by Rich Curtin
At the crest of the hill, he drew his weapon, approached the pickup on the passenger side, and peered inside. It was empty. He touched the exhaust pipe. Cold. The vehicle had been here for an extended period. He advanced to the far side of the hill and looked downward. About forty yards downslope, he spotted a man crouched in an outcropping of tan and brown rocks. He was wearing a dark jacket, jeans, and a broad brim hat with a camouflage pattern. He was panning the airstrip with his binoculars. A rifle with a scope was resting against a large rock beside him.
Rivera knew once he started down the hill, he’d have to move fast and quietly. If the man heard Rivera coming, he could turn, grab the rifle, and shoot the deputy before he was within reliable range of his Glock. Rivera looked left and right, then advanced toward the man. At thirty yards distant, he was still in danger. At twenty yards, it was a tossup. Rivera moved toward him quickly, gun pointed straight ahead. At ten yards, the man began to turn. At five yards, Rivera could see his face. At three yards, a smile broke out on the face. It was Nathan White, the retired DEA agent.
“Don’t shoot me, goddammit. I’m just keeping an eye on that airstrip.” He laughed a jovial laugh.
“Put the binoculars down and keep your hands where I can see them.”
White complied.
“What are you doing here?”
“Helping you out,” said White. “Monitoring the airstrip for you.”
Rivera looked past White at the airstrip in the distance below them. The former agent had a perfect view of it from end to end. “Why are you doing that?”
“Would you mind pointing that cannon in a different direction? The way you’re panting, it’s liable to go off.”
Rivera lowered the muzzle of the gun, aiming it at the ground a few feet in front of White. “You haven’t answered my question.”
The grin faded from White’s face. “After we talked last night, I contacted some of my old buddies at the DEA. Guys I worked with when we busted up that drug-running gang I told you about. I asked them a few pointed questions. Had that gang resurrected itself? Were they bringing drugs into Utah again? Was the DEA monitoring the old airstrip? None of them would give me a straight answer to any of my questions. Some buddies. I guess I’m officially an outsider now.” He frowned. “After all those years of risking my life, now they treat me like I’m part of the problem, those sumbitches.”
“You still haven’t answered my question. What are you doing here?”
“First of all, I wanted to see if the airstrip was being monitored by the DEA. Far as I can tell, it’s not. And since it’s not, I decided I’d keep an eye on it for you.”
“Stand up.” Rivera patted him down and removed a SIG Sauer pistol from the pocket of his jacket.
“C’mon, man. I really am trying to help you. And it gets me out of the house. Makes me feel useful again. I’m still one of the good guys, Rivera. I was going to call you if I saw anything. I’ve got your card right here.” He reached into his shirt pocket with two fingers, slowly extracted Rivera’s card, and held it out for him to see.
Rivera glanced at the card. Now he wasn’t sure what to do. Sheriff Zilic had said he had some reservations about White, but he hadn’t elaborated.
Rivera couldn’t arrest White. He wasn’t breaking the law. He was on BLM land and had every right to be here. The airstrip and the surrounding hills were part of the Converse-Dryden grazing lease, but BLM land was multi-use and permitted such activities as hunting and hiking by others. White was perfectly within his rights.
“How long have you been here?”
“Since early this morning.”
“See anything interesting?”
“No aircraft, if that’s what you mean. No people either. Just a few head of cattle and a herd of mule deer.”
“What’s the rifle for?”
“Just a precaution. Say, how’d you spot me anyway?”
“I saw a reflection from the chrome bumper of your pickup truck. Decided to check it out.”
“Damn. I guess I’m losing my touch. I thought my truck was completely hidden back in those junipers. This is the same surveillance site I used when I was staking out the airstrip two years ago.”
Rivera was beginning to think White might be telling the truth. He seemed happy to be out here, back in the game again, looking for the bad guys. But Rivera couldn’t be sure. Suppose White had gone over to the dark side. Rivera might catch a bullet in the back from that rifle as soon as he started back up the hill.
“Tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m almost positive you’re on the level—”
“But you can’t take a chance. Can’t walk back up that hill and leave me here with my weapons. I understand that.”
“Good. So I’m going to take your pistol and your rifle with me. I’ll leave them in your truck. I’m sure you understand.”
White forced a smile. “First my old DEA buddies treat me like an outsider, and then you stalk me like I’m working for the cartels. My ego is a little bruised but I think it’ll survive.”
Rivera picked up the rifle. “Thanks for the help. Let me know if you see anything.”
“Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow. Maybe I won’t. Not sure how I’m gonna feel about all this later.”
“No offense intended.” Rivera hiked back up the hill to the truck. He unloaded both weapons and dropped the bullets into his jacket pocket. Then he opened the truck’s center console, removed two boxes of bullets, and stuffed them into another pocket. He glanced back down the hill and saw White sitting there, looking up at him. White was overweight and not in the best of shape. It would take him a minute or two to climb back to the truck. Rivera hustled down the hill and out of the immediate area. He felt bad for the way he’d treated White but trusting him completely would have been foolish.
He hiked back to his vehicle and drove to Monticello, reviewing the facts in the case and feeling a rising sense of defeat. Why were the Masons shot? Who shot them? The two key questions in the case remained unanswered.
Rivera entered Mitchell’s office and sat down. He felt like he had wasted the whole day. There were no messages awaiting him, but a folder rested in the in-box—a report from the State Crime Lab. It contained information on the handgun found at the scene of the crime in Matthew Mason’s hand. It was an old gun, a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson Model 14, vintage 1970s. There was no record of the serial number in any of the law enforcement databases. The bullets found in the victims’ bodies had been fired from the gun. Mason’s fingerprints were found on the gun’s trigger and grip, but there were no fingerprints on the barrel, suggesting it had been wiped clean before it was pressed into Mason’s hand. Staging the crime scene to look like a murder-suicide had clearly been the work of an amateur. The report stated that there were some partial prints on the two unfired bullets remaining in the cylinder and these had been forwarded to the FBI’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System database for analysis. The report noted that the empty casings yielded no prints because the high temperature resulting from the bullets being fired would have evaporated them. The partial prints on the unspent bullets offered at least a glimmer of hope for Rivera.
Just then, Nick Lathrop entered the office.
“How’s it going, Manny?”
“Not so good.” Rivera briefed Lathrop on his progress, or lack of it, including the trip to the reservation, the meeting with Herman, the encounter with Nathan White, and the lab results on the gun.
So what’s the next step?”
Rivera shook his head. “I wish I knew. Let’s go bring the sheriff up to date. He’s getting a lot of questions and needs to know what’s going on.”
Rivera walked down the hall to Sheriff Zilic’s office, Lathrop following along behind him.
Zilic was sitting at his desk, holding a manila folder, studying its contents, and frowning. Rivera knocked on the open door. Zilic looked up. “Any progress?” he asked, without putting down the folder.
“Nothing significant to
report,” said Rivera. He brought Zilic up to date. “I wanted to ask you about the comment you made about Nathan White, something about not trusting him, or something like that. Could you elaborate on that for me?”
“It’s nothing personal about White. I just don’t trust the feds, whether it’s the FBI, the DEA, the bureaucrats from Homeland Security, or any of ‘em. They tell us nothing about what they’re doing and treat us like a bunch of errand boys. And I still haven’t forgotten about that FBI sting operation we had in my county a few years back when they rounded up the pot hunters—including some of our leading citizens—just to make the point that pot hunting on public land is illegal, when it’s been going on all over the Four Corners area for over a century. It freaked out the whole community. Scores of feds swooped in, wearing black SWAT gear, giving me no advance warning. I don’t trust any of them.”
“So, there’s no reason to suspect that Nathan White was involved in the drug-running business?”
