Easy Errors

by Steven F Havill

  “They said that they were attending a 4-H confab of some sort,” I persisted. “That’s what Bobby said his brother told him. Wednesday night is an odd time for a 4-H meeting, seems to me, but Browning says they were working on a float for the Fourth. Darlene Spencer’s mother says the same thing.” I grimaced. “Whatever they did, whatever they were up to, they got their stories coordinated from the beginning.”

  “Party time somewhere, maybe. Have you had a chance to talk with Darlene?”

  “She hasn’t shown her face yet.” I sighed. “She wasn’t riding with them at the time of the crash, and that’s kinda funny when her boyfriend is driving. Maybe they had a tiff of some kind, and she hooked a ride with somebody else.”

  “Nothing unusual about that,” Mears said.

  “Except she didn’t make it home. As of this morning, when mom called me, Darlene still hadn’t shown up. What we do know is that the Suburban hit the abutment at seventeen minutes after nine p.m. I heard it, for Christ’s sakes. If they were flyin’ low on their way home from Lordsburg, they could have left there well after eight, unless they had some stops to make. This asthma thing with Orlando gets me, though. Maybe that explains the speed. The driver’s got one passenger dying or dead, another one going nuts climbing over seats trying to reach him…Hell, no wonder Chris made mistakes in judgment. You’ve had the chance to work up the liquor inventory?”

  Mears nodded and flipped open a file folder. “Among other things, two unopened cans of Coors, one of them ruptured by the crash. No liquor bottles, empty, full or otherwise. No empty beer cans. One half-empty two-liter bottle of generic lemon-lime soda that didn’t rupture. A bag of Cheetos that did.” He looked up at me. “Not much there. They didn’t do their drinking in the car. Or if they did, the containers went out the window.”

  “And that’s likely. Nothing that might be construed as 4-H materials?”

  “No, sir.”

  I walked over to the large map on the west wall. “Thirty-six miles from Lordsburg to Posadas. All we know for sure is that when they hit the Posadas exit, they were on the interstate. We don’t know about before that.” My index finger traced the heavy, straight line of the interstate, tapping each of the infrequent interchanges. “They could have accessed the interstate in any of four places.” I looked at Mears. “And it’s just as likely that the little squirrels didn’t even go to Lordsburg. And if they did, it sure as hell wasn’t for 4-H…unless one of the H’s is hooch.”

  “Lots of party spots.”

  “Indeed.” I gazed at the map. If the kids had slipped out of town to take part in some high jinks, and Posadas County hosted plenty of parties in plenty of secluded spots, why would they bother with the interstate?

  “Fastest way home,” Mears said, as if reading my mind. “Mr. and Mrs. Holmes are still in town, by the way. I’ll go through it again with them.”

  “See if they can conjure up a better recollection of what the front seat passenger was actually doing when the two vehicles touched.” I shrugged. “And if the dome light was on in the truck. Although nobody told them beforehand that they’d have to remember details, so ‘conjure’ might be the name of the game in this case.”

  Three passengers, three fatalities. What was left that we needed to know? Like a nagging sore, it was just that…a need. An optimist might claim that revealing every detail in the chain of events might help us prevent a repeat. Not likely, unless a fourth party had somehow been involved—a supplier of booze to underage kids, or someone who had frightened the trio of kids so badly that Chris Browning had felt compelled to put the hammer down, flailing that big Suburban beyond common sense. A kid gasping and turning blue in the backseat certainly qualified as frightful.

  I looked past Mears to the assignment board out in the hallway. The little magnetic chip showed that Robert Torrez had returned to the office, on duty after all. I sympathized. He wasn’t going to sit home through any of this.

  In dispatch, Miracle Murton was sitting with his chin propped in his hands, staring down at the new computer keyboard.

  “Torrez’ twenty?”

  Murton startled at my question and pushed the keyboard a little farther away, as if he’d been caught watching something prurient dancing among the keys.

  “He’s, ah…”

  “I thought he might be.” That confused Murton even more.

