Privileged to Kill (23 page)

“He’ll probably earn his law degree in prison,” Estelle said, and I muttered a curse.

“You didn’t used to be so cynical,” I said. “You’ve been around me too long.”

37

The serial number of the .22 rifle was thoroughly documented on Chief Eduardo Martinez’s reports. The rifle itself was no doubt still rusting somewhere in the back room of the village department. I was sure that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had the same information somewhere in the bowels of their enormous database, together with information about the gun’s original purchase. But they weren’t going to talk to us on a Saturday night. And if Wilton had purchased the gun from an individual, the paper trail would be even more remote.

“Let’s just ask the son of a bitch,” I said, and Estelle’s left eyebrow went up a notch. I glanced at my watch. “It’s as good a time as any. We’ll see what we can find out, and then I’ll buy you and Francis a late dinner. How about that?”

She agreed, although not with the enthusiasm that a dinner at the Don Juan de Oñate should have prompted.

As we pulled out onto Bustos Avenue, she keyed the mike. “Posadas, this is 310.”

Dispatcher Gayle Sedillos responded, and Estelle said, “Posadas, we’ll be at 390 Grant for a few minutes. Three-oh-eight needs to stay central.”

“Ten-four, 310. Three-oh-eight, did you copy?”

Sergeant Bob Torrez sounded like he was eating a sandwich when he acknowledged. In his typical fashion, he didn’t ask what we were doing, or why.

“Three-ten, P.D. copies. I’m ten-eight.”

Estelle glanced across at me at the sound of Tom Pasquale’s voice. I reached out and took the mike from Estelle. “P.D., meet with 308.”

“Ten-four,” Pasquale said, and I could hear the eagerness in his voice drop a couple of notches. Bob Torrez had probably choked on his sandwich.

“That’s just what we need—Tom Pasquale crashing the only other car the P.D. owns into the Wilton’s living room,” I said.

We turned south on Fifth Street, drove two blocks, and jogged west on Grant, into one of the oldest neighborhoods in Posadas. The homes were adobe, all on large, irregular lots with an irrigation ditch running along the property lines. If all the junk that had sprung up during the 1950s mining boom were to vanish, this was one of the neighborhoods that would be left.

The Wiltons’ home was attractive, a big rambling place not unlike my own, with ancient elms surrounding the buildings. Behind the attached garage was a small barn, its shed roof recently repaired with bright corrugated metal.

Estelle eased 310 into the driveway.

“Are you doing all right?” she asked.

“I’m doing fine,” I said, and pointed at the porch light that had just flicked on. “They’re home.”

Dustin Wilton greeted us at the door with a guarded smile, but his face was pale, the worry lines etching his broad forehead. He held out a hand and shook with a firm grip.

“Sheriff, how are you?”

“Fine, thanks. You know Detective Reyes-Guzman?”

He nodded. “We talked at the hospital earlier.”

Wilton was a big man, well over six feet and burly. Long hours of wrestling heavy equipment for the state highway department in the hot New Mexico sun had built muscles like rope and aged the skin of his face and hands to leather.

“We just wanted to stop by and bring some good news,” I said. “It’s not much, but it’s something. How’s Dennis doing?”

“Sleeping,” Wilton said. “It’s been pretty rough for him.”

I nodded. “May we come in for just a minute?”

He nodded and held the door for us. The saltillo tile of the entryway was polished to a high sheen, and I stopped just inside the door.

“Let me get my wife,” he said.

“Well, no need,” I started to say, but he shook his head.

“She’ll want to hear anything you have to say.”

“Fine.” We waited for a moment, and I stepped forward so I could see into the living room. A mounted elk head hung above the fireplace. Before I had a chance to inventory anything else, Dustin appeared with his wife in tow. DeeDee was thirty pounds overweight and wore lavender stretch pants two sizes too small. Her top half was inside a sweatshirt with
NOTRE DAME
blazoned across the chest. Fortunately the material had plenty of stretch.

Dustin, DeeDee, and Dennis, I thought. Eighteen years before, the proud parents had probably entertained all kinds of cute thoughts.

“Ma’am,” I said by way of greeting. I thrust my hands into my pockets, trying to look as casual as possible. “The results of the blood test on your son are in, and I just wanted to tell you folks in person that it was clean in every respect.”

