“Glad I still have some clout,” Gastner replied. “And it’s me who’s going to be God damn embarrassed here in a bit, probably…embarrassed and relieved as hell.”
“We’ll want to stop him right here,” Estelle said, nodding at the remains of the Moore Mercantile building. “Nice and level, and well clear of the highway.”
The deputy moved his Expedition so that it blocked the dirt road, putting it headlight to headlight with the approaching semi. He lit the roof-rack when Florek’s rig was a hundred yards away, and they immediately heard the diesel choke as the driver slowed. Estelle could see Florek leaning forward, hard against the steering wheel.
He let the rig idle to a stop, and Estelle stepped closer, looking up into the tall cab.
“I sure as hell wasn’t speeding,” Florek said, “and I ain’t got no livestock. What are you guys up to this morning, anyways?”
“Sir, would you climb down?”
“Sure enough.” Florek emerged from the cab and lowered himself to the ground, a great bear of a man in full beard and denim bib coveralls. “Bill, you old bandit, how’s life treatin’ you?”
“I’ve been better,” Gastner said.
“So what’s this about?”
Estelle held out the warrant. Florek glanced at it, then ignored the document, looking to the undersheriff for answers. “We’d like to examine your load, sir.”
“I know I ain’t overweight,” he replied. “And she’s all tied down good. Just goin’ to the yard, anyways.”
“Yes, sir,” Estelle said. “Would you mind staying with the deputy for a few moments, sir?” Deputy Abeyta and Florek remained by the front of the truck while Estelle and Gastner walked back to the trailer. Now eighteen inches thick, the pancaked wad of metal and plastic on the bottom tier showed the clear patina of age and burned metal.
“Doors are gone,” Gastner observed, “but this sure as hell is the center post between front and back.” He tapped the crumpled tail pipe. “This is what I was talking about. That’s diesel hardware. And right here?” He moved along the wreck and touched a spot of metal. “That’s where the fender insignia would be. Probably said something like XLT Powerstroke Diesel or some such. Something like that anyway, depending on the year.”
“If we’re going to look for much more, we’re going to have to unload it and take it apart.” Estelle leaned inward, between the semi’s cab and trailer. “An engine, you suppose?”
“I would bet against it,” Gastner said. “That’s worth a lot of money.”
She lowered her voice. “If this truck belonged to Johns…”
“Then we have a few choices,” Gastner added.
“Ay, ” Estelle whispered. “We need to know.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
By the time they reached Florek’s wrecking yard, Sheriff Robert Torrez was there to meet them, along with Deputy Tom Pasquale.
“Got a really good buy on this stuff,” Gastner quipped. Torrez shot him an amused look, and offered a salute to Florek, who stood on the running board of the tractor, waiting instructions.
“Mears has found the dentist,” the sheriff said to Estelle. “Nothing yet, but maybe. It’s a step. So tell me what you got here.”
“I have reason to believe that this baby down here-” Gastner stepped forward and pointed at the wreck-“this vehicle right here is a late model Ford crew cab, Robert. It’s a diesel. It’s been burned enough that the paint is gone, but not so much that we couldn’t find a trace somewhere in a protected area.”
“Johns?”
“Could be. We need to know the year. That’s critical.”
Torrez turned and looked at Estelle. “You talked to Gus about this?”
“No. Not yet. I want an identification first.”
The sheriff pursed his lips and frowned. “You had to pick the one on the bottom, didn’t you,” he said to Gastner, and followed that with a tight smile. He stepped closer. “You trust Florek with all this?”
“Yes,” Gastner said without hesitation, then shrugged. “And no. As much as I trust anyone. Up to an hour ago, I trusted Gus, too.”
“Okay.” The sheriff ambled up along the truck and looked up at Cameron Florek. “How long will it take you to unload?”
“Well, see, I was going to run this load right on down to the plant in Cruces.”
“Nope. Not yet, anyway.”
“Look,” Florek said as he swung down. He stood eye to eye with Torrez. “You want to tell me what’s going on here? What’s the interest in the wreck?”
