Free Hermit's Peak by Michael McGarrity

to cover his personal expenses, so having him living at home wasn’t much of a burden. But Gabe still walked around most of the time with a nearly empty wallet.
    He looked at the clock on the kitchen stove, pickedup the cordless phone, and called Officer Russell Thorpe at home.
    â€œWake up, rookie,” Gabe said when Thorpe answered. “I need you to run some paperwork down to Chief Kerney in Santa Fe. Pick it up at my place.”
    â€œThen what?”
    â€œSince you’ve just volunteered to work on your days off, call me when you get back. We’ll do one more sweep of the mesa. I still think we may have missed something.”
    â€œTen-four.”
    Thorpe picked up the reports, departed, and Gabe headed out. He took the paved road past the county detention center and followed it to where the pavement ended. Several miles in on the dusty dirt road he passed through San Geronimo.
    Once a prosperous ranching community, in the late nineteenth century the village had spawned Las Gorras Blancas, the White Caps. It was a secret militant organization of Hispanic ranchers determined to drive out the Anglo settlers who had encroached on the old Mexican land grant with the help of corrupt politicians.
    Wearing white hoods to conceal their identities, Las Gorras Blancas raided at night, burning barns and haystacks, ripping down fences, and shooting the land grabbers’ livestock. They staged midnight rallies on the Las Vegas Plaza, circulated petitions to the citizens, and even had a leader elected to the territorial legislature. But they couldn’t stop the bleeding away of the land to the Anglo newcomers, and by the turn of the century much of it was gone forever.
    Gabe thought about the recent rise in property crimes and wondered if, a century later, a modern version of Las Gorras Blancas was riding again. It was worth thinking about; land prices were climbing and the few old Hispanic families left in the valley were having a hell of a time paying their property taxes. Maybe somebody had gotten pissed off enough to start ripping off the latest wave of Anglo immigrants.
    The morning sky changed from hot pink to flat gray as the sun broke above the horizon and disappeared behind a low, thick cloud.
    Chief Kerney had asked Gabe to check out the owner of the cabin to the north of his property. He turned onto the dirt track that led to Carl Boaz’s cabin in the meadow. Finding out about Boaz had been easy. His property had been added to the fire department response grid map after the cabin had been built. Supposedly, Boaz lived there with a girlfriend and her young son.
    If Gabe hadn’t been driving a 4 x 4 state police Ram Charger, he would have stopped and walked in—the road was that bad. He made the last turn near the top of the hill and saw two crows sitting on the top of a steel gate. Above, several more circled lazily at low altitude. He looked at a mound on the ground, and looked again.
    He got out, walked to the mound, and bent over it. A dead man looked up at him with blank eyes. Cold nighttime temperatures had left the body covered with frost. The bullet hole in his forehead was perfectlyround, and his face was tattooed with pinpoint hemorrhages from powder burns.
    He’d been shot at very close range. Gabe put on a pair of plastic gloves, tilted the body slightly, searched the back pockets for a wallet, found it, and looked for a driver’s license. Issued by the state of California, it identified the dead man as Carl Boaz.
    Gabe stayed low, keyed his hand-held radio, and called in the crime. The crows didn’t move from the gate until he returned to the vehicle. Then they hopped away a few yards and perched on the top strand of the wire fence.
    He crouched behind the open door and scanned the meadow with binoculars. Approaching the cabin would be risky. He would have to cover at least a hundred yards of open space from the gate to the cabin. There might be an armed hostage