by Lakota Grace
The engine purred as I backed the car out of the garage, the sunlight glinting off the newly polished windshield. We headed down the access road and stopped at the intersection leading to Highway-260.
We still had an hour or two before our appointment at the Spine Ranch. “Which way?” I asked.
“Ladies' choice.”
Shepherd liked to brag he knew every pothole and broken curb in his district. A good cop did that, drove the same roads hundreds of times, alert and watching for nuances that made the difference at high speeds.
I was technically a rookie with less than a year under my belt. Maybe it was time to start building that fundamental knowledge that I couldn't find in any textbook.
I considered my options. Left would take us back toward Cottonwood on a sometimes-divided road with a staid 55 mile per hour speed limit. There was always the potential for picking up a few traffic tickets, because most drivers exceeded that low driving speed.
Right led to Interstate-17 and from there another cross-road decision point: north or south. South led to Copper Canyon, a ten-mile stretch filled with curves and steep uphill climbs. They'd just opened a new lane for slow-moving trucks—been working on it for a year now, moved tons of rock.
On the other hand, if I turned north at I-17, I'd enter a straight stretch of four-lane road running across the valley before heading up the hill to Flagstaff.
When we reached the Interstate, I headed north. Traffic was light, unlike the weekends when lanes would clog with vacationers from Phoenix and locals anxious to get home to a cold beer and a lazy sprawl in front of the TV.
I goosed the engine a little and the speedometer jumped to 85. They'd resurfaced this section of road in anticipation of the bad weather to come, and tracking remained steady. The road curved out in front of us like a river to nowhere. I tapped the accelerator, and the car accelerated to 97 easily. Still a lot of room under the pedal.
“Sweet.” Shepherd leaned back, stretched out his long legs. “Let her out, see what she can do.”
I rose to the invitation like a shark smelling blood in shallow waters. The car leaped ahead, hitting 110. The mesquite and chaparral on the hillsides smeared into a gray-green blur. How fast would this baby go? I increased the pressure on my foot and the needle nosed over to 125. Still steady.
My vision narrowed, encompassing only the road before me, black and smooth. Signposts zipped by, and my heart pounded. My lips lifted in a silly grin, and I smashed the pedal to the floor. The speedometer hit 140 and hung there for a moment, the needle jittering. Could I get more?
Shepherd reached over and hit the lights and siren, and the pulsating lights and noise entered my brain, rattling back and forth. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t need to breathe.
150…Time slowed. I was all-powerful, invincible.
I barely heard Shepherd's growly voice beside me.
“Ease her off a little,” he said. “Getting light in the rear end. Feel the suspension float?”
I felt disappointment in my heart. Too soon. This car was flying, and I wanted to fly with her.
“Slow down!” Shepherd’s flat tone of command broke through my road haze.
Reluctantly I raised my toe. The car bucked, crossing the heat grooves that the semis had worn into the roadbed, gearing down for the higher elevations ahead.
The car moaned in frustration as I pulled it down to highway speed. I signaled for the exit to Oak Creek Canyon.
I gulped, filling air-starved lungs, as I halted at the underpass stop sign.
Colors swirled around me like a rainbow on steroids. Every nerve crackled with the need to challenge the universe. I wanted to do it again! To take that mother of roller coasters by the throat and ride forever.
Shepherd grunted and motioned for me to make a U-turn under the freeway and stop when I reached the freeway access road facing south once more. I crossed under and stopped the car as he had directed.
I'd trained on the police academy driving course with helmets and yellow foam neck guards, but this was the real thing. I turned to Shepherd with a wide grin, expecting him to share my excitement.
His returning expression was pensive. “What do you feel?”
Why’d he ask that? I felt everything. I was a god!
“Describe that car parked in front of us,” he directed.
“A gray—no, beige—Honda. Two—no, three passengers.”
It was hard to concentrate. My sweaty hands clenched the steering wheel and thigh muscles cramped against the fabric of my uniform. I started to shake, just a little.
