Privileged to Kill (2 page)

2

“Are you going to work late tonight?”

I looked up to see Posadas County Sheriff Martin Holman standing in the doorway of my office. The little digital clock on my desk said 5:53 P.M. and that didn’t seem particularly late to me. It was certainly too early for the sheriff to feel solicitous, unless he figured it might earn him another vote.

And as usual, no matter what the hour, Holman’s clothes looked as if they were fresh from the dry cleaner’s. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the barber and manicurist following at his heels like trained spaniels.

“Why?”

Holman smiled and held up a hand. “I just wondered if you wanted to go get some dinner.”

I pushed the deposition I’d been working on into the pile of papers on the right side of my desk and dropped the pen on the desk pad. “Are you a bachelor tonight?”

Holman grimaced and nodded. He stepped over to the left side of my desk and picked up a magazine that lay on top of the detritus. “She has a Republican Women’s dinner of some sort. ‘Meet the candidate’s wife night’ or some such. I wasn’t invited.” He thumbed through the magazine and I saw his left eyebrow lift. He glanced up at me and held the magazine so I could see the cover.

“You into canoeing now?”

I pushed away from the desk and stood, hitching up my trousers. “Used to do some with the kids years ago. When I was stationed in North Carolina.”

“Not too many rivers around here.”

“No, there aren’t. The thought had crossed my mind to travel some.” I shrugged.

Holman dropped the magazine on the desk. “Somehow I can’t picture you in a canoe.” Neither could I, but then again, maybe my belly would keep the center of gravity low. “If you’re looking for a hobby, why don’t you come play a round of golf with me sometime?” He held up an index finger. “Now there’s a hell of a game.”

“It would be, the way I’d play it.”

“Good exercise, no matter what.”

“So is eating. I was planning on going to the Don Juan after a bit. That suit you?”

Holman made a face. “Do you have to eat that stuff morning, noon, and night?”

“Yes,” I said. “I do.” I headed for the door, picking up my Stetson on the way. “Without green chili, there is no point in hobbies of any kind. Life stops.”

Holman followed me with a sigh.

The Don Juan de Oñate restaurant, one of the few truly memorable things about Posadas, New Mexico, was nine blocks west of the sheriff’s department…or, as Sheriff Marty Holman was fond of calling our office when he wanted the county legislators to fork over more money, the “Public Safety Building.”

As I idled the county car down Bustos Avenue, Holman drummed his perfectly trimmed fingernails on the passenger window sill. “Did you see the
Register
today?”

“Yes. In fact, it’s in my briefcase here.” I lifted my elbow so he could reach the paper if he wanted it.

He shook his head and said, “Did you read the editorial?”

“I read the whole paper. Right down to the last want ad.”

“That’s right. I forgot that you do that. So what did you think?”

“Politics is not a hobby I’m considering, Martin. But most of the newspaper’s endorsements made sense.”

“Ah,
most
, you say,” and he grinned as if he’d sprung a clever trap. “I was half expecting them to come out in favor of Estelle.”

I shook my head. “Not likely.”

“Why not?”

“Not in this century, Martin. She’s a woman, she’s under thirty, she’s college educated, she’s a Mexican…how many more reasons do they need?”

“And you’re not going to publicly endorse, are you?”

“No. And not privately either, for that matter.”

Holman chuckled and then frowned. “If I win, do you think she’ll quit the department?”

“I would hope not. But that would probably depend more on you than on her.” I turned at the intersection of Twelfth Street and Bustos, then bumped the patrol car up into the restaurant’s parking lot. Half a dozen cars were parked helter-skelter. Leaning against the building near the west entrance was Wesley Crocker’s overloaded bicycle.

Holman saw it as well. “Jesus,” he said. “Now there’s hobby for you, Bill. Pedal one of those things from Alaska to Argentina. Or L.A. to New York.”

I parked the patrol car with its nose facing Bustos Avenue and got out. Holman walked across to the bicycle and scrutinized it. “Look at all this stuff,” he said, pointing at the side packs and front duffel bag. Crocker’s heavy navy surplus coat was folded over the seat. “Probably everything he owns.” He knelt down and looked at the back tire. “Only flat on the bottom,” he said. “I sure as hell would hate to have to push that thing.” He grinned at me. “I haven’t seen a bike like that since the Norman Rockwell covers on the
Saturday Evening Post
.”

