by Rex Burns
“I’ll do more than that. We’ve still got that dinner date.”
“I’m waiting.” Her voice said that she, too, knew how unsatisfactory telephones were. “Oh … we missed Polly’s barbecue … you were down in Pueblo. I told Max we were sorry. Both of us.”
Wager wasn’t sorry. “That’s nice. I forgot all about the damn thing.”
“I know. Gabe, please be careful!”
“Well, sure!” That was a silly thing to tell him. “And you be good.”
“That’s a silly thing to say. Bye.” The buzz of the telephone line seemed almost mocking.
He began the second stage of the process by driving the yellow Jeep with its shattered windshield folded down through the tourist traffic to the Beacon’s office. The CLOSED sign was still hanging, but the door stood open to the street, where a few people walked slowly along narrow sidewalks that were already searing hot.
Wager stood in the empty outer office until a woman, face drawn with concentration, came out of Orrin’s room. “Oh! Sorry, we’re not open for business. I’m just here cleaning up some things.”
He showed his badge. “Is anything missing from the break-in?”
“It doesn’t look like it. But they certainly made a mess. If Orrin had seen it …”
She was in her early thirties, dark hair showing an occasional glint of gray. Her name was Claire Lewis. Mrs. Claire Lewis. “Are you the ‘C’ that Orrin put down in his notebooks?”
“The ‘C’?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m trying to learn if anything in his notebooks can give a reason why somebody would shoot him.” He lay a sheet on the counter for her to look at. “Did you meet with him at eight last Tuesday evening?”
“Tuesday? Yes—that’s budget night. I do the books,” she explained. “It’s one of the things I do, anyway. We meet every Tuesday night at the Mesaland bar to go over the advertising accounts. Orrin said he could never look at an account book without a beer in his hand.” She smiled. “He never did, either.”
“At eight o’clock at night?”
“Yes. The paper goes to bed around six or seven on Tuesdays. Then we go over the books for an hour or two and then Orrin picks up the first run around nine or ten.” She corrected her tense, “Picked up. We distribute on Wednesday morning,” she added softly.
“I see.” He made a little note beside that entry on the sheet. “Everybody liked Orrin?”
“They did. And I can’t think of many people in the world he didn’t like. Certainly no one who would do such a terrible thing. Poor Nelly.”
“He had no enemies at all?”
“No. This,” her palm swung around the office, “was a labor of love as much as a business for him. He said it gave him a chance to meet the people of the county and introduce them to each other. He’d joke about getting paid to be nosy, but he really was serious about the feeling of community that the paper developed. Birthdays, high school graduations, communions, obituaries—they weren’t just vital statistics for him; they were stories about his friends. And he’d always leave room in the newshole for what he called the happy stories—births, an anniversary celebration, the kinds of things that get buried in the back pages of the daily.” She scratched some pencil lines on a sheet of newsprint. “Maybe that sounds corny to you, but Orrin believed that those were the most important stories.”
“He did a lot of the reporting himself?”
“He had to. I have the women’s page—club news, weddings. And Ida Jenkins has the school and church news. But other than that, the stories were generally Orrin’s. The local ones. National and state we get off the wire.”
Ida Jenkins. That would be the “I” Winston had noted here and there. Wager jotted that down, his satisfaction at defining another unknown mixed with the frustration of learning its unimportance. “Did he ever get into anything controversial?”
“Of course. Orrin loved the town council meetings. And if you think a small town doesn’t have room for controversy, well …” She ran out of words to illustrate with. “But that was part of what Orrin liked about Grant County. He said that even the worst of the lot were honest in their greed. He said he could forgive anything but phoniness, and he didn’t find much of that around here.”
“Not even,” Wager asked, “with the avenging angels?”
Mrs. Lewis frowned and watched a figure stroll slowly across the street in the white glare. “I’ve heard stories. I’m not Mormon myself, but everybody’s heard stories. And you know that Orrin comes from a Mormon background—so far back it could never catch up, he used to say.”
“Yes.”
Her mouth tightened. “You know about his relatives over on the benchland? The ones who belong to that splinter church?”
“Orrin told me about them.”
“Well, if anybody knows anything about avenging angels, I think it would be them.”
“You don’t like them?”
“I don’t know them and I don’t want to. They have primitive and demeaning practices. But I suppose they have a right to live life as they see fit. As long as they stay over there. I cannot understand any woman tolerating that, though.”
“So you don’t believe in the avenging angels?”
She paused again, a worried wrinkle coming over her nose. “I didn’t think so. But those horrible murders in Denver. And then Mueller. And now poor Orrin. But why? Why would anyone—avenging angels or anyone—want to kill Orrin?”
Wager had asked that a few times, too, and had come up with the same answer: “I don’t know.”
“Of course you don’t. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am. Orrin didn’t tell you why he was going to the benchland three days ago?”
“Has it only been that long?” She looked around the office. “It seems like a week already. No, he didn’t tell me or Ida anything except that he was going over there. Which isn’t unusual; he chased stories all over the county—we’re the only countywide paper. Sometimes he would tell us what he was working on, other times he wouldn’t. He’d just leave a note saying when he’d be back. If we needed him we could usually raise him on the CB.” She gestured toward a small transmitter resting on top of a filing cabinet.
