“I helped.” Baxter wasn’t to be cheated of this increasingly pungent treasure.
Within a half hour, Pete and Lonnie also viewed the grisly find. Pete put on thin rubber gloves and gingerly dropped the fingers in a bag.
“Could I have a Ziploc filled with ice? Let me put this in that.”
Carlotta quickly fixed him one. She wanted the damned fingers out of the house. “The dogs came through the door and just dropped them,” Carlotta informed them as she handed over the large bag of ice cubes.
“Lonnie, let’s go outside and look,” Pete said.
He dropped the ice bag in the back of the squad car, then called HQ. After, he and Lonnie started walking around the buildings as did Jeep, Mags, and Enrique.
“If a body was this close to the house, we’d have found it,” Enrique said.
“No doubt,” Pete replied, “but we’d still better check.”
The two agitated dogs kept barking and heading southward, then coming back.
“We should follow the dogs,” Jeep suggested.
“At last, someone with sense.” King gloated. “She is the smartest of the lot.”
Pete hesitated, so Mags said, “Aunt Jeep, why don’t you and I follow them on the ATVs? Pete and Lonnie can keep looking here.”
Five minutes later, the two women sped after the dogs. Swerving to avoid isolated rocks and large sagebrush, they kept the creek bed to their right. They stopped when the dogs jumped down into the bed. Following, the grisly sight shocked Mags. Jeep didn’t much like it, either.
Mags called Pete from her cell. He showed up ten minutes later, seeing them parked on the side of Dry Valley Road.
Carefully, he and Lonnie dropped down into the creek bed.
“Think they’ll give us any of this?” Baxter wondered.
“No,” King replied with some regret.
“It’s Oliver Hitchens, isn’t it?” Mags asked.
“Yes,” Pete replied simply.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Murder raises issues most people would rather not consider. The first being why, the second being that most of us have somewhere within us the capacity to kill. Some admit it, some don’t.
Best not to jump to conclusions about anything, not even identifying the body. The Sheriff’s Department scrambled to reach the next of kin before the news was blasted across TV screens. The minute Pete called in to HQ, a female officer was dispatched to Karen Hitchens, another male officer to Darryl Johnson. The Hitchens’s son, away at college, was later called by his mother. Oliver’s daughter, at high school, was picked up by her aunt, who, thank God, lived in Reno. Even with the mutilation of the corpse, Pete knew it was Oliver before he confirmed it because he found his wallet and ID inside his coat pocket.
Darryl Johnson called a meeting of upper management the moment the police officer left his office. Those who had seen the uniformed presence suspected it had to do with Oliver Hitchens’s disappearance but still the news of his death came as a shock.
After providing some details and withholding the most gruesome ones, Darryl said to the employees gathered around the conference table, “Our first priority is Karen and the kids. George W., you know the family better than any of us, I think. We should stop by to express our condolences right after work, all of us, unless you feel otherwise.”
“No, no, that’s the right thing to do.”
“We should bring food.” Elizabeth McCormick suggested quietly.
“Lolly and I will take care of that.” Darryl folded his hands on the table. The president, like all such leaders, had expected to solve many problems during his tenure. He’d never expected this.
For a moment, nothing was said. Outside the closed doors, phones could be heard ringing incessantly.
Elizabeth advised quietly, “Our first ad appeared in the paper today. I think we should pull the rest of them until February.”
“It’s a good ad”—Darryl inclined his head toward her—“but you’re right. SSRM is going to receive a lot of media scrutiny and I’d advise all of you to say as little as possible. Any stray comment could be misconstrued or, worse, impede the search for Oliver’s killer. Is that understood?”
All said, “Yes.”
“Good. Go back and inform people in your respective departments. Elizabeth, stay back a moment.”
Craig Locke, moving toward the conference room exit, stopped a moment, started to say something, then thought better of it.
George W. put his hand on Craig’s shoulder as they walked out the door into the hallway.
Craig asked, “Anyone know how he was killed?”
“Not yet, or if they do, they aren’t telling us.”
“This all started with Pump Nineteen.” Craig’s voice was bitter.
“Craig, at this moment I don’t know anything except that Karen and the kids will need all our support.” George W. reached the elevator bank and pushed the down button. He’d head to the warehouse now, along the way calling his crews on the road.
Back in the conference room, Darryl asked Elizabeth, “Help me prepare a statement to the press, will you?”
“Of course.”
They worked diligently as the phones reverberated throughout the building. By the time they had finished, a mobile TV crew had pulled up in front of the SSRM corporate offices, shooting the outside.
Late in the afternoon, after Oliver Hitchens’s body had finally been removed, Pete and Lonnie drove back to Jeep.
Having returned with Mags hours ago, she was already curious for an update. Seeing them coming down the long drive, she opened the door. “Come on in,” she said from the porch. “Can I get you anything?”
“No. Thank you for your help and I’m sorry you had to see that,” Pete said kindly.
Mags came down the hallway and stood behind her great-aunt. “It was awful.”
“Pete, whoever put him there was someone who knows the land out here, someone who must have walked it a time or two, and right on the southern edge of my ranch.”
