“The Tonto?” Jane said, a little alarmed. “That’s north of Phoenix.”
Angie nodded her head. “It’s the largest wilderness area in the state,” she said.
“But that’s north of Phoenix,” Jane said again, still alarmed. “If a cat’s capable of going that far north—”
“—they do it all the time—”
“—then that means that it could be near Phoenix.”
Angie pulled one of her papers from her stack and turned it over so that the page was blank. She drew a map with her pen.
“Phoenix lies here,” Angie said. “The Valley of the Sun. You have a couple of mountains in town here—Camelback, the Phoenix Mountains—and due northeast of Phoenix is this giant wilderness area, the Tonto National Forest: nearly three million acres of untouched mountainous land. There are lakes and mountain peaks and forests, and the total human population is less than a thousand. Now, if you’re a mountain lion, where would you live: in this wilderness area where no human is ever going to see you, or close to a giant city of nearly three million people?”
“I’d tend to say that it would stay in the wilderness area,” Jane said. “But this animal has clearly shown that it doesn’t give a damn about the wilderness boundaries that we’ve set up. It killed two people on a golf course, Doctor Rippard.”
“A golf course built within fifty meters of National Forest Land.”
“And now you’re telling me that the animal has moved north to one of the largest cities in the United States?”
“No, that’s not what I’m telling you at all,” Rippard said. “I’m telling you that it’s possible for a male lion to move two hundred miles in a month.”
“But Phoenix is only ninety miles north,” Jane said.
“And chances are that mountain lion will stay as far away from the city as it can,” Rippard said. “However, it has made two successful human kills that we know of; so it knows that people make a good food source.”
“A good food source?!”
“On the record, Jane, my position should be crystal clear: I am for relocating these animals at any cost.”
Jane gazed across the table at her. “But?”
“I don’t know,” Angie said. “The cougar that did that to two of my students, to two bright kids with their whole lives ahead them—maybe relocation isn’t always the best solution.”
Twenty-One
Charlie “The Chopper” Rutledge was a giant bear of a man who once ran the two most expensive unsuccessful gubernatorial campaigns in Colorado state history. He was born in 1933 to a mining family that had been in the Denver region for more than sixty years. His father was president and CEO of West Corp., an innocuous name for the state’s most notorious strip-mining company. In the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, though, Colorado was still a relatively uninhabited state and environmental consciousness was pretty much limited to knowing what the weather was going to be like for the next few days.
Charlie grew up going to the best schools and living in multiple homes around Colorado and the southwestern United States. By the early 1940s, West Corp. had diversified and branched out into Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Nevada, but a strange thing began to happen in the late 1940s and early 50s that impeded its progress. Average citizens became aware that companies like West Corp. were irreparably damaging natural resources in the region.
By the mid to late 1950s, state and federal legislation had gotten involved and laws were put into place to limit the amount of destruction a company like West Corp. could inflict on local ecosystems.
Young Charlie turned twenty-five in 1958, and he was bright enough to see that there was a hard future ahead for large mining companies in the state. He enjoyed hotels. He enjoyed skiing. He loved partying with the social elite, and in 1960, he talked his father into loaning him ten million dollars toward building a resort hotel in, what was then, the remote town of Aspen, Colorado.
The St. Chevis Hotel took three years to build and occupied twelve acres of prime real estate at the base of Aspen Highlands. It opened in October 1963 and was an immediate sensation. One of the chief consulting architects was a student of the legendary builder Frank Lloyd Wright, and the St. Chevis actually won several awards for its design. Fueled by that particular hype and poised at what was becoming one of the most popular ski resorts in the world, the St. Chevis proved a windfall for a young entrepreneur then only known as Charlie Rutledge.
What Charlie found in the early 60s and on into the 70s was that the state regulation for developing tourism destinations was much more lax than for mining companies; i.e., it was easier to cut down one thousand acres of trees, if the aim was to build a golf course and hotel, than the exact same thousand acres of trees if the aim was to strip-mine silver. It was a matter of less red tape.
By 1967, Charlie Rutledge had completed three similar hotel resorts following the success of the St. Chevis in and around Aspen, Aspen Highlands, and Snowmass. And no one complained; the hotels were a hit and it was a time when posh vacationing was popular. It seemed that the government even encouraged him because the Colorado governor, at the time, did television ads inviting tourists to Colorado, and in several of the ads, the governor was seen standing in front of a West Corp. Hotel.
Charlie did raise a few eyebrows in 1971 when his particular branch of West Corp. mowed down ten thousand acres of trees in north-central Colorado to begin building his own ski resort at Smuggler Mountain. Smuggler’s Hole (as the resort was to be called) was ruthlessly designed and completed in under two years to coincide with the opening of the Eisenhower Tunnel on March 8, 1973. Charlie had the vision to build a ski resort less than three miles from Interstate-70, fully aware that the tunnel would significantly change traffic flow into the interior of Colorado. Denver’s population was soaring, and Charlie believed that tourism should no longer be limited to those who could fly into Colorado.