“Looks like something out of about 1950,” I said.

“Columbia Roadmaster,” Holman said with authority. “That’s what they called ’em. It’s probably worth some money to a collector.”

We went inside and Holman wrinkled his nose. “What’s that smell?”

“They’re burning some piñon in the fireplace, Martin. It lends ambiance. They probably prefer to call it ‘aroma.’”

“Shit, smells like they should clean their chimney.”

Shari Chino saw us standing in the foyer under the ugly velvet painting of Don Juan de Oñate, his helmet shimmering against a background of gaudy purple and black. If the don had known that he was going to be remembered that way, he might have drowned himself in the El Morro pool up north, instead of carving his
paso por aqui
on Inscription Rock.

Shari hustled over. “Two for dinner?”

I nodded, but Holman saw an opportunity. He painted on his best public relations smile and handed Shari one of his campaign cards.

“Appreciate your vote,” he said.

“Do you want your usual table, sir?” Shari asked me, deftly sliding the campaign card into her apron pocket without a glance. That was one vote for Estelle Reyes-Guzman. Holman kept smiling. She led us back to an isolated alcove whose tinted window faced Twelfth Street.

“I’ve lived in Posadas for thirty years,” Holman said as we settled into the fake-leather-upholstered booth. “Don’t ask me why, but I have. How come I don’t have a ‘usual table’ anywhere, except home?”

“One of the very few advantages of living alone,” I said.

Holman leaned forward quickly and dropped his voice to a husky whisper. “And that’s another hobby you should take up, Bill. Chasing women. Think of what that could do to spice up your life.”

“Make it very short, probably,” I said. I was about to add something else when Shari Chino arrived laden with chips, salsa, water…and Wesley Crocker walking escort at her elbow.

She set things down and sidestepped Crocker with a nervous glance. Maybe in the short time he’d been in the restaurant, she’d seen all of him that she wanted to see.

Crocker beamed at her and reached out to touch her on the elbow as she disappeared around the partition. He turned the smile on us and surprised me by revealing a well-kept set of false teeth. Earlier on Highway 17, the teeth must have been riding in his coat pocket. Then he extended his hand to me. His grip was hearty but no knuckle duster, and his hand was a hell of a lot warmer than it had been a couple of hours before.

“Gentlemen,” Crocker said. “Good to see you again, sir.” Holman was looking askance, his eyes taking in Crocker’s road-worn coveralls, scuffed boots, and knit scarf. Crocker held his cap in both hands, and I saw that his hair was cut about an inch long uniformly around his skull, like the burdock cut I used to inflict on my two sons when they were little squirts.

“Your choice of restaurants was superb, sir. Just superb. And such a nice young lady running the place, too.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it. The cigarette machine is by the cash register.”

He grinned and I knew he’d found it long before he’d sampled the food. “Thank you, sir.”

“By the way, this is Sheriff Martin Holman.” The good sheriff did his best not to look stricken, and Wesley Crocker shot his hand across the table to pump Holman’s.

“Wesley Crocker,” the traveler said. “I saw one of your campaign signs west of town. Yes, I did. Best of luck to you.”

“Thanks,” Holman said lamely. He didn’t dig for a business card.

Crocker held up a hand. “I’ll leave you two to enjoy your dinner. I just wanted to say thank you again.”

I nodded and Crocker disappeared around the partition.

“Who the hell was that?” Holman asked.

“He belongs to the bike outside,” I said. “I picked him up earlier this afternoon a few miles west of town. We put the bike in the trunk and I gave him a lift. It’s tough pushing a flat tire.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“I just did.”

“I mean outside,” Holman said impatiently. “You didn’t say anything about that.” When I didn’t respond, Holman added, “So where’s he headed? Who the hell is he, anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t ask him?”

“No.”

Holman looked puzzled, then irritated. “You are so damn close-mouthed sometimes, Bill. It drives me nuts.”

I leaned back and wiped my lips, savoring the heat of the salsa. “I suppose he’s just passing through. When I offered him a lift, I didn’t see that it was any of my business where he was going. He wasn’t breaking the law, except maybe by walking on the wrong side of the highway.”

