The Lovely Pines

by Don Travis

  “What about Enriquez?” Charlie asked.

  “Oh yeah. There’s an APD lieutenant who wants to discuss a beating two men gave one of our Albuquerque citizens. He’s probably first in line.”

  “Shit. That was Spider’s idea too.”

  “I had to guess, Sergeant, I’d say most of this problem you’re facing started with him. You and Diego both would have been better off dropping him back in Iraq.”

  Pastis nodded. “You don’t know Natander. Nobody dropped him.”

  “Hazel, please call Lieutenant Enriquez at APD. Sergeant Pastis and I will wait for him in my office.”

  Charlie joined us at my conference table in the office. Good. He’d be a witness. Never hurts to have one, even though I’d been recording our conversation since I’d turned on my recorder at my waist before speaking to Pastis. Once we were comfortable, I pulled if off my belt and laid it on the table.

  “Do you mind if I record our conversation?” I asked.

  He shook his head but mumbled “Okay” at Charlie’s prompting. I went about identifying the parties as if I’d just turned the device on.

  “Let’s go back to the attack on Mr. German C de Baca. What was that all about?”

  “Wanted to find Diego, man. We wasn’t getting nowhere running him down, so Spider looked up the address of the brother Diego used to talk about. I didn’t know he was gonna beat the shit outta the man until he started whopping on him.”

  I ignored the fact that German said both men had beaten him and moved on. “What information did you get from him?”

  “Nothing. Claimed he didn’t know where his brother was. But he give up your name. Said you was looking for Diego too.”

  “Let’s go back to the night the young man was killed at the Pines. You’re claiming you had nothing to do with that?”

  “Not a damned thing. Neither did Spider. That’s one thing he ain’t guilty of.”

  “Did you see or hear anything?”

  “Hell, yes. Saw it all.”

  “Why were you there at five in the morning?”

  “Wasn’t five. More like zero-two-hundred.”

  That was more in line with when the neighbor found Bas’s body. “Then why were you there at two in the morning?”

  “Usually wasn’t nobody around that place at night. Not after the winery closed down. Then we cased the place one night and seen some guys moving around after dark. First time that happened. So we give up looking for Diego in the daytime and started staking out the place by night. We knew Diego was somewhere at that winery. We caught sight of him a couple of times, but he disappeared every time before we could catch him.”

  “What was your location that night?”

  “Little grove of pines west of the house across the road from the winery. Took turns catching shut-eye and watching. I was asleep when Spider shook me awake. Said Diego was coming out the gate. I wasn’t too sure. I peeked through my spotting scope. The guy looked like Diego, but he didn’t walk like Diego.”

  Pastis pulled out a pair of military-style sunglasses and fiddled with the earpieces as he continued. “We was about ready to go face the guy when someone come outta the trees at the edge of the winery wall and stopped him.”

  “Then what happened?” Charlie asked.

  “Diego—or who we thought was Diego—started walking on down the path. The guy pulled out a weapon and shot him. The Diego guy stumbled but started running. The shooter pulled off a bunch more rounds. Probably emptied his popgun. But it did the job.”

  He closed his thin lips firmly, but Charlie and I waited him out. After a moment he started talking again. “The shooter used a little penlight to police his casings. Then he disappeared back into the trees where he come from. Spider wanted to shoot him because he thought the guy offed Diego without us finding the Lady. But I told him his rifle would wake up the people in both houses… you know, the one to our east and at the winery. So after we waited some longer—”

  “Why?” Charlie asked.

  “Wanted to see if those little pops woke anyone and brought them running. Didn’t wanna get caught standing over a dead guy, did we? And we wanted to make sure the shooter didn’t come back. Anyway, we eased across the road and turned the dead guy over. And he was dead. We took a coupla quick looks with a flashlight and seen it wasn’t Diego. You know, it was hard to be sure. That guy coulda been Diego’s little brother.” Pastis glanced up. “Was he?”

  “No, he was a winery worker named Bascomb Zuniga,” I said.

