“Karen? Do I know a Karen?” Capshaw’s thick eyebrows formed a caterpillar arc.
“She’s Ken’s girlfriend.”
“I thought her name was Deb.”
“Straight blond hair? Long legs? Early twenties?”
“Nah, Deb’s a redhead. She does have great legs. I guess that goes with owning a ten-thousand-square-foot house.” He laughed. “What were you sayin’ about a truck?”
“Karen told me you insured Ken’s truck.” The lie was getting smoother with practice. The words were rolling off my tongue like polished gemstones.
“Ken doesn’t own a truck. I insure him for his Blazer and his Ferrari.”
“Where does he get all his money from anyway?”
“Venture capital. He invested heavily in Silicon Valley. There’s a guy who can live anywhere he wants with anybody he pleases. Give these guys a modem and a cell phone and they can work anywhere. That’s what’s fueling Oro’s expansion.”
I knew enough about venture capital and the computer business to know that sometimes you win big and sometimes you lose even bigger. Ken Roland might have been on a losing streak and needed the money a fire would bring in. The South Canyon fire had to have decreased the value of his house, but he did have good insurance, making it more profitable, perhaps, to burn than to sell.
“I suppose he has a large mortgage to pay off,” I said.
“No mortgage,” Capshaw said. “It was a cash deal. Guys like him are reshaping the West. They’ve got the money to turn these small Colorado towns around. Ninety thousand Californians moved into Colorado last year. I figure you can fight ’em or you can join ’em.”
It was good for the economy, bad for the sense of community. How you felt about the growth depended on how badly you needed the money, how much you cared about preserving the place you lived. There’s a lot of resistance to change in the rural West, enough even to make me wonder if Ken Roland’s house might have been torched by someone other than Ken Roland. “How do they feel about newcomers around here?”
“Depends on where you’re from.” Capshaw grinned, straddling the line between real honesty and good business. Sometimes honesty works for you in business, sometimes not. “Are you from California?”
“New Mexico,” I said.
“That’s right. You mentioned that, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll have no problem,” he replied. “You’ll love Oro.” New Mexicans are welcome most places; we’re not rich enough or numerous enough to threaten anybody’s way of life.
“You have a chapter of Forest Sentinels here?” It was the environmental group the birders had said they belonged to. Forest Sentinels was active in New Mexico and, in fact, was embroiled in controversy because loggers believed the environmentalists were preventing them from making a living.
“Well, yeah, we have a chapter, but you wouldn’t want to be involved with them.”
“Why not?”
“They’re troublemakers,” Jim Capshaw said.
“Well, thanks for your help,” I said. “I’ll let you know if I decide to buy at Mountain View.”
“You do that.”
I bumped the nose of the deer on my way out and raised a cloud of dust. “Getting a little musty,” I said.
“I’m thinking of taking it down,” Capshaw replied.
18
THE KID AND I had agreed to reconnoiter at two, which left me plenty of time to track down the Forest Sentinels’ office in a ramshackle Victorian house several blocks south of Main Street. The woman sitting at the reception desk had a fair amount of gray hair among the blond, but the hairdo was youthful—long and curly. She wore jeans and a Guatemalan huipil with embroidery all over it. She was older than many of the people I’d been talking to lately, but equally fit. On her desk sat several mugs with dangling strings of tea bags. The sun beamed in through a bay window, making it brilliantly clear that the walls of the office needed painting, the floor needed sanding, and the curtains were ragged. Environmental organizations tend to have minimal funding for office and staff. The woman might have been a receptionist, but my guess was she ran the place. This office felt like her nest. There were a couple of rooms behind her, but I couldn’t see who or what was in them. The posters of green forests tacked to the walls and the framed photographs on her desk were bright and shiny spots in the shabby room. Another woman might have had pictures of her lover or her children; she had pictures of a wolf. I’ve never seen a wolf that wasn’t magnificent myself. This one was sitting, standing, howling, sleeping. In one memorable shot its paws were on the woman’s shoulders and it stared her in the face.
