Avenging Angel

by Rex Burns

  “Mrs. Winston?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Gabe Wager in Denver. Is Orrin home yet?”

  “No, he’s not, Mr. Wager. I know he wanted to talk to you, though. He should be back soon. Does he have your number?”

  Wager gave her his unlisted home number and then lay on the bed in the half light of pulled drapes and tried to force some stillness into a mind that persisted in churning: phrases, images, fragments of the past mixing with twisted and half-formed glimpses of the future. The case, his own life, the victims, Jo—all tangled in the raveling web of broken threads of thought. Sucking in a deep breath, he held it for a count of ten, willing his muscles to relax, his legs and hands to lose the tension that kept them unconsciously stiff. He went on duty again in five hours, and he would need some rest before then.

  The first shooting of that night’s tour was reported at 00:28, when Wager and Axton were still at the homicide office going through the last twenty-four hours’ circulars and mail. A bar on upper Larimer: three men going out the door bumped into a man coming in, words led to shoves, shoves to a punch or two, and the man ran out to his car and came back with a pistol. By the time the homicide detectives arrived, the uniformed patrol had covered a body with a coarse prison blanket, and an ambulance had taken a second victim to Denver General’s emergency room. The third of the trio, beginning to shiver as his shock gave way to awareness of what had exploded around him, gave the officer a description of the assailant. An alert had already gone out in all quarters of the city.

  “Pretty cut-and-dried,” said Officer Martinez. “We got a couple witnesses who know the dude that was doing all the shooting: Aurelio Rivera. We’re trying to get a current address on him now.”

  Wager nodded and scanned Martinez’s notebook, with its list of witnesses and addresses. If shootings had to happen, and they happened so often that necessity seemed a part of it, then he was glad when they were this way: positive identification and enough witnesses to give even Prosecuting Attorney Kolagny a case, and the public defender anxiety hives. “Okay, Marty—good work. We’ll take it from here.”

  The second call came about forty-five minutes later, a liquor store holdup and a shoot-out between the clerk and the robber. One man dead.

  “You want to finish up here?” Wager asked Max.

  “Right. Take the car—I’ll get a patrol to give me a ride over when I’m through.”

  As Wager arrived, Lincoln Jones was still flashing his strobe light over the sprawled body, and the ambulance attendants were rolling a squeaking gurney through the propped door. Police-reporter Gargan had his ear hanging over an officer’s shoulder to note down what an excited, slab-faced man was saying. The policeman, wide, black face shining with sweat in the warm night air, printed laboriously on a long blue and white form.

  Taking a minute to overcome his dislike, Gargan nodded and asked Wager if there was anything new on the killer-angels case.

  “No,” said Wager. “Ask Doyle tomorrow.”

  “It’s a big story, Wager. National coverage. If you give me the inside dope I promise I’ll hold it until the story breaks. And despite what I think of you, I’ll give you a good write-up. You, Doyle, the whole division. You people could use it.”

  “I’m on a call, Gargan. Talk to Doyle.” Wager pushed past him to the black officer and said, “Hello, John. What’s the story?”

  “Gabe! I was hoping you’d get on over here. This here’s Mr. Coleman; he’s the clerk. That there’s the stick-up man; he’s dead. Whyn’t you tell your story to Detective Wager, Mr. Coleman? Ain’t no sense you having to tell it more’n once.”

  “Any other witnesses?”

  “Nope.” Officer Blainey noted on his report that Detective Wager assumed control of the case, and then he capped his Bic pen with a relieved stab.

  “Weapons? Dispatcher said shots were exchanged.”

  “The victim’s still got it. He’s lying on it.” Blainey’s face opened in a wide grin. “See you on the street, Gabe.”

  “Okay, John.” Wager, feet beginning to burn, hoisted himself up to sit on the counter beside the cash register. He pulled out his own notebook, dated a page, and jotted down the time and location. Gargan moved a little closer and pretended that Wager wasn’t Wager. The pungent smell of cheap bourbon came from half a dozen shattered bottles on the floor behind the counter. Beside the doorway, where the ambulance attendants swerved the wheeled cart out to the curb, a couple of kids breaking the city curfew poked fingers at the bullet hole punched through the plate glass and gazed with wide eyes at the sheeted corpse.

