Half a century ago, he died with a grimace of nightmarish horror on his face. It’s time to unravel the mystery of this death [FRAGMENT]

The Rio Grande flowing along the edge of the city, irrigated fields, snow-capped mountain peaks in the distance – Socorro didn’t look that bad at all. But it was still a flat network of criss-crossing streets—hot as hell at that—and as she reached her destination, the desert wind blew several steppe runners across the street, reminding her of where she was. She parked outside the sheriff’s office, and as she took her bag out of the trunk, she heard the long, pitiful whistle of the train, which only added to her sense of emptiness and loneliness. It was places like this, she thought, that the FBI sent agents who failed. And for the hundredth time she told herself that she had a rather promising case.

The sheriff’s office, on the other hand, was in a nice unbaked brick building that surrounded the cracked asphalt of the parking lot that had been patched so many times it had patchy patterns. Even though it was late September, her hiking boots were sticking to the tarred surface.

The sheriff immediately came out to meet her, and she had the first shock of the morning. She had expected to see a wiry, elderly mustache with a saggy face, but Watts, a man about her own age – twenty-three – was tall, thin, and handsome as hell. He had 33 curly black hair, a smooth forehead, brown eyes and a movie star smile, and his beauty was accentuated by the two antique revolvers he wore on his hips. With a bandaged earlobe and a fancy cowboy hat trimmed with horsehair band, he seemed as surprised to see her as she was to see him.

When they left the office, he suggested that they take the police car. He started to open the door for her, but seemed to think it was an inappropriate gesture and quickly backed away. It was obvious she had shattered all his ideas about female FBI agents.

“We’ll pick up Charles Fountain on the way,” he announced. “He’s a lawyer and knows a lot about the history of the area. It’s a walking encyclopedia. I thought he might shed some light on the matter, answer a few questions.

She hadn’t expected a civilian to accompany them, but she couldn’t protest.

“Thank you, Sheriff.

Watts nodded and started the Jeep Cherokee repainted with a large sheriff’s star. She considered going “you” with him, but decided not to. It was better to keep a formal distance.

“I heard you talked to Pick,” he said as they drove slowly through the city.

“He tried to kill you, and you call him by his first name?”

I’m surprised. He laughed.

“Well, he wanted to, but he didn’t succeed, and I don’t hold a grudge for long. He’s a bad shooter. He just got lucky. – Definitely. Lucky you didn’t kill him.

– NO. If I wanted to hit him in the center of mass, I would have.

He said it completely freely, without embarrassment or conceit. She frowned. Did that mean he waited for Rivers to fire first? She figured it would be awkward to ask him straight out, so she said,

– By the way. It’s hard not to notice these revolvers with ivory grips.

Watts nodded again, this time with a little pride.

“These are Colt Peacemakers. Repeatable, with a single pin bobbin case. Around 1890. They belonged to my grandfather. He won’t say where he got them.

He threw up his arms.

– It’s complete.

– And the holsters? The handles of the revolvers face forward. Haven’t you heard of cross-drawing? I don’t think they teach you that at Quantico.

She didn’t answer. She would have chosen her Glock instead of those antiques, but she wasn’t about to argue with him.

“But I still wonder why Rivers shot me,” he added. “He’s been clean for a couple of years. And this corpse interested him to such an extent that he was ready to risk it and put everything on one card. I wonder why.

He parked in front of a modest, well-kept house, but had not even gotten out when a man burst through the door, and Corrie had another surprise of the day. Instead of the western lawyer she’d expected to see – one with a 35 corncob pipe, red suspenders, and a big belly – she saw a tall, slightly corpulent sixty-year-old. He was wearing a dark green Barbour jacket—probably the only one for a hundred miles—so wrinkled as if he’d slept in it. Neatly shaven, he had thick, grizzled, film-like hair parted in the middle and falling almost to his shoulders on both sides. With his gold-rimmed round glasses and faded blue intelligent eyes, he looked first at Watts, then at her.

Watts got out and shook his hand, and she followed suit. The sheriff introduced them.

“You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Semi-retired,” Fountain replied in a soft melodious voice. “That’s probably better.” For everyone.

“Don’t be fooled,” the sheriff said. “He’s known not only across the state, but beyond.” It is hard to find a sharper legal mind. He hasn’t lost a single case.

Corrie couldn’t help herself.

– That’s true?

– Not completely. I lost a few when I worked at the Attorney General’s office.

“But none since he became a lawyer,” Watts put in.

– She has a good voice. The enemy never knows when he’s going to get hit.

