Coyote's Regret

by Rich Curtin

  “Listen, Nick, I need to get back to work,” said the driver. “I get paid by the load, not by the hour. I’ve got nothing else to say beyond what I already told the sheriff.” He was addressing Lathrop and ignoring Rivera. “I was driving by and spotted those two lying near that old shed. I stopped the truck and ran over there. They were dead. Neither one had a pulse. I went back to the truck and called it in. That’s my whole story. The dispatcher asked me to wait here until the sheriff arrived which I agreed to do. Now he’s gone and I’m still here. Losing money by the minute.”

  “Lighten up, Felix,” said Lathrop. “You’ll leave when I say you can leave.”

  The driver frowned, turned to one side, and spit something brown onto the ground. “Just who in the hell do you think you are, Nick, talking to me like that. I remember you when you were in diapers.”

  Lathrop stepped closer to the man. “You best settle down, Felix.”

  “Just a couple of quick questions,” said Rivera, deciding it was time to intervene. “Then you can be on your way.”

  The driver looked at Rivera, then back at Lathrop. He jerked a thumb in Rivera’s direction. “Who the hell is this guy?”

  Rivera realized then that without his uniform he must look to the driver like any other civilian in the county.

  “He’s a deputy sheriff from Grand County. Sheriff Zilic asked him to handle the case. Name’s Rivera.”

  “How come you’re not handling the case, Nick? Does the sheriff think you’re still too wet behind the ears?” Felix smiled, exposing a set of crooked teeth coated with brown juice and a few flakes of chewing tobacco.

  “You’d better watch it, Felix, or you’ll be cooling your heels in a jail cell tonight.”

  “You watch it too, Nick. Don’t forget, my son’s a lawyer.”

  Lathrop inhaled a deep breath. Exhaled. Seemed to relax. “Alright Felix, I’ll deal with you later. Right now, just answer the man’s questions.”

  Felix had a self-satisfied look on his face as though he’d clearly been the victor in his spat with Lathrop.

  Rivera glanced at the position of the truck. It was facing west. “When you spotted the two dead people, I take it you were heading west.”

  “That’s right. I picked up a load of crude from the tanks over on the Converse Ranch. Left there about ten thirty and turned onto Route 347 heading west. When I got right here, I spotted them. I stopped the truck and ran over there. They were dead. I called it in.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “In Bluff.”

  “So you left Bluff this morning and drove directly to the tanks on the Converse Ranch?”

  “That’s right. I left home about seven o’clock.”

  “And you didn’t see the bodies on the trip to the tanks?”

  Felix thought a long moment, nodded. “That’s a damn good question. I’m not sure.” He looked over at the bodies, thought some more. “Either I didn’t spot them, or they weren’t there. But I think I’d have seen them if they were there. It’d be hard to miss two bodies lying out in the open like that.”

  “How long were you at the Converse Ranch?”

  “About an hour and a half, maybe. Takes about an hour to fill the tanker truck and some more time to connect and disconnect the hoses to the storage tanks. Add a few more minutes for me to fill in my log book and that probably brings it to an hour and a half, give or take.”

  “Did you see anyone else on Route 347 going in either direction?”

  “There’s hardly ever any traffic on these back roads. Occasionally I see an oil service vehicle or a rancher hauling cattle. Usually I don’t see anyone. Don’t recall seeing anyone this morning.”

  “Okay,” said Rivera. “Thanks. That’s all I need for now. How can I contact you if I need to?”

  Felix reached into the door pocket of his vehicle, pulled out a business card, and handed it to Rivera. Felix looked at Lathrop and grinned. “You want one too, Nick?”

  Lathrop’s face turned a light shade of pink. “Just get the hell out of here, Felix.”

  “Suits me. I’ve already wasted enough time. I think I’ll bill the county for it.”

  He spit on the ground, climbed into his truck with a smile on his face, and drove off.

  Rivera turned to Lathrop. “What’s the problem between you two?”

  Lathrop shook his head. “Nothing. He just needs to learn a little respect, that’s all.”

