Leaning Land (7 page)

“You were asked to come out here? By who?”

“The FBI, through Captain Melrose, Denver Police Department. The initial request came to the CBI from the state attorney general’s office.” Then he played the big card. “The governor signed off on the request, too.”

As chief executive of the state, the governor had the power to name replacements for elected officials who, for one reason or another, failed to serve out their terms; the state attorney general had direct supervision of all district attorneys as well as the state court system in Colorado. That office’s power over sheriffs was in the hazy area that called sheriffs and their deputies “officers of the court.” Under law, the court system was one structure leading all the way from local small-claims courts up to the state supreme court. However, like judges, sheriffs were elected by district and had wide latitude in performing their duties. Reported irregularities in that performance were assessed by the state attorney general’s office, which had the power to empanel grand juries to investigate complaints. But the distinction between local and state powers was a flexible and sometimes competitive line. While no one at either state or local level was ever eager to investigate charges of malfeasance, it had happened occasionally. And no sheriff enjoyed the idea of explaining to the voters at the next election why he had been investigated by the SAG, or why the governor had threatened to appoint someone else to the job.

The heavy flesh of Spurlock’s face hid any emotion, as did his baggy eyes, which rested, unblinking, on Wager. “The governor did, huh? So just what kind of ‘coordination’ you have in mind, Officer Wager?”

“Whatever it takes to solve four homicides.”

“Three, none of which was in my jurisdiction. We’re not sure the fourth’s a homicide.”

“It’s listed as a suspicious death. I’d like to clear it up one way or the other.”

“You’d like to do that, would you?” He folded large-knuckled hands comfortably across his stomach. “Well, just what makes you think I won’t be able to do that without your help?”

“I don’t doubt that you can. And I know for sure I couldn’t do it without your help. But my job—what the governor and the attorney general sent me out to do—is to help you and the federal people work together to determine if any of the deaths are related.” He added, “If they are, then maybe working on one will lead to a break on the others.”

“And just why does the state attorney general’s office think they’re related?”

“Four homicides—possible homicides, I know—in a three-month period and in a population this small is suspicious in itself. Then you add the facts that two were federal employees killed by snipers, and the third was an informant for the feds. It becomes a possibility too strong to ignore.”

“That’s the way the people in Denver see it?”

“If it happened in another county, wouldn’t you wonder?”

The sheriff didn’t answer, but only hissed a long breath through his nose. “La Sal County has 1,658 people in it, Officer Wager, and 1,280 square miles. I got four patrol deputies and myself to look after that many square miles and the people therein, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not complaining. I ran for this office, and I’ll keep running for it as long as me and the people think I can do the job. What I’m telling you is me and my deputies get called to everything from hippies camping out on somebody’s range land to robberies and killings, plus the court’s business in this county, as well as running my four-room, free-rent hotel, which tends to get pretty full on payday weekends. To do all that with what little support the county commissioners let me have, Wager, means I got to have a system—I have to do things my way if they’re going to get done at all. Now,” another long breath, “I’m happy to work with those people any time they want to work with me. But I’ll be damned if I have the time or the resources to turn me and my people over to Special Agent Durkin so things can be done the way him and Washington, D.C., think they should be done. To the people that put me in office, Wager, moving them hippies off the land they squatted on is a hell of a lot more important than whether or not Special Agent Durkin’s confidential informant was a homicide. And that, Wager, is the way it is and the way it is going to be.”

And that gave Wager his angle. “Which is the other reason I was sent out: I’m a homicide detective—been one for almost ten years. I might be able to help you out if you want me to, and you can still run your county your way.”

“I didn’t ask for no help, damn it!”

“No, you didn’t. Neither did Durkin. He thinks he can do it all by himself. Henderson’s the one who had the sense to make the phone call, Sheriff. He’s the one who doesn’t give a damn who gets the credit as long as he can find a way to solve the murders. And personally, I think he’s got the right attitude: forget the politics and get the job done. And do it before another man is killed and somebody else’s wife and kids have to stand around staring at a fresh grave.”

