Threepersons Hunt

by Brian Garfield

  “Anybody home right now?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Watchman got it started and pulled out of the lot. “Okay, what happened?”

  “Why’d you send those dogs away?”

  “You can’t track a car with dogs. You said he stole a car.”

  “Toyota. One of those four-wheel-drive jobs.”

  “Well then.” The road unwound through the trees and went past the silent rodeo grounds. The pavement was chipping away at the edges from frosts and flash floods. Watchman said, “Anybody actually see Joe to recognize him?”

  “Pete Porvo saw him.”

  “In the Land Cruiser?”

  “Naw, it was before. He was on foot, lugging a rifle and a gunnysack. Pete says he was driving up this road here and he saw Joe plain as day going into those trees back there, the ones we just came through.”

  “But he lost him in the dark.”

  “Yes. This is where you turn left.”

  Watchman downshifted for the corner and went hustling up into the hills on the dirt road. Bits of gravel thumped the undersides of the fenders like buckshot. The road followed the side of the creek, in and out of the line of trees. They passed the occasional wickiup, corrals, here and there a dusty house trailer up on chocks.

  “Now that’s funny when you think about it,” Victorio said.

  “What is?”

  “If he already had a rifle why’d he steal one of Rufus’ guns?”

  “Let’s find out what kind of rifle it was.” Watchman shot a quick sidewise glance at him. “Have you got a prescription for Seconal?”

  “Huh?”

  “It’d be easy to check,” Watchman warned.

  “What the hell would I be doing with Seconal?”

  “You paid a few visits to Maria while Joe was away, didn’t you.”

  Victorio went silent for a while. There was a bit of pout on his face. Finally he said, “Yeah.”

  “But you didn’t get anywhere with her.”

  “She was trying to do a brother-and-sister number.”

  “And you didn’t like that.”

  “It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Victorio admitted. “But I had to settle for it, it was all she’d go for. The first time I went down there I really wanted to see what I could do to help. But I took one look at that place of hers and I could see she wasn’t the one who needed help.”

  “Who was paying for that, Tom?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Somebody was grubstaking her.”

  “Sure, I could see that. But every time I tried to ask questions she’d turn me off like a faucet.”

  “You must have made a few guesses.”

  “I figured she had a boyfriend she wasn’t talking about.”

  “Is that a fact.”

  Victorio’s face swiveled toward him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re not the kind of guy who’d take it quietly if you thought she had some other man. It must have made you a little sore.”

  “Sure I was sore. Who wouldn’t be?”

  “You’d have tried to find out who the boyfriend was.”

  Victorio’s lips peeled back from his teeth; it wasn’t a smile. “Matter of fact one time I spent a whole God damned two weeks driving down there every night after work and hanging around outside her place like some kind of peeping Tom. But nobody ever showed up.”

  “So you just gave up?”

  “I kept trying to worm it out of her. But it wasn’t easy to rattle Maria. She was one of those people, you know, sometimes they’re so damned self-confident they make you grit your teeth. There just wasn’t any way to shake her up. That was one of the things I guess I loved her for—she wasn’t your average hysterical female. This is the place, you drive in the gate here.”

  Victorio pointed and Watchman turned off the dirt road into a narrow drive with tufts of grass growing on the ridge between the ruts. The suspension clanked once or twice.

  It was one of those outfits that accrued structures over the generations. There must have been a half dozen ramshackle buildings—wickiups and shacks—and there were a windmill and two sagging corrals and a profusion of wheeled vehicles in various states of collapse. Chickens and dogs ran loose in the caked hardpan of the yard and five small children played in the trees under the guardianship of two obese women who sat in the shade gossiping.

  Getting out of the car Watchman said, “Limita’s a medicine man, isn’t he?”

  “That’s right.” Victorio turned to look at two of the shacks alternately and scowled. “I’ve only been here a couple times, I don’t remember which one he lives in.”

  A butterfly chopped heavily across Watchman’s line of sight. A squat figure appeared at the larger shack, the one under the cottonwoods, came out and let the screen door flap shut behind him.

  “That’s him.” Victorio waved and walked around the hood of the car. Watchman went up to the shack with him.

  Rufus Limita wore mud-crusted boots and limp khaki pants and an old tee-shirt, its fabric strained by his outthrust belly. His face was almost a perfect square with a big triangular nose in the middle. He had a wide mouth and amiable eyes overhung by fierce shaggy brows. He was probably in his sixties and couldn’t have been much more than five feet tall. His legs were bowed into parenthetical arcs and if the bones had been straight he might have been four inches taller.

  Victorio made the introductions with the peculiar respect that elders like Limita commanded. Limita shook his hand and said, “Somebody sure made it bad luck for that boy Joe.”

  “Did you see him yourself?”

