by Rex Burns
“It’s not theirs.”
“True. But they been using it for a long time. And now that the government’s trying to increase the grazing fees and regulate use … . Well, they say we’re putting them out of business and out of their homes.”
Wager remembered what Chief Menzor had said. But he didn’t have an answer. The land belonged to the government, not to the ranchers; but most of it was too poor and dry for anything except raising cows. Without the use of a lot more land than they could afford to buy, the ranchers couldn’t make a living from their cattle; and without the cattle-grazing fees, the land wouldn’t make any money for the government. “What about the reservation? I was told there was a murder there recently, too.”
“Yeah, that was early February. An Indian. That’s Special Agent D. D. Durkin’s problem, though, and he’ll likely tell you about that.” The man shook his head. “But Durkin don’t seem too excited about that one. It looks like a routine drunk fight and it don’t fit his theory.”
“What’s his theory?”
“I better let him explain all that. He’s kind of touchy, and he’ll get worse if he thinks I been putting words in his mouth.”
After another half hour, Henderson slowed to turn off the pavement onto a dirt road. Equally straight, it rose and fell across the rippled earth toward the glimmer of a single snowy peak that seemed to be fifty miles distant. Wager, listening to the occasional rock thrown up to thump against the car’s undercarriage, studied the spread of flat earth tufted with knee-high sagebrush, smaller tufts of wiry grass, an occasional big-eared cactus or narrow-leaved yucca plant. Between weedy clumps, the red-brown dirt looked like the cracking bed of a dry lake; contorted fissures opened blackly in the clay, slabs of earth curled up at the edges in waterless agony. Narrow, windblown tongues of sand formed rippled streaks here and there, and worn shoulders of rock rose up where the sand had blown away. Except for the occasional flicker of a startled bird, there appeared to be no life at all on the heat-shimmered flats. But of course there was. It was just the kind of life that relied on sharp eyesight and camouflage for protection, on speed for the hunt—and on greater speed for the escape. It was a manner of survival, Wager thought, that anybody out here might be wise to adopt.
“There he is.” Henderson nodded toward the quivering glint of afternoon sunlight on a distant windshield. It turned out to be a pickup truck painted in the pale green shade of government issue and pulled to the side of a wider stretch of road. “Douglas D. Durkin, special agent. And he’s a pistol.” The deputy’s heavy jaw wagged. “Yessir, he is a pistol.”
The pistol was a silhouette in the truck’s cab until Henderson’s vehicle pulled to a halt in a wind-tossed swirl of dust. Then the agent stepped out to nod at Henderson and to study Wager flatly for a long moment before he made up his mind about whatever he was wondering. Taller than Wager and Henderson, Durkin looked half as heavy and half as old, though he tried to give more weight to his boyish face with a thick brown mustache that curved around the corners of his mouth. He did not smile, but he did hold out a hand. “Detective Wager? Agent Durkin.” There was no warmth in the businesslike handshake. “I appreciate your taking the time to work with us.”
“A pleasure,” said Wager just as insincerely. He had an image of two strange cats studying each other over a safe distance, tails twitching with tension and suspicion.
“I understand that officially you’re supposed to be working on this by yourself, Detective Wager. Through the—what do you call it, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation?”
Wager nodded. “CBI, that’s right.”
“CBI. Right.” A wag of his head said what he thought of amateurs who relied on important-sounding initials to substitute for the extensive training that real professionals received. “Well, I also understand that your independent status is supposed to make you more palatable to the local yokels. That it’s supposed to make them open up to you. Frankly, I think you’re going to be wasting your time, but this little plan wasn’t my idea and nobody asked me.” Another wag of his head for the inexplicable stupidity of superiors. “From this point in time, we’ll use the telephone to exchange information. Any other personal meetings you and I have will be damn rare and clandestine. So don’t be afraid to ask your questions at this briefing, because you’ll be pretty much on your own after this.”
“If I decide to take the job.”
The man’s eyes widened briefly. “If you decide to take it?”
“It’s my decision, Special Agent Durkin. That’s what I was told: Come out here, get a read on the assignment, and make up my mind about it.”
The man’s lips puffed out with a long exhale. He scuffed an expensive Gore-Tex hiking boot in the soil and glanced at the Forest Service man. “Christ, Henderson—a prima donna. I guess that’s what we get when we work with local agencies: prima donnas. All right,” he leaned forward as if to challenge Wager, “you can decide whether or not to take it. No skin off my nose either way. See if this makes up your mind for you: we’ve lost two BLM employees so far. One an agent, the other a civilian with Interior—a contract scientist doing some work for the Geological Survey. The civilian didn’t have a damn thing to do with investigation or enforcement or anything remotely threatening to anyone—he just happened to be out by himself on BLM land over near the north side of the reservation. Bastards gut-shot him and crippled his vehicle and left him to die. The medical examiner said that chore probably took about fifteen hours.” He added, “Toward the end, it must have hurt like hell because the man finally used a pocketknife to cut his own wrists and hurry things along.”
Henderson said, “That was Buck Holtzer. Real nice young man. Lived up near Grand Junction.”