  “Let’s go take a look at that sedan.”

  Rivera unlocked the vehicle. He considered requesting the Utah State Crime Lab send a crime scene team to dust the vehicle for fingerprints but decided against it. It would delay the investigation at least a day and probably produce nothing useful. The vehicle had been locked and no attempt made to break in. The motive for the killing wasn’t robbery, so the killer would have no reason to search through the vehicle.

  The front seat contained nothing of interest, other than a Utah tourist magazine and two pairs of sunglasses in protective cases. In the back seat were various items of cold-weather clothing, an ice chest filled with bottled water and some fruit, a box of Kleenex, and a half-empty package of Oreo cookies. The glove compartment yielded the usual collection of papers: proof of insurance, a receipt for an oil change four days ago in St. George, tire warranty papers, an old-fashioned flip cell phone, an address book, and a map. Rivera unfolded the map and studied it. It was a map of the western states. A driving route had been highlighted with a yellow felt-tip marker and several sightseeing destinations circled. He got out of the vehicle and spread the map out on the hood of the car so Lathrop could view it.

  “It looks like they were on a grand tour of the major national parks of the west,” said Rivera, tracing the route with his fingertip. “From San Francisco, they went to Yosemite, then Zion, then Bryce, and finally Capitol Reef. If they’d continued on their route, they would have gone from Capitol Reef south to Monument Valley and from there to Grand Canyon, Death Valley, and Sequoia National Park. Then back home to San Francisco.”

  “Couple of thousand miles, I’d guess,” said Lathrop.

  “But instead of continuing from Capitol Reef to Monument Valley, they left their planned route and detoured to this place for some reason,” said Rivera, tapping their present position on the map. “I wonder why. I mean, why this particular spot? Round trip, this is about a sixty-mile detour off their planned route. Mostly on unpaved roads.”

  “Maybe because somewhere along the way, they came to a decision to end their lives. What else could it be?”

  “Could be anything. Maybe just to get off the beaten path. Visit an out-of-the-way place.”

  “This is definitely off the beaten path.”

  “Nick, how familiar are you with this part of the county?”

  “Not very. I’ve been through here maybe two or three times. There’s not much reason to come here. Except for the oil and gas wells and a little ranching, not much goes on. Sheriff Zilic says that San Juan County has a landmass larger than Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island combined—and not nearly enough deputies to patrol it all. So this part of the county doesn’t get much attention from us. I’m more familiar with the north end of the county. The southeast corner is Emmett Mitchell’s territory. He can tell you a lot more about it than I can.”

  Rivera folded up the map and bagged it. “Let’s take a look inside the trunk.”

  He unlocked the trunk and surveyed its contents. Inside were two pieces of new luggage, several plastic bags containing souvenir mugs from the parks they had visited, some loose clothing and sweaters, a collection of travel brochures, an empty five-gallon gas can, a flashlight, a spare tire, and a set of tire-changing tools.

  “Nothing unusual here. I’ll go through the luggage back at the office. Would you call the office and request that someone come and retrieve this vehicle?”

  “Will do.”

  “And call the mortuary. Tell them they can come and pick up the bodies now.”

  Lath
rop nodded and went to his vehicle to make the calls.

  Rivera walked from the road back to where the bodies lay. Lathrop could be right, he thought, as he stared at the corpses. Maybe the couple had decided to end their lives. But if that had been their plan, why did they buy souvenir mugs from the national parks they visited? And why get an oil change in St. George?

  More importantly, why had they come here? This place was not highlighted on their map. And it was a significant detour from their route—on substandard roads. Were they just exploring a random sector of backcountry? Or did they specifically intend to come to this place? And if ending their lives was the goal, why not finish their trip first? Monument Valley and Grand Canyon are well worth seeing, even if you’re planning suicide.