“Watch. He’s probably got eighty pounds of uncut heroin in those saddlebags of his.” Holman snatched a chip and started to scoop it into the salsa, then thought better of it. He crunched it dry.

I chuckled. “Wouldn’t that be something.”

“Where’s he spending the night?”

“Martin, get a grip. I don’t know. I didn’t interrogate him.” Shari returned and we ordered, Martin Holman predictable as always by ordering fried chicken so he didn’t have to face green chili. I held up a hand as Shari was turning to go. “Did the gentleman who was just here leave his ticket?”

“Yes, sir. Do you want me to just add it to your total here?”

“That’s fine.”

“He bought some cigarettes, too.”

“That’s fine. Just total the whole thing.”

She left and Holman leaned forward, his voice a hoarse whisper. “You bought that guy dinner?”

“Yes,” I whispered back.

“Jesus Christ. Saint Gastner to the rescue. And cigarettes, too?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll bet you ten bucks that’s the last you’ll ever see of that money.”

“It wasn’t a loan, Marty.”

Holman shook his head and looked out the window. Crocker’s bike was on the opposite side of the building, or the sheriff would have been watching his every move.

“I wonder where a guy like that goes. I mean, where he’s going. And why. Why the hell doesn’t he just get a job somewhere? He reminds me of all those bums you see on the street corners in the city—like up in Albuquerque. ‘Will work for food.’ And you know they probably never intend to do an honest day’s work in their lives.”

“Probably not.”

“And you’re not curious about where he’s headed? Who he is? Why he’s just tramping around?”

“No. It’s his life. There’s no law that says he has to stay in one spot and build a nest.”

“Build a nest, shit.” Holman looked across what little we could see of the dining room from the alcove. “Maybe I should just go out and ask him.”

“Spare the man, Martin. He can’t vote in this county anyway.”

Holman knew I was joking but he still managed to look hurt.

“You’ll probably never hear from him again,” he said. “And you’ll never know. I still say he’s probably pushing around eighty pounds of heroin.”

I saw Shari Chino come around the corner. “No doubt he sells a little now and then to finance new bicycle tires. Hell, why not.” I grinned as Shari set a platter down in front of me. “As long as the chili is hot, that’s all that matters. Thanks, sweetheart.”

As the aroma rose to clear out my sinuses, all thoughts of Wesley Crocker vanished from my mind. Martin Holman poked tentatively at his dark, generic fried chicken, then looked wistfully across the table at my masterpiece. “Maybe I should have had that,” he said, always willing to admit his shortcomings.

“Yes, you should have,” I said around a mouthful of green chili enchilada.

“The heartburn would keep me awake all night,” the sheriff said, and he started to pick some of the hard, grease-embalmed skin from a chicken wing.

“It’s worth it.” I knew insomnia would keep me awake most of the night anyway. And that was why, eight hours later when the telephone rang at two in the morning, I was sitting at the kitchen table of my old adobe house on the south side of Posadas, burping the aftertaste of my rich chili dinner and drinking coffee. I picked up the receiver, expecting to hear the voice of the sheriff’s department night dispatcher.

“Sheriff, now I hope you believe me when I tell you I wouldn’t be calling at an hour like this if it wasn’t important.”

I recognized Wesley Crocker’s quiet, polite voice.

3

I glanced at the clock over the stove and jotted down the time on the telephone pad just as he added, “This here is Wesley Crocker. You might remember that you gave me a lift into town earlier.”

At that hour, there was no point in chitchat. He wasn’t calling to thank me again for dinner.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Crocker?”

“I hope I didn’t wake you.”

I briefly wondered why people who called in the middle of the night bothered to say that. “What can I do for you?”

“Well…” And he stopped talking. I could hear a voice in the background, and then Crocker said, “Yes, sir,” obviously not to me. I waited. The unmistakable crackle of a two-way radio came next, and I knew where Crocker was before he spoke.

“Sir,” he said, “I’m in kind of some trouble here. I didn’t know who else to call.” He murmured something apologetic that I didn’t catch, then added, “I still have your card, thank the Lord.”

“Where are you, Mr. Crocker?”

“I’m…I’m down at the village lockup.” Again I heard a voice in the background and Crocker said to someone else, “Yes, sir. Here.”

“Bill?”

