by Rex Burns
Like the others, she wore no name tag. “I need an item from your evidence locker.”
“The what? Oh—the safe! Sure.” She led him to the large Mosler that blocked one corner of the room. The heavy door hung open and, without glancing at the file number Wager held, she rummaged through the middle shelf to pull out a flat brown envelope. “Here you go—the Mueller case, right?”
“Yeah, right. You want me to sign for it?”
She shook her head, brown eyes wide with curiosity. “What for?”
“You don’t require people to sign evidence in and out?”
“No. We’re always here. And when we’re not, the safe’s locked.”
“What’s your name?”
“Cynthia.”
“Thanks, Cynthia.”
“And your name’s Gabriel. Or do you want to be called Officer Wager?”
Her eyes teased and he smiled back. “Gabe. Only angels are called Gabriel.”
“And you’re no angel?”
“I just work for them,” he joked.
The laughter went out of her eyes, blown by a sudden gust of fright that she quickly hid behind a taut smile. “We’re all on the side of the angels,” she said, and turned away with the smile carefully held in place, leaving Wager puzzled. He stared a long moment before he went back to his small table.
There he matched the sheriff’s evidence with his own copy of the sketch. Under the magnifying glass they looked identical, which wasn’t surprising since both were Xerox copies. Turning to the photographs of the victim and the supporting documents of the case, he set aside Cynthia’s unexplained fright and gradually lost himself in the awkwardly precise language of reports. After a while, as he neared the bottom of the stack of papers, the silence behind him became noticeable: the clatter and ding of typing had ceased, the telephone noises quieted, and only the occasional snap and chatter of the radio filled the sheriff’s offices. Wager gave a long sigh, put Tice’s evidence back in its plastic Baggie, and tucked his own copy of the angel away in his small green notebook.
“Is the sheriff in?”
Apparently Communications took her lunch break after the others; the older woman looked up from her log of radio messages and nodded at the sheriff’s door. “Just go right in.”
Tice was poking with a ball-point pen at a small stack of papers. “You got it solved yet?”
If it was a joke, it wasn’t funny; if it was sarcasm, Wager could do without it. He set the plastic Baggie on the sheriff’s desk. “This should go back in your evidence locker.” Pointing to the sketch, Wager asked, “Does the drawing mean anything to you?”
“First, we don’t have an evidence locker, Detective Wager. All’s we got is a safe. And second, no, that angel don’t mean a thing to me. But it does to some damn fools. Or so they claim.”
Such as his own clerk, Cynthia. “What do they claim?”
“There’s some around the county that believe in the avenging angels. I don’t happen to.”
“What’s the avenging angels?”
The man heaved back in his protesting chair and eyed Wager. “You’re not Mormon I guess. I thought DPD sent you over because you were supposed to know all about this shooting.”
“They sent me over to learn about it, Tice. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“I see—learn.” He grunted. “You a Catholic? You raised a Catholic?”
Wager nodded shortly; he preferred to ask the questions.
“Got any Mormons over on the Eastern Slope?” Tice asked.
“Latter-Day Saints? Sure.”
Tice grunted again. “LDS—some of them don’t like to be called Mormons, and some Mormons don’t like to be called LDS.”
When Wager was a kid, all non-Catholics were lumped under the heading “black Prods,” and either were pitied or laughed at because they had traded religion for superstition. There were even a few fights over who was the most Christian. But for a long time now all the sects and their jealousies had made no difference to him, and it was hard to imagine people getting upset over rituals. “What’s this got to do with the picture?”
“You were sent here to learn you say? You want to learn or not?”
Wager picked at an imaginary piece of lint on his trousers and managed to hold his temper. “Go on.”
“I aim to.” Tice waited for Wager to say something more, but he didn’t. “Now out here we got people scattered over the benchland that don’t like either bunch because they think they’re the only real Mormons left. They’re the ones that still believe in the avenging angels or destroying angels or sons of Dan or whatever you want to call them.”
“Why?”