Because of its timing with the Eisenhower Tunnel’s completion, Smuggler’s Hole became a phenomenon. Located an easy forty-five miles west of Denver, it hailed a new era for skiing tourism in the state. That people could easily drive to the resort seemed like a simple enough idea, but it was something that few real estate developers had cashed in on up to that point. There simply weren’t enough accessible roads to Colorado’s interior prior to the 1970s.
Charlie was the first. And by 1977, a half dozen more West Corp. resorts sprung up along Interstate-70, totaling fifty thousand acres of deforestation in the region, more land than West Corp. Mining had destroyed in fifty years of business. And all of it was presented in the form of trendy, popular ski resort vacations that the public loved. Charlie was a hero. And a billionaire.
By the early 1980s, West Corp. diversified by building resorts and hotels in Las Vegas, Tucson, Scottsdale and at Mammoth Mountain in California. He appeared on the cover of Time and Newsweek and became something of a public figure at major social events. He often wore a black cowboy hat and a rhinestone-studded necktie. He never married but did date one supermodel in the late ’80s, and he even showed up in a couple of small Hollywood movie roles.
No one knows for certain who first coined the nickname “The Chopper,” but its origins were likely the Denver Herald, where the first major criticism of Charlie’s ruthless real estate development emerged. The public largely overlooked the criticism because Charlie was building some of the coolest jetsetter destinations in the country. They wanted more, and any criticism in the 1970s and 80s regarding the lavish lifestyles Charlie’s resorts promoted were quickly dismissed.
It wasn’t until the early 1990s that the cultural pendulum began to swing the other way, and people began to notice that Charlie’s mountain resorts were scarring up the natural landscape. And so Charlie began branching out of the United States, first to Mexico, where West Corp. built a fabulous oceanfront resort in Cabo San Lucas called The Palace. In 1994, construction of resorts in Austria, Greece, Italy, Fiji, and New Zealand were mapped out. Maui and Oahu were added in �
��97, Sao Paulo, Brazil in ’99, and by 2001, West Corp. was one of the largest global resort contractors on the planet.
Along the way, Charlie put his hat into the 1992 and 1996 Colorado gubernatorial races, spending a reported one hundred and thirty million dollars in two unsuccessful bids for the state’s governorship. It was as much money as a national presidential candidate would spend on a run at the White House, and all of it was for naught. Colorado had gradually shifted to become a more liberal state, and Charlie “The Chopper” was seen as staunchly conservative.
He enjoyed sport hunting wildlife that, in states like California, voters were outlawing. He had stuffed grizzlies, elk, and mountain lions adorning his forty-five-million-dollar Aspen estate, and he was friendly with the National Rifle Association.
Perhaps the most damning photograph of the two elections was the result of poor campaign insight. The image showed Charlie wearing plaid flannel and hefting a woodcutter’s ax up over a pile of logs. The intent had been to show Charlie as an “everyday” Coloradoan chopping logs (presumably) for his own little woodstove, but the final perception was quite different.
Time did an unusually vituperative article of his campaign for governor, and splashed “The Chopper Wants In” in massive forty-eight-point font above the full-page photograph. The article described West Corp.’s devastating deforestation as a “rape of the natural land,” and with red, white, and blue schematics, it showed the regions where Charlie had cut down the most trees to build his lavish resorts. It was a period of strong environmental awareness, and Charlie was laughed out of both elections.
It was the first sign that he might be losing his Midas touch, but he countered his political defeats by diversifying his company, by going global. In the late 1990s, his name regularly showed up on America’s wealthiest top-ten list, and he went ahead with plans to build a stunning quarter-billion-dollar resort community in Tucson, Arizona near Ventana Canyon.
Construction of West Corp.’s Ventana Canyon Resort began in 1994 and ignited outrage because of its proximity to National Forest Land. It was the first of his “planned communities,” wherein an entire town sprung up around a golf course and fabulous hotel. Homes, pools, shopping malls all came together, and Charlie’s original vision was exactly that; to develop small cities around his hotels and golf courses. If he couldn’t get elected as a state leader, he’d build his own states within states and rule his empires that way.
Twenty-Two
Jarvis Cole wheeled his red Nissan Sentra into Prospector Park and was somewhat surprised when he saw no one on the lighted basketball courts. It was a Wednesday night, about an hour past sunset, and a Little League baseball game was underway on the far side of the municipal park. Parents filled the bleachers behind home plate and along the first and third base lines. The lights on the field were bright, and Jarvis caught the scent of popcorn and hotdogs from the concession stand.
A P.A. announcer’s voice said, “Number Nine, the short stop, Timmy Redfield!” Parents clapped for Timmy, who stepped up to the plate, tapped dirt from his cleats, and swung his bat a couple of times. He dug into the batter’s box.
