Bag Limit (16 page)
“Why don’t you bring a few more Gestapo with you next time,” he said. “Maybe you could bring the National Guard in on it, too.”
“Victor…” I started to say, my patience running thin.
“Here,” he interrupted, and handed me a fat brown envelope. He swatted my arm with it, to make sure he’d made contact.
“What’s this?”
“Kid dropped it in the kitchen,” Victor said with a slight inflection that might have passed for humor. “He had it in his back pocket.”
The brown envelope was rumpled and folded. I opened it just enough to see the considerable amount of money inside.
“I figured it didn’t belong to him. Otherwise, you guys wouldn’t have been chasing him. Right?”
“Thanks, Victor,” I said, but I was already talking to his back.
“Thanks for not chasing the boy off into some tree stump somewheres,” Herb Torrance said. He had good reason to look and sound miserable. He watched the ambulance pull out of the parking lot and shook his head wearily. He turned back to Larson and me. “Thank God his momma wasn’t home. Jesus.” He heaved a great sigh. “I don’t guess you all know for sure what happens next.”
“No,” I said. “First things first, Herb. Let the doctors check him out. He took a hell of a rap, so they’ll probably hold him overnight. There’ll be a deputy at the hospital to make sure he doesn’t do something foolish if he wakes up in the middle of the night.”
I tried a sympathetic smile, but I was weary myself. As soon as the Torrance kid had spun that pickup truck out of the yard, my nerves had replayed hell with my system. On the drive south on County Road 14, my imagination had conjured all kinds of awful scenarios, each one ending with Dale Torrance splattered over the New Mexico landscape.
“You don’t need to worry about him getting out of that room. He ain’t goin’ nowheres,” Herb said emphatically. “The wife wasn’t home when all this happened, thank God. But I’m going to pick her up now, and we’ll be at the hospital in just a few minutes. And we’ll be there, as long as it takes.”
“That’s good, Herb. I’ll talk to Judge Hobart as soon as we get back to Posadas this evening, and see if he can arrange a preliminary hearing for the morning…assuming Dale’s released by then. You understand that he’s in our custody right now?”
“Yep,” Herb Torrance said. “I understand that, all right. The boy’s gotten himself in a hell of a mess.” He thrust out his hand. “Thanks again.” He grinned and ducked his head in embarrassment. “I don’t guess I handled this all too good.”
“It happens.”
“Shouldn’t have, by God. And by the way, what’s the deal with Waddell’s steers, now? They’re impounded over in Lawton?”
I nodded. Cliff Larson cleared his throat. “And the Oklahoma authorities sure as hell don’t want a feed bill, so they’re eager to have someone truck ’em out of there.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Herb said. “Give me tonight, to make sure the boy’s going to be all right. Then I’ll go over first thing in the morning, or whenever Judge Hobart is done with us.”
“That’ll work,” Larson said. “They’re at Emerson Livestock, right on the south side of town. I’ll fix you up with paperwork so you can get ’em back.”
Herb nodded and again shook first my hand, and then Larson’s. Cliff and I watched him trudge back to his pickup. “Ain’t that a sorry mess,” Cliff muttered. He looked at me and grinned, the stub of the cigarette jerking as his lips moved. “See why I need you to fill in for me?”
I glowered at Larson and mouthed an obscenity at him. That split his grin even wider.
By 6:30, the last patrol car pulled out of the parking lot of Victor Sanchez’s Broken Spur Saloon, leaving him in relative peace and quiet. I had no doubt that by closing time, the story passed from drunk to drunk would include at least eighteen officers converging on the saloon from all sides, with Victor alone able to subdue Dale Torrance, saving the fair damsel behind the bar from who knows what fate. What the hell. It was all good for his business, even though he would be the last one to admit it.
I dropped Cliff off at the Public Safety Building where he’d stashed his truck. With things quieting down, we had an extra vehicle or two, so I took the unmarked car home with me.
I didn’t know what direction Bob Torrez’s investigation of Sosimo Baca’s death was taking, but at the moment I was too tired to ask. It was his ball game, anyway. If he needed something from me, he’d say so.
When I walked into my house on Guadalupe Terrace, I could hear familiar theme music. In the sunken living room off the kitchen, my grandson was hunkered down in front of the television watching Gary Cooper stand uncomfortably in front of the church congregation. “Now you all know what I think of this man,” the on-screen mayor was saying self-righteously.
