“Attractive young lady,” I said. Slim, trim, with a long pony-tail of dark hair, Julie Warner even made the grimace of a coach’s holler look good.
“You’ve never met her?”
“Hell no,” Johnny Boyd said. He stretched one leg painfully. “You know, my son has his own life now, and it ain’t what he grew up with. He don’t confide much.”
“Did the two of you argue about Waddell’s project the last time he was here? At Christmas, maybe?”
“Nope.”
“Did he talk about any other people with whom he might be associating—anyone with similar sentiments?”
“You’re talkin’ about somebody who might talk Curt into taking a chain saw to power poles? Not hardly, Sheriff.”
“What was on his mind when he visited at Christmas?”
“Can’t guess. He talked about his coaching season…he was pleased goin’ into the second half of the season five up, I guess. Mostly he went on about a new gun he found. Hell of a deal. He’d bought a handful of shells for it, and was tryin’ to talk this Kiran fellow into goin’ out to the range to try it out. The kid wasn’t much interested.”
“What did he find?”
“One of them French Chitchats. That’s what I call it. It’s over in the cabinet if you want a look.” He didn’t wait for me to accept the invitation, but rose as quickly as his bashed knees would allow, as if eager for the chance to dwell on something other than the death of his son.
The large gun cabinet beside the fireplace wouldn’t have been my choice for secure storage, but I knew that the half dozen barrels standing upright were a small fraction of the young man’s collection.
Johnny opened the glass door and hefted out a bulky, awkward-looking weapon with a massive crescent magazine.
“I’ll be damned,” I said with honest admiration. “Where did he find this?”
“Don’t know. But there she is.” He handed it to me, the first time ever that I’d handled the French light machine gun with which allied soldiers had struggled during World War I. The thing was a horror of awful engineering and crude manufacturing, but it’s what they had.
“Cost him some,” the rancher offered.
“I don’t doubt that.” After a moment, I handed the gun back. The Boyds had a paperwork snarl ahead of them if they wanted to keep their son’s collection. As far as I knew, each fully automatic weapon in the collection was papered to the young man. They couldn’t just be sold to a neighbor, or given away. Johnny would figure it all out when he could settle his mind.
“This Kiran fellow was one of Curt’s roommates, right? Was he the only one who came out with him at Christmas?”
Boyd nodded. “Seemed like a nice-enough fellow. Quiet as hell. I was hopin’ that Curt’s girlfriend, there, would come along, but she was visiting family. Back in Michigan, I think it was.”
We probed this and that for another fifteen minutes, and then took our leave.
As Estelle idled the stiffly sprung sedan out the driveway, I tried to make myself comfortable. “And I apologize,” I said as we passed under the metal archway that capped the front gate. “I was going on and on there.”
“That’s all right, sir.”
“Well, no, it’s not. But…” I reached out and slapped the dashboard in frustration. “It’s harder than hell to stay on the sidelines with something like this. I’ve known the Boyds for years. One thing I know for damn sure—it wasn’t Johnny Boyd who was with his son last night.”
“It would be easy to invent,” the undersheriff said. “Curt had surrounded himself with foreign roommates—Indian, Kenyan, and Ecuadorian. He…”
I interrupted her. “Ecuador? I didn’t hear that mentioned.”
“His name is Roberto Esquibel. He’s a senior majoring in child psych. He’s also a licensed practical nurse.”
I looked at her with amusement, once again left behind by Estelle Reyes-Guzman. “And the guy from Kenya?”
“A junior majoring in physical education. I’d have to read my notes to get his name correct.”
“You’re slipping, sweetheart.” And she hadn’t blabbed what she knew to the Boyds, either, letting me charge ahead, bull-headed and out of order. “So we have a household full of internationals. Let’s stretch the loop a little and include Julie Warner. What’s the surprise about her?”
“Originally from Toledo, Ohio. Graduated from New Mexico State two years ago in El Ed. Teaches and coaches varsity volleyball.”
