Red, Green, or Murder

by Steven F Havill

  Sipping coffee with one hand, I pulled my phone out of my shirt pocket, looking at it as if it had just announced an incoming call by vibrating. I pushed the autodial.

  “Hello?” I said, and dispatcher Brent Sutherland came on the line.

  “Sutherland.”

  “Hey, you found me,” I said, and if that confused the dispatcher, he didn’t let on. “Where’s Tom at?” In the background I could hear radio traffic.

  “He’s in the Broken Spur parking lot, sir,” Sutherland replied.

  “Tell him to hang tight.”

  “The sheriff just left the airport, so. ETA is forty at least.”

  “Okay. I’ll be in touch.” I folded the phone and put it back in my pocket. Christine came out of the kitchen, where she’d followed Victor, and as the door swung behind her, I caught a glimpse of Deputy Tom Pasquale. Forcing a confrontation was pointless, since we had all the time in the world and all the space in the world once outside. Rory Hobbs and Richard Zimmerman had no vehicle of their own. They had nowhere to run.

  As if sensing an escalating tension, Zimmerman looked down the bar, perhaps wondering where the pretty barmaid had gone. Victor came out of the kitchen, ignored us, and went over to the table where the two laborers were just finishing up. He gathered their burger baskets and nodded at the ticket. The two men conferred over the payment, then tossed down a few bucks, rose, and left the Spur.

  Holding the two baskets, Victor paused and nodded at Father Anselmo. “Come back to the kitchen for a minute,” he said. “I gotta talk to you.”

  “Well, sure,” the priest said. He rose and almost as an afterthought said to the two young men, “Give me a second. Then we’ll head on up to the interstate.”

  “You got it,” Hobbs said. Zimmerman rubbed the palms of his hands on his trousers. I guess that his radar was more finely tuned than his partner’s. He might not have even known why his nerves were twanging, but Rory Hobbs was oblivious.

  Now, with everyone out of harm’s way and just the three of us in the bar, I saw no reason to put off the inevitable. I rose to my feet and beckoned toward the kitchen door, hoping that Deputy Pasquale was paying attention. Both young men followed my gaze, and none of us heard the front door behind us.

  “Gentlemen, put your hands on the bar in front of you,” the voice commanded, and it startled even me. I pushed away from the bar, right hand flying back to the butt of my revolver. Pasquale had moved with stealth belying his size, and his automatic was drawn. “Right now. I want to see four hands.”

  Zimmerman gasped something incoherent and half-turned, his face drained of color. Hobbs rose slowly, an unreadable expression on his handsome features. He looked at me then, and his eyes were chilling. “You old bastard,” he whispered.

  “Don’t be stupid,” I snapped. “Hands on the bar, spread the feet.”

  Facing a drawn gun, and Tom Pasquale’s was steady and out of reach five paces away, most folks would turn to gelatin. Zimmerman was well on his way to that state, but Hobbs was calculating. I could see it in those dark eyes, shifting this way and that, playing the numbers.

  “There’s nowhere you can go,” I said. Pasquale stepped forward, closing the distance. “It’s over, Rory. It’s over. We have good descriptions from the chop shop in Oposura, and from a witness in the parking lot in Cruces where you took the Dodge.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “Oh, God, Rory,” Zimmerman whispered.

  “The good news is that you didn’t kill Patrick Gabaldon, the cowboy whose truck and trailer you highjacked. I’m sure he’s looking forward to meeting you two.”

  Zimmerman’s knees buckled, and he let the bar stool take his weight. Hobbs turned slightly, and in fifty years of paying attention to such things, I have never seen anyone move so fast. With the deputy advancing but still three strides away, Hobbs spun and grabbed his partner in a hammer lock, a blue utility knife appearing in his right hand.

  “Back off!” he screamed at Pasquale. The razor tip of the knife dug into Zimmerman’s neck. He hauled his partner to his feet and backed along the bar toward the kitchen. Barstools crashed out of his way. “Back off!” he repeated.

  “What’s that going to accomplish?” I slipped around the end of the bar into the bartender’s aisle. “Let him go, Rory.”

  “You just back off. I mean it.”