My son was settled deep in the leather folds of my favorite chair, a book open on his lap. “We couldn’t find where you store the rest of your tapes,” Buddy said with a wide grin. He knew perfectly well the answer to that mystery. He’d given me a VCR and the tape of
High Noon
for Christmas several years before, I suppose figuring that would kick off my collection.
It didn’t kick off anything. I’d watched the movie countless times, and could probably recite most of the dialogue by heart. During a burglary of my home two years before by local teenagers, the original VCR had been stolen, but not the tape. So much for taste. I’d replaced the VCR, but never added to the tape collection.
“This is cool beans,” my grandson said, nodding approvingly as Cooper walked out of the church, a disgusted man.
“How did your afternoon go?” Buddy said, and pushed himself out of the chair. “Sit. I’ll make some coffee.”
I waved a hand and glanced at my watch. “Even better. Let’s go get something to eat.”
“You ready for that?” my son said to Tadd, and the kid launched up off the floor and snapped off the VCR and television. “He’s always ready to eat,” Buddy added.
“We going to the Don Juan?” Tadd asked. “That’s a cool place.”
My estimation of my grandson clicked up another notch. And this time, we managed a meal that was uninterrupted and leisurely. By the time we finished eating, we were all ready to go to sleep right there in the restaurant. I knew that with close to thirty hours to wakefulness behind me and my belly full of fresh green chile I could go home and conk out for at least twelve hours. By that time it would be Sunday, the day that Estelle and her family would arrive from Minnesota.
Back at the house, we settled comfortably while Tadd watched Will Kane make preparations to face the vengeful brothers.
“So what happens after Tuesday?” Buddy asked. He rested his arm on the back of the sofa and looked at me. I tipped my mug slightly and regarded the steaming surface of the decaffeinated coffee he’d made for dessert.
“I thought maybe I’d figure that out on Wednesday morning,” I said. “Cliff Larson offered me a job today.” I shrugged. “He’s the livestock inspector. Maybe that would be interesting for a little while.”
“What sort of work would that entail?”
“Not much.” I grinned. “Basically, anytime a rancher moves livestock in New Mexico, he has to have a travel permit. The brands have to be inspected. Or lip tattoos on horses if they’re headed for a race track. You make an accurate count. Check for obvious signs of disease. That sort of thing.”
“Do you have situations very often like you had this afternoon?”
“Hopefully not,” I said. “But there’s a surprising amount of livestock theft that goes on. Our department has helped Larson clear several larceny cases over the years. And there’s more and more trouble with the border traffic. Especially with racehorses moving back and forth.” I sipped the coffee. “I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.” I set the cup down on the end table. “When’s your tour over?”
“In January,” Buddy said. “January twenty-sixth is my last day. Twenty-five years.”
“God, that got here in a hurry.”
“Yes it did.”
“And you’re only forty-seven years old!” I said in wonder.
“So the more immediate question is, what the hell are you going to do with yourself? Edie is not going to let you stay at home all day long and have all the fun while she’s swapping lies with other lawyers.”
My grandson glanced over at us. On screen, Katy Jurado was explaining the facts of life to Grace Kelly. “Did you tell Grandpa about our place in San Antonio?”
“You haven’t told me anything,” I said. “Great state secrets abound in this place. What’s with San Antonio?”
“We’ll be moving up there right after Christmas,” Buddy said. “I’ve got some accumulated leave, and Edie and the kids will be done with the semester. We’ve bought a place there.”
“This is all pretty sudden, isn’t it? But hell, San Antonio’s a pretty city. Why not.”
Buddy nodded enthusiastically. “You can’t imagine how happy we are to get out of Beeville. I signed on with the Texas Department of Public Safety, and San Antonio’s where I’ll be based. It worked out great, since Edie got an offer from a law firm there as well. It’s the firm she wanted.”
I held out my hands. “Whoa. You signed on with DPS?”
“Aviation division. I get to watch chases like you had this afternoon, from the air.”
“I always assumed that you’d end up with one of the airlines,” I said.
“Nah,” Buddy said with a grimace. “Bus driving is not for me. Shuttling those heavies from one city to another, full of a bunch of cranky passengers—that’s not my cup of tea. Anyway, for the last ten years or so, I’ve been in choppers.”
I smiled. “Well, good. If that’s what you want, that’s good.” I felt as if I needed sticks to prop my eyes open. I thumped the arm of the chair, and watched the TV for a few seconds. A very young Lloyd Bridges was trying to talk Cooper into saddling a horse and lighting out of Hadleyville.
“This is the same guy who was in
Hot Shots
, ” my grandson said with considerable wonder.
