Easy Errors

by Steven F Havill

  “Willis Browning passed away early this afternoon.”

  “Shit,” I muttered, then keyed the radio. “Ten four.”

  “Perrone’s really going after it. He’ll have some results on the girl by late this afternoon.”

  “Ten four.”

  “Everything okay out there?”

  “Affirmative. We’re going to need the county’s cherry picker for a bit. If they could get that out to us this afternoon, it’d help. Have them come right to Herb’s windmill.”

  “You’re sure you’ll need that?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Then I’ll call over there right now.”

  “Give ’em an hour to get here,” I called up to Torrez. I watched him climb down, as graceful as a big man can be on such a thin structure, unhurried and mindful of what metal he grasped.

  With both feet on the ground, he gazed upward, and by the set of his jaw I knew he was thinking, thinking, thinking. To himself, which was fine with me.

  After a moment, he shook his head and took a deep breath. “I need to measure from here,” and he touched the southwestern leg of the tower, “over to where we found the body.”

  “Let me go stand on the stump,” I said. “That’ll give you something to shoot for. Maybe keep the line a little straighter.” I paused. “You heard the sheriff?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The sudden formality of his answer startled me. “Willis worked well with us,” I said. “We’re going to miss him.” Torrez nodded. It took me almost ten minutes to amble out of the windmill’s glade, through the brush, and down the slope. I approached the old juniper carefully from the north, avoiding any of the tiny evidence flags that Torrez had planted around Darlene Spencer’s final resting place.

  Climbing up on the huge old snag, disturbing nothing but a little bit of lichen, I looked back and could just see Torrez’ head. I waved, and he set off toward me.

  “Two hundred and thirty-one feet,” he announced when he reached me.

  “From the base,” I said. “Not much more than that from the top of the tower. Another foot or two.” I waited while he made a notation in his pocket pad, and when he finished, I said, “So…” He didn’t respond, but his thoughtful gaze had dropped to the victim outline, a light sifting of chalk dust.

  “I’d like to know what you’re thinking,” I added.

  He chewed on that for a while, then said, “I’m thinkin’ that a little more than two hundred ain’t too far for a ricochet.” With his index finger, he traced an imaginary trajectory in the air…up from the shooter to the windmill sails, then angling down to where we stood.

  Clever conjecture, and a bullet fragment would be consistent with the wound above Darlene’s left eyeball—irregular, not quite knife-blade like, not the bruised hole we’d expect from an impacting bullet, and certainly not the explosive impact I’d expect from a high-powered rifle. I wanted the deputy to always think in terms of existing evidence, rather than grasping at straws, so I said, “It won’t be long before Perrone has some news for us. If it’s a bullet fragment, he’ll find it, and then the fun begins.”

  “Yep.”

  The conjecture raised all sorts of questions. I could easily imagine a bullet glancing off the metal structure of the windmill, to go whining away. How Darlene Spencer happened to be in its path, more than two hundred feet away from the original target, might be as simply explained as her having to find a spot to take a piss. I liked that version since it explained the dropped drawers and the protection of the old juniper. I didn’t much care for the possible alternatives—that someone had followed her to this private little spot, assaulted her, stabbing her with some sharp object like a tent stake or juniper spear…

  “One thing I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around,” I said when Torrez finished with another round of his notebook jottings. “Chris Browning was sixteen or so. Darlene Spencer was going on eighteen. Your brother was what, seventeen?” He nodded. “And Elli was just fifteen.”

  “Yep.” That came as little more than a whisper.

  “Darlene had already graduated from high school. Chris was an early grad, a year ahead of his classmates, headed for college in the fall. Orlando was a junior, maybe?” The deputy nodded. “And Elli…”

  “Just finished ninth grade,” Torrez said.

  “So what’s the link? It seems unusual to me that Chris Browning would hang out with Orlando.”

  “Neighbors, sort of.”

