Page 57 of Ransom
"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. Hefiled 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 firsttime 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."