“Forty-five years younger,” I said. “And since I know how this movie ends, I’m going to go to bed. You guys are welcome to watch movies all night, if you want. There’s even a video store downtown, if you get desperate.” I pushed myself to my feet with an audible symphony of joints.
It was nearly nine. The phone had left me in peace for three hours. In my bedroom at the opposite end of the house, I couldn’t hear a sound—not my grandson chatting with his father, or the gunshots as Gary Cooper settled accounts, and certainly not the gentle little
chunk
as he pitched his badge in the dust at the end of the movie.
The cool silence enveloped me and for once chased away the devils of insomnia and the kind of circular, unproductive problem-solving that inflicts the prone and the wakeful. Maybe it was just the pleasure at having good company under my roof once more, with the anticipation of more to come the next day. Maybe it was profound relief that Dale Torrance had suffered nothing more serious than a rap on the head—something he probably needed anyway.
Whatever the reason, I slept like a dead man, deep and hard. It would have been nice to awaken refreshed and rested, with the sun of Sunday morning just peeking through the cotton-woods. Instead, I jerked awake soaked in sweat, the house silent and black. My mind had been working, even if the rest of me hadn’t.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, and sat up straight. The clock on the dresser said forty minutes after two. I fumbled for the telephone and managed to find the right buttons for the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department.
I sat on the bed and listened to the circuits click, the light from the number pad soft in my peripheral vision. After five rings Brent Sutherland answered. I could hear voices in the background, and, as he brought the phone to his ear, Sutherland said, “No, I don’t think so,” to someone.
“Posadas County Sheriff’s Department, Sutherland.”
“Brent, this is Gastner. Is everything all right down there?”
“Yes, sir. Jackie just brought in a DWI. We were finishing up the Breathalyzer.”
“Who was it?”
“Out of town.” I heard papers shuffle. “A Mr. Bruce Whitaker, from Socorro.”
“Passing through, or staying in town?”
“Apparently he was passing through. Jackie stopped him on Seventy-eight, just beyond the airport. He told her that he’d had trouble staying awake, and had one too many cold beers.”
“That’s brilliant thinking,” I said. “Everything else quiet?”
“Yes, sir. Dead.”
I glanced at the clock on the dresser. At 2:43, deputies had been home from the swing shift for a couple hours, long enough to have settled comfortably in bed. “I need Tony Abeyta’s home number, Brent. I don’t have the roster in front of me at the moment.”
“Just a second, sir.” I could picture him leaning across the desk, consulting the neatly printed chart taped to the green filing cabinet. “That’s nine seven seven, three zero zero six,” he said after a minute.
“Thirty ought six. That’s easy enough to remember,” I said. “Thanks.”
“He’s not there, though. At least I don’t think he is. He and Tom Mears were planning to do something with Tom’s car. I don’t remember what. But he was going over there. Do you want Tom’s number too?” I said I did and he read that off as well. I hung up, rolling the number around in my head enough times that I’d remember it.
I started to push the buttons and then hesitated. Both Tony Abeyta and Tom Mears were married, Tony for less than a year. I hated to haul a spouse out of bed in the middle of the night with the harsh ringing of a phone if it wasn’t an emergency.
I hung up and sat in the dark for a few minutes, mulling over what my memory had told me, trying to decide if I was just imagining connections that weren’t really there. In five minutes, I knew I’d never fall back to sleep. I got up, showered, shaved, and slipped into my favorite red-checkered lumberjack shirt and corduroy trousers.
In the kitchen, I glanced out the window at the thermometer. The temperatures were taking November seriously, touching twenty-seven degrees. There would be frost on the car, but by midmorning it might be fifty degrees. A light breeze rocked and rattled the few cottonwood leaves that clung to the tree just off the back deck.
While I waited for the coffeemaker to do its thing, I rummaged in the front hall closet and found my down vest. I slipped it on and was in the process of running my belt through the hi-rise pancake holster when I damn near collided with my bathrobe-clad son.
“Well, good morning,” I said.
“Just barely morning,” Buddy replied. He watched as I slid the pair of handcuffs off the kitchen counter and hooked them through my belt at the small of my back. “You don’t have enough seniority yet to avoid working the graveyard shift?”
I sighed. “The mind,” I said, tracing circles around my right ear. “The mind won’t shut up.”
“I know how that goes,” Buddy said.
I set two cups on the counter, poured, and slid one across to my son. “I hope you haven’t inherited my sleeping habits,” I said. “Or lack thereof.”
He grinned. “I think I’m working on it.”
