Griggs had tipped off Shackleton about the raid and its timing. The deputy was sufficiently embedded in the business of the sheriff’s office — and, so far, sufficiently isolated from complicity in any crime — to know the Feds were planning to move on Churpov. They typically disdained local help, but prior notification was in order, not least because yesterday’s preliminary autopsy results on Coyle’s body suggested foul play, and the crime of murder would ordinarily fall to the county sheriff to investigate. Churpov was presumed to have ordered the hit.
The Byzantine relationships among the federal authorities were complicated in themselves. Having built the Truman Dam and Reservoir, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers still controlled land use onshore. But it was the U.S. Coast Guard Sector
