Strangers (8 page)

In the kitchen, I plucked the keys off the hook. I intended to leave right away, but there was something, an aura of dark melancholy, in the empty stillness that kept me standing there. It wasn't my imagination. Strong emotions such as pain, suffering, fear have a way of imparting a mood to a place, and I'd always been sensitive to such vibes. Cheryl's emotions alone? Or some of Cody's, too?

I knew so little about him, and all of what I did know was hearsay colored by personal feelings. What kind of young man was he? An unfiltered opinion of my own was what I needed, but if Sam Parfrey couldn't arrange even a brief meeting with him …

Well? I thought then. He lives here, doesn't he?

Snooping without permission is not something I normally do—I respect people's right to privacy—but these were special circumstances. And here I was, already inside the house by invitation. What Cheryl didn't know wouldn't hurt either of us and it might help me.

The bedrooms were on the north side of the house, two of them, the door to one open and to the other closed. The open one was Cheryl's room, the bed neatly made, a nightgown folded on the counterpane. I bypassed it without entering. The closed door was not locked; I took a long look around from the doorway before I stepped inside.

It was both a boy's room and a man's room. Shelves containing model cars, a miniature Nerf basketball hoop attached to the closet door, stacks of well-thumbed comic books (old) and automotive racing magazines (recent). A small desk with an equally small Dell computer on it. Something in one corner that looked like a heavy-duty electric winch, the kind that can be mounted on a Jeep Cherokee. A Le Mans racing poster on one wall, and over the bed, a fairly large
Playboy
centerfold-type photograph of a nude blond woman. Joe Felix and one or more of his deputies would have been in here; I had a pretty good idea what they'd made of the nude photo. But Cheryl? What did she think of it?

The bed was neatly made in here, too, clothing all put away and everything in its place. Cheryl's doing; the law wouldn't have left it like this. So no way of telling whether Cody was the tidy type or as sloppy as the majority of nineteen-year-old males.

I went in and began searching. Impressions, a sense of Cody Hatcher, were all I was after; if there had been anything here even remotely pertaining to the three rapes, Felix would have confiscated it. That included the computer, but I booted it up anyway, long enough to determine that it was password protected. I thought that it was a good thing Cody hadn't been into viewing hardcore porn; if he had been, Frank Mendoza would have used the fact to further stack the case against him.

There was nothing to hold my interest in the two drawers in the desk, nor in the dresser or nightstand drawers. But inside the closet I found a waxed-canvas rifle case tucked in behind a rolled-up sleeping bag. I drew the case out, unfastened Velcro straps, withdrew the weapon inside—a Marlin lever-action .30-30 Winchester. New or nearly so: there were no marks of use on the stock or barrel. Several hundred dollars worth of firepower.

I slid the rifle back in the case, closed the straps, and laid the case down where I'd found it. When I closed the closet door and turned, I was facing the heavy-duty electric winch. A closer inspection showed that it, too, was brand new, all its components shiny and unmarked—never installed or used. I had no idea what something like this would cost, but it wouldn't come a whole lot cheaper than that Marlin .30-30.

The rifle and the winch—two new, expensive nonnecessities. And Cody Hatcher had been out of a job for five months and his mother couldn't be making much waitressing at the Lucky Strike. Presents from somebody other than Cheryl—Matt Hatcher, maybe? Or did Cody have a source of income that she wasn't aware of?

Out in the hallway, I hesitated before the open door to Cheryl's bedroom. I did not like the idea of invading her privacy, too, but I did it anyway. Just long enough to determine that there was nothing new or expensive anywhere in her room. That would seem to let Matt Hatcher out as Cody's benefactor. If Hatcher was going to lavish presents on somebody, it would be the object of his passion, not her son.

So who had paid for the rifle and the winch? And for that matter, the five-year-old Jeep? Even secondhand, those babies don't come cheap. If it was Cody, where had the money come from?

