Nightzone (10 page)

“He sure as hell was unlucky, then,” I said.

The paperwork and conferences stretched the day into a never-ending mess, and I lost track of whether I was coming or going. The District Attorney and his investigator hauled Miles Waddell in for a tete-a-tete, to find out what the rancher had seen or heard. They even persuaded Frank Dayan to come in for a chat, exploring the issue of the proffered advertisement that had never seen the light of day. I would like to have sat in on that one, but didn't—and didn't press Frank later to see how quickly he'd folded, telling the cops everything he knew.

None of the roadblocks succeeded. The killer and his little Nissan pickup had faded away as slick as you please. I was sure that Bobby Torrez would continue the effort at least until dark, but after that, there was no point in corking the roads. The killer was long gone, and that left us—them—with little to go on. A blue truck, no tag number. No year. No definitive description. No radio conversation. No recovered slug or shell casing. Just a dead cop on a lonely road.

But we—and this time the “we” was accurate—
did
have a description of where the Nissan had
been
. I had seen it northbound from the felled power poles, had witnessed it turning east on the state road, speeding toward town. That little snippet of an image screened itself over and over again through my mind, even upstaging the sorry incident with Nathan Baum.

Chapter Eleven

I needed to be doing something physical, to keep my assaulted brain from stewing itself into a puddle. Since my luck hadn't been so wonderful last time, this trip I allowed myself to be chauffeured. The rancher drove south from Posadas on NM 56, speedometer pegged just below ninety, the big diesel sounding as if it were locked right in the glove box, clattering away. I relaxed back in the plush seat and let Miles Waddell worry about critters stepping out into the road. I could have dozed off in all that velour comfort, but what he had given me to examine was more interesting.

Someone had cut the front off a Frosted Flakes cereal box, and in neat block letters printed a message on the back:
Cattle yes, U.N. no!
A nail hole top and bottom marred the smooth, thin cardboard.

“That was nailed to my gate post,” Waddell said. “Real professional job, eh?”

“Bobby should see this.”

“I suppose he will.” He slowed hard as we came up behind a little sedan poking along at the speed limit, and when the road straightened out beyond the Rio
Salinas bridge, passed with a hearty bellow of turbo-diesel. I slid the crude sign up on the dash and settled back.

We approached his mesa from the south, cutting off the state highway onto County Road 14 just southwest of the Broken Spur Saloon. If he ever forgot exactly what he was building, Miles Waddell could stop in there and hear a dozen versions.

As we turned onto the dirt, my cell phone chirped. I'd promised Estelle Reyes-Guzman that I'd pay attention to it, and sure enough, her quiet voice greeted me.

“Sir, Neil Costace is in Las Cruces. He's picking up one of the Homeland Security guys, and they'll be heading over in an hour or so.”

“Good afternoon to you, too,” I said.

“I know this just thrills you to death, but I was hoping that you'd be available for a little bit when they arrive.”

I was hoping.
Never was an order from the undersheriff of Posadas County couched in more gentle terms. Flattery would get her everywhere.

“Nah,” I said. “Waddell and I are headed to Vegas right now. Don't know when we'll be back. We're going to spend some of that money the United Nations is paying him.”

“Sir,” the undersheriff's voice remained gentle and patient. “There are FBI offices in Vegas, too.”

“You're no fun.” She also didn't have time for shit from me. “We're out at the mesa. You want me in town, or what?”

“We'll come out. And dinner is still on, sir.”

“You dreamer.”

A road beaten to dust wound a half-mile off the county thoroughfare, then turned abruptly toward the foot of the mesa where we encountered the gate, the sort of structure that, in a world of rambling barbed wire and juniper pole enclosures, was guaranteed to set folks speculating. Waddell stopped the truck and found a remote wand in the center console. With the push of a button, the black gate with its bright-yellow caution stripes rolled aside.

“Works off the cell phone, too,” he said with satisfaction. “We're leaving most of the downside construction until later. We'll concentrate topside, then work on the tram and base house,” Waddell said, twisting around to survey the generous, dust-beaten parking lot behind us. “Less to draw the curious that way.”

“If Curt Boyd and his buds were after your site, why didn't he just drive down here and take an axe to your gate?”

“Don't give 'em ideas,” Waddell said. “Maybe they didn't want to get within rifle shot. Maybe they caught sight of you roaming around down here on the prairie and that spooked 'em.”

