Red, Green, or Murder

by Steven F Havill

  “Lemme know,” Herb said finally, and pulled his truck into gear.

  Even as I recrossed the narrow county road, Deputy Tom Pasquale’s SUV cruised down the hill, and he raised a hand in salute as he pulled to a stop. “Sheriff’s hangin’ out for a few minutes,” he called to Estelle.

  Bobby Torrez would do that, enjoying some silent time alone, mulling whatever it was that needed mulling. He’d still be there when Herb arrived, and the two of them would mull some more. Maybe something would come of it.

  As if she could sense my slump, Estelle said, “We have word out to everyone. State police, Border Patrol, neighboring counties—if Pat’s to be found, it’ll be soon, sir.”

  “Sure enough,” I said. “I wish I shared your optimism.” I glanced at the time. “You headed back home now?”

  “Yes. Are you ready to finish dinner?”

  Normally, of course, that would have been a silly question. “Thanks, but I think I’ll just mosey around for a while,” I said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I’ve always been thankful that few clever people turn to a life of crime. Sure, there are some successful criminal minds whose misdeeds never catch up with them—perhaps more than we would like to know. But the vast majority commit the crime when their snowball starts down the hillside, and then they decide to think, often too late—and that’s what makes the cop’s job possible.

  The notion that if I could pinpoint the mistakes, that I could find the trail leading to the site of Pat Gabaldon’s misadventure, fed my insomnia. Everyone else had something pressing to do. Estelle was on the phone with Albuquerque and her deputy there, trying to fit pieces into the Payton puzzle. I didn’t know where Sheriff Torrez was prowling, but despite his taciturn nature, he had a good head for puzzles. He also understood that the rest of the county’s activities didn’t come to a stop because of a single incident or two.

  I needed to stay out of the way and find something constructive to do. After retrieving my SUV from the Guzman’s, I drove back out to Bustos Avenue and headed east to the intersection of Grande. Why someone would steal a fancy, almost new truck and livestock trailer was obvious—it was worth a ton of money, even south of the border where money wasn’t knee-deep except for the drug cartels. Given the chance, Pat Gabaldon would have had a thing or two to say about that plan—and that was the key…given the chance.

  I found myself parked at the intersection of Bustos and Grande, the one traffic light in town, and watched it cycle two or three times.

  An infinite number of places around Posadas County would offer good sites to dump a body unseen. In some of them, weeks, even months, might pass before the cluster of ravens and vultures attracted attention. If a killer didn’t want a body to be found, success didn’t require rocket science. A grave only two feet deep would foil the most curious coyote.

  A station wagon pulled up behind me, then swung out and passed when the light turned green and I didn’t budge. The driver could have had two heads for all I noticed.

  Why would the hijackers bother to haul Pat Gabaldon’s carcass down off the mesa? Why not just drag him off into the trees, well away from the two-track? Somebody was being clever, I decided. But they should have taken the dog along. That was the first mistake. If the whole kit and kaboodle had gone missing—truck, driver, dog—we wouldn’t have known where to start.

  Herb Torrance’s rig would have come down off the mesa on County Road 43. That was the only route, other than a Jeep trail or two on the west side. Then, State Highway 56 was the logical route south to the border crossing, where the rig had been spotted next. They’d certainly avoid the huge, international border crossing between El Paso and Juarez, where too many sets of keen eyes and noses guarded the gates.

  But only an idiot would approach the border-crossing check point with a corpse in the vehicle, or someone tied up and gagged on the rear floor of the crewcab. If the hijackers had whacked Pat Gabaldon and heaved the body into truck or trailer, they’d grow uneasy as the border approached. The crossing at Regál was open twelve hours a day, six to six. Risking the check station in broad daylight with a corpse or captive didn’t make sense.

  The Mexican desert was a great dumping ground, true enough. But the risk of trying to cross was too great. Drivers never knew when a customs agent from either side would point to the parking lot, demanding a search. No. Pat Gabaldon had been dumped somewhere between Cat Mesa and Regál.