“Because the Mormon church used to have avenging angels, and these people stay with the old ways. They’re the ones that think Negroes are Satan’s children—that’s why their skin’s black; and that Indians are red because they broke God’s commandments. And that polygamy’s still one of God’s laws. They’re what you might call your basic, hard-shelled, unreformed Mormons.”
“Polygamy?”
“You going to tell me that’s against the law?” The sheriff had that look of a man who’d argued the question before and was damned if he wanted to go over the same ground again.
“I don’t have to tell you that.”
“No. You don’t. But around here we got people living together without marriage, we got people living together that are still married to somebody else, and we got people living together that are married to each other—except there’s more than one woman that’s married to the same man. As far as I know, we don’t yet have two men married to each other, not like they do over in Boulder. But we got a few of that kind living together that ain’t married. We got a whole variety of connubial bliss in these mountains, Detective Wager. Maybe it’s something in the water. But as long as those people don’t endanger life or property, I don’t bother them.”
“You have any men and women that are just married to each other?”
Tice coughed something like a laugh. “A few. They seem to be the unhappiest of the lot.”
“What’s the avenging angels have to do with it?”
“Nothing—it has to do with Mormons. The avenging angels were Mormon vigilantes. When Brigham Young started to settle groups of Mormons in the corridor down from Salt Lake City to San Diego, California, they ran into people who didn’t like Mormons. Some were on the land first, like around here; some tried to move in after the Mormons did the improving. Brigham Young sent out a chosen few to convert or kill off anybody they couldn’t buy out. And to go after any Mormons who wanted to stray from Brigham’s path. Since Brigham spoke for God, these vigilantes were just doing what God told them to, so they were called avenging angels or Danites or what-all.”
“And …?”
Tice shrugged. “There were some killings by Mormons around here. Massacres just west of here. But that was a long time ago—a hundred years. And it was kept pretty secret even then. I doubt you find many Mormons today that know much about them. Sure as hell few that believe in them.”
Wager looked at the drawing spread in its plastic wrapper. “Mueller was one of these unreformed Mormons then?”
“No, he wasn’t. I can’t find any link between him and any kind of Mormon or any other religion. As far as I can learn, he spent his Sundays—Saturdays, too—getting drunk by himself up in his cabin. Your Mormons of all kinds aren’t supposed to drink coffee even, let alone whiskey. They do drink a lot of soda pop,” he added. “The kind the church is a major stockholder in.”
“No other motive? Robbery?”
“Hell, Mueller never had a thing but that cabin and maybe a few hundred acres of timberland around it. When he needed a little cash, he’d hire out as a hand. Most of the time he didn’t even bother with that. Look, Detective Wager, I may be just a county sheriff, but by God I been in law enforcement work almost thirty years. I know enough about this business to look for the motive in a killing. And I can’t find one in th
e Mueller case—no enemies, no robbery, no relatives, no mysterious avenging angels.”
“But there is that drawing. According to the investigating deputy—Roy Yates?—it was folded up and stuck between Mueller’s fingers so it wouldn’t be missed.” Wager half shrugged at the obviousness of it. “That fits the m.o. of the Denver killing, and that angel’s an exact copy of the ones we found in Denver and Pueblo.”
Tice sighed. “Yeah.” Then he grabbed his Stetson from a corner of his desk and grunted to his feet. “There is that damn picture, and there are some damn fools it scares hell out of. Come on—let’s get some lunch. Yates should be down from Rio Piedra in an hour or so and then you can worry him about it. Whenever I get puzzled I get hungry, and that damn picture’s ruining my diet.”
