On Deadly Ground (23 page)
Afterword
September brought relief from the intense summer heat. The tourist season was winding down, autumn was around the corner, and the deer hunt was in full swing. It had been nearly three weeks since the showdown at Becky Eddins' home. The gunshot wound Books had sustained, courtesy of Peter “the Rose” Deluca, was on the mend. In retrospect, he'd been lucky. The bullet hadn't shattered bone nor had it struck a major artery. He had endured a low grade infection in the leg, but ten days of antibiotics had cured it. The leg chronically ached, so he was forced temporarily to use a cane to get around.
Becky Eddins and Ned Hunsaker became self-appointed managers of his rehabilitation program. They'd hovered like mother hens since his release from the hospital and elevated the art of well-intentioned nagging to a whole new level. Even his father, Bernie, had lent a hand.
After the autopsy, the Utah Medical Examiner's Office released the body of Peter Deluca. Despite a concerted effort, nobody had been able to locate family, and consequently nobody claimed the body. His remains were eventually returned to Las Vegas, where he was buried in a pauper's grave in a city-owned cemetery.
Books still hadn't been cleared to resume work in the field, but in the last days, inactivity and sheer boredom drove him to BLM headquarters, where he pestered Alexis Runyon for something to do. She obliged by assigning him mundane clerical jobs that kept him busy and out of her office.
On this night, Books left headquarters late. He stopped at the town market and purchased two bouquets of fresh flowers. One was for Becky Eddins, who had invited him to dinner, and the other was for his mother's grave. He parked the Yukon near the cemetery office and hobbled, cane in hand, the short distance to the grave. He laid the flowers across his mother's headstone and sat down on the lawn next to her. He stayed for a while. When he glanced up, Ned Hunsaker was striding toward him.
“Evening, Ned.”
“J.D.”
“I'll bet I know what brought you here.”
Hunsaker grunted, “Same as you. I figured it was time to tidy up around the graves.”
“Yup.”
Neither man spoke for a time. Books broke the silence. “Something on your mind, Ned?”
“Sure is. I've been meaning to talk with you when it felt like the time was right.”
“Well, I guess that makes two of us because I've got something to say to you, too.”
“You do?” said Ned, looking puzzled.
“Yeah. I never thanked you for saving my life. If you hadn't been on guard duty at Becky's that night, I'd have been toast. So thanks for saving my life.”
“You don't need to thank me, J.D. If you hadn't called and given me the heads up, Becky and I wouldn't have had the opportunity to set up the welcoming committee for Mr. Deluca.” Hunsaker cleared his throat. “Besides, you didn't think I'd let anything happen to my own son, do you?”
For a moment, Books thought he hadn't heard Hunsaker correctly. Then he looked the old man in the eyes, and he knew. “I'm your son.”
Hunsaker looked away into the distance. Tears filled his eyes. “Before you say anything, please hear me out.”
Books didn't know what to think or say. “Okay,” he mumbled.
“Look, I don't really know how to explain this, so I'm just gonna say it. Thirty-three years ago, your mother and I had a brief affair. Lord, I hate that word âaffair.' It sounds so cheap. Anyway, it didn't last long, at least the physical part didn't. But nine months later, you came along. I want you to know that I loved your mother until the day she died. And I'm still in love with her.”
Books interrupted. “What about Bernie? Did he know?”
“No. Bernie never knew, and your mother and I agreed we'd never tell him or anyone else. And that's a promise we kept all these years. It was only on your mother's deathbed that she gave me permission to tell you. In the end, she left it up to me.”
“But Ned, if you loved each other, why didn't you get divorced and marry? People would have understood.”
“No, son, they wouldn't have, not in a small Mormon town like this one. We considered it, but never very seriously. Your mother was married. I was married with a daughter by then. It became a secret we carried for thirty-three years.”
“What made you decide to tell me this now?”
“Selfish reasons, mostly. Having you back in Kanab and near me, I just couldn't bear to keep the secret any longer. I think your mother would have wanted you to know. And in the end, I think you deserved to know. Truth is, there was a risk in telling you the truth. I probably would have told you sooner except I was scaredâscared you might hate me and your mother. I know how your own marriage ended, and I know how you feel about your father's indiscretions.”
Books was stunned. He didn't know how to take this revelation, how he should feel knowing his mother and Ned had kept this secret from him his entire life. It meant that his sister, Maggie, was really his half-sister, and that Ned's daughter was his half-sister as well. And what about the man who'd raised him all these years never knowing he was really someone else's son? Maybe for Bernie there was poetic justice in all this, thought Books. The philandering father who had raised a son for thirty-three years, never knowing the boy wasn't his own. Should Books tell him now, after all this time? Probably not.
***
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the State of Utah convened a federal grand jury in St. George. In recent days, the grand jury had unsealed indictments against Victor Calenti Jr. and Michael Calenti. The brothers had been charged with three counts of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in the deaths of David Greenbriar as well as Ivan and George Gadasky. They were also charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit attempted first-degree murder in the shootings of Books and Brian Call.
Call was recovering from his own gunshot wound in the medical unit of the Washington County Jail in St. George, where he was being held without bail. As far as Books knew, the final details of his plea deal with the prosecutor still had not been worked out. He was widely expected to be the star witness in the Calenti brothers' trial.