  “Too bad.” He shrugged. “Luck of the draw, I guess.”

  “Tell me as much as you remember about the killer. How big was he? How was he dressed?”

  Pastis hadn’t taken a look at the guy through his scope. Didn’t even think of it, he claimed. But the guy wasn’t particularly big. About the same size as Zuniga. All he could say about the clothing was that it was dark.

  “How did Natander find Diego’s hiding place?” I asked when he seemed drained of information about the murder.

  “We already figured the general area where he disappeared but couldn’t go the last mile. We been through that ruined cabin half a dozen times. We even tried lifting that slab of wood that covered the trapdoor, but it wouldn’t budge.”

  Diego must have barred the trapdoor every time he entered his hiding place. Merely left it open when he left in order to give himself access later.

  Pastis got up suddenly, startling both Charlie and me, but he just needed to work off some nervous energy. He took to pacing my office.

  “We knew Diego got nabbed by the cops but thought maybe the Lady was still where he hid her. I wanted to take off for parts unknown, but Spider… uh, Natander insisted we take one more look around the winery. We waited until most of the workers was gone. I stayed off behind the wall with my walkie-talkie to watch his back. I clicked him once when he needed to evade somebody and twice when it was clear. I couldn’t see too good from where I was, but he disappeared into that tumbledown cabin and didn’t come back out.

  “I was about to go look for him when you and that other guy come outta nowhere and started snooping around. When your buddy took off for the parking lot and you didn’t come back, I knew we was in for it. Wasn’t nothing I could do for Spider. Didn’t know if he was picking up my walkie-talkie clicks in that cave, so I hoofed it to the car and fired up the engine in case I needed to pick him up. Then I heard the cops and saw an ambulance.”

  He stopped pacing and pointed at me. “I figured it was you the meat wagon was coming for. Anyhow, when I seen you come out of the winery with the cops, I knew Spider was a goner. I lit out of there and went up the mountain to where we bivouacked. Intended to break camp and hightail it, but I got so tired, I figured I’d end it. So I come here.”

  Pastis tensed as the outer door opened, but he sat back down and dropped his aviator glasses on the table. The sound of Hazel and Gene exchanging snatches of conversation preceded her opening the door to the office to admit my old APD partner and a uniformed officer I didn’t know. Gene wasted no time. He marched to the table.

  “Are you Sgt. Hugo Pastis?” The GI nodded. “Get up,” Gene ordered. “I’m arresting you for criminal assault with intent to do bodily harm.”

  “You can relax, Gene,” I said. “The sergeant has come here for the express intent of surrendering himself.” I held up my digital voice recorder. “He’s made a full confession and supplied some missing information on the murder of Bascomb Zuniga. He and Natander witnessed the whole thing.”

  “You don’t buy that.” He made it half a question and half a statement.

  “You and Yardley and Muñoz will have to sort it out, but at the moment I’m inclined to believe him. Natander gave me a shorter version of it as he was dying, remember?”

  “I need that recording,” Gene said. “Both recordings.”

  “Hazel’s making you copies.”

  “Not a transcript. I need the recording.”

  “And that’s what you’ll get.
” I sighed. “It was simpler when we used a tape recorder, but there’s still a way. Hazel will have to use some translator software to make copies. Either Charlie or I will deliver them… today. I’ll leave it up to you to notify the state and the county that you have Sergeant Pastis.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that. Tomorrow.”

  ONCE GENE and the uniform departed with Pastis in custody, Charlie, Hazel, and I huddled around the table. As usual, Charlie’s clearheaded thinking framed the situation for us.

  “For a simple breaking and entering, this turned into a mess. Breaking and entering, a couple of AWOL military guys pursuing Diego C de Baca, and a murder.”

  Hazel spoke up. “Don’t forget a missing child. Well, you’ve caught the intruder, dealt with the AWOLs, and located the child. Looks like our end’s pretty well done.”

