Red, Green, or Murder

by Steven F Havill

  “Somebody tried to kill Patrick Gabaldon,” I said. “They took Herb’s truck and trailer, bashed Pat in the head, cut his throat, and then headed for Mexico. They dumped the boy in an arroyo over at Borracho Springs.”

  Without comment, Victor scraped the grill. The frown on his broad, homely face deepened, and he racked the big spatula with more force than necessary. “Christine said you were looking for him earlier.”

  “He’s been lying out there for hours, Victor, and he sure as hell didn’t need to be. They airlifted him to Albuquerque.”

  He wiped his hands on his apron again. “What do you want?”

  “For one thing, I need to know if you or anyone here saw Patrick earlier. We’re trying to nail down some of the details here. We don’t know if Pat picked up a couple of hitch-hikers, or what. We think that the actual assault happened up on the mesa. Up on Herb’s grazing allotment.”

  “How’d you get mixed up in all this?”

  “I cut the permit for moving the cattle, Victor. That’s what Patrick was doing when he was attacked. But we’re all mixed up in it.”

  “What’s he say?”

  “Patrick, you mean? He can’t talk yet,” I said. “Look, this is a simple thing, Victor. You either saw him, or you didn’t. That’s all I want to know.”

  He took his time turning off the stove as if it were a ceremony demanding serious attention. “I get along by minding my own business,” he said finally.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sakes, Victor.” His son had returned to the kitchen and looked apprehensive. “That’s what Patrick was doing, too. He maybe thought he was doing a good deed by picking up a couple hitchhikers. They tried to kill him, they stole Herb’s rig, and they drove it to Mexico.”

  “Then you need to talk to your buddy down there.”

  “Naranjo will do what he can. Look…” and I moved over so that I could lean my hip against the prep table, my arms folded. I knew there was no point in trying to bully Victor, or threaten him. But for all his attitude, he was an intelligent man. “All I want to know is if you saw Patrick earlier in the day. Goddamn it, it’s not like you’re a priest giving away the secrets of confession.”

  Victor surprised me by laughing—not much of one, mind you, but enough to show some gold.

  “So what’s your stake in all this?” he asked. “You’re not sheriff anymore, last I looked.”

  I regarded him in silence for a moment. “Nope, I’m not sheriff anymore.”

  “Still runnin’ around in the middle of the night, though.” He glanced at the clock again, a not-so-subtle hint.

  “We all have our demons, Victor.”

  “Yeah, well.” He turned to his son. “Tell Christine that we’re closin’ up. Shag all the freeloaders out.” I hadn’t budged, and as his son left the kitchen, Victor dropped the spatula into the sink. He headed for the back door, and included me in a nod of invitation. The outside air was crisp and clean, and I could smell the rich kitchen effluvia on Victor’s clothing.

  “Come here,” he said, and I followed him to the east corner of the building and then around to the parking lot. “I was helping some asshole at the diesel pump,” he said. “And no…I don’t know what time it was. Sometime this afternoon. There were two guys hitch-hiking right over there,” and he pointed west, toward the intersection with Herb Torrance’s county road a mile away. “The Gabaldon kid came out of the side road in the ranch rig, and picked ’em up. Right over there.” He pointed to a spot almost directly across the highway.

  “Could you see their faces? Would you recognize them again?”

  “No, I wouldn’t recognize them again. Just two guys with backpacks. One taller than the other.”

  “What were they wearing?”

  “Clothes.”

  “Caps? Anything distinctive?”

  “I told you. Why should I notice? Just two guys.” He pulled a ragged pack of unfiltered cigarettes out of his trouser pocket, grubbed one out, and lit it. “He picked ’em up, and they drove off toward town. You know, if the kid had pulled in here to buy some diesel, maybe I woulda seen ’em. But he don’t do that. Old man Torrance would rather drive all the way to town than buy it here.”

  I wasn’t about to be suckered into that argument. “If you remember anything else, I’d appreciate your letting me know, Victor. This is a help.”