  That flood of information didn’t offer anything new. The Torrez clan owned three or four lots over on MacArthur, and the ill-fated Brownings owned both a ranch-style four-bedroom monstrosity on Belmont, a subdivision street across an arroyo from MacArthur, as well as an elm-shaded town house in Deming—a place Willis had purchased when it seemed likely that his wife would need extended medical care. She hadn’t lasted long enough to make Deming home…and now, neither had he…or his son.

  “They hung out together a lot? Chris and your brother?”

  That earned a slow nod. “Wasn’t much that little shit wouldn’t do,” he whispered. That, I knew. Sheriff Salcido had referred to Orlando Torrez more than once as a real pistolo, a perpetual motion teenager who could be counted on to make all the wrong decisions. Careening his motorbike around the county, there wasn’t a stop sign he hadn’t run, a speed limit he hadn’t broken. I wondered if Orlando’s older brother, now a member of the Sheriff’s Department, had given any consideration to how he would deal with his wild-hare sibling.

  On the other hand, Chris Browning was an athlete who had to work at being a star. I had the impression that between the two boys, there might have been a little hero worship going on. Little Orlando had the natural grace of a Pelé and his comic tendencies reminded me of Continflas, the Mexican actor. I could understand that Chris, even though a year older and cut from far different academic cloth, might have savored the little twerp’s company. Even come close to idolizing him. Apparently so.

  Less than an hour later, a cherry picker with county shields on the doors rumbled down the two-track from the Torrance ranch.

  “Didn’t know for sure if I had the right place or not,” Skip Moreno said as he clambered down from the truck. A stumpy guy, he looked as if he’d just slid out from under some piece of county equipment in for repairs. I could smell the odd mix of oil, grease, and cigarette smoke from ten feet away.

  “You do.” I explained what we wanted, and in moments, with stabilizers planted and Robert shackled to the safety harness, the bucket rose quickly. The deputy oriented himself with the sun behind the camera, and after he hand-turned the sail to put the selected bullet damage within his reach, I set the windmill’s brake.

  Torrez photographed another half dozen bullet holes, but if there was a pattern there, I didn’t see it. He finished and stood quietly in the bucket, surveying the terrain.

  Doing his best to fill dead air, Skip Moreno turned a full circle to take his own reconnaissance of the country, and shook his head. “You had about everybody out here today, huh?”

  “A fair crowd.” I wondered what version Moreno had heard. The county maintenance offices had a scanner, of course. Maybe we had entertained a good audience. Maybe, if we were lucky, the listeners were content to think that we sure squandered a lot of resources on a shot-up windmill.

  Finally satisfied with the scenery, Torrez looked down from his perch.

  “Need a photo taken from here to there.” He motioned back toward the juniper site. He turned the sail until the sample of damage he’d selected at first was about at the three o’clock position. “If you can set the brake right there…” I did, and he maneuvered the bucket outward, and then to the east, taking him around the sail. “That’ll work,” he said finally. After a change of film, he shot through another roll.

  “Are you going to need Garcia to shoot this again?”

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sp; “Don’t think so,” Torrez said. “But it’d be good if Herb knows he don’t touch this sail ’til we’re done with it.” Torrez lowered the bucket, letting it nestle smoothly on the truck’s back.

  “Comes in handy, don’t it?” Skip’s grin revealed maybe a dozen teeth, scattered top and bottom. “Old Bobby here worked for us one summer a couple years back. Nothin’s wasted, is the way I see it.”

  “Yep.” Torrez shed the safety belt and clambered down from the truck.

  “You know, a few holes in them blades ain’t going to make much difference,” Skip observed, and I nodded agreement. He wanted more information, but I ignored the hints, and he didn’t press. “I don’t know why Herb would even bother with it.”

  “He probably won’t,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, if that’s all you need, I’m going to be gettin’ back to town,” Moreno said.

  “Appreciate it,” I said, and he earned a nod from Torrez as well.