“Evidently not enough.” The road up the mesa was enough to fuel lots of curiosity. We drove through the gate, and I watched as it slid closed behind us. The tires whispered on silky smooth macadam. Artistic stonework graced each culvert and drain. The place reminded me of a National Park project. Unspoiled by standing signage, the road was marked European style, with reflective painted symbols on the macadam surface itself.

“One point six miles of this,” Waddell announced with considerable satisfaction. “You've seen it a couple dozen times while it's been under construction. Did you think I'd lost my nut?” Before I could answer, he added, “You know, in all that time, you never asked me point-blank what the hell I was building up here. You're not curious?”

“Of course I'm curious. You told me some time ago that you were building an observatory. A man can build what he wants.”

“That's what I used to think. Now I know there are folks who don't share that view.” The rancher slowed the truck abruptly and pointed toward the north. I could see several vehicles still parked out on the prairie, near the fallen poles and the spot where Curt Boyd had met his end. Dust plumes marked more incoming traffic from the north.

The new macadam mesa boulevard swept upward as we continued, around the mesa's western terminus with a spine-tingling view all the way to Arizona, and after rounding a gentle curve, started on the final climb to the rim. “You haven't asked yet,” Waddell said. “The question that always comes first.”

“How much this road to the stars cost you?”

He smiled broadly. “That's what I like about you, Bill. Cut to the chase, no bullshit. Sure, that's what everyone gets around to asking. And the answer for your ears only is a nice round two million a mile.”

He saw me glance at the odometer. “One point seven,” he supplied. “This little stretch comes in right around $3.4 million.”

“Christ.” The notion of a cattle rancher with $3.4 million to spend on mesa access—or on anything else for that matter—was inconceivable. “You know, I can remember when you were trying to have Gus Prescott scratch a path up here with his old road grader.”

“Circumstances change. Gus did a little for me, and then the project started to take on a life of its own, and he ended up with more than his share of troubles. I started to look around at other options. See, Carl Rockford and I had a long talk.” I'd seen Rockford's name on enough pieces of heavy road-building equipment over the years to know that Miles Waddell had gone first class on this little private boulevard up the mesa. “Now, the story he told his crews was that I was building an enormous sand and gravel operation down at the bottom, and a housing development up here.”

“It's amazing what people will believe.”

“As long as it fits what they understand. Folks have seen gravel pits, and they've seen plenty of subdivisions. They can readily imagine that there might be a worthwhile investment there. So they believe it. It fits their paradigm.” He said “paradigm” as if he'd just learned it. Maybe he had.

“If I had said I was building an observatory, no dice. No one would understand what the hell I would want with an observatory, or why the hell I'd spend so much money on it, because
they
don't. It's not obvious how I'd earn a return on the investment, or the expenditure.” He glanced over at me. “And you gotta have that, Sheriff. You have to have a return, because no one does anything anymore just for the fun of it.” He shrugged. “Isn't that depressing? And because they don't understand it, they'd ask, ‘Where the hell did Waddell get all that money? Must be into drugs or something.'” He laughed. “Or funded by the United Nations conspiracy.” He tapped the newspaper on the center console. “That's the new theory.”

“I heard the one about the gravel pit and the housing development topside. Didn't believe it, but I heard it a time or two.”

“You didn't believe it because you have more than half a brain. I mean, come on. A housing development? Can you imagine school buses winding up and down this road? It'd be a hell of a commute to work for the parents. But see, with an observatory, and with that big array from California,
this
is where the work will be.”

The roadway abruptly crested and I could see the breathtaking sweep of the mesa-top, so flat it appeared to be laser-leveled, the rim an abrupt and clean transition from brown earth to blue sky. From civil cases involving this desolate place and former owners, I knew that the mesa-top included more than 900 acres.

“As good a spot as any,” Waddell announced as he parked in a dusty patch, the thin mantle of topsoil beaten raw by machinery. We faced north, uncomfortably close to the vertical rim rock. When he dismounted, the rancher immediately walked to within a single step of eternity.

“How's this for a grandstand seat?” The breeze touched his purple neckerchief. I zipped up my jacket and got out, running my hand along the fender. I could imagine my ankle twisting and me taking wing over the edge. Far below and to the north, the vehicles looked like Matchbox toys, the downed power poles like toothpicks cast willy-nilly. Somewhere hundreds of feet under our boots were the string of limestone caves that the Bureau of Land Management was thinking of developing. Telescope on top, caves underneath—it would be a hell of a tourist attraction.

