Leaning Land (3 page)

“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.”

H
ENDERSON DIDN’T SAY
much until he had pulled his vehicle back onto the paved highway and the rumble and thud of the rough dirt road had changed to the high whine of tires. “Agent Douglas D. Durkin figures anybody’s not with him has got to be against him.”

“He ought to figure we’re all on the same side.”

The man’s big head nodded once and he kept his eyes on the road. “Be nice if you can make Sheriff Spurlock see it that way.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” A quarter mile away through shoulder-high brush, a flash of bobbing white indicated the backside of a startled pronghorn antelope. Wager made out, running with it, two or three other bounding, earth-colored shapes that quickly disappeared. “I take it you’re working with Durkin?”

A grunt of some kind. “You got a little more independence than I do. Durkin tells me to jump, I got to ask, ‘How high?’“ He glanced at Wager. “FBI’s got general authorization from Congress to direct operations in any joint enforcement undertakings involving BLM. That was the payoff to the FBI for letting Interior organize its own enforcement branch a few years back, and like I told you, I got no experience working a homicide. Plus, the FBI’s also got control of the technical side of things. What that means is all fingerprint ID, forensic science requests, and everything else the FBI labs at Quantico can do for us have to be sent through a regional FBI liaison if we want priority service.

“Usually, it’s pretty routine: We fill out a request and an agent rubber-stamps it and sends it on to be handled like a bureau item. But it doesn’t have to work that smooth, and if we get into a pissing contest, it’s not going to.” He fell silent while the car’s wheels danced across a stretch of frost-broken pavement and deep potholes caused by late winter runoff. “I forgot to tell you, even some of the routine stuff—fingerprint traces, blood and tissue samples—can take six months or more if they aren’t given priority. And anything special, like chemical traces or fabric samples, can take up to a year or more.”

He didn’t have to tell Wager. It was why the Denver Police Department and a lot of other police departments used the FBI labs as seldom as possible.

“And there’s one more thing: Federal judges tend to pay more attention to us if the FBI joins our requests for legal action. That means a lot quicker issue of warrants, subpoenas, that kind of crap.”

“So what are you left to do on your own?”

“General security for BLM properties. Look for people stealing gas or oil from any wellheads on BLM land. Count cow populations for overgrazing and keep an eye out for rustlers working BLM land. Search for marijuana patches and meth labs. We do manage to find things to keep busy with, Wager.”

“Poachers?”

“Not directly. The law enforcement section of Fish and Wildlife has that job—they’re Department of Interior people, too, but they’re independent of BLM. But there’s only twenty-four of those agents to cover the north-central region—eight Rocky Mountain and prairie states, so we do keep our eyes open and call them if we see something.”

“And you haven’t investigated homicides?”

Henderson shook his head. “Nope. Not until now. That’s one of the areas the FBI kept to itself, which has always been fine with me. But you heard what Durkin said—he’s directing and advising, now, and I’m the one’s supposed to do the investigating. Plus, one victim was working for the USGS and the other was a BLM agent, so we got a sort of vested interest in both cases. Which Durkin don’t like particularly, but Chief Leicht said it’s good for BLM morale to show we’re part of the hunt for the bastards, and somehow he got the FBI regional director to go along with it. So now me and Durkin got us an officially sanctioned cooperative effort.’’

“It’s good for morale?”

“Not as good as not getting shot, I grant you. But Kershaw was one of our people, Wager. You don’t just hand something like that over to somebody else.”

He could understand Henderson’s point. More than once, when a metro police unit in the Denver area closed in on a cop killer, they had turned the actual arrest over to officers from the dead man’s district. It wasn’t just courtesy—it was a way of bringing some kind of balance to the injured department, an evening up of the score.

Henderson cleared his throat. “Tell you true, I’d just as soon leave the whole thing to you because I know damn well you know more about homicide investigations than I do. So you sort of run your own investigation, OK? I’ll sort of poke around where I know I won’t screw anything up, and help out when you need me, but as far as I’m concerned, you get a free field.”