Double Prey pc-17

by Steven F Havill

  “Oh, my God. Wait…” Thumpings and voices were loud in the background, and at one point Estelle could hear an electronic voice, and a series of chimes that sounded like an elevator signal. “The cops didn’t know when,” Romero said. “When it happened.”

  “We’re not sure, sir.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t want to guess, sir.”

  “Look,” Romero said, and his voice trailed off. “He was lying out there all night? Is that what they’re saying?”

  “It appears right now that the accident happened sometime yesterday, sir.”

  “So he was out there all night?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, Jesus. You mean he could have…” Romero’s voice trailed off, and then Estelle heard him try to speak to someone else, perhaps Tata. “When did you find him?” he managed finally.

  “We found him about three hours ago, sir.”

  “Oh, my God. Who? Who found him?”

  “Bill Gastner and I, sir.”

  “You were looking for him? How…”

  “Yes, sir. We were following the tracks of his ATV. He parked his truck over by Borracho Springs. Then he drove over to Bender’s Canyon from there. I can’t be sure, but I think I caught sight of him yesterday around two o’clock. Driving along State 56, sir. He turned off at the saloon, and took the back trail over to Bender’s Canyon.”

  “You didn’t talk to him?”

  “No, sir. I didn’t have the chance.”

  “He ain’t supposed to be driving along the highway, is he?”

  “No, sir, he’s not. But he was on the shoulder, and just for a mile or so. By the time I passed by, he was off in the distance, off-road. I couldn’t have followed him if I had wanted to. And at the time, I didn’t know it was him.”

  “I don’t know why he’d be over there,” Romero said. His voice was husky, right on the edge of a sob.

  “Nor I, sir. Is there anything I can do for you or Tata?”

  “Christ, I don’t know. I don’t know what to think right now. Butch is going to be all right, I guess. I mean, he’s going to be blind in that eye, but everything else is under control. But now this…”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “I just don’t know what to think. We’re in the ER right now. They had to give Tata a sedative.” Romero heaved a great, shuddering sigh. “Where is he now?”

  “At the hospital, sir.” Estelle avoided the blunt, awful word morgue that would have been more specific. “Dr. Perrone is with him.”

  “Okay. I guess that’s all…all I needed to know. But I want to see where it happened.”

  “I can understand that, sir. Whenever it’s convenient for you. In the meantime, if there’s anything I can do, please don’t hesitate.”

  “Well, right now, I guess we’re driving back down there. Tata wanted to stay here, but…”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “My sister lives here in the city. I’m thinking that we’ll ask her to come stay with Butch so we can break away for a little. God, I don’t know.” He sighed again. “We’ll be there in five hours, Estelle.”

  She looked at her watch. Five hours would put the Romeros on the highway well after dark. “Sir, is there any way I can convince you to drive down tomorrow?”

  “I can’t wait until tomorrow.”

  “Then travel safe, sir. And again, I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah, well. We all…we all are, I guess.”

  She rang off and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as she slipped the little phone back in its holster. “What a thing,” she said to Bill Gastner. “A day starts out one way, and changes so fast there’s just no keeping up.”

  “We’ve seen it too many times,” Gastner grumbled. “When it hits close to home, it kind of jerks our chains. They’re driving back tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s not good, either.”

  Chapter Ten

  She pulled the SUV into gear and let it idle along the rough two-track. In a few moments, they reached a fork, and just beyond on the left, a closed gate.

  “Herb’s back forty,” Gastner said. “Freddy didn’t go through there.” Sure enough, the four-wheeler tracks, here and there clear, but most of the time just a vague scuff on the hard ground, veered to the right, where the two-track dropped down into a shallow arroyo and then around the buttress of the mesa. “If we continue out this way, we’ll be on Miles Waddell’s property in about two miles, and then back to the county road,” he said. “So where the hell was he going?” Almost immediately, he sat up straighter, just as they reached another grove of piñon and oak scrub. Estelle slowed.