  I let the SUV idle through the intersection, turning right onto Grande. If the truck thieves knew Posadas, there were any number of alleys and empty lots where a body could be dumped. But they were driving a big rig with an imposing twenty-four-foot long fifth wheel trailer—intimidating if they weren’t used to that sort of thing. City byways and alleys wouldn’t be my choice.

  Several blocks south, Grande passed under the Interstate, and once out of the village, I faced almost thirty miles of rumpled country. I slouched in the seat, all four windows down, speed just fast enough that the SUV wouldn’t shift down out of drive.

  In the twenty-six miles between Posadas and the Broken Spur saloon, there were less than half a dozen two-tracks off into the rough country. The first was just beyond Moore, the remains of a tiny village that had folded for good in the early 1950s. I slowed and pulled off the highway. Building foundations jutted out of the bunch grass and koshia, and the Moore Mercantile loomed in my headlights, its board and batten skeleton slumping a bit more each season.

  Both state police and sheriff’s deputies liked to park in the shadow of the Merc and run radar, and in the glare of my headlights and flashlight, I could see the tire prints where the cops swung in and parked.

  Stopping the truck, I shut off the engine. For a minute the ticking of its guts intruded, but then the silence filled in. No ranch dogs barked in the distance, no traffic hissed on the asphalt, no aircraft moaned overhead. The silence was heavy. I found my phone, flipped it open, and touched the choice for Pat Gabaldon’s number. Nothing. I closed my eyes and listened harder. Still nothing.

  Snapping the phone off, I started the Chevy and idled back out to the highway. Headlights popped on the eastern horizon, and I waited, my lights off, while the westbound vehicle approached. The lights flooded over me and the large SUV braked hard. Deputy Tom Pasquale swung in so that we were door to door.

  “Quiet, huh, sir.” He took the opportunity to pick up his log and jot a note. No doubt, I was now officially recorded. “I was going to take a swing back down through Regál, just to see.”

  “That would be good.”

  “What are you thinking, sir?”

  “You’re assuming that I am, Thomas. I’d like a bolt of inspiration out of the night.” I sighed. “Right now, I’m thinking that they dumped the kid’s body somewhere between Cat Mesa and the border crossing. That’s as brilliant as I can be at the moment.”

  He turned and looked at the dash clock. “It’s just coming up on eight. Hasn’t even been that many hours since he went missing.”

  “Four too many,” I said. “Look, I don’t have a radio in this rig, but you have my cell. Give me a buzz if you need to. I’m going to be working some of the two-tracks down this way.”

  “You bet.” He touched his right hand to the brim of his Stetson and then swung the Expedition around in a tight circle, the fat tires loud on the gravel. I stayed parked, watching his tail lights fade down State 56 until he rounded Salinas Mesa. Long after the lights disappeared, I could hear his engine and tires, a distant complaint in the dark.

  The ranch road to Gus Prescott’s tired little place intersected the state highway less than a quarter mile from Moore, and I turned onto the two-track, feeling the tires nestle into the powdery dust. For a quarter mile the lane wound north across the prairie, through grass cropped to the nubbins by too many cattle over too many years. A tight left turn presented a steep grade down to the Salinas Arroyo, the graveled crossing now bone dry. I stopped on the downgrade, letting my headl
ights flood the crossing. If someone had parked a big rig here, they’d done so in the middle of the road, leaving no marks on the shoulders. As I had at Moore, I shut off the engine, letting all the night sounds in. Again, I dialed Patrick’s number.

  I knew that he had carried the gadget in one of those nifty little leather holsters on his belt, right beside the holster for his utility knife. Those and the snuff can in his hip pocket made up the only tool kit a cowpuncher needed.

  But no harsh electronic melody broke the stillness. It had occurred to me that perhaps the thugs had taken the phone, or smashed it, or any number of other possibilities. But it was worth the try. From far off to the west, a sharp wail of tires on concrete drifted to me. Tom Pasquale’s heavy SUV, probably driven at his usual eighty miles an hour, had crossed the expansion joints and grooved surface of the bridge across the Rio Guijuarro. I restarted my Chevy but left the lights off, drove down into the arroyo and up the other side, bumping across another half mile of prairie until I could see the lights of Prescott’s mobile home.