I know a wolf when I see one, but just to get her reaction I said, “Nice dog.”
“It’s not a dog,” the woman replied. “It’s a wolf.”
“What’s its name?”
“Savage. Can I help you with something?”
“Maybe,” I replied, segueing into the lie that had been working so far. “I’m from New Mexico and thinking about moving up here. I’m trying to get a feel for the place.”
“Forest Sentinels has a chapter in Santa Fe.”
“I know.”
I also knew that their leader had recently been burned in effigy by loggers who felt Forest Sentinels’ support of spotted owl habitat was costing loggers their jobs. I like forests and I didn’t necessarily disagree with Forest Sentinels’ goals, but my purpose here was not to join up, only to gather information.
“I’m sympathetic to what you’re doing, but it would be nice to get away from controversy,” I said.
She laughed, showing spaces between her teeth. This woman didn’t have the look of pampered privilege common to many environmentalists. She did have the determined look of someone who’d found a calling in midlife. “It’s getting hard to avoid controversy in the West nowadays,” she said.
“True,” I replied. “So tell me what you guys are all about. What’s your mission in Oro?”
“Preserving forests. Preserving wildlife habitat. Trying to prevent the Forest Service from caving in to ranchers, loggers, and other special interest groups. Many of our members are former Forest Service employees. We think the government’s policy of fire suppression is a disaster. The forests were a lot healthier when fires were left to burn out naturally. Nowadays fuel buildup has turned Western forests into a tinderbox. The fires are bigger and hotter than they’ve ever been.”
“So the idea is to save forests by letting them burn?” I asked.
“In the long run. In the meantime we advocate controlled burns.”
“You’ve had a couple of forest fires nearby, I hear.”
“Right, and nine firefighters were killed unnecessarily.”
“What do you think the Forest Service should have done in the South Canyon?”
“Let it burn,” she said, looking me right in the eye. She wasn’t smooth or pretty, but her convictions gave her a certain raw power.
“What about the houses that go up in smoke?”
“As far as I am concerned, they can burn, too.”
“Isn’t that kind of drastic? People do get attached to their homes.”
“Then they shouldn’t build near wilderness areas,” she replied. Wolves are smart and wary. You’d expect a woman who hung out with them to have a good bullshit detector, but hers seemed to be working overtime. I hadn’t asked that many questions. Yet already her eyes were narrowing and her shoulders getting hunched and tense.
“Are you a reporter?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then why all the questions?”
“Just naturally curious, I guess.” It was a weaselly answer and I got a ferret’s response.
“What did you say your name was?” she barked.
“I didn’t. I have to get going; I’m meeting someone at McDonald’s. Thanks for your help.”
“Did you find out what you came here for?” she asked.
“More or less,” I replied.
&nbs
p; ******
Leaving an irritated and suspicious woman behind me at Forest Sentinels, I walked down the street to McDonald’s. It was only one o’clock and I still had an hour to kill, so I got myself a Big Mac with fries and sat down near the window to eat and wait for the Kid. It was lunchtime; McDonald’s was crowded but not packed. I was just finishing up my hamburger when a guy with a tray in his hands stopped at my table and asked if he could join me. Maybe he thought I was the best-looking woman in the restaurant. Maybe not.
“Have a seat,” I said. My dining companion had a narrow face, a sharp nose, dark shoulder-length hair, and a scrawny build. He moved gingerly, which made him kind of comforting after all the super-fit and athletic people I’d recently met. He put down his tray and picked up his hamburger. He’d sought me out; I let him make the first move.
“You visiting Oro?” he asked in a raspy voice.
“That’s right.”
“How do you like it?”
“It’s okay. There seem to be a lot of very fit people in this town.”
His smile was thin but appealing. “Is that why you’re thinking about moving up here? You want to get in shape?”
“Not really.” I’d told my lie about moving to Oro to two people. I put my money on the woman from Forest Sentinels as the person who’d passed it on to him. “You’re from Forest Sentinels?” I asked.
He was cutting his fries into tiny pieces and choosing his words with care. “I am affiliated with them.”
