A Nose for Justice (28 page)

“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.”

B
ack 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.”

A
fter 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.”

“If you gave me potato chips, I’d be happy.” His voice lifted.

“I’ll try and do better than that. When can you come by?”

“Six-thirty.”

Just as he was hanging up, Lonnie opened the passenger door and set down the cardboard tray. “What’s up?” Then he grinned. “Should I look the other way?”

“Shut up.” Pete grabbed his half of a foot-long sandwich.

“You’re in a better mood than when I left.”

“Feel like I won the lottery.” He took the change Lonnie handed him, stuffing it in his pocket. “Close that door.” He lifted the cardboard tray so Lonnie could slide in.

“Colder than this morning. Okay, what’s up?”

“Mags asked me to dinner tonight after work. She said she’d cook.”

“Buddy, you’re one step from the bedroom unless you blow it.”

Pete sipped his tea. “I’m not hurrying anything. I like her too much.”

Lonnie, for all his focus on sex, knew what Pete meant. “You going to bring her flowers?”

“I was thinking about a book.”

“Flowers.”

Pete grinned. “Both.”

“I’d have a hard time knowing what book to buy a woman.” Lonnie shoved his sandwich in his mouth.

“If you’d read more, you wouldn’t. You find out a lot about people by what they read or if they read.”

“I get the fidgets. I start out just great, then I want to get up and do something.” Lonnie didn’t much like all the time he sat in the squad car, either.

Pete changed the subject. “Mags brought up something, that the killer might be under pressure, under threat.”

Lonnie polished off his sandwich. “Of course, given Oliver’s personality, maybe his killer thought he was doing the world a favor.”

“I think it’s an inside job. You know when we opened Oliver’s car, the notebook?”

“Yeah.”

“The cloth looked like the bits of cloth we’d found at the blown pumps. Now I’m sure it can’t be that hard to find similar notebooks, but still.”

“Let’s go to Staples, Office Depot. If it’s easy to find, it will be there. It’s not much, but it’s something.”

After finishing a quick lunch they pulled into Staples. There were all kinds of notebooks but none covered in ripstop cloth. Office Depot yielded similar results.

“One last try.” Pete headed toward the most expensive shopping center in Reno. Inside was a stationery store.

The owner looked up as they entered. “May I help you?”

“Do you have notebooks covered in ripstop cloth?” Pete asked.

“No,” she replied. “We have some lovely leather ones though from Smythson of London. Bond Street.”