“Take your pulse.”
I put my fingers on my wrist, started counting, one-two...my heart pounded out of my chest...seventeen, eighteen. I lost count, had to start again. “One twenty.”
My pulse should be half that. What the hell was going on?
“Breathe,” Shepherd said.
Irritated, I slowed the air rushing in and out of my nostrils. The world stopped whipping around me in a dizzy spin.
“Welcome to a Cop High,” Shepherd said. “Nothing like it, especially the first time.” He smiled as though remembering. “When you're in that zone, it can seem like you’ve got total focus, total concentration. But don’t be misled. Mistakes get made there, big ones. Cops who lead with their emotions get killed.”
I swallowed once, hard, and tucked his words away for future reflection.
Shepherd unbuckled his seat belt and opened the door. “Time for me to take a turn. Let’s go write some tickets.”
***
Later that afternoon Shepherd and I headed over to the Spine Ranch. Shepherd planned to interview Heinrich Spine, and I was going to recheck Ray Morales’s alibi.
As we passed through Camp Verde, I asked Shepherd to stop at the post office so I could pick up some stamps. I'd tried calling my mother back in Tennessee, but in her dementia, she didn't seem to remember. Letters were something tangible to hold on to, a reminder that she still had a daughter. At least I hoped that was how it worked.
There was a demonstration going on in the parking lot, half a dozen people waving signs and walking around. One young man with a clipboard accosted me as I walked out of the building with my stamps. “Want to sign our petition?”
I looked over at his paper with interest. As a newly registered voter, now an official resident of Arizona, I could sign. But then I'm always a sucker for public action. I'm the one that buys the tickets for the local 4-H group fair and the boxes of Girl Scout cookies in front of Safeway. How can you resist those thin mints?
This petition was a recall for one of the county commissioners.
“What'd he do?” I asked.
The young man was indignant. “He voted to approve Prescott's steal of the Verde River water.”
Now I understood. It was a hot topic here in the Verde Valley. The headwaters of the Verde River began with a series of springs on the rim of the valley. Prescott, located on that same high plateau, was rapidly outstripping its own water supply and was buying up land that had more. If they succeed in buying the land that held the springs, they’d have more water, but Verde River that flowed through this valley would dry up.
I tried to imagine our green valley without water and couldn’t. As I scribbled my name at the bottom of the list of signatures, I thought about the recent cloudburst in Red Tank Draw and the fight Serena and Heinrich were locked into. Water—too much or too little—was the perennial problem of our high desert.
“What was that all about?” Shepherd asked as I got back in the car.
“Water. You want to sign the petition?”
“Already did. They got me in Mingus.”
I didn’t have to ask which side of the controversy Shepherd was on. We were all in the same boat on this one.
The Spine Ranch was next. Soon we passed under the hanging sign for the ranch. With one skillful twist of the wheel, Shepherd parked the vehicle inches from the barn. Clouds of dust billowed over us as he jerked on the parking brake. The
man could drive. But that also meant we’d need to sluice off the dust before we returned the sheriff’s new patrol car to the garage.
Shepherd walked toward the main house to meet with Dr. Spine, and I headed toward the barn. There I found Ray Morales sitting on an overturned five-gallon bucket. Pieces of black leather bridle harness covered a white sheet spread on the cement floor.
“What're you doing?” I asked.
“Getting the horse barn ready for Heinrich. He’s got business people coming in to look at the ranch. Onyx always draws a crowd and I want him to look pretty.”
What business people? Was Dr. Spine considering a sale of the property? He’d mentioned the Nature Conservancy—Was this yet another change of plans?
“Come sit a spell,” Ray invited, as he dissembled a bridle and carefully examined the metal fittings for wear. He unbuckled the straps and tugged carefully on each one. Then examined the stitching on each side. He looked at me from under the brim of his green John Deere cap.
“Do this on a regular basis,” he said, “and a broken bridle won't surprise you when you're at a full gallop.”