  “Ariel’s not going to let me off the hook so easily,” I reminded them. “He wants us to find the murderer. I’m convinced it wasn’t Natander and Pastis. Diego’s a possibility, but damned if I can figure a reason he’d step out from some trees and accost one of the very people he’s been avoiding.”

  “He could have mistaken Zuniga for Pastis or Natander.”

  I shook my head. “Makes no sense. If he saw one, he’d know the other wasn’t far away.”

  “If you believe that, you don’t have anyone left but the Daytons.”

  “They’re alibied up down in Las Cruces except for the youngest brother, Patrick, who was up in Bernalillo. Besides, he was friends with Zuniga.”

  “Before Zuniga got his sister pregnant,” Hazel said.

  “True.”

  “Course, it could be someone from the winery. Some of them have alibis, but it’s hard to get a handle on that many people,” Charlie said.

  “Hazel, you better get to duplicating those voice recordings. And I’d like a written transcript of them as well. I’m heading to the winery to bring Gonda up-to-date on things.”

  Charlie put his finger squarely on the dreadful feeling building up inside me. “He’s not gonna like hearing Natander and Pastis aren’t his son’s killers.”

  Chapter 22

  EVEN THOUGH he already knew of Natander’s denial of the murder of his son, Ariel Gonda was not pleased with Pastis’s corroboration. He’d hoped that as tragic as it was, his son had been killed in a case of mistaken identity. Once I finished my report, he sat opposite me in the sitting room and did that hand-brush of a missing beard.

  Then he placed his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “So our killer is someone in the Dayton family.” His voice held an air of finality about it that I pegged as denial. He was too intelligent a man to fail to comprehend that the killer might lie closer to home.

  “According to the police, they all seem to have been in Las Cruces at the time, except for one son who is alibied by two companions. A young man Bas’s age called Pat.”

  “I recall you telling me that he was a friend of my son.”

  “People I interviewed confirm that to be true. But even friends fall out at times.” I drew a breath. “We can’t overlook the possibility that the attack came from someone at the winery.”

  “Nein!” He leaned back in the chair. “All my people were exonerated, were they not? With—what do you call them?—alibis, no?”

  “I merely established alibis for the time of the initial break-in. But I’m sure the police have questioned your people about the murder.”

  All of a sudden, he looked tired. “Will they share information with you?”

  “To a point.” I paused again and took a stab. “Have you learned anything that might be helpful?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “I’m not just talking about your hired hands, Ariel.”

  He stiffened. His face grew mottled. “My family? You are accusing my family!”

  This was the first overt hostility I’d seen from the man, which told me he’d searched his soul in the dark of night about this very subject.

  “It has to be considered. You know that. Bas was a potential heir to a considerable fortune.”

  “Bas was an heir. There was no question of that.”

  “So you’d made up your mind. Who else knew of your decision?”

  “No one. Not even Margot. I was still weighing how she would take the news, but now I realize she would have done what she always does. The right thing. She would have accepted that the decision was mine to make.”

  “Did Marc know?”

  “I have told no one.”

  ONCE I was back in the office, Hazel dumped a pile of reports and correspondence on me for signature. Charlie and Tim Fuller, the retired APD sergeant who helped with our overflow cases, had been busy. They’d cleared two missing person cases, located a lost relative for a Kansas City banker, and completed background checks on new hire candidates for two local businesses.

  After my pen scratched enough signatures to satisfy Hazel, I invited Charlie and her into my office to rehash Bas Zuniga’s murder. I opened the discussion.

  “Let’s go over things again. Why is it we don’t believe Diego C de Baca is the killer?”

  “No motive. They didn’t know one another. Diego was avoiding contact with everyone,” Hazel said.

  “And I think we know from Natander’s and Pastis’s recount of the murder that if the killer who stepped out of the tree line and accosted Zuniga had been Diego, they’d have recognized him,” Charlie added.

  “Right. So we all agree he’s not our man.” The two nodded, so I moved on. “A drive-by is not on the table. The wound placements on the body weren’t right. Wasn’t a robbery of opportunity for someone passing in the night. Watch was still on his wrist and a few dollars in his pocket. And again, the two AWOL GIs’ stories preclude that.”

