Chapter 22

We made it into the wonderful town of Santa Fe just a few days after Hector’s visit. It truly is a beautiful place, especially if you like southwestern architecture and artwork. We met with Hector, his wife, Julia, and their paralegal slash secretary, Tammy Johnson. Their regular secretary was out on maternity leave, and they felt a temp would be more trouble than they were worth. Julia filled in as needed, proving to me that these people were definitely worth working with.

We signed statements about what took place, and as we were finishing, he enlightened us regarding some real new news. A representative of Beverly Land Management and Acquisition, LLC, had approached some people in the state capital about ways to purchase a strip of land recently purchased and developed by a retired military man. Interestingly, Tammy Johnson’s boyfriend worked as an aide for a state senator from the Las Cruces area. His brother was a state trooper assigned to the security detail protecting the governor’s office.

Both of the brothers, the aide and the trooper, were veterans, one a Marine, and the other an Army paratrooper in their previous lives. Tammy had mentioned Hector’s feelings about the Beverly people to her boyfriend, and when they were chatting the next day, the brothers put three and three together coming up with us.

Hector did some backroom research, finding out that Beverly didn’t have any help in the New Mexico state house, but the questions were also relating to the Bureau of Land Management, the different native American reservations, possibilities of exercising eminent domain, and other avenues that might be approached.

Hector had friends. There were no two ways about it. A quick check proved that the BLM wouldn’t allow the expansion, so they wouldn’t interfere. The reservation in question, the one most directly involved, was happy with the way things were right now, and there was already a road near our property running end to end and moving it would cost millions upon millions of dollars the state didn’t have. We were batting a thousand.

“The only legal way,” Hector said, “to get you off of that property is to convince you to sell it outright, through legitimate means. However, coercion is not beyond the limits of reason, nor the grasp of these people,” he said. “They might do something dastardly. They might get violent. Well, not them, per se, but they might hire thugs to do something stupid. If that happens, remember that New Mexico has ‘stand your ground’ and ‘castle doctrine’ laws, and you can basically shoot anyone you want to on your own land. I mean, within reason. Girl Scouts selling cookies would be a no-no. Especially if they have the thin mint things.” He got a laugh out of all of us.

“You are more closely related to Arthur than you admit to, aren’t you, Hector?” I asked.

“Arthur is way funnier than Hector,” Julia Chavez said, sticking up for the Shaman. The pretty blonde woman had more information for us, too. “The point is, you people are tens of miles out in the boonies, the closest neighbors being a couple of old timers in Hector’s tribe, and a park ranger who spends very little time on that border of your property. It’s not for me to say, but if I was you folks, I’d stop at the gun store and the hardware store on the way home, put up a bunch of targets and waste some ammo practicing.” Two of the girls gasped. Sylvia and Laura weren’t the ones that did. Both of them had way too much common sense to think Julia was speaking anything but the truth.

“We’re ahead of you a bit, Julia. We did some of that before Courtney and Lori showed up, and we have a few extras laying around, but you’re right. We need to keep our eyes open and be prepared. Stupid is as stupid does, and all that. Charlie even bought a reloading set so we can replace some of our ammo at a bit of a discount. He’s pretty resourceful.”