“That’s a long detour. Did he give a reason?”
“He told me he could never be in the Four Corners area without seeing it.”
“Really? Did you follow up on that? Ask him why he liked Ship Rock so much?”
The moon was bright, Bernie remembered, and Ship Rock had resonated with beautiful mystery that night.
“No.”
The look Cordova gave her said he thought she’d made a mistake. “Go back to the conversation. Tell me everything you remember, even if it seems irrelevant or inconsequential.”
“He mentioned Northern Arizona University.” Bernie tapped a finger for each point. “He told me about his dog. He talked about staying at the Comfort Suites in Gallup.”
Cordova interrupted. “Did he mention any other specific places he had been?”
Bernie thought about it. “No. Oh, wait. He said he’d been in a meeting in Albuquerque. Mostly he talked about Flagstaff. Told me he worked in construction, mentioned that the town had a good brew pub, said he liked to walk with his dog around there. Nothing that seemed noteworthy.”
Cordova’s questions became less routine, more interesting. “At what point did he offer you a bribe?”
“Before he opened the trunk.”
“He offered you five hundred?”
“First a hundred. Then five hundred.”
“That’s right.” Cordova smiled at her. “Why?”
“Two reasons, I guess. I didn’t respond when he made the first offer. Maybe he would have offered more, but he said that was all the cash he had. After I saw the rifle in the trunk, he told me I could have that, too.”
“Anything else stand out from the encounter?”
“Before he offered me the bribe, he asked how I found out.”
Cordova looked up from his notes. “Found out about what?”
“That’s what I wondered. Why are you guys interested in Miller?”
Cordova clicked off the little recorder and placed it gently in his pocket.
“I can’t tell you. But we’re glad you stopped him. It looks like you did everything by the book.”
“Tell that to Largo. Everyone at the station is giving me grief about confiscating two boxes of dirt.”
“Gives them something to talk about. Our man is examining the recorder. If nothing else, he can get it working for next time. I’ll be in touch. Let me know if something else occurs to you.”
“So has the crew looked at Miller’s car yet?”
“They went over it yesterday.”
“What did they find?”
“It was clean.”
“Clean?”
“Well, besides the dirt you found, there was a bunch of dog hair.” Cordova grinned at her. “I can’t say much except Miller is on our radar, and your instincts about him being up to something are probably correct.”
“Did your guys look at that dirt? It could have been contaminated. Miller told me he was in construction. Maybe someone hired him to cover up some illegal spills, chemical dumping, uranium tailings, stuff like that. Did you have it tested?”
Cordova sighed. “You don’t give up, do you? I’m not sure exactly what tests they did on the dirt, Manuelito, but don’t worry about it.”
“They might have missed something. You could—”
He shook his head before she’d finished the request. “They did whatever was required. End of story.” Cordova stood, letting her know the interview was over. “Tell Largo he can get rid of that dirt. Unless you want some as a souvenir.”
After Cordova had gone, Bernie wondered what to do next. Maybe one more look at the evidence would inspire her.
Sandra gave her the key again, then picked up her water bottle and took a sip. The dispatcher was on a new water diet. The idea was that if you drank enough, your stomach would be full and you wouldn’t be hungry. As far as Bernie could tell, it also worked by requiring you to use energy in more frequent trips to the restroom. “I guess that guy was a rock collector or a dirt collector or something.”
“Are you going to give me a hard time about this, too?”
“Not really. I think you’ll catch enough grief without me.”
The boxes sat on a table next to the cabinet, lined up side by side. Bernie leaned over to examine the first one. It was maybe four inches deep, with “Foodclub” printed on the outside, the kind of container canned goods came in for stocking in grocery stores. Someone, probably Miller, had shoveled in dirt to fill it halfway. Now that she had better light, Bernie spotted grayish sticks, a shiny beetle carapace, partially disintegrated paper, a few tiny cacti, eroded lava rocks the size of the jawbreakers she liked as a kid, and black specks that looked like seeds. She put her face close to the dirt and inhaled deeply. No chemical odor she could detect.
She looked at the second box, spending another ten minutes with it, finding similar contents and nothing that smelled odd. The mystery remained unsolved. She relocked the room, turned in the key, and came up with an idea.
Largo looked up from his computer when she rapped on the doorframe.
“How did it go with Cordova?”
“Well, I learned that Miller is some kind of untouchable the feds or DEA or somebody has on their radar. Bribing a tribal officer is small potatoes. Even if I’d had it on tape, I think Cordova would have dismissed it.”
“Don’t let it bother you.”
“Cordova says they’re done with the dirt, but I have an idea, sir.”
“Somehow that does not surprise me.”
“I’d like to have the soil tested for contamination. You know—oil spills, uranium debris, chemical leaks. Stuff like that.”
“And you know what the budget is like. And the feds already cleared it.”
“Cordova gave me the impression they just looked for drugs.”
Largo hesitated. “You can’t let it go, can you?”
“It bugs me.”
“If you can talk someone into doing the tests for free, go ahead. I wanna keep you happy, Manuelito.”
“Would you mind if I took some of those little cacti home? Maybe I can get them to grow.”
After making a few calls, she found a contact at the San Juan County extension office who knew someone who could do the soil testing as part of another batch of samples he was working on. He’d come by for the dirt that afternoon. If the boxes didn’t contain anything special, she would stop obsessing about them. If she came up with something and outsmarted Cordova—well, a little humility might be good for the man.
When she went into the break room to get cups to put the plants in, Bigman was alone at the table with a sandwich in front of him. “I hear that was some haul you came up with the other night. If it had been me, I would have made that scumbag tell me where that dirt came from and drive out there and put it back. Did you ask him to empty out his shoes and take off his socks? Maybe there was some sand lurking between his toes.”
“You bet I did. You can’t be too careful.”
“Speaking of lurking, when is your husband coming back from zombie duty?”