  The truck rumbled off, leaving plenty of dust in its wake. My watch said 4:02. Down below, I heard a vehicle, no doubt the relief deputy arriving. “I’ll go talk to ’em,” Torrez said.

  “And I’ll be back after I check on a few things,” I said. “Find yourself some rest between now and eight-thirty. Go home and be with your family, Robert.” Without indicating whether he thought my advice worthy or not, he trudged off toward the canyon, camera in one hand, walking wheel in the other.

  Chapter Eleven

  I heard Deputy Encinos call his location to dispatch, and I heard Torrez’ Blazer leave the canyon. Reasonably confident that the crime scene would be in good hands, I bumped the Crown Vic back out the two-track, staying to the left when I reached the intersection with Herb Torrance’s driveway.

  He and his wife were sitting on the front porch as if their to-do list was blank. I gave them a salute with the roof lights, but didn’t stop. I wasn’t ready to give up more time to their enduring hospitality. If I sat on that porch just now, the eyelids would grow heavy, and after pie and coffee, away I’d go into dreamland.

  A lingering question remained about the Torrance kids—there were a handful of them and Patrick, the oldest, would be fair game for some teenaged high jinks. The next in line, eleven-year-old Dale…I wondered about him. He was a BB-gun or maybe .22 risk, and I was sure there wasn’t an unexplored inch of the Torrance ranch, or a critter living there that didn’t hold him in mortal fear. But I couldn’t see Dale poking holes in the ranch hardware. Chances were one hundred percent that Herb had already talked to the boys, and with his steely glare, the kids would spill any beans they might have tried to hide. But Herb didn’t know about Darlene Spencer. At least, not yet.

  I drove south on County Road 14 so slowly that my car scarcely kicked dust. Shortly, Bender’s Canyon Trail angled in from the east, crossed the county road, and disappeared among the jumble of boulders that marked one end of San Patricio Mesa. I turned off the county road, passing by the sign that announced, “CR14-b. This Road Unsuitable for Passenger Vehicles.” Sure enough, it was unsuitable, and the old patrol car scraped bottom more than once. I jounced over two cattle guards before I reached a gate in the barbed-wire range fence.

  Reuben Fuentes’ homestead was a wonderful time machine. I don’t think he ever sold anything, or made a run to the landfill. From a now-discarded garden colander that he’d fashioned in 1946 from a rusted wash basin to a 1919 Ford reduced by the years to nothing more than a firewall and front fenders, the yard around his home was what an archaeologist might optimistically call a “scatter.”

  Rueben and his wife, Rosa, had moved to this homestead in 1945, when he was looking for a safe haven from some troubles he’d had south of the border. He bought more than a hundred acres and the old stone cabin for twelve hundred dollars, without knowing that the land bordered a vast treasure of caves and lava tubes owned by the Bureau of Land Management. In 1945, the intriguing formations were just holes in the ground, before Carlsbad educated tourists became interested in such things. I can imagine that Rosa had been more than a little skeptical when Reuben toured her around the acreage that included the tiny two-room stone structure that he envisioned as their paradise.

  Since then, Reuben had done his best to stay out of trouble, working various small construction jobs on both sides of the border. Rosa had always imagined her dotage to be spent home in Mexico with her extended family, but that wasn’t in the cards. As lost in the boonies as this little rancho might be, a flu bug somehow managed to find her, and that was that. Reuben never remarried.

  I reached one of the arroyos that crossed the fading county two-track and stopped. For sure, the crossing was unfit for the aging Crown Vic. Lots of tracks crossed, sure enough, sticking to the rocky places, but Reuben’s little truck was much higher slung than the county barge. I dug out the binoculars from the center console and scanned the field in front of Reuben’s little house. His four dogs had heard me, and now stood as tail-wagging sentries just below the house. The little pickup was gone, and the dogs were clearly waiting.

  For a moment, I sat quietly, engine switched off and all four windows lowered. One of the dogs felt the urge to announce himself, his barks in a steady one-two-three pattern with a second or two in between tunes.

