Michael McGarrity - Hermit_s Peak

In the morning he would dig up the cactus plants in the greenhouse that Wanda had transplanted from the mesa, and start some more marijuana seedlings. There were only twenty cactus plants, but they took up valuable space. He couldn't believe he'd let the bitch talk him into starting a little cactus garden.

The teapot whistled and Boaz got up and made his coffee. A BBC news reader was reporting on a New Zealand woman who grew rare nineteenth-century roses in her garden. He turned up the volume, listened to the batty old lady ramble on about her roses in a down-under accent, and started working on his finances.

Money was tight, and he wouldn't see a profit until he could market his product. Every dime he'd made from dealing at colleges in Southern California had gone into his enterprise. The land, the cabin, the greenhouse, the move last year to New Mexico, had cost a lot of money.

But if he could make it through the next six months, and get half a dozen more crops in, he would be a rich man.

Then he would finish his novel.

He stared at his piece-of-shit Ph.D. diploma from UC Santa Barbara that was nailed to a joist supporting the sleeping lofts. All those years in school, for what? A shitty teaching assistant position in some backwater philosophy department with no hope for a tenure-track appointment. Worthless.

A truck horn blared from the locked gate-two short beeps. Boaz grabbed his coat and went outside. A full moon and a clear sky made it easy for him to see Rudy's truck. The headlights were off and the motor was running.

It was about time Rudy showed up to pay him some money. He was weeks overdue.

"Where have you been, man?" Boaz asked as he climbed over the gate and approached the driver's door.

"Working," Rudy replied through the open truck window.

"You want to come in?"

"Can't stay."

"Did you bring my money?"

"Yeah," Rudy said, as he raised the pistol from his lap and blew a third eye through Boaz's forehead.

Up early, Gabe Gonzales made coffee, and sat at the kitchen table reviewing his completed reports. It was much too soon for Orlando to be awake, and the house was quiet.

Theresa, his ex-wife, had forced Gabe to buy out her equity in the house, a Victorian built by his grandfather on a street behind the Las Vegas Public Library. It took Gabe a second mortgage to do it, and he was still paying on an earlier loan used to renovate the house after his grandfather had sold it to him.

He had his eye on a lieutenant's vacancy that would ease some of the monthly pressure to pay bills. Orlando was on a full scholarship at the university and worked a part-time job to cover his personal expenses, so having him living at home wasn't much of a burden. But Gabe still walked around most of the time with a nearly empty wallet.

He looked at the dock on the kitchen stove, picked up the cordless phone, and called Officer Russell Thorpe at home.

"Wake up, rookie," Gabe said when Thorpe answered.

"I need you to run some paperwork down to Chief Kerney in Santa Fe.

Pick it up at my place."

"Then what?"

"Since you've just volunteered to work on your days off, call me when you get back. We'll do one more sweep of the mesa. I still think we may have missed something."

"Ten-four."

Thorpe picked up the reports, departed, and Gabe headed out. He took the paved road past the county detention center and followed it to where the pavement ended. Several miles in on the dusty dirt road he passed through San Geronimo.

Once a prosperous ranching community, in the late nineteenth century the village had spawned Las Gorras Blancas, the White Caps. It was a secret militant organization of Hispanic ranchers determined to drive out the Anglo settlers who had encroached on the old Mexican land grant with the help of corrupt politicians.

Wearing white hoods to conceal their identities. Las Gorras Blancas raided at night, burning barns and haystacks, ripping down fences, and shooting the land grabbers' livestock. They staged midnight rallies on the Las Vegas Plaza, circulated petitions to the citizens, and even had a leader elected to the territorial legislature.

But they couldn't stop the bleeding away of the land to the Anglo newcomers, and by the turn of the century much of it was gone forever.

Gabe thought about the recent rise in property crimes and wondered if, a century later, a modern version of Las Gorras Blancas was riding again. It was worth thinking about; land prices were climbing and the few old Hispanic families left in the valley were having a hell of a time paying their property taxes. Maybe somebody had gotten pissed off enough to start ripping off the latest wave of Anglo immigrants.

The morning sky changed from hot pink to flat gray as the sun broke above the horizon and disappeared behind a low, thick cloud.

Chief Kerney had asked Gabe to check out the owner of the cabin to the north of his property. He turned onto the dirt track that led to Carl Boaz's cabin in the meadow. Finding out about Boaz had been easy.

His property had been added to the fire department response grid map after the cabin had been built. Supposedly, Boaz lived there with a girlfriend and her young son.

If Gabe hadn't been driving a 4 x 4 state police Ram Charger, he would have stopped and walked in-the road was that bad. He made the last turn near the top of the hill and saw two crows sitting on the top of a steel gate. Above, several more circled lazily at low altitude.

He looked at a mound on the ground, and looked again.

He got out, walked to the mound, and bent over it.

A dead man looked up at him with blank eyes. Cold nighttime temperatures had left the body covered with frost. The bullet hole in his forehead was perfectly round, and his face was tattooed with pinpoint hemorrhages from powder burns.

He'd been shot at very close range. Gabe put on a pair of plastic gloves, tilted the body slightly, searched the back pockets for a wallet, found it, and looked for a driver's license. Issued by the state of California, it identified the dead man as Carl Boaz.

Gabe stayed low, keyed his hand-held radio, and called in the crime.

The crows didn't move from the gate until he returned to the vehicle.

Then they hopped away a few yards and perched on the top strand of the wire fence.

He crouched behind the open door and scanned the meadow with binoculars. Approaching the cabin would be risky. He would have to cover at least a hundred yards of open space from the gate to the cabin. There might be an armed hostage taker barricaded inside one of the structures with captives.

He saw no movement, but stayed put for a few minutes before getting a tarp out of the back of the 4x4 and covering the corpse. He didn't want crows feasting while he waited for backup.

He called for assistance, positioned himself at the rear of the vehicle where he had the most protection, and kept scanning the cabin and greenhouse. All the preliminary work-photographing, measuring, and evidence collection-could wait until he was sure the area was secure.

The crows flapped lazily off the wire, circled above him, and cawed.

There would be no free lunch for them today.

Kerney's bedroom phone rang. He reached for it and checked the time: it was seven o'clock. He listened to the dispatcher's report, asked for a helicopter to stand by, and hung up.

"What is it?" Sara asked as she sat up in the bed and pulled the sheet up over her breasts.

"Cold?"

"No, modest."

"I don't think so."

"Are you going to tell me or not?"

Kerney looked at Sara, wondering how she could look so sexy on such little sleep. They had stayed awake and talked through most of the night, catching each other up. Kerney now knew about the firefight in the DMZ that had led to her meritorious promotion, and the Distinguished Service Medal. Kerney thought the honors were richly deserved.