My only experience with horses had been riding once or twice at the local stable back in Tennessee. There, the groom held the horse steady while I stepped onto the mounting block and climbed on for an hour's ride. This up-close-and-personal view was new to me.
Ray must have sensed my inexperience. “Ever polished your shoes?”
I nodded. What rookie cop hadn't spent the night before inspection putting a high shine on those black brogans?
“This is the same thing.” He pointed to the dissembled leather pieces spread out on the sheet. “Pick one. I've cleaned them already with saddle soap. Be careful not to get polish on the horse side of the straps.”
He handed me a small dish of water and a twist can of black Kiwi shoe polish.
I picked up a strap of leather, supple after Ray’s ministrations. I dabbed the polish on a rag and rubbed it on the strap. “Why no polish on the inside?”
“Not so bad on our black horses, but get that dark polish smeared on a light-colored horse and you'll not forget. Anyway, it irritates their skin, sometimes.”
It was an unusual position for a interview, sitting here on an overturned bucket, but I figured I'd go for it. I cleared my throat. “Ray, they've declared Gil's death suspicious, so I'm checking with everyone. Where were you the night he died?”
Ray pulled the bridle bit out of a pail where it had been soaking. He flicked off a bit of encrusted matter and examined the metal. Then he gave me a keen stare. “At home. In bed with my wife. That's Rosa, works for Heinrich Spine. You might have met her?”
My mind flashed to the middle-aged woman who had comforted Amanda. “You live here at the ranch?”
“In that small casita over there.” He gestured vaguely.
“Hear anything unusual the night the stable burned?”
He shook his head. “We'd been having a party for her niece, so maybe a bit too much to drink. Alana's going back home to Mexico.” There was hesitancy in his soft voice.
I remembered Shepherd’s comments. “She’s an illegal alien?”
Ray rubbed harder on the metal. “Alana’s a person, not a bug-eyed monster from Mars or something.”
I raised my hands in surrender. “Hey, I'm not an immigration officer. Just asking.”
He sighed. “She’s going back to Hermosillo for her mother’s funeral. We all chipped in for her trip. She's crossed the border to the States twice before, but I worry about her returning. My wife says it isn't safe for any of us. She wants me to liquidate our possessions and move to the high plateau of Mexico, the Mesa del Norte, where we're from.”
“Will you?”
“When it next comes time to renew my visa? Maybe so. I've lived in Arizona all my life, but there are times when I don't feel welcome. I worry that your patrol officers might stop me. That’s not right, to think somebody’s a criminal because of how they look.”
Racial profiling. It was awkward talking to somebody on the other side of that line who had experienced the bias. And it brought another fact into play. Ray Morales lived in Arizona legally but his niece did not. Would that fact be grounds for blackmail? Somehow I didn’t see this soft-spoken man as a killer. But even if he was innocent, he might know someone who was not.
“Who might have wanted to harm Gil?” I asked. Always good to get another perspective. Triangulation, Shepherd called it.
“Streicker was good with horses. And women liked him.”
“Any of the ladies here likely suspects?”
“Amanda? No.” He thought for a moment. “Her mother? Not so sure. That woman is too stressed out. She needs to calm down, my Rosa says.”
“What about Raven LightDancer? I hear he’s the drug-connection here on the ranch.” I picked up another piece of leather and applied more polish.
“Who told you that—Amanda? Gil was the dealer on the ranch, not Raven. Streicker sold the workers that poison and then there was no money to feed their families. I argued with him about it. He refused to listen.”
“Argued, how?”
Ray chuckled. “I know where you’re going. Not like that. I didn’t hurt the man.”
He finished buckling the bridle throat piece and hung the harness on a nearby hook to dry. “Can't let leather stay wet. It'll mildew and be ruined. You have to take care of precious things.”
I wondered if he was referring to the leather in front of him or to other important items—like his job at the ranch, or protecting one of his extended family. I sighed. Ray wasn’t off the suspect list, not by a long shot.
