Bag Limit (18 page)
I was halfway out of the car, contorted like Houdini, when I started to count down all the stupid things I was doing. If I had caught one of the rookie deputies pulling the same dumb stunt, I’d have chewed his ass up one side and down the other. Had the person waiting in the dark vehicle ahead of us been an armed psychotic in a stolen truck, he needed to look no further for an easy target.
The interior courtesy light of the Corvette wasn’t much, but it did a thorough job of illuminating my gyrations as soon as I opened the door. Finally struggling to my feet and taking a deep breath of relief, I pushed the door closed and walked around the front of the car.
The dome light of the Durango snapped on just as I rounded the left rear fender. The driver’s side window was down, and I could see an elbow resting on the sill. The headlights of my son’s car behind me worked to my advantage.
“Good morning,” I said as I came up behind the open window.
Scott Gutierrez leaned forward a bit so that he could twist around to peer at me. He grinned and then turned away from the glare of the headlights. “Good morning, Sheriff. I was wondering who that might be.” He gestured toward the northwest.
“I saw you turn into the lane down there, but I lost you through that grove of trees. And then I saw the Border Patrol unit do the same thing. I figured the two of you were having a chat.”
“The night shift,” I said. “That was Bergmann and Tomlin-son chasing coyotes.” I moved forward so that I could lean on the Durango’s door. “My son and I are roaming around, sharing insomnia on a nice peaceful Sunday morning.”
He laughed. “Yep.” He stretched, straight-arming the steering wheel with his left while thumping his right hand against the vehicle’s roof.
“I thought you were on leave,” I said. “That’s what Bergmann told me. And you told me earlier that you were going hunting this weekend.”
Gutierrez yawned and nodded. “I am. Or rather, we are. My sister and me. And my stepdad. He’s visiting from Del Rio.” He turned and looked up at me. “The annual pilgrimage.”
“He’s staying in Posadas?”
“Yes. With Connie French. My sister.”
“Aren’t you still living in Deming?” Gutierrez caught the puzzled note in my voice and grinned.
“I thought it would be easier if I bunked on sis’ floor for the weekend, rather than driving back and forth. We’re going out and set up camp this afternoon, over on the north side of the mountains.” He nodded at the San Cristóbals. “Then, come first light Monday”—and he held up and sighted an imaginary rifle—“the champion twelve-point buck who’s waiting out there is mine.”
He put down the rifle. “But see, the problem is that my step-dad sees it as his goal in life to rearrange
my
life to his satisfaction. We always end up arguing about something. There’s about a six-hour grace period after he and I show up in the same house. And then, it’s anybody’s guess.”
“I know how that can be.”
The young man’s expression turned to one of chagrin. “This time I didn’t even get the six hours. We had a good row earlier this evening. I went back to sis’ place after that ruckus at the Broken Spur, and I made the mistake of mentioning it to my stepdad…you know, about that stupid kid running from the cops.” He shook his head ruefully. “That lit the fuse, I guess. What he really wants is for me to be partners with him in the dealership in Del Rio.”
“That doesn’t appeal to you?”
“Jesus, no. I can’t even imagine that.”
“He’s trying to bribe you into it by letting you drive this fancy truck?”
“Right.” He surveyed the inside of the Durango. “It’s not bad, either.”
“I hope you left your stepdad a note.” I chuckled. “He’s apt to wake up, find his baby gone, and go ballistic.”
“Not likely. He sleeps like a rock. In fact, he usually misses all the good dawn hunting when we go out.”
“So,” I said, and paused. “Any brilliant ideas about this mess we’ve got on our hands?”
“The Baca thing, you mean?” He shrugged. “There’s two possibilities that are the most logical. One is that the old man had an argument with a relative over something. Domestics are number one, right?” He laughed. “I should talk.”
I nodded.