“Cam,” Gastner said, “you’re the expert to ask. If I wanted to know the year of this one,” and he reached out and touched the diesel tailpipe, “how would I do it?”
“Door plate would tell ya, but the door’s gone, so that’s out,” Florek said. He examined the wreck. “VIN is…well, hell, you know where the VIN is as well as me.”
“And if the vehicle identification number plate is missing?”
Florek shrugged. “It’s a later model. That’s for sure. Burned some.”
“What year?”
The salvage yard owner scratched his hairy forearm. He strolled along the trailer to the rear of the wreck, his mobile face active as he worked his tongue around the inside of his mouth. Hands jammed in his pockets, he turned his head this way and that.
“That’ll tell ya,” he said, and reached up to pull at the remains of a tail light lens. There was no way to judge how large the lens might have been, since it was broken, partially melted, and jammed into the crumpled steel that had formed the housing around the unit. “Lemme get a bar.” He turned and strode over to his small office by the gate, and returned in a moment with a short wrecking bar.
Torrez held up a hand to stop him as Estelle worked the camera. She took a series of half a dozen photos of the tail-light area from various angles, then nodded.
With a few deft probes, Florek loosened the remains of the lens. It hung from the carcass by several wires, themselves melted to the copper. “Now see, it’s got three sets of wires that would attach with quarter turn sockets. Still got one left.” He popped the light out of its socket, and the plastic lens fragment, about the size of a tea cup saucer, came loose in his hand. “Socket up here, broke off. Socket right here. And between ’em…” He held the fragment so Estelle could see it.
“ASY four-el-three four dash six nine…and then it’s broken off. Below that, hecho en Mexico. ”
“That’s the part number,” Florek said. “And if I remember right, the number after the first letters is the year. So four, is two thousand four.”
“Not ninety-four?”
“Nope. They used a different series back then. And before that, I don’t know if they used a separate number or not.”
“So two thousand four. You’re sure of that.”
“Yep.” He turned back to the wreck. “You know, unless someone replaced the lamp with another one of a different year. That’s unlikely. And if you look down in there, you’ll see some overspray that the fire didn’t touch. Just a second.” He walked up to the cab of the truck, rummaged in the door pocket, and returned with a flashlight. “Look here.” Estelle stepped close and looked inside the bent and folded carcass.
“Black.”
“That’s right.”
“What we have here is a black, 2004 Ford crew cab, with a diesel engine.”
“At one time,” Florek said. “At one time, that’s probably what she was.”
“Shit,” Bill Gastner said quietly.
Estelle turned to him and lowered her voice. “We can’t be sure it was his, Padrino. ”
“How big a coincidence are you looking for?” He waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Evidence. Thank God for evidence, right?”
“Look, we need that unit,” Torrez said to Florek. “If you’d unload the others, I’ll get the county to pick this one up. Hour or so, maybe.”
Florek sighed hugely. “You’re the boss, sheriff.” He backed up a few steps so he could see
around the rig’s cab. “I’ll pull up right there, in that open spot past the fence. I think we’ll only need to take off the front six, unless they’re all tangled.” He looked at first the sheriff, then Estelle, and finally at Bill Gastner. “You folks ready to tell me what’s going on?”
“Nope,” Torrez replied, and Florek laughed.
“How’d Gus happen by this carcass?”
“Good question,” the sheriff said, and his glare was impressively black. “And by the way…if he happens to call you, or you him, you didn’t see any of this. You’re headin’ down to Cruces just like always.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
All that they knew for sure, Estelle thought ruefully, was that the crushed truck had come from Gus Prescott’s collection. That was all. The questionable recollection of another rancher had offered that Eddie Johns had driven a black, three-quarter ton Ford diesel crew cab. She could imagine the bemused expression of District Attorney Dan Schroeder.
The undersheriff was tempted simply to confront Gus Prescott with the question, but knew the risks of that. Tipping one’s hand prematurely was a dangerous poker move…and even more so here.