“Yes.” I would have recognized Sheriff Martin Holman’s voice in the middle of a deep sleep. “What’s going on, Marty?”

“I didn’t know he was going to call you right off the bat or I would have beaten him to it,” Holman said. “We’ve got a real mess down here at the village P.D. I already called Estelle Reyes-Guzman and some of the others. But it sure would help if you’d come on over.”

I took a deep breath, knowing it did no good to get testy with Holman’s oblique nature.

“Sheriff,” I said, measuring my words as if I were talking to a four-year-old instead of a reasonably intelligent former used-car salesman, “what happened?”

“Well, the village got a report of a possible person down. Over under the high school bleachers. Looks like it’s a twelve- or thirteen-year-old kid.”

“Dead?”

“Yes. Tom Pasquale’s first guess is that it was assault.”

I managed not to groan. Tom Pasquale had worked his way up from hopeful volunteer to paid part-timer for the village department, adding his overly enthusiastic weight to the village’s two-man squad.

The young officer’s application for employment with the county had taken up residency in my filing cabinet more than a year before. I was sure there was a carbon copy at the state police personnel office as well.

Pasquale spent a good deal of his time trying to impress whoever would pay attention. He would have been better served by going to the police academy in his spare time…but he wasn’t going to attend on our buck.

“And he arrested Wesley Crocker?”

“Well, it seems logical to me,” Holman said. “Officer Pasquale said the man was camping near the bleachers, apparently. Are you coming down?”

“I’ll be right there. Who is the victim, do we know?”

“Not yet. They haven’t moved the body yet. They’re waiting on Estelle. She was going to pick up Francis at the hospital and head over.”

“All right. I’ll see you in a few minutes. Who’s standing by at the scene? Is someone protecting that?” I had visions of huge Pasquale boot prints squashing evidence into unrecognizable pancakes.

“Bob Torrez said he’d take care of it until you or Estelle got there. Chief Martinez is there with him.”

“Good. I’ll be right there.” I hung up, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. Before the night was over, we’d know who the victim was, if Estelle Reyes-Guzman and the deputies had to knock on every door in town. That would be half of the puzzle.

I left the quiet darkness of my old adobe wondering how long it would take to find out who Wesley Crocker really was.

***

I drove 310 out of Escondido Lane and turned onto South Grande Avenue. Grande split the village in half from north to south. The only thing grand about it was its name.

The streets of Posadas were deserted. Even traffic on the interstate was sparse with winter still too far away for the snowbirds to be heading for Arizona or Mexico and too late in the fall for family vacations…just the consistent, dull flow of trucks.

I turned on the radio and was greeted with silence. Holding the coffee cup and steering wheel in one hand and keying the mike with the other, I said, “Three-oh-eight, three-ten.”

The response from Sergeant Robert Torrez was immediate. “Three-oh-eight.”

“Three-oh-eight, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Ten-four.” Torrez sounded half asleep, but he would sound that way in the middle of a train wreck. “You might want to park in front of the school, in the bus loop.”

I acknowledged with two clicks of the transmit button and then slowed down as I continued north through the intersection with MacArthur. The high school was the dark hulk off to the left, on its own island, surrounded on all sides by the families who supported the place.

As I turned onto Piñon, I buzzed down the window, listening to the night sounds of the village. Piñon jogged to Sylvester and then I turned the patrol car onto Olympic, the narrow macadam service road that skirted the football field and track. Someone shot a flashlight beam at me, but I didn’t stop the car. Instead, I continued on, circling the grounds by turning left on Pershing and away from the field.

The semicircular driveway in front of the high school was aglare with three sodium vapor lights, and I idled the patrol car into the driveway, aiming to park behind Torrez’s unit and the chief’s blue Pontiac.

I pulled to a halt beside a
SCHOOL BUSES ONLY
sign. The night air was cool, but the wind had finally given up. I heard another car before I saw it, heard it accelerating hard, its oversized engine howling. Headlights flashed on Pershing and the tires of the village police car chirped as the vehicle swung into the driveway and pulled up beside me, driven like something out of Hollywood.

Patrolman Tom Pasquale looked across at me and raised an eyebrow in what he no doubt hoped was an imitation of his favorite movie star. He opened his window but didn’t get out.