  My visit wasn’t prompted by Reuben’s theft of railroad ties. In a straight line, this particular spot wasn’t far from Bender’s Canyon, or even Torrance’s windmill. Last night, Reuben would have been home, and could have heard a vehicle pass by on County Road 14. He could have heard the shooting, too, if the circumstances had been right.

  He wouldn’t have been alarmed, though. More than once during his colorful career, he’d survived being on the wrong end of a gun, and he still carried one with him. As long as the gunfire hadn’t been on his property, he probably wouldn’t have been concerned.

  I started the car and backed around, leaving the dogs’ curiosity unsatisfied. A few minutes later, down at the intersection of County Road l4 and the state highway, I looked northeast toward the Broken Spur Saloon. One or two cars graced the parking lot, early tourists searching out happy hour.

  Instead of turning left, back toward town, I headed southwest on State 56, enjoying the long, curvaceous climb up the flank of the San Cristóbals, cresting Regál Pass with the Ford’s temperature needle still in the green. From the pass, I had an unobstructed view of Old Mexico, a vast, arid land dotted with tiny enclaves of homes that followed the water. Tres Santos, a village of perhaps fifty people, nestled along a seasonal stream fed from the San Cristóbal runoff.

  Just below me, the village of Regál graced a tiny sliver of land between the rising southern exposure of the Cristóbals and the five-strand barbed-wire border fence that extended out from the official-looking chain link at the crossing itself. I knew that the official border crossing facility, the portal from all things miserable and austere in Mexico to all things wonderful in the United States, was scheduled for replacement. A fancy little customs building would grace our side, and who knows what the Mexican authorities would design.

  At the moment, the crossing was open twelve hours a day, six to six, from October through April, and six to eight during the remainder. Rumor had it that the crossing was going serious, to be open twenty-four/seven, if the Mexican authorities agreed to the change. For added security, the chain-link border fence at the crossing itself had been extended west up into the San Cristóbals before joining the barbed wire. Hikers could laugh at it and hunters could ventilate the support posts.

  I glanced at my watch. Reuben Fuentes’ habits would keep him on the job until near dark, and Tres Santos was but five miles south of the border. I could drive there in a handful of minutes, since the road to the village and beyond to larger communities like Janos was graveled and smooth. But I was in a marked county car, in what passed for a uniform for me, and between on my person and in the car I was toting a fair arsenal. Our relations with the Mexic
an authorities were smooth and cooperative. I wanted to keep them that way, and their border was not something to barge across as if I owned the place.

  Before dropping down off the pass, I radioed dispatch, my mind set to hear Ernie Wheeler’s clipped, efficient delivery. But JJ Miracle Murton, who loved working dispatch as much as any self-respecting road deputy hated it, had slipped back into the seat while Ernie ran an errand that couldn’t wait.

  “PCS, three ten will be ten ten, Regál.” I predicted that all the tens were going to scramble Miracle’s mind. Sure enough.

  “Uh, three ten, say again ten nine.”

  “Three ten is ten ten, Regál.”

  “Uh, ten four, three ten.” Whether or not Miracle understood the numbers magic, who knew? I’m not sure he had ever figured out why cops used arcane things like the ten code, but I was hoping he would see the uniformity of it, and understand that saying “ten ten” was faster and more precise than trying to explain that I was going out of service, but remained subject to call.

  “Say, uh, three ten?” he continued. “There’s a request here for you to return a call to Doc Perrone at your earliest convenience. As soon as you can.”

  “Ten four. What time was that request logged?”

  “Uh, he called right at three oh five.”

  An hour ago. “What number did he leave?”

  “He was over there to the hospital.”

  “Ten four.”

  I passed the first graveled street that wandered off west through the village. If the sun winked on it just right, I would be able to see Luciano Cleveland’s water pipe where it snaked out of the brush and wound like a great black serpent down to his orchard. I didn’t want to be cornered by the loquacious Luciano just then. I stuck to the pavement as I passed the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora on the left.