With the ice broken, things get downright friendly. Turns out that one of Morris's old buddies was Riese's boss when he was still on the police force in Denver. Everybody starts using first names.
"The truth is, I'm not a disbeliever," says Morris once the men return to their seats. "But I'm a hard-evidence guy, and I just can't find any in conjunction with the mutilations I've been investigating."
He ducks out of the office for a second and returns with a stack of crime-scene photos. "I keep these locked up," he explains. "Nobody outside the office has seen these." Morris kneels down between Storch and Riese and starts showing the pictures. They're of a large steer with half of its face cut off, like a cross-section you might see in a veterinary surgeon's handbook. The animal's tongue is missing.
"No coyote in the world could make razor-sharp cuts like these," says Morris. "And I checked the whole steer and couldn't find a cause of death. My gut instinct is that somebody tranquilized it, then made the cuts. But still, where did the blood go? There's not a trace of it anywhere around the animal, and there aren't any tracks. It doesn't make any sense."
After the three men chat about office politics, response times and the relative merits of the Caprice Classic and the Crown Victoria as squad cars, Morris walks the visitors out and they exchange phone numbers.
In the car, Storch says he wishes he could have been along when Morris did the mutilation investigation. "I don't fault any of Morris's work," says Storch. "I think he did a thorough job with the resources he's allocated. But I would have liked to do a soil test under and around the steer for radiation and have a full autopsy and toxicology test performed. It just doesn't make sense that somebody could've done that and not left a single trace.
"But it's good that we made contact with the local authorities. When we come down here on the next expedition, we'll have people to talk to who'll shoot us straight."
The hunters strike camp Friday morning and head back to Denver. There are no aliens strapped to their fenders, but their mood is pretty good. They've made plans for a future trip to Utah, where they hope to stake out a possible government-run secret site for alien technology studies.
"I think this went way beyond our expectations," Storch says of the San Luis Valley trip. "We didn't get the classic sighting we wanted, but we gathered an immense amount of intel and made great contacts with the local jurisdiction. In fact, they agreed to a joint investigation with us next time they come across a cattle mutilation. And our main goal in that will be to establish a cause of death. Right now, no one can conclusively say what's killing these animals, and we're hoping to determine once and for all if it's related to the aerial phenomena."
Storch adds that they've struck a deal with Undersheriff Morris for Dalicandro to come down and do some intel work. Namely, they want Dalicandro to infiltrate some of the new-age or drug cults that call the San Luis Valley home.
"In exchange for the mutilated cow," says Storch, "LJ will turn over any crystal meth or cocaine operations he infiltrates. It sounds like a fair deal to us."
Visit www.westword.com to read related Westword stories.
