Bloodville (2 page)

Senior State Police Officer Troy McGee watched two rookies as they worked at filling out a standard traffic citation form. Fresh from recruit school, it took them twice as long to write a ticket as it would have taken him. He didn't mind much. The workday was about over. When they finished with the Texan, he'd be on his way home.

―Troy! Troy! Bud Rice just got shot! You hear me, Troy? Dead! Shot dead! At the trading post! You hear me, Troy?! Troy! Answer me!‖

No radio procedure. No ten-code. Debbie Smith, the State Police dispatcher in Gallup, simply screamed hysterically over the air waves. McGee reached inside and snatched the microphone from its dashboard clip. Violations of procedure bothered him.

―One-nine-nine Gallup. 10-9.‖ He said it sternly.
―Bud Rice got shot!‖ Debbie shrieked.
―One-nine-nine Gallup. Did I copy right? Bud Rice got shot?‖ ―Yes! Yes! Five minutes ago. Flossie thinks he's dead.‖ ―One-nine-nine Gallup. We was just there.‖
―I know! Go back! Go back!‖
―10-4 Gallup. Show us en route to the scene at this time.‖

The taller of the rookies, Bobby Gutierrez, walked toward the driver's door of the Corvette. The stocky one, an Indian from nearby Acoma Pueblo, Juan Posey, took a back-up position at the right rear of the sports car.

McGee backed off the road to his right and the two young officers jumped into the moving car. The Plymouth fishtailed wildly when McGee slammed the transmission selector into ―drive‖ and smashed the accelerator pedal hard against the floorboard. The big V-8 engine strained at its mounts as the officer completed his turn back to the east. The car's wheels dug into the soft shoulder and showered the Corvette with gravel, dirt and dead grass; the tires screeched and smoked white when spinning rubber met hard pavement. Budville was six miles away.

Sounding closer to normal, Debbie Smith's voice came back on the radio. ―Gallup one-nine-nine.‖
―One-nine-nine. Go ahead Gallup.‖
―Further on Bud Rice. Suspect vehicle is a light colored sedan. Make and model unknown. Direction of travel unknown. 10-4?‖
―10-4, Gallup. Contact Sergeant North. We need 10-72s at the Rio Puerco Bridge and the east city limits at Grants. ID all drivers of light colored sedans and other suspicious vehicles. 10-33.‖

