investigations in the district.'
'I understand from Phil Cox that you're good at it,' Kerney replied.
'That's nice to hear, but it's not the point,' Charlie shot back.
'Poaching and illegal trophy hunting are a way of life for most of the people in this district. It's part of their culture. They do it to feed themselves, to make money, or just for sport.
There are twenty-five hundred people spread out over almost seven thousand square miles in Catron County. A hell of a lot of them are poor as church mice, and they know the forest better than any ranger.
Catching them isn't easy.
'You're wasting your time canvassing. You got two kinds of people who live here-the minority who want poaching stopped, but who aren't going to snitch on their neighbors, and all the rest, who see it as a birthright. Folks poach depending on how hungry they get, how broke they are, or how bullheaded they feel. You can't approach it like a criminal investigation. It doesn't work that way. And the locals aren't going to talk to some newcomer they don't know or trust.'
Charlie was still scolding. Kerney didn't want to make it worse.
'I understand,' he said.
'Good. I'll be at the Blue Range burn for the rest of the day. Finish your patrol shift and report back to the Luna office in the morning.
Leave your report with Yolanda. I'll read it later.'
Kerney tapped his paperwork with the tip of the ballpoint pen.
'Do you have any poaching files I can look at?' he asked.
'I'd like to learn more about it.'
'You don't have the time.'
'I'll do it after work,' Kerney countered.
Charlie considered Kerney. He hoped to God he was never in the man's predicament. He knew Kerney was a medically retired cop from Santa Fe hired on an emergency basis by Samuel Aldrich in the Albuquerque Office to fill in for a permanent employee on extended sick leave. The rest Charlie could see for himself: a hobbled-up, middle- aged man in a temporary job that would end no matter how hard he worked or how much he tried to please-not that placating people seemed to be much of a concern to Kerney. There were simply no permanent staff vacancies, with all the budget cuts.
'Catching poachers isn't your job,' Charlie said.
'I thought I made that clear.'
'You did.' Kerney leaned back in the chair and smiled at Charlie.
'Explain something else to me.'
'What is it?'
'Why are you pulling my chain? I don't think asking a few questions has damaged the investigation.'
'That's your point of view,' Charlie replied bluntly.
'Is there more to this case than meets the eye?'
Charlie exhaled loudly through his nose and shook his head.
'You don't get it, do you? It's not your case. It's not your business.
End of discussion.'
'Whatever you say.'
Charlie left, and in a few minutes Kerney heard the helicopter lift off to take Perry back to his fire. As he paper-clipped the report together, Kerney wondered why Charlie had stonewalled him about the case. It made no sense, and dismissing Perry as an arrogant, hard-nosed son of a bitch wasn't a completely satisfying explanation.
Kerney walked down the hall and gave his report to Yolanda for typing.
She promptly dumped it on the top of an overflowing tray. A heavyset, slow moving woman with expressionless eyes, she held Kerney back from leaving.
'Charlie said for you to work a double shift,' she informed him.
There was a bite to the announcement. Charlie had obviously made his feelings about Kerney known to Yolanda.
'Did he really? What does he want me to do?'
'Campground patrol.' She pulled open the desk drawer and handed him two keys on a chain.
'For gasoline and the office,' she explained.
'Just leave your paperwork on Charlie's desk.'
'Anything else?'
Yolanda shook her head and turned back to the typewriter.
It looked like the dead black bear was going to be the high point of his day. *** The district office was dark and locked when Kerney returned from his double shift. He sat in Charlie's office reading closed poaching cases he'd found in the bottom desk drawer. It was meager stuff; mostly small-fry poachers who had been snitched off, caught taking game out of season, or found spotlighting prey at night. A few trophy hunters had been busted while transporting carcasses out of the forest.
Charlie's open cases were stuffed in a file cabinet and consisted of a mixture of poaching and trophy kills, with no solid leads, witnesses, or hard evidence.
All of Charlie's attention seemed focused on game-taking within the Glenwood District. Kerney wondered about similar activity in other areas. He scanned through a stack of game-kill bulletins from other agencies. One bighorn sheep had recently been taken on state land by a poacher using an ATV, and several exotic ibex from the herd in the Florida Mountains east ofDeming had been harvested earlier in the year.
An all-terrain vehicle had been seen in the vicinity by a Bureau of Land Management officer.
With the bear kill on the mesa, that would make at least three cases where an ATV had been used to get to the killing ground. It was enough to raise Kerney's interest. He went to the map posted in the front lobby and studied it. Aside from Forest Service land, there were large parcels under the control of the Bureau of Land Management and smaller sections owned by the state. Maybe Charlie Perry had tunnel vision.
Just for the hell of it, Kerney decided to query every state and federal park and conservation agency in the region and ask for information on kills where an ATV was used. He typed fax messages at Yolanda's desk and sent out the inquiries, asking for responses to be sent to him at the Luna office. As he fed the messages through the fax machine, Kerney wondered how ticked off Charlie Perry was going to be when he discovered this most recent act of insubordination.
He got home to Reserve late. His trailer, painted a bright blue by his landlord in a desperate attempt to rent it, sat in an empty field across from the high school. Inside it was hot, stuffy, and smelled like mouse piss. He opened all the windows. Across the field the parking-lot lights at the high school burned pale yellow. He heard the deer mice under the floor-much more established tenants of the trailer than he was-scurrying around, upset by his arrival.
He would put out some traps on his next day off.
The trailer was a dump, but Kerney didn't mind.
A single-wide furnished with a bed, kitchen table, couch, ragtag easy chair, and several lamps, it served his temporary needs. He was banking all his paychecks and living on much less than his retirement pension.
Along with the money the Army had paid him for the recovery of the stolen artifacts from White Sands Missile Range, he just might finish the summer with enough cash for a down payment on some land. Not much, and certainly nothing as extensive as the Slash Z summer grazing acreage, but something that could get him started.
Kerney really didn't give a damn what Charlie Perry might do. Four weeks on the job was long enough to convince him that he could never permanently return to patrol work. Not even the beautiful landscapes and startling sunsets in the Gila could ease the boredom of long hours in a vehicle. Maybe a wilderness assignment would be different, but that was a plum job reserved for forestry and wildlife specialists.
It had been years since he'd worn a uniform, and he had never liked them-not when he had served in the Army nor when he had started out as a street cop. He stripped off the garments, dressed in his sweats, and limbered up the knee for his nightly run, wondering how long it would take Phil Cox to figure out who the hell he was.
