Now his right eyebrow joined the left. “You are assisting the police?”
“More of a personal service opportunity. I don’t think the detectives are doing a very good job.” This opinion was solely based on their unwillingness to return her calls, but heck, they were terrible at that.
“They came here,” Victor said. His eyes were grim. “Early last week. The older one, the man, he was more interested in Ricardo’s immigration status than anything else. And insisting this must be our fault.”
“Why?”
“The land neighboring Se?or Rhoads’s ranch to the east belongs to the land trust. The shore closest to where Ricardo was found, we manage it. They took half our property management tools for testing. Shovels. Sledgehammers. Potential weapons.” He shook his head. “They threatened one of my naturalists, a colleague of Ricardo’s, implied he might have been the one to hurt him. When I tried to protect him, they turned their ridiculous accusations on me.”
Lana nodded in commiseration. “It’s a kind of abuse, the way they’re jumping to conclusions. I want to find a real suspect, to refocus the detectives away from innocent people like your naturalist. Like you. I’ve come here hoping to get a more complete picture about Ricardo. What he did, who he spent time with. That sort of thing.”
Victor held her gaze, his eyes calculating. He rose from the table and turned to the wall. “Do you know what this is?” he asked, pointing at a large, framed map with ornate lettering at the top.
Lana reluctantly left her armchair and joined him for a closer look. She recognized the coastline and the shape of the western United States. But the words and symbols portrayed a different place. There were lakes where there should be deserts and mountains where there should be valleys. The words “ALTA CALIFORNIA” stretched from the Pacific across the Colorado River. Lana picked out a few names along the coast she recognized—Puebla de los Angeles, San Diego, Monte Rey—and many more she did not.
“This map was made by John Frémont in 1848,” Victor said. “The year California became a US state. Before that, this was part of Mexico, New Spain. And before that, Native land. Every time an individual makes a claim on a piece of land, there is someone standing behind him who was there first. Land is fought over. Land is sold. Land is stolen.”
Lana rubbed her right temple. Either Victor was going to get to the point soon or she was going to ask Gaby to get her a Diet Coke.
Victor waved his hand across the map. “Here at the land trust, we believe there is another way to hold space together. To hold it in trust. For everyone, past, present, and future.”
“And Ricardo?”
“Ricardo was a true believer. More than a believer. The boy was a prophet.”
Lana remembered the photograph of the long-haired, bright-eyed young man in hiking sandals. “What do you mean?”
Victor looked back at the map. “It takes most people many years to learn this business. Conservation science, land use technicalities, legal paperwork, and of course the delicate relationships with our land stewards, our donors. For Ricardo, it was instinctual, like he was choreographing a dance between land, owners, and lawyers.”
“What made him so good at it?”
“It’s in his blood. His grandparents came to the Pajaro Valley in the 1950s as braceros, and his father carried on as a farmer. When Ricardo was small, he and his mother left to live with her sister inland because of some kind of difficulty, but he came back as an adult. Farmers here know the Cruz name. They trust it. Ricardo was able to accomplish more in two years than others here have achieved in ten. Sometimes he played it a bit loose. But he got results.” Victor fixed his eyes on Lana. “He helped donors see what it might be for land to be truly public. To be not owned by any of us, but stewarded and cared for, honored and preserved.”
“This is what he was helping Mr. Rhoads with? Donating the ranch to the public?”
“We were on the path to making that vision real.”
“May I see what he was working on? Before he . . .”
A sudden grimace twisted Victor’s face into a rush of emotion, red-hot and pained. Then, as quickly as it had come, the storm passed. His eyes settled, and he was back again. Lana had to blink to convince herself the look hadn’t been a mirage.
“One moment,” he said.
Lana walked to the door and watched as Victor approached a long glass cabinet lining the rear wall of the open office. He made a careful selection and walked back toward her carrying two thick hardback binders.