“With what happened to his son and all, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what happened. And then you gotta figure”—and he swept his hand in a general arc that included all of Regal—“if he’s out on the highway, he’s fair game for just about the whole world. Somebody saw him, figured to take whatever money he had, maybe brought him back to the house by force.” He looked up at me again. “That’s what I think, for what it’s worth…which ain’t much.”
I glanced at the digital clock on the Durango’s dashboard. “So how long have you been sitting here?”
“Hell, I don’t know. A while.” He yawned. “I pulled in here on impulse. A good place to do a lot of thinking. You never know what you’re going to see.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Well, the old lady who lives in that adobe with the yellow window frames”—and he pointed to a single porch light across the way that wasn’t blocked by the bulk of the church—“she let her dogs out for about ten minutes, and then called ’em both back in again at three-oh-five. That’s big news. The Contreras’ kitchen light came on at three-thirty for a few minutes and then went off again, so husband or wife or both were up and got a snack. That’s big news.” Gutierrez laughed.
“Hot times,” I said.
“And then a little bit ago, at about oh four hundred hours, this big, bad-ass ’Vette sneaks down the hill into town. I thought I had something fun going on with that one, until the Border Patrol nailed him.”
“I hadn’t thought of it as sneaking,” I said.
“Well.” Gutierrez looked at me sideways with a “gotcha” grin. “You were comin’ off the hill like some airplane. I could hear all the way down here. And then you slowed, and didn’t come out from behind that big foothill there for a long time. And when you did, you were just kinda of drifting along.”
“Lots of deer out,” I said.
“Ah,” Gutierrez agreed. “Leave some for me, all right?”
I straightened up and stretched, and glanced back at my son sitting patiently in the car. “I have to climb back in that thing,” I said. “It’s a major undertaking.”
“Life’s tough.” Scott chuckled.
“Did you happen to drive through the village tonight?” Before he had a chance to respond, I added, “See any foot traffic? Hear any dogs going nuts?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “I didn’t have to drive through. I can hear every sniffle and giggle right from here. The whole valley is as quiet as this church.” He sighed and settled even farther down in the seat. “One of the things that’s on my mind is seeing that youngster get hit. That’s one reason I’m out and around. I lie down to sleep, and that’s what I see.” With a grimace, he smacked one hand against the other. “Bam. Just like that. I don’t guess I’ll ever forget that sound.”
“I sympathize,” I said, thumping the windowsill of the Durango with both hands. “It takes a while for things like that to heal—if ever.”
“You still don’t know why he tried to run?”
I shook my head. “The only thing I can figure is that he was afraid of his cousin. They’ve had more than one set-to over the years, and Bobby’s a little tough on the boy. I’ve been running it through my mind, and that’s all I can come up with. Just before he popped the window, I radioed the office and said I was bringing the kid in. At that point, Matthew was behaving himself. I made the comment that the dispatcher might want to contact Undersheriff Torrez and let him know. That’s when the kid went berserk.”
“Huh,” Gutierrez said. “That might make sense, Sheriff. You stopped your unit and we pulled in on the shoulder behind you. With all the lights on, the kid couldn’t tell one unit from another. Bergmann’s a big fella. If the kid caught sight of him backlit by all the flashing lights, maybe he thought it was Torrez, comin’ to thump on him. So he bolted.”
“Maybe so. At any rate, we got one thing cleared up. One of the deputies found a fake license that Baca had been using as an ID.”
“No shit?” Gutierrez raised an eyebrow. “You mean a fake driver’s license?”
“Sure enough. The little rat had stuffed it down behind the seat of the patrol car. And that makes sense, when you think about it. That’s the last thing he wanted any of us to find on him.”
“I thought you looked in his wallet. I know Taber did. I saw her do it.”
“We don’t think it was
in
his wallet, Scott. He had it stashed somewhere else.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“Yep.” I pushed away from the truck. “Well, we best be heading back to town.” I stopped. “Oh, by the way, Tony Abeyta probably asked you about this already. When you drove through Regal yesterday…no, when the hell was it. Saturday morning? Before the ruckus? You didn’t see any vehicles that looked out of place?”