“More than likely. Either that or the killer had blind luck finding that crevice. But I think you’re right.”
Jake Tanner, out on his Bobcat, saw the swirling lights.
Unless there’s a range, one can see for miles in this part of the world. When he spotted a sheriff’s vehicle coming down Red Rock Road from the north, Jake knew something big was happening. He hopped in his old truck and cruised slowly down Red Rock Road. Then, despite wanting to know what was happening, he decided if he showed up in the middle of everything he might just be in the way. So he turned and drove up to Pump 19. From there, he’d have a good view below.
Oliver’s car sat in the parking area. You wouldn’t see it from Red Rock unless you craned your neck upward. Then you might possibly catch sight of the Explorer’s taillight.
From his cell, he immediately called the Sheriff’s Department.
Just as Pete and Lonnie were leaving Jeep’s they got the call.
Lights flashing, going fifty on the twisty road, they managed to meet Jake within twelve minutes.
“It’s Oliver’s,” Jake decreed simply. “I checked the registration.” Jake pointed inside the car to a long, smooth notebook wedged in the glove compartment.
Pete put his gloves on. “Damn! Now it has your fingerprints.” He retrieved the notebook from the car and flipped it open.
“What’s going on down there?” Jake couldn’t contain his curiosity.
“Jeep’s dog found Oliver’s body. Someone stuffed him into a crevice of the creek bed, on the road side so no one would see him as they drove by.”
Jake’s eyes grew large. “Jesus Christ.”
Pete looked around inside the Explorer. He noticed a six-inch by eight-inch notebook, covered in red ripstop cloth. The SSRM logo in blue was embroidered in the right-hand bottom corner. Opening the notebook, he saw just three words scribbled on the lined papers: “Drainage basin. Bedell.” Nothing else. Pete checked other pages, but they were blank. He retur
ned to the glove compartment. Halls lozenges, small packets of Kleenex, and a couple of ballpoint pens filled it, along with the vehicle manual.
“I bet I’ve driven by here every day since Oliver went missing,” said Jake. “Never looked up.”
“Jake, you did good.” Pete shut the door to the Explorer.
“Know what I think?” Jake was about to tell them, whether they wanted to hear it or not. “I think someone is sitting on a pile of money.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Back at Washoe Water Rights, Pete was questioning Walter De Quille, who was doing his best to make complex issues understandable.
“Let’s go back to the beginning for a moment. I’ll make it brief.” The older fellow smiled. “We became a state in 1864 and we knew even then we’d have water problems. For those of us in this part of Nevada, the Truckee River is our lifeline.”
“What about the aquifers?”
“To get into those underground stores, you have to dig down deep. It depends on the soil. And those aquifers depend on what little rain we get, plus the snowpack runoff. In drought years, the snowpack can be easily depleted. We’ve had five drought years up until now.”
“Why don’t we build more reservoirs?”
Hunched at a table, Lonnie scribbled away, listening intently.
Walter dropped his hand on Dowser’s head as the boxer settled beside him. “In the current economic climate, the expense is out of the question. We have some small reservoirs, but the headwaters of the Truckee are in California. In the nineteenth century there was endless squabbling over Lake Tahoe, drawing water from it for here. This flares up every time we have prolonged droughts. California, then and now, refuses Nevada access to the Truckee’s bounty on their side of the state line. This is understandable but they have more water than we do. Remember that. The political uproar for a project as huge as a new reservoir would paralyze the state. I really believe that.”
“Could folks bring in water from another part of Washoe County?” Pete asked.
Walter stroked his chin, a thin white stubble showing. “Well”—a pause followed—“what you’re talking about is an interbasin transfer. The first one occurred in 1873. Water from the Hobart Reservoir was sent to Virginia City, then in the big boom of its existence”—He twisted in his chair, sweeping his hand toward the bookshelves that covered a wall of the storefront. Low file cabinets were interspersed in other locations—“everything on those shelves or in those file cabinets refers to our history: legal proceedings, reports from the state engineer.” He paused. “I still don’t know it all, but I think I know where to find it.”
“What about going online?”
“Better to have primary sources in hand. You’d be surprised at how many inaccuracies are online. I use the web, don’t misunderstand me, but I can get up and pull out the information on that first interbasin transfer with comments written in the margins by prior researchers. If I had three lifetimes, I would not know it all.”
“Can developers tap into Pyramid Lake?”
“Now there’s a hot potato.” Walter relished the thought. “The Paiutes live there and the Truckee empties into it. That would start a shooting war.”
“And as I recall you don’t think the projections of our ability to sustain, ultimately, some six hunderd thousand are accurate?”
“No. It would be a disaster to keep emptying out the aquifers and to use more of the Truckee. Let me put this in perspective. You and I look at a creek or a river running and we feel all is well. But even in a nondrought year, we cruise into July, August and many of those have dried up, especially the feeder creeks. The underground water is held in various types of sediment, and some are in a recharge area that is quite saturated. It’s what you can’t see that really keeps us going in many ways. The largest aquifer in the world is right here in the United States, the Ogalalla Aquifer, which undergirds most of the western states. The recharge area for the Ogalallas are the western mountain ranges. Most of that vast aquifer accumulated over tens of thousands of years. It’s falling three-point-two feet a year but the recharge rate is one thirty-second of an inch.”
