“I agree. But I’m sure they’re pricey, Eduardo.”
“I’m sure they are. So is our time and manpower. We’d be ahead in this investigation if we weren’t waiting on film, no?”
“Yes, we would be.”
“Then…no, you’re busy just now. Let me do this. I’ll speak with Avelino and see what he wants. Then I’ll work up a proposal.” He nodded with satisfaction. “That’s what I’ll do.”
The sheriff went back downstairs to talk with Torrez, and I took that opportunity to drive out and secure the two guns from Clifton Bailey’s truck. I had hoped to duck in and out of D’Anzo’s unnoticed, but Carmen caught me red-handed.
“No word yet,” she said as she approached across the parking lot. She pushed her dark glasses up into her thick hair and stood with her back to the sun as she unlocked the boneyard fence. “There’s been a string of drive-bys who want to look at this truck.”
“They can look all they want, as long as they stay outside the fence.”
“Just this morning, I’ve heard from four different people about Darlene Spencer. Such a sad thing. Everybody is talking about it.”
“Sometimes that can be a help, Carmen.”
I unlocked the camper window and lowered the tailgate. I wasn’t about to duplicate Bob Torrez’ coordinated hop up in the truckbed, and Carmen must have noticed my hesitation.
“Can I climb up in there for you, sir?” I couldn’t help regarding her sylph-like figure.
“I’d appreciate that, but…” I shook my head. “I need to do this.” She looked perplexed. “If some lawyer asks you if you handled the guns, you truthfully need to be able to say no.” I grinned as I hoisted my carcass butt-first onto the tailgate and then swung my legs up. “The law is a pain in the ass sometimes.”
After unlocking things and making out a receipt that I left in the toolbox, I took both guns in their cases, and one partial box of ammo. There were only twenty-two loaded rounds left in that box, and it seemed reasonable to assume that the fired bullets had come from there. The other five boxes were full, fifty count in each.
“You’ve never met the truck owner, then?” I slid out awkwardly.
“He didn’t come in with the truck, no.”
“Have you ever met Mr. Bailey before?”
“I haven’t. I’ve been practicing putting on my most innocent face for when he shows up.” She grinned, more than a little apprehension tempering the expression.
“Nine one one,” I said sternly. “That’s the first thing you do. Nine one one.”
“That’s easy to remember.”
“Yep. Nine one one. That’s before you even talk with him or unlock the boneyard gate. Just between you and me, the owner of this truck is Leo Bailey’s younger brother. Leo might be with him. And have you ever met Artie Torkelson? Stuart’s brother? We’re told that Clifton Bailey may be in Artie’s company. Stay on your toes. I’m suggesting that if you see any of those fellows, you contact us. Do not give out any information.”
She puffed her cheeks out, then said, “I have to tell you, Sheriff. This whole thing is making me very, very nervous.”
“That’s good. That means you’ll be very, very careful. And you and Rick remember.” I made a zipper motion with my fingers over my mouth. “Lose lips sink ships.” She smiled at that and made a zipping motion of her own. I gathered up guns and ammo and secured them in a black evidence bag, then stowed them in the trunk of my car.
“PCS, three ten.”
“Go ahead, three ten.” Gayle Sedillos was working dispatch days for the next two weeks, and I liked her clipped, efficient style. Just twenty-one years old, she was turning out to be a quick study.
“PCS, three ten is clear D’Anzo’s. I’m ten eight.”
“Ten four, three ten.”
Posadas Properties was just down the street, behind Posadas State Bank. I took a moment and caught up my log, then told Gayle where I was going. The sky was achingly bright, the sun trying its best to peel the paint off parked cars. I parked on the street that paralleled Pershing Park off Bustos, finding some partial shade under the park’s elm trees, all of which looked as if they were on their last roots.
