Ground Money (24 page)

“Why don’t you pump up the raft, and I’ll get breakfast going. It must have got a lot colder than I thought last night—the raft went down some.”

“How much air do you want?”

“Just make it firm, like that bow tube. When the sun gets on her, she’ll tighten up good.” He went to poke up the fire and flip the fish.

Wager finished the last section of the tube, and Jo, face a healthy color from sun and a cold-water scrub, called him to breakfast. He had not realized how hungry he was until the first taste of hot and fragrant fish, and the others must have felt the same way, because breakfast—fresh pineapple, slabs of thick-crusted bread, strong coffee, and icy orange juice—lasted about ten minutes. “There’s eggs if you want them, and sausage. I brought it along in case the fish didn’t cooperate.”

Jo patted her stomach. “Not a thing more! That was delicious.”

“People like my cooking better out here than they do back home. So do I.”

They packed up and strapped the waterproof bundles and chests securely to the raft’s D-rings and frames. “We’ll probably bounce against a few rocks today—Boulder Field’s going to be exciting. We don’t want to go through there without everything tight and secure.”

“Will it be like the rapids yesterday? Those first ones?”

“It’s not as sharp a drop, but it’s a lot narrower. And it lasts a lot longer. We’ll have to scout it out before we run it.”

Wager asked how far down the river it was.

“About eight miles. There’s a good put-in just above, so we can get a look at it.”

“I’d like to spend some time along shore before we get there.”

“Most of what we’ll be going through is T Bar M land.”

“I know.”

Sidney looked at him curiously. “They really don’t want trespassers.”

“I thought they wouldn’t mind if they didn’t see us.”

“Well, yessir, that’s true enough. But they really don’t like it. And Ron would get awfully upset if he knew I was antagonizing them.”

“Is there some way you can put me ashore by myself and pick me up later?”

Sidney ran his hand under the sun-bleached hair that curled at the back of his neck. “Are you looking for something?”

The question was bound to come, and Wager wished he had a better answer. “I’m not sure what I’m looking for. I’m a cop—we both are. And we’re interested in what’s going on at that ranch.”

“You’re a cop, too?”

Jo nodded.

“Man, I didn’t think … I mean, he kind of looks like a cop, but you sure don’t.”

“You should see me in uniform.”

He glanced from Jo to Wager. “What do you think’s going on at the ranch?”

“I’m not sure anything is. That’s what I want to find out.”

“Why can’t you just go there and make them let you look the place over?”

“It’s their property. I can’t do that without a warrant.” He couldn’t do it with a warrant, either, because it wasn’t his jurisdiction. But there was no need to confuse the boy. “And I can’t get a warrant without probable cause—without a good idea that something is going on.”

Sidney chewed his lip. “Undercover? Is that what you guys are?”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say anything about it.”

“Wow. It sounds like something from a book or movie or something.” He nosed the spatula at some burned grease in the large iron frying pan. “It’s kind of exciting.”

“What I want to do is look around some of these side canyons, and do it without being seen.”

“A recon mission?”

“You got it.”

“Landing from rubber boats in enemy territory …”

It wouldn’t be all that dramatic—Wager hoped it wouldn’t be all that dramatic. But it wouldn’t hurt if Sidney got caught up in the moment. “Just like that.”

“Wow.” He pointed downstream. “The next landing on this side’s about half a mile down; you can walk there—the beach goes along to it. We can come down in an hour and tie up on the other side and fish some. You signal us when you’re ready and we’ll come across and pick you up.”

It was as good a plan as any. Wager took off briskly, staying as close to the water’s edge as the chaos of fallen rock would allow. Occasionally he found a deer trail that etched a faint shelf across the steep faces, and he followed that through the stiff grass and clumps of wiry brush. But most often he had to scramble around shoulders of shattered rock that led up to the mesa hundreds of feet above. After a good half hour of climbing up and down like an ant across the giant boulders, he saw a small V in the walls where a stream once cut its way down to the river.