Openness. That was the word Wager searched for in his mind when a relaxed and belching Tice led him from the restaurant and around town by way of introduction. The people on the streets had none of that squinty-eyed I’m-as-good-as-you-are look that so many newcomers to Denver assumed after they’d been out west for six months. Instead these people assumed that, since Wager didn’t have long hair, he was as good as they were, and they would treat him that way unless he proved otherwise. It was the kind of easy acceptance he remembered in his old neighborhood, before the bulldozers leveled it first for parking lots, then for the blank glass faces of classrooms and office buildings. Here, the openness in attitude matched the openness of the ranch and farmland scattered across the broad plateau between the steep crest of eastern mountains and the long, falling distances to the western horizon. It was an openness that was emphasized by the hardness of the afternoon sunlight, which glowed as much from the earth as from the sky. Even Deputy Yates, to whom he was introduced when they got back to the sheriff’s office, and who was to take him out to Mueller’s ranch, seemed genuinely glad after a few moments of cautious sniffing—two dogs of the same breed meeting for the first time—to tell Wager all he knew about the homicide and everything else.
“That kind of thing doesn’t happen much in this neck of the woods, Gabe.”
Tice had introduced him as Gabe Wager from DPD, and Yates went right to his first name. Which was friendlier than Tice was and all right with Wager. “Not many homicides in the county?”
“Nope. We get some shootings, suicides and accidents mostly. One or two a year. And if we do get a homicide, it’s because of a fight; somebody gets beat up in a bar and wants to get even, or somebody messes with another man’s woman.” Yates turned the four-wheel-drive car onto the bumpy state road that led back north to Rio Piedra and Mueller’s isolated ranch. “Burglary’s the big thing around here—we’re starting to get transient construction workers coming in, and they’ll rip off whatever ain’t tied down. Dope, too.” He bobbed his head toward the jagged snow-covered peaks fifty miles away. “The ski people bring that in. But the marshal up there won’t move against them. He calls it the ‘community life-style.’” Yates slapped his palm against the steering wheel. “He says those people hired him, and those people’s standards are what he’s paid to uphold.” He added, “No matter how low.”
“What about the DA? Doesn’t the marshal have to report to the district attorney?”
Yates’s yellow-brown eyes glanced from the narrow highway toward Wager, unsure just how much might be repeated and to whom. “Our DA don’t like to prosecute. He don’t like us spending our time in court when we should be on the road or serving warrants, he says. Besides, he’s a Republican, and the marshal’s a Democrat. They don’t work together too well.”
The deputy was a lean man in his thirties whose Adam’s apple bobbed prominently when he talked. Beneath his tan uniform shirt, trimmed with western piping on back and chest, the faint outline of straps and ridges showed that he wore body armor. Most of the street cops in Denver wore it, too, but there it seemed necessary. “What about the sheriff’s office? How does Tice get along with the DA?”
“Not too good. Tice wants to provide law enforcement for the unincorporated areas of the county—which is most of it. The DA thinks the sheriff should spend his time serving papers and running the jail. We make a little money on papers and prisoners.”
“How in hell does the DA get any convictions?”
“Guilty pleas on reduced charges, mostly. He says it serves justice and the county budget at the same time. Besides, he’s a good buddy of the leading defense lawyer in town. I won’t say there’s any pay-offs, but if you ever get charged with something, there’s one lawyer who can get you out of it without ever going to trial.”
As in every judicial district in Colorado, the DA decided which cases to prosecute and how hard to go after them. Plea bargaining could save the state a lot of money and the prosecutor a lot of work, as Kolagny, the Denver prosecuting attorney, knew. And if you only went after the sure cases, you could have a very good conviction rate, one that the state’s attorney general would be happy with. “It sounds like a real circus, Roy. How about the municipal police? How do you get along with them?”
“There’s only one municipality in the county—Loma Vista. The rest of the towns have marshals, and some are good and some are bad. As far as the Loma Vista police is concerned, it depends on who’s got duty. If you need backup, your friends come when you holler. The others don’t.” He told Wager about a bar fight during one of the region’s summer tourist celebrations, Gold Rush Days: two sheriff’s officers sent to quell a brawl of thirty drunken construction workers and not-too-sober cowboys. “Municipal didn’t send anybody into the county to help with that one. We ended up standing outside the door and picking them up when they flew out. If there’d been just four or five of us, we could have gone in and broken it up. But just the two of us, and one of them a reserve …” Yates tried to answer Wager’s silence. “Look, Gabe, the s.o. has three full-timers for the whole county, including Tice. We’re not as rich as Cortez or Grand Junction. We just don’t have the tax base for a good sheriff’s office. If I spend two, three days on a court case, I’m not out on calls, like I should be. And I’ll tell you what, if we don’t respond to calls, Sheriff Tice don’t get re-elected, and I don’t get reappointed. That’s just the way it is out here.”