A gush of super-cooled air greeted me as I opened the door to the real estate office. The receptionist awarded me with a wide smile, charming from the nose down. But her eyes were like blue chips of ice. That’s one trouble with a small town. Everybody’s little secrets are there for the picking. I knew that Sylvia Styles, not yet twenty-four years old, already had one marriage, one divorce, and one charge of domestic violence behind her. Looking at her neat, trim figure and tiny stature, it’s hard to imagine that she had broken her ex-husband’s nose, fractured his left collarbone, and wrecked his right knee so badly that he was on crutches for a month. She handled a mean golf club. After that temper tantrum, he had divorced her, and taken custody of the two Styles children.
Maybe she was genuinely happy now—it was hard for me to tell. I had been the arresting officer for her golf outing, and she was slow to forgive—even though Judge Hobart had resisted the temptation to jail her shapely little butt. Instead, he’d put her under a restraining order to protect Jake and the kids, and ordered a few hours of community service.
“Ms.…” I noticed that her name plaque said Sylvia Bohanan. Her husband had dumped her, and she’d dumped the name. “Ms. Bohanan, I need to talk with Stuart.”
“Oh,” she said with regret. “You know what? He went to an early lunch with Leo Bailey.”
“At the Don Juan?”
“Always the Don Juan,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“I’ll catch up with him there. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” The smile reappeared, genuine this time, no doubt because I was leaving.
After the refrigerated air, the heat of a June morning felt delightful. It was six blocks west to the Don Juan at the corner of Twelfth and Bustos. Walking would have done me good, but I needed my office with me. That was my excuse. As I neared the parking lot, I saw Torkelson’s massive Ford 4x4—giant trucks ran in the family, apparently. Glossy black from stem to stern, even the grill and cowcatcher on the front were black. Parked next to it was Leo Bailey’s little Honda. Evidently, the newspaper publisher had made it back from Deming promptly. Maybe that meant no problems with the newspaper’s latest edition. I was curious to see the spin he gave the story.
Chapter Twenty-two
The Don Juan was dark and cool, and Desireé Aragón, one of Fernando’s nieces, greeted me. Like all the other Aragóns I’d met, she was shaped from the pro-wrestler mold. And, like all the others, she had been perfectly endowed in the personality department. The clock above the ugly velvet portrait of Don Juan de Oñate, one of Spain’s least politically correct explorer/conquerors, said that lunch hour was still an hour away. The lunch crowd would start to filter in shortly before noon, but even so, my favorite table, in the back and partially hidden by the waitress station, was occupied.
Desireé spotted me and held up a menu. As I strode through the empty restaurant, I recognized the back of Stuart Torkelson’s head, his bouffant hairdo perfectly in place. Leo Bailey, ever observant, saw me enter and beckoned me over with a minimal flexing of the fingers.
“Early lunch for you?” Desireé asked with that perfect, welcoming smile.
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “How about just coffee for now?”
“Perfect.”
As she retreated, I shook hands with both men. “Leo,” I said, “I hope everything went well this morning. A folded Posadas Register lay under his right forearm, and he pushed it toward me by way of answer. The article on Wednesday night’s crash dominated the top right corner of the front page.
The banner headline bellowed, “Teens Killed in Rollover,” and I scanned the article quickly. Straightforward, no assumptions, no editorializing, it read like a hundred others I�
��d seen over the years.
Any details that might have been the least bit controversial, like the mention of high speed and possible alcohol consumption, were attributed to me. There was no mention of Orlando Torrez’ possible death before the crash. Nor had the rumor mill given him any spin on Darlene Spencer’s tragedy. As if sensing how thin was the ice on which we all were skating, the story confined itself to details of the Suburban’s violent crash. There was no mention of the collision with Riley Holmes’ Cadillac. That gave me a small opening.
“Fair enough,” I said, handing the paper back to Leo.
“Just awful,” Stuart whispered.
“You might want to know that we’re currently investigating a minor collision between the kids’ Suburban and another vehicle. That happened about ten miles west of here, up on the interstate.” I slid my hands together. “A sideswipe that ripped off the other vehicle’s driver’s side mirror.”
Leo scooted over and nodded at the seat. “Take a load off.”
