by Rex Burns
CHAPTER 3
HENDERSON DIDN’T SAY much until he had pulled his vehicle back onto the paved highway and the rumble and thud of the rough dirt road had changed to the high whine of tires. “Agent Douglas D. Durkin figures anybody’s not with him has got to be against him.”
“He ought to figure we’re all on the same side.”
The man’s big head nodded once and he kept his eyes on the road. “Be nice if you can make Sheriff Spurlock see it that way.”
“Yeah, that’s true.” A quarter mile away through shoulder-high brush, a flash of bobbing white indicated the backside of a startled pronghorn antelope. Wager made out, running with it, two or three other bounding, earth-colored shapes that quickly disappeared. “I take it you’re working with Durkin?”
A grunt of some kind. “You got a little more independence than I do. Durkin tells me to jump, I got to ask, ‘How high?’“ He glanced at Wager. “FBI’s got general authorization from Congress to direct operations in any joint enforcement undertakings involving BLM. That was the payoff to the FBI for letting Interior organize its own enforcement branch a few years back, and like I told you, I got no experience working a homicide. Plus, the FBI’s also got control of the technical side of things. What that means is all fingerprint ID, forensic science requests, and everything else the FBI labs at Quantico can do for us have to be sent through a regional FBI liaison if we want priority service.
“Usually, it’s pretty routine: We fill out a request and an agent rubber-stamps it and sends it on to be handled like a bureau item. But it doesn’t have to work that smooth, and if we get into a pissing contest, it’s not going to.” He fell silent while the car’s wheels danced across a stretch of frost-broken pavement and deep potholes caused by late winter runoff. “I forgot to tell you, even some of the routine stuff—fingerprint traces, blood and tissue samples—can take six months or more if they aren’t given priority. And anything special, like chemical traces or fabric samples, can take up to a year or more.”
He didn’t have to tell Wager. It was why the Denver Police Department and a lot of other police departments used the FBI labs as seldom as possible.
“And there’s one more thing: Federal judges tend to pay more attention to us if the FBI joins our requests for legal action. That means a lot quicker issue of warrants, subpoenas, that kind of crap.”
“So what are you left to do on your own?”
“General security for BLM properties. Look for people stealing gas or oil from any wellheads on BLM land. Count cow populations for overgrazing and keep an eye out for rustlers working BLM land. Search for marijuana patches and meth labs. We do manage to find things to keep busy with, Wager.”
“Poachers?”
“Not directly. The law enforcement section of Fish and Wildlife has that job—they’re Department of Interior people, too, but they’re independent of BLM. But there’s only twenty-four of those agents to cover the north-central region—eight Rocky Mountain and prairie states, so we do keep our eyes open and call them if we see something.”
“And you haven’t investigated homicides?”
Henderson shook his head. “Nope. Not until now. That’s one of the areas the FBI kept to itself, which has always been fine with me. But you heard what Durkin said—he’s directing and advising, now, and I’m the one’s supposed to do the investigating. Plus, one victim was working for the USGS and the other was a BLM agent, so we got a sort of vested interest in both cases. Which Durkin don’t like particularly, but Chief Leicht said it’s good for BLM morale to show we’re part of the hunt for the bastards, and somehow he got the FBI regional director to go along with it. So now me and Durkin got us an officially sanctioned cooperative effort.’’
“It’s good for morale?”
“Not as good as not getting shot, I grant you. But Kershaw was one of our people, Wager. You don’t just hand something like that over to somebody else.”
He could understand Henderson’s point. More than once, when a metro police unit in the Denver area closed in on a cop killer, they had turned the actual arrest over to officers from the dead man’s district. It wasn’t just courtesy—it was a way of bringing some kind of balance to the injured department, an evening up of the score.
Henderson cleared his throat. “Tell you true, I’d just as soon leave the whole thing to you because I know damn well you know more about homicide investigations than I do. So you sort of run your own investigation, OK? I’ll sort of poke around where I know I won’t screw anything up, and help out when you need me, but as far as I’m concerned, you get a free field.”
Wager nodded. It was what he intended anyway. “Do you think the militia group’s involved, too?”
Henderson considered before answering. “Well, they have made a lot of noise about defending their rights against the federal government. And where there’s smoke, there’s fire, you know? But Durkin hasn’t told me he’s got any concrete evidence—that’s one of the things Del Ponte was supposed to find out: if anybody in the group said anything about the killings. That, and if the Constitutional Posse really was trying to branch out onto the reservation.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Don’t know if or why. Just that the killings and one of the bombings took place on or near the reservation. No killings up in the mountains in the eastern part of the county or on the Uncompahgre Plateau up north, not yet, anyway. But we did have two vehicle bombings in the national forest land east of La Sal township.”
“How much has Sheriff Spurlock been dragging his feet on this?”
“Well, since Kershaw and Holtzer were killed on federal land, and that’s not Spurlock’s jurisdiction, he hasn’t been all that involved in those investigations. But Durkin did ask him for any information he might come up with on them, and Spurlock says he don’t have none. My guess is, even if he did know something, he wouldn’t be likely to give it to us if it might cause any trouble for somebody he knows. The Del Ponte death is the one Spurlock’s really dragging his feet on.”
“Where was he killed?”
“Alongside State Road 181, down in Squaw Canyon. That’s where he was found, anyway. About a mile and a half before you reach the reservation.”
“He might have been killed somewhere else and dumped there?”
“Couldn’t tell. He’s the one the animals got to before we did.”
Wager remembered. “So it could have been natural causes?”
