Hotshots Page 13

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m thinking out loud.”

  How did she know about the firing threat? I wondered. Could Mike Marshall have told her? Was she even smarter than I’d given her credit for? I was glad this conversation was taking place over the phone so she couldn’t see the expression on my face. It was a Marlboro (or a poor substitute) moment and I was already reaching for the Ricola bag. “Tom Hogue threatened to fire Ramona?” I asked as disingenuously as I was capable of.

  “Actually he didn’t have the power, but he was mouthing off about it around the Forest Service. Hogue was the old Forest Service. He wasn’t known for diplomacy and he had zero respect for women. If you ask me he was the wrong person at the wrong time for the wrong job. The only qualification he had was seniority. It wouldn’t surprise me if the things he said made their way back to Ramona. Just because she doesn’t talk much doesn’t mean she doesn’t listen. Don’t get me wrong about Indians. They do a great job for the Forest Service, but they keep things to themselves and why not? You can’t blame them for not trusting us, can you? But because they’re private, they’re like a drive-in movie screen that everybody tries to project larger-than-life images on. They weren’t savages when we got here and they’re not all saints and shamans now. You think about stuff like this when you were given a name like mine. If Ramona set that fire, whatever her reasons for doing it, arson is arson and I’m going to treat her just like any other perp. She was friendly with your clients’ daughter, I hear.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I understand Mrs. Barker blames Ramona and/or the Forest Service for Joni’s death and that she has a hot temper.”

  “Really?” I replied.

  “I don’t need to remind you, do I,” Sheila continued, “that this is an ongoing investigation and I haven’t crossed your clients’ names off my suspect list yet.”

  “No,” I said. “You don’t.”

  ******

  It was close to noon and I was meeting a client at Scalo’s for lunch. I left the office in Anna’s hands and drove across Central. Scalo’s is one of the few places in Albuquerque you can approximate a power lunch. I knew that because I counted four guys and one woman talking on their cell phones. My lunch with Janet Balboa wasn’t exactly a power move, but it did get her a little closer to her upcoming divorce.

  As I passed the university on my way back to the office I made a quick right-hand turn at Yale and went to see Eric Barker. I found him sitting in his office staring at his computer screen, surrounded by piles of papers and empty coffee mugs. He could have used a backhoe himself. Papers spilled off his desk and overflowed the file cabinets, but a space had been cleared for Joni’s photograph. She wore a yellow firefighter shirt, a green hard hat, and a radiant smile. She was Eric’s beloved daughter; it was killing him that she was gone.

  “Eric?” I said.

  When he looked up his eyes were returning from a faraway place.

  “Are you all right?” I asked him.

  He shook his head to clear it. “Neil,” he said. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

  “I happened to be in the neighborhood and decided to stop in.”

  “I’m glad you did. How are you doing? Is the cough any better?”

  “Somewhat.”

  “Here, sit down.” He cleared a space for me on a chair. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Mind if I have one?”

  “Go ahead. I went back to Thunder Mountain last weekend.”

  “It’s hard to go back to the scene of a fire you’ve been involved in, isn’t it?”

  Hard, but sometimes necessary. “Yeah. I looked at the house that burned. There was nothing left but ashes and an enormous stone fireplace. I talked to the owner. His girlfriend was distraught, but he didn’t seem terribly upset. If you ask me he was seeing dollar signs in the ashes; he had good insurance. Sheila McGraw is checking him out. I also ran into some birders there and they told me they had seen a brown truck with Colorado plates traveling down the road at a high rate of speed that afternoon. They also mentioned that they saw Nancy sitting under the cottonwood tree but they didn’t see the backpack.”

  Eric watched the screen saver moving across his computer screen and said nothing.

  “You’re sure you didn’t see any vehicles that afternoon?” I asked him.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Do you know anybody who has a brown truck with Colorado plates? Another firefighter? An acquaintance of Mike’s or Ramona’s or Joni’s?”

  “I can’t think of anyone.”

  “Are you and Nancy members of Forest Sentinels?”

  “No.”

  “I talked to Sheila McGraw this morning. She still believes the fire was set by a professional and she’s not willing to rule you and Nancy out yet.”

  “Nancy’s not a professional,” he said.

  “No, but she did have a firefighter husband and daughter. She’s spent a lot of time around firefighters.”

  “She never took that much interest in it. Fire fighting was an interest Joni and I shared.” An interest, I thought, that might have made Nancy feel excluded. “Nancy has always been more interested in quilting and gardening than she is in fighting fires.”

  “Sheila said Nancy was known to have a hot temper. Where would she have gotten that information from?”

  Eric stared at me for a long minute. “Nancy was home alone when they sent the messenger to tell us Joni had died. She went berserk. She screamed and smashed things and hit the guy. I suppose that’s what Sheila was talking about.”

  Some people crumple under disaster, some get angry. I’d already known that anger was Nancy’s response. “How did she feel about it afterward?”

  “She says she doesn’t remember.” This raised the question of what else she’d been able to forget.