“Did he leave a note that day?”
“No, he just said, ‘See you tomorrow.’”
But someone had to know so they could dry-gulch him. “Did he seem at all worried or excited or different in any way before he left?”
“No … Well, maybe … I mean it wasn’t a jumping-up-and-down kind of excitement, but he did have this kind of gleam in his eyes when he was on to a good story or when he was telling a joke. He was that way all morning just before he left, and I think it had something to do with you. He came in late—which isn’t unusual; it was distribution day, and things are slow that day. I handle distribution, too, so any glitches are mine. But he was very anxious to hear from you, I remember that. He even called the sheriff’s office a couple times to see if they were in touch with you yet.”
“But he didn’t give you any idea what it was about?”
“Oh, no—he was a newsman. He wouldn’t talk a story out until it was down on paper.”
“Would you look at some of these notebook entries? I think I’ve figured out most of them, but there’s a few that are still puzzling. Like who ‘C.H.’ might be.”
“C.H.?” She wagged her head. “I don’t know any C.H.”
He pointed to the entry on the page. It read “C.H. ck recs” and was bracketed by Wager’s red pencil.
“Oh, maybe it’s ‘courthouse.’ Sometimes he used C.H. for courthouse. It means he wanted to go by the courthouse to check on some kind of records.”
“But you don’t know what kind?”
“No. It’s one of his story-notes.”
“How about this series of numbers?” He pointed farther down the page.
“I have no idea at all. I don’t think it has anything to do with the paper.”
She r
ead further. There were five more obscure entries, two of which she cleared up: “This is a garage appointment. He was always late getting that truck timed for spring.”
“This is summer.”
“I said he was always late.” She pointed to another bracketed note. “This is a leather shop. They owe us for three months’ ads, and he was supposed to go by and talk to them.”
“Do you carry delinquent accounts that long?”
“Oh, sure. It’s a seasonal business. And advertisers are hard to find for a weekly.”
“But nobody owed Orrin a lot of money?”
“Do you mean enough to shoot him for? No, nobody around here has a lot of money to owe. Most of us work for extra cash, but we live off our farms or ranches. We’re not as bad as the northern part of the county, but we can still show you some fine examples of rural poverty. You people in Denver,” her mouth tightened again, “you’ve got the votes so you get the government handouts. But out here, if we don’t look after ourselves nobody looks after us.” She added, “We like it that way.”
The city folks sang a different tune, but Wager just nodded and tried to get Mrs. Lewis back to the notebooks. “This one here?”
“I have no idea. It looks like ‘Why with above in sheriff’s office.’ S.O. usually means sheriff’s office, but it could be a name.”
It wasn’t all loss. Wager thanked her and took a few minutes in the Jeep to jot down the translations. Then he headed for the next stop, the courthouse.
“Orrin Winston.” The old man scratched under his chin with ink-stained fingers. “Poor Orrin—that was quite a shock. Quite a shock indeed.”
“Yessir. I wonder if he came in to check any of your records about three or four days ago.”
“They’re my records, all right. Ain’t nobody else knows the filing system—hee. Ain’t many folks come down here, either—law clerks, mostly, and they don’t like to talk, just snoop-snoop-snoop and then leave without even a thank you. Deputies are all right. Once in a while a deputy comes by to talk some. And Orrin now and then. But mostly he spent his time up in Vital Statistics. They’re upstairs.”
“I’ve just come from there.” And from the court records and from the health records and from election and voter records and from motor vehicle records. Every division of the county government seemed to have its own records office buried away on different floors and in different wings of the old brownstone building. Periodic remodeling had changed the interior and lightened it a bit, but the wide stairways still smelled of aging wood and decades of dust, and the echoes generated beneath the towering silver-painted dome caused a sad, unending murmur all over the building. Now he stood in the cool of a subbasement room, whose door said PROPERTY AND LAND RECORDS, and faced this white-haired man whose skin was the color of potato shoots. “Well, they’re my records all right. How old you think I am?”
“How old?”
“How old? How old?”
He looked maybe a hundred and twenty. “Sixty?”
“Hee! Fool them every time. Seventy-seven last October. Going on seventy-eight. And they can’t fire me because I’m the only one knows the filing system!”
“That’s mighty nice. Did Orrin come in a few days ago?”
“Yes! I told you that. Usually he went up to Vital Statistics and spent his time there. Didn’t come down here to see me much. Too busy, he claimed. But I don’t believe a word of it. I seen work in my seventy-seven years, young man, and there wasn’t none of it sticking to Orrin.”
“Yessir. Can you tell me what he was after when he came in?”
“My records! That’s what they’re all after. You too, right?”
“Yessir. The same ones Orrin looked at.”
“The same ones? All of them?”
“Did he look at a lot?”
“Three whole books. Spent half a day right at that table looking through three books of transfers. Thought I was going to have to charge him rent. Hee-hee—get it? Charge him rent because he used the table so long.”
