Leaning Land (6 page)

“OK. How late is your kitchen open?”

“Nine.”

“I’ll be back before then.”

T
HE BRIGHT SUN
, a hard yellow against his room’s drawn roller shade, woke him, and he lay a few moments in the strange bed. The still air brought the stale smell of old cigarette smoke from the worn carpet and faded drapes, the raucous squawk of a magpie somewhere outside, the murmur of a single car passing slowly on the highway.

Liz had been glad to hear his voice last night, and he was just as glad he had remembered to call her and let her know he’d arrived all right and where he was staying. They really hadn’t had much to say to each other that was important—Wager told her he was meeting with local law officers and she told him about Committee Chairman McGraw’s latest ploy, sponsoring a bill that would exempt United Airlines and the Broncos, Nuggets, and Rockies from paying city property taxes. “He claims they earn enough for the city in sales, seat, and occupation taxes, as well as bringing in out-of-town customers. He said it’s unfair to expect them to pay property taxes, too.”

“Everyone else pays their share, including stores and movies that collect sales and seat taxes and bring in visitors.”

“You know it and I know it. But McGraw wants to give his rich friends a little more. He says if they make more, they’ll invest more in Denver—the old trickle-down theory.”

That had been the kind of things they’d talked about, but it wasn’t exactly all that their words told each other. He could hear it in her voice as they spoke: the shift from an early brisk tension to a lower, more relaxed, and intimate tone, so that when they finally said good-bye, it was as if they had really been saying how glad they were to listen to each other regardless of the topic. And when she told Wager that she missed him, his answer was just as simple, and as sincere—”I miss you, too.” Neither used the word “love,” but he guessed that was what they’d meant.

Propped against the hard pillows, he let out a long, slow breath. Liz and his mother had become friends—possibly because they didn’t see too much of each other, or, more likely, because they both suffered him. And there was really no reason why he and Liz shouldn’t marry. Except that she didn’t seem to want to and he didn’t think it was necessary. Even, it suddenly struck him, his mother hadn’t asked whether or not he planned to marry her. It seemed like a paradox, as if the legal distance between them gave more weight to their emotional ties. Occasionally in Denver the issue had crossed his mind; but here, in silence and loneliness and three hundred miles from the varied and constant demands of daily life in the Homicide division, he had the stillness and solitude to reflect on how much Liz meant to him. And how deep a sense of loss he would suffer if she were to go.

It was something he would feel good telling her right now, and he glanced at his watch to see if it was too early to call. But he was surprised to find it was too late—almost eight—and she would be in whatever morning meeting filled today’s seven-thirty slot in her own varied and demanding schedule.

He had slept far later than he usually did. The altitude, maybe—fifteen hundred feet higher than Denver—or the almost total silence broken only by the faint tink of radiator pipes and, just then, by the thud of a door closing three or four rooms away. Or maybe he had been a lot more tired than he had thought. But it was late now, and time to move—things to see and people to do.

Heaving from under the blankets and thick comforter, he showered and shaved and had breakfast in the restaurant, the house specialty: huevos rancheros with your choice of green or red chili sauce. The morning sun made the faceless box of a dining room a little less blank, though not much. Paula worked this meal, too, moving so quickly and quietly that she was almost invisible, bearing plates and coffeepot between Wager and the three or four other tables occupied by tourists and salesmen. They ate quickly, filling up before heading for their cars and the long roads ahead. The only table where people lounged on their elbows and smoked over cups of coffee was at the far end. Three ranchers, faces chapped and red with wind and sun, and thick fingers dwarfing the mugs they gripped, had fallen silent when Wager came in. Occasionally, as he ate, they glanced his way, voices a low rumble. One of them asked Paula something and she, too, glanced at Wager, then shook her head as if to say she didn’t know.

Wager, finishing, wiped his mouth and went out past the tiny bar with its OPEN 11 A.M. TO 11 P.M. sign to the cash register. He could feel their eyes follow him across the room.

Verdie, the thin woman with curly hair dyed flat black who had signed Wager in the night before, smiled and asked how he’d liked his breakfast. Then she paid no attention to his answer as her sharp eye checked the addition. She quickly made change, which was fine with Wager, because his answer had been as formulaic and pointless as the question. Intent and as quick as a sparrow, she handed Wager his money; Wager pushed a couple of ones across the glass-topped counter as a tip. “Those three men over there, they have ranches around here?’’