The coffee did the trick. I could feel the rest of my senses spooling up to speed. “You want to go along?”
He raised an eyebrow. “To where?”
“I need to talk to one of my deputies,” I said. I set the cup down on the counter and drew irregular patterns on the wood. “It’s like a big puzzle.” I looked up at Buddy and lifted a finger. “I woke up thinking that maybe I’d been shown another little piece and just didn’t recognize it.”
“Ooookay,” Buddy said slowly. “If you can give me a minute to get dressed. And I’ll leave a note for Tadd.”
“Oh, we’ll be home long before he gets up,” I said, but Buddy shook his head.
“You’d be amazed.”
While Buddy got dressed, I refilled my cup and snapped the coffeemaker off, then went outside. The air was crisp and clear, the great star-wash of the Milky Way so bright that it rivaled even the pervasive glow from the interstate exchange over to the northwest.
I had no outside lights around my home, figuring that all they did was make life easy for burglars. On more than one occasion, when I’d nearly tripped over a skunk at night, I’d briefly considered a simple entryway light over the door. I’d never done anything about it, preferring the darkness.
My son stepped out and closed the door. “Nippy,” he said. “Want to take my car?”
I almost refused, then shrugged. “Why not, if I can get in it.”
With the tiny door of the Corvette open, I regarded the challenge dubiously. “It’s easiest to slide your left leg in first,” Buddy instructed. “All the way. And then just kind of slide down into the seat.”
“This may not be such a good idea,” I said as I did as instructed. With plenty of grunting, I settled in place, the seat hugging me in a dozen spots and the center console under my left elbow. I slammed the door and regarded the interior with interest. “Not much room for radios,” I said. “And you’re going to have to carve out half the dash and punch a hole in the roof for the shotgun rack.”
Buddy laughed and fished the ignition keys out of his jacket pocket. “A real pisser for high-speed chases, though.” The massive engine cranked half a cylinder before erupting into a gruff idle that shook the entire car. He blipped the throttle gently as the beast warmed up, and I could feel the whole thing twist with the torque.
“What engine?”
Buddy grinned. “That’s worth more than the rest of the car. It’s a four twenty-seven that a friend of mine on the base had. It’s actually from a ’68 ’Vette that mated with a telephone pole. He salvaged the engine, and I bought it from him. She’s been tweaked, too. We figure somewhere around four-thirty horses, give or take.”
“I’m impressed.”
“It’s a hell of a lot of fun,” Buddy said. He pulled up the hypodermic-shaped lifter on the gear lever and found reverse. He idled the sports car around the back of the unmarked county car and then we headed out the winding driveway through the trees to Guadalupe and Escondido. Buddy drove the thing as if it were made of handblown glass, letting the idle carry us along in first gear.
At the stop sign on Grande, he glanced over at me. “Where to?”
“Just up the street to the second right. MacArthur.”
I lowered the window, enjoying the icy air on my face. The curb passed by just below head level, the pavement only inches under my rump. “This isn’t so bad,” I said. “There’s even room in here for a wallet and maybe some spare change.”
We turned onto MacArthur and I pointed up ahead. “The street just this side of the middle school.”
“Crosby.”
“Right. When was the last time you were in Posadas, anyway?”
Buddy sighed. “I guess about ten years ago. Not much has changed, that’s for sure.”
“Nothing,” I said. “Turn left here.” We swung north on Crosby, a narrow macadam street that skirted the dilapidated middle school building. I looked across at the building’s hulk.
“Did you go there? I can’t remember.”
“Eighth grade,” Buddy said without pausing to calculate. “We moved here in the fall of ’66.” He slowed the car to a crawl. “Lots of places out behind that building to do stuff,” he added.
“Stuff,” I mused. “They still do stuff. Just more of it.” I shook my head. “I don’t want to think about how long ago that was.” I craned my neck to see over the long, sloping hood. “There’s a little side street about a block up here on the right. It’ll go right behind the athletic field. We’ll want to try the fourth house on the left. There’ll be a race car on a trailer parked in the driveway.”
We turned onto Ithaca Place. The little concrete-block houses looked as if they’d been poured from the same mold, rectangular two-bedroom units that had been built in the late fifties in response to the mining boom. Each had been dinked with and added to over the years, but there was no hiding their pedigree.
A blaze of lights marked Deputy Tom Mears’ home. Sure enough, number
18
squatted on its white trailer. Huge fat tires were enclosed by bodywork whose every square inch was rumpled, dinged, or torn. Mandy Mears’ red Honda was parked at the curb, with her husband’s old Suburban in front and Tony Abeyta’s yellow Camaro behind.
