Apache Country
Page 34
The wake lasted a long time. At about hourly intervals, the ceremonial tulapai –“white water,” a drink made from twice-fermented corn — was passed around gravely by the shaman, or medicine man, and everyone drank to one of the sacred regions, to one of the gods who, according to Apache tradition, hold up the four corners of the earth. Throughout the ceremonies, the wailing lamentations of the women were soft and sad. Nobody minded Easton’s tears.
He looked at the calendar.
Joanna Ironheel had told him Apache mourn for a month. It should be over now. He picked up the telephone and called her number. She answered after the first ring and he was glad to hear her voice.
“I’ll be passing your door tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve got to pick up Jessye. She’s staying in Las Cruces with friends.”
“Oh, I’d love to meet her,” Joanna said.
“I’d like that, too,” Easton said. “Why don’t I pick you up and bring you down to Cruces with me? I’ll even spring for dinner at La Posta in Mesilla.”
“I’m not sure ...”
“Try,” he said. “Please.”
“It’s a long time since I went to La Posta,” she said, and he imagined her smiling.
He looked at Susan’s picture on the desk.
“It’s just dinner, Suze,” he said. But he had a hunch Susan knew better.
Epilogue
It must have been about six months later Easton read in the Riverside paper that the badly-decomposed body of former district attorney Olin McKittrick had been found by backpackers in a gully in the Sagrado Mountains. The coroner had determined the cause of death as a gunshot wound to the head, possibly self-inflicted.
After giving evidence at Joe Apodaca’s trial and the subsequent trials of a number of men arrested by the FBI on charges of operating a syndicated sex-pornography ring whose tentacles extended from Oklahoma to California and as far north as Idaho.
McKittrick had been given a suspended sentence and released, the report continued.
His estranged wife Karen told the reporter she had not seen her husband since their separation the preceding summer, and that he had been drinking heavily for some time.
Easton called Grita in from the kitchen and read the news item to her.
“I wish I could say I sorry, patrón,” she said. “But I’m glad he’s dead. He was malhechor, evil.”
“All of them were,” Easton said.
McKittrick’s testimony had let the whole dirty cat out of the bag. Masterminded by Carl Gerzen, who fed the Mexican youngsters into the system and distributed the pornography, the whole operation protected and concealed by McKittrick’s and Apodaca’s manipulation of the legal and law-enforcement system, the Riverside sex-porn syndicate had been a smoothly functioning license to print money until Adam Twitchell accidentally found that damning DVD.
Those who had been involved in the investigation were astonished when McKittrick testified that the DVD had not belonged to Bob Casey but, by a stroke of bitter irony, to Adam’s father, Ralph Twitchell. When Adam told his grandfather what he had seen on it, Casey demanded immediate action from Olin McKittrick.
Which put McKittrick between a rock and a hard place: if Gerzen was exposed, they would all go down. So Apodaca set up a meet with the old man and his grandson on Garcia Flat. Casey realized that Apodaca intended to kill the boy and tried to protect him, but Apodaca shot him dead and Gerzen killed Adam. They were in too deep to get out, anyway. The rest everyone now knew.
The next time he was up at Junta, Easton called in at the County Courthouse and asked to see the coroner’s file on the McKittrick autopsy. It was the usual bundle of folders, documents, statements by the kids who’d found the body, the deputies who responded, the evidence found. The photographs were pretty unpleasant. McKittrick’s body had been out in the open for a long time and the scavengers had had plenty of time.
Easton carefully put everything back into the envelope and left. There didn’t seem to be any point in drawing anyone’s attention to the fact that the body was lying with the head pointing due east.
But the adventure doesn’t end here …
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