  “Right there,” he said. The ATV tracks, now little more than a swath of bent and crushed dried grass and range weeds, swept to the left, off the trail. Estelle stopped the truck, staying in the two narrow ruts of the two-track. They both got out and circled around in front of the SUV.

  “Now, the question is…” Gastner started to say, then shrugged. “Who knows what the goddamn question is.” He walked a few paces to the southwest, then turned and knelt down. “Joe Tracker here says that there have been enough people through this spot in the past week or so to fill a parking lot.” He pointed, sweeping his arm back and forth. “Get the light just right, and you can see that.”

  Estelle walked ahead, staying on the raw dirt of the trail’s ruts. “He-or somebody-went on, that’s for sure.” She waited for Gastner to catch up. In a section no more than six feet across, merely a wash of sandy trash between two smooth, flat rocks whose crowns were now part of the trail’s paving, they could see a clear impression of the knobby tires from what looked like the big, soft tires of an ATV. And other tracks as well…truck, car, even motorcycle, perhaps a mountain bike or two.

  A portion of the ATV’s prints were obscured by other tracks, too indistinct to signal anything other than that they were there.

  “Useless,” Gastner said. “Nothing we can tell for sure.”

  “But let’s suppose that Freddy went through here, along with everyone else. Hunters, ranchers, BLM, tourists, lost illegal immigrants, kids out partying.”

  “And so? Let’s suppose that. So what? That’s what it all is, sweetheart. Supposition. We just don’t know, and we may never know. And even after the kid crashed, it’d be easy enough to miss him.” He shrugged. “Herb Torrance could have come out his gate and gone down this way. Could have gone the other way, too. Ditto anybody else you care to mention.”

  Estelle sighed and rubbed her head. “I just want to know, Padrino. That’s all. I just want to know. I want to know why Freddy rode out this way, I want to know where he went.”

  “Of course you do. But.” Gastner strolled down the two-track, hands in his pockets. “Oh, you got more tracks up here,” he said, stopping at the edge of another sandy wash where run-off down the flank of the mesa had carved a shallow crossing. “Several, as a matter of fact. See? That’s what I mean.”

  “It won’t hurt to follow the two track out a bit farther,” Estelle said.

  “You aren’t going to see anything,” Gastner offered. “I mean, so what? So he rode out this way? You know, the ride he took yesterday, when you saw him, wasn’t necessarily the only recon he’s taken in this area.” He surveyed the countryside, hands on his hips. “Probably pretty good hunting out this way. He’s got the rifle, so he’s making life miserable for the coyotes and bunnies. You know what I’ll bet?” He waited until Estelle raised an eyebrow in question. “I’ll wager lunch, which by the way we haven’t enjoyed yet, that if we walk out into the prairie here a hundred paces, we’ll cross at least one set of vehicle tracks.”

  “I don’t doubt it, sir.”

  “Rats. I wanted lunch.”

  “We will, eventually.”

  “You could fly over this country from the air, and it’d be a lattice-work of tracks, vehicle, cattle, and otherwise.”

  “Rough going, all of it.”

  “
Not for a kid on a hot machine, it’s not,” Gastner said. “Bouncing and jouncing is half the fun, anyway.”

  They returned to the truck and meandered along the two-track, eventually running into another barbed-wire fence. Ahead they could see a power pole, concrete well house, and just ahead down a slight slope, a large galvanized stock tank-this one full with fresh water not yet scummed over with algae.

  “This is the back way into Miles Waddell’s property,” Gastner said, “and that’s his well house. And I can see tracks from here, every which way. You want me to open the gate?”

  “No. There’s no point.”

  “Waddell built this a few years ago, thinking that there would be money to be made when the BLM develops the cave property across the county road. Maybe a good guess, maybe a waste of money. He runs livestock here, and I know he leases some of it to Herb.”

  Estelle pointed to the right, away from the gate, across the prairie where the main Bender’s Canyon Trail headed off to the north.

  “Two more choices,” Gastner said. “If you stay on this road, it’s the easy way out to old State 17. Before you get there, there’s another really rough son-of-a-bitch that runs east through all those foothills, and eventually runs right down to Gus Prescott’s ranch. Right through his back yard.”

