“But a long night before that, nevertheless. And yet you claim that you don’t roam the county at night actually looking for…” and he waved his hand in the air, “episodes that might demand your attention.”
When I didn’t answer, he carefully laid the BIC down again and folded his hands. “Sir?”
“I roam when and where I please, Lieutenant.” If I clenched my jaws any tighter, he would have heard enamel chipping. “I go out at night because it’s more pleasant than lying in bed alone, staring at the goddamn ceiling. That’s one of the joys of insomnia, Lieutenant.” I took a long, slow breath. “The very fact that at one o’clock in the morning, I was sitting on a favorite rock way the hell and gone on top of Cat Mesa, looking at stars and thinking great thoughts, would indicate that I wasn’t looking for ‘episodes’ demanding my attention. On the other hand,” I said, and then stopped, choosing my words carefully. “If I happen upon something, upon some situation that demands response, I don’t like to think that I would hesitate to render whatever aid I could until the appropriate authorities arrive.”
Dan Schroeder shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. “Bill, when you drove by the motel parking lot, was Sergeant Taber out of her vehicle?”
“Yes.”
“But at that moment, there was no other officer anywhere in the vicinity. At least to the best of your knowledge.”
“That’s correct.”
“Huh,” the district attorney grunted. He shook his head. “You have a sheriff’s radio in your personal vehicle, do you not?”
“Yes.”
“But it wasn’t turned on?”
“No.”
He frowned and spun his pen between two fingers. “Was there any way for you to tell whether or not the sergeant had walked over to the RV and engaged in an argument of some sort with the driver?”
“I don’t think so. There wouldn’t have been time. I never actually saw her approach the RV, counselor. Not during the brief time that I could see her as I drove by. She positioned herself toward the front of her Expedition. That’s what I saw her do. By the time I turned around and then arrived in the parking lot myself, she was putting space between herself and Mr. Baum. That’s what she’s trained to do when there’s a threatening situation with a weapon involved. So no. I don’t think she’d had time to walk over to the RV.”
“Could the discharge of the shotgun have been an accident?” Mellon asked.
“Doesn’t matter to me,” I said. “He had it pointed for action, that’s all I know. If he was worried about firearm safety, the gun would have been unloaded and in a gun case back under his bed. But it’s obvious to me that he brought it out to use it, loaded and locked and ready to go. That’s what counts.”
“Before this incident, you were eating breakfast at the Don Juan, weren’t you.”
“Yes.”
“Again, alone?”
“No.”
“Who was with you?”
“Miles Waddell, a local rancher.”
“Ah,” Mellon said. “You two discussed the investigations currently underway down at his property?”
“We did not. He knows better, and so do I.”
“What did you talk about?”
“That would be none of your business.”
The wrinkles around Mellon’s ice-cube eyes deepened a touch. “Just a companionable breakfast with old friends.”
“Correct.”
“And all this at the culmination of a long, difficult night.”
I had had worse nights, but I couldn’t recall the exact circumstances. I remained silent.
“Let me remind you of what people are going to think,” Schroeder said, the politician’s side of him finally surfacing.
“I don’t care what they think,” I snapped, but the district attorney held up a mollifying hand.
“I’m sure you don’t, Bill. But with the circumstances…” He pushed his legal pad a few inches away as if it were beginning to smell. “They’re going to see you as out hunting something to do. First you arrive on the scene of the fatality down by Waddell’s—”
“No, I didn’t. I called in curious activity from a vantage point on a mesa-top twenty miles from that power line. By the time I was sent to the scene by Sheriff Torrez, several regular officers were already there, including Undersheriff Reyes-Guzman. I had stopped at the scene of Kenderman’s murder, but didn’t get out of my vehicle. And then,” and I held up a hand to fend off the district attorney’s poised remark, “I was assigned to talk briefly with Frank Dayan, which I did, telling him essentially nothing. Okay? Then I went to have some goddamn breakfast, and shared a table with Waddell. I then intended to visit a project of his out on the mesa. I was following him out of town, in point of fact, when I stepped in the middle of the Baum incident. Now, I could have looked the other way when I drove past the scene of Sergeant Taber’s traffic stop, but I didn’t. I’m not wired that way.” I straightened a crick out of my back and tipped the empty coffee cup, hoping that more coffee had somehow generated itself from the trace of sludge.