“Good to talk to you, Officer Quincy.” He stood and held out a hand. “Stay out of cow pastures, now.” He winked.
Would that escapade continue to haunt me? Not exactly what I wanted to be known for. I gave the fenced area a cautionary look as I returned to the squad car, but the Brahma bull who had given me chase was somewhere else tending to cattle business. Good thing. I might have challenged him for best two out of three.
Shepherd was already in the squad car, the engine idling. His fingers tapped the dash as I opened the door to a blast of air-conditioning.
“Saw you in there with Ray. What'd he have to say?” he asked.
I told him about Gil being the ranch supplier of drugs, not Raven LightDancer.
“Not surprised,” Shepherd grunted. “Although Raven has his own share of law-breaking activities.”
“Ray’s niece is going back to Mexico,” I said, mentioning Ray’s concerns. “You ever pull anyone over because of appearance?”
“Once or twice, when they fit the description.”
I pushed a little. “And your view of our neighbors to the south?”
Shepherd shifted uneasily in the seat as he pulled onto the paved road leading back to the highway. “Two sides to every story. A friend of mine has a ranch south of Tucson. Says he spends days repairing that border fence, rounding up loose cattle. The coyotes, those guides, rip holes in it to get their 'clients' through and leave trash littering the place.”
For Shepherd, the law was black or white, no room for question. Maybe seeing the human side of things was my weakness as a family liaison officer.
“What'd you find up at the Big House?” I asked.
Shepherd seemed relieved to leave a sensitive topic. “Well, Heinrich confirmed that since Gil's no longer in the picture, he may revise his will. Says he’ll cut out the Nature Conservancy; give the ranch to Marguerite and her family after all. He uses that document like a goddam ping-pong ball to keep his heirs in line. What makes a man do something like that?”
I didn’t have an answer. Gil Streicker had wanted that power himself, and that desire got him killed.
Chapter 27
After lunch, we switched drivers. Shepherd was quiet, not talking much. He'd direct me to pull over one vehicle, then ignore the next. We wrote a few warning citations, and the quiet afternoon dragged on.
I was about to suggest we head back to the office when a car entered the freeway at the Middle Verde entrance. Gunned it up to speed in sixty seconds. A red car. A red Porsche.
“Got him,” Shepherd said with satisfaction.
I eased into traffic and stayed two cars back of the Porsche. The traffic automatically slowed, as drivers became aware of our presence.
Shepherd watched our speedometer carefully, until I reached one mile over the speed limit. “Hold it there,” he ordered.
It only took a few minutes before the Porsche impatiently pulled away from the line of cars.
“Now,” Shepherd said.
I eased out of the traffic and clicked on the light bar. I blipped the siren when I was directly behind the Porsche.
The driver's head jerked up at the noise, and he looked in his rearview mirror. His hand hit the steering wheel in frustration. His turn signal blinked right and he slowed to the side of the road. We pulled to a stop behind him.
“Call in the plate,” Shepherd said.
I did. It was Shepherd's nemesis, all right. But no wants, no warrants. His attorney must have been busy clearing all those old tickets. We sat there for a minute.
“You or me?” I asked.
Without responding, Shepherd opened his door and stood there for a moment. Then he straightened his shoulders and walked purposefully toward the sports car. I remained in the idling patrol car on high alert.
The Porsche driver rolled down his window, and there was a conversation between him and Shepherd. The driver reached into his glove box for his registration. I thought that it would be it, a routine rolling violation, just like he had gotten in the past. The ticket would reside in the glove box with the others his attorney eventually paid.
There was a roar in front of me. Shepherd jumped back and the Porsche accelerated onto the road, back-end fishtailing. A hand poked out the window and raised with a one-fingered salute. Shepherd ran back to the patrol car. I was rolling, before he slammed the door, before he even buckled up.
“I'll handle communications, Peg. You concentrate on stopping that son of a bitch.”