I saw relief on their faces and DeeDee Wilton said, “He told us that he hadn’t been drinking.”

“Then he told you the truth, ma’am. The boys were just plain tired after the excitement of the game. It looks like he just dosed off. Just for a second, but that’s all it takes.”

Dustin Wilton shook his head. “I’ll tell you what I think happened,” he said, and his voice rose a notch or two. “I think some son-of-a-bitch drunk probably swerved into their lane and run ’em right off the road.”

“That’s something we’re pursuing,” I said easily, knowing that it was pointless to argue. If that pipe dream made them feel better, they could cling to it all they liked.

“We needed to ask Dennis a couple of things, just to clear up the last of the paperwork, but if he’s asleep, it’s not important enough to bother him.”

“What do you need to know?”

“Well, one of the deputies mentioned that the truck didn’t have a grille guard, but that the bolts and brackets for one were there. He hadn’t found the guard at the scene, and wondered if it had been removed from the vehicle before the time of the crash.”

Dustin Wilton’s brow knit together and he looked at me as if I were senile. “Now that’s a hell of a thing to be concerned about,” he snapped.

“The officers try to be thorough,” I said mildly.

“If the guard wasn’t on the truck,” Wilton said, “then I’m sure it’s out in the shed. Every time Dennis sees the least little stone nick, he’s got to sand and paint that thing again. He might as well have gotten it chrome plated. It would have saved him a lot of time.” He looked sorrowful. “That truck was his pride and joy, Sheriff. His pride and joy.”

“Could we take a look?”

“Hell, yes. We can go right out through the kitchen.”

We did that, with Dustin Wilton never breaking stride to stop and wonder just why the hell we wanted to see a grille guard, or what difference it made whether it was on the truck or not. DeeDee stayed inside the house. Such was the magic of ignorance, I thought.

The barn was home to Dustin Wilton’s major hobby. Parked in the center of the floor was an ancient truck that was so pretty it took my breath away.

“Look at that,” I said in genuine admiration.

“Nineteen eighteen double T Ford,” Wilton said, and stroked one gracefully curved front fender. “We’ve got some final work to do on the oak racks in the back, and then she’s done.” He patted the metalwork. “Show-quality restoration, frame up.”

“Impressive,” I said.

“And I don’t see any grill guarde…No wait, here it is. He’s getting set to work on it,” Wilton said, as if the truck from which the guard was taken wasn’t a shapeless mess.

The guard was under one of the workbenches, and Wilton bent awkwardly to retrieve it. He grunted and grabbed the edge of the bench to support himself.

“Goddamn back,” he said, and yanked the grille guard free.

“Did you hurt yourself?” I asked.

Wilton shrugged it off. “Twisted it last week doing something stupid.”

“Isn’t age wonderful,” I said, reaching out to accept one end of the heavy guard. The right side was badly bent.

“Someone probably smacked him in the parking lot at school,” Wilton said. He lifted the guard so I could see it, then slid it back under the bench.

“Probably so,” I said, glancing at Estelle. She smiled.

“So,” Wilton said, stroking the fender of the old truck again. “That’s that. What else was it you needed to know?”

“What year did you say this was?” I asked.

“Nineteen eighteen.”

I looked inside the cab. “Wood and metal. No plastic,” I said and turned to grin at Wilton.

“Not a scrap.”

“Beautiful,” I said. “How’s she drive?”

Wilton patted the fender and grinned slyly. “Well, let me put it this way. There have been a lot of improvements in the past seventy-eight years. A lot of improvements. I’ll tell you one thing…if you set out down the road in this, you’d better keep your mind on your business. She don’t have no cruise control.” He laughed.

And no air bags and no seatbelts, I wanted to say. Instead, I asked, “Does your son work with you on this?”

“Oh, yes,” Wilton said. “In fact, I made him a promise. He graduates from college, this sweetheart is his.”

“That ought to do the trick,” I said. “This is a rough time for him. Something like this is good to keep his mind occupied.”

Wilton nodded. “In fact,” I added, “I hope you don’t take offense at an old man sticking his nose in other people’s business, but I’ve got four kids of my own…and some of them went through some tough times, too. For the next day or so, you might want to spend as much time as you can with the boy.”