―10-4 one-nine-nine.‖
―Damn, Troy,‖ Gutierrez shouted over the wail of the siren, ―that's going pretty far, ain't it? Setting up roadblocks before we even know what happened?‖
―Sergeant better do it, too,‖ McGee yelled. ―Bud Rice is a good old buddy of Chief Charlie Scarberry. You get my meaning, Bobby?‖
The rookie nodded emphatically.
McGee hoped, silently prayed, the call would turn out to be bogus, that everything would be 10-4 once he got to Budville. Things often worked out that way. But Debbie Smith's uncharacteristic violation of radio procedure told him that everything was not all right in Budville. The Plymouth roared along at a hundred and twenty miles an hour and didn't pass a single light colored sedan.
The State Police car slid sideways to a rocking stop in the trading post parking lot between the road and the faded red gas pumps, sending up a brown cloud of dirt and dust as the engine stalled. The three officers deployed quickly. Posey took cover behind a gas pump and Bobby Gutierrez ducked behind the Plymouth's left front fender. Both leveled .357 magnum Smith & Wesson revolvers at the trading post entrance. McGee dashed toward the building. The store's windows were brightly lit and the place looked open for business. McGee tried the doorknob. Locked. He knocked loudly with his gun butt and then waved his left arm in both directions as if directing traffic. Posey dashed to the corner of the building and crouched down. He used his flashlight to probe the darkness beyond a low wall and out toward an old-fashioned wooden windmill tower and water tank, and the desert beyond. Nothing moved. No one there. Gutierrez ran quickly to the garage at the east end of the store and took cover in the doorway. A padlock secured the building.
No one checked around back, in the junkyard. No need. The pit bulls stood guard there.
Nettie Buckley unlocked the store‘s front door and the officers nearly knocked the feeble housekeeper off her feet as they charged inside, guns at the ready. They took up positions never taught in any police academy. The three of them simply stood in the center of the room, back to back, sweating, while Nettie disappeared meekly into the living quarters like a little gray ghost. The store was quiet and seemed deserted. McGee smelled burnt gunpowder. He saw spent cartridge casings on the floor.
―Flossie,‖ he called, scared deep in his guts at what he'd see when she answered. Five seconds passed.
―Over here,‖ Flossie said in little more than a loud whisper. ―Over here, Troy.‖
McGee took a step toward the voice before he saw her, down on her knees behind the glass-topped counter, beside the body of her husband. She held his lifeless hand in hers. Bud‘s neck, a torn mass of ripped flesh and gore, oozed his life‘s blood into a large irregular pool that spread out around his head and shoulders and soaked into his clothing and into hers. The fluid glistened dark red/black and wet in the glare of overhead fluorescent lights. Death closed Bud's eyes but his mouth remained open, as if he had one more thing he wanted to say.
―He killed him, Troy. Just shot him down.‖ Flossie's voice quavered and her words came slowly, but she didn‘t cry. ―And Miss Brown. Shot her too. Why would he do that, Troy?‖
―Where‘s she at, Flossie?‖ Troy asked more forcefully than he intended.
―He drug her in the living room.‖
McGee nodded his head toward Posey and then the living quarters before he knelt down beside Flossie Rice but away from the blood. He'd known her since the State Police assigned him to the patrol area east out of Grants five years before. He wanted to comfort her, wanted to make things better. He knew, though, that he could not.
Officer Juan Posey disappeared through a door between the store and the living quarters. He returned in a few seconds and leaned on the end of the counter, his dark face frowning, his head bowed.
―She's dead too, Troy. Shot in the head, looks like. There's blood all over the place back here.‖ The young Indian‘s face was impassive. ―I liked her,‖ he said.
Officer Bobby Gutierrez walked outside, quickly, to the corner of the building and over the wall by the windmill. He vomited mightily. He, McGee and Posey had visited with Bud and Miss Brown not an hour before. They'd stopped at the trading post after supper at Scottie's Cafe.
Gutierrez slowly returned to the store. He and Posey stood looking at the floor, doing nothing and staying as far away from the body of Bud Rice as they could and still be indoors. There was something about the room neither of them liked and neither could identify as the cloying, sickening, miasma of fresh human blood. A lot of it. And death.
―Who done it, Flossie?‖ McGee said gently. ―Who killed ‗em?‖
She gripped her husband's hand tightly in both of hers. ―I never seen him before, Troy. I thought he'd kill me too. He pointed that gun right at me and he poked me with it too. Just kept poking me.‖
―What'd he look like?‖
―I don't know. Bud fought him.‖ She tilted her head and looked wistfully at her dead husband, her long face ashen and down at its corners, a look of grief in her gray, uncrying, eyes. She looked up at Troy. ―His shirt was ripped open. Bud did that, I guess. I seen a mark on his belly, like a tattoo. Like a bird, maybe. He had on a black jacket.‖
McGee stood. ―Bobby, get on the car radio and call Gallup. Tell 'em we need ambulances and all the back-up they can find and get us some criminal agents out here. Check on them 10-72s I requested. Tell ‗em to watch for a guy in a black jacket with a torn shirt and a tattoo on his belly. Posey, you guard the crime scene. I don't want nobody to touch nothing 'til the criminal agents get here. Nobody! Got that?‖
Posey nodded, not at all sure what McGee expected of him.
McGee took Flossie firmly by the elbow and helped her stand. ―Let's go outside. Get some fresh air.‖ She held back, reluctant to leave. ―Come on Flossie. There isn't nothing you can do in here and we need to make sure nothing's disturbed. Maybe it'll help catch whoever done it.‖
She stood slowly. ―Bud was a tough guy, Troy, and you know it too. He fought all his life. This time he got killed for it. But Miss Brown. Why shoot her? She never hurt a soul in her life. It don't make no sense, Troy. No sense at all.‖

Word of the Budville murders spread quickly to law enforcement people all over northwestern New Mexico. Valencia County Sheriff Jack Elkins heard Debbie Smith‘s hysterical broadcast as he scanned radio channels and he soon hurried along State Road 6 on his way to the scene, fifty miles west of the county seat at Los Lunas.

The Sheriff had made the same trip under similar circumstances only three months before, on the night Decillano ―Speedy‖ Montaño died in the dirt, shot to pieces from ambush near the village of Cubero. Elkins had a suspect in custody, but not much would likely come of it. A nasty business, Elkins thought, but ol‘ Speedy was the local bully and he probably had it coming. The murder rate in and around Budville seemed on the rise.

Troy McGee‘s supervisor, Sergeant Al North, and District Attorney's investigator Jim Mitchell sat drinking coffee in the Franciscan Cafe in Grants when North got word of the murders and a request for roadblocks by way of a phone call from Debbie Smith. North took the time to call his boss, Lieutenant Morris Candelaria in Gallup, before he and Mitchell set out for Budville at a high rate of speed.