“Thanks. Anyway, that collision, just moments before the fatal crash, gives us some valuable information that we didn’t have before.”
“Like what?” Bailey had his notebook out, food forgotten. My coffee arrived, and I waited until the young lady retreated.
“It’s the first hint that something was going on in that Suburban before the crash. We think there was a good reason why the kids were speeding. We just don’t know what it was.”
She hadn’t retreated far. Desireé hovered just out of range, pad in hand.
“I can’t, Desireé. Not today. I’ll only be here a minute or two.” She vanished with a smile, and I turned back to Stuart Torkelson, who up to this point hadn’t volunteered a word.
“Stu, are the three hunters staying with you while they’re in town?”
“The three…”
“His brother, Clifton.” I nodded at Leo. “Your brother, Artie? And Lieutenant Smith? I know they’re off sticking pigs in Mexico at the moment, but before and after?”
“Cliff is staying with me,” Leo said.
“Okay. And the other two?”
Torkelson nodded. “Sure enough. They’re at the house for a bit. I mean, not right now. Before they went down to the Rio Mancos country. They’re scoping out some of the ranch country around here for the antelope hunts later on this fall. And then for a day or two when they get back.” He smiled. “They’re hoping to have a bunch of pork to process when they come back.”
“They’ll use O’Conner?” Jim O’Conner was the only game processor I knew, and even clean roadkills—if that wasn’t an oxymoron—kept him busy. “They’re just bow hunting down south, though.”
Torkelson looked surprised. “Oh, God, yes. It practically takes an act of congress…their congress, I mean, to carry firearms across the border. Bows, no problem.”
I smiled. “You aren’t kidding on that score. On the occasions when I have to drive south, I stash the hardware at the BP office if I’m driving the county car. What, they left all their hardware with you before crossing over?”
“Yep. I could open a gun shop with that arsenal.”
Leo Bailey was resting his head on his hand, regarding me steadily. “So what’s new with the Spencer girl?” He was adept at making connections.
“Investigation continues.”
His eyes narrowed just a bit. “You think my brother was down there? In the canyon?”
“I haven’t heard about this,” Torkelson said uneasily. “My gosh, now, Darlene? I heard about that, all right. Why would the boys be down there?”
“Good question.” I could see that my cryptic answer made Torkelson uneasy.
“Stu, we need to get. Or at least, I do,” Leo said. “Bill, good to see you. Remember Monday.” Looking as if he’d been left out of the conversation, Stuart hesitated, then shook my hand as he rose.
“If I can help in any way?” His grip was clammy.
“I’ll let you know. Did the guys say when they’re heading back from the hunt?”
“Oh—that was sort of indefinite. But what’s today? Friday? I’m thinking probably Sunday or so.”
I pushed to my feet “I hope they’ve had good luck.”
“Monday,” Leo said again, and pointed a cocked finger pistol at me.
I shook his hand again. “You won’t let me forget, Leo.”
By the time Bob Torrez returned from Regál, I was ready for him. A quick comparison of the unfired ammo for the forty-four convinced me that the bullets in the tank and from the windmill ricochet were consistent. They were all flat-nosed bullets with the copper jacket covering everything but about an eighth of an inch up front. Apparently Cliff Bailey had been saving the hollow points for later, perhaps for something that made for better eating than galvanized steel.
I heard Torrez’ heavy boots on the stairs.
“What’s the news?” I asked.
He laid his notebook on the table and unfolded a photo copy of a log page. “Clifton Bailey, Arthur Torkelson, and Joe Smith crossed into Mexico at ten minutes after six yesterday morning. That’s Thursday.”
“Several hours before Darlene was found.”
“Yep.”
“And at that point, it’s likely that she was still alive.”
“Yep.”
“The officers are going to keep an eye out for us?”
Torrez nodded. “Drivin’ an eighty-six Ford Bronco registered to Arthur Torkelson, New Mexico tag TORQUE.”
“Cute. Let’s see what the bullets tell us.”
