Chapter 12 #2
He dismissed me with a wave of his spoon. "Don't thank me for doing my job. Go on now. Get."
Ransom was already up, heading for the door.
He stopped at the sideboard, fished his phone out from the bottom of the bowl without looking at the screen, and slid it into his back pocket.
Behind him, Cruz watched the move with the open, longing face of a kid watching another kid get to leave class early.
Sierra cleared his throat once from the stove, and Cruz looked back down at his eggs.
I followed Ransom through the house. The hallway walls were lined with photos in mismatched frames.
Boys on horseback, boys at graduation, boys standing in front of the main house with their arms around each other.
A hand-painted sign above the bathroom door said "Wash Your Damn Hands" in Sierra's careful script.
Somewhere deeper in the house, a radio played low, Spanish-language news.
By the time he reached Rafe's door, Ransom was the man who'd led me into the desert again.
The version that'd held me through the night and fucked me in the shower had drained out of him in twelve steps, and I'd watched it happen.
Three Ransoms in two days. I was starting to wonder how many of him there were total, and which one I'd be spending today with.
Rafe's office was at the back, the door wide open, but he didn't have a traditional desk.
Instead, there was this giant table made of turquoise and petrified wood.
It was like something out of a damn fairytale.
Rafe stood at the window with his hands in his pockets, looking out at the paddocks where the horses moved in the early light.
We came in, and Ransom closed the door behind us.
Rafe turned around. He looked at both of us for a long moment, then gestured to the table. "Sit."
We sat.
I waited for someone to say something, but neither of them spoke. I was about to break the silence myself when Ransom finally said, "They keyed the truck, Rafe. They keyed it and threatened to burn the ranch to the ground."
Rafe folded his hands on the table. "And you thought punching Otis in the face would keep that from happening."
"What was I supposed to do? You made it clear that my job is to protect this place, so that's what I did."
Rafe looked at me like it was somehow my fault Ransom had punched Otis in his face.
"Rex's boys had the truck surrounded when we came out," I said. "They weren't letting us off the property without a fight."
Rafe's attention slid back to Ransom. "It isn't the fight that has me so worried, mijo."
Ransom was silent, but his throat worked like he had to swallow whatever he was about to say.
Rafe sighed and put his palms flat on the table. "What's done is done. Now, at least we know where things stand."
"What's his beef with Pae Saco, anyway?" I asked. "There's clearly some bad blood here I'm not privy to."
"It ain't blood," said Rafe, shaking his head. "Blood would be simpler. It's the water that's the problem."
My eyebrows shot up. "Come again?"
"Pae Saco sits on senior rights to the Pae Saco River that runs the length of this valley.
Has since before there was a state to register them.
Bonney sits downstream and junior by about ninety years.
" Rafe tapped the table once. "In a dry year, Pae Saco takes what it needs first. Bonney takes what's left.
Most years there's plenty to go around. Last three years there hasn't been. "
"So Rex wants the water."
"Rex wants my water," Rafe corrected. "He filed in district court eighteen months ago. Forfeiture claim. His lawyers argue Pae Saco hasn't been putting the full appropriation to beneficial use, so the unused portion ought to revert and transfer downstream to him."
"Has it?"
"Been in beneficial use? Every drop of it. Horses drink, hay grows, the pueblo upstream uses what it's always used. The paperwork's clean. It's been clean since my grandfather filed it."
"Then he loses."
"On the law, he loses. On the law, he should've lost months ago.
" Rafe sat back. "But Rex didn't file this to win on the law.
He filed to win on the optics. His lawyers stand up in court and tell the bench Bonney Ranch employs a hundred and forty people in Sierra County.
Brings in two million a year in tourist revenue.
Pays property taxes that keep three school districts running.
Pae Saco is a horse rehab operation with eleven boys in a bunkhouse and no commercial output anybody can point to.
Why's the small ranch sitting on the big water? "
"That's not how water rights work."
"No, it isn't. First in time, first in right.
Doesn't matter if I'm running a horse ranch or a hot dog stand.
The senior claim is the senior claim. But that's a hard argument to make in front of a county where half the courthouse drinks at Bonney's bar on Fridays.
Rex was banking on a sympathetic judge."
"Instead, he got Castillo," I said. "And Castillo's in your pocket."
Rafe nodded. "Roy Castillo's responsible for sending half the boys out there to us.
He understands that some men don't belong in a prison yard.
They can do more good here. He also understands the law doesn't give a damn how many tourists Rex had eating burritos at his theater.
" Rafe's hand flattened on the petrified wood.
"So Rex killed him to vacate the case," I said.
"Vacate the case, push it onto another judge's docket, and buy himself another year while he lobbies the bench he can get to." Rafe nodded once. "Castillo dead means a new judge. New judge means new arguments, new motions, fresh delays. And it buys him time to buy himself a judge or two."