  “No, no. That boy is still a pretty good Innun, maybe you don’t see him unless he wants you to. But he set the dogs to ruckus, so I know somebody was here, I got up right away and look around. He got my good rifle I guess. Anyhow that time I heard the Land Cruiser start up. I went out but he went away in my Land Cruiser.”

  Limita held the screen door open and followed them inside. There were good rugs on the floor and the furniture was old but sturdy, some of it handmade of lumber from the tribal sawmill. One wall had a tall gun rack on it and one of its slots was empty; the others were filled with expensive hunting rifles that had been taken care of with knowing attention: their steel gleamed with oil.

  Watchman said, “Do you know how much gas was in the tank?”

  “I keep them full, all times. Got my own tank pump out there in my yard.”

  That was a bad break; a full tank would give Joe a hell of a working radius. Watchman approached the gun rack. “This rifle he took.”

  “That boy sure knows guns. That sure was the best elk rifle I ever had.”

  “Elk,” Watchman said and turned slowly to face him. “Big game rifle, then.”

  “Sure. Three-seventy-five magnum.”

  “Jesus,” Victorio said. “That’s a God damn elephant gun.”

  Watchman had his notebook. “Weatherby?”

  “No,” Limita said. “She’s a Winchester Model Seventy.”

  Watchman knew the model. A precision-made bolt-action rifle, high-priced and worth it. “Any telescope?”

  “You bet,” Limita said. “Eight power Bushnell.”

  Victorio was standing there with his eyes squeezed shut as if in great pain. “Good God.”

  If you knew the drill you could reach out and pluck the life from a man half a mile away from you with a rifle like that. And Watchman already had firsthand evidence of the quality of Joe’s marksmanship. The shooting last night had sounded like a medium caliber, probably a standard old .30-30 Joe must have swiped somewhere.

  Victorio talked quietly out of the side of his mouth. “Man that’s an assassin’s rifle. He’s not out to bag an elk with it.”

  Watchman said to Limita, “Do you have the license number of the Land Cruiser?” Not that it would likely do any good; of all the cars in Limita’s yard Joe had selected the cross-country four-wheel-drive vehicle and that meant he didn’t inte
nd to drive too far on the highway.

  “I gave it to Pete Porvo that time,” Limita said. “But I think it is writ down someplace here.” He had an old school desk in the corner; he pried up its lid and pawed through papers, taking a frayed tally-book out and setting it aside. “Maybe Pete took it with him but I think he give it back to me.”

  Watchman spoke to Victorio in a voice too low to carry across the room to the old man. “You mind waiting outside for me?”

  Victorio resented the rebuff but went out. His shoulders were very stiff.

  Watchman approached the desk. “Some folks think Maria Threepersons was witched, Mr. Limita. She died last week you know.”

  “I heard about that.” Limita looked up at him and then resumed rummaging in the dog-eared slips of paper.

  “Do you think she was witched?”

  “Sure, it could happen you know.”

  “Who would want to witch Maria?”

  “I don’t know who was doing that to her.”

  “Do you know anybody who might have had a reason to?”

  “Maybe lots of folks don’t like that boy Joe. But I don’t know who could want to hurt his wife like that. Maybe her own people, those San Carlos kin. I guess they got witches down there too.”

  “Did Joe know about your rifle collection before he went to prison?”

  “Sure. That boy I took him deer hunt two, three times.”

  “He’s a good shot, I hear.”

  “He is sure a good one. That time I seen him shoot some real long bullets. Good hands on Joe.”

  Watchman glanced toward the door. “You think maybe Tom there might have had anything against Maria?”

  “Maybe so, but that boy’s too young for witching. A man got to grow up before he get the power.” Limita found the car registration. “This is your paper.”

  Watchman copied down the license number. “Thank you.”

  “That boy Joe been that way since he was just a boy. Sometimes he drink all the time, even his baby go hungry. Even when folks give him money he spend it on drink. He was crazy to do things like that. You should watch out, I think. He took some cold beer out of my springhouse down there on the creek.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “You stay away, then. You get close to that boy he might hurt you.”

  Watchman smiled; that had been what the old man was leading up to. They all had their own ways of telling him to leave Joe alone.

  5.

  Victorio was waiting in the Volvo. Watchman shook Rufus Limita’s hand and drove out of the yard. The shocks bottomed on the same bumps again. Pretty quick he was going to have to make a big decision: spend a small fortune renovating the old clunker or buy another car.

  Victorio said, “Rifle like that, Joe sure as hell doesn’t aim to get caught alive.”

  “That’s not why he took that gun.”

  “No?”

  “You said yourself it’s an assassin’s rifle.” Watchman steered onto the dirt road and headed down toward the fork. “He’s got it in mind to put somebody away.”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever killed Maria.”