On what basis? I wondered. He didn’t have the polished teeth, rumpled cotton, shiny-haired look of an Ivy League environmentalist. He was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt. His lank hair fell in front of his face. Maybe Forest Sentinels was reaching out for support, which could be a good thing. Environmentalism doesn’t have to be a class struggle. We all stand to lose when the environment gets trashed. Before I could ask what exactly he did for Forest Sentinels I had another coughing fit.
“That’s a bad cough,” he said.
“It’s getting better.”
“What are you? Some kind of investigator?”
“I’m a lawyer,” I said.
Usually a knee jerks when I name my profession, but this guy just gave me another thin smile. “So why all the curiosity? Forest Sentinels is Ms. O’Connor’s baby. She gets uncomfortable when people ask too many questions.”
“Has she got something to hide?” I asked.
“No. She’s up front.”
“She does speak her mind,” I said.
“You told her you were from New Mexico?” He brushed his hair back from his face.
“That’s right.”
“So what are you doing here? Are you representing someone in Oro?” He was asking a fair number of questions himself.
“I can’t say; it’s a matter of client confidentiality.”
“Where is it in New Mexico that you’re from? Santa Fe?”
“Albuquerque.”
“Albuquerque.” He looked out the window, where kids were swinging and sliding on McDonald’s multicolored playground. His eyes were dark and sad when they turned back to me. “I’ve been through some bad times,” the eyes said. “I’ll take care of you,” some women might have answered, but not me and apparently not wolf woman either, or she’d have had his picture on her desk.
“Where’d you get the cough?” he asked.
It must have been all over the Oro news that an Albuquerque lawyer was caught in the East Canyon fire. My cough could have blown my cover, but whether that would matter or not remained to be seen. “I was in a forest fire.” I told him.
“Which one?”
“East Canyon.”
“That’s too bad,” he said.
“Isn’t it?”
The Kid had appeared in McDonald’s doorway looking curly-haired and upbeat. I stood up and waved him over.
“Friend of yours?” my companion asked.
“You could say that.”
The guy picked up his tray and prepared to make a getaway.
“What’d you say your name was?” I asked him.
His mouth laughed. His eyes did not. “I didn’t,” he replied.
“Who was that?” the Kid asked, watching no-name environmentalist maneuver his way through the obstacle course of McDonald’s. The Kid’s voice had that proprietary tone men get when they think a rival has appeared on the scene. Did the guy have rival potential? I wondered. I thought not; he was too dark and brooding for me.
“He’s an environmentalist connected to Forest Sentinels. That’s all I know,” I replied.
The Kid went to get himself something to eat. I looked out the window to see what kind of vehicle the guy drove away in, but he wasn’t driving. He crossed the street and walked slowly up the hill.
“Did you find Oscar Ribera?” I asked the Kid when he returned with his Big Mac.
“Yeah. Did you find the insurance agent?”
“I did and he was very cooperative. I found out that Ken Roland has good insurance. He’ll make a lot of money on the ashes of his house.”
“Guys like him always make a lot of money, no?”
“Yes. How’s Oscar doing?”
He shook his head. “He’s living with a bunch of guys in a trailer. It’s not so crowded now; there’s not much work in the summer and many of the guys go someplace else. In the winter they work in restaurants and hotels and take turns sleeping on the floor. It costs too much to live close to the ski areas. They have to drive far on the snowy roads. They leave in the dark, they come home in the dark. I think it was the right move for me to go to Albuquerque.”
“I know it,” I said. Business was booming in the Duke City. A good mechanic could make as much as an average lawyer. But the Kid would land on his feet wherever he went.
We cruised by Forest Sentinels on our way out of town, but I didn’t see any brown truck parked near the office. We took the Chama route home, stopping for a few minutes at Abiquiu Reservoir, where the Kid wanted to watch the water flow and listen to the wind blow. But after having witnessed the ashes of Ken Roland’s house I was anxious to make sure mine was still standing. Adobes don’t burn very often, but they can. When we got back to town, the Kid dropped me at my door and went to the shop to check up on Mimo, his parrot.