“The BLM agent was murdered last week,” said Durkin. “He was out on BLM land near Many Goats Canyon and somebody shot him in the back.”
“That’s the other one I was telling you about,” said Henderson. “Larry Kershaw. I met his wife and two kids at the funeral down in Cortez three days ago, and I ain’t got over feeling sick about it yet. Real nice folks. There was no reason at all for anybody to do something like that to him or to them. Two little boys, one eight, the other six.”
“Same weapon?”
Durkin had the answer to that. “No. Both thirty-thirties, but different barrels.”
“Do you know what either of them was looking for?”
The FBI agent eyed Wager with something like real interest. “Good question. What did you find out about Holtzer, Henderson?”
“Not much. Holtzer was probably out there on government business; he was driving a USGS four-by.” The man nodded toward Durkin’s government issue four-wheel-drive pickup. “But it’s hard to say because the kind of project he was working on was a part-time contract: collecting long-term erosion data. Every now and then he’d drive all over BLM properties and measure erosion, which is why he was assigned a government truck. Anyway, he was found way over near Narraguinnep Wash. Some of it’s BLM land, some of it’s private, and most of it’s reservation. Just a bunch of broken country and not much ranching—and he didn’t leave any notes, so we don’t know for sure if it was his own business or government business he was on. Larry Kershaw was just on routine patrol, as far as we know—keeping an eye on things, you know.” He explained to Wager, “We since tightened up on patrol procedures for our personnel: travel in pairs when possible—which ain’t often, given we only got two hundred and fifty field officers to cover two hundred and seventy million acres spread across every state in the union. And always leave information about where you’re going and why you’re going there. The regular BLM personnel in this region’s been issued radios, too, but you get down in some of these canyons and they’re about as useful as a flashlight to a blind man.”
“We also had another death close to three weeks ago,” said Durkin. “We lost an informant. I don’t know if it was a screw-up on his part or the result of a leak in the local sheriff’s office. I wouldn’t put it pas
t Spurlock, that asshole.”
“Spurlock’s the sheriff?”
“He’s the one. We found the informant’s body near the east side of the reservation in Squaw Canyon—but the animals hadn’t left enough of it for us to determine the manner of death. No bullet holes in what parts of him we could find, and the local coroner hasn’t been able to determine cause, so it’s just listed as suspicious. By God, I’m suspicious, all right.”
“The coroner? So the death didn’t take place on federal land?”
“The body wasn’t found on federal land. It was found beside a state highway, so that one belongs to the sheriff. And one of Spurlock’s men was his contact, too: Deputy Howard Morris. At that time, I was instructed to go by the book—I was to advise the local authorities that I was working in the area, and get their involvement in the case in a manner that would not—ah—inhibit my own activities. Using one of the sheriff’s men for contact with the confidential informant seemed the most efficacious way.” Durkin’s gray eyes shifted to Henderson. “You told Wager he can’t rely on the local sheriff’s office, right?”
“I told him.”
“What was your CI looking for?”
Durkin started to speak but thought better of it, a tight little smile on his lips. “You know as much as you need to know if you pull out of this assignment. What’s it going to be? And, Wager, it really makes no difference to me either way.”
The two men who had interviewed Wager said only that three men had died in the last three months. They had said nothing about one of them being an informant. That was a lot more serious for what it implied about the killers’ motives and the degree of threat for law enforcement officers. Captain Melrose hadn’t said anything, either. Maybe she hadn’t known. Then again, maybe she had, and that was why her final words to Wager had emphasized that it would be up to him to decide if he wanted to go through with it after he talked with the case agent. If so, she also probably figured he wouldn’t be likely to make the long trip out to the western slope for nothing. “I’m in.”
Durkin shrugged. “OK. His name was Rubin Del Ponte—half-breed, quarter-breed, something like that. Enough to have a lot of contacts among the Indians on the Squaw Point Reservation, anyway. What he was looking for was some kind of linkup between a survivalist group called the Constitutional Posse, and somebody on the reservation.
“If he found out anything, he didn’t have a chance to report to me. And if he said anything to his contact in the sheriff’s office, that bastard hasn’t passed it on.”
Henderson snorted. “Whoever it was has made it pretty damn clear they’re after government personnel. They not only killed Holtzer and Kershaw and probably Del Ponte, but they’ve bombed a couple of BLM vehicles, too. Three in the last month.”
“Same day of the week?”
“No—as far as we know, it’s not some kind of anniversary thing. And I got to tell you, our people are nervous as all hell.”
Wager asked Durkin, “Why do you suspect a link between this survivalist group and the reservation?”
“Something I’ve been following ever since Holtzer’s death—rumors of some kind of deal developing between people on and off the reservation.” Durkin wagged his head once. “I haven’t found out anything definite yet, but that’s when the bombings started. And then Kershaw was killed. And then Del Ponte himself.”
“No clues at all? Nobody talking?”
“Not to me.” Durkin glared at Wager as if to say nobody would talk to him, either.
“I was told there were three confirmed murders. That does not include Del Ponte’s death?”