The garage door was up, and inside I could see the two young men leaning over the front suspension of yet another race car, this one an open-wheeled thing with a monstrous wing on the back and a stack of polished chrome carburetors thrusting up through the hood.
“This is it,” I said, and Buddy let the Corvette idle to the opposite curb. The engine died with a final
whump
and shake. Mears and Abeyta had straightened up and were watching us with rapt attention.
“I could use an ejection seat,” I mumbled, and Buddy laughed. There was no easy way, but by swinging a leg out and then pretending I was going to fall on my face in the gutter only to save myself at the last moment, I managed to exit the beast.
Mears ambled down the driveway, wiping his hands on a rag. He was a small, slender blond-haired man whose twin brother was a loan officer at Posadas National Bank…and at first glance looked more at home there than Tom did in the deputy’s uniform. But looks were deceiving. Mears had been with the department for nearly fifteen years, a good, steady, levelheaded cop.
He extended a hand. “Commander,” he said to Buddy. “Nice to see you again.”
Buddy flashed a smile. “Thanks,” he said. “That’s quite a memory you’ve got.”
Before I had a chance to walk around the car, Mears had introduced my son to Tony Abeyta. “And as I remember,” Mears said, “the commander flies things considerably faster than this.” He patted the Corvette’s left rear haunch. I frowned, embarrassed to think there had been a time when I had talked enough about my family that Tom Mears would remember all the details.
“I need to chat with you guys for a minute,” I said.
“If it’s to decide who gets to use this new undercover car first, it’s my turn,” Mears said instantly.
“No, no.” I waved a hand in dismissal. “Tom Pasquale’s already called it.”
“Oh, shit no.” Mears burst into laughter.
“Let’s go in there,” I said, nodding at the garage. “Out of the wind. And where the neighbors won’t ogle.”
For the next few minutes, we chatted about the Mears racing stable, and then I lifted a small toolbox off the seat of a ratty metal folding chair and sat down. “Tony,” I said, “yesterday morning, you and Scott Gutierrez talked to Betty Contreras down in Regal, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I did too, a little bit later in the morning. There’s something that she said that kind of bothers me, and I should have followed up on it.” I shifted my feet and leaned back in the chair until I felt it start to flex under my weight. “Betty told me that when she was talking to you guys, she mentioned to you that she saw a vehicle drive by on Saturday morning.”
Both deputies looked puzzled. “This would have been about eight o’clock. She said that she was outside, hanging up clothes or some damn thing. No…she was feeding the cats. That’s what she said. While she was doing that, she recalls seeing a vehicle drive by. She said it was white with a touch of green. She told me that she assumed it was the Border Patrol. They drive through there all the time. When she said that to you guys, Scott Gutierrez told her that it was probably him.”
Abeyta frowned. He looked down, regarding the front right tire of the sportster.
“You remember that conversation?”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“You don’t recall Mrs. Contreras mentioning the white and green vehicle?”
“She didn’t mention it,” Abeyta said. “Not to me.” He lifted the Dallas Cowboys cap off his head and scratched his scalp, trying to agitate the memory cells. That didn’t help. He shook his head. “I don’t recall her saying anything like that. And as far as I remember, Scott never said a word, all the time we were there.”
“Huh,” I said. “Maybe she was dreaming.”
“I would have remembered, sir. That’s the time period we’re interested in, and if I knew that Scott Gutierrez, or anybody else, had driven through the neighborhood just then, I sure as hell would have asked them about it. And Scott would have said something, for sure.”
“Was there ever a time when she was alone with Scott, and might have mentioned it then?”
Tony Abeyta shook his head emphatically. “No, sir. We went in together, talked to her for a little while, and left.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why did Gutierrez go with you in the first place?”
Nonplussed, Tony Abeyta turned to Mears. “I don’t know. I guess we just sort of fell into teams, you know.”
“Rick Knox went with me,” Tom Mears said, naming one of my least favorite state troopers. “Tommy and Bob were busy in the house and stuff. You and Schroeder were together until the DA left. That’s just the way it worked out.”
“It was kinda good talking to Scott,” Abeyta added. “He’s real savvy. He knows a lot of people. He gave me a lot of good ideas to follow up.”
I shook my head and stood up. “I’m not debating that, Tony. And I’d be the last person to object. It’s just that I’ve known Betty Contreras for the better part of thirty years. I’m trying to puzzle out why she’d lie to me.”