Gutierrez’s eyebrows knitted together. “I didn’t drive through Regal on Saturday morning. I was at the crossing talking with one of the Customs guys, and caught the call on the scanner. That’s the first I heard about it. I heard the call, and drove over. Hell, it’s what, a little more than a mile? Half the town was there by then, already.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding in comprehension. “Somebody’s got their timing screwed up. I was told that you had driven around the village earlier.”
Gutierrez shook his head. “Not me. I know that Taylor Bergmann is fascinated by this place. It might well have been him. Or maybe one of the other guys. It’s kind of on our route.” He flashed a sudden smile. “Bergmann’s from St. Louis. There are more cars at a single traffic light at any given moment on an average day than in all of Regal.” He scoffed. “He thinks Regal would be the ideal place to live.”
“It might be,” I agreed.
“Who told Abeyta that I drove through?”
“That’s a good question. Maybe I heard him wrong.” I grinned. “We’ve heard a different story from every resident of the village. Makes a fascinating set of reports.” I reached in and tapped him on the shoulder with my index finger. “Don’t be dozing off now. Some illegal would really be tempted by this buggy. I’d hate to have to break the news to your stepfather that you’d been hijacked to Mexico.”
“See, that’s what he expects,” Gutierrez said with a laugh. “That would—how does Bergmann put it—‘validate all his arguments.’ You guys have a good night. Keep it slow and easy.”
Practice was paying off. When I settled into the Corvette this time, it almost qualified as a modern dance routine.
“All set?” my son asked.
“Yep.” I slammed the light fiberglass door and struggled with the seat belt. “It’s one of the Border Patrol officers, undercover in his stepfather’s truck.”
“Well”—Buddy laughed—“you’re undercover in your son’s car, so that makes it even, right?”
He backed up a couple of paces and cranked the front wheels to clear the Durango’s chrome back bumper. Despite his best egg-under-foot efforts, the wide back tires of the Corvette kicked a little gravel as we swung wide.
“Where to, sahib?”
I had the phone in hand and pointed up the hill with it. “I want to talk with the deputy. Make sure she hasn’t been inhaling the funny smoke or something. Somebody sure as hell is making up stories.”
From her vantage point just south of the pass, Deputy Jackie Taber could see the entire village of Regal, and beyond the vast, yawning blackness that was Mexico. A single group of lights twinkled on the southern horizon, the tiny Mexican village of Tres Santos.
“If you swing around and point downhill, we can park door to door, and I can talk to the deputy without getting out of this thing.”
“That’s not going to work too well,” my son said, “but we’ll take a shot at it.” Cops become expert, over the years, at those door-to-door conferences. You can pass coffee and donuts back and forth, or hand over paperwork, or chew the fat—all those good things that we did while we waited for something exciting to happen.
That didn’t work this time. When I turned my head and looked out the window, I’d be looking right at the bottom of the sheriff’s star on the driver’s door of Taber’s unit. Fortunately, the young deputy had anticipated that very problem, and as we rolled in, she got out of the truck to meet us.
She knelt down beside my door. “Good morning, sir.”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “Have you met my son? Commander Bill Gastner Junior, this is Deputy Jackie Taber.”
“Pleasure,” Buddy said.
“Nice car, sir.” Jackie grinned. She stroked the top of the door with light fingers. “What did you find out down below?”
“First of all, that’s Scott Gutierrez hanging out down there,”
I said.
“Really?”
“Really. He’s driving a vehicle from his father’s dealership. The old man’s up visiting for a few days, and Scott decided to find some fresh air.”
“Ah,” Jackie said. “Okay, that makes sense.”
“I’m glad it does to you. This is a long way to drive just to get out of the house. Of course, like the rest of us, Scott’s got Matt Baca on his mind.”
