The State Line – The Crime Scene

Picture it.

The middle of nowhere in the San Luis Valley. It’s early in the morning in April. We’re on US. Hwy 285 and at an imaginary line between two states, Colorado and New Mexico.

A detective is lying in the dirt. He just took a bullet from a .357 Magnum in the chest. All that saved him was a bullet proof vest he was wearing.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t hurt. The force of the bullet had to go someplace, and while it didn’t knock him down (he tripped trying to back away from the shooter), he is hurting.

That’s where a fair chunk of the first half of My Brother’s Keeper occurs.

As I point out in the book, this is an area popular with tourists and motorists. They like to stop there and take pictures with the sign of whichever state their entering.

And since the area is so empty, and traffic in the early morning, light, it’s the perfect place for a murder.

You can see from the image to the left that there isn’t much to see there. A couple of pull offs and that’s about it.

In this case, the incident happens barely in Colorado.

If you look closely, there’s a small pull-off adjacent to the “Welcome to Colorado” Sign. That’s where it all happens.

Getting a shot from the ground level and looking north, we see the Welcome to Colorado sign. This is a favorite place to pull over for a photo-op in the summer. Unfortunately, it’s also a favorite place for people to toss trash and it’s sometimes littered. You can see it’s well into the middle of nowhere.

Now looking south, we see the “Welcome to New Mexico – The Land of Enchantment sign.” Further down we see a Forest Service sign and another sign telling us we’re in Rio Ariba County.

The mountain in the distance is San Antonio Mountain and stands at 10,912 feet and is a free-standing volcanic peak being part of the Rio Grande Rift area. It was last active around 3 million years ago.

Will mentions the mountain several times during the course of the novels. Like the ancient Tewa that inhabited the area (they called it “Bear mountain” and represented the Mountain of the North in their cosmology. It’s south of Will in the stories, but it’s an important marker in his Universe as well.

Interestingly, I’ve heard a lot of old timers (the memory goes back to being a kid and they were all old even then), call it by the Tewa name translated into English of course. Why it got changed is beyond me, but since the community of San Antonio is nearby, at least we know where the name came from.

The below picture is taken standing almost right on the border between the two states. You’ll see a fence stretching away to the west. That’s the line between the two states.

So, that’s the crime scene.

It’s so close to New Mexico that, as Will observes, a few more yards and it wouldn’t have been their case.