“This man Hanratty couldn’t have done it?”
“No. He works for Dave Roebuck’s brother, John T., and the other hands swore he never left John T.’s ranch that day.”
“What about a stranger, a drifter?”
“Highly unlikely,” Hoxie said. “Dave and Anna’s ranch is far off any main road. When his body was found his wallet was untouched; it contained fifty-seven dollars in cash. And nothing was disturbed or missing from inside the house.”
“Well, there couldn’t have been any evidence to incriminate Anna, either. Otherwise she’d have been arrested and charged.”
“Circumstantial evidence, but not enough to satisfy the district attorney.”
“Where did she say she was at the time of the killings?”
“At the old Bootstrap Mine.”
“What was she doing at a mine?”
“Looking for gold.”
“... She was a miner as well as a rancher?”
“It was a hobby with her,” Hoxie said. “The Bootstrap has been shut down for thirty years, but there are traces of gold left in it. The mine and most of her ranch are on BLM land, less than a dozen miles apart.”
“BLM?”
“Public land. Owned by the Bureau of Land Management. Most sagebrush ranchers around here lease grazing land and grazing rights from the BLM. It’s a common practice in Nevada.”
“So she went alone to the mine that day?”
“Yes.”
“And no one saw her there?”
“No one.”
“How long was she away from the ranch?”
“Three hours or so, she claimed.”
“And when she returned she found the bodies?”
“Her husband’s body. Sheriff Espinosa and one of his deputies found Tess. Anna showed little emotion when she called them, and hardly any more when Tess was found. In public opinion that was another strike against her.”
“Shock,” Messenger said. “Or she was the kind of person who internalizes pain and grief.”
“Perhaps.”
“Why was everyone so willing to believe the worst of her? Was she disliked for some reason?”
“Misunderstood, rather than disliked. Anna was a difficult person to know or understand. Except for her family she preferred her own company.”
“Lonely. A lonely person.”
“Private, in any case. Much more so after the tragedy. She refused to see or talk to anyone, even her sister.”
“Sister?”
“Younger sibling. Dacy Burgess.”
“Does Dacy Burgess live here?”
“On a ranch not far from Anna’s.”
“Where would that be, exactly?”
“Salt Pan Valley, west of town. Dacy and her son are alone out there now. Too large a place for the two of them to manage by themselves, really, but they can’t afford a full-time hired hand anymore. Times are hard here. As everywhere these days.”
“Is she Anna’s only living relative?”
“Yes,” Hoxie said, “she and the boy. But if you’re planning to see her, I’d advise you to go carefully. Dacy’s cut from the same cloth as Anna was. She keeps to herself, doesn’t trust strangers, and doesn’t like to talk about what happened.”
“But she does believe in her sister’s innocence?”
“At first she did. But when Anna disappeared... no, I doubt even she does any longer.”
“Does anyone around here believe in it?”
“Jaime Orozco.”
“Who’s he?”
“A retired ranch hand who worked for the Burgesses for several years. He also did odd jobs for Dave and Anna.”
“And he’s the only one?”
“Who believes Anna was innocent? I’m afraid so.”
“Which puts you in the majority, too.”
Hoxie sighed. “I’d like to say otherwise, but I can’t find it in my heart to credit any other explanation. Not now.”
“Why not now?”
“Anna’s suicide, of course. Wouldn’t you say that was an admission of guilt, Mr. Messenger?”
“No,” he said, “I wouldn’t. It’s just as possible she killed herself because she was innocent.”
The road leading from Beulah to Salt Pan Valley was one of the two graveled ones he’d taken earlier. He drove past the crumbling hillside diggings, out into the desert another mile and a half until he came to a Y fork. Hoxie had told him to take the left branch. He did that, jounced up onto higher ground over a series of low ridges spotted with yucca trees. Dust boiled up behind him, so that he was able to see little else when he glanced into the rearview mirror — as if he were towing a parachute on invisible wires. Sand and gravel thrown up by the Subaru’s tires peppered the undercarriage.
Two miles of this, and the road dipped again into a wide bowl-shaped valley bounded by tawny hills that seemed taller and had sharper edges. The valley floor was flat, thickly covered with sagebrush and greasewood and scattered clumps of cactus, scored here and there by shallow washes. In the distance, where the land dipped low, a patch of white shimmered and glinted under the harsh sun: a sink full of salt deposits that had given the valley its name. Barbed-wire fences were strung along here, and power lines angled in from the south. Lean black and brown range cattle grazed in the washes and around the sage and greasewood scrub.
Off to his left he could make out a jumble of ranch buildings set within a grove of cottonwoods. A graveled access road veered off that way. When he reached the intersection he saw a closed gate inside a square wooden head frame, a burnt-wood sign on the head frame’s cross-piece that said ROEBUCK in the same style lettering as on the cemetery marker. Old Bud Roebuck’s ranch, according to Hoxie. Dave and John T.’s father. It had been willed to John T. alone, evidently because of some falling-out between the old man and his youngest son. Hoxie hadn’t been inclined to elaborate.
Messenger drove on. A few hundred yards beyond the turnoff to John T. Roebuck’s ranch, the road surface worsened. Instead of gravel there was sand-coated hardpan, washboarded and spotted with chuck holes. He reduced his speed to less than thirty for fear of damaging something along the Subaru’s underbelly.
After another mile an unmarked track cut away to the right, past a weathered wooden storage shed. He went on past by fifty yards, then on impulse braked and reversed through hanging plumes of dust to where he could turn onto the track. He sat for a few seconds, making up his mind. The side road led to Anna Roebuck’s ranch. Dacy Burgess lived another mile and a half along the main road, at the far end of the valley where the tawny hills rose bare and rough-edged against the hazy sky.
“Nothing to see at Ms. Lonesome’s except ghosts,” he said aloud. “What’s the point?” But he made the turn anyway. Admit it, Messenger: It was in your mind to do this all along.
The track led him over bumpy ground, around a hillock, then for three-quarters of a mile through a shallow canyon. When it climbed out of the canyon there was rusty barbed-wire fencing on his right. Past another turn, more fencing stretched away on the opposite side; and at the top of a short rise the roadway ended at a closed wood-and-wire gate. He parked and stepped out into a windless hush. Motionless hush, too: It was like being confronted with a desert hologram, everything three-dimensional yet not quite real. Still Life with Ghost Ranch. The stillness was so complete the click of the car door as he shut it had a loud, brittle quality.
The gate was secured with a length of heavy chain and a padlock, both relatively new. A hand-lettered sign on the gate post read: NO TRESPASSING. KEEP OUT OR ELSE! A hundred yards beyond, in a hollow that ran out into a sage flat, were the ranch buildings: small, squatty house shaded by tamarisk trees, a low-roofed structure with a wire enclosure at one end, a shed not much larger than an outhouse (maybe it was an outhouse), and at the edge of the flat, a barn and the remains of a corral, a windmill, and a huge galvanized water tank. The windmill lay broken on its side, collapsed or blown over or pulled down. He couldn’t see the well from up here; it must be behind the house.