The woman craned her head around the doorway, showing Wager the back of it with its hair colored evenly down to its gray roots. “Two of them do. One’s a foreman.”

“Know their names?”

“Bradley Nichols—he owns the B Lazy N over on Cross Creek. Louis Gregory, he’s the foreman on the Rocking K. And Stan Litvak. He owns the Bar L Bar.”

Wager studied the three men. “Which one’s Nichols?”

She looked again, jerking back as one of the faces seemed to feel Wager’s interest and turned their way. “The dark-haired one. Sitting with his back to the window.”

Wager studied the man. He was lean, dark complexioned; somewhere in his late thirties or early forties. His hair, cropped close on the sides, rose to a tall pompadour that was combed back from his forehead. “Litvak?”

“Sitting next to Nichols. Crew cut, blond hair.”

Wager caught that man’s eyes, too: chips that stared back across the room with a glint of pale blue light, and the thought crossed Wager’s mind that Deputy Morris probably made a phone call or two last night. “Come here a lot, do they?”

“About everybody in this part of the county comes by one time or another.” Her eyes were black dots in the leathery, wrinkled face of a longtime smoker. She wore no makeup, but her fingernails had been painted a dark red and looked so perfect that Wager wondered if they were false. “There’s not that many other places to go without driving a lot of miles.” A muffled bell dinged from the serving window and a couple of seconds later Paula crossed the dining room with another tray of breakfast plates.

“Does Paula have a boyfriend?”

Verdie’s eyebrows, narrow lines that had more ink than hair in them, lifted. “Nobody special I know of. A lot would like to be, and she seems to like a couple of them, but nothing special. Why?”

Wager shrugged. “She’s a pretty girl. Seems someone would have claimed her by now.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” The woman’s voice closed the subject. “She’s a real smart girl—too damned bright for the men around here. And a good worker.” Her dark eyes glanced at Wager and sharpened. “And a good girl, too!”

“That seems to go together.” Wager looked again at the three men who had turned back to their own business, then went to his room to brush his teeth. The sky had cleared overnight and the sunlight held a hint of summer’s coming heat as he locked his room door and headed out to his car. Even the wind had quieted and, from the high grass of a roadside ditch, the sharp whistle of a meadowlark gave its seven or eight rising and falling notes. A dusty pickup truck pulled onto the highway from one of the county roads; the rattle of its worn shock absorbers faded as it slowly picked up speed, heading toward the northwest and the Utah line. Even the still air smelled of peace. As Wager started to unlock his car, his reaching hand told him that something wasn’t quite right. But his eyes hadn’t noticed anything yet. Then he paused and looked at the vehicle—something about its height—and stepped back to gaze at his tires. Both on the driver’s side were flat. Gaping lips of sliced rubber scarred their pinched black walls. He walked around to the other side, and they, too, pressed, airless, against the dusty gravel. Glancing in the restaurant windows, Wager caught the three men staring at him. Their eyes were eager but their faces showed nothing before they turned back to huddle with each other. He could almost hear their laughter through the glass.

It was almost ten before he pulled onto the highway and headed toward the county seat of La Sal. The AAA service truck had taken a good hour and a half to show up, then another half hour to replace the tires. The mechanic, in his twenties with his straight hair pulled back into a pony tail, looked out of his truck window at the cut tires and asked if someone was trying to give Wager a message. Wager nodded. “I guess whoever it was didn’t know how to write.”

The young man glanced at the antennae and then the state license plates. “You a cop?” That had been his last comment until he’d finished the fourth tire. Then, as he made out a receipt for parts and service, “Hope the rest of your visit’s better than this.”

“I plan on that,” said Wager.

“But if it ain’t,” he handed an oil-smeared business card to Wager, “just give us a call. Twenty-four-hour service.” The card repeated the sign on the truck’s door: “La Sal Conoco Service.” Then he tossed his jack and tools into the truck’s sponson, wiping grease-smeared hands first on a stained rag and then across his long hair to smooth it down. “Think I’ll have a cup of coffee and say hi to Paula before I go.”

