Michael McGarrity - Nothing But Trouble

He’d memorized the license-plate numbers of both vehicles. Using his cell phone, he called the regional dispatch center in Santa Fe, asked for a motor vehicle check on the van and pickup, requested an NCIC wants and warrant check on Shaw, and told the dispatcher to call him back on his cell.

As he made the turn at Hachita on his way back to Playas, a small airplane flew overhead out of the south, its anticollision beacons clearly visible in the night sky. The sight of the airplane made Kerney’s excursion on the ranch all the more interesting. While he wasn’t about to jump to any conclusions about Walter Shaw and his unknown companion, his misgivings had been raised. Tomorrow he would find an excuse to break away from the production crew and pay another friendly visit to Joe and Bessie at the ranch to see what more he could discover about their ranch manager.

A cloud-covered sky veiled the mountains and hid the rising sun, and a stiff, moisture-laden breeze flowing up from Baja California carried a refreshing chill to the air that lingered until midmorning. Jackrabbits skittered across the empty streets of Playas, and a resident roadrunner stood frozen on its large feet for a long moment before it pumped its tail feathers up and down and trotted away.

Under the overcast sky the expanse of the valley yawned as far as the eye could see to the faint outline of the Animas Mountains, which hovered at the edge of the basin like a misty mirage. In the dull gray light the colors of the desert were muted and the sands took on a soft, pearl-white sheen.

The agenda for most of the day had the crew working on locations in and around Playas, which made for less traveling. By late morning the wind had subsided and the sun broke through the clouds, only to dim and fade as a gentle rainstorm moved across the hazy valley, creating a gray sky that bled yellow shafts of light through the patchy cloud cover.

The work for the day had nothing to do with police procedure, and consigned to the role of onlooker, Kerney followed the crew around from location to location as they discussed the specifics of what would be needed for each scene. Earlier in the morning Johnny had driven off to Duncan, Arizona, some seventy miles northwest, to arrange to use the rodeo arena on the county fairgrounds. As a result of his absence the work of the production crew seemed to proceed at a more rapid and relaxed pace.

Kerney used his time to talk to some of the town residents who’d assembled to watch the filmmakers. Those he spoke with knew about the death of the Mexican on the highway, and several people wondered if it meant that smuggling activity along the border was on the upswing. Kerney probed a bit deeper and learned that over the past six to eight months, border-related incidents had dropped. One man recounted stories of how half-starved migrants had once routinely wandered into town, and speculated that they now avoided Playas because it was an anti-terrorism training center. While the man’s argument made sense, Kerney wondered if the fall-off in immigrants passing through the town was also tied to the smuggling operation Fidel’s undercover agent had infiltrated.

A woman he spoke with criticized the Mexican government for handing out desert survival pamphlets to the illegals who were planning to cross the border, calling it nothing less than an attempt to flood the United States with undocumented workers. Her husband, an older man with a U.S. Navy anchor tattooed on his arm, thought the problem was tied to not having enough Border Patrol agents assigned to the Bootheel.

When Kerney asked about drug trafficking, he was told that the unmanned drones the Border Patrol had put into service to track aircraft crossing from Mexico hadn’t reduced the number of nighttime flights by any significant degree. Rumor had it that large amounts of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin were still being flown in on a regular basis, off-loaded at remote locations, and trucked north.

Kerney wondered if his take on the death of Fidel’s agent was all wrong. Was it possible that the murderers had had no intention to leave their victim in the middle of the highway with ligature marks on his wrists? Had he fallen out of the van, as Officer Sapian had suggested? And if so, did the driver fail to stop because he or she had seen Kerney rubbernecking at the side of the road almost within shouting distance of where he would find the dying agent, and didn’t want to chance turning around to retrieve the body?

The more Kerney thought about it, the more he seriously questioned his initial analysis of the crime. Why would the killers deliberately dump the body of a man they knew to be an undercover cop on a highway to be found? Wouldn’t it be better to simply make the agent disappear altogether and avoid becoming hard targets as cop killers?

Agent Fidel had told him a corrupt ex-policeman in Mexico ran the immigrant smuggling operation, possibly aided by some dirty Border Patrol officers. Bringing the feds down around his head by dumping the agent’s body would be the last thing a coyote would want to do.

There were two ways to test the theory: either find and take statements from the people who were in the panel van, or inspect the rear door latch on the vans owned by Walter Shaw and Jerome Mendoza, the motor transportation officer, to see if either was defective. Locating the smuggler’s clients might be hard to do, but checking out the rear door latches to the panel vans shouldn’t be difficult.

Services ended at the Baptist church on the outskirts of town, and the number of onlookers swelled, bolstered by ranch families and a few folks from nearby Hachita who’d come by to watch the happenings. One of the people was Ira Dobson, the water works manager Kerney had met at the smelter. He was dressed in his Sunday-go-to-meeting best: a pair of blue jeans with razor-sharp creases, a starched white long-sleeved Western shirt, and a pair of polished black cowboy boots.

“Have you signed up to work on the film?” Kerney asked.

“Not me,” Dobson replied. “I’ve got enough to do without taking on any more responsibilities.”

“I understand the Granite Pass Ranch borders the company’s property,” Kerney said.

“Pretty country,” Dobson allowed. “It runs for a far piece along our eastern flank.”

“Do you know the Jordans?” Kerney asked.

“Good people,” Dobson said with a nod.

“Yes, they are,” Kerney replied. “I grew up on a ranch outside of Truth or Consequences that neighbored their old spread.”

“Then you know that Joe’s a smart old boy. He’s had me over for supper a number of times, mostly to pick my brain about water conservation. I’ll tell you this: He may be long in the tooth, but he sure keeps up with the latest ranching practices.”

“What has he done?”

Dobson described how Joe used solar power to pump water at his remote wells, covered stock tanks with evaporation barriers, used almost indestructible truck tires as water troughs in his holding pastures, and had protected several artesian springs in the foothills by fencing off the streambeds and restoring the riparian habitat.

“He’s saved hundreds of thousands of gallons of water every year,” Dobson added, “recharged the aquifer, and has reduced his pumping costs. He hasn’t had to dig deeper wells, install larger pumps, or spend a lot of money on erosion stabilization. It’s damn smart ranch management.”

Dobson looked over at Usher and his team standing in the middle of the baseball diamond next to the empty outdoor swimming pool. “What are they going to be filming here?” he asked.

“A country music concert,” Kerney replied. “Free to the first five hundred or so people who show up.”

“Now, that I’ll have to see,” Dobson said, breaking into a grin.