“Well, sure.”

“I mean even if it involves taking off of work. He’s going to be feeling pretty alone right about now.”

“I know what you mean.”

“So, take him fishing, take him hunting…something like that. You hunt? The two of you?”

Wilton tried to put the manly bluff to it, but I could see it hurt him. “Oh, we used to. A few years back. But these kids get into high school, and I don’t know. Their world is sure different from mine. Different from what mine was, I mean.”

I nodded sympathetically. “Might do him a world of good for just the two of you to pack off in this sweetheart for a week deer-hunting up north. Something like that.”

“Well,” he said, “you know how it goes.”

“I don’t mean to be nosy,” I said, “but I noticed the elk over the fireplace inside, and figured that you two probably got out a lot.”

Wilton scoffed. “Hell, I won that at the club in a raffle.” He grinned sheepishly. “I haven’t hunted in twenty years. And the boy never took to it. I bought him a rifle once, for his twelfth birthday, as a matter of fact. Brand spanking new. Almost a hundred and fifty bucks over at George Payton’s. You know what he did with it?”

I shook my head.

“He loans it to a friend of his who’s going hunting up in Wyoming. The damn fool kid
lost
it. Can you imagine that?”

“Kids,” I said, and glanced at Estelle. She looked like she didn’t understand English.

I thrust out my hand as if I had all the time in the world. “Mr. Wilton, thanks for your time. We really appreciate it. And like I said, keep a close watch on the boy for a while. These things can be rough.”

He nodded and followed us out of the barn. We didn’t go back in the house, but walked around to the front yard under the glare of a sodium vapor light. DeeDee Wilton didn’t come outside, and I didn’t see Dennis’s face peering through a curtain.

I settled back in the seat of 310 and closed my eyes.

“Well done, sir,” Estelle said, and I opened my eyes and turned to see her smile.

“George Payton’s,” I said and pointed down the road.

Estelle pulled the car into gear. “What do you suppose Mr. Wilton takes for his sore back?” she asked.

“I was thinking the same thing,” I said.

38

George Payton and I were the same age and damn near the same weight. There the similarity ended. While my blood pressure was finding new and creative ways to bust pipes, George’s personal demons were diabetes mixed with equal parts glaucoma and gout.

I’d known George for twenty-four years. We’d stood in front of his shop on summer afternoons, soaking in the sun, chatting about this and that. And we’d gone for coffee hundreds of times, ducking our heads against the winter chill. We’d both had large families, and now we were both living alone, probably both trying not to think too hard about next week. I’d never been in his house, and he’d never been in mine.

Over the years, George Payton had assisted the sheriff’s department in a number of ways…and what he didn’t know about firearms wasn’t worth knowing.

I’d always suspected that George didn’t need the income from his small gun and tackle shop just off Pershing. There was nowhere to fish within fifty miles—not that distance ever deterred the avid fisherman—and his firearm sales had to be equally slow.

He made exquisite muzzle-loading rifles by hand, maybe one a year. That was his first love.

Now that he was alone, George Payton lived in a small apartment behind his shop. He greeted Estelle and me with a frown and a mumble and waved us inside. His firearm sales records were in large, black-bound ledgers in a bookcase in his office, kept in addition to the yellow federal forms that the ATF demanded.

“Who are you after tonight?” he asked, and he squinted through his bottle-bottom glasses at me. “And you look like shit, as always.”

“Thanks, George. We need to find the serial number of a .22 rifle purchased from you in 1992. Either in late August or early September.”

“Well, that’s easy enough, as long as you know who bought it.”

“We do. At least we know who says he bought it.”

“Well, have at it,” Payton said. He ran a hand along the volumes, pulled 1992 off the shelf, and laid it on the table. Estelle opened the cover and leafed through the pages, scanning down the left margin. With Payton’s business, the scan didn’t take long.

“September 8,” she said and silently read across the columns of name, address, make, model, and caliber. I held out the copy of Chief Martinez’s report and she read the serial number. I watched the numbers click off, in perfect order.

“Bingo,” I said.