  Rivera let his eyes wander across the surrounding terrain. It was remote and desolate—gently rolling hills sparsely covered with grama grass now tan from the cold winter nights. Sage, black brush, and bright green junipers dotted the landscape here and there, except where they had been cleared away for the airstrip. About sixty yards to the southeast, at the bottom of a long downward slope, was a small stand of cottonwoods, their bark a pale gray color and their branches leafless. He’d been exploring the backcountry long enough to know that a cluster of cottonwoods in the high desert usually signified a source of water, a spring perhaps. The only obvious signs of human incursion in this stark and lonely landscape were the gravel road, the airstrip, an occasional pump jack, and a few head of cattle here and there.

  He walked partway along the undulating terrain of the airstrip, noting that some of the stems of dead grama grass were broken and crushed in places. Could that have been caused by a small aircraft landing and taking off, or was it a result of the winter wind gusts snapping the brittle stems? He couldn’t be sure but if it were from an aircraft, it could have happened yesterday or weeks ago or even months ago. There was no way to know for sure when the stems had been broken. Maybe Emmett Mitchell could shed some light on recent activities at the airstrip.

  Rivera walked to the shed, looked through an opening where a couple of planks had fallen off, and saw only scattered debris—a crumpled pouch of Red Man chewing tobacco, a rusted screwdriver, a length of chain, several tumbleweeds, and a couple of inches of windblown sand. The shed hadn’t been used in years.

  He retraced his steps back to the corpses. Not far away, behind a growth of junipers on a small rise in the terrain, he saw a pile of fence posts, several rolls of rusted barbed wire, some rusted tin cans, a small area of flat rocks he surmised was an old cowboy campsite, a ring of large stones for a campfire, and some old tools he recognized as those used for stringing barbed wire. The camp looked like it hadn’t seen a cowboy in decades.

  He stood on the flat rocks and continued surveying his surroundings, memorizing the details of the area and appreciating its natural beauty. The land undulated outward in every direction, an infinity of hilly mesa land cross cut with shallow canyons. Except for the old shed, there wasn’t a building in sight. Defining the horizon to the east was the purple-gray outline of Sleeping Ute Mountain, to the south the Carrizo Mountains, and to the northwest the Abajo Mountains. The peaks of all three were bright white with snow.

  This was pretty country, he thought, but very different from the landscape he was used to around Moab. He studied it, trying to understand the difference. First of all, the canyons around Moab were much deeper, thousands of feet versus a hundred or so here. There, the cliff faces were rugged and striking, here they were soft and subtle. The coloring of the rock was another obvious difference. Around Moab, the coloring was bold—the rust color of the sheer Wingate walls, the milk chocolate color of the Moenkopi layer, the greenish-gray color of the Chinle stratum. Here, where the rock strata were exposed, the colors were pastel shades of ochre, buff, orange, purple and pink. It looked as though an artist would choose to use gentle strokes from fine brushes to paint the scenery now surrounding him and aggressive strokes with a pallet knife to paint the jagged landscape around Moab. Both high desert landscapes were strikingly beautiful, but in completely different ways.

  It was a mild day for February. The air was still and crystal clear, and not a sound could be heard. He inhaled, filling his lungs with the cool, fresh air, then exhaling it. He loved the high desert. It was where he wanted to spend the rest of his life.

  That thought made him uncomfortable. It reminded him that he hadn’t yet discussed with Gloria where they might live after they were married. And that reminded him that he hadn’t even discussed marriage with her. He patted the small box in his front pocket, once again reassuring himself that it was still there.

  3

  RIVERA SAT IN a straight-backed, wooden chair in front of Sheriff Zilic’s massive mahogany desk, scanning the framed photographs hanging on the office walls while waiting for the sheriff to arrive. The photographs were of the staff members, the communities they served, the high school football team, and Monticello’s Pioneer Days annual celebration. They were not self-serving photographs designed to enhance a politician’s image, but reminders of the community of citizens he swore to serve. In Rivera’s mind, that spoke well of Zilic.

  Zilic arrived with some loud throat-clearing, circled around behind his desk, and lowered himself into his chair with a grunt. “Okay, what have you got for me, Manny?”