  “Where do you think you’re going to go?”

  A thin tendril of blood laced down Zimmerman’s neck, and I could see that this time, the small triangular blade was in just the right spot, a thin layer of skin and muscle between it and the young man’s carotid.

  “Not across the border,” I said. “They’re waiting for you. And even if you did make it across, Mexican authorities would be delighted to see you.”

  “Get the priest out here!” he cried. For the first time, I heard panic in his voice. He jerked upward with his left arm, yanking Zimmerman’s head backward.

  “Can’t do that,” I said.

  “I’ll kill him!” He jerked his partner again, and Zimmerman let out a cry.

  “Well, you can go ahead and do that if you want, I suppose,” I said. Zimmerman’s knees sagged. “I’m not sure what that will accomplish, other than saving the taxpayers a lot of money.” I took a step or two down the bar, keeping my hands in sight.

  “Drop the weapon,” Pasquale ordered, but Hobbs ignored him, eyes locked on me. He’d twisted his hold enough that his captive provided effective cover from the deputy’s gun. He was full face to me, though, and maybe could judge that I wasn’t the one to put a bullet between those expressive eyes.

  Behind him, the swinging door to the kitchen drifted open, silent and smooth. Victor appeared, face glowering.

  If he felt the air change or heard a soft foot tread, I wasn’t sure, but Rory Hobbs turned ever so slightly to his right, arm still locked around Zimmerman’s chin, blade still digging into flesh.

  Victor struck with precision, the pan hitting Hobbs squarely on the temple before the boy could life an arm to protect himself. The impact was an ugly, muted thud. Victor hadn’t selected an aluminum pan, or a copper one, or even stainless steel. The old-fashioned cast iron caved in Hobb’s elegant skull like a gourd hit with a baseball bat. Pasquale moved just about as fast. He grabbed Hobb’s right arm even as the kid slid to the floor, twisting the utility knife free. Released, Zimmerman staggered against a bar stool, hand clamped to his neck, then recoiled in horror as he saw Victor’s arm draw back again.

  Before I could round the end of the bar, the deputy bulldozed Victor to one side, spun the young man around out of harm’s way and cuffed his hands behind his back. Zimmerman offered no resistance as I reached across with a bar towel and pressed it against the small incision on his neck.

  “Back off,” Pasquale snapped as Victor stepped toward the crumpled figure on the floor. The dark pool of blood was spreading inexorably across the wooden floor from Rory Hobbs’ skull.

  “Get him off my floor,” Victor ordered.

  “I said, back off!” Pasquale roared. “I mean it, Victor. Drop that pan.”

  “My Lord,” Anselmo said. He’d swung open the kitchen door and now strode forward, catching Victor by the arm.

  The deputy bent down, eyes still locked on Victor, and touched two fingers to the side of Rory Hobbs’ neck. After a few seconds, Thomas looked up at me and shook his head.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Concentrating on the what, and not the why, I wrote my way through a lengthy deposition, taking my time so that I included every detail, from the utility knife to the old-fashioned leather-covered lead slapper that Rory Hobbs had carried concealed in his hip pocket. There was no point in dwelling on the why of it. Over the years, I had seen a fascinating number of people who, certainly knowing better, had done astonishingly stupid, self-destructive things.

  The late Rory Hobbs and his incarcerated-without-bail partner Richard Zi
mmerman were certainly in that category. Hobbs had gone from promising actor to dead; Zimmerman had traveled his own slippery slope from pre-med studies to charges that included conspiracy, aggravated assault, grand larceny auto theft, international trafficking, and even cruelty to animals.

  Of course, most of those charges would vanish in the cluttered haze of the legal process, but the certainty was that Richard Zimmerman would spend many years behind bars. If lawyers were clever, civil suits on behalf of Pat Gabaldon would hammer Zimmerman and Hobbs’ family for years to come.

  In short, two lives wasted, and all because one of the two young men—it was still not clear which one—happened to glance into the cab of a fancy truck and saw the keys dangling from the ignition. Of course, Zimmerman said that it was Hobbs who had hatched the scheme, but he wasn’t a half-bad actor himself.