He studied the notch. The steep cut led away from the main canyon, a tangle of willow and hackberry forming a thick screen along the river. Even the morning cries of birds had ceased by now, and the only sound was the water, a steady echo against the rock like a ceaseless wind. Keeping away from the scattered patches of sand that would leave footprints, Wager worked down spines of rock to the floor of the gulch and past a sign warning, “Posted—Keep Out.” An animal trail tunneled through the bushes, and Wager, bending low, picked his way along the narrow path and up a shelf into a rocky field dotted with cottonwoods. Somewhere up the cliffs a crow squawked sharply, alerted to his movements, and in the heat Wager began to sweat and feel the sting of scratches on his arms and shins. But he saw nothing. He wandered several hundred yards to where the gulch began to close into a long slope of cactus-dotted soil leading up to the next bench of stone, but the only human or animal sign was a scattering of long-dried cow dung.

The raft was waiting across the channel when he got back; Sidney had tied to a spur of rock, and he and Jo made lazy casts downstream toward a large eddy. When they saw Wager on a boulder at the river’s edge, Sidney pulled hard across the current. The raft was carried below Wager, and he scrambled across the jagged, slippery rock to the closest landing; Sidney, with a heave on the bending oars, nudged the craft against a sloping shelf of stone, and Wager tumbled aboard as he pushed off quickly into the main current.

“Find anything?”

Wager shook his head. “A bunch of horseflies.”

“Man, those things smart, don’t they?” Sidney was a little disappointed, but there were a dozen or so other places downriver.

“We didn’t catch anything, either,” said Jo. “But I had a strike.”

“Hop over and wash off the sweat—it’ll make those horsefly bites feel better. Put your life jacket on first, though.”

The next landing was across the river where a tongue of stony soil tumbled down to disappear into the water. The raft touched briefly above, and then Sidney rowed hard toward the steep cut of the opposite bank. Wager scrambled up past the inevitable Keep Out sign to a shelf of level earth that formed the floor of the side canyon. Working his way across the sun-baked flat, he followed a dry wash beyond a line of heavy brush. Carved into the clearest section of the canyon floor, a small plowed field stubbled from last year’s harvest wavered in the heat. A handful of birds scattered to fly up the canyon walls, and across the hundred yards of open field, a deer froze, staring at him, its black stump of tail twitching nervously. Beyond, where the field ended, an eroded rut of road curved away toward the mesa.

“Anything there?”

Wager, pulling himself over the side after his swim for the raft, grunted no. “An old field—corn, I think. Do ranchers grow many different crops in these canyons?”

“Mostly hay for the cattle. I didn’t know you were in the homicide department.”

Jo handed him a cold beer from the tow sack. “We’ve been talking police work.”

“I am,” said Wager, tilting the beer down his dusty throat.

“Did John or James kill somebody?”

“I don’t think so. But I hope you don’t talk it up too much. Undercover means secret—ours and yours.”

“Oh no, I’m not going to tell anybody. God, if I did that—told Ron about letting you ashore along the T Bar M—man, he’d have my butt! He doesn’t want any trouble with the ranchers along the river. They tried to close the river down a few years back and Ron had to get a lawyer and everything.” He added, “And if anybody sees you, tell them you swam ashore to go to the bathroom or something.”

“I won’t tell Ron if you don’t. How’s that?”

The third time wasn’t the charm; it was the fourth, and even then there wasn’t much to see. The largest of the side canyons they had passed so far was masked for a quarter mile above and below by a wide lip of brushy earth rising a few feet above the river. Wager found a black plastic pipe trenched into the bank and leading under the loose soil past the river growth. About a hundred yards inland and fenced against cattle and deer, a wide field of earth was ridged into furrows where young plants made evenly spaced green dots in the sunlight. The siphon pipe carried the river water up to a gas pump and dumped it into an earthen reservoir about ten yards across. Lying flat like strands of spaghetti over one shoulder of the dam, a series of white plastic irrigation hoses led to each of the furrows. Looking closely, he saw that every other plant was marked by a popsicle stick, and looking even closer, he had the answer: marijuana. It was a marijuana farm, with about two thousand seedlings carefully set in and irrigated from the newly built pond.