  Victor didn’t care to know that he’d been helpful, of course. Two more quick sucks on the cigarette and he snapped it out into the dark.

  “The sheriff or undersheriff might want to talk with you again,” I said to his retreating back, and he stopped abruptly.

  “You make sure that don’t happen,” he said. “Then we’re about even.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  My headlights picked up the door shield of Deputy Jackie Taber’s unit, parked behind the sign for Borracho Canyon. She’d come out of the shadows and would give travelers of the night a turn. Some of the lingering customers of the Broken Spur would redouble their efforts not to wander.

  The deputy had seen me coming—maybe it was my snail’s pace. As I approached she clicked on the roof rack for a turn, and I pulled off onto the shoulder. She wasn’t parked such that door-to-door was possible, but by the time I’d stopped, she was climbing out.

  “Good morning, sir.” She leaned both elbows on the door of my truck and watched an oncoming pickup roar by. “Quiet night.”

  “And I’m glad of that,” I said. “I’ve had all the excitement I can stand.”

  “Neat trick with the phone, sir. Tom was telling me how you found the Gabaldon kid.”

  “Well, he got lucky. Look, I was just talking with Victor. He says that Pat picked up a couple of hitch-hikers just west of the saloon this afternoon—yesterday afternoon. No description other than that it was two men with backpacks. Maybe little by little we’ll pry some more out of him, but for right now, that’s all he’ll say.”

  “That’s a start. The undersheriff wanted me to pass along some information to you, sir.” She held up three fingers. “First of all, Sheriff Torrez, Tony Abeyta, and I are going to take this place apart in the morning to see what else we can find.”

  “I don’t expect you’ll find much,” I said.

  “Probably not. But who knows how lucky we might get. If you want to join us here, that would be welcome.”

  “I’d just be in the way. You need sharp eyes, my friend.”

  “Your choice, sir. Number two, the dumpster party is on, and the undersheriff said you’d want to know about that. She said that if you wanted, she’d meet you behind the Don Juan at six.”

  “Behind the Don Juan? At six, I plan to be in the Don Juan, stuffing my face. This is nuts.”

  Jackie held up both shoulders in a long, slow-motion shrug. “Don’t shoot the messenger, sir. Nuts or not, that’s what’s going down.”

  I nodded at her hand. “What’s third?”

  She waggled the finger. “Just a point of information. Estelle said that you’d want to know that Norma Scott?” She waited a couple seconds for the name to register. “The late Norma Scott? She’s Phil Borman’s sister.”

  “Shit.”

  “The undersheriff said you’d want to know. She said that she would have called you direct, but she knew you were probably out with Herb, and she didn’t want to interrupt.”

  “Estelle’s at home now?”

  “I suppose so, sir.”

  I sighed. “Anything I need to do for you? Coffee? Hamburger?”

  “I’m fine, sir.”

  “Then I’ll mosey,” I said. “If we’re having a party for breakfast, I need to clean up and change into something more fashionable.”

  Jackie laughed and stepped away from my truck. “Somehow I had the misfortune to be the one tagged to help out at Borracho. You enjoy, sir.”

  “We’ll get even,” I said.

  “I’m sure you will, sir.”

  I resumed my amble northeast, n
ow with nothing to look for except some coherence for my thoughts. With the jog from Estelle, I remembered Norma Scott. The wife of Wes Scott, one of the maintenance men for the school district, Norma had not died quietly at home, but in the middle of the produce aisle at the supermarket.

  I knew why Estelle wanted to search the dumpsters, but it was a real long shot, longer even than searching the Borracho Springs parking lot in hopes that the thugs might have dropped something besides Patrick Gabaldon. When someone has something they want to get rid of, odds are good that into the dumpster it goes…either that or tossed out along the roadside. A third option might see the goods stowed in a closet for safekeeping, but I understood the undersheriff’s logic. The obvious thing to do first was look in the most likely places. And we could do that without sweating warrants or tipping our hand. Still, the targets were tiny: a tiny chemical bottle, maybe a plastic spoon or a tongue depressor, maybe a little plastic baggie.