“Other people have been known to roam the county with no particular destination in mind, sir,” Jackie said, and grinned across at my son. She shifted her weight to favor the other knee. I motioned her away from the door.
“Let me get out of this thing so we can talk without torture,” I said. Buddy switched the car off. The mountain was silent, just the faintest of winds itching the vegetation along the highway. My son got out with practiced ease.
“Scott is staying with his sister for the weekend,” I said. “They’re going hunting.” I leaned against the Bronco’s front fender, the hood just the right height for my elbow. “I don’t think I know her.”
The deputy nodded. “His sister Connie lives in Posadas, over on South Twelfth Street. About a block south of the Guzmans’ place.”
“Scott said he took a drive to get away from the old man for a while. But Connie…do I know her?”
The deputy smiled, an expression that didn’t wrinkle her smooth, serious face too often. “I would imagine that you do, sir. Connie French? She got divorced last year from Mike French, the guy who runs the Chevron station on the east end of Bustos. She’s living with somebody else right now.” Her brow wrinkled. “He’s a custodian at the high school. I can’t recall his name. She works for the Motor Vehicle Division with the undersheriff’s sister. I’m sure you’ve met her.”
“You’re getting to be a regular gazetteer of Posadas.” I laughed. “And I’m sure I have. But the memory is a leaky bucket these days.” By stepping around the front of the Bronco I could look out into the darkness. “You say that you can see Sosimo Baca’s house from here? And enough detail to guess at the color of a vehicle?” The village was a sprinkle of lights, no more than half a dozen.
“Try these,” she said, and handed me a pair of heavy binoculars.
That was the operative word…
try
. The eyepieces weren’t designed to use with bifocals, and without glasses all I saw was black. A light flashed briefly and I managed to pin it down so that it created a neat star pattern in the lenses without showing me a damn thing.
“So you decided to park here and check out the village,” I said.
“I always do that, if I have time. I like the idea of an overview.”
“Outstanding. And you saw the headlights, I assume, over by Baca’s. Then you saw the vehicle drive out the lane. As it passed by Contrerases’ you’d catch a glimpse of the color, if their porch light was on.” I tried to find the Contreras house, but gave up. Without car headlights to serve as a marker, the whole place was just a black hole to me.
“Yes, sir. And then it drove out to the pavement, turned south, and then swung around behind the church. That’s where he parked. After about ten minutes, I decided to drive on down the hill and check him out. I was about to get back into the unit when you drove by.” She beamed again. “And then after I found out who Thunder Pipes was, I thought it might be useful, if you were touring Regal, for me to stay up here. I wanted to know what the occupant of the vehicle behind the church would tell you. I talked to the undersheriff, and he agreed.”
I handed the binoculars to my son. “Can you see anything, Commander Thunder Pipes?”
Buddy cranked the objectives a little farther apart and spun the focus knob like someone who uses those sorts of gadgets on a regular basis. “As a matter of fact, I can. Our white Durango is coming out from behind the church with his headlights off. Ah…now they’re on.” Even without the binoculars, I could see the beams stab out across the parking lot. “And now he’s on the highway, turning up the hill.” Buddy handed the binoculars back to Jackie.
“By the way, Scott told me that he hadn’t driven through the village, Jackie,” I said. “Either tonight, or on Saturday morning, despite what Betty Contreras says.” She nodded, and I added, “That confuses me, see. Tony Abeyta said that Betty never mentioned a vehicle driving through the village while he and Scott were talking to her…she certainly didn’t mention a Border Patrol vehicle driving through. That’s what Tony says. Now Betty says that she did mention the vehicle while she was talking to Scott.”
I turned and listened. “You can hear him now, coming up the hill.” Looking back at the deputy, I said, “So either Betty is lying, or Tony Abeyta is lying. And Scott Gutierrez
is
lying, about tonight, anyway.”