Jarvis grabbed his basketball, stepped out of the Nissan, and walked up to the courts. The courts were about two hundred meters from the baseball field, and the parking lot adjacent to the ball field was packed with pickups, minivans, and SUVs. The Apache Junction Little League games were made of a curious socioeconomic composition: working-class folks, yuppie transplants, and the super wealthy that lived at the base of the Superstition Mountains. Jarvis laced up his shoes, did a few stretches, and then began to shoot from around the key.
He heard the metallic plink! of an aluminum bat on the ball, and he looked up and saw the long fly ball to deep left-center. A roar went up from the crowd, and the ball hit the ground on the warning track, careened up off of a sign that said “Lloyd’s Dry Cleaning,” and Timmy Redfield rounded first and started running for second. Timmy slid into second base, popped up, and dusted himself off.
One of the parents shouted, “Way to go, Timmy!”
Jarvis smiled. He dribbled the basketball out to the three-point line, and practiced a hook-and-roll shot that he’d been working on the past few weeks. He hit three out of four and then got bold and took a couple of shots from the baseline.
The first baseline shot hit the rim and fired back to him. He let the ball hit his hands, spun it around, and went up for another jump shot. This time he was long, and the ball hit the back of the rim and took off bouncing toward the far side of the court. Jarvis trotted after it, and the ball rolled down a hill at the side of the courts and into the shadows.
“Damn,” he said. He walked down the hill toward the ball. Regulars at Prospector Park’s basketball court complained about the hill all the time, but no one seemed to be able to get the city of Apache Junction to do anything about it.
All they needed was a fence along the court’s perimeter, but city officials thought an aluminum fence whose sole purpose was to catch errant basketball shots was an eyesore and a waste of money. And as Apache Junction had received a lot of heat about zoning codes and building regulations as one of Phoenix, Arizona’s fastest growing suburbs, town officials were not just going to put up a five hundred dollar fence without due consideration.
Jarvis saw his basketball and bent down to pick it up.
Something moved in the shadows ten feet from him, and it sent a bolt of adrenaline through his body.
“Hello?” he said.
There was no answer. He craned his head to see better through the bushes in the wash, and he slowly started backing up the hill toward the lighted basketball courts. He heard something that sounded like a low growl, and he thought it was maybe some kind of dog, though it didn’t sound like any dog he’d ever heard. The bushes shook, and the sleek figure moved farther up the wash, staying out of sight.
Whatever it was, it was moving in the direction of the baseball field.
Jarvis reached the edge of the basketball court, and he stood there, looking down the hill. He held the basketball on his right hip and stared into the darkness at the bottom of the hill. He stared for a good ten seconds, didn’t see anything, and so turned and took a long baseline shot that hit nothing but net.
“That’s right,” he said.
• •
Miguel Priest stood at the fence just beyond the dugout on the first base line. He preferred setting up his lawn chair next to whatever dugout his son’s team was playing out of, than to sitting in the bleachers with parents who looked like rejected models from a J-Crew catalogue. The white parents treated their kids’ baseball games like it was a PTA meeting.
Jose Priest was playing third tonight and would likely come in to relieve the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Nelson Jacks who had gotten the start for Debruck’s Cardinals. Debruck’s Feed and Cattle sponsored the Little League team, and Jose was one of those rare twelve-year-olds of whom other parents quietly thought, This boy’s got potential. Real potential.
Miguel leaned over the fence and took a long hard look inside the dugout. Head coach Mike Fox was in there eying his pitcher, chewing away at a wad of bubble gum and glancing at the boy who had just made it to second base.
“Okay, Nelson,” Coach Fox said. “Dig in now and get this last out!”
The score was tied three-three, and it was the third of a scheduled six-inning game. Make it or break it time.
Miguel glanced across the infield at his son on third. Jose smacked his hand in his glove, shouted “Pitch it in there, Nellie,” and crouched down into his third-baseman’s stance. Nelson Jacks eyed the catcher’s signals, nodded his head, and went into his windup.
“Oh, my God!” one of the parents shouted, standing and pointing toward the right-field fence.
Nelson delivered the pitch. The batter swung hard, and the ball smacked into the catcher’s mitt, a puff of dust blasting up from the glove. Everyone started to clap.
But a ripple of fear was going through a
pocket in the crowd because one of the parents was standing up shouting, his voice somewhere between a panic and a shriek. The parent was pointing out toward the right-field foul pole. And slowly, all eyes went to the spot at which the parent was pointing. There was a large opening in the fence where the groundskeepers could drive their riding mowers out onto the outfield, and because of the field lights, the opening looked like a large dark mouth.
A wave of shrieks went up, and suddenly all of the players and coaches turned and saw the mountain lion standing there at the opening of the fence just right of the right-field foul pole. It was the size of a Volvo.
The cat had golden eyes that glanced with utter calmness at the field of Little Leaguers as though they were a flock of sheep. Parents screamed and waved for their kids to run. The fenced-in ball field suddenly became a large prison cell, and the large cat singled out the weakest child on the field and began trotting toward him.
CLAWS Page 10