  They didn’t need company, and I didn’t need conversation, so I turned around and retraced my tracks. A mile down State 56, a well traveled lane cut through BLM property, then angled up the face of Salinas Mesa.

  That two-track was narrow and infrequently used. Grass, sage, and a host of other opportunists grew in the mounded center. They brushed the bottom of my SUV, fried to aromatic perfection by the hot catalytic converter. In a hundred yards, a wide expanse of undisturbed blow sand paved the tracks. No one had driven this road in the past week. The Chevy bucked as I steered up out of the ruts, and the prairie was so dry the grass clumps crackled and turned to dust under the tires.

  The evening wore on as I methodically worked my way southwest, ducking off State 56 at each opportunity, looking for tracks or scuff marks. At the bridges over the Salinas and Guijarro arroyos, I stopped and climbed out of the truck, crossed the guard rail, and then took my time sliding down beside the concrete bridge buttresses. In both cases, the arroyos were dry, and the Guijarro, much wider and inviting, was scarred by four-wheeler tracks.

  For long minutes, I stood in the bottom of the Guijarro and waited as the night seeped into my bones, as if the Big Answer was going to roll down the Guijarro like a wall of storm water and engulf me. It didn’t, and I wished that I had worn a heavier jacket. The tight interior of the SUV felt good when I struggled out of the arroyo and slipped inside.

  I could remember instances when I’d told my deputies to be patient, to let each of the little puzzle pieces swim into place. Now, I told myself the same thing. The state highway department had begun stockpiling crusher fines in preparation for a paving project, and I swung off the highway and circled behind the uniform mountain of steel gray stone. One of the neighbors had done the same thing, then found a spot near the middle where they would be invisible from highway traffic. They had backed up tight against the pile, dropped their tailgate, and shoveled a truckful. I had no doubt that the theft would be repeated until the low spot in someone’s driveway was nicely graveled.

  Off in the distance, I could see the halo of the single parking lot light at the Broken Spur Saloon, the one oasis on this lonely stretch of highway that Victor Sanchez had turned into his private goldmine. Once southwest of the Spur, the highway would curve gently southward, heading up the back flank of the San Cristóbal mountains, those jutting, rugged peaks that formed our own border fence. Over the top of the mountains at Regal Pass and then down to the border crossing—and the mountains could hide countless corpses in their ravines, rock slides, and brush fields.

  A mile before the saloon’s parking lot, my headlights picked up the large Forest Service sign, blasted by dozens of bullet holes, that announced Borracho Springs Campground and the Borracho Springs Trail. The campground lay more than two miles off the highway, after Forest Road 122 forked off the county two-track.

  I slowed, looking for the narrow turn-off marked on each side by highway reflectors. Both markers were askew, the usual target of careless drivers. The Chevy thumped onto the rough two-track, and I jammed on the brakes, shoving the transmission into park before the tires had stopped rolling.

  The flashlight was inadequate, but I didn’t have one of those nifty swiveling spotlights on the SUV. Still, the marks were obvious. The first post, one of those flat things made out of tough fiber, had been caught dead center by someone who’d turned too tightly, dragging a wheel over the lip of the bar ditch and culvert. The scatter of gravel was fresh—that is, it lay on top of a myriad of other tracks. I was no Daniel Boone, but any idiot could see that.

  Crossing behind the idling SUV, I inspected the other marker. It was bent and cracked, the indestructible material not so indestructible after all. The tire marks angled across the end of the culvert, dropping down into the ditch and then up and out across the marker. On the way out to the State highway, someone had not minded his turn and hooked the marker, dragging it under the axle.

  That’s easy to do on a narrow road, even easier to do with a trailer that didn’t track immediately behind the truck during a turn. I’d done the same thing a number of times, and always felt like an idiot when I did.

  Returning to the truck, I sat for a moment, letting my pulse settle a bit. There were dozens of explanations, of course. A hunter, a rancher, a tourist. In and out.