  “Not a lot, I’m afraid.” Rivera briefed him on what he had surmised from the crime scene. It didn’t take long—there wasn’t much to tell that the sheriff didn’t already know.

  Zilic ran his hand through his thinning hair, then massaged the back of his neck. “What about the murder-suicide theory?”

  “I doubt that’s what it was. We found this map in the glove box of the car. It has their route marked in yellow.” Rivera unfolded it and spread it out on Zilic’s desk. “According to the map, they were about halfway through a long trip that must have required a lot of planning—visiting the national parks, seeing the sights along the way, so forth. Not something you do on the spur of the moment.”

  Zilic put on his black-rimmed glasses and studied the map, tracing his stubby index finger along the route. He sat back and clasped his hands across his belly. “You’re right, it doesn’t make sense. Why stop in the middle of a great vacation trip and kill yourself?”

  “And we found some souvenir mugs from Bryce and Zion in the trunk of their car.”

  Zilic nodded. “Yeah, I get your point. You don’t buy souvenirs if you’re contemplating suicide.”

  “And the man had fresh bruises on his right wrist, as if someone had been gripping his arm tightly.”

  “I didn’t notice that. Could be someone was restraining him while putting a gun to his temple.”

  “That’s the way I’ve got it pictured. The killer grabs the man’s wrist, shoots the woman in the chest, then shoots the man in the head. Something like that. Or maybe he shoots the man first.”

  “What do you make of the way they were dressed?”

  “The hippie outfits? Not sure yet. I’ll be checking their luggage to see what the rest of their clothing looks like.”

  Zilic took off his glasses, chewed on the tip. “Odd place for a shooting, though.”

  “That’s the strange part. They deviated from the route they had marked on the map. They must have left Blanding or Bluff and driven on back roads to where we found them. Round trip, it’s about sixty bumpy miles out of the way.”

  Zilic considered that. “And there are no real tourist attractions out there. Maybe they just wanted to get off the pavement for a while to explore the backcountry.” Zilic didn’t look like he believed that himself. “No, that doesn’t make sense. That part of the county is pretty to look at, but it doesn’t compare to Bryce or Monument Valley.”

  “But they must have had some reason to go there,” said Rivera. “Maybe it had something to do with that old airstrip.”

  “I don’t believe that airstrip is active anymore. It was originally used by mineral exploration crews, bef
ore the roads through that area were built and improved. After that, as far as I know, the airstrip was hardly used at all. That is, until a couple of years ago when a gang tied to one of the Mexican cartels used it for smuggling drugs into Utah. The DEA caught up with them and shut the operation down. They’re all in prison now. Could be it’s started up again under new management. You thinking maybe them old folks had something to do with drug trafficking?”

  Rivera shrugged. “Could be. I don’t know. I need to learn more about them. I also need to find out if anyone has seen any recent traffic flying in or out of that airstrip. I saw a few head of cattle grazing in the pastures along Route 347. Maybe the ranchers who own them can answer that question.”

  “Emmett knows that part of the county better’n anyone. He can give you the names of those ranchers and tell you how to find them.”

  “Good. I’m planning to visit him as soon as we’re finished here.”

  “You can use his office while you’re working here. And I’ve arranged for you to borrow one of our units. It’s just like the ones you have in Grand County. Extended cab Ford F-150 pickup, 4-wheel drive, high clearance.” He handed Rivera a set of keys. “It’s parked out front for you.”

  “Great. Thanks.”

  “And here’s a letter from me appointing you a San Juan County deputy and a badge to go with it. Keep me posted on your progress. We don’t get many murders in San Juan County, so our County Council members are real interested in this case. They’ve already started asking me a lot of questions I can’t answer.”

  Rivera understood what that meant. Zilic needed this case solved pronto. Rivera stood up. “Where’s Emmett’s office?”

  The sheriff pointed down the hallway. “Second door on the left.”

  “Okay, I’ll get settled in.”

  “Manny, before you go, there’s one other thing I’d like to discuss with you.”