  In this instance, Lloyd Parsons, the village’s sanitation department supervisor, would be amused at our request—as long as he didn’t have to do the rummaging.

  The undersheriff sure as hell didn’t need me for this stunt, but she would know perfectly well that I would want to see the investigation through. By the time I’d driven home, showered, and put on some old clothes, it would be time to brew a pot of coffee and face the day.

  I did just that, and at a quarter of six, my phone rang. The undersheriff sounded bright, perky, and well rested.

  “Sir, how about if I swing by and pick you up?”

  “Who told you that I had any desire at all to go dumpster-diving?” I growled. “Damned dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of.” Before she had time to judge whether or not I was kidding, I added, “That would be good, sweetheart. The front door is open. And when we’re done, you owe me the breakfast of all breakfasts.”

  “Absolutely, and congratulations again, sir. No word on Patrick’s condition yet, but we’re adding another chapter in your legends book.”

  “Stop it,” I snapped. “Any prints off the phone?”

  “A couple of good ones.”

  “Let’s hope they’re not Patrick’s.”

  “Exactly, sir. ETA about two minutes.”

  Friday was one of three trash pick-up days when the big refuse trucks of Southwest Compax Services rumbled through the alleys of Posadas, flipping dumpsters. If something had been discarded anywhere in town or in the outlying areas, another ten hours would see all the trash at the landfill northeast of town. Picking through the tangled heap at the landfill wouldn’t be a delightful way to spend the day. One dumpster at a time was easier, more efficient, and probably more productive.

  By the time I’d refilled my cup and turned off the coffee maker, I heard a single siren yelp out in my driveway as the undersheriff announced her arrival. Such urgency was uncharacteristic on Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s part, and I didn’t keep her waiting.

  As I settled into the passenger seat of her Crown Victoria, I saw that she was dressed in battered blue jeans and a well worn sweatshirt. “When Jackie told me about this, I hoped that all along you were kidding,” I said. “After all, I could be out in the canyon, tripping over roots and bashing myself on rocks. Who do you have working?”

  “There are six of us,” she said.

  “Do you know how many dumpsters there are in this burg?” Of course she did.

  She accelerated the county car out onto Guadalupe. “Lloyd gave us a map. We have thirty-three in the village itself, and another twenty-eight outlying. I don’t think we’ll have to search them all.”

  “Christ,” I muttered. The whole thing made me feel tired, and it wasn’t from lack of sleep. “And what if someone got smart and used gloves when they handled the bottle?”

  “Then we have the weapon but not the prints. That would be a major success in itself. If they weren’t clever enough to wear gloves, then we have both.”

  In another two minutes, we swung into the fenced area behind the Don Juan, where three green dumpsters waited. So too did Tom Pasquale and Linda Real, both looking as if they’d abandoned a painting project so they could attend this party—spattered jeans and old shirts, looking like a couple of physically fit vagrants.

  Deputy Pasquale had the first dumpster’s dual lids flopped back, and he was peering inside. When he saw us drive up, he shook his head in amused wonder. “Fun times,” he said, as we got out of the car. “This is when we find all the dead dogs, cats, babies, and stuff.”

  “I’ll remember that the next time I order a burrito.” I surveyed the first dumpster’s aromatic contents warily. We’d drawn the long straw for the easy task with this selection, since most of the refuse that was expelled from the back of the restaurant was neatly bagged or boxed.

  “We can tip it, I think,” Pasquale said, and sure enough, he, Linda, and Estelle were up to the task, like a trio of eager dumpster bears on the way to dinner. They were more gentle than bears would be, and the container went over with a loud, reverberating bung. That’s when Fernando Aragon appeared at the back door of the restaurant, wiping his hands on his apron. He watched silently for a moment as Tom, Linda, and Estelle dragged the large, intact bags to one side, exposing the jumbled inner contents.

  “If you guys can’t afford to pay for breakfast, just say so,” he said soberly.