  “I’ve never driven that.”

  “Rough, washed out in spots, a kidney crusher.”

  “How many miles to Prescott’s? About fifteen or so?”

  “I would guess about that.”

  “Freddy could have gone that way. He could have ridden over to see Casey.”

  “He could have.” Gastner flashed an amused grin. “Or he could have taken the paved highway to Moore, and a mile and a half would have taken him in to the fair Casey’s front door.”

  Estelle regarded the route ahead thoughtfully.

  “Please tell me you’re not going to crash and bang along that trail in this crate,” Gastner pleaded.

  “You don’t want to do that?”

  “No, I don’t want to do that. I want to eat lunch, sweetheart. Anyway, that route isn’t going to offer up any easy answers. If I thought it would, I’d say go for it. Jounce and bounce until we both piss blood.”

  “The Romeros are going to want to know, sir. They’re going to want to know what Freddy was doing when he was killed.”

  “I understand that. And the answer is simple. He was careening down Bender’s Canyon Trail far faster than he should have been. He got careless. He got killed.” Gastner made a face that mirrored Estelle’s frustration. “You’ll find a more tactful way to explain it to them, I’m sure. But that’s the nut of it all.”

  “The handgun in his kit says that’s not all of it,” Estelle said quietly.

  “Ah…the gun.” He ducked his head in acquiescence. “Now you’re right about that.” He glanced at his watch. “And if I’m not mistaken, you may have some answers about that when Mears is finished processing the damn thing. That I’d like to hear.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Some clear prints.” Sheriff Robert Torrez passed to the undersheriff first a card bearing Freddy Romero’s finger prints lifted by Perrone at the morgue, and then a latent print collection. “Freddy didn’t make any effort to keep his prints off the gun.”

  “I can’t imagine why he would,” Estelle replied. She studied the card, blinking to clear tired eyes. The clock on the office wall read nearly nine thirty, and she had already fielded a second call from George Romero a couple hours earlier. She’d managed to convince Romero that a visit to the crash site would serve them both far better in the fresh light of morning. He and Tata had settled instead for a visit to the morgue, a brief moment that would keep them sleepless for the rest of the night. Perrone had been there, had been gentle and thoughtful, allowing them only to see their son’s face.

  Tata Romero had been unable to ask questions other than why, a word she repeated a dozen times. Estelle had no answer. George Romero’s face was set in grim lines, and at one point, as they left the hospital, had asked, “What do you know?”

  Estelle had been almost honest in her answer, erring only in being deliberately incomplete. She hadn’t mentioned the handgun found on the ATV.

  “Kind of interesting,” Torrez continued. “The gun had a round chambered, but wasn’t decocked.” He slid the heavy automatic across to Estelle. Sgt. Tom Mears had spent considerable time with the gun, retrieving whatever evidence he could. The sum total was several smudgy prints, all belonging to Freddy Romero.

  “Freddy wrapped the gun in that cloth, with one round in the chamber, hammer cocked, ready to go,” Estelle said. “He didn’t try to unload it, and I doubt that he fired it.”

  “Looks like.” The sheriff hefted a sealed plastic envelope and displayed a handful of stubby.40 S amp;W cartridges. “The gun has a ten round magazine. You could add one in the chamber, and that would make eleven. We recovered nine. One was in the chamber, eight in the magazine. All Speer Gold Dot. Mears is processing a couple of prints that might work for us.”

  “So it could have been fired once, or maybe twice, depending on how it was loaded.” Estelle took a moment to mull the sheriff’s shorthand explanation.

  “Could have been fired a thousand times, far as that goes,” Torrez said. “But that’s what was in the gun when we found it in Freddy’s carry-all…cocked, with one in the pipe, eight more in the magazine.”

  Estelle gazed at the stubby, heavy automatic, then picked it up and thumbed the decocker lever. The cocked hammer snapped down, but the large, rotating bar of the decocker mechanism prevented the hammer from striking the firing pin. The gun then could be carried safely with a chambered round, hammer down. Then snap the decocker up, leaving the gun in double-action mode, and all the shooter had to do was pull the trigger. When the gun fired, the hammer was cocked by the slide slamming backward, and would remain that way, cocked and ready to fire, unless the decocker was activated.

