Stony Mesa Sagas. Chip Ward
believe he would actually kill anyone. Otis may growl like a bear but they knew his soft-hearted side, too. He wasn’t violent, but still, who else hated Bo Hineyman more? Otis had a temper and he drank too much.
“Otis, how are you? You don’t look well.”
“Damn right, I’m a wreck. You know why. I need your help.”
“My help? Why me?”
“Because you were a private eye.”
“No I wasn’t, I was an investigative journalist.”
“Same thing.”
“No it isn’t. Private investigators hide their identity and sneak around. Investigative journalists state plainly who they are and then say publicly what they find. We don’t solve crimes, we expose them.”
Otis grew pale. “But you have those skills, man. I don’t have an alibi and everyone knows I had a motive. The only way I can get out of this for sure is to find the one who did it. Find the guy who killed Hineyman and I’m free. You gotta help me. I’m begging you.”
Elias Buchman had left his career as an investigative journalist five years earlier. He’d exposed polluters, cheaters, scammers, hypocrites, and a wide range of greedy businessmen and corrupt politicians. His friends and family wondered how he had the intestinal fortitude to keep uncovering the sleazy underbelly of the American economy scandal after scandal, year after year.
“It doesn’t bother me, really. I detach,” he would tell them. “I just do my job and have faith that in the end the truth prevails and the bad guys can’t hide forever.”
But in his last story, the one he didn’t complete, he learned that sometimes it’s hard to distinguish the good guys from the bad and the bad guys do get away and the truth is suppressed. He’d investigated the shooting deaths by police of homeless men. Not just homeless. There were many people who are temporarily homeless while trying desperately to land on their feet, but the people who had been killed were chronically homeless. They are the ones we point to, the ones who live on the streets, sleep in parks and alleys, spend their days reading in public libraries, and sometimes rant on sidewalks, piss in the court-house shrubs, and scream in the subway when visited by their inner demons. They’re the ones who cry with joy in fast food lines when angels appear above the condiment bar.
America, Buchman realized, had kicked the mentally ill out into the streets and then punished them for expressing the symptoms of untreated illness. Often, way too often, the ranters and screamers who didn’t or couldn’t respond to the police when confronted were coldly executed. In case after case, an order was given once and given again. If the raging didn’t stop, a cop would calmly and deliberately take aim to kill and then fire. These incidents had a cold and calculated aspect and they were becoming almost routine, like removing pests from a garden, bullets instead of bug spray.
There was no outrage. Internal police investigations routinely favored the cops over the crazies. Mentally ill street people were isolated from their communities and often from their families. Nobody sues if nobody is watching. Everyone, it seemed to Elias, was averting their eyes but him. But the worst part was this: the cops shoot to kill, he was told, because a wounded man is alive to sue and some opportunistic lawyer might take his case and hope to pocket a worthwhile settlement. And a wounded bum, a cop he befriended told him confidentially, could collect disability benefits. From the taxpayer’s point of view, the cop said, dead was better than wounded if nobody was looking, which was almost always the case. The cop’s attitude was that he was doing society a favor.
That was the story that broke him. His editor suppressed it. Too risky, he said, not enough proof. Buchman took a leave of absence. He couldn’t sleep and lost interest in the wonderful meals Grace cooked. She tried in vain to cheer him up, distract him. Nothing worked. He paced and mumbled, cried and shouted. Weeks went by and then he quit.
He took early retirement and they moved from the city to the quiet, far away canyons of Stony Mesa where he had camped with his dad when he was a kid. He and Grace told each other that they would reinvent themselves, or rather become the people they had always wanted to be before the detours that came with kids and careers. Grace painted and taught yoga. She was glad to get Elias out of that gut-wrenching career of his and start over. The kids were grown and they deserved some peace of mind.
Stony Mesa seemed a likely place to find it. The nearby national park was a tonic. They had visited the park on vacations with the kids as they were raising them. Their kids loved the park. If Grace had one wish for her retirement years it was to be close to her son and daughter. Her daughter spent a junior year abroad in Rome and fell in love with a handsome man there. After graduation she headed back to Rome. That relationship didn’t last but she fell in love with an American who worked at the embassy. He was set on a diplomatic career and Grace realized her daughter would always be moving. Their son also had wanderlust and traveled the world as an assistant to a man who starred in a television travel series. Grace figured that if she couldn’t chase them around the planet, at least Stony Mesa and the nearby national parks would serve as a magnet that would draw her wandering kids to her on annual visits.
Grace had doubts about Stony Mesa’s culture and lack of diversity. As a nurse dealing with all sorts of people, Grace learned to tolerate differences and appreciate variety. She knew that social life in Stony Mesa was dominated by the One True Church because most of the town’s residents were members. She was concerned that Elias was an odd fit for a local culture dominated by gun racks and mud flaps. Elias didn’t hunt or fish, drove a Prius, and preferred classic rock to country and western, which he described as codependency put to music. He didn’t visit the Fox News bubble. But she knew there were many so-called move-ins and locals who befriended one another despite their differences.
They made many friends and their social calendar had never been so full. They hiked and rafted, started a garden, and canned apples in the fall. Their grown kids visited and wanted to come back soon. Elias was sleeping through the night and eating enthusiastically. Laughter returned to their days.
“Look, Otis, I don’t know who you think I am but your problem is too big for me. I can’t go around interviewing people on my own. I would need credentials.”
“Sally at the Boon County Weekly will give you a press card if I ask her. She owes me. But you don’t have to interview anyone. There’s the Internet. You can find out lots of stuff on that. You’ve done it before.”
“I once had the skills of a veteran librarian but I haven’t done research for years. The technology keeps changing and I haven’t kept up. I don’t even do Facebook. I don’t tweet. I have maybe four apps on my phone.”
Otis looked miserable. The two men stood in silence. Otis stifled a sob and turned away. Elias caved. “Okay Otis, I’ll do what I can.”
“Thanks, Elias. I swear I’m innocent, man. Please believe me.”
Elias turned back into the house as Grace entered the back door from the garden. “Who was that?” she asked. “I heard a truck.”
“Otis Dooley. He claims he’s innocent and wants me to find Bo Hineyman’s killer.”
“Maybe you could do something about global warming while you’re at it,” she joked. “And then there’s always peace in the Middle East.”
“I know, I know. I tried to tell him. The poor man is desperate. Where is my laptop?”
Chapter 6
Nolan Mikesel often boasted that he was a fourth-generation rancher. Four generations are about as far back as white people went in his corner of the American West and if you didn’t understand that he would tell you his great-grandfather was a pioneer. Nolan knew that when he characterized himself that way it smacked of deep roots in local history, the stamp of venerable tradition, and the authority of long experience. It conferred a dignity and respect that he often didn’t get when changing tires at the Exxon station at the junction. There, he was better known for the gobs of gooey chewing tobacco he spit