  The first mile of the two-track belonged to the county, and they graded it once a year or so. I let the SUV inch along at idle, windows still open, nudging the gas only when a slight grade slowed progress. As I did so, I kept the cell phone on my lap, touching the autodial every hundred yards or so.

  The intersection with Forest Road 122 appeared in the wash of my headlights. The fork to the left angled off into the prairie, ending at a windmill and cattle tank. Most of the tracks headed for the campground, and I turned that way, toward the boulder gardens at the base of the mountain.

  The campground included two concrete firepits, two Port-a-Potties, and a bullet-riddled Forest Service sign that pointed off toward the rugged country, announcing Pierce Canyon and Borracho Springs, ½ mile. More important, the spot featured a donut of space large enough to swing around even the most awkward rig. I stopped, leaning forward against the steering wheel. The fresh tire cuts swung in an arc around the perimeter of the clearing.

  I shut off the truck and rested back in the seat. My thumb did the little dance on the phone, but I’d tried that trick often enough that I wasn’t expecting a response. When the first notes of La Cucaracha jangled out of the darkness, I startled so hard that I cracked my elbow on the door sill.

  Lunging out of the truck, I took three steps and stopped, leaning against the hood. My hearing was by no means acute under the best circumstances, and the rock amphitheater played tricks with the sound. A dozen cycles of Cucaracha and I’d pinpointed what I thought was the general direction, up through several house-sized boulders. With flashlight in one hand and phone in the other, I picked my way toward the music.

  Something large and energetic bolted off through the brush, and in a moment hard hooves clattered on the rocks up slope. I leaned against a buttress of limestone and gave both pulse and breath time to mellow. Switching off the phone saved some battery life and gave me time to think. The two truck-jackers would lug their victim up on the mountain? Not a chance. A mountain lion or coyote might carry off body parts, and that thought made me pause.

  I dialed again, and the damn custom ring tone filled the night air, drifting down-slope from the right. The gravel was loose underfoot, and I was wearing a pair of smooth-soled boots unsuited for rock climbing. A large piñon loomed ahead, with La Cucaracha merry as ever, emanating from well above my head. I swept the flashlight beam through the limbs, seeing nothing but piñon needles. I grabbed a fistful, knowing I’d regret it, and shook. Sure enough, the ring tone cascaded down toward me. The phone had been flung hard enough that it should never have been found, caught high up in the piñon where it could have sta
yed for years.

  Stretching on my tip-toes, I reached in and with a grunt of exhilaration almost grabbed the gadget. My brain clicked into gear then. I had no camera, and I’d already disturbed a crime scene. Making careful note of the phone’s position, and with the night once more quiet, I found a comfortable rock and sat down.

  A couple of minutes later, my breathing had slowed enough for conversation. This time, Ernie Wheeler answered my ring, and a minute after that, Deputy Tom Pasquale had been dispatched to my location.

  Less than a minute after I switched off and before I’d gathered the energy to push myself off the rock, my phone came alive again.

  “What do you have?” Bob Torrez’s voice sounded unnaturally loud in this quiet place.

  “Gabaldon’s telephone. Somebody pitched it. I just found it in a goddamn tree.”

  That didn’t prompt any gasp of wonder from the sheriff, as if he knew that phones grew on trees. “What about him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You think he’s there?”

  “Has to be,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “Why would anyone drive all the way into this place just to pitch a phone?”

  That prompted silence from the sheriff for a moment. “Be down in a bit,” he said. “Sit tight.”

  I wasn’t able to do that, picturesque and peaceful as my perch on the rock might have been. Instead, the notion of trajectory prompted me to point my flashlight downhill until the beam bounced off my SUV. If the hijackers had parked within a few feet of where I had, throwing the phone this far off into the trees took a strong, athletic, over-hand fastball. Why would they bother to do that? If Pat Gabaldon was still breathing, pitching his emergency link provided a little insurance. Maybe they’d been startled when they’d heard it ring—I had dialed the number a dozen times during the day.

  Behind the last fire pit, a deep arroyo choked with dense scrub oak marked the perimeter of the campground, and I made my way toward it, down off the slope and back across the parking lot.