“Betty told the undersheriff the same thing, sir. Just what she told you.”
“She did?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She told him that she saw the Border Patrol unit drive by her house? Around eight?”
“Yes, sir. She said that she only caught a quick glance, but that it was two agents.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” I said wearily. “Betty, Betty, Betty.” At the sound of an approaching vehicle, I turned and saw headlights pop into view, and a moment later, the white Durango passed us, its aggressive all-season tires howling on the pavement. Scott Gutierrez tapped the horn twice.
As the taillights disappeared around the bend, I said, “Archie Sisneros called dispatch and said that he saw a light inside Sosimo’s house while the vehicle was parked there. Is that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Scott says he didn’t even drive into the village.”
“You’ve got an interesting potpourri of what passes for the truth on this side of the mountain,” my son said.
“That’s what has the undersheriff on edge,” Jackie said quietly.
“The obvious thing to do at this point,” I said, “other than thinking about finding breakfast somewhere, is to talk with Mrs. Contreras again. Her husband doesn’t recall seeing any traffic, of any kind…but part of the time he was inside the church sniffing paint. So…” I shrugged. “Tell you what. Let me talk with Betty again. We’ll see what she’s up to. In the meantime, I’d like you to find out all you can about Scott Gutierrez.”
“The undersheriff is working that way, too,” Jackie said.
“Then I need to talk to Robert. He’s at the office, or at least he was a few minutes ago.”
Buddy held up a hand in surrender. “Dad, we need to head on back to the house. Tadd will be up and around, and maybe we can catch up with you later in the morning.” He pushed a button on his watch. “It’s about four-forty now, and beginning to look like you’re going to have a busy morning. I’ve got a couple of errands I need to run, myself. Let’s try to meet at noon. How about that?”
“Noon for lunch,” I said. “If it won’t hurt your feelings, I’ll ride back in with Jackie.”
The only luggage I’d had with me in the sports car was my cell phone, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. It didn’t take much to transfer that. The Corvette’s bellow was already fading as Jackie and I pulled out onto the highway in the Bronco.
“Your son flies jets in the navy, sir? That’s what some of the others were saying.”
“That he does.” I chuckled. “Choppers too. You can tell?”
“He has that military look,” she said. “The big watch, and all.” The military “look” was nothing new to Jackie Taber, fresh out of six years with the army when Posadas County hired her. “How long will he be visiting?”
“Through the middle of the week. More if I can twist his arm. Where’s your sketch pad, by the way?” The large drawing pad had become a Taber trademark, and her work was stunning. Others might sit in the patrol unit and smoke a cigarette during an off moment. Jackie Taber hauled out her charcoal pencil and drawing pad.
“Under my briefcase,” she said, indicating the clutter between us.
“You keep after that,” I said. “It’s a real talent.” I laughed. “You need to talk Sheriff Torrez into moving you to days. The light is a whole lot better.”
She made an amused little sound, noncommittal at best. “Maybe swing shift, sir. Then there’s the best of both worlds. Lots of gray tones.”
As we headed north, both of us fell silent. I didn’t have to ask what prompted the occasional impatient drumming of Deputy Jackie Taber’s fingers on the steering wheel. The puzzle had enough pieces to keep us all busy.
Something had been on Scott Gutierrez’s mind. There was no question about that. Only old, fat insomniacs parked themselves in the dark corners of the county in the middle of the night, listening to the dim pulse of the world. No doubt, Scott had his share of troubles—a recent divorce, a nagging stepfather, the dull routine of chasing people trying to come into the country without a ticket.
A young, aggressive cop with his whole career ahead of him had better things to do than sulk behind buildings just to fritter away time.
There was something on the undersheriff’s mind, too, enough to keep him sleepless, despite the best efforts of his beautiful wife. I knew it wasn’t the election just two days away. I hadn’t met a single person who took his opponent seriously—and Robert Torrez wasn’t the sort to lose sleep over politics.