  “All right, Mr. Coleman, can I have your full name and home address, please?”

  “The sonofabitch came in and pulled a gun, Officer. It was self-defense. He came in and looked around a little and then he came over here and lifted out that pistol from his belt and he said, ‘You know what to do—empty it out.’”

  “Yessir, we’ll get to that in a minute. Can I have your full name and home address, please?”

  By the time Wager went off duty he still had not heard from Winston. He placed another call to Loma Vista and a worried voice answered after half a ring, “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Winston?”

  “Yes … yes it is.”

  “This is Gabe Wager again. Can I talk to Orrin, please?”

  “He’s not here. He didn’t come home last night and I’m worried sick. I thought you might be the sheriff’s office. I called them. Orrin’s never done this before and I’m worried sick something happened on one of them roads.”

  Wager heard the edge of hysteria in her voice. “Maybe his truck broke down, Mrs. Winston. He wouldn’t try walking, and there’s no phone out there. He’s probably waiting in his truck until somebody comes along.”

  “I know, I know. That’s what Sheriff Tice said, too. And that Orrin’s CB might not work out there. But he’s sent somebody out there to look. I thought you were him calling.”

  “I’m sure it will be all right, ma’am.” He wasn’t, but that was the polite thing to say.

  And she took it that way. “Yes, yes. I’m sure it will. I’ll tell him you called when he gets home.”

  He took the large elevator to Records, turning over in his mind any possible reason why Winston might disappear. There was a lot about the man Wager didn’t know, and newsmen sometimes made enemies that had nothing at all to do with avenging angels. If you were like Gargan you could have a whole raft of enemies by simply showing your face. But Gargan hadn’t been going out to visit his half-brother to talk about the avenging angels. And Gargan hadn’t tried to call Wager with some important message before he disappeared.

  When Jo saw him at the counter, she smiled good morning as if they had not had that fumbling, ill-defined argument that was as painful for its lack of focus as it was for its hurt feelings. “Busy night? You look like you could use some coffee.”

  “The usual summertime crap—bar shootings, holdups.” His stomach clenched at the thought of one more acid-filled cup. “But no coffee. Any more and I’ll start acting like Munn.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Don’t ask; he might tell you. How about giving me a call when you get off work? I owe you a dinner from last night.”

  “I’ll give you a call. But you don’t owe me anything, Gabe. I thought it over, and maybe I was feeling that way—that you owed me something.” She fell silent as another policewoman said, “Excuse me,” and pulled a form from a drawer behind the counter. “You don’t. What I’ve done has been because I wanted to, and that’s all. Maybe,” she smiled wryly, “us Italianas just can’t help thinking marriage—our Catholic training and molti bambini.”

  Wager wasn’t all that certain he didn’t want to owe her something. But he didn’t think it was marriage. Not yet, anyway. “Okay. Let’s say I want to take you to dinner. For my own selfish reasons.”

  “You got a date, copper.”

  He had to break it. He barely remembered to call Jo just
after he finished packing and was on his way out the door to Stapleton airport and the small airline that had just opened service between Denver, Loma Vista, and other oil-shale areas on the Western Slope.

  In the groggy heat of midafternoon, the telephone had rung him half awake, and the message relayed by Doyle’s secretary from Sheriff Tice brought Wager the rest of the way: Orrin Winston had been found shot to death in his pickup truck. The sketch of an avenging angel was tucked between his fingers.

  Tice was waiting in front of the small metal building that served as control tower, facility offices, and lobby. Wager, handed his bag as he stepped down the short ladder of the two-engined craft, raised a hand in greeting. With one finger, the sheriff touched the brim of his Stetson in return.

  “My car’s over here. I got you a room at the Mesaland again.”