Candelaria called Debbie Smith and ordered her to order roadblocks on major roads. Then he called his boss, the deputy chief of the State Police, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Scarberry at his home near Santa Fe. Candelaria despised the deputy chief almost as much as he hated his job as commander of the Gallup State Police district. He correctly blamed Scarberry for the assignment. Candelaria called the deputy chief ―Old Gooseberry‖ behind his back. Even so, he did his job. No one could accuse Morris Candelaria of allowing personal feelings to interfere with professional obligation.

Chief Scarberry called the Special Operations Unit duty sergeant and ordered the State Police helicopter readied for a flight to Budville. Then he called Captain Mateo ―Mat‖ Torrez, commander of the State Police Criminal Investigations Division at his home in Albuquerque. ―Torrez,‖ he shouted into the mouthpiece, ―Bud Rice got shot a little while ago. Murdered! I want every son-of-a-bitch in the State Police workin‘ on it and I won't rest ‗til I see the bastard that done it dead or in jail. Preferably dead. You got that? And I want every swingin‘ dick agent in Criminal, Narcotics, Special Investigations and Intelligence, and every uniform in Gallup, Grants, Santa Fe and Albuquerque workin‘ on it. All leave and days off is canceled! You understand me, Torrez? And I want to see your brown ass in Budville in an hour.‖ He slammed down the phone without waiting for comment.

Mat Torrez, half asleep, had not said a word after ―hello.‖ Scarberry brooded over the news. Tears wet his cheeks and his breath caught in his chest as he dressed in his headquarters command uniform. The Deputy Chief never in his life had a better friend than Bud Rice and it grieved him to know he‘d never talk to the man again. He‘d miss sharing mutual contempt for lesser men and tourists with old Bud, miss splitting a pint bottle of bourbon and getting drunk in the old garage out back of the trading post while Bud‘s pit bulls romped in the dirt nearby. He thought about Flossie, fondly, and wondered if she was all right. Candelaria hadn't said. The deputy chief's mind raced. Who‘d do it? And how? A hell of a lot of people didn‘t like Bud—hated his guts, truth be told—but Bud kept a gun handy and viewed strangers with a wary eye. Robbery? Bud would fight back. He wouldn't give up a nickel without a struggle. But what if it was something else? Bud, Scarberry remembered, had testified for the FBI in a narcotics trafficking trial in Texas only a week before. Or what if some Indian with a snootful of Twister went on the warpath? He remembered a time fifteen years before when State Police officer Nash Garcia died under circumstances just like that, ambushed and shot by drunk Acoma Indians. It didn't seem possible that a tough old hide like Bud Rice could be murdered, shot down like any ordinary man. As Deputy Chief, Scarberry would take personal command and bring the matter to a rapid conclusion. Nobody could kill a friend of his, and a friend of the New Mexico State Police, and get away with it. He vowed to himself that he‘d do whatever it took to avenge the untimely passing of Bud Rice.

The State Police helicopter landed on the Cubero Elementary School playground, a mile from Budville, in a circle of light made by the headlamps of eight police cars. The pilot‘s log read 2200 hours.

Most local folks didn‘t consider Budville a town. A wide place in the Old Road, they said, named by Bud Rice for himself thirty years earlier. Fewer than two dozen people lived there, in ten buildings of various size, shape and purpose. A few tourists stopped each day to patronize local business houses: Rice‘s Trading Post, Scottie's Restaurant, Dixie‘s Place and Joe Garcia‘s King Cafe & Bar. Indians from the Laguna and Acoma Reservations did business with saloon keepers in Budville but they did their trading at Cubero or Los Cerritos. Few travelers or Indians paid much attention to Budville‘s two churches.

By ten o‘clock on the night Bud Rice and Blanche Brown died, more than fifty police officers congregated in Budville. Assigned to various tasks, some soon left the little town, emergency lights flashing and sirens screaming as yet others arrived. Most wore the black and gray uniforms of the New Mexico State Police, but deputy sheriffs in brown uniforms and Grants city and Indian tribal police officers in blue came and went, too. Police cars lined both sides of the Old Road for a hundred yards in either direction. Most unassigned officers milled around in front of the trading post awaiting orders from someone to do something. Well supplied with coffee from Scottie's Cafe, they didn't seem to notice the chill of the clear November night as they shuffled, gossiped, muttered and spat into the gravel.