  “We appreciate that,” I said. I hadn’t partaken yet, figuring that someone had to look like the supervisor of this outfit. “What are you doing up so early?”

  “I work here,” Fernando said, eyebrow raising. “If we open at six, somebody has to do the prepping. What are you looking for?”

  “If I knew…” I said.

  Fernando couldn’t resist the attraction, and stepped over to where I stood. He looked me up and down critically. “You look like you need a good night’s sleep.”

  “Indeed I do,” I said affably. “But this is so much fun.”

  “You’re not looking in the bags?” He pointed at the big black sacks.

  “We think it’s loose,” I said. “Whatever it is that we’re looking for. We might save ourselves a little time and effort by not undoing all your good work.”

  “Hijole,” Fernando muttered under his breath. “You choose a bad day, you know. They pick up on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So you got a lot to look through before they come around this morning.”

  “Right. But it would have been tossed in sometime since Thursday noon,” I said.

  The restaurant owner sighed with resignation. “Well…you want help?”

  “No. You have far better things to do,” I said. “We’re fine, Fernando.”

  “You still think something happened to Mr. Payton?” I was impressed that he’d made the connection without prompting.

  Other than death? I amended, but I kept the thought to myself. “Yes.”

  He nodded. “Coffee’s on whenever you need some,” he said, and reached out to pat my arm as he walked past. He went back inside the restaurant, careful not to let the screen door slam behind him.

  For another half hour, we waded our way through a day and a half in the life of the Don Juan de Oñate restaurant. I knew from her determined expression that Estelle had conjured up her own scenario for what had happened on Thursday. I hadn’t, but maybe that was because I wanted us to find some innocent reason for George Payton’s death, not food or wine spiked with lethal chemicals.

  A similar scene was in progress at several other sites around the village—in the alleys that served George’s small home on 1228 Ridgemont, in the Borman’s neighborhood, even behind Guy Trombley’s pharmacy. They found exactly what we did…lots of garbage, none of it incriminating. No deadly little bottle with the DeMur Industries label, no plastic spoon, no ah-stick used to mix the brew.

  It’s always nice to hope for a simple resolution, but when a criminal doesn’t want to be caught—when he doesn’t send rude notes to the cops taunting them, when he doesn’t leave behind incrimina
ting, obvious clues, when he has no intention of striking a second time, or most simple of all, when there are no witnesses—crimes often remain unsolved, something most taxpayers don’t want to hear.

  In another hour, we’d finished behind the restaurant. All our digging and sorting had produced nothing.

  The two dumpsters behind the county building on Bustos featured an entirely different ambiance, including an interesting mix of bagged governmental detritus, rather than old lettuce and platter scrapings. Somebody spent a lot of time feeding paper shredders. Even though I’d been caught in the middle of county bureaucracy for a fair span of time, I’d never actually appreciated the amount of just plain stuff that pooped out the back of the county office buildings every day, headed for the landfill.

  By the time we finished there, the sun was painfully harsh on the metal surfaces. I hadn’t had breakfast yet, and none of the young eager beavers around me showed any signs of weakening. I had privately reached the conclusion that of all the interesting wild chases I’d been on with the undersheriff—and most of them had paid off in one way or another—this one took top honors as being the most useless. That in itself was depressing, since I wanted answers about George Payton’s death as much as anyone.

  At least Estelle, Tom, and Linda were perfecting their technique. The dumpster was eased over, the lids folded back out of the way, and then the trash was eased only as far forward as necessary to examine all the way to the bottom of the container.

  About finished with the second dumpster behind the county building, Tom Pasquale straightened up, holding what appeared to be a perfectly good deep throat document stapler. As he turned it this way and that, the sun winked off the metallic inventory sticker on the bottom. “From the assessor’s office,” the deputy said. He clicked it several times, pulled open the back, and checked the innards. “Anybody want it?”

  “Jack Lauerson might,” I said, and Tom handed the gadget to me. “It must have slipped off one of the desks somehow and landed in the trash.” The bags went back in the dumpster and I watched the trio clean up before tipping the last container back into place.