  “Fine. What happened?”

  Tice patted a red bandanna at his face as he led Wager to a blue and white Bronco with the sheriff’s silver star gleaming on its side. “Hottest damn day of the damn year. Ain’t cooling off none, either.” He waited until they had driven around the prefabricated metal building and past signs saying ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE before telling the story. At Mrs. Winston’s request, Tice sent Deputy Hodges over to the benchland to see if Orrin was in trouble. “Earl hadn’t been out that way in a couple weeks, anyhow,” Tice said, excusing more to himself than to Wager the additional drain on the gasoline budget. “He got nine and a half miles out and found the truck and Orrin in it. Shot twice. With a rifle, I reckon. The coroner’s sending the bullets over to the CBI lab for identification, but they look to me like .30-30 slugs. One hit him in the front of the left shoulder—that would be the first shot, my guess is—the second just at the throat when he was turned toward the window. It came out the back of his neck and lodged in the seatback.” The Stetson bobbed decisively. “Two quick shots at a moving target. It took a pretty good man to do that with a lever-action rifle.”

  “Fired from the side? The driver’s side?”

  “Left front. One bullet went through the windshield. Hodges and me searched all over that damn desert and we didn’t find any brass.”

  Wager tried to picture the long shelves of rock and sand and emptiness that Winston had been driving through. “What time do you think he was killed?”

  “I reckon about five or six yesterday evening. The coroner’s report’s not in yet.”

  “The truck was headed back this way?”

  “That’s right.” Tice’s eyes swiveled in their net of wrinkles toward Wager. “You got an idea where he’d been?”

  “I asked him to go talk to Zenas Winston.”

  “I see. He didn’t tell his wife that. Just said he was going over to the benchland. That was all he told anybody at the paper, too.”

  They fell silent in their own thoughts as the sheriff guided the Bronco through the early evening automobiles caught by the town’s sluggish traffic lights. He pulled into the parking lot of the Mesa land Motel and shut off the hot motor. Neither man got out yet.

  “The benchland’s a big place,” Wager mused.

  “God-awful big,” said Tice. “Somebody either knew where he was going, or they followed him.”

  In the street behind them, a tractor-trailer rapped its exhaust loudly as it geared down for the red light. “You found the avenging angel stuck between his fingers?” Wager asked.

  “Left hand. Just like Mueller. Folded over and slid in. Killer probably reached in through the driver’s window. No fingerprints anywhere—I dusted it myself. Not a print on it that wasn’t Orrin’s.”

  “The picture was the same?”

  “Xerox copy.” He nodded.

  “Any footprints? Any leading up to the car?”

  “We looked, Wager. But I reckon somebody dragged the ground and then the wind did the rest. Hodges didn’t find him until about noon today. Same thing goes for tire tracks. We found the place where the killer probably waited, but there were no clear tracks. Too sandy.”

  “I suppose it’s too late to drive out for a look.”

  “It is. Be dusk by the time we got there. We marked the spot with a stake, though, before we brought his truck back. Tell me.” Tice’s pale-gray eyes settled on Wager again. “What was it you wanted Orrin to talk to Zenas about?”

  “To ask if he had any idea where the Kruse family might be hiding.”

  Tice grunted. Then he asked, “How much do you know about Zenas?”

  “He’s one of the people you don’t want to bother for a little thing like bigamy.”

  “That’s right. His people been here since before Colorado was a state. They stay by themselves over there. Always have. I sort of think of them like Indians on their own reservation.”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  “It would be just the same if it wasn’t fine with you. Now, what makes you think Zenas might know about the Kruses?”

  “He kept in touch with Beauchamp. He sent a warning to Kruse through Beauchamp that Willis was looking for them.”

  “And if the Kruses were running, they might run to Zenas as a friend—I see. Well, Zenas might know something at that.” He lifted his Stetson and dragged the bandanna across the red line it left on his forehead. “Those people don’t trust strangers, but they got to trust each other. Most of the time, anyway.” Then, “You think the avenging angels are still after the Kruse family? Is that it?”