“No surprise there. We’ve got an international house, and a fair young lady. Any of them wearing chain saw dust?”
“I doubt it, sir.”
“Hot arguments over dinner about the United Nations invading the United States?”
“That may be.”
“None of them owns a Nissan pickup truck?”
“Curt Boyd does. Or did. Color blue, 2009 model, Golf Lincoln Foxtrot Seven Niner Seven.”
I sighed. “And we don’t know where it is at the moment, do we?”
“No, sir.”
“There’s a connection, then. You have a guy or gal driving it with creosote sawdust spattered on his trousers, splatter of bar oil, maybe some spilled gasoline. Then there’s sawdust in his shoelaces, red sand ground into the floor mats, all kinds of shit. And a chain saw in the back. And if he shot Kenderman, then you can mix all of that in with some nitrite residue from the gun shot.”
“And the direction. When he left the scene, he headed north on the county road, not south. Had he gone south, you wouldn’t have seen him. You wouldn’t have called it in.”
“True…but he couldn’t have known I was stroking my insomnia up on Cat Mesa. Which way he headed was a flip of the coin.”
“Unless he was an outsider and didn’t know better. If Curt Boyd drove to the site because he was familiar with the country, then it makes sense his partner would take the same route going out.”
The reflectors along the side of the state highway flashed by altogether too fast as we headed into town.
“So now what?” I asked.
“Bobby has a meeting called for nine o’clock.” The digital clock on the dash showed we were well past civilized dinnertime already. “You’re welcome to come.” She smiled. “Encouraged to come, in fact.”
“I’d rather sleep,” I said. Even insomniacs eventually collapse, and I was reaching that point. Only the whacking of the tar strips on the highway was keeping me awake. “And I need fuel,” I added. “I remember vaguely a promise of green chile stew and corn bread.”
“Yet another in a long string of broken promises,” Estelle laughed. “Carlos is going to be furious.” Her youngest son had an affinity for experimentation in the kitchen, and the nine-year-old’s creations were sometimes delectable, sometimes awful. He did hold dear the old-fashioned notion that corn bread should be golden, crumbly, and touched only by real butter, melting down the sides.
“You need rest more than the chile,” she added. “How about cashing a rain check tomorrow?”
“I’ll check my busy schedule.”
I knew there were going to be lots of bags under lots of eyes before the sheriff had this mess cleaned up. If the killer had been driving a truck that belonged to Curt Boyd, that closed one loophole, but didn’t get us far. Didn’t get them far. Curt Boyd’s companion at the fatal power pole party remained a shadow. It was hard for me to believe that the young teacher would be able to live one life with roommates and girlfriend, and another entirely separate life with a cold, calculating eco-terrorist and killer. Some how, the two paths must cross, or at least touch.
Back at the Posadas County Sheriff’s Office, and with a little bit of reluctance, I took my leave, so weary that for a moment I forgot where I had parked. That wasn’t a difficult mystery, since there were only a half-dozen vehicles in the lot, all but one with government plates.
&
nbsp; I settled into my SUV, started it, and waited until all the digital nonsense on the dash had calmed down before pulling it into gear. I wanted to go home, and I didn’t. The night, clear and calm, was so damn comfortable that I knew I sat on the brink of waking fully. I didn’t fight it. With an evening where things out of place would shout their existence, I was loath to ignore the opportunity. So I compromised.
Slouched comfortably in the fancy any-which-way power seat, the police radio turned low, I took “the loop,” a path I’d worked out years ago that allowed me to cover most of the village without retracing or crossing my own path. The hunting would have been better with two inches of fresh snow, but the brilliant night sky that would have warmed Miles Waddell’s heart didn’t promise moisture.
As the clock ticked past eight that evening, the village was already winter-night quiet—a few kids out and about, one or two renting videos at Tommy’s Handi-way convenience store when I paused there for some of his awful coffee. The First Baptist Church parking lot was empty, but there was some life at the VFW, a squat, ugly little building up on North Fourth that used to be the Baptist church’s home.