“No. Just a general mistrust of all feds.”
16
JENNY MITCHELL HAD LOOKED exhausted. “He’s tired. Let him sleep,” she’d said when Rivera stopped by the hospital to visit Emmett. Rivera had brought two cheeseburgers, two Dr. Peppers, and some fries in a brown paper bag, intending to visit with his old friend, update him on the case, and let him eat some tasty, non-hospital dinner for a change. But Rivera learned from Jenny that Emmett had been in a lot of pain the night before, refused the offered pain medication, and spent a night of uncomfortable, fitful sleep. So Rivera shared the meal with Jenny.
It was late in the evening when he left the hospital and headed for his vehicle. The air was still, and the temperature had already dropped into the low forties. Feathery streaks of purple, pink, and orange clouds, remnants of the sunset, hovered in a light blue western sky. The reflection of sunlight from the clouds gave the trees and buildings of Monticello an eerie reddish cast. He hopped into his vehicle and drove south to Bluff.
Rivera removed his jacket and sat on the bed in his motel room. He turned on the television, flipped through a few channels, watched thirty seconds of local news until an ad for pillows came on, switched to another channel showing an ad for some kind of brain enhancement potion, switched to a third channel showing an ad for a magic adhesive, then turned the television off. Too many ads.
It was just as well. He knew his mind wasn’t going to let him focus on anything but the Mason case. It was a flaw he had—this single-minded concentration on the problem at hand. Replaying facts and possible scenarios in his mind over and over again. Trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together to form a complete picture, even when so many pieces were missing. Fighting through the frustration that came with his inability to make sense of it all. Relief came only when the case was solved.
He went through it all again. The Masons of San Francisco detoured off the pavement to a remote place in the backcountry of southeast Utah. They were dressed like hippies and were probably taking a nostalgic trip down memory lane. They were shot by someone, their camera taken, and the scene staged to look like a murder-suicide. There was no apparent motive. No one in the general area saw or heard anything unusual, except Slim Keegan, foreman at the Converse ranch, who said he’d heard four shots. The old airstrip still seemed to be the key, but no one had seen any recent aircraft activity.
The buzzing of his cell phone interrupted his thoughts. The caller was Virginia Stolte, the Masons’ friend from Taos.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you, Deputy Rivera, but I just had to call you.”
“You’re not disturbing me. How can I help you?”
“I need to tell you about something. It’s been bothering me for my entire adult life and not a week goes by that I don’t think about it. Something awful happened on that trip we made fifty years ago.” Virginia was slurring her words as though she’d been drinking.
Rivera waited, heard nothing. “Please go on,” he prompted.
Virginia produced a loud sigh. “I don’t know how to start this.”
“Just start at the beginning.”
“That’s just it; I’m not sure where the beginning is.” There was a long pause. Now Rivera could hear the sound of ice cubes clinking in a glass.
“I’m sitting here alone and I’m just miserable. A few days ago, the Masons were alive, and I was happy because they were coming to visit me. I so looked forward to seeing them and talking about the old days. Then, wham, I get a phone call from their daughter telling me my old friends are dead.”
Rivera heard sniffles. “Take your time.”
“I just can’t believe they’re dead.”
“I can only imagine how you must feel,” said Rivera. He waited.
“I’m going to tell you something that I’ve always worried would get me into serious trouble if it ever became known. Maybe not, it happened so long ago—maybe the statute of limitations protects me.” She paused. “Actually, I don’t even care about that anymore. I’ve been wanting to get this off my chest for fifty years.” Another pause.
Getting her thoughts together, Rivera figured. He decided to remain silent. Why distract her with questions?
“For this story to make sense, you have to understand the sixties. You sound like you might be too young to have lived through that era.”
“I’m thirty-eight. But I’ve always been interested in the sixties. I studied about it some in college, and I’ve seen several TV documentaries.”