George Payton stood quietly by, his myopic eyes sleepy and uninterested. He didn’t ask again who we were after, and he didn’t invite us to stay for dessert. We were probably interrupting his favorite television show.

We left the shop with the ledger and a copy of the ATF form that Dustin Wilton had filled out four years before.

“The kid lied to his father about the rifle…Either that or the father is making up stories to protect his son,” I said to Estelle when we were back in the car.

“The only trouble is,” she replied, “he could have given the gun to Rudy Davila, or sold it to him. There’s nothing illegal about that. It’s Vanessa Davila’s word against his. And if Vanessa testifies that she saw Dennis Wilton climb out of her brother’s window after the shots, then that doesn’t help much either. He could deny that he was ever there, or he could say that he was there and was trying to talk Rudy out of it. He could say it was an accident and that after it happened, he just panicked.”

“He could say lots of things,” I agreed. “And if he didn’t actually pull the trigger, then the most he’s guilty of is assisting suicide. That’s just a fourth-degree felony in this state.”

“He’s clever,” Estelle said.

“Tell me something,” I said and twisted sideways in the seat. “There’s something about Vanessa Davila that makes you want to believe her story, hook, line, and sinker. What is it?”

“It’s just that there’s too much rage there,” she said. “If Dennis Wilton had nothing to do with her brother’s death, I don’t think Vanessa is bright enough to make up a story like that. And there wouldn’t have been any reason to. Not after four years.” She thumped the heels of her hands on the steering wheel. “I think she sees something in all this that we don’t see, sir.”

“She sees Dennis Wilton in school every day, for one thing.”

“I wonder what he’ll do,” Estelle said.

“Who?”

“Wilton. You know, if we’re right, he’s sailing along on a cloud of self-confidence a mile thick. It’s been four years since the Davila case was closed, with a no-questions-asked ruling. And he’s gotten his share of sympathy from the wreck last night. This is about the time he’s feeling invincible.”

I watched Estelle’s face as she guided the patrol car back into the parking lot of the sheriff’s office. She pulled 310 into the slot, pushed the gear lever into park, and turned toward me.

“In order to collect any evidence about the sedative, we’re going to have to show our hand, sir. We don’t know where the drug came from, but if it was close at hand, my first guess is the Wiltons’ medicine cabinet. There’s the possibility that Ryan House got it himself. We don’t know. As soon as we start digging into that, there are going to be some very unhappy people. More so than there are right now.”

“You want Wilton now?”

She nodded slowly. “We’ve got Vanessa Davila’s story. We’ve got someone caught in a lie about a rifle…either Wilton or his father. We’ve got a lie about a seatbelt. We have the bent grille guard. We have Wesley Crocker’s statement that the vehicle that struck him was a pickup truck, and that he saw it earlier in the day with two occupants, and that he can identify it.”

“Pieces, pieces, pieces,” I said. “I don’t want this kid on hit-and-run, or failure to report a death, or assisting a suicide. If he popped Ryan House’s seatbelt buckle with the intent of sending him through the windshield, then he’s guilty of murder.”

“Yes, sir. We can’t prove the seatbelt yet, but we’ve got plenty of ammunition to set up a powerful bluff. We have enough evidence to talk Judge Hobart and the DA into an arrest warrant. That will give us some time. We can see how Wilton reacts.”

“He’s arrogant enough that it should come as a pretty powerful surprise,” I said with satisfaction.

“And we need the time,” Estelle said. “If it was Dennis Wilton who gave old Manny Orosco a spiked bottle of wine, it may take us a day or two to track down the liquor sales.”

I looked at her with astonishment. “You think he might have done that, too?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me a bit.”

“What would be the point?” And I knew the answer at the same time the question left my lips.

“If Dennis Wilton never intended for Maria to come home alive that night, it makes a lot of sense. Drunk as Orosco was most of the time, he still might have been able to identify a face.”

“But Wilton couldn’t have been certain that the bottle would have killed the old man.”

“No. But at the very least, it would have made him so drunk he wouldn’t have remembered a thing. And that’s all part of the kick. Wilton takes his entertainment where he can.”

“You’re not painting a very pretty picture, Estelle.”

“No, sir. And none of it is what Maria Ibarra hoped to find when she came here.”