I said, “That’s just him talking. I’ll get him to agree, and when he does, you need to be ready. He’s not going to wait. We don’t have the time to waste going to New Mexico.”
“Pike, it won’t take long. All we need to do is confirm or deny the presence of an indigenous civilization, then write a report. He’ll do the rest. Just let me give him a call and figure out the left and right limits.”
Knowing I was going to lose, I said, “We go, and you still have to train in the evenings. Okay?”
She gazed at the ceiling as if praying for patience. She said, “Let me call first. It might all be a moot point.”
A. J. Sweetwater hung up the phone and said, “They’ve agreed to come.”
The man he knew as Chris said, “And will they be able to stop the dam?”
A.J. hoisted his jeans up over his hips and said, “They can slow it down. Long enough for you to do what you want.”
“That’s sounds suspiciously like what you said originally. When I paid you the first time. Your word alone, as the president of the Historical and Preservation Society, would cause a pause in the work. That didn’t happen. Now you want me to pay more money.”
Sweetwater heard a veiled threat and wondered if Chris was lying to him about why he wanted the dam stopped. Claiming to be a member of one of the many nutty UFO groups that clung to Roswell like a bad rash, he’d stated there was evidence of an alien crash on the rancher’s land and his group wanted to find it. But he acted like none of the alien groupies that Sweetwater had met in the past. Slightly off-kilter folks, wearing clothes out of date and always talking about the latest theory on the Roswell incident so long ago, they could be spotted from across the street. Not so with Chris. No, wearing what looked like expensive clothing for a safari, Chris rarely said a word and had a cloud of menace about him.
Sweetwater said, “I’ve never had a rancher say no to me in the past. Most everyone lets us at least explore for Native American artifacts. We bring in these experts and we’ll have official paperwork backing up our claim.”
“Why them? Why not someone from here? Aren’t there government agencies that do this?”
“Well, yeah, but I didn’t think you wanted any government types involved. On top of that, we need someone from out of town. The stuff I planted will fool an outsider, but someone who makes a living looking at New Mexico archeology will know it’s not kosher. I can call them off if you want.”
“No. No government. When will they get here?”
“They said they’d fly in today, so I can see them tomorrow morning.”
“Okay. I’ll pay for their services, but they’d better slow down the process. My people need some time to search. If this doesn’t work, you’d better learn to scuba dive.”
Sweetwater smiled at the joke, the grin sliding off his face at the absolute lack of humor on Chris’s face.
Chapter 3
Jennifer tried one more time to break Pike out of his foul mood, but he was having none of it. He’d climbed behind the wheel of their rented pickup full of gear, and let her ride shotgun as the sole conversationalist with Mr. A. J. Sweetwater in his own Ford F-150.
An affable farmer-looking guy with a wispy mustache and a pronounced Adam’s apple, Sweetwater was dressed like everyone else she’d seen in Roswell — blue jeans, leather belt, plaid shirt, and straw cowboy hat. He didn’t seem like he had a doctorate in American history, but that’s what he claimed.
Pike had been grouchy since they’d woken up this morning. She’d walked down the hall and knocked on his door, the cheap hotel varnish doing nothing to add weight to the seriousness she felt about their mission. He’d answered buttoning his shirt, noticeably having not shaved. She knew he’d done it because it aggravated her. He’d been trying to push her buttons since they’d flown out from Charleston the day before.
They’d gone down to the free breakfast and Pike’s attitude had grown worse.
“This is the breakfast? Some bananas with black spots and a box of doughnuts? I should have found the hotel.”
Now getting a little piqued, she said, “This is what Mr. Sweetwater recommended. I didn’t think you tough guys cared where you stayed.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like paying for bed bugs. I should have moved us last night when we saw the place.”
“You couldn’t. This is where they’re shipping the ground-penetrating radar.”
He’d said, “Ground-penetrating what?”
“Pike, it’s an archaeological dig. I can’t just look at the dirt. We need to see if there’s anything under the ground. Walls, wells, graves, that sort of thing.”
“Who’s paying for this shit?”
She told him. And that’s when he’d really become grumpy.
Jennifer, riding with Sweetwater, made sure their pickup with Pike at the wheel was still behind them, then turned back around to the front just as Sweetwater took a left turn off Highway 2, heading east on a dirt road, bouncing along and leaving a dust cloud like a mini-tornado in their wake. She said, “How much farther?”
Sweetwater said, “’Bout ten minutes, give or take. How long will it take to get this done?”
“Depends on the size of the plot. From what you said, we should be able to finish in a day. I did my research on the flight over, reading through the archives from the Office of Archaeological Studies at the Museum of New Mexico, so I’m up to speed on what to expect.”
Sweetwater looked a little queasy at the statement, something Jennifer tucked away for no good reason. Just a tidbit that was worth filing in her subconscious. She continued, “As a matter of fact, they’ve done quite a few surveys around here, locating sites from both the Ceramic and Archaic periods. Why didn’t you just have them do the investigation? It was no trouble getting them on the phone, and they seemed a little surprised that you’d brought us in.”
Sweetwater looked downright nauseous at her words. He fumbled a little with the radio dial, trying to get something to come in, then said, “Well, that’s mighty big of them to say that now. All I care about is preventing the loss of indigenous artifacts, like an Apache migratory campsite or some other settlement. When I talked to them, they said they’d put it in the queue for survey, but that wasn’t going to work with the dam being built.”
Jennifer took Sweetwater’s words at face value, catching Pike’s visage behind the wheel in the side mirror, all venom and disgust at the entire effort, bouncing along behind them and eating all their dust. She focused back to the front, smothering a smile.
She’d spent a great amount of time trying to figure out what made him tick, and had given up. Whenever she thought he was intolerant or chauvinistic, he would end up surprising her, showing a softness that was completely out of character.
He could be more trying than any man she’d ever met, but she held the edge and she knew it. Pike could threaten all day long, but there was a connection with him that was real. She knew, beyond the grumpiness, no matter what she did, he liked her. Which was a high school way of saying he had a crush on her, and also pretty much summed up their relationship. A sort of twisted juvenile bond between grown adults. A stagnant level she tolerated because his ability to connect had been short-circuited by the loss of his family. Pike might be capable of killing men with a soda straw, but he had no skills operating in her world, and it was so easy to twist him about, something she enjoyed. Up to a point.