Journal of the Dead by Jason Kersten

Author:Jason Kersten [Kersten, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-06-203243-0
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

14

Once a month, a program on a computer at the Eddy County Courthouse randomly decides which of the county’s seven prosecutors will be on call each weekend. The process—like so many rituals of the justice system—is meant to ensure fairness and impartiality. So it was that a mathematical algorithm brought Lesley Williams the strangest case of his career.

Les Williams was about as far from a big-city prosecutor as one could get. Opening the door to his office a month after Kodikian’s arrest, he immediately made it clear that he was keeping his cards to himself until the trial. “C’mon in, have a seat.… But I warn you, I’m not going to talk about the case,” were the first words he said.

Unlike Gary Mitchell, who could effortlessly jaw a reporter into a state of pleasant oblivion and leave him no hard answers, Les seemed guarded and uncomfortable around the media. He had the slim, angular build of a preacher, and he’d cross his long arms in front of his chest protectively, quickly warning reporters when they were heading down a road that might get him in trouble. Often he’d answer a question with a yes or a no and a smile, indicating he clearly knew they had hoped for a more elaborate response. He would not let slip a single opinion or tidbit about the investigation, not even a quiver of prosecutorial passion.

But he was certainly passionate about Carlsbad, and he offered to give a tour of the town. The first stop was Carlsbad’s historical centerpiece, an old viaduct built in 1902 that locals simply called the Flume. Fed by a raised canal from a reservoir upriver, it allowed the captured water of the Pecos actually to cross over itself and irrigate over twenty thousand acres of vital farmland east of the town. He walked down to the river’s cool edge and stood under the Flume’s wide cement arches. It was an impressive feat of engineering, one that had been featured on Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

“This is it,” Les said, looking up at the arches with his hands plugged into his pockets. “It’s not the Great Wall of China, but this is what makes it all happen.”

He explained that the original flume had been build of wood but had washed away in the flood of 1893. It had been part of Charles Eddy and Pat Garrett’s vast irrigation project, which ultimately turned out to be an expensive lesson in the dangers of water gambling. In front of him the Pecos flowed peacefully, a light breeze licking facets onto its surface and rustling the cattails on its shore. But it had a capricious temperament. It had flooded a dozen times in the town’s history, and just as often the desert had squeezed it into a trickle, bringing the farms and cattle ranches to the brink of annihilation.

Fifty yards downriver was what looked like a shorefront ruin: a series of square, algae-lined cement tanks, open to the sky and set back from the river.

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