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fathers weren’t about to accept a young Mexican as the first woman sheriff of Posadas County. They needn’t have worried, since that’s not the way the cards were stacked, anyway.
    Still, there was no trace of gloat in his expression when Sam Carter pulled the white piece of typing paper out of his pocket. I knew what it was before he handed it to me but took it nonetheless, looking at it as carefully as I had at the first one.
    I read it through, wondering how many copies the author had printed.
    “What do you think?” Carter asked.
    I took a deep breath and pushed my plate off to one side. “It’s enough to give me gas, I’ll tell you that much.”
    “You don’t seem surprised.”
    I looked at him for a long minute, then said, “I don’t guess I am. One of your brethren got a copy and shared it with me earlier in the day.”
    “You mean one of the other commissioners?” he asked, and I nodded. “Which one?”
    “It probably doesn’t matter,” I said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if all five of you got the same thing. Photocopies are cheap. You have the envelope?”
    “Envelope?” he said.
    “I assume it came to you in an envelope?”
    “No…well, yes. It did. I didn’t even think about that. I’ll look for it.”
    “That would be helpful.” I scanned the message again, and if my memory served me correctly, it was identical to Gray’s.
    “Well,” Carter said, and watched as I carefully refolded the letter and placed it on top of my hat. “What do you think?”
    I shrugged, hoping I looked far more casual than I felt. “It’s always welcome when concerned citizens give us these nice little tips,” I said, and smiled.
    “This is serious, though,” Sam Carter said.
    “Of course it is.”
    “If this got out, it’d be a real mess.”
    “Yes, it would. Did you show this to anyone else?”
    He shook his head vehemently.
    “But I tell you,” I said, and then stopped to take a deep drink of my iced tea, “it’s going to be all over the front page before we’re through, no matter which way it goes. The last thing we’re going to tolerate is a crooked cop…or someone writing libel about honest cops. We’ll find out which way it falls, and then you watch the headlines.”
    Sam Carter leaned forward a bit. “You can’t just sort of…” and his voice trailed off as he made little chopping motions with his right hand. I didn’t have a clue what he was trying to suggest, and I didn’t want to pursue it.
    “No,” I said. “I can’t. That’s not the way I work.” I smiled again, without much humor.
    Sam reared back as if he’d seen an apparition seated across from him, maybe Don Juan in person. “You think someone would…” He stopped in midthought.
    “Maybe they would, and maybe they wouldn’t,” I said. I pushed myself out of the booth, dropped a ten-dollar bill beside my plate, and patted Sam Carter on the shoulder as I stepped past him. “I try not to think too much at all these days, Sam. You take care.”

Chapter Five
    Pounded into fragrance by the heat during the day, the prairie collected back its vapors when the sun set and the air lost its heat. I breathed deeply, savoring it all. The Blazer ticked gently as it cooled, parked with engine off, windows open, and police radio turned to a whisper.
    About five miles southwest of Posadas, New Mexico 56 passed by the remains of Moore—a couple old wooden buildings long since wilted into disuse, an abandoned truck or two, the remains of a 1924 Moline tractor with steel wheels that I had once considered salvaging for restoration.
    Just west of Moore, the highway bridged the Rio Salinas, a broad dry wash that in thirty years I’d never seen carry water. The grandly named arroyo formed the western border of Arturo Mesa, and I had bumped the truck up an abandoned two-track on the flank of the mesa until I had a view of the highway below.
    To the northeast, the village lights shimmered in the last haze of the dwindling summer