I half wished that Pasquale had been asleep somewhere, skull propped against the seat’s headrest, mouth open and blissfully ignorant of the world around him.

I stepped out of the county car and hitched up my trousers. “Thomas, who’s at the police station?”

“The sheriff’s still there, sir. And Deputy Mitchell. And Cindy.”

The village department’s girl Friday, Cindy Aragon, worked very hard to keep Pasquale out of trouble. “So tell me what happened.”

“Sir, someone called the P.D. to report a possible downer. I took the call. I happened to be the only one in the office at the time other than Cindy. So I drove right over to check it out.”

“And then?”

“I hopped the fence by the track, over there on Olympic. I crossed directly to the bleachers and saw the body by the foundation of the press box. I determined that the subject was deceased. On the way back to my unit I saw another subject over near the east end of the football field. In that small grove of trees by the pump house.”

“You were able to see him in the dark?”

“The field night lights are bright, sir.”

“And that person turned out to be Mr. Crocker?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you took him into custody.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did he resist in any way?”

“No, sir.” After the briefest of pauses, Pasquale added, “I almost wish he had, sir.”

“No…you don’t.” I started to walk off and then stopped. “On what grounds did you make the arrest, by the way? Did Mr. Crocker admit that he had anything to do with the incident?”

Pasquale’s head jerked forward as if he’d just been startled in the dark. “No, sir, he didn’t say much of anything at all.”

“You read him his rights?”

“Yes, sir. That’s when he said he needed to make a call. That there was someone here in town that would vouch for him.”

“Yeah, well…” I motioned at the walkway between the main building and the gymnasium. “Let’s cut through there.” We left the cars and walked through the inky black passageway between the buildings, Pasquale’s flashlight stabbing into each dark crevice.

A yellow crime scene ribbon stretched across the parking lot, effectively blocking off the rear of the bleachers.

Sergeant Robert Torrez and Chief Martinez appeared out of the shadows, looking like Mutt and Jeff. Torrez, six-four and walking like a hunting cat, led the chubby chief of police.

“Estelle coming?” Martinez asked, sounding altogether too cheerful for the time and the circumstances. I liked Eduardo Martinez as a human being and thought he was ridiculous as a law officer. But Posadas was an incorporated village that budgeted its own law—the chief and two part-time patrolmen.

Most of the village night calls were handled routinely by the sheriff’s department, logical since the P.D. had no dispatcher of its own and not enough manpower to cover twenty-four hours. Martinez was a parade cop…polish the car and turn on the lights for the Fourth of July.

“Yes. Estelle’s on the way. You gentlemen stay here for a minute.” Pasquale wanted to go with me, but I waved him back. I knew perfectly well that he liked to spend time in Sergeant Torrez’s company, but this wasn’t the time for impressions. The chief understood the same thing and put a chubby hand on the kid’s arm to hold him still.

I ducked under the channel-iron braces and worked my way carefully along under the bleachers, keeping my footprints immediately beside the row of concrete pillars. In the center of the structure, a cinder-block foundation arose like a huge chimney, providing support for the press box and announcer’s station above.

The circle of light from my flashlight played around the blocks, and sure enough there was a bundle pressed over in the corner. A casual glance could have mistaken it for a garbage bag left behind by the custodians after the last home football game. Pasquale had good eyes, at least.

I approached to within a dozen feet and stopped, playing the light slowly this way and that, surveying the area. The footing was crushed stone, broken glass, torn Styrofoam, a sock or two—a delightful place. I stepped forward carefully.

The corpse lay like a broken rag doll, flat on its back. A brightly colored coat was bunched around the upper body, concealing the face. I grimaced at the bare knees that looked absurdly small and fragile in the harsh beam of my flashlight.

One arm was twisted under the body, the other was caught up in the loose fabric of the coat, as if the garment had been hastily wrapped around the child.

I turned the light and looked at the only patch of skin I could see besides the two spindly legs—the back of the child’s left hand, fingers dug into the fabric of the coat, dirt caked with blood on the smooth brown skin.

With a grunt, I shifted balance and pulled the coat far enough down that I could see a tangle of long, black hair. Maybe a girl, maybe not. The hand was cool to my touch. I slipped my hand inside the coat and pressed two fingers to the side of the kid’s neck and waited…waited longer than I needed to.