Our recovery tank was a spectacularly ridiculous gadget that Sergeant Avelino Garcia had fabricated during his first year with the department. It was clumsy, awkward, time-consuming, and worked wonderfully well. Avelino had started with an eight-foot-long section of eight-inch diameter steel drill casing. The “down” end included a watertight cap held in place with four bolts passing through the cap and welded flanges on the pipe.
The “hot” end was welded closed with a three-inch hole with centering guides through which one thrust the barrel of the test weapon. The whole affair sat on sturdy channel-iron legs so that the tube rested at about a forty-five-degree angle. Filled with water, it was massively heavy. And sloppy. A rubber pad hung down over the shooting hole, in an effort to stop some of the backsplash. It almost worked.
Unfortunately, to recover the bullet required emptying the pipe into the floor drain. Since we tested at most two or three guns a year for ballistic matches, the inconvenience didn’t matter much.
“Let’s do the handgun first,” I said, and watched as Torrez readied the tank. He eased the heavy muzzle of the Super Blackhawk onto the tank’s barrel guides, and carefully estimated the barrel to tube alignment. Even with earphones, the sound was convincingly loud. And the backsplash soaked the deputy’s right arm. He unbolted the end, letting the water drain carefully so that the projectile didn’t go into the sewer as well.
The bullet was pristine. Torrez had held the gun steady and centered so that the bullet had never kissed the side of the pipe during its journey. After dabbing the test bullet dry, he spent a long time arranging it on the microscope stand, butt to butt with the bullet recovered from Herb Torrance’s stock tank.
When he straightened up and turned to me, his grin was huge. He stood back and let me peer.
“Bingo. Easy match. Even I’m convinced.”
“Yep.” He looked at me with interest. “No point in doing the rifle, then.”
“A negative result is useful evidence,” I said. “I picked the handgun to go first because I guessed that’s what kids would like to shoot,” I said. “The little rifle is just that. A rifle. It doesn’t have the macho pizzazz of the big handgun. I figure if you offer ’em side by side, the kids are going to choose the handgun every time. You said yourself that Orlando liked to shoot your forty-four. So…” I looked at t
he comparison again. “The pond bullet matches the windmill bullet. And now the test slug matches as well. Which means, if we’re right, that a bullet from this Ruger Super Blackhawk, the gun taken from Bailey’s truck, is the bullet that killed Darlene Spencer.”
Torrez’ reply to that was a single, whispered groan, and he was no longer smiling. I didn’t know what he was thinking, of course—other than that there was the possibility that his eager little brother had fired the fatal bullet.
Chapter Twenty-three
We tested the rifle amid another impressive bang and splash, and it was interesting to see, under the stereo microscope, how dissimilar bullets from two different guns can really be. Even though both guns were Rugers, perhaps from the same factory with the same barrel rifling machines, the imprints scored into the brass hide of bullets were as individual as fingerprints.
“If we’re right, we have three witnesses to what happened in Bender’s Canyon,” I said. “That’s where this leaves us. Bailey, Torkelson, and Smith.”
“Why’d they leave?”
“Exactly,” I said. “You’d think that if three adults came upon an injured girl, they’d do something to help. They could have bundled her into their truck, taken her in to the hospital. Or at least to the Broken Spur to wait for an ambulance. But what did they do…or at least, what did Bailey do, assuming that he was the one driving his own Dodge when it slammed into that stump? What was he doing out there on County Road 14?”
Torrez fell silent, as was his habit. He stared at the dusty ceiling.
“Guesses?” I prompted.
The deputy sighed. “Chasin’ the kids, maybe. Maybe they saw something and took off.”
“Saw what?”
“If they saw Bailey with Darlene…”
“Saw them and came to all the wrong conclusions?”
“Could be.”
“Darlene was not carrying a wallet that day,” I said. “She wasn’t driving, so maybe she wasn’t in the habit.” Torrez looked sideways at me. “No wallet, no address. How would Bailey know who the girl was? Where she lived?”
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