  “I tracked down Ramona and she came back to town and talked to Sheila.”

  “Good. She needed to do that.”

  “Sheila says Ramona didn’t tell her much. Only that she had left her tribute to Joni and was on her way down the mountain when she saw the fire, heard me screaming, and covered me with her fire shelter.”

  “If Ramona said that, it’s true. She and Joni were very good friends.”

  “They had a friend named Jackie who lives near Oro? Ramona was staying there before she came back to Albuquerque.”

  “Jackie?” Eric asked. “I can’t think of any friend of Joni’s named Jackie.” He hit the mouse, chased away the screen saver, and looked at the time in the corner of the screen. “I have to get going soon, Neil. I have a class to teach. Anything else we need to talk about?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Well, actually, there is one more thing.” His eyes were heading toward his window that looked down on a parking lot.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nancy and I came to an agreement. We’ve decided to go ahead with the negligence suit as soon as the arson investigation is over.”

  An agreement, I wondered, or a deal? “What changed your mind?” I asked.

  “We’re a couple,” he said. He stood up. “Thanks for stopping by.”

  “Glad to do it,” I said.

  ******

  When I got back to the office I called Mike Marshall. Music blared in the background that—to me anyway—sounded less like a hard workout than hard rock. “How you doin’, Neil?” he asked.

  “Getting better,” I said. “I went back to Thunder Mountain last weekend and came across a couple of things I’d like to talk to you about.”

  “I’m coming downtown this afternoon. You want me to stop by?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  20

  IT TOOK ABOUT two minutes for Mike Marshall to turn my medium-sized office into a small cell. He was wearing shorts and hiking boots. He seemed bigger and more tightly wound here than he had in the other places we’d met. If he did become an engineer, I hoped he’d have a chance to get out i
n the field; he’d find an office like Eric Barker’s or mine far too confining. But unlike Joni, Mike wouldn’t stay twenty-something forever and he wouldn’t always be a hotshot. Someday he’d burst through the bubble of his grief. Someday he’d get older, someday he’d slow down. But at the moment I was sitting in front of a guy who was at the peak of his physical power and impatient with being confined to a chair in a lawyer’s office.

  “So what was it you found at Thunder Mountain?” he asked me.

  “A couple of birders told me they saw a brown truck with Colorado plates speeding down the road around the time the fire started. Do you know anybody with a truck that fits that description?” Mike had the kind of mind that would remember make, model, year, speed, license plate number, and color.

  He thought about it for a minute and said, “No.”

  “What kind of car does Ramona drive?” Although I’d met Ramona for lunch I hadn’t seen her vehicle. At the time it hadn’t seemed important.

  “A white Ford pickup with New Mexico plates. I told you she drove up with me that day, didn’t I?” This line of questioning wasn’t increasing his enthusiasm for being in a lawyer’s office.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He leaned forward in his chair, resting his forearms on his thighs. “What about the guy whose house burned? What kind of vehicle does he drive?”

  “A Blazer and a Ferrari.”

  He leaned back. “That figures.”

  “Sheila McGraw is investigating, but she still believes the fire was started by a professional.”

  “There are plenty of them around.”

  “But only three were known to be on the mountain that day. If it wasn’t one of you—”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Then who do you think it could have been?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “This friend that Ramona was staying with—does she live in Cloud full-time? Is her vehicle registered in Colorado? Is she a hotshot?”

  “You mean Jackie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jackie’s a guy. His full name is Jake Sorrell. He’s the crew boss who hired Joni and Ramona. He was a buddy of theirs, and they always called him Jackie. It was sort of a joke. I don’t know what kind of vehicle he drives, but he does live in Cloud full-time. He has a cabin up there. He was injured in the Lone Ridge fire and got government disability. He can afford to live in the woods.”

  “Lone Ridge is the fire where three firefighters were killed?”

  “That’s the one.” Mike was looking around for the clock that wasn’t on my wall, but, sensing warm cinders under the cool ashes of the Lone Ridge fire, I wasn’t ready to let him go yet. “Is there Gambel oak in Lone Ridge?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is the man who prepared the report the government never used?”

  “Right. It was a first-class report and he helped prepare a training video, too. If the government had used them Joni and all the hotshots would be alive today, but they just took all that work, knowledge, and experience and put it on the shelf. And look what happened.” His voice was bitter.

  “Did Sorrell quit because he’d lost crew members at Lone Ridge or because he’d lost the heart for fire fighting?”

  “Both, but his injuries would have made it impossible for him to continue even if he’d wanted to. Joni felt she owed him her job, but after a while even she stopped seeing him. It was too depressing. I was never as close to him as Joni and Ramona were.”

  “What made you think Ramona was at his place?”

  “I knew she wasn’t at home. You told me she wasn’t at her mother’s. She didn’t have her car and he’s the only person I know of that she knows in southern Colorado. I figured Jake heard the news reports about the fire, went into Oro, and picked Ramona up at the hospital. I’ve never been to his cabin, but Joni told me how isolated it was. It would be a good place to hide out.” He stretched out his legs and crossed one foot over the other.