  “No, Sheriff, he’s out west. Herb Torrance? Herb called in a complaint about somebody shooting the hell out of one of his cattle tanks. Bishop is still busy down in Regál. That new kid was just mooning around here, so I sent him on out to see what the deal was. If he wants to work, seems like west is the quiet side, and well, you know old Herb.”

  “Yes, I do. What does Bishop have going?”

  Murton tapped the desk with his pencil, looking officious. “Neighbor water troubles.” He pulled the blotter closer and pushed his glasses up. “The Clevelands called. Well, Luciano Cleveland did. He thinks…”

  I held up a hand in gentle protest. Luciano Cleveland, who had lived the first fifty years of his life in Mexico City before moving to the tiny hamlet of Regál to start the peach orchard of his retirement dreams, guarded his spring tenaciously. Actually, the rolls of cheap black polypropylene piping were his. The spring itself, a hundred yards inside the national forest boundary, wasn’t.

  The water burbled out of a vein from the vast bulk of the San Cristóbal Mountains behind the village. The pipe carrying the water ran out of the forest, across property owned by Miriam Hidalgo, who probably neither knew nor cared about the waterline, and eventually found its way to Cleveland’s peach orchard. The eighty-year-old Luciano kept a wary eye peeled for water thieves. Unfortunately, several of his other neighbors were in that category. Of course, the U.S. Forest Service might argue that Luciano was the biggest thief of all.

  Deputy Howard Bishop, who knew maybe ten words of Spanish, was steady and patient to a fault. Luciano Cleveland would keep him busy for hours if allowed to do so. “Maybe I’ll swing down that way after a bit,” I said. I liked Luciano, and his coffee was always hot and rich.

  “And Sergeant Payson is still pushin’ paper.” Murton relaxed a bit. “Hell of a lot of overtime this week.”

  “Always is. Come to think about it, I haven’t talked to Herb in a couple of weeks, so I think I’m going to cruise out that way first and make sure our young deputy stays out of trouble. If Bishop needs anything, remember I’m just up on 14.”

  The Torrance ranch spread out across the western side of Posadas County, edging up against Bureau of Land Management acreage and, on the west side of County Road 14, a little patch of heaven owned by Rueben Fuentes, my current suspect in the case of the purloined railroad ties. If I could lock Rueben and Luciano Cleveland in the same room, in company with a jumbo bottle of good tequila, the majority of petty nuisance calls that we fielded would be eliminated.

  Herb Torrance, on the other hand, went about his business quietly, minding his growing family and his angus cattle. He had complained that one of his stock tanks had been vandalized, but I knew that Rueben had had no hand in that. But who knows what he had seen as he bounced and jounced his old truck through the country, hauling railroad ties to Mexico?

  Reuben would be across the border now, working up a sweat on some gorgeous project or other. I wasn’t going to chase after him down there, but after an endless night, I’d favor one of the shady spots on the western side of the county for a quick cat-nap when my eyes drooped. Especially since Alice Torrance made some of the best pastries in the civilized world.

  Chapter Seven

  Wild West trick shot specialists like Bill Cody or gun factory reps like Ad Topperwein used to wow crowds by drawing pictures with their amazing shooting. I’ve seen historic photos of those Indian heads, or cowboy profiles, or liberty bells, rendered by bullet holes through thin metal plate…half an inch or less between neatly punc
hed bullet holes, spaced with precision and, even, one might say, artistry.

  I tried it once years ago, but I was working with my .357 magnum revolver, and the recoil made it a challenge to stay on line. That’s my excuse, anyway. My Indian head, blown into the white lid of a washing machine dumped in the county landfill, came out looking like the Elephant Man after a bad night.

  “Bill, do you know how much one of these tanks costs now?” Herb Torrance said. “I just put it in last year, too.” A real honest-to-God working cowboy in his faded denims, white shirt with pearl buttons, and scuffed boots with heels run down, Herb worked his tongue around a generous pinch of Copenhagen. As if that wasn’t enough nicotine to meet the need, he fished an Old Gold out of the pack without removing the pack from his shirt pocket. “Goddamn, Sheriff, they did it, didn’t they?”

  “Yep, they did.”