He wasn’t certain of the crop’s exact value—it had been a long time since he worked in the Organized Crime Unit and he didn’t have the latest street figures. But this much care and investment meant high-quality stuff, sensimilla plants, probably, and there would be a lot of profit at stake. If several other fields were scattered in these isolated gulches and canyons, it added up to enough money to kill someone for. Even your own father.

He wanted to take one of the plants, but each popsicle stick had a number inked on it. Given their value, they were accounted for and probably mapped on a chart kept for each field. Tended with individual care, they would be checked regularly, and any missing would raise questions. He took a last quick look at the field and the high canyon walls protecting it, then he made his way back to the beach, careful not to leave a trail in the soft sand.

“Any luck this time?”

Wager pushed the raft away from shore and glanced back. The screen of brush and low trees was unchanged, and from here this canyon looked no different from any other that sliced its way to the river. “Yep.”

“Yeah? What did you find?”

“Come on, Gabe.” Jo nudged his shoulder with her fishing rod. “Give.”

“They’re running a pot farm. A big one.”

“Pot? Marijuana?” Sidney looked back at the silent canyon that glided out of sight around a bend in the stream. “I read about some guy over in Delta County growing marijuana in the middle of his cornfield. But I never thought …”

“Did you see the plants?”

“They’ve mixed them in with some other kind of plant, probably in case a plane flies over. But the real crop’s happy weed.”

“Well, man, that explains why they get so uptight about people landing on their property!”

It also explained a lot of things about the ranch and about Tom’s worry over his sons. It explained how they could afford the time and money to rodeo so much. And if it didn’t explain the whos and hows of Tom’s death, it sure as hell offered a clear motive.

“What’s the setup?” asked Jo.

“They pump water out of the river to a small reservoir—a little pond probably lined with plastic so it won’t leak. My guess is they add fertilizers to the pond and then run the mix down the rows with a gravity-feed irrigation system.”

“Sure,” said Sidney. “You see those rigs all over—the farmers have these metal tubes they set in irrigation ditches and they hook up these plastic hoses to run downhill from the ditch.”

Wager nodded. “That’s what this looked like.”

“Is it a big field?” asked Jo.

“About a hundred yards across—big for a pot farm. I think there’s around two thousand plants. They went to a lot of trouble to dig the pond and set up a fence and the irrigation system. They’re expecting a big payoff.”

“Two thousand!”

“What’s that worth? That many plants?”

“Depends on the street value. But probably between one and two million dollars.”

Sidney stopped rowing and stared at Wager. “How much?”

He told him again.

“My God.”

“Do you think they have plots in all these canyons?”

Wager didn’t think so; not all of them were suitable for irrigation. But they would have other fields where they could—they would want to grow as much as possible in a season to make the investment pay quickly. And it didn’t take much space or water to raise twenty or thirty plants here and there. They could have tiny plots wherever a spring seeped out of the sandstone cliffs or a hose could snake down to the river. In all, the operation could harvest tens of millions of dollars every fall.

“Man, that does beat raising cows!”

“The overhead can get pretty expensive,” said Jo. “Even if the growers don’t go to jail, they’re going to lose that ranch.”

One crop would pay for that ranch a couple times over, and Wager suspected this wasn’t the first harvest. But Jo was right—the feds would confiscate anything used to grow marijuana, including the land, and that might explain why the owner wasn’t too worried about keeping the place up. It was a write-off.

Sidney whistled a low, long note. “That much money!” Then he looked at Wager. “What do we do now? Do we go to the feds? The sheriff? What?”

That part was no problem—an anonymous telephone call to the Drug Enforcement Agency or a word to Sergeant Johnston, and a helicopter would hover over each draw and gully to study the land with binoculars. Those plants weren’t going anywhere before autumn. But Tom’s killers were something else. In addition to his suspicions, Wager had a motive now; but he knew damned well how much weight that would have when DEA got their noses filled with the scent of a marijuana farm. “I’d like to think about that for a little while. There’s another case involved, and I’m not sure yet what’s the best way to go.”

“That’s right—you’re with Homicide!” Sidney’s eyes widened as he stared at Wager and he put a few things together. “Somebody was killed because he knew about this place!”