No one was parked in the abandoned drive-in theater out on County 43, no one was trying to cut a late deal at Chavez Chevy.
I lowered the window and dumped out the last of the fetid coffee as I turned south on McArthur Street by the Hamburger Heaven. Business there was as slow as anywhere else, but it only took the aroma of a single broiling burger to waft out, setting off the hungries. Not to succumb to the temptation this early in the evening meant I was seriously off my feed, but I wasn’t sure I had the energy to chew.
The struggle to keep my eyes open kept me occupied as I drove home to my own comfortable burrow on Guadalupe, no longer trying to X-ray every shadow or peer behind every building, no longer trying to see the lurking shadow of a blue Nissan.
Chapter Fifteen
At one time, my residential lot off Guadalupe had been a five-acre parcel, worth enough to make any realtor salivate. I’d kept a half-acre and given the rest to Dr. Francis and Estelle Guzman. It had been a good move. The Medical/Dental Clinic built there had prospered, and I took a quiet pleasure out of occasionally cruising the spacious parking lot and seeing all the license plates from Chihuahua and other points south.
The attached pharmacy was still open, with two or three cars parked in front. Out of old habit, I looped through the parking lot, glancing at license plates. There had been a time when I might run them through dispatch. I returned to my own driveway. I damn near fell asleep waiting for my garage door to open, and when it scrolled shut behind me with a gentle thud, the thought occurred to me that I could just slump in my car seat and snooze without all the hassle of dismounting.
“Come on,” I said aloud. Supporting myself against the wall, avoiding a rack of long-abandoned paint cans, I reached the interior door that took me into the small utility room. Moving by automatic pilot with my hand skimming the rough adobe walls, lights weren’t necessary. Miles Waddell’s dark zone mesa had nothing on me. The old adobe was a proper burrow, and the tiny night light on the kitchen wall—allowing me to always find the coffeemaker at the oddest of hours—was enough without polluting the whole house.
The darkest room in the house was the bedroom, and by the time I reached it, I’d shed my jacket, hat, and the replacement Smith and Wesson that had become my companion an hour after I’d surrendered the other one to the undersheriff for the sort of pointless testing that only lawyers love. I sat on the side of the bed for a moment, considering. Then I just let gravity win, using a last burst of energy to swing my feet up.
When I next looked its way, the dim three-inch numerals of the clock on the bureau said it was nine thirty p.m. I’d slept for less than an hour or for a full twelve—either way, I felt as if I weighed three hundred pounds. The expensive pillow-top mattress that my eldest daughter Camille had insisted upon had a firm grip on every stiff joint. So why wake up? Why not just roll over and sink once more into a few moments of oblivion? I had started to ponder that very question when the phone rang.
My land line—the one making all the racket—was out in the kitchen, by design. If it were bedside, I’d answer in my sleep and probably embarrass myself. This way, if the caller let the phone clamor long enough, I’d get up, find it, and be coherent enough to swear fluently.
The ringing passed five, and I heaved out of bed, making my way through the short hall and around the corner.
“What?” I growled.
“Got two things,” Sheriff Robert Torrez said, and his voice was so soft that I had to cover one ear with my free hand and stuff the receiver into the other.
“They better be good, in the middle of the goddamn night.”
Bobby didn’t rise to that. Instead his tone sounded as neutral as if I’d said, “Why, thanks. I was expecting your call.”
“Estelle and me are going to run over to Deming. Thought you might want to come along.”
“For what?” I looked outside and saw pitch black. The nap had been less than an hour.
“Deming PD found the truck.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“And why do I need to see it? All I saw was headlights from twenty miles away. What am I going to recognize?”
Silence, so I let him off the hook. What the hell…I enjoyed their company.
“All right. That’s just what I need right now, a ride to Deming.”
“We’ll be by in about five minutes.”
“Yup.” I sounded as if a late night road trip outbid the pillow top. But if I hustled, the coffee would be done in time.
