Potshot

Chapter 50

I WAS BACK in Cawley Dark's office with the airconditioning humming steadily. Dark had on a blue oxford shirt today. With him was a red-haired guy with a big Adam's apple.

"This is Ray Butler," Dark said. "He's the water resource guy for the county."

Butler and I shook hands. We sat in the two chairs facing Dark's desk.

"I told Ray about your situation down in Potshot. He was real impressed that I was doing legwork for a Boston shoo-fly."

"Me too," I said.

Dark leaned back and made a go-ahead gesture at me with his right hand.

"What's the water situation in Potshot?" I said to Butler.

"The Arapaho Aquifer," he said. "Extends from around Salt City in the Sawtooths, maybe eighty-five miles down through Potshot."

"An aquifer is like an underground river?" I said.

"More like an underground sponge," Butler said.

He had a high, sharp voice.

"Which holds water, and can be caused to yield it through wells or springs. The water seeps through pores and fractures in consolidated rock, or through spaces between the particles if it's unconsolidated."

"Thank you," I said.

Leaning back in his chair with his fingers laced over his flat stomach, Dark might have been in a reverie, except that there was a hint of amusement in the way his eyes moved.

"There are, of course, confined aquifers and unconfined aquifers."

"Of course," I said. "Is the Arapaho Aquifer sufficient to the needs of Potshot?"

"Barely," Butler said.

"Does that limit development?"

"Of course it does," Butler keened.

Talking to the likes of me was clearly painful for him.

"What would happen if the water consumption exceeded the capacity of the aquifer?"

"It could not recharge at a pace sufficient to the need."

Everything Butler said sounded like sort of a high-pitched protest.

"So they'd run out of water."

"That's what I just said."

"Is there any possibility that there is another aquifer?"

"Of course there is. It would be presumptuous to suggest that we know everything about the substrata."

"Presumptuous," I said. "Is it likely?"

Butler paused. How to say this to an unscientific moron?

"It's possible," he said finally.

"And if there were an increase in the amount of available water," I said. "Then I assume it would support increased development."

"It would make it possible," Butler said, "where, right now, it is not."

"Anybody been looking for water down there?"

"No."

"How do you know?"

"In this environment, water is very precious," Butler said. "We cannot permit it to be exploited without supervision."

"So how would you know," I said.

"We'd know."

"How?"

Butler was silent. It was impossible that this rube had asked him a question he couldn't answer.

"Do you know how," I said to Dark.

Dark shook his head.

"There would be evidence of exploration," Butler said.

"When's the last time you looked?"

Again Butler was silent.

After awhile Dark said, "Well thank you very much, Ray, I don't believe we'll be needing anything else."

Butler stood and shook hands with me, sourly, I thought, and departed.

"Ray's never met a man he didn't like," Dark said.

"Be fun to drink beer with," I said.

"If you drank a real lot," Dark said.

"You able to get anyone to check the real estate?"

" 'Course I did," Dark said. "I'm the goddamned police."

"And?"

"And I had somebody go over to the county hall, like you wanted, and look up real estate transactions in and around Potshot. Here's a list."

Dark handed me the list.

"Recognize any names?" he said.

"Couple," I said. "Who's this Saguaro Development Associates?"

"Thought you'd ask me that," Dark said. He handed me another sheet. "Recognize any names?" he said.

"All of them," I said.

I took it and folded it over and tucked it in the inside pocket of my elegant toffee-colored summer silk tweed jacket, which I wore to conceal my somewhat less elegant, blue-barreled handgun.