“As you well know,” I directed at Mellon, “when someone fires a shotgun at a peace officer, or at anyone else for that matter, you don’t just stand there with your head up your ass, waiting to see if the creep is going to fire again. You don’t politely ask him what his intentions are. If he had dropped the gun and locked his hands on top of his head, I wouldn’t have fired. He didn’t do that.” I picked up the coffee cup as I pushed my chair back, rising stiffly. “Somebody in this place has to have some.”
The opening door damn near knocked the cup out of my hand. Sheriff Torrez loomed, tagged shotgun in hand. I was surprised to see Torrez, since as far as I knew, Kenderman’s killer was still on the loose, and that would be priority one with the sheriff, not monkeying around with Baum’s duck gun.
“Fresh one.” He nodded at the coffeemaker behind dispatch.
I held my cup up toward the others, but apparently they were interested only in business. By the time I returned to the conference room, Mellon was examining the shotgun. The sheriff had stood the gun upright, recoil pad on the conference table.
“Estelle happened across this.” Torrez’s remark was directed toward me, barely more than a whisper. He reached over and pulled the charging lever back sharply. Hesitating only a second for all of us to see that the gun was empty, he released the bolt and let it slam forward. Had there been rounds in the magazine tube, one would have been chambered.
Lifting the shotgun six inches straight off the table, he held it thus for a moment, then let it slip to thud against the wood. The click of the internal hammer falling was loud.
“Screwed up somehow,” he said. “It don’t take much of a jar to set it off.”
“Wear and tear?” I asked.
Torrez shook his head. “Don’t think so.” He turned the gun and pointed at first one screw and then another. The screw slots showed signs of an ill-chosen screwdriver, the buggered metal in sharp contrast with the rest of the gun’s choice condition. “Joe Hobby got in there, is what I’m guessin’.”
“Could that damage account for it?” Schroeder pointed at the butt stock just behind the receiver where one of my rounds had gouged the wood and removed the shooter’s right thumb at the same time.
“Don’t think so. Anyways, it’s something we’ll look at,” Torrez said. “He’s got other problems, too. Late-stage pancreatic cancer, for one thing. Docs say that his odds are slim and none.” He looked at me as he hefted the shotgun off the table. “Your shots maybe will speed up the process a little. That’s about all.”
“Have you talked with his son yet?”
Torrez shook his head. “CYF is goin’ into that right now. It’s a mess. All we know is that Baum picked up his granddaughter in San Diego where she was living with her mom. Took her from the neighborhood daycare. They were
headed to El Paso where the son lives. Maybe. CYF hasn’t found him yet as far as I know.”
“Did Mr. Baum know that he has pancreatic cancer?” Schroeder asked.
“Yep. He was under treatment by the Cancer Center down in El Paso. Until last week, when he skipped his chemo treatment and headed out on his own.”
“Stupid, stupid,” Schroeder said in wonder. Then he frowned. “I want the son—what’s his name?”
“George Baum.”
“George—I want him in custody ASAP, Sheriff.”
“We’re workin’ on it,” Torrez nodded. “Maybe stupid runs in families. He shouldn’t be hard to find.”
“What’s Nathan saying, anyway?” Schroeder asked. “Did the son put him up to this or what? Is this just a wild ass stunt to break the daughter’s custody of the child?”
“Don’t know. Baum’s not in any condition to talk with us yet. He’s still under.”
The district attorney glowered at the table, shaking his head slowly. “Is this one of those suicide-by-cop deals? You think that’s what he wanted? He knows he’s caught, so…”
“He sure as hell was unlucky, then,” I said.