“Nathan Baum died, by the way.”
That news punched me silent. No wonder Bobby had called.
“I guess a blood clot,” the sheriff added. “Something like that.”
Normally, the sheriff’s vintage understatement would have amused me—Baum died, “by the way…a clot, or “something like that.” I didn’t try to find the right thing to say.
“I’ll be here.” I hung up. I would have liked to say that I swung into action like a well-oiled machine. I fumbled the coffeemaker, forgetting the filter and spilling the water. But what’s better than gritty cowboy brew in the middle of the night? While it gurgled, I charged around my face with an electric razor and, knowing I’d be stuck in a vehicle with others who might not appreciate a storm of perfume, settled for a little witch hazel aftershave.
As I poured the coffee into a large Thermos cup, I heard a vehicle crunch on the gravel in front of the house. I had almost reached the front door when I remembered the four-inch Smith and Wesson, and found it tucked under my jacket on the foyer bench.
The sheriff was driving one of the new extended Expeditions, and Estelle got out as I emerged from the house. She held the SUV’s front door for me. “I curl up easier than you do,” she said. “Did we wake you up?”
“Thank you. And yes.”
As I slid into the big tank, the sheriff did an unexpected thing: he reached over, extending his hand. His grip was powerful but not crushing, almost as if he was trying to transmit a little sympathy with the greeting. He watched as I managed the shoulder harness, and didn’t ask about my hardware which the short jacket didn’t conceal very well.
“Schroeder said nothing’s changed,” he said, leaving it to me to figure out to what he might be referring. I assumed it was Nathan Baum’s death and my contribution to it.
“Clot broke loose from the surgery?”
Estelle leaned forward, no doubt pleased that the security cage was behind her seat, not in front of her. “Francis said the autopsy will clarify it, but he thinks that’s likely. Probably from the massive hip surgery. For a few minutes, they thought that they could bring him through it, but it didn’t work out that way.” Her hand touched my left shoulder. “The cancer was advanced, by the way.”
/> “The way it goes,” I said. “He didn’t have to offer an invitation with that shotgun.” But no matter what the Monday Morning Quarterbacks who hadn’t been there said, there was a monumental difference between wounding someone—causing a world of hurt and complications—and killing them…no more phone calls from granddaughter, no more pride in what the son might be accomplishing, no small satisfactions, no good coffee, no more Christmas mornings with the family. Just dead.
“So where’s the kid?”
“She’s back with her mother.”
“And the father?”
“Don’t know,” Torrez interjected. “That’s one of our problems. But we got some paperwork now.” We swooshed up the interstate ramp, and it was evident that we weren’t going to waste a lot of time in transit.
“It turns out that there was a restraining order filed against him,” Estelle explained. “Against the son. Apparently George Baum originally had visiting rights on a regular basis, and blew that this summer when he took off with the little girl to visit Grandpa. Mom went ballistic and won the court order after he punched her. She wouldn’t press charges.”
“Ah…that kind of guy.”
“Lots of education, lots of computer savvy, and unfortunately lots of temper. He’s talked himself out of a string of jobs over the past couple of years. From what we’re told, George Baum is the sort with all the answers, and everyone else is an idiot.”
“You’ve been busy,” I said. “So where is he, do you think?”
“I wish we knew. All we know for sure is that he isn’t at his home in El Paso. One of the nurses thinks that he came to the hospital in Las Cruces briefly. They’re not sure. He wasn’t allowed to see his father. The old man was in the operating room at the time. George ranted and raved, and made a few threats. Your name came up.”
I lurched this way and that, trying to get comfortable with seat belt and coffee mug. “I’m sure he just wants to thank me. What can I say.” I nodded and sipped the awful coffee. “Now Deming.”
“Curt Boyd’s truck is parked in a storage unit there, just off the main drag,” Estelle said. “DPD says the unit’s renter is as puzzled as we are. He’s the one who called police.”
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