  “Yes. And I think we’d better find the Kruses before they do.”

  Again Tice nodded. “First thing in the morning, I’ll have a vehicle ready for you. And a map. I ain’t got the time to go with you—commissioners’ meeting, budget hearing. But you can drive out to where Orrin was found, then on over to talk to Zenas. I reckon you’ll want to do that.”

  Wager did, but some certainty in Tice’s voice made him ask, “Why?”

  “Orrin lived long enough to write a couple words: ‘water’ and ‘Wager.’ Newspaperman,” Tice explained. “Always carried a pencil and paper.”

  “Water and my name?”

  “Yep. The first, I reckon, because he was in that desert and pumping out a lot of blood. The second because he had something for you. Maybe something he found out from Zenas, and Zenas might tell you now.”

  Before Wager drove off with one of the county’s two yellow rescue vehicles, Sheriff Tice jotted down the mileage. “I got to bill that special task force of yours for the gas,” he said. “I told that to your man Doyle when I called yesterday.”

  Wager bet his man Doyle was happy about that. “You say it’s a stake with a red cloth tied to it?”

  “It marks the left front wheel. Here’s a sketch where I figure the sniper stationed himself. This wash, here—you’ll see it.” Tice handed Wager a carefully drawn sheet of graph paper. “Now, you got extra water in this vehicle, and a radio into our county net. But that don’t always work out there—there’s a lot of dead spots and skips once you’re on the benches. If you get in trouble, don’t start walking in that desert. Just stay with the vehicle—it’s a lot easier to see than a man, and sooner or later somebody’s bound to come along.”

  “Any reason why I should get in trouble?”

  “It’s the desert, Wager. Only a damn fool wouldn’t be ready for trouble.”

  The sand road’s descent cut through the white glare ahead of him. If he did need the help Tice warned about, Wager hoped it would come sooner rather than later. Without enough water, without shade, without protection from a wind as hot and dry and steady as a sigh from hell, a man might last one day in the sun. Night would bring relief from the heat but not from the thirst. Dawn would bring a flaming sky and the knowledge that he would not live to see sunset.

  Between the two worn front seats of the Jeep, a receiver crackled and muttered as distant transmissions ruffled the band. But as soon as Wager dropped over the mesa’s edge the radio began to blank into total silence and the only reason now for leaving it on was that even the occasional static was better than hear
ing nothing but the rush of empty wind.

  The last time he had driven this road had been with Orrin. Now the man’s torn body lay at the funeral home, where Tice had shown Wager the holes, and the bloodless lips still twisted from the impact of bullets and the effort to write those two last words.

  “He must have died pretty quick.”

  “Emory said maybe two minutes. Either bled to death or drowned in his own blood—throat wound.”

  “Emory?”

  “Emory Wright—funeral director. He’s the county coroner.”

  That was why Tice was satisfied with an either/or cause of death. “Where’d you find Orrin’s note?”

  “On the floor.” Tice showed Wager the man’s wire-bound notebook. The tan paper cover was scuffed by fresh dirt. Inked on the cover was a date from a couple of days ago followed by a dash. “I reckon the dirt came when Orrin kicked his legs.”

  “What’s this?” Wager pointed to the date.

  “Mrs. Winston says that’s Orrin’s filing system. He dates his notebooks when he starts one; when it’s full, he puts another date on it. Then he files them in the order of the dates.”

  That explained why the pages were mostly empty. Wager read the earlier entries. A couple of leaves were dedicated to a Mr. Angstrom’s ninetieth birthday celebration; a sentence was underlined: “He was fond of saying you should run through life like a rabbit.” There was a note on a local artist who was opening a new show at the gallery—that would be today—featuring a model for the Coors Beer Cowboy and other genuine western scenes. A cryptic “8 p.m. C.” Some memos to himself: “Call Ellie for mock-up Frank’s ad,” “commiss. meetg 9 Fri.” And, underlined, “Wager,” followed by a local telephone number.