The paperwork and conferences stretched the day into a never-ending mess, and I lost track of whether I was coming or going. The District Attorney and his investigator hauled Miles Waddell in for a tete-a-tete, to find out what the rancher had seen or heard. They even persuaded Frank Dayan to come in for a chat, exploring the issue of the proffered advertisement that had never seen the light of day. I would like to have sat in on that one, but didn’t—and didn’t press Frank later to see how quickly he’d folded, telling the cops everything he knew.
None of the roadblocks succeeded. The killer and his little Nissan pickup had faded away as slick as you please. I was sure that Bobby Torrez would continue the effort at least until dark, but after that, there was no point in corking the roads. The killer was long gone, and that left us—them—with little to go on. A blue truck, no tag number. No year. No definitive description. No radio conversation. No recovered slug or shell casing. Just a dead cop on a lonely road.
But we—and this time the “we” was accurate—did have a description of where the Nissan had been. I had seen it northbound from the felled power poles, had witnessed it turning east on the state road, speeding toward town. That little snippet of an image screened itself over and over again through my mind, even upstaging the sorry incident with Nathan Baum.
Chapter Eleven
I needed to be doing something physical, to keep my assaulted brain from stewing itself into a puddle. Since my luck hadn’t been so wonderful last time, this trip I allowed myself to be chauffeured. The rancher drove south from Posadas on NM 56, speedometer pegged just below ninety, the big diesel sounding as if it were locked right in the glove box, clattering away. I relaxed back in the plush seat and let Miles Waddell worry about critters stepping out into the road. I could have dozed off in all that velour comfort, but what he had given me to examine was more interesting.
Someone had cut the front off a Frosted Flakes cereal box, and in neat block letters printed a message on the back: Cattle yes, U.N. no! A nail hole top and bottom marred the smooth, thin cardboard.
“That was nailed to my gate post,” Waddell said. “Real professional job, eh?”
“Bobby should see this.”
“I suppose he will.” He slowed hard as we came up behind a little sedan poking along at the speed limit, and when the road straightened out beyond the Rio Salinas bridge, passed with a hearty bellow of turbo-diesel. I slid the crude sign up on the dash and settled back.
We approached his mesa from the south, cutting off the state highway onto County Road 14 just southwest of the Broken Spur Saloon. If he ever forgot exactly what he was building, Miles Waddell could stop in there and hear a dozen versions.
As we turned onto the dirt, my cell phone chirped. I’d promised Estelle Reyes-Guzman that I’d pay attention to it, and sure enough, her quiet voice greeted me.
“Sir, Neil Costace is in Las Cruces. He’s picking up one of the Homeland Security guys, and they’ll be heading over in an hour or so.”
“Good afternoon to you, too,” I said.
“I know this just thrills you to death, but I was hoping that you’d be available for a little bit when they arrive.”
I was hoping. Never was an order from the undersheriff of Posadas County couched in more gentle terms. Flattery would get her everywhere.
“Nah,” I said. “Waddell and I are headed to Vegas right now. Don’t know when we’ll be back. We’re going to spend some of that money the United Nations is paying him.”
“Sir,” the undersheriff’s voice remained gentle and patient. “There are FBI offices in Vegas, too.”
“You’re no fun.” She also didn’t have time for shit from me. “We’re out at the mesa. You want me in town, or what?”
“We’ll come out. And dinner is still on, sir.”
“You dreamer.”
A road beaten to dust wound a half-mile off the county thoroughfare, then turned abruptly toward the foot of the mesa where we encountered the gate, the sort of structure that, in a world of rambling barbed wire and juniper pole enclosures, was guaranteed to set folks speculating. Waddell stopped the truck and found a remote wand in the center console. With the push of a button, the black gate with its bright-yellow caution stripes rolled aside.
“Works off the cell phone, too,” he said with satisfaction. “We’re leaving most of the downside construction until later. We’ll concentrate topside, then work on the tram and base house,” Waddell said, twisting around to survey the generous, dust-beaten parking lot behind us. “Less to draw the curious that way.”