  The pre-med student had been smart enough to hurl Patrick’s phone when it rang and scared the crap out of him—but not smart enough to think about prints.

  At five minutes after seven that evening, I became conscious of a figure standing silently in the doorway, watching me. I relaxed back from Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s computer, clasped my hands behind my head, and smiled at the undersheriff.

  “You look right at home, sir,” she said. “How’s it coming?”

  “Ah. Well, there’s a tendency to wax eloquent, but that’s what the ‘delete’ key is for.”

  “I faxed a photo of Zimmerman and Hobbs to Captain Naranjo. The descriptions fit, and we should be getting confirmation from his witnesses here in a little bit.”

  “By next week, maybe.”

  “And I thought you would like to know…the district attorney is not going to press any charges against Victor.”

  I grunted approval. “If he did, I’d rewrite this deposition,” I said. “Hobbs was threatening great bodily harm during the commission of a felony, and besides that, Victor had no way of knowing whether or not Hobbs would turn his whacko attentions toward Christine or Father Anselmo.”

  “Besides, he’s Victor,” Estelle said.

  “That’s right. He’s Victor. He doesn’t cringe behind the nearest table. There’s a certain element of frontier justice at work here, sweetheart. I did tell Victor that he needs to find a good lawyer, though. I’m willing to bet that Hobbs’ family won’t see it our way. So I’m being extra careful here. Then again, they’ll be busy in a blizzard of other legal paper.”

  “I wondered if in a few minutes you’d be ready for a break.”

  “Absolutely. I’m ready for food, is what I am. This is what you get for sending me out on errands,” I laughed. “‘Go ask Herb some questions,’ you say. And see?”

  “Yes, sir. I knew that Herb would talk with you more easily than he does with me. That’s all.”

  “Nonsense.” I knew damn well that she was right.

  “And we made some important progress,” Estelle added. “I’ll be in the conference room when you’re ready.”

  Ten minutes later, I saved, printed, and filed my deposition, complete with the notary seal that Gayle Torrez affixed for me. My six-page version of events would go into the hopper with all the others, and Zimmerman’s fate would churn out the other end. It was out of my hands, with the exception of testimony eventually in court.

  Expecting a short ride either to Estelle’s home or to the Don Juan, my home-away-from-home, I was surprised when we pulled into the small parking lot of the Town and Country Liquor Store.

  Formerly the Town and Country SuperMart and before that the Posadas Ball and Pin Bowling Center, the liquor store was not the destination I had in mind. Both Estelle and Francis enjoyed a glass of wine now and then, but I’d never actually seen Estelle buy any—and certainly not while on duty in a county car. The way the day was shaping up, though, I was thinking that a good stout belt of something high octane might be the drug of choice. We pulled into the parking lot of the liquor store, and before getting out of the car she took a moment to retrieve a small plastic evidence bag tucked in her briefcase.

  She held up the bag so that I could see the store receipt inside. The tiny blue print recorded the purchase of a 1.5-liter bottle of Tucker’s Aussie, one of the strong, cheap Australian merlots of which George Payton had been fond…and a near full bottle of which had been on his kitchen table.

  “That receipt was in the trash under the sink,” I guessed. “In the bag that the bottle came in.”

  “Yes, sir.” She ran her fingers thoughtfully along the zip closure. “A fresh bottle of Tucker’s merlot was on the table, minus a single glassful that had been poured and then spilled when Mr. Payton collapsed. We found an empty bottle in the trash as well…along with the bag and this.”

  “All right.”

  “Tom Mears found George Payton’s prints on both wine bottles, sir.”

  “As I would expect he would.” I gazed at her, waiting.

  “And no one else’s.” Estelle turned the evidence bag this way and that. “No one. Not a clerk at Town and County, not a distributor…no one.”

  “A glass wine bottle is about the world’s best surface for prints,” I said. “So it was wiped clean. That’s what you’re telling me?”

  “Yes. Tom Mears found a faint smudge or two, but nothing else. Nothing of use. You said that Mr. Payton almost always had wine with his lunch?”

  “Every time that I’ve eaten with him. Yes. Before and during. He always had a dose before the food. ‘Gotta wake up the taste buds,’ he would say.” I could see George’s gnarled, arthritic hands holding the eight ounce tumbler in a two-handed grip. I’d seen him chug down the merlot the way most people can chug tap water.