  Herb was lanky, just under six feet with bad knees and a spine that was starting to take on an artful bend. Half a hundred bullet holes pierced or scarred the galvanized metal sides of his newest stock tank, and most of them weren’t the modest little holes from a twenty-two caliber prankster. The metal was pretty tough, strong enough to hold up when the cattle leaned against it. Unless they hit just right, most twenty-two slugs would have just glanced off anyway. On top of that, the vandalism was done without much regard for artistry. No pictures here. Just a riddled tank.

  On the far side, fragments of glass dotted the tank’s rim where the pistoleers had set bottles and cans. At least they’d started that way, maybe, with no intent to damage the tank. A litter of torn cans and glass shards lay in the tall grass beyond, and one or two had spun back into the tank. I could picture the hilarity as one drunken, errant shot missed the target and punched through the tank. I imagine that that started the bullet fest.

  I measured one hole with the tip of my little finger. Nice fit, but inside the tank, the explosive exit rosettes erupted in jagged-edged tears. The water had drained down to the level of the lowest holes, streaking the metal. Wasps and butterflies were going nuts sopping up this rare bonanza. It made me wonder how the word went out around the insect world.

  The walls of the tank where the sun struck the metal had dried, but in the shade, some driblets of water still clung to the metal.

  I leaned on the tank edge and looked down. “Not too long ago,” I said. A few rounds, fired after the water had drained down, had punched through both sides of the tank. Those rounds striking below the waterline must have sent up satisfying geysers.

  “Wish’t I’d a caught them at it,” Herb said, then tilted his head. “But maybe not. They’d probably just as soon shoot at me, anyways.” He turned and pointed. “But that bothers me more, Sheriff.” Herb nodded at the windmill. Dozens of holes let sunshine through the idled blades in fascinating patterns. “Tore up every damn one of ’em.”

  “Maybe there was a breeze, and they were enticing targets,” I mused. “Did you call dispatch this morning, or was it Alice?”

  Torrance shrugged, the thin muscle and bone of his shoulders hard against the worn cotton. “I was in town this mornin’, so I didn’t hear the shooting, if that’s when they done it. Now, Alice thinks it was yesterday, though. She thinks that she heard ’em shooting yesterday, late. Maybe so, I don’t know. She thinks lots of things, sometimes.” He chuckled dryly, then shrugged. “I was out in the shop ’til way after dark. Didn’t hear a damn thing over the welder. I came out to check on things today and found this.”

  I leaned over the edge and watched the half dozen koi assembled down below, waiting for treats. The little fish, four or five inches long, had less than six inches of water in which to navigate, but seemed content enough. The watercress and other weeds fanned out now on the surface, dragging their stems in a tangle. Little black beetles with oar-like legs rowed through the aquatic jungle.

  “It’s not damp around the holes, even on the shady side, so it’s been a few hours, anyway.”

  “That’s what the new guy was sayin’. He stopped by for a few minutes. He collected some spent bullets and some brass, but I don’t know as there’s much any of you can do about it unless you catch ’em in the act.” He pointed with a jerk of the chin. “He picked up a bunch of the cans, too. And some bigger pieces of busted bottles. Don’t know what for.”

  “Fingerprints, I suppose,” I said. “A fingerprint on the can doesn’t mean much, though. Doesn’t prove who put it there, or who shot it.”

  I gazed off to the south. What was a well-marked two-track leading in to the windmill site—what I’d followed in with the aging Crown Vic—became just a trace through the bunch grass beyond, angling down through an old lava flow to Bender’s Canyon—a grand name for a little wrinkle in the blanket of the prairie. If I imagined hard enough, I could follow a track or two off through the bunch grass. The tracks would take me down into Bender’s Canyon, and then loop back out to County Road 14.

  The canyon palisades were an eroded remnant of some prehistoric sea bottom, all the soil washed away, then carved and smoothed by once-a-hundred-year floods. Kids loved the cliffs because they were accessible, treacherous, overhanging and water-streaked in spots, a grand place to practice freestyle rock-climbing or rappelling. There were enough rock ledges and overhangs to provide camping shelter. The BLM, which owned the land in the canyon, had even considered designating the site as a rock-climber’s recreation area, signing the place in from the highway.