“But you know, for all this, Bill, the real view is up here.” He swept his arm to take in the heavens, a full dome with a slightly rippled edge south at the San Cristóbals and another to the north marked by Cat Mesa outside of Posadas.

He dropped his arm. “Hell, you've seen it. You get yourself Orion just coming up in the early morning sky out there to the east in late summer, with all the planet traffic? Why, it's enough to take your breath away. And then come winter the Milky Way turns around and cuts the sky in half. You know, I've seen SkyLab go over half a hundred times, and
every
time, I swear I can see 'em waving out the window.”

He gazed up into the sky. If he did it much longer, the sun would fry his retinas like bacon rinds.

“You're too damn polite to ask, but you'll want to know.” He turned and faced me, feet planted hard as if he expected me to take a swing at him. “Do you know what my mother said to me two years ago, just before she died?”

“I have no idea.”

“‘Go ahead and do it.'” It was that simple to her. I'd talked to her about all this, and she said to just do it. I explained the whole concept, and she tells me, ‘If it doesn't work out, you'll have tried.'” He shook his head slowly. “I never could work for her, all these years. I tried, back in the seventies. But Chicago wasn't my idea of heaven.”

“This is, though?”

“Damn right. At least, it's where I'm going to build heaven. Let me show you.”

He stepped to the truck and pulled a large cardboard tube out of the back seat. As he was working the plastic cap off, he looked across at me, eyes assessing.

“How are you weathering this shooting mess?”

“Mess is the right word.”

“I talked with Schroeder for a few minutes, after we were done with Fish-eyes in that inner sanctum,” Waddell said. “It almost seems like he's trying to combine all three incidents—the Boyd kid's death, the cop's shooting, and then the thing with Jackie and the creep in the RV.”

“Two out of three, maybe,” I said.

He rapped the tube gently against the fender of the truck. “The family will sue you?”

“Oh, probably. That's par for the course in these things. They look for somebody to blame.”

Waddell smiled in sympathy. “How many times in all your years with the department has someone tried to collect a pound of flesh from you?”

“Too often.” It wasn't the sort of accomplishment I wished to inventory at that moment, so I let it go at that. Waddell regarded me solemnly.

“Jackie is a lucky young lady.”

“Yes, she is.”

“And Baum…that's his name? He's going to live, you think?”

“It looks that way.”

“So you're not as good a shot as you used to be.” He took a deep breath and turned to survey the mesa. I waited for a welcome change of subject, and it wasn't long in coming. He still held onto that cardboard tube, and my curiosity was building.

“What does our good sheriff think about young Boyd's misadventure?”

I was sure “young Boyd” would call it worse than that if he could. “The sheriff doesn't confide much,” I said. “I'm certainly not on his short list.”

“You'd probably be surprised at how close to the top of that list you really are,” Waddell said. “Did Estelle speculate?”

“Even less than the sheriff.”

Undaunted, Waddell tapped the tube on the hood again. “And what to
you
think?” he persisted.

“I'm not paid to think anymore. But I'll say this…there's nothing random in this gig. Boyd and whoever was with him picked a spot where they could work without interruption, with a pretty good plan of attack.”

“Boyd obviously wasn't alone, though. We know that. Someone made off with his vehicle, that's for damn sure.”

“Between you and me…” I stopped, because ships have been sunk with simpler little slips. Waddell didn't need to know that Boyd's clothing hadn't borne the absolute evidence of creosote-stained sawdust. “Let's just let it go at that. He had help, and they'll catch the son-of-a-bitch.”

Waddell shook his head in silent disgust while he fished a can of Copenhagen out of his hip pocket. He concentrated on taking a delicate little pinch, placing it just so behind his lip. After he'd stowed the can, he turned to lean his back against the fender of the truck. “You know, I just don't know how people hear about all this stuff. I hadn't talked much with anybody, and already I have those assholes chainsawing down power poles. I have newspapers in Colorado ranting about conspiracies. Hell, I've even have a private security firm up in Denver shooting me proposals for when I'm up and running.” He grinned. “And that's not even counting the dumb ones. You heard the rumor about the military, I'm sure. Do you know how many folks think that those big radio telescopes are actually used for earth-based listening? Like we're going to monitor your damn cell phones?”