“If Curt Boyd and his buds were after your site, why didn’t he just drive down here and take an axe to your gate?”
“Don’t give ’em ideas,” Waddell said. “Maybe they didn’t want to get within rifle shot. Maybe they caught sight of you roaming around down here on the prairie and that spooked ’em.”
“Evidently not enough.” The road up the mesa was enough to fuel lots of curiosity. We drove through the gate, and I watched as it slid closed behind us. The tires whispered on silky smooth macadam. Artistic stonework graced each culvert and drain. The place reminded me of a National Park project. Unspoiled by standing signage, the road was marked European style, with reflective painted symbols on the macadam surface itself.
“One point six miles of this,” Waddell announced with considerable satisfaction. “You’ve seen it a couple dozen times while it’s been under construction. Did you think I’d lost my nut?” Before I could answer, he added, “You know, in all that time, you never asked me point-blank what the hell I was building up here. You’re not curious?”
“Of course I’m curious. You told me some time ago that you were building an observatory. A man can build what he wants.”
“That’s what I used to think. Now I know there are folks who don’t share that view.” The rancher slowed the truck abruptly and pointed toward the north. I could see several vehicles still parked out on the prairie, near the fallen poles and the spot where Curt Boyd had met his end. Dust plumes marked more incoming traffic from the north.
The new macadam mesa boulevard swept upward as we continued, around the mesa’s western terminus with a spine-tingling view all the way to Arizona, and after rounding a gentle curve, started on the final climb to the rim. “You haven’t asked yet,” Waddell said. “The question that always comes first.”
“How much this road to the stars cost you?”
He smiled broadly. “That’s what I like about you, Bill. Cut to the chase, no bullshit. Sure, that’s what everyone gets around to asking. And the answer for your ears only is a nice round two million a mile.”
He saw me glance at the odometer. “One point seven,” he supplied. “This little str
etch comes in right around $3.4 million.”
“Christ.” The notion of a cattle rancher with $3.4 million to spend on mesa access—or on anything else for that matter—was inconceivable. “You know, I can remember when you were trying to have Gus Prescott scratch a path up here with his old road grader.”
“Circumstances change. Gus did a little for me, and then the project started to take on a life of its own, and he ended up with more than his share of troubles. I started to look around at other options. See, Carl Rockford and I had a long talk.” I’d seen Rockford’s name on enough pieces of heavy road-building equipment over the years to know that Miles Waddell had gone first class on this little private boulevard up the mesa. “Now, the story he told his crews was that I was building an enormous sand and gravel operation down at the bottom, and a housing development up here.”
“It’s amazing what people will believe.”
“As long as it fits what they understand. Folks have seen gravel pits, and they’ve seen plenty of subdivisions. They can readily imagine that there might be a worthwhile investment there. So they believe it. It fits their paradigm.” He said “paradigm” as if he’d just learned it. Maybe he had.
“If I had said I was building an observatory, no dice. No one would understand what the hell I would want with an observatory, or why the hell I’d spend so much money on it, because they don’t. It’s not obvious how I’d earn a return on the investment, or the expenditure.” He glanced over at me. “And you gotta have that, Sheriff. You have to have a return, because no one does anything anymore just for the fun of it.” He shrugged. “Isn’t that depressing? And because they don’t understand it, they’d ask, ‘Where the hell did Waddell get all that money? Must be into drugs or something.’” He laughed. “Or funded by the United Nations conspiracy.” He tapped the newspaper on the center console. “That’s the new theory.”
“I heard the one about the gravel pit and the housing development topside. Didn’t believe it, but I heard it a time or two.”
“You didn’t believe it because you have more than half a brain. I mean, come on. A housing development? Can you imagine school buses winding up and down this road? It’d be a hell of a commute to work for the parents. But see, with an observatory, and with that big array from California, this is where the work will be.”
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