“Could. Or couldn’t. Ruled a suspicious death.”
Which was the normal label for a death that had not been sworn to by a doctor or coroner as natural. The location of the corpse made Spurlock the primary investigator on that one—his jurisdiction, his case—despite Del Ponte being an informant for the FBI. It also sounded like the case that could provide Wager with the clearest legal basis for his own involvement. “He’s not copying you on his reports?”
“Hasn’t yet. Far as I know, he’s not doing enough work to generate any reports. Moreover, the state district attorney just shrugs and says it’s the sheriff’s job and there’s no evidence it was a homicide, and even if it is, there’s no statute of limitations in Colorado for filing charges on a homicide, so there’s no rush either way.”
“Are you saying ‘cover up’?”
“No. No, I’m not accusing anybody of that, so don’t go saying I am. All I am saying is that Sheriff Spurlock is taking his own sweet time about doing anything, and what little he has done, he’s not telling us about. Just why he’s moving so slow is something else, and I don’t make any guesses as to that.”
“What’s his name? The DA?”
“Medina. Betty Medina. She’s down in Montezuma County but acts for La Sal county, too. There’s not enough people in La Sal County to support a DA’s office. Hardly enough to pay for their own sheriff’s office, and was I Spurlock I’d worry about any one of my taxpayers getting killed off.”
Talking to the DA would mean going back to Cortez, the Montezuma Count
y seat. Wager might get by with a phone call and save that long trip—depending on what he would have to ask District Attorney Medina. And how he might have to ask it. Some things, like a person’s eyes, you just couldn’t read over a telephone. “There’s a Colorado Highway Patrol office in Dry Creek, isn’t there?”
“I think so, yeah. But they’re not involved in any of this. Thank God. All we need’s another agency to cooperate with.”
“Just drop me off there; they’re supposed to have a vehicle for me,” Wager said.
A courier had driven it down from the state motor pool branch in Grand Junction. As plain as Henderson’s federal vehicle, the state vehicle was an old dull-white Plymouth Caravelle with official Colorado license plates and antennae mounted on the roof and on the slope of the rear deck. The boxy sedan’s engine was still making little noises as it cooled from the long run along State 141.
“You want to sign this, Officer Wager?” Trooper Shonsey held out a Bic pen. Its point hovered over the line for “Receipt of Vehicle.” He was lean and tall and his uniform had been tailored to fit snugly and without wrinkling. It reminded Wager of the skintight khaki uniform shirts he’d invested in when he’d finished boot camp. The Marine Corps’ regulation issue, given his wide shoulders and short legs, looked baggy on him, so he’d had his shirts tailored. Along with the modifications to his dress blues, it had cost him almost a month’s pay, and he’d only had a chance to wear the dress uniform for two weeks on leave before being sent to the Pacific. But he could remember the special feel of that stiff blue cloth with its scarlet-and-gold PFC stripe on the sleeve, and the sliver glitter of the expert marksmanship badges on his chest. He would, though he didn’t know it then, soon rate cheery little campaign ribbons to place above those badges. That spasm of vanity had cost a lot, but it had been worth it.
“I got the keys right here, soon as you sign.”
Wager traded his name for the keys strung together with a paper identification tag and asked the trooper for the local radio channels used by police and emergency units. “Do you work closely with Sheriff Spurlock?”
“Close? No—not unless it’s a pursuit or a road block. Sometimes a medical call. My job’s the state and federal highways, he covers the county roads.”
“How about Deputy Morris? Do you know him?”
“Howie? Sure. Lives over near Egnarville. That’s in his sector: southwest corner of the county. Sector four.”
Wager placed the town on the Colorado highway map he held in his memory. It wasn’t difficult because in this part of the state there weren’t many dots with names to them. “It’s near the reservation?”
“Squaw Point Reservation, yeah. About eight miles.”
“Did you work on that body they found out there?”
“Del Ponte? I answered the call along with the sheriff’s office—it was a state highway they found him on. But Howie and the S.O. cleared the scene. The death didn’t involve a vehicle, so the only part I had was traffic control: a pick-up truck and two stray cows. Couple of nosy rabbits.”
Wager wasn’t certain if the man was joking, but he didn’t see anything funny in it. “Have you worked closely with any of the FBI or BLM agents?”
“Not closely or otherwise.” Shonsey carefully filed the vehicle release form in a manila folder and slid a metal drawer closed. “But you ought to know, Officer Wager, there’s some hard feelings around here toward federal agents. That was Henderson who dropped you off, wasn’t it? The BLM man?”
Wager nodded.
“Well, it doesn’t matter to me either way. But like I say, people here don’t put any trust in anything to do with the federal government.”
“That includes Sheriff Spurlock?”
“Matter of fact it does. He and that FBI agent—Durbin? Durman?—traded some hard words. The way Spurlock tells it, he and Henderson came in here from Denver or Washington, D.C., or somewhere and begun to tell Spurlock how to run his county and what he should do on the Del Ponte case and I don’t know what all. The upshot was one hell of an argument, I understand, and Spurlock told both of them he didn’t want to see either of their ugly faces in his office again. Ever. So if you’re thinking of getting some help from the S.O., you might want to think twice about palling around with Henderson anymore.”
“I’ll remember that.”
A shrug. “Like I say, it doesn’t make any difference to me—as long as it doesn’t have anything to do with the state highways.”
Buy The Leaning Land Now!
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1995 by Rex Raoul Stephen Sehler Burns
cover design by Michel Vrana
978-1-4532-4797-6
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