  “Maybe we’re giving their story of the murder too much weight.”

  I shook my head. “Natander was dying. He readily admitted killing a priest to steal the Lady of the Euphrates. Why would he deny another killing? I got the feeling he was confessing to cleanse his soul.”

  “Besides,” Hazel said, “they support one another. In the telling, I mean.”

  We talked each of our theories to death, and by the time we finished, my belief was that the killer lay with the Daytons in Las Cruces or with someone at the Pines itself.

  “We need to start all over on the people at the winery. Hazel, you dig deeper into the background of everyone. Everyone, including the Gondas. Charlie, take another look at alibis. I’m going to tackle Ray Yardley at the state police and see if I can learn anything new. Then I’m going to concentrate on the Daytons.”

  “There’s an angle we haven’t mentioned,” Charlie said. “Gonda money’s not all that’s involved. There’s C de Baca money as well. And I get the feeling the sister… what was her name—?”

  “Consuela Simpson,” Hazel said.

  “—wasn’t too fond of her daddy’s youngest son.”

  “You’re right. Charlie, you take another look at German. I’ll take Consuela. And that reminds me, there was a boyfriend of the Pines’ waitress. Her name is Katie. Katie Henderson. Someone mentioned the boyfriend was of doubtful character.”

  “Miles Lotharson,” Hazel again provided the name. She transcribed everything I dictated and had a better memory than I did.

  “We probably ought to check him out too. He and Zuniga are about the same age. Maybe there was some jealousy over a girl.” I stood, ending the meeting. “My first task is to check in with Lieutenant Yardley.”

  RAY YARDLEY took my call but couldn’t scrape together enough time for a meeting. So I settled for discussing the case by phone. He had taken a hard look at the Daytons as suspects in the Zuniga killing, and while he still wasn’t willing to rule every one of them out, he was edging closer to doing so.

  “If I remember right, Willie Dayton, the oldest brother, claimed he was working a swing shift and hit a bar after work, right?” I asked.

  “The Mesilla Valley Produce Company,” Ra
y came back at me. “Two-to-ten shift. Then he hit the Ocotillo Club until closing at 2:00 a.m.”

  “I assume you questioned witnesses.”

  “You telling me how to do my job, BJ? Of course, I talked to witnesses.”

  “And there were no holes in the story? He could have gone off shift at ten and easily made it to Valle Plácido by two.”

  “I should ignore the testimony of three witnesses who speak for him?”

  “Who are the witnesses?”

  “Two buddies and a cocktail waitress.”

  “Who could also be a pal. So you tell me. Is it airtight?”

  “The middle brother’s a cinch. Bart was locked up in the Doña Ana County Detention Center overnight for drunk and disorderly. He was released the next morning.”

  “Did you—”

  “Talked to the jail administrator himself. Had him personally look up the records.”

  “That leaves Patrick, the youngest brother, and James, the old man,” I said. “I remember that Patrick was in the Albuquerque area, in fact not all that far from the Pines.”

  “At Santa Ana Star with two buddies, watching a show. They claim they were together the whole time. Besides, Pat was the one brother who was friendly to Zuniga.”

  “The old man,” I said. “I forget what his alibi was.”

  “Weakest of the bunch. In a bar with a lady. A married lady, he claims. So he won’t give up her name. But he was seen in the place drinking by himself as late as ten thirty or eleven that night.”

  “He could have hauled ass and made it in time to catch Bas,” I suggested. “Should I drive down and have a go at him?”

  “Do what you like. I’m not through with him yet. But honestly, I can’t quite make one of them fit into this killing.”

  I hung up a little unsettled. Two of the Daytons… maybe three were possibilities, but other than Patrick, they’d have a dickens of a time getting up to the winery in time to hide in the trees and wait. And why would they wait in the dark without some foreknowledge that Bas Zuniga was standing guard that night? The obvious answer was that they wouldn’t.