She forced herself to remain patient as Cameron Florek took his time with his mammoth fork lift, shifting the carcasses of the crushed vehicles from trailer to ground. An hour later, the burned pancake of a late-model pickup was transferred to Florek’s smaller flatbed car carrier and delivered to the Quonset hut behind the barbed wire fence in the county boneyard.
Then, using wrecking bars, an assist from the fire department’s Jaws of Life, and considerable sweat and cursing, the officers unfolded the truck’s corpse one bend at a time.
Sheriff Robert Torrez glared at the heap that leaked driblets of oil and other bodily fluids on the floor of the impound building. “No engine. No tranny. No wheels, no brake rotors or calipers. Hell, this thing’s been stripped like a derelict in downtown Juarez.”
“You know what puzzles me?” Bill Gastner said. “This crate was burned, but only sort of, you know what I mean? Look here.” He rested his hands gingerly on one crushed front fender, and pointed at the firewall. “Windshield is gone, of course, and that’s where the VIN impression used to be. That’s all ripped to hell and gone. But all this shit?” He leaned farther in and pointed at some of the firewall connections. “The fire didn’t reach there. In fact, just not much at all in here.” He straightened and backed a step or two away. “In fact, it’s sort of a surface burn…a scorch.”
“Somebody got there quick with an extinguisher,” Tom Pasquale offered.
“Yes, but. Look at it…the whole thing is nicely toasted, know what I mean? On the outside. ”
“Front seats are gone, so they didn’t melt. But they left the back bench in.”
“And that’s an odd combination to me,” Gastner said. He turned and looked at Estelle, who, along with Linda Real, was saving images with a variety of cameras. “This was burned long enough ago that the sheet metal has had time to patina pretty nicely. It’s hard as hell to tell what color the thing was, at least from a distance. You dig around inside, and you can see that it was black, but it takes some work.”
The sheriff had been kneeling at the back of the wreck, and he stood slowly, beckoning Tom Pasquale. “Need to unfold that,” he said cryptically. The that was the tailgate of the truck, now crushed forward into the bed, the side bed panels folded inward to lock it in place. The tailgate itself had folded in a ragged line, collapsing in on itself. The sheriff beckoned to Estelle. “See in there?” He held his flashlight for her. By looking into the tunnel formed by the folded tailgate, she could see the remains of an emblem.
“Part of it left, anyways,” Torrez said. “Be careful with that,” he added as Tom Pasquale brought the jaws close. “If that’s a dealer emblem, I don’t want it wrecked.”
For nearly half an hour, they worked, the metal screeching and groaning as it was peeled back layer by layer. With a come-along looped to a building support at one end and hooked to the fender with the other, they spread the crushed bed apart, freeing the tailgate a bit at a time.
“Sure as hell be easier if they’d left the license plate on it,” Torrez grunted at one point. “But this is gonna be almost as good.”
As the envelope of crushed tailgate was pried open, they could see a fragment of burned pot metal lying askew. The adhesive that had affixed the name plate to the tailgate’s surface had been tough enough that the plate had broken in two places.
Torrez waited patiently as Linda Real moved in close with her macro lens, and when she finished, pushed the two pieces of name plate together. “Borderland Fo,” he recited. “Paso, Texas.”
He looked up at Estelle. “We need to get Mears over there ASAP. Borderland Ford will have records. Then there’s no question. He…” The sheriff was interrupted by the jarring buzz of the building alarm, and then a tentative rap on the metal door.
Abeyta shot the bolt and opened the door a couple inches. “Good morning sir,” he said, and turned to the others. “Herb Torrance?”
“Ah,” Estelle said. “I asked him if he’d stop by. Bill and I will be right out.”
“Bill and I?” Gastner grunted. “I’m getting too damn deep in this.”
“Your impressions are always welcome,” Estelle said. “After all, you’re the reason we’re here at the moment.”
Herb Torrance, owner of the H-Bar-T ranch, had retreated away from the door, and now leaned his forearms on the hood of his truck, hands clasped together as he watched the performance on the other side of the boneyard as two county employees worked with a hoist to sling a repaired back tire onto a county road grader.
