The ponytailed storekeeper’s name was Rand McNally. (He said his parents had a weird sense of humor.) He invited Landry to ride in his 1979 Ford truck, complete with an old camper shell. They drove out of Branch and passed through the smaller town, Lunaria, where Landry had bought the Suzuki Forenza. McNally drove to the outskirts of Lunaria to a neighborhood of cheap tract houses. “She’s here?”
“Hold your horses.”
He stopped just past the driveway. All the houses looked the same. Two floor plans, depending on how many bedrooms. Nineteen seventies construction, fired-adobe walls, long and one story. McNally backed the truck into the covered carport and up to an aluminum fishing boat. It looked to be about ten to twelve feet long, with a small-horsepower tiller-steered outboard engine titled up in back. Landry’s father had owned a boat just like this one. He called it a “car topper.” Landry noticed there were fishing rods, too, already rigged up, along with two tackle boxes—one large, and one small.
McNally expertly backed the trailer hitch to the hitch ball and completed the connection, before climbing back into the truck.
“Let’s go,” he said.
They drove out of town and picked up the highway again. Landry didn’t know the roads around here, but he knew direction. They were heading east, toward Las Cruces. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“Want to keep it a surprise.”
“I don’t like surprises.”
“You’ll like this one.”
“There’s a big lake north of here,” Landry said.
“Sure is.”
They drove in silence for a while.
Landry said, “What do you know about this?”
“This? Not much. Jolie’s a friend, she asked me to help her, so I did.”
“You don’t know who she’s in trouble with?”
“She didn’t tell me. She’s good people, so when she asked for help getting lost, I helped get her lost.”
“You’re used to doing stuff like this?”
“I used to be with an underground group.”
“What kind of underground group?”
“Environmental.”
“Oh. Like burned-down ski resorts? Stuff like that? Ecoterrorism?”
“More like chaining ourselves to trees, but yeah, thirty years ago, that’s what I did.”
“You want to tell me where we’re going?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“You think somebody bugged your truck?”
He shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”
“I could check it for you.”
“Okay.” He swerved over to the side of the road. Landry had him get out, looked in the places he thought there might be a microphone, but more important, he checked for a transponder.
Nothing. “Anyone notice what you’re doing? Anyone on to you?”
“Honestly? I don’t think so.”
“Good enough.”
At Las Cruces they took I-25 north to the turnoff for Elephant Butte Lake. Rand followed the blacktop down Marina del Sur, where the boats were. There were a lot of them, cheek by jowl in their slips. Shade canopies kept the sun off the docks. There were plenty of docks, slips, and boats. Contrast that with the solid blue of the lake. It was a long lake, hemmed in by biscuit-colored ground—scrub desert, mostly. There was a formation Landry took to be Elephant Butte, wading in the water like a hippo. He could see the white striations along the bottom of the rock and along the shore—the water level was down. Everything in the west was in a state of drought, so it didn’t surprise him.
Landry shaded his eyes against the glitter of sunlight on water. “So she’s here,” he said.
“Yup.” Rand backed the trailer down the ramp to the water. “Figured she’d just be one in the crowd.”
Landry shaded his eyes. “There are houseboats here?”
“Plenty of them. Lots of cruisers, too. There’s a camp store, too, all the comforts of home.” He nodded to the boat. “Get in.”
They headed out into the lake, followed the shoreline on the other side.
Landry spotted the cabin cruiser in a small cove, just around an outcropping of rock. The rock hid the cove from both directions. He grabbed the binoculars.
And there she was.
Chapter
11
Jolie Burke looked the same except for her hair, which had been cut short and colored black.
She had them in the binocs. Anchor already pulled up and the boat drifting a little. She was positioned at the console, ready to take off if she needed to.
McNally produced a flag—a denuded branch from a creosote bush, a blue pair of Jockey shorts tied to the top.
Landry mentioned to McNally that his grasp of high tech was mind-boggling.
Jolie dropped the binocs to her chest and shaded her eyes. Then waved.
He missed her long, golden-brown hair, usually pulled into a ponytail or bun, but otherwise, she was the same Jolie. She wore shorts, boat shoes, and a square-necked embroidered peasant top, the kind you got from Mexico.
The white-and-black Bayliner cabin cruiser had a swept-back aerodynamic design. It looked new. It was about thirty-five feet from stem to stern. The Bayliner would make a good drug-running boat. He wondered who owned it. They came to and tied up.
The boat’s name was written in dark red cursive near the bow: Texas Red.
Landry said to Rand, “This your boat?”
“Belongs to a friend of mine.”
“Texas Red. Great name.” He added, “Won a Breeders’ Cup race.”
The boat rocked gently as they stepped onto the gunwale. Jolie wasn’t a hugger and neither was he, but they hugged, anyway. He could feel her slender body mold against him, more slender than she used to be.
She stood back, holding his hands, and gave him a solemn look, then broke into a smile like a sunrise.
He felt his own heart respond.