The strips of sky above the window well must have been interesting because the sheriff took his time studying them. When he began speaking again, it seemed off the subject. But Wager knew the man well enough by now to understand that that was the way the sheriff worked toward something he was angry at or wasn’t really comfortable with. “We have a real population boom in La Sal County. Have had for the past few years—four or five new people move in each year, most of them from California. Looking for God knows what. Some of them don’t find it and leave pretty quick, and some hang around and try to change things so they have whatever it is they’re missing. Whatever will make La Sal County into what they ran way from: Orange County, or whatever. Can’t just let things be.”

Wager waited through the long pause. He had expected the sheriff to be a redneck who shared his constituents’ suspicion of federal officers and outsiders in general, and maybe the man did, down deep. But so far, all Wager had seen was a sheriff who figured he knew how to run his county, and damn well knew how the law defined his authority. And he didn’t intend to let Durkin or Henderson or Wager poke their noses into the way he ran his office. It was a territorial attitude Wager had seen before and one he could understand.

“More than half my county belongs to the federal government, Wager, and it don’t pay any local taxes—national parks, national forest land. And we got some bits and pieces of the Indian reservation, but they’re not my worry, thank God. And now we got people want to build great big retirement communities on the edge of the forest land—say that’s where money’s going to come from: aging baby boomers who want to retire in the mountains. Of course, it’s not really the mountains they have in mind. It’s golf courses, it’s better highways so the retirees can get in and out with their Winnebago’s. It’s better medical facilities—hell, we don’t even have a county hospital! But now there’s talk we should legalize gambling and build up the tax base so we can afford all these things, and to do it by making the place more attractive to high rollers. Set up big hotels, whatnot, because high rollers have to have some place nice to roll in. Open up the forest land to more than just fishing and hunting: winter sports like skiing and snowmobiling. Start subdividing the ranch land and put in roads and put up schools for more people who want to bring California with them. Damn it, the land can’t take that kind of use, Wager—we live in a desert!”

“Is that what has the ranchers worried?”

“Yeah, that’s the big part of it. Change never does come easy when people are happy with their lives, and now there’s a lot of that kind of pressure. That and the federal government’s policies on grazing and land use that’s squeezing the small outfits till they can’t make a dime, year in and year out. Most of the land around here’s just plain scrub—you need five hundred, a thousand acres for each cow, and it’s not good for anything else anyway.” He finally stopped staring up at the window. “I reckon I can use some help at that, Officer Wager. But only if you take care of that damned Durkin—you keep him away from me—you do that and I’ll turn this Del Ponte thing over to you. That what you want?”

Wager nodded. “That’ll do.”

T
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file was one of the thinner manila folders propped up in the bookcase behind the reception counter. Dorothy, the sheriff’s clerk, didn’t have a check-out form—”I’ll remember who’s got it, Officer Wager”—and Wager, given a closet-sized corner of the copy room and a folding table and chair—”Sorry, it’s all we got”—settled down to scan the papers.

He had asked Sheriff Spurlock who might have slashed his tires; the answer didn’t rule out the three ranchers or calm any fears Wager might have had: “Anybody who thinks you might be a fed.” And he’d asked Spurlock how that somebody would have known Wager was a cop. “You got a state car? State license plate and radio antenna on the back? Don’t take a genius to figure that out, Wager. That, and being a new face at the only motel in that part of the county.” He added, “I’ll tell everybody you’re working with me. Maybe that’ll keep your wheels safe. As well as your scalp.”

And maybe it wouldn’t, but that was something Wager didn’t want to waste time worrying about now. Instead, he put the incident into that corner of his memory labeled “Don’t get mad, just get even” and focused all his attention on the Del Ponte file.