  I had heard that, and immediately had visions of a dozen kids being swept away when a cloudburst upstream rampaged down through the canyon. Maybe the BLM thought about that, too, since no progress for development had been made.

  Herb lit another cigarette as he regarded his punctured tank, offering the pack toward me. “I’m trying to quit,” I said. “Again.”

  “Good luck with that.” Torrance thumped the side of the tank with heel of his hand. “I guess I can try weldin’ this up. What I got don’t work for shit on galvanized steel, though. And I got a few of them screw-in tank plugs with the rubber gaskets? They might hold for a time.”

  “File a report with us, Herb. You can claim this on your homeowner’s.”

  “Hadn’t thought of that.”

  I stepped back and examined the tank. “This must have a drain plug?”

  “Sure.” He skirted the tank and stopped opposite the windmill’s feed pipe. “Lemme fetch a wrench. The plug’s in there pretty good.”

  The midday June sun was warm, and the entertainment was pleasant. The day was so different from the night before that I was loath to cut short my visit to the Torrance ranch. I watched the water striders scoot across the water’s surface and the agile water beetles dive through the vegetation like little glossy submarines, spooked when my shadow loomed over them.

  In a moment Herb had the plug out, and the draining water cut a dribbling, lazy arc.

  “Your man didn’t bother to drain the rest of it,” Herb observed. “He’s a long-legged son-of-a-gun. He just did one of them sort of kips over the rim like it was nothing. I told him, ‘You know, there’s a stile right behind the mill.’ He just said, ‘Thanks,’ and over he went. By then the water was down to a few inches, so it wasn’t so bad. Soaked his boots, though.”

  I grinned, trying to picture myself “kipping” over the side of a four-foot steel tank. The lead in the Posadas Register would scream, “Two-ton Undersheriff Drowns in Stock Tank after Breaking Neck During Mystery Fall.”

  “I’m not that eager,” I laughed. The draining water had started to cut a mini-arroyo in the dirt. I ambled around the circumference and found the stile with bunch grass and a riot of little yellow composites growing up through it. I kicked the wood gently to wake up dozing reptiles, but nobody was home.

  “Lemme give you a hand.” Herb offered, and we tussled the stile upright, then heaved it up to straddle the tank’s side. “I guess I could leave it in the tank all the time, but
it gets so damn slippery.”

  “I don’t need slippery,” I agreed. “You said Torrez recovered some slugs?” Now that I was contemplating actually climbing inside, I looked down at the slimy tank innards without much enthusiasm.

  “He fished out a whole handful. I guess that’s what he was after. And he took some pictures of the tire tracks. Don’t know what they’re going to tell him, but he don’t talk much, that one.” He waved a hand over toward my car. “And then he picked up some brass. Wasn’t much, but a few pieces, over there in the grass. I was surprised there wasn’t more, all the holes there are.”

  I glanced across at the faint marks through the grass. “The tracks. I wish him luck.” I leaned on the tank again, gazing out across the twelve feet of water surface, low enough now that most of the aquatic plants held their heads above the retreating surface. Herb and I stood there in companionable silence. He’d spat out the chaw and substituted another of his Old Golds.

  Across the tank, a cow-killer walked along the tank rim, pausing at each glass fragment. A full two inches long with a stinger like a sharp tack, the red and black wasp was as fearsome looking as he was a gentle giant…at least to humans. Tarantulas didn’t think much of him lingering in the neighborhood. If we stood there long enough, the wasp’s curiosity would prompt him to hike the tank circumference to visit.

  “I never did catch his name.”

  I glanced at Herb. “The deputy?” No…the wasp, Herb was polite enough not to say. But I wouldn’t put it past Herb Torrance to have pet names for his livestock. “That would be Robert Torrez, one of our new hires.” I grinned. “He’s one of Sheriff Salcido’s distant cousins. I’m sure you know his dad…Modesto?”

  Herb nodded in recognition. “One of my sons was a classmate of his, then. The boy is big for a Mexican.”