from: aging baby boomers who want to retire in the mountains. Of course, it’s not really the mountains they have in mind. It’s golf courses, it’s better highways so the retirees can get in and out with their Winnebago’s. It’s better medical facilities—hell, we don’t even have a county hospital! But now there’s talk we should legalize gambling and build up the tax base so we can afford all these things, and to do it by making the place more attractive to high rollers. Set up big hotels, whatnot, because high rollers have to have some place nice to roll in. Open up the forest land to more than just fishing and hunting: winter sports like skiing and snowmobiling. Start subdividing the ranch land and put in roads and put up schools for more people who want to bring California with them. Damn it, the land can’t take that kind of use, Wager—we live in a desert!”
“Is that what has the ranchers worried?”
“Yeah, that’s the big part of it. Change never does come easy when people are happy with their lives, and now there’s a lot of that kind of pressure. That and the federal government’s policies on grazing and land use that’s squeezing the small outfits till they can’t make a dime, year in and year out. Most of the land around here’s just plain scrub—you need five hundred, a thousand acres for each cow, and it’s not good for anything else anyway.” He finally stopped staring up at the window. “I reckon I can use some help at that, Officer Wager. But only if you take care of that damned Durkin—you keep him away from me—you do that and I’ll turn this Del Ponte thing over to you. That what you want?”
Wager nodded. “That’ll do.”
CHAPTER 6
T HE D EL P ONTE file was one of the thinner manila folders propped up in the bookcase behind the reception counter. Dorothy, the sheriff’s clerk, didn’t have a check-out form—”I’ll remember who’s got it, Officer Wager”—and Wager, given a closet-sized corner of the copy room and a folding table and chair—”Sorry, it’s all we got”—settled down to scan the papers.
He had asked Sheriff Spurlock who might have slashed his tires; the answer didn’t rule out the three ranchers or calm any fears Wager might have had: “Anybody who thinks you might be a fed.” And he’d asked Spurlock how that somebody would have known Wager was a cop. “You got a state car? State license plate and radio antenna on the back? Don’t take a genius to figure that out, Wager. That, and being a new face at the only motel in that part of the county.” He added, “I’ll tell everybody you’re working with me. Maybe that’ll keep your wheels safe. As well as your scalp.”
And maybe it wouldn’t, but that was something Wager didn’t want to waste time worrying about now. Instead, he put the incident into that corner of his memory labeled “Don’t get mad, just get even” and focused all his attention on the Del Ponte file.
The body had been reported at 11:14 A.M. on 24 March by one Gordon Hunter, State Highway Maintenance, who had been doing a routine survey of the road’s condition and had noticed a shoe lying at the shoulder. He’d also noticed that it wasn’t your everyday empty shoe, curled and split by weather and perhaps flattened by a passing tire. In fact, there seemed to be a ragged knob of something poking out of the shoe, which looked suspiciously like a chewed-on ankle. Hunter stopped the maintenance truck for a better look, and his belief that the shoe was no ordinary discard was reinforced by a thick column of busy ants. That, and, carried by a gentle breeze, the smell that came from somewhere over in the high grass filling the berm. Following his nose, Hunter discovered what was making the smell, and a small stack of glossy black-and-white Polaroid photographs showed what Hunter had seen: a swatch of mashed grass and the scattered and partially eaten bits of the body strewn across the broken weeds. The last
“Is that what has the ranchers worried?”
“Yeah, that’s the big part of it. Change never does come easy when people are happy with their lives, and now there’s a lot of that kind of pressure. That and the federal government’s policies on grazing and land use that’s squeezing the small outfits till they can’t make a dime, year in and year out. Most of the land around here’s just plain scrub—you need five hundred, a thousand acres for each cow, and it’s not good for anything else anyway.” He finally stopped staring up at the window. “I reckon I can use some help at that, Officer Wager. But only if you take care of that damned Durkin—you keep him away from me—you do that and I’ll turn this Del Ponte thing over to you. That what you want?”
Wager nodded. “That’ll do.”
CHAPTER 6
T HE D EL P ONTE file was one of the thinner manila folders propped up in the bookcase behind the reception counter. Dorothy, the sheriff’s clerk, didn’t have a check-out form—”I’ll remember who’s got it, Officer Wager”—and Wager, given a closet-sized corner of the copy room and a folding table and chair—”Sorry, it’s all we got”—settled down to scan the papers.
He had asked Sheriff Spurlock who might have slashed his tires; the answer didn’t rule out the three ranchers or calm any fears Wager might have had: “Anybody who thinks you might be a fed.” And he’d asked Spurlock how that somebody would have known Wager was a cop. “You got a state car? State license plate and radio antenna on the back? Don’t take a genius to figure that out, Wager. That, and being a new face at the only motel in that part of the county.” He added, “I’ll tell everybody you’re working with me. Maybe that’ll keep your wheels safe. As well as your scalp.”
And maybe it wouldn’t, but that was something Wager didn’t want to waste time worrying about now. Instead, he put the incident into that corner of his memory labeled “Don’t get mad, just get even” and focused all his attention on the Del Ponte file.
The body had been reported at 11:14 A.M. on 24 March by one Gordon Hunter, State Highway Maintenance, who had been doing a routine survey of the road’s condition and had noticed a shoe lying at the shoulder. He’d also noticed that it wasn’t your everyday empty shoe, curled and split by weather and perhaps flattened by a passing tire. In fact, there seemed to be a ragged knob of something poking out of the shoe, which looked suspiciously like a chewed-on ankle. Hunter stopped the maintenance truck for a better look, and his belief that the shoe was no ordinary discard was reinforced by a thick column of busy ants. That, and, carried by a gentle breeze, the smell that came from somewhere over in the high grass filling the berm. Following his nose, Hunter discovered what was making the smell, and a small stack of glossy black-and-white Polaroid photographs showed what Hunter had seen: a swatch of mashed grass and the scattered and partially eaten bits of the body strewn across the broken weeds. The last
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