Out here, back there, anywhere and everywhere, the sure conviction of criminals was the best prevention a law agency could offer. Proving your case in court was what it was all about, and if a DA took only the easy wins, the real crooks would get a lot smarter a lot faster. Wager gazed out the window at a flooded meadow whose grass was so green it was almost black against the blue of water-reflected sky. He was here on one case. As an outsider. He wanted to remember that. And Yates, like any good cop, preferred to be on the street instead of in court or filling out time-study forms. Even if things were done differently or downright wrong in Grant County, he wanted to remember that.
“Were you born around here?”
“Texas. El Paso. Worked for the s.o. in El Paso County for two years before coming up here. I been here almost ten years now. Man, talk about your budget—that El Paso s.o. had helicopters, take-home vehicles, overtime pay, everything! It cost me almost three hundred a month to come up here.” He pointed out the window by way of explanation. “But it was worth it—I like the country.”
Looking where Yates pointed, Wager could understand. It was the kind of scenery people traveled thousands of miles and paid hundreds of dollars to see. And Yates, assigned to live in the northwest corner of the county as the sole resident peace officer, would be his own boss most of the time. It was the kind of job a city cop might like to retire to. If he could stand the small-town politics. Gazing at those steep snowfields brilliant in the afternoon sun, Wager figured the years to his own retirement. He was about halfway there, and it wouldn’t be bad at all to move out to a place like this. “How many people in the county?”
Yates thought a moment. “Last census said a little over two thousand, outside Loma Vista. About twenty thousand in all. But it was wrong—I figure another five hundre
d, maybe more. I know a dozen new families up in my corner that have moved in from God-knows-where.” He grinned, wrinkling his flat cheeks. “A real population explosion.”
A pickup truck passed with a large tank filling the bed. The driver raised a hand and Yates waved back. Wager tried to remember the last time he saw someone in Denver lift a friendly hand to a cop.
“That’s Deputy Hodges’s uncle—looks like he’s going for a load of water.”
“Water?” They were climbing swiftly now; the wet meadow was left behind as the road lifted through piñon and scrub to the top of a mesa. But the grass was still green and fresh, and narrow gullies cut in the mesa showed that creeks ran from those distant snowfields. “It seems wet enough.”
“It’s spotty, and some areas are downright dry. Water rights! It’s the biggest damned headache we have, and the water laws in this state are a lawyer’s delight. Subsurface water, too; it’s a whole new area and nobody really knows what the law is. We’re always serving summonses on water rights cases.”
The road swerved in sharp curves as it dipped and rose again, this time into a pine-filled valley that was formed by the lowest ridges of the mountain range. Among the tree trunks scattered vacation cabins sat awaiting another brief season; occasional trucks and cars passed with a wave, and Yates seemed to know most of the drivers. Wager let him talk without interruption and gazed at the passing landscape. On the radio, infrequent coded messages crackled with the slow business of the sheriff’s office, the municipal police in Loma Vista behind them, the faint queries and answers of the county’s highway maintenance crews. Yates slowed suddenly to swerve onto a graded dirt road—”Got a paper to serve, won’t take long”—and groped his automobile down first one narrow dirt track and then another, looking for the plastic lot number nailed to a pine tree. Not all of the empty-looking A-frames or log cabins were vacation homes; Wager caught glimpses of pickup trucks with current Colorado plates, of large dogs sitting up to stare as the vehicle rattled past, of the occasional child playing alone around the cinder-block foundation of a half-hidden mobile home.