  “I can think of a hundred ways Freddy could have come to grief with this,” she said. “Not the least of which is having it bounce around in the carrier of that ATV, charged and ready to go.”

  “Odds are slim that it would go off by itself,” Torrez said. “Slim and none. But then he gets home with it…”

  “That thought gives me the willies. I didn’t mention it to George Romero yet. I wanted to know more before I did that.”

  The sheriff nodded. “So instead the kid does something really dangerous. He drives into an arroyo,” Torrez said, almost philosophically. “Anyway, Mears said the gun looked like it had been locked away in somebody’s attic for a few years. We can comb through any unresolved break-ins or thefts, but I don’t remember anything.”

  “No. Plus I never got the impression that was Freddy’s style. I don’t think he would have taken the gun in a burglary. It almost looks as if it’s been outside. It’s stainless, so it didn’t rust, but look at the rest of the condition. If that gun was in somebody’s closet, they sure were the world’s worst housekeepers.”

  The sheriff turned as another figure appeared in the doorway. “What do you want,” he said in mock truculence, and Doug Posey flashed him a smile. The New Mexico Game and Fish officer was in his late thirties, but still managed to look sixteen.

  “I’m working my ass off, sheriff,” Posey said. “If you don’t think talking to a class of second graders is scary, you can take the next round. That’s what I did this afternoon, for starters.”

  “Ain’t gonna happen,” Torrez said.

  Posey’s expression turned serious. “I heard about what happened to the Romero kid. Shit, his fifteen minutes of fame didn’t last long.”

  “Bender’s Canyon arroyo,” the sheriff said.

  “Son of a gun, that’s too bad. I liked him. Real wild hares, those two boys. How’s Butch coming along, anyway?”

  “He lost the eye, but will recover otherwise. Probably,” Estelle said. “He’s up in Albuquerque.”

  Posey grimaced. “What�
�s with the Smith?” He leaned over Estelle’s desk and peered at the gun without touching it.

  “This was wrapped in a cloth inside the carrier of Freddy Romero’s ATV,” Estelle replied.

  “No kiddin’. May I?” Estelle nodded, and Posey hefted the gun, racked the slide back and inspected the empty chamber and magazine. “Never used one of these. What’s the deal?” He looked across at the sheriff.

  “Don’t know,” Torrez said. “We’ll talk with George tomorrow, maybe. See what he knows.”

  “It’s been cleaned up some,” Estelle said. “When we found it, it was loaded and cocked, and looked like it had been out in the weather. Or a loft up in someone’s barn or garage somewhere. Covered with all kinds of nasties.” She opened a folder and pulled out an eight by ten print of the gun as it had first appeared, cradled in the oily cloth. Posey looked at it, turning it this way and that.

  “Huh.” He turned it again, then pointed at one spot on the forward portion of the gun’s slide. “What’s that, bat guano?”

  “Guano of some sort.”

  “Huh.” He handed the photo back and leaned on the desk, staring at the automatic. “Prints?”

  “Only Freddy’s.”

  “Gun like that shouldn’t be hard to track down,” Posey said. He straightened up, not taking his eyes from the Smith and Wesson. “You guys got a minute?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll be right back. Let me go out to the truck and get something.” In no more than two minutes, he returned and handed Torrez a small plastic evidence bag. “Coincidences make me really uncomfortable,” he said, and waited while Torrez read the tag and then handed the bag to Estelle.

  The single bullet was discolored and hugely mushroomed, its brass jacket peeled back around the lead core so that the resulting projectile was nearly twice its original size.

  “From?” Torrez asked.

  “I picked it out of the cat skull. I talked to Underwood over at the high school this afternoon, when I finished up with the little ankle biters.” He put a finger to his own skull. “There was that hole right behind the right orbit? This was wedged into the bone low on the other side.”