“Yessir.” Wager thumbed through the sheets of Orrin’s notes and laid one on the counter. He pointed to the series of numbers. “Is this some kind of index to your records?”
“Let me see.” The old man pulled out a rectangular magnifying glass and held it above the entry, lips moving as he read. “Could be—ain’t the way it should be done, but it could be.” He went over it again. “He ain’t got the right initials, but that’s the order: section, township, range, and meridian. Ain’t got the quarters, though. He ought to have the quarters.”
“Can I see the records for that section?”
“If you want to, sure. That’s what I’m here for.”
He watched the old man finger his way down a row of tall, green-bound volumes, whose numbered patches were yellowing and curling away from the books’ spines.
“Here. You can use that table. But if you take half the day like Orrin, I’m gonna charge you rent for it!”
“Yessir.” He thumped the tome onto the table and folded back page after page until he came to the numerical heading he looked for. Whispering his finger down the column, he came to the right section. Wager carefully compared the cryptic numbers with the neatly lettered description in the book. Most of the page below was blank, and Wager supposed that was in case the quarters were divided into tracts. Only two of the quarters listed a recent change, and a notice of transfer of title named the new owner of both: Carmen Louisa Gallegos. It was dated four weeks ago. The taxable amount paid was $24,974.00. The previous owner, name carefully lined out but still legible, was Frederick Mueller.
Wager stared for a long time at the entry, trying to fit this new fact into Mueller’s killing and the avenging angels. But these facts had too many sharp corners, and he couldn’t slide them into any neat pattern.
“You find what you want? Don’t want to have to charge you rent—hee!”
He had found something. But whether it was what he wanted or not was another question. “Do you record these land transfers?”
“No. County clerk does that. I’m the librarian. Don’t put a mark in those books, and see to it that nobody else does, either.”
“Does the buyer come in and show proof of purchase to record the sale?”
“What for? Lawyers do all that—title transfer, deed, what-all—nope, all I ever see are the books. Clerk gets a list of transfers and each week or two down he comes and copies them into the records.” The yellow nose sniffed. “Prissy young fella—thinks he knows it all.”
“Can you tell me where the clerk’s office is?”
The old man could and did, telling Wager once more that he was seventy-seven going on seventy-eight, and just as healthy as when he was a young man of fifty. When Wager finally closed the door on the man’s still-quacking voice, he sighed with relief and climbed out of the coolness of the subbasement toward the ground floor. The clerk of records’ office was just off the domed pavilion. But Wager found little help there.
“No, Detective Wager. The parties don’t have to come in to record a sale. All I need to see is a notarized bill stating legal description and the tender for tax purposes. If folks are smart they’ll go through a lawyer and a title search, but a lot of people don’t want to pay those fees. And they don’t really need to if it’s a simple transaction.”
“Doesn’t the transfer have to be signed in front of a notary?”
“Yes. The seller has to have his own notarized deed and positive proof of identification—driver’s license with photograph, in most cases.”
“What about the buyer?”
“What for? The seller’s satisfied and proves it with his signature, and the buyer gets what he wants—the deed. Now if it’s a trade of property, or a contract payment, or restricted sale—mineral rights, water rights—then the buyer has to be notarized, too, to show that he read the contract he signed. But a fee-simple, cash sale, he just gets title to the property. That’s his proof of purchase.”
“What happens t
o the notarized sale?”
“You mean after we record it downstairs? We mail it back to the buyer. It’s his legal deed.”
“You don’t make a copy?”
“No. Not yet, anyway. We just enter it in the transaction book. It’s an old-fashioned way of doing things, but we don’t have the money for copiers and computers.”
Wager repeated, just to be sure. “So the only notarized copy goes to the buyer after it’s been recorded downstairs?”
“He’s the only one who needs it.”
Which meant that neither Wager nor anyone else could locate the notary who witnessed the seller’s signature. “Do you have a lot of sales? Any big properties?”
“In the last few years, yes. We’re getting a lot of vacation-home development, especially up in the mountains. But the biggest transfers are ranch land. A whole section’s not uncommon on the desert side of the county.”
“You don’t remember the names of the people who buy? Or the notary?”
“Not usually. We check the notary’s registration number to make sure it’s current. Who are you talking about?”
“Carmen Louisa Gallegos. I wondered if you knew her.”
“Gallegos? There must be a hundred Gallegos’s in the county. All related. You know how the Catholics feel about birth control.”
“I know.”
In the Jeep, Wager sat and mulled over the information, trying to determine what it was he’d found out. This was what Orrin was excited about—he was sure of that. Mueller dead on or about the time he sold his land to one Carmen Gallegos. Robbery? Paid in cash and somebody knew about it? Avenging angels robbing him? Why leave a drawing? And why hasn’t Gallegos come forward to claim the land? Well, if Wager didn’t have a clear idea of where he was going he at least knew where he was—at a point where he needed help. Cranking the Jeep’s loud starter, he turned toward the sheriff’s office.
The older woman who operated the switchboard and radios caught his eye when he came in. “Detective Wager! You have an urgent call from Denver. There’s a note on your desk.”
It said he was to call Chief Doyle immediately, and beneath it were the three times that the same message had been received.