  “That may have been when he finished the first bottle, then,” Estelle said. “He…or someone…poured a second glass from a fresh bottle, and that was what was spilled during the attack.”

  “Without a doubt,” I said. “He’d drink that first glass, and have about thirty seconds before he’d have to waddle off to…” I stopped in mid-sentence.

  “Waddle off?”

  “He’d go to the bathroom,” I said. “He had the beginnings of prostate cancer. Slow growing, Perrone told him. Not to mention that George wasn’t a good prospect for surgery. He wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol. Or smoke. Maybe you can imagine what a six- or eight-ounce tumbler of red wine loaded with tannic acid would do to a cranky prostate and irritated bladder.”

  Estelle smiled sympathetically. “Uncle Reuben was always muttering about his próstata.”

  “Well, it gets your attention, let me tell you,” I said. “But what’s the fun of giving in to the doctor’s orders, George would say. He just stayed close to a bathroom. But it’s predictable as hell. You drink, you pee. That’s just the way it is.”

  She held up the receipt. “I find it hard to believe that he went out to buy a bottle of wine when he knew that the food was on its way over from the Don Juan. Would he do that? Would he drive himself?”

  “I was supposed to buy it,” I said. “When we talked Thursday morning, he asked me to pick up a bottle on the way over. He knew he didn’t have enough for lunch.”

  “But you didn’t buy the wine.”

  “No, I didn’t. I got hung up at Herb’s. I did talk to George briefly, and he didn’t want to wait. He cancelled the luncheon date, not me. He didn’t mention the wine then, or that he was asking someone else to fetch a bottle. He wouldn’t ask Ricardo Mondragon to do it. But no…I don’t think he’d go out to get it himself. He’d just make the one glass last.”

  “So,” Estelle mused regarding the receipt thoughtfully. “At 11:47 a.m.” She held up the baggie, her thumb marking the cash register’s day-time imprint.

  “If the computer’s clock is accurate.” I nodded at the store’s front door. “Blake would remember if George came in,” I said. “Well, he might,” I amended.

  Blake Pierson had tended the little bar at the bowling alley in the 1970s, then worked at the supermarket, tendi
ng its small liquor department, then managed the current iteration. His knowledge of things alcoholic was encyclopedic. I knew him well not because I drank—nobody got rich off my intake—but because the largest percentage of crimes involved lubrication before their commission, wearing the badge meant talking with the source of the sauce from time to time.

  I followed Estelle inside, struck as always by the odd, cloying aroma of the store. The merchandise didn’t ooze through the glass of the shelved bottles. It oozed from the pores of those who drank too much and then returned to the store for a refill. The potpourri of wine and spirits thickened over the years, permeating the very skeleton of the building itself.

  Pierson, a stumpy little guy who favored plaid flannel shirts any time of year, was studying a multipage computer print-out as we entered. “Ohhhh,” he shuddered. “I didn’t do it.” He folded the print-out carefully, patting it flat on the counter. From somewhere amid the racks of red wine, a rail-thin elderly man appeared clutching a liter-and-a-half bottle, and Pierson reached out across the counter to tilt the bottle just far enough that he could scan the bar-code with the little hand wand. “Thirteen thirty-eight, Pop,” he said, and made change from the twenty with economical motions, counting the change out like a rapid-fire auctioneer. “You come back and see us,” he said. He slipped the bottle into double paper bags and handed the cargo to the aging customer. Pop Mendoza ambled past us with a curt nod of greeting, headed for the door.

  “How’s it goin’?” Pierson asked, and leaned on the counter.

  Estelle had removed the receipt from the evidence bag, and she placed it on the counter. Pierson framed it with both hands without touching it and closed one eye as if peering through a spy-glass.

  “Right over there,” he said, and pointed over the top of the cash register. “The Aussie end cap display. We sell a lot of that. Good shelf life when it’s uncorked, robust, lots of fruit. Good, honest stuff, and cheaper than it should be.”

  “Sir, did George Payton come in sometime during the last day or two to buy a bottle of this?”