 

7

River Road, graded but unpaved, most of its numerous chuckholes gravel-filled, loosely followed the twisting course of a fairly narrow river. I was not used to either the Jeep's manual transmission or its tight clutch; I had to fight the wheel and the gearbox on several occasions as I bounced along. The terrain out here was something of a surprise; I'd expected barren desert, but what I found was agricultural land and a fair amount of greenery nurtured by the river and its creeks and springs. The ranches were spaced far apart, with plenty of open space where irrigated crops grew and cattle and horses grazed on patchy grass.

The Neilsen ranch was easy enough to find. A white, horseshoe-shaped sign spanned an access lane where it intersected with River Road, a huge X-Bar brand burned into it and the red-painted words P
RIZE
H
EREFORDS
below that. I turned in there, through an open gate, and jounced along through fenced pastureland until the ranch buildings came into sight.

There were several of them, set in a hollow along a bend in the river. To my unaccustomed eye the main house, shaded by cottonwoods, looked to be a hybrid of wood, adobe brick, and native stone. Spread out around it were two barns, a couple of house trailers, a long structure that might have been a bunkhouse, a covered hay rick, two windmills with galvanized water tanks, and a maze of corrals and cattle-loading chutes. A fairly large operation, and a successful one judging from the buildings' well-kept look and the overall orderliness of the place.

A middle-aged Latino was using a gas-powered weed-whacker along one side of the bordering fence when I came into the ranch yard. I stopped near him, waited until he shut off the noisy implement, and asked in Spanish if Jimmy Oliver was working here today. Speak a person's native language in a friendly way and you can usually get a cooperative reply. He nodded and said yes,
el hombre joven
was in the stable attending to the horses, and pointed toward the smaller of the two barnlike structures adjacent to a pole-fence corral populated by half a dozen equines. The way he smiled as he said
asistencia a los caballos
indicated that what young Jimmy was mainly doing was shoveling horse manure.

Not so, as it turned out, at least not right now. The cool interior of the stable smelled of manure, all right, but its only occupant was bent over the hindquarters of a roan mare outside one of the stalls, applying some sort of sticky brown substance to the animal's leg just above the hoof. When he heard my footfalls on the rough floor he glanced around briefly, then resumed his work on the horse's leg.

He was a tall, gangly kid, body and limbs and head all angles and juts and knobs. Trying to grow a mustache, probably to make himself look older, but not having much luck at it; it had a sparse, weedy look on his upper lip. He was dressed cowboy-fashion, a sweat-stained Stetson hat pulled down low over his ears—an outfit you had the feeling was standard with him when he was out of sight of his mother.

I stopped a short distance away—I've never been particularly comfortable around horses—and asked if he was Jimmy Oliver. He admitted it without looking up from his work. “Do something for you, mister?”

“Answer a few questions about Cody Hatcher.”

The words froze him for a couple of seconds. He swiveled his head to give me an up-from-under look through squinted eyes. Then, slowly, he uncoiled and faced me, pushing the Stetson back on his forehead with his free hand.

“Who're you?” he asked warily.

When I told him, he relaxed a little. “For a minute there, I thought maybe you're some new guy with the county and my uncle sent you. I guess you know he's the sheriff?”

“Yes, we've met. Why would he send somebody around to talk to you?”

“He thinks I might know something about Cody and those rapes that I won't tell him. You know, like Cody confessed to me or something because we're buddies.”

“Why doesn't he approve of Cody?”

Jimmy Oliver's mouth pinched in at the corners. “Him and my mother, they're always telling me what a bad influence he was, how I'd get into trouble if I hung around with him. Now it's I-told-you-so and a lot of praying and trying to make me forget I ever knew him.”

“You don't believe he's guilty.”

“No way. He wouldn't attack a woman, wouldn't hurt anybody. He just likes to have a good time, that's all. I told my uncle who I think did the rapes and framed Cody, but he wouldn't listen to me.”

“Who would that be?”

“Derek Zastroy. That jerk-off's had it in for Cody ever since Cody and Alana got together.”

“Why? Jealousy?”

“Yeah. Zastroy used to go with Alana. He'd attack a woman, all right. Real bad temper, smacked Alana around a couple of times—that's why she wouldn't have anything more to do with him.”

“Cody and this Zastroy had trouble, then. What kind?”