She laughed. “Well believe me, Honey, reading about it or watching a documentary ain’t the same as living it. It was something else. Makes today’s kids cowering in their safe spaces look like a bunch of pansies.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“It helps to remember what life was like before the sixties turned the country upside down. The fifties were kind of a buttoned-down, idyllic period—a perfect world. I was just a child, but I remember it well. Families lived in little houses on tree-lined streets. Kids took the trolley or bus to safe schools. Mothers stayed home and raised kids. If your parents had any troubles or disagreements, the kids never heard about them. Divorce was almost unheard of. The paperboy delivered newspapers to your front door, the milkman delivered milk to your back door. A copy of Life magazine sat on the coffee table. Black and white televisions had three channels. The family got together in the evening and watched Father Knows Best or the Ed Sullivan Show. You never heard the words ‘hell’ or ‘damn’ on TV. Looking back on it now, it all seems so otherworldly. Sex wasn’t discussed in polite company. Drug use was generally unheard of. Eisenhower was president. Most everyone had a job and went to church.” She paused a moment, thinking. “Then Rock and Roll began intruding on the scene—Little Richard, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers. Music to dance to. Music with a beat. It was all new and exciting and just a hint of things to come as we broke free of the fifties. Am I taking too much of your time with all this, Deputy Rivera?”
“Not at all, I’m very interested.”
“Well, then the sixties hit and everything changed. And the changes were revolutionary and rapid. I’m not sure what triggered it, but suddenly the young people began rebelling against all authority. I guess it was a combination of opposition to the war in Vietnam, the emergence of the civil rights movement, women’s lib, and kids thinking for themselves instead of listening to their parents and doing what they were told. In fact, because of Vietnam, kids were losing confidence in the judgment of their elders. The hippie counterculture was gearing up, and it promoted an alternative lifestyle. I remember there were demonstrations in almost every large city and on many college campuses. Sometimes the demonstrations became riots and cities were set ablaze. Young men burned their draft cards and young women burned their bras. Almost everyone was using marijuana, and some were experimenting with hallucinogens like LSD. Timothy Leary’s Tune in, turn on, and drop out became the mantra of the day. For some, it became a philosophy of life. Rock and Roll was in full swing and the music was
fabulous. Artists like Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, and Neil Young re-invented popular music. I loved those days.” There was another pause, and Rivera could hear more tinkling of ice cubes. “I know I’m taking a lot of time, but I think all this is important for you to understand. Otherwise, what I’m about to tell you won’t make much sense.”
Virginia’s background information fit right in with what Rivera had learned on the internet the night before. She was obviously feeling the booze and talking openly from her memories. “I have no plans for the rest of the evening. Take your time.”
“Okay, good. With that as the general backdrop, in 1967 I had just completed my freshman year at the University of Maryland at College Park. My friends and I were totally into the sixties culture—demonstrations, long hair, miniskirts, piercings, sex, marijuana, all of it. It was a blast. We loved being part of it. One day we heard about the Summer of Love. I told you a little about that yesterday. Kids from everywhere in the country were headed to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district to be part of it. It was a coming together of those who wanted love, peace, and music instead of war, materialism, and government. We were excited about the idea and decided to go. There were five of us. Two guys and three girls. We couldn’t wait to get started.”
“I thought there were six of you.”
“Eventually there were six, but we started off with five. One of the guys—his name was Michael—owned an old Volkswagen minivan. Before we left for San Francisco, he painted a big, multicolored daisy on the side of it and a peace symbol on the front. We didn’t have much money but figured we could sleep outdoors as we crossed the country. We had a stash of marijuana—we weren’t into hard drugs—that we hoped would last until we got to San Francisco where we knew we could get more. We packed our things and took off.”
Rivera wondered where all this was leading. What had they done that disturbed Virginia so much? And why did she feel compelled to reveal it now, fifty years later? He got up from the bed, set up the coffee maker, and brewed a cup of coffee while he stood and listened.