She gave him a quick tour. The cockpit up top was spacious. You could call it stylish. Down below Jolie walked them through the boat—the galley with its small dining area, two berth beds, the head, even a wide-screen TV.
“It’s about half and half, getting reception out here,” she said.
At first glance, she looked like a party girl, but Landry knew it was just the look she’d adopted to stay under the radar. Anyone who took a second look would see the quiet strength underneath the painted exterior.
They sat down at the dinette. Rand remained standing. He seemed to be debating whether to leave them to talk alone, or to stay. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”
Jolie nodded to him.
Landry realized it had been a year since he’d seen her. They’d been lovers then. As much as two independent people could
be
lovers.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Three people broke into my house,” Jolie said. “One of them was my boss.”
“The sheriff?”
She recounted events. From the members of her own department—including Sheriff Waldrup himself—breaking into her house, to her escape, to ditching her car in the barn. She told him about the moment she realized that Jace Denboer and the sheriff’s office were on the same team.
“Looking back, I know I was capable of handling this on my own, but I thought of you. I thought I could use the backup.”
“You did all right on your own,” Landry said.
“Yes, but we’re far from done.”
It left the two of them together, elbows on the table. “You know what sheriff’s offices and police departments are doing all over the country, don’t you?” Jolie said. “They’re seizing assets.”
Landry nodded. It was a common practice.
“I have no problem with seizing assets from drug dealers, but somewhere along the line, here in Branch, the sheriff’s office decided to go after innocent people. Or at least people who should be presumed innocent.”
“The new deputy, Dan Atwood, seized the wrong car from the wrong guy.”
There were plenty of horror stories, many of them in New Mexico.
Police departments that used any excuse to claim a “civil asset forfeiture.”
Originally, the purpose had been to bring down the untouchable
drug dealers and members of organized crime. But now that many
counties were strapped financially, more and more jurisdictions divvied up spoils of war—mostly cars. It didn’t matter if you were a drug dealer or a shoplifter, if they could take your high-ticket item legally, they did. Some departments kept the swag for higher-ups, targeting desired items.
Say, if you wanted a Corvette.
Just go ahead and place your order. Good luck to the person who got ticketed in a traffic stop and lost his car. Once it was gone, it was gone.
“So who did he take the car from?”
“Jace Denboer. Jace Denboer’s 2015 Camaro.”
Jace Denboer. Landry remembered the cops talking at the donut shop. The kid’s father owned the town and the county. Taking the kid’s Camaro was a major infraction.
“I can see why the kid—the deputy—got confused,” Jolie said. “He sees them doing this, day in and day out, targeting people with nice cars, nice homes. These are wealthy, influential people. I’ve never been in on those ‘after-school’ meetings—where Branch’s finest divvy up the spoils—but I know what goes on. You wouldn’t think there was much money in this town, but there are plenty of people who live on the outskirts, plenty of people with money. Some are retired executives, enjoying their place in the sun.”
“They have lawyers, don’t they?”
“Yes, but there’s also intimidation. Threats.”
“Threats?”
“And blackmail. The sheriff’s department chooses their victims carefully. What with all the bureaucracy, promises, time stretching out over months or even years, a lot of people just give up. Hard to believe, but they do.”
“Okay . . . so what happened after Atwood took the car?”
“It was worked out. Within the hour. They turned the tow truck around in the
street,
they worked so quick to get the car back to Jace. But a week later Dan Atwood was gone.”
“Is he still gone?”
“No.”
“Where is he?” Although Landry was sure he knew.
“A worker found a body in a bean field—what was left of a body. They had the teeth, though. There was DNA.”
“You think it was because he seized Jace Denboer’s car for five minutes?”
“It’s the theory.”
“The Denboers killed him?”
“I didn’t get that far. It could be anyone. There are some guys . . . he could have gotten crosswise of them. And you can be sure nobody else in the sheriff’s department wants to prove it. Half the force is corrupt, and the other half is running scared.”
“Why are you on the run?”
“Because I was the one assigned to investigate Danny’s death.”
She opened a drawer and produced a lightweight laptop. “Rand gave me this to use. The files are already on here.”
She showed him the murder book for Dan Atwood. A description of the crime scene, sketches of the body, aerial view, a list of physical evidence, grisly photographs.
Atwood’s body had decomposed considerably. Atwood was shot execution style—a .22 slug, placed right at the junction box. That didn’t mean he’d been shot by an expert. Anybody with a television set would know that a .22 to the head at close range did the most damage. Every cop show in the history of the world had gone over that ground at one time or another.
Jolie’s theory was that the hole had already been dug and he had been kneeling at the time, shot in the back of the head, and fell forward into the shallow grave.
So she’d looked for enemies. Atwood wasn’t popular. For one thing, he was a rookie. A freshman, basically, in a high school full of jocks. Jolie recalled some awkward moments, some practical jokes, the usual hazing. The “kick me” sign on his back.