“What happens to the ground?”
“It compacts. No water can get back in once enough is drawn out. In some cases, the earth simply sinks. Phoenix, Tucson, and Albuquerque sit over depleting aquifers. Right now in Reno we’re holding our own, but for how long?”
Pete crossed one leg over the other. “When I was online last night I pulled up the Hydrographic Area Summary for Red Rock Valley.”
“Right now, Red Rock is stable. But its proximity to Reno makes it worth watching. Pump Nineteen serves Lemmon Valley”—Walter named a small community—“but one could send water up to Reno once all the pipes were laid.”
“But are there other areas more vulnerable?”
“Yes. They don’t have Jeep Reed. The obvious one being Horseshoe Estates, land south of Reno.”
“It occurred to me while I was researching on the computer that all our attention has been focused on water being sent to Reno.”
“That’s the obvious destination.”
“But isn’t it possible to take water from, say, the small springs around Winnemucca and develop over there? It’s on the back side of the Dogskin Mountains. There has to be some runoff and there is a good road.”
“In theory—that is, if you could get the water rights—yes. But it’s too difficult to be a commuter community to Reno. The geography would make building good roads outrageously expensive right now. There aren’t enough roads over there. Put the point of a compass in Reno and draw a circle that represents a half-hour commute. Then draw one representing forty-five minutes and, lastly, one hour. Those are the hot zones, closer the better, obviously.”
“What about on the California side?”
“If it’s within shouting distance of Reno, it’s vulnerable. I believe Sam Peruzzi foresaw that vulnerability and feared that, sooner or later, the California legislature would sell out Sierra County for the phenomenal tax revenues that water rights sale would generate. And this would kill the wildlife Sam loved—again, sooner or later.”
“Did you know Oliver Hitchens?” asked Pete.
“No. Terrible thing. The news hasn’t said how he was killed.”
“He hadn’t been examined yet by forensics, but it looked like a blow to the back of the head.”
“The papers said he was in the equipment and repair division. He wasn’t the fellow out there buying up rights? Curious. But then again the pumps are blown. Still, the blown pumps and murder can’t be about equipment.”
“Right.” Pete straightened his leg. He’d run that morning after working out in the gym and for some reason his leg ached.
“Deputy Meadows, when you were searching about on your computer, you came across the Orr Ditch Decree from 1944?”
“The law that says all old claims are recognized. Nothing can change regarding them.”
“Right, except that those same rights can be converted from agricultural to municipal. That’s the reason, the whole force behind picking up water rights. To convert them.”
“One could just sit on them and wait for the right time.”
“You’d have to be prophetic to know where the next development will be. If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it.”
“Do you think you know?”
“No. For example, I know the area where Horseshoe Estates will be built, but I wouldn’t have thought of the exact location. I would have put it a bit farther west because the developer wouldn’t have to build such a long access road. Of course, with the prices they’ll be charging for the homes, I expect they’ll get it.”
“That they will. Mr. De Quille—”
“Walter.” He looked down. “Walter and Dowser. Do you know, Deputy Meadows, that animals, buffalo, antelope, even Dowser here can smell water from miles away? I read that Jeep’s dog and a little wire-haired dachshund found Hitchens. Of course, that’s a different odor.”
“But it was cold. Those dog noses are incredible.”
Walter affectionately stroked Dowser’s head. “They know when someone is going to have a heart attack, an epileptic fit. I think they even know when you’ve got cancer. They know so much and they live within nature, they live within their personal limits. We don’t.”
“I expect we have a lot to learn from dogs.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
After seeing Walter De Quille, Pete pulled the police vehicle into the parking lot at Subway. Fishing in his pants pocket for money, he handed over fifteen dollars. “The usual. Lunch’s on me. And hot water.”
“All right.” Lonnie stepped out of the car, cold air hitting him. “I hate winter.”
“Me too.” Pete took his personal cellphone from the door pocket and called Mags. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get back to you again yesterday, but it was a nonstop day. Are you all right?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “I guess you see stuff like that all the time.”
“Never quite like that, though. You stayed calm.”
She thought a moment. “There’s nothing pretty about death, but there’s not exactly anything you can do about it, either.”
“Not for the dead, true, but you can work for the living. Oliver Hitchens left a wife and two children. That offends me.”
“I think I understand. Am I allowed to ask you about the case?”
“Sure. I don’t know if I have answers.”
“Whatever is at stake must be something close, it must be pressing. What do you think?”
“Yes.” He didn’t tell her that he thought Sam Peruzzi’s death was also connected. “Too many things in a compressed time period.”
“Would that mean that the killer is under threat?”
“Mmm, not necessarily. He may now feel he’s removed the threat.”
“Meaning Oliver had dangerous knowledge.” She changed the subject. “If you come by after work, I’ll cook you a meal. Me, not Carlotta—which means you take your chances.”
A Nose for Justice Page 20