“Not confirmed, no. Whoever told you that was probably thinking of Lawrence, Walter Lawrence. An Indian killed a month ago on the reservation. That’s the case I’m primarily assigned to, and to direct and provide technical assistance in the investigations of the Holtzer and Kershaw deaths. That’s Henderson, here. But I don’t have any evidence that Walter Lawrence’s death is in any way related to these other two.” Another shrug. “In fact, Del Ponte told me that he heard it was just another Saturday night stabbing over some long-standing quarrel. And I haven’t found any reason to think otherwise. And no link with Del Ponte’s death. Neither we nor the tribal police have found out anything more about it…not that the tribal police are much help.”
“They don’t like you, either?”
“It’s not that—and believe it or not, we haven’t made enemies out of everybody around here, Detective Wager. But the tribal police just aren’t trained for criminal investigation—they handle parking and traffic offenses, a little security and crowd control, but nothing in the felony line. I use them for eyes and ears on the reservation, and that’s about it.”
“You’re the only FBI man working these cases?”
“Yes. The bureau—ah—has been instructed to keep a very low profile on this. Keep our distance, so to speak, until we have enough definitive information for a four-square case. That’s your job, Wager: to get me some goddamn information.”
Wager studied the faint wink of the snowy peak on the horizon. Despite the half-hour drive down the dirt road, the mountain had moved no closer. Maybe it was a hundred miles away—a hundred and fifty, perhaps.
What Durkin was talking about was the muzzle that had been slapped on the FBI since the so-called siege at Ruby Ridge up in Idaho and the Branch Davidian slaughter in Waco, Texas—two bloody eruptions of mismanagement and death that had cost a lot of civilians their lives and, more important, government agents their careers. Wager guessed that the FBI’s directorate had decided to move very cautiously in any future operations that might lead to another shoot-out, especially if there was any suspicion of the involvement of local survivalist groups. So the tactic now was to place a buffer between the FBI agents and any activity having the possibility of a lethal confrontation—someone to take the blame or deflect criticism if things got out of hand. And since Durkin’s first buffer, the sheriff, was not too cooperative, and his second, a civilian informant working through the sheriff’s office, had not worked out too well, someone behind a desk somewhere had come up with the idea of recruiting a regional law enforcement officer to be the new buffer. Hello, Wager.
“What about the Drug Enforcement Agency or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms? They have any people assigned to this?”
“No.” At the sound of those agencies’ names, Durkin tried to look as if he hadn’t bitten into something sour. “As far as we know, there are no drug-related offenses. And despite the bombings, BATF hasn’t expressed an official interest yet.”
These two other federal agencies had operatives who had been involved in various incidents, up to and including no-knock raids that tore up the wrong addresses, and agents getting into drunken brawls in rural taverns. It was a careless and ill-disciplined use of force that Wager, an ex-Marine, especially despised because it reflected badly on all competent lawmen. At its worst, the lack of discipline resulted in such corruptions as the poorly officered Ohio National Guard shooting students at Kent State; at its least dangerous, it meant that evidence was obtained illegally and thrown out of court during trial. Equally bad was the credence it gave so-called militias and survivalists who saw the federal government and—by extension—all law officers as agents of the New Evil Empire out to destroy American Freedoms.
“I’m in, Durkin. I said I would be, and I am. But I was told to make it clear that I’m neutral. I am not Officer Henderson’s man. Or Sheriff Spurlock’s. Or yours. Like you said, I’ll be working on my own and I will be supervising coordination between your agencies.”
Durkin scratched at one wing of his curving mustache as he studied Wager. “You think you’re going to clean this up all by yourself, that it?”
“No. I think I’m going to try and help you people work together whether you want to or not. And we’ll start off this way: from now on, I am the liaison between federal and state enforcement, including the sheriff’s office. If you have information, you feed
it to me; if I develop information myself or through the sheriff’s office, I give it to you. It’ll be a two-way trade.”
“A trade.”
Wager nodded. “If you have trouble with that, say so now.”
“Any and every federal agency has seniority over local law enforcement, Wager.”
“Not over me, they don’t. My chain of command’s to the state of Colorado.”
“I can pull your chain as well as your goddamn federal authorization.”
“You can if you have cause. And you can try it if you don’t have cause. But if that’s what you do, you’ll want to give your chief in the Denver office a damn good explanation for your failure to work with me. Because I won’t have any hesitation about filing official complaints—local and national—that describe you as being uncooperative with state enforcement personnel. And they will be filed through the state of Colorado’s congressional representatives who, I have been informed by Captain Melrose, are personally interested in the outcome of this investigation.”
In the silence, Henderson, too, stared at Wager. The silvered lenses of his sunglasses hid his eyes, but his open lips signaled his surprise.
Durkin drew a long, slow breath and shifted his angry gaze to the heat-paled sky, to some distant spot on the unbroken horizon. It was finally that spot he spoke to. “I’ll work with you, Wager. I’ve been ordered—as you obviously know—to work with you, so I’ll by God do what I’m ordered. But I don’t think you are going to be worth a shit around here. I don’t think you’re going to do a damn thing except screw up my investigation. But you go ahead and do your thing. And be sure to remember what I said: you are on your own. You can work on your own, and by God, you can die on your own.”