At the behest of federal prosecutors, the assets of Nevada Mining & Manufacturing had been temporarily frozen. Rumor had it that the feds planned to bring additional charges using federal racketeering statutes. The brothers were being held without bail in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Detention Center awaiting extradition to Utah.
***
In Kanab, little was being said publicly about the fate of Neil Eddins, but the gossip mongers were out in force. The local newspaper, citing unnamed sources close to the investigation, revealed Darby Greenbriar's pregnancy and named Neil Eddins as the father. Like most religions, the Mormon Church took a dim view of marital infidelity, so his future in the Church was uncertain at best. And despite his impending fatherhood, Eddins' wife of more than thirty years remained stoically at his side. From what Books had heard, Darby had decided to have the baby and raise it herself. Only time would tell how that would play out.
Nobody had seen or heard from Lance Clayburn since his abrupt departure several weeks earlier. As far as anybody knew, he was still back east in New England visiting family. Maybe he'd decided that spending his life surrounded by the cloak of family wealth and privilege wasn't such a bad idea after all.
Sometimes tragedy lurks at the confluence of fate and plain bad luck. One week after the burial of Ivan and George Gadasky, a neighbor stopped by the Gadasky home to look in on Ronnie. When he couldn't find him in the house, the neighbor walked over to the barn. He found Ronnie hanging from a crossbeam, a step stool overturned under his feet. The town gathered for yet another funeral. This time, however, there was a collective sense of something, guilt or shame perhapsâa sense that this time the community had failed to watch over the life of a shattered boy whose family had been destroyed in a calculated act of violence.
***
Books stood lost in thought under the shaded portico at Becky Eddins' home, beer in hand, grilling steaks. They were alone. Her son was spending the night with Grandma and Grandpa Eddins. Becky was watching Books from the picnic table over a glass of Shiraz.
“Are you feeling all right, cowboy?”
“Sorry. I'm fine. I guess I just drifted off someplace there for a minute.”
“Maybe you ought to sit down and take a load off. I grill a mean steak.”
Books lifted his beer in salute. “I'll bet you do, but I feel fine, really I do, and I've got two medium rare steaks coming right up.”
“Penny for your thoughts. What were you thinking about, anyway?”
“A little melancholy, I guess. I've been home for more than a month and look at what's happened. We've had three people murdered, a fourth committed suicide, the Gadasky and Greenbriar families destroyed, and one dead contract killer left on our hands. By comparison, it makes the mean streets of Denver look tame.”
Books steered clear of the startling admission earlier that evening from Ned Hunsaker.
“None of that was your fault, J.D. The community was lucky to have you here to help sort it out. I don't know where we'd have been without you. Charley Sutter would never have figured it out. Lance Clayburn would have been arrested and prosecuted for a crime he didn't commit. Brian Call wouldn't have been arrested, and the Calenti brothers would have gotten away with murder and then some.”
“I suppose that's true, but think about where things stand today. After everything that's happened, this community is still deeply divided over land management issues. The Green organizations hate the locals, the locals hate the environmentalists, and both sides dislike and distrust the federal governmentâone big happy family, wouldn't you say?”
“There's truth in that, J.D., but I don't think the picture is as negative as you paint it. There are examples of cooperationâof both sides showing a willingness to sit down at the table and talk. At least that's a start.”
Becky was right about that and Books knew it. So on this night, Books would happily settle for the company of a beautiful woman, a cold beer, and a good steak. The rest of it could wait.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
The above disclaimer aside, many of the environmental issues raised in the story are very real and extremely contentious throughout the West. Perhaps a few statistics are in order. The federal government owns more than 650 million acres across the U.S. Approximately 90% of that land lies in a dozen or so western states, including my home state of Utah. In Utah, the federal government owns 70% of the land. In neighboring Nevada, it's about 76%.
In the early 1970s, a movement that started in Nevada quickly spread throughout many western states. This organized resistance to federal public land use policies became known as the Sagebrush Rebellion. The Sagebrush Rebellion's goal was to wrestle control of public lands away from the federal government and place it in the hands of state and local government. Supporters of the Sagebrush Rebellion have argued that federal lands rightfully belong to the states and that states, not the federal government, can more effectively manage these lands.
During the past thirty years, the Sagebrush Rebellion has lost momentum but has never completely gone away. The principal reason for the failure of the Sagebrush Rebellion was the inability of the movement's proponents to sustain the legal argument that federal public lands truly belong to the states. Thus, public lands have remained under the federal government's control through oversight by federal agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management.
Unfortunately the rancorous debate continues. Its intensity is still as strong as it was 30 years ago. As we go to press, I am reminded of the similarities between the ongoing public land use debate and the virulent diatribe surrounding the discussion of health care reform in America.
With the Sagebrush Rebellion as backdrop, I chose to create a fictitious character named John David (J.D.) Books. As the protagonist in the story, J.D. is employed as a Law Enforcement Ranger in the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a branch of the Department of the Interior. The BLM has jurisdiction over more than 260 million acres of public land located primarily in the aforementioned dozen western states.
In telling this story, I attempted to keep my personal views outside the framework of the plot and story. I wanted to allow the characters to express their own opinions and points of view through the use of dialogue. Ultimately, you, as readers, will decide how well I accomplished that.
Michael Norman
Salt Lake City
October, 2009
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