  “What does Sorrell look like?”

  “Medium-sized, black hair.” It wasn’t much of a description, but maybe Mike was better at numbers than he was at faces.

  “Is his hair long or short?”

  “Short when I knew him.”

  “Is he skinny?”

  “No. He had a build like mine, but I haven’t seen the guy in a couple of years. What do I know?”

  “Is he involved with Forest Sentinels?”

  “He could be now. He wasn’t when I knew him. Why do you ask?”

  “I met someone who was connected to Forest Sentinels when I was in Oro who was very curious about what I was doing. It might be him. I still have the photos Ramona gave me. Would you mind taking a look to see if Jake’s picture is in there?”

  Mike’s feet were itching to hit the trail, but he agreed to look at the pictures.

  The bag with the photos and the boots was under my desk. I pulled it out and handed him the manila envelope. He opened it and began thumbing through the photographs, stopping whenever he came to a painful reminder of Joni.

  “Here he is,” he said, handing me one of the photos.

  It was a group of hotshots in full fire-fighting regalia standing under a tree. I recognized Mike, Joni, and Ramona. None of the guys leaped out of the picture as being the man I’d talked to in McDonald’s and none of the women looked like the woman I’d met at Forest Sentinels.

  Mike pointed Jake out. “Is that the guy you talked to?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. The hotshot he indicated had an orange chain saw slung over his shoulder. He was considerably heavier and stronger than the man I’d met. His smile was wider and his hair was hidden by the hard hat. But he did have dark eyes and a nose that could have been a beak on a thinner face. Take away thirty pounds, turn him into a shadow of what he’d been, and it was possible. The photo was a moment trapped in time. They were all so young and strong and good-looking. Mentally I began turning the hotshots thinner or fatter, grayer and weaker, making the changes that happen slowly over time or rapidly under fire. I had plenty of opportunity to study this photo because Mike had become lost in the one he held. His eyes were tearing, his hands trembling.

  “Mike?” I asked. “Are you all right?”

  He pressed his fist against his forehead and handed the photos back to me. “Joni was so beautiful,” he whispered. “So goddamn beautiful.”

  “She was.” I took a long time putting the photographs under my desk, giving him a chance to regroup. Then I turned the conversation back to Ramona. “Ramona needs help. Hiding out didn’t do her any good with Sheila McGraw.”

  Mike pulled himself out of his fog and became the competent firefighter once again. “What would you have done if you were her?”

  “I’d have come back and defended myself.” The Hamel way was to dive in and get it over with.

  “Yeah, well, you’re not Ramona. She knows what to expect from the Forest Service. If you’ve got a quota to fill, Indians and women are the first people hired. But they’re also the first people blamed when anything goes wrong. There’s still a lot of resistance to women in the Forest Service.”

  “The arson investigator is a woman.”

  “Her boss isn’t and her boss’s boss isn’t either. There are plenty of guys left in the Forest Service who believe women can’t hang. The arson investigators are going through the motions of investigating me and Eric Barker. They have to. But we’re their own and they don’t want to find us guilty. My guess is that if they charge anybody, it’ll be Ramona.”

  “You’ve talked to Sheila McGraw?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you tell her about the disagreement with Hogue?”

  “I told her we argued, but I didn’t tell her Hogue threatened to fire Ramona. Ramona’s got enough strikes against her in the Forest Service without that. A brown person is always a magnet for suspicion in a white person’s world.”

  “Ramona could get herself a lawyer.”

  “She can�
��t afford to pay a lawyer. So what would she get? A public defender?”

  “There are public defenders who do good work.”

  “Maybe, but the brains in your profession go for the real bucks, don’t they?” He had a good attitude toward Indians and women firefighters, but the usual contempt for lawyers.

  We’ve got Indians and women, too, I thought. But what I said was “Not always.”

  I looked around (ostentatiously, I thought) at the lack of trappings in my office, but he didn’t notice.

  “I loved Joni. I worked with Ramona. I have a lot of respect for both of them. If Ramona wants to handle this herself, that’s her decision.”

  “Is she still in town?”

  “Far as I know she’s home with her daughter. Officially, she’s on leave from the Forest Service.”

  “What brought you downtown?” I asked.

  “The gas bill was overdue and I had to go to the PNM office to pay it. Is that it?” He was like a kid with feet dangling from the chair pleading to be allowed to leave.

  “That’s it. Are you going home after you pay the bill?” I hoped he wasn’t headed for Ramona’s. I wanted to talk to her before he did, but if he knew that, Ramona’s trailer could well be his first stop.

  “No. I’m going to hike the La Luz Trail.” This was a precipitous climb to Sandia Peak full of switchbacks and drop-offs. There were places where you could look down and see the backs of hawks soaring below you. Most people arrived at the top panting, sweating, and out of breath after an all-day climb. Mike could probably make it up and back by nightfall.