“Hey,” he said as Estelle and Gastner appeared from the Quonset. At a distance he could be confused with someone from one of the utility companies, dressed entirely in a brown double pocket work shirt and brown trousers. A grubby baseball cap with the bill folded just so rested on the back of his head.
“I saw this comin’,” he said. “I figured you were going to show up on my doorstep sooner or later.” He shook hands with both of them, then relaxed back against his truck again.
“I appreciate your stopping by,” Estelle said.
“Well,” Torrance said with a resigned smile, “you said you wanted to see me, so here I am. We got a mess, don’t we? Pretty quiet neighborhood I live in most of the time.”
“Sir, tell me about Eddie Johns.”
Torrance’s leathery face remained impassive, and he pointed at Bill Gastner with his chin. “Hell, you know that son-of-a-bitch as well as me.” He looked back at Estelle. “Waddell tells me that you found Johns up on the mesa.”
“We think so, sir.”
“Been there a while? That’s what Miles said.”
“It appears so.”
“Well, that don’t surprise me. I was gonna call you, but then figured what the hell…if you wanted my two cents, you’d call.”
“Why doesn’t it surprise you, sir?”
Torrance laughed. “I never could see why Miles encouraged that guy. I mean, what’s to come of it?” He shrugged. “Never cared for him much. You know, one time he tried to buy a piece of property from me. Wasn’t interested. Johns didn’t seem ready to understand that. He got real pugnacious. That don’t work so good with me.”
“I really have two things to ask you, sir,” Estelle said. “First of all, were you in the Broken Spur last week-it would be Thursday, we think. Freddy Romero rode through the saloon parking lot on his four-wheeler. Do you recall that?”
“Sure.” He shook his head slowly, ice blue eyes never leaving Estelle’s face. “Sure sorry that had to happen. That trail’s a dangerous place.”
“You saw him that day?”
“Nope. Miles said he did. Now, I sure as hell heard him. That’s the noisiest God damn thing, that little buggy.”
“Gus Prescott was at the Spur as well?”
“Well, yeah. He was.”
“Did you leave the Spur shortly a
fter that, sir?”
Torrance frowned. “You’re askin’ me to remember something longer ago than breakfast, young lady. But sure enough. I had things to do. I only stopped by to see if Gus was going to have his road grader fixed by this time next week. He ain’t, so there we are. But hell,” and he smiled, “it’s only been two years.”
“You and Gus talked about that?”
Torrance laughed hoarsely. “About fifteen seconds. From what I can gather, his grader’s gone south for want of parts that he can’t afford to buy. But you’ll talk to him about that.”
“And then you left the saloon?”
“I did, and then just about the time I was pullin’ out of the parkin’ lot, Gus left the saloon, too. Don’t know about Miles.”
“You drove home?”
“Guess I did.”
“And Gus?”
“And Gus what?”
“Did you happen to notice which way he went? Toward Regál, or back north to Moore?”
“Neither one, I don’t guess. He went up through the canyon.”
“The back trail?”
“That’s what him and me were talkin’ about. There’s a section in there that just tears my truck all to hell. I’ve been tryin’ to get him to grade that-there ain’t no one else with a machine, except for the county, and they won’t do it. Got about a hundred yards that’s more like a quarry than a two-track.”
“Ah,” Estelle nodded.
“If he’d turned east at Bender’s, he’d likely have seen the kid on the four-wheeler, but I guess he woulda turned west on the canyon road. Just too bad, the whole thing.”
“Sir, do you know what kind of vehicle Eddie Johns drove?”
“Well…” Torrance looked up at the blank sky, eyes narrowed to slits. “Been a while. Big old pickup, as I recall.”
“An older model?”
“Well, no, I don’t guess so. He’s in real estate now, you know. Got to look good.”
“Real estate, then, ” Gastner corrected.
“Yup. Guess so. Pretty damn strange.”
“Sir, if you were to see Eddie Johns’ truck, would you be able to recognize it?”
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