“Name-calling, shoves, a couple of punches.”

“Did Cody tell you about this or did you see it happen?”

“Both. I was there the time they got into it at a community dance.”

“Did Zastroy threaten Cody in your hearing?”

“Said he'd get him, yeah. I wasn't the only one heard him say it.”

“Alana, too?”

“Sure. She was right there.”

So why hadn't she told me about the bad blood between Cody and Derek Zastroy? Why hadn't anybody else mentioned it?

“Why wouldn't your uncle listen when you told him about Zastroy's threats?” I asked.

“He said he talked to him, like he talked to a lot of other guys after the rapes started, but Zastroy couldn't've done it because he had an alibi for the first one.”

“What sort of alibi?”

“He wouldn't say. Just that he was satisfied with it.”

“What does Zastroy do for a living?”

“Bartender at the Horseshoe.”

“Day or night?”

“Both, I think. You know, whenever they need him.” The roan horse made a snorting sound and shuffled its feet. Jimmy Oliver reached over to rub the animal's muzzle, murmured something to it, and it calmed immediately. “I've got to finish up with the Cut-Heal,” he said to me. I must have looked blank because he added, “Cut-Heal medicine. Red's got a rock cut on her right fetlock.”

I watched him apply more brown gum to the horse's leg, cap the bottle, then lead the animal into one of the stalls and talk to it for a few seconds before shutting the gate door. When he turned back my way I said, “Cody's mother said he lost his job at the Eastwell Mine a while back and hadn't been able to find work since.”

“Yeah, that's right.”

“Not even ranch work, like you're doing?”

Jimmy Oliver hesitated before he said, “Well, Cody's not into horses and ranching the way I am.”

“What is he into? Not mining?”

“Not so much, I guess. What he'd really like to do is race. You know, off-road or stock cars. He had these plans about leaving here, going to Reno or California somewhere, getting into the racing scene.”

“You think he'd have done that if he hadn't been arrested?”

“Probably. Come spring or sooner.”

“Alone or with Alana?”

“… I think maybe alone.”

“So their relationship isn't all that serious?”

“Well, he didn't want to get married, I know that.”

“And Alana did?”

“Most girls do,” he said, and shrugged.

“Cody being out of work, what did he do for spending money? His mother doesn't seem to have a lot.”

“She does okay. I mean, she's got a good job and they're not starving or anything.”

“But what about Cody? Gas isn't cheap, especially when you spend a lot of time racing around in the desert. And he has a new Marlin rifle and a new electric winch for his Jeep. He tell you about those?”

“Well … the rifle, yeah. He said Gene Eastwell gave him a real good deal on it.”

“Gene Eastwell.” That name wasn't on Parfrey's list, either. “Another friend of Cody's?”

“No way.” Oliver's lip curled slightly. “Eastwell's too important to hang with guys like us, or thinks he is.”

“Member of the family that owns the mining company?”

“Son of one of the bosses.”

“Works at the mine, does he?”

“Sometimes there, sometimes at their office in town.”

“So he gave Cody a good deal on the rifle. When was that?”

“Couple of weeks ago.”

“And Cody paid cash for it.”

“… I guess so.”

“How much?”

Shrug. “He didn't say.”

I said, “Five months since he lost his job at the mine. Where'd he get the money? He have a little something going, maybe, that he didn't tell his mother about?”

“I don't know what you mean.” But Oliver knew, all right. The downward shift of his gaze told me that.

“Something to do with Max Stendreyer.”

Shot in the dark. And a dud: the only reaction was another slight lip curl. “Cody wouldn't have nothing to do with a desert rat like Stendreyer.”

“Bought some weed from him now and then, didn't he?”

“I don't know nothing about that.” Then, defensively, as if I had accused him instead of Cody, “I'd be crazy to smoke dope with my uncle the county sheriff.”

Alana Farmer had intimated otherwise, but then maybe Jimmy Oliver had abstained the night Felix smelled marijuana in Cody's Jeep. Give him the benefit of the doubt. None of my business, anyway, unless it had some direct bearing on my investigation.