My house was exactly as I had left it. The kitchen was still waiting for a backhoe to show up. The Kid’s clothes were in the closet. I walked through the house looking at the vigas and the tiles, touching the fireplace and the walls. I never thought it could happen to me, but I was falling in love with a house. Once you’ve slept in it, had sex in it, been sick in it, then a house becomes a home. It doesn’t take long to fill it with memories and stuff. When you torch someone’s home, I thought, you turn their soul to ashes. Hard to imagine someone burning up his own home, but people commit suicide often enough.
I walked into the empty room and was standing there when the Kid arrived. He looked at the white walls, the brick floors, the empty nicho, mentally filling it up, I knew, but with what? Family? Friends? Guys sleeping on mattresses on the floor? His stuff?
“Are you always going to keep this room empty?” he asked.
“Why not?” I replied. It wasn’t a luxury or a necessity—just a kind of clearing like Ramona’s yard. She’d had to work to keep her place empty and, so it seemed, would I.
“Mimo gets lonely in the shop at night,” the Kid said.
A house also becomes a home when there’s a child in residence, but a parrot? “I don’t think so,” I said.
19
ON TUESDAY MORNING I called Sheila McGraw. “How was your weekend?” I asked.
“I had to take my dog to the vet. Otherwise okay. How ’bout you?”
“Interesting. I went back to Thunder Mountain.”
I knew what she’d be doing, pushing her glasses back up her nose. “And what did you find there?”
“Ken Roland.”
“Oh, him.”
“He had a good insurance policy.�
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“We’re checking it out, Neil. A guy who loses an expensive house in a fire is a suspect, and we’re looking into his girlfriend Karen, too. She was at Roland’s house that afternoon, but she’s not a likely suspect; she’s an animal lover. The sheriff’s deputies had to drag her out of the place kicking and screaming about Bambi. Doesn’t it seem unlikely to you that a guy would torch a house with a girlfriend in it?”
“He may not have known she was in it. She told me she didn’t feel well and came home from work early.”
“Henry’s up there this week investigating.”
“Roland invests in the computer industry, a risky business. If I had the resources I’d check out his financial situation.”
“You lookin’ for a job?”
If I was, it wasn’t her job. “Just trying to help. I also ran into some birders who were unhappy about the spotted owl situation.”
“Names, addresses?”
I had two half names, one partial address, but that would lead to the brown truck and that was a lead I wasn’t ready to give up until I knew whether or not it would help my case. “No,” I said. “They told me they were members of Forest Sentinels.”
“The woods are full of angry people these days. Ranchers, hunters, birders, environmentalists, Forest Sentinels, the Wise Use Movement, you name it. Everybody’s pissed and everybody has a different idea of who owns the West. The place is turning into an emotional tinderbox. It’s getting so Forest Service employees are afraid to go anywhere in their green rigs, but I still believe the East Canyon fire was an inside job. Whoever started that fire knew what he or she was doing. Ramona Franklin came in voluntarily, by the way.”
“Good.”
“She’s a woman of few words. Less talk than action, I’d say. Henry did better with her than I did. She mentioned you advised her to come in and I want to thank you for that.”
“I suggested she get her own lawyer.”
“She says she doesn’t want a lawyer. She wants to handle this the Indian way. She says she went to the mountain to leave a tribute to Joni Barker and that she was coming down when she saw the fire, heard you screaming, and covered you with her fire shelter. If anybody can tell me what the Indian way is, I’d sure like to know. I hear all this talk about Indians revering fire and suffering when trees go up in smoke, but I’ve been in the South Dakota office. They started fires up there often enough when they needed powwow money. Supposedly this country was all virgin timber before the white man came and a squirrel could leap from Maine to California without ever touching ground. It’s bullshit. The Indians have known how to start fire and have used it for their purposes for a long, long time. Was torching the mountain Ramona’s idea of a tribute to the dead firefighters? Is it the Indian way to incinerate a member of the Forest Service because you want to prove a point, or because you bear a grudge, or because he threatens to fire you?
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