The body had been reported at 11:14 A.M. on 24 March by one Gordon Hunter, State Highway Maintenance, who had been doing a routine survey of the road’s condition and had noticed a shoe lying at the shoulder. He’d also noticed that it wasn’t your everyday empty shoe, curled and split by weather and perhaps flattened by a passing tire. In fact, there seemed to be a ragged knob of something poking out of the shoe, which looked suspiciously like a chewed-on ankle. Hunter stopped the maintenance truck for a better look, and his belief that the shoe was no ordinary discard was reinforced by a thick column of busy ants. That, and, carried by a gentle breeze, the smell that came from somewhere over in the high grass filling the berm. Following his nose, Hunter discovered what was making the smell, and a small stack of glossy black-and-white Polaroid photographs showed what Hunter had seen: a swatch of mashed grass and the scattered and partially eaten bits of the body strewn across the broken weeds. The last photograph was of Del Ponte’s torso with its head—the distance marked by a ruler to give dimension to the photo—tumbled into a depression between two rocks. To judge from the black, desiccated flesh running from left eye to right jaw and covering half the face, he had lain partially facedown in the hot sun for at least a couple of days before animals began their playful feast.

Identification had been by the man’s wife, one Sharon Del Ponte of RR1, Egnarville. She stated that her husband had left home on 17 March and that she hadn’t seen him since. No missing person report had been filed—Del Ponte had been self-employed as a small-time trucker and had had his own tractor-trailer for transporting livestock and other cargo. March was a busy time for him ordinarily, bringing cows from lower winter pastures in the canyons to the better grass of the highlands at the east end of the county. It wasn’t unusual for him to go off to a job that lasted several days and which she would not be told about. She knew of no one who wanted to kill her husband.

His last haul, at least that Sheriff Spurlock could determine, was March 15 for the Butte Springs Ranch, moving cattle to their summer range in BLM land east of La Sal.

The analysis of the remains—conducted by the coroner down in Montezuma County—showed no causative wounds located in the bones of the victim; too much damage had been done by animals to determine if death was the result of trauma in the soft tissue. In short, the coroner’s report was inconclusive on everything except the fact that nobody would be in that condition who wasn’t dead.

Neighbors or known associates of the deceased who had been interviewed were listed: B. J. Haydn, Egnarville; Pete Stine, Egnarville; Joseph Dorfin, RR2, Egnarville. None offered any information about possible assailants.

Del Ponte’s car and his diesel tractor were found parked and locked behind Mallard’s Garage at Lewis Corners, where he usually stored his truck and trailers.

What wasn’t in the file were the steps of investigation that a larger department would do routinely: lab analyses of body fluids and tissue samples; fingerprint search of the victim’s vehicles; canvass of all local residents who used that stretch of highway daily; forensic medical specialists to examine the victim’s clothes, intestines, fingernails, hair, teeth for any indication of where he’d spent his last hours. It was too late for any of that now, and the only thing left for Wager was legwork.

Or car work. He couldn’t help a glance at his new tires as he unlocked the car and headed back west toward Egnarville. Twenty-five minutes later, he passed the Gypsum Motel. In the parking lot outside the restaurant, he noted two dusty pickup trucks bearing La Sal County plates and a dark Lexus sedan with Denver’s code: it was the car a salesman was likely to drive in this country—speedy but easy to handle and soft to ride in. Another twenty minutes of fast driving brought Wager to Egnarville.

This town didn’t have a crossroads. Its center was a wider shoulder on the north side of the highway where a combination gas station and grocery store sat. It held the single public telephone as well as the contract post office. The scattered mobile homes and small frame houses were all on the same side of the highway. The south side was fenced rangeland, and Wager guessed that the houses were located where they were because that was where a spring had been found and where water wells could be sunk without much drilling.

The name of the Egnarville store was Store, and the name of the man who worked the cash register as well as the post office counter was Jesse.

“Jesse Herrera.” He looked at Wager’s ID and then at Wager. “What can I help you with, Officer?”

“Rubin Del Ponte. He lived around here, didn’t he?”

“Sure did.” A tilt of his head indicated somewhere behind the crammed shelving that formed the wall behind him. “Just over there. Terrible thing, him dying like that.”