He’d been partnered with three different deputies, and none of them could stand him. Policing was a dangerous job. A cop needed good backup. That bond was very important.
No one wanted to partner with him.
Still, when he’d had the opportunity, he’d made the big move. He’d taken Jace Denboer’s Camaro.
And then he was gone. He didn’t officially quit, but it was assumed he’d taken the coward’s way out.
Jolie said, “But why would he leave all his possessions? Why wouldn’t he try to get back some of the money he’d paid on rent? I was making hea
dway, and then, just like that, I was reassigned. The sheriff gave the case to Jacobs, probably the worst detective we have, does the very minimum. A few of us have a saying: ‘If you want to bury something, give it to Jacobs.
’
”
“So what do you think about this kid? What was going on with him?”
“I think Dan Atwood found out something he shouldn’t have.”
“What would that be?”
“I have no idea.”
They went through the murder book.
Atwood had disappeared in late spring. May 8th to be exact, when he didn’t show up for his shift. They’d tried his cell and his home
phone: nothing. Sent a deputy to cruise by his house. Two days
later, it turned out that he had formally quit— by letter. It was a short,
typed letter of resignation, pleading an emergency at home. In Sitka, Alaska.
His reason for quitting: his brother had cancer. He left an address for the sheriff’s office to send him his last paycheck.
Then his body was found in October by a farm worker.
Jolie’s theory was some kind of animal had dug him up. The burial site was only a few yards in from the roadside fence. Not in a row of beans, but in the patch of dirt and tall grass by the fence. The confrontation between Dan and his killer might have happened on the road. Maybe someone had pulled over; maybe there was some kind of altercation. Of course this was all conjecture. There was little evidence left, since it had been months between the time Atwood disappeared and the time he was found.
“If it was a bean field, wouldn’t someone find him pretty fast?”
“The field was fallow.”
Landry remembered the drive to Branch, the big agricultural farms that stretched for miles alongside the road. Three of them in a row, and two smaller ones, mom and pop concerns, on the opposite side. “Which farm?”
“Valleyview Experimental Agricultural Station.”
Landry said, “The one nearest to town. There was a lane with poplar trees. And an airstrip. And bean fields.”
“You have a good memory. That’s the place.”
“Who found him?”
“One of the farm workers checking irrigation ditches. He smelled it, thought an animal had died out there, and went looking for it.”
She described the scene. Something had been out there digging—“An animal of some sort. Maybe a dog, or a coyote. Or a bobcat.”
According to the interview with the worker, he’d smelled decay, and then he saw something brown, the dark soil clinging to it—a bone. Disarticulated, probably dug up by a predator. They’d pulled the arm out. The body was degraded, part of it mummified. And clinging to the corpse was a tan shirt—the color deputies wore. And a badge, smeared with dried mud but still reflecting the sun.
Landry pictured the farm. Rows and rows of dried, reddish-brown beanstalks—at that time of year they would look a lot like shredded wheat cereal. A corpse would fit right in. Muddy brown from the dirt, hard to see. Hard to see, but easy to smell. Still, who went out that far into a fallow field?
“May,” he said.
“Yes, May.” Jolie turned the laptop toward him.
Landry looked at the corpse again. There was the bean field. Just as he had imagined it. The row of tall poplars way in the background. Sheriff’s deputies and detectives standing around.
More photos. Atwood
in situ
in the grave. Atwood placed on a tarp to be moved. Atwood zipped into a body bag.
Photos of the grave from every angle. An aerial view of the farm as well.
Evidence markers had been placed here and there. One next to a rusty nail. A fast-food wrapper that had been wadded up and blanched white from the wet, coated with mud. But inside one fold it was bright yellow.
Landry said, “I saw someone sitting outside near the Walmart the other day. At a taco place. The wrapper was yellow.”
“The Chimi Brothers has wrappers like that,” Jolie said. “Atwood disappeared in May and wasn’t found until October—that’s five and a half months. I interviewed the servers at Chimi Brothers. I asked them if they recognized Dan Atwood and if they’d ever served him. It was a stretch, but I asked them if they had ever served him in
May
. I even asked them if Atwood might have been with somebody.”
“Let me guess,” Landry said. “You got nothing.”
“No one remembered serving him, or even seeing him. It was too long ago. Whatever encounter they’d had with him—if they did at all—wouldn’t have been memorable. And for all I know there’s another three or four Mexican chain restaurants with yellow wax paper.”
“There
are
another three or four Mexican chain restaurants.”
She shook her head. “There you go, correcting people’s grammar again. It’s like you have Tourette’s syndrome.”
“It’s habit.”
“It’s a bad habit.” She grinned, to let him down gently. “There’s other stuff you need to know.”
“Like what?”
“I went out on a date with Jace Denboer.”
“What was it like?”
“Unpleasant. Awkward.
Weird
.”
“Did he ask you out again?”
“No.”
“Why’d you go in the first place?”
“Why do you think? To check him out.”
“And what did you find out?”
Jolie told him.