“I’d say voice and appearance,” Fountain added with a laugh. “I prefer to call it ‘disarming looks’.

“Rather broken.” It’s his work clothes. The familiar crowd must have relaxed the sheriff, because this time he opened the car door for her without hesitation.

“I’m only coming with you as an amateur historian,” Fountain announced as he got in. “I won’t get in your way.”

Watts turned on the air-conditioning, cranked it all the way up, and off they went.

– We are going to High Solitude in the mountains of Azul, a ghost town founded by gold prospectors and abandoned in the early 20th century when the deposits were exhausted. It’s one of the prettiest places of its kind in the state, but it’s hellishly hard to get to. We have a two-hour drive ahead of us. In a straight line, it’s supposed to be close, but the roads there are terrible.

Two hours? Corrie thought. She’d be lucky if she got back to Albuquerque before midnight.

– Some music? Watts took out his phone and plugged it into the stereo.

“I’d love to,” she replied.

– Any preferences?

“Anything but rap and Gregorian choirs,” Fountain replied from the backseat.

Corrie didn’t think the sheriff shared her taste in music.

– Choose for yourself.

– We can change at any time. Watts fumbled on his phone and Gipsy Kings flamenco blared from the speakers. She wouldn’t have chosen it, but the number wasn’t bad at all, and it suited the landscape.

Watts rode south toward a jagged line of mountains rising out of the pale brown desert. At one point they turned, and she quickly lost herself in a dizzying maze of twists and turns into dirt roads, each one rougher and more eroded than the last. Eventually, bouncing over the potholes, they slowed down to eight or ten kilometers an hour, but she still had to hold on to the top handles to keep her from being thrown out of the seat. They climbed higher and higher, and the pines soon gave way to yellow pines, which in turn gave way to spruces and Douglas firs. At the top of the pass, a beautiful view opened before them. They paused for a moment, and the sheriff pointed south.

– The Jornada del Muerto Desert and the San Andreas Mountains, part of White Sands, the military training ground where our boys play with rockets.

“Jornada del Muerto means ‘death journey’ in English,” Fountain translated. “An old Spanish trail from Mexico City to Santa Fe, over a hundred and sixty kilometers through the desert. The road is strewn with human bones and studded with crosses.”

Corrie looked that way, at a desert streaked with red and brown.

“And beyond the mountains is White Sands,” added Watts. “You were there?”

– No, I didn’t make it. I was assigned to Albuquerque eight months ago. were you?

– Many times. I grew up in Socorro, my dad is a rancher. As a kid, I rode horses all over the neighborhood. White Sands is one of the most amazing places on Earth: dunes white as snow cover hundreds of square kilometers.

“And you grew up here?”

The sheriff laughed at the note of disbelief in her voice.

“Some do,” Fountain said.

Cori blushed.

“Are you from here too?” – From Lemitar. From a tiny village north of Socorro.

She had no idea where it was, so she just nodded.

“It’s not that bad,” continued the lawyer. – We have a lot of interesting places to visit here. On the right is Chimney Mountain, and there Oso Peak, where Black Jack Ketchum and his gang were hiding. In the old days, he terrorized Socorro and robbed trains. they wanted him

hang him, but they botched the job and the noose tore his head off. The ketchum reportedly fell, landed on his feet, and stood for a while before finally collapsing.

“Impressive sense of balance,” Corrie commented.

Fountain laughed at this.

“And to the southeast of us is the Mescalero Indian Reservation. Beautiful grounds. It was founded in the place where the remnants of the Geronim Apaches settled. Geronimo, Cochise, Victorio… These great chieftains once ruled all these mountains.

Corrie heard the deep love of the land in his voice and, oddly enough, felt a pang of envy. She didn’t love her hometown, Medicine Creek, Kansas, and she never intended to go back there. She’d rather go to hell.

They crossed the pass and began their descent slowly down the road that wound its way through flat outcrops of rock at the southern end of the mountain range. Here they lost most of the height they had gained and returned to a desert covered with stunted pines and criss-crossed by gullies and mesas. And suddenly they saw a ghost town perched on a low promontory overlooking a vast plain, a settlement completely isolated from the world. Watts made a few more switchbacks and five minutes later they reached their destination.

“Welcome to High Solitude,” the sheriff said.

Scorpion tail – cover promotional materials of the Agora Publishing House

Douglas Jerome Preston (born 1965) and Lincoln Child (born 1957) are American writers best known for their collaboration on the bestselling Pendergast series. Their “Ogon skorpiona” will be released on April 12, 2023 by Wydawnictwo Agora, translated by Jan Kraśka.