The room went quiet.
I'd come up here to put a bullet in Rex Rawlins for what he'd done to my daddy.
I'd figured the ranch was incidental, just useful cover, a way in, nothing more.
Sitting at this turquoise table watching Rafe Lujan describe the slow throttling of a hundred and fifty years of family land, I understood for the first time that the ranch wasn't incidental to anybody at this table except me.
And I was the one who was supposed to be the careful one.
Rafe leaned against the front of his desk and crossed his arms. "Rex is coming for us now. Hard and fast. You two lit that fuse last night."
Ransom's jaw tightened, but he didn't answer.
Rafe dropped a file folder onto the table and slid it across to us.
"Everything we have on Rex. I need you boys to find me an angle.
Pae Saco ain't big enough to fight him man to man.
We make a move on him, he'll have law enforcement from two counties and the state on us.
He'll have this place shut down. We need a way to put Rex in cuffs or in the ground that doesn't fuck over Pae Saco. I don't care which."
I opened the folder and started flipping through it.
"We'll need to move fast," I said.
"Faster than you think." Rafe tapped the top page.
"You'll want to head up to Los Lunas today to speak with Joe Dancing.
He did four years of a six for aggravated assault.
You met Otis already. Well, Joe was Otis's protégé.
He took the charge clean, but word is he's started talking inside. " He paused. "He gets out tomorrow."
Ransom's head came up. "Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow morning. I've been tracking it for a while.
" Rafe held Ransom's eyes. "Rex has been tracking it longer.
Joe walked in angry, and he's walking out angrier, and the only thing Rex has going for him is that Joe's been on ice.
Minute he clears that gate, he's a dead man.
Rex will have somebody on him before he makes the parking lot. "
I set the file down. "So we get to him first."
"You get to him today. Inside. Before he walks out and gets picked up by whoever Rex sends." Rafe tapped the file again. "You can use your badge to get access, Ranger. But I want to know everything Joe says by sundown."
I rubbed the stubble on my jaw. The badge would get me in, but a state prison logged Ranger interviews, and somewhere down the chain a captain in El Paso would see a name he hadn't authorized in New Mexico.
The badge bought me hours, not days. Same problem I'd been managing for three weeks, just bigger now.
"I can be there by two if I leave now," I said.
"Same-day visit's harder than a scheduled one but it's doable if I call ahead and tell the warden's office I'm working a homicide that ties back to Texas.
They want the call. They like the favor on the books.
I just need to be in and out before the badge runs into the system. "
"Then go," Rafe said.
"Why didn't you tell me about Joe before?" Ransom said coldly.
"Didn't have a reason to tell you." Rafe held his look. "Now there's one. So we use it."
Ransom's mouth tightened. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. The two of them had been locked onto each other and the room had narrowed around it. I had the feeling I was sitting in on the back half of a conversation, and the front half had been about me.
Rafe broke the look first. He turned to me.
"Winston. Step outside a minute."
I started to stand.
"He stays," Ransom said.
Rafe didn't look at Ransom. He kept his eyes on me. "Stays for what, son?"
"Whatever you've got to say to me, you can say in front of him."
"You sure about that?"
Ransom didn't answer.
I sat back down slowly.
"All right," Rafe said. "Then I'll lay it out plainly. I don't care that you're sleeping with him, mijo. A man's got needs and wants, and how he sees to them is his business. What I care about is your ability to prioritize accordingly."
The question sat there on the table between the three of us like something Rafe had set down and was waiting on Ransom to pick up.
Ransom's jaw worked. He drew a breath to answer.
He didn't.
The silence went on a second too long. Then another. Long enough that I felt it in my back teeth. Long enough that Rafe's face changed by a quarter of an inch, the way a man's face changes when he's just gotten the answer to a question he didn't ask out loud.
"I'm loyal to Pae Saco," Ransom said finally. The words came out level, but they came out a beat after they should have, and all three of us at the table knew it. "Same as always."
Rafe didn't speak.
"Rafe," Ransom said.
"I heard you, mijo."
"Same as always," Ransom said again, like saying it twice would put the missing beat back where it belonged.
Rafe looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked down at the petrified wood under his hands, ran his thumb along a vein of turquoise, and didn't lift his eyes when he answered.
"Go on. Get up to Los Lunas."
Ransom stood. He waited for something else, some softening, some sign that the answer he'd given had been the answer Rafe was looking for. It didn't come.
The chair under me had gone cold. I held my face still and stood up with him.
I followed Ransom out of the office. Behind us, Rafe didn't move from the table. When I glanced back from the doorway, he was still looking down at the wood, thumb still tracing the same vein of turquoise, like the answer to whatever he was working out was somewhere down inside the stone.