The three ranchers had long ago strolled to their pickup trucks, ignoring Wager and his car, and had disappeared down the highway; Wager, finally mobile, pressed hard on the gas pedal as he steered east on State 181 for the county seat.

After Gypsum, La Sal seemed like a large town with its tavern and hardware store, restaurant and clothing emporium. It even had a traffic light at the main intersection, and Wager guessed at a population of around seven or eight hundred. The county metropolis that boasted a car dealer and a small supermarket also advertised the league championship of the La Sal Eagles high school six-man football team; he passed the Conoco station with its stenciled notice, TOE-TRUCK SERVICE, 24 HRS, and saw the blue state-supplied sign SHERIFF with an arrow pointing down a side street. It was one of the half dozen paved lanes that led out the block or two into the quiet residential area around the shopping district. The sheriff’s office was in the county courthouse, a narrow brick building set back behind a mowed lawn with a flagpole and a World War I monument. The ground floor was half basement, and white stone stairs led from the walk up to the second level, whose arched entry said it was the main floor. A central pointed tower formed a narrow third story. The building looked as if it had been put up in the late nineteenth century. Across the street, behind its own patch of lawn, stood a redbrick school dating from about the same period and designed by the same architect. There must have been a lot of tax money in the county at that time. Mining, probably, though long played out by now.

Wager pulled into one of the angled parking places and spotted a second blue-and-white metal sign for the sheriff’s office; it pointed to a small door tucked beneath the worn white stone stairs.

The whitewashed door opened to a tiny cubicle and three steps down to a second door. Wager pushed through that and found himself facing the barrier of a cramped, chest-high service counter. A sign pointing off to a reinforced door on his left said HOLDING CELLS. A smaller one said PLEASE RING FOR SERVICE and had a wired button at its foot. Wager pressed.

“Yes, sir. Can I help you?” A woman came from behind a bookshelf filled with loose-leaf binders, manuals, papers, and row after row of manila folders of varying thicknesses. She wore a blue work shirt bearing a name tag—D. LAMMERS—and black slacks that made her lower torso look like a large ball supported by two thin sticks of short legs.

“I’m Detective Sergeant Wager, Denver police. I missed my earlier appointment with Sheriff Spurlock—car trouble. Is he still around?”

“We wondered what happened to you, Officer Wager. Let me see where the sheriff’s at.” She disappeared into the crowded office space behind the bookshelf and Wager heard her talking into an intercom or a radio. Then she came back. “He’s back in the jail. He’ll be out in a few minutes. You want a cup of coffee?”

Wager’s Styrofoam cup was half empty when the locks on the reinforced security door rattled and the man stepped out.

Spurlock was big. Probably in his mid-fifties, though it was hard to tell because of the combination of wrinkles and the tanned, healthy-looking flesh of his full cheeks. He ducked under the door frame, wide of shoulder, his waist even wider, with a swelling stomach bound by a cartridge belt of glossy, tooled leather; heavy thighs stretched flat the remnants of creases in his khaki trousers. He was clean-shaven, but Wager thought a mustache might have reduced the size of the fleshy, almost purple nose that had been broken at one time and spread like a fist in the middle of the man’s face. If his office clerk looked like a golf ball on a tee, Spurlock looked like the tree she could get lost behind, and like a tree he seemed to sway from the roots of his large cowboy boots to swallow Wager’s hand in his own.

“Heard about you, Officer Wager. Good to meet you.” His voice rumbled with half-swallowed phlegm.

“Sorry I’m late—car trouble.”

“Those things happen. Dorothy’s fixed you up with coffee? Good—come on back. Tell me what all you’re doing out here.”

The man’s office, made even smaller by his bulk, had a tiny window protected by a mesh of heavy metal. It looked out into a corrugated steel well on the other side of the basement wall. The top of the well had a barred grate over it. While Wager told the sheriff what he thought Spurlock had a right to know, the large man stared up at strips of blue sky.

“Howie Morris called me last night. Told me you two’d talked some.”

The deputy’s telephone had been pretty busy. “He thinks I’m working for the FBI or BLM. I’m not. I was asked to come out here and see if I could help coordinate between your office and the feds, and that’s what I’d like to do.”