  “Killed Maria?”

  “She was murdered.”

  Victorio stared at him. “Maybe you’d better repeat that for the benefit of the West Coast audience.”

  “Somebody fed her enough barbiturates to knock out five people.”

  “I thought she crashed a car.”

  “She crashed because the Seconals put her to sleep at the wheel.”

  Either Victorio was a far better actor than he appeared to be or the news did come as a surprise to him.

  Watchman said, “You were there that morning, weren’t you.”

  “I was where?”

  “Maria’s house. A little while before she died.”

  “The hell I was. Who told you that?”

  “Your car was there.”

  “That’s a lie. This was last Tuesday?”

  “Monday. Fourth of July. It was a holiday. You weren’t in your office.”

  “Wrong. That’s exactly where I was. All morning. I had a brief to finish. And I had my car there and I’m pretty sure I had the keys in my pocket the whole time. You’re barking up the wrong tree—I never left Whiteriver that day. We had a rodeo that afternoon and I was there. I was one of the bronc handlers. You ask anybody.”

  “That was afternoon. You had time to get back from Phoenix by then. Who saw you in the office?”

  Victorio thought about it. “Nobody, I guess. Like you said it was a holiday. But somebody might have noticed my car. I always park it there between the council house and the trading post. Everybody knows my car.”

  “Anybody else around here drive a blue VW?”

  “Not that I know of. There’s a lot of them around but not right in town.”

  “Well nobody’s arresting you yet,” Watchman said. “But somebody killed her. You’re right up at the head of the list.”

  “If I’m such a hot suspect why are you telling me all this?”

  “Think about it, you’ll figure it out.”

  He turned the car onto the paved road and picked it up to forty-five heading back up toward the sawmill. Beside him in the bucket seat Victorio sat as tense as a runner in the starting chocks. “It’s a frame. A lousy frame. Somebody lied to you. I wasn’t anyplace Monday morning, I was in the office. I can show you the brief.”

  “Sure.”

  “I think I get it. You figure if I killed Maria then Joe’s gunning for me. I’m supposed to get scared and confess everything so you’ll put me in protective custody.”

  “Well the idea crossed my mind,” Watchman agreed. “How about it?”

  “I didn’t kill her. For Christ sake I’ve been in love with Maria since I was in pre-law.”

  “You told me you were sore at her.”

  “You murder everybody you get sore at?”

  Watchman smiled with one side of his mouth. He saw Victorio’s right hand reach the dashboard handgrip and flex around it. Victorio said, “You know what worries me now? Suppose Joe heard the same lie about me and my car? Suppose he thinks it was me? Then he could be after me with that damn elephant cannon of Rufus’.”

  “He sure could.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Victorio breathed.

  Watchman drove into town and made the turn at the corner by the council house and pulled into the lot behind it. He parked right beside the blue Volkswagen. Dwight Kendrick’s Corvette was farther back in the shade. Over against the trading post wall were parked several cars and one of them was Charles Rand’s high silver-grey Rolls Bentley.

  Victorio said, distracted, “That’s Charlie Rand’s.”

  “I know. Slumming?”

  “He was due in today to talk a deal with the council.” Victorio sat with his hand tight on the grip even though the car was motionless.

  “When’s the case due to come up in court?”

  “It’s already been postponed a dozen times.”

  “By Rand?”

  “Usually. Sometimes we have to ask for a continuance ourselves.”

  “I thought the tribe wanted to wrap it up as soon as possible.”

  “Things aren’t that simple. It’s all juggling and maneuvering. You don’t want to go into court at a time that’s advantageous to the opposition. Hell a few months ago somebody rifled our files, we lost a lot of papers and practically had to start again from scratch. We’ve been stalling like mad until we can get the information together again.”

  “What kind of information was it?”

  “Nothing vital. Stuff like references to obscure cases that were tried seventy-five years ago in places like Montana and the Canal Zone. You have to marshal all the precedents. It’s boring as hell.”

  “And somebody stole your notes?”

  “Notes, briefs, transcripts, the whole mess.”

  “Was the theft investigated?”

  “Sure. The Agency cops and the County both. Somebody’d
pried that window over there. They busted into the filing cabinets and took half a drawer of files.”

  “Did they steal anything else or just the water-rights materials?”

  “Just that stuff. They knew what to look for. It was Rand’s boys of course, but try proving that.” Victorio’s eyes came around to Watchman. He looked bleak. “I can’t help it, I keep thinking about that gamy son of a bitch out there lining up his crosshairs on the back of my neck.”

  “Tell me something,” Watchman said. “How good was your alibi for the night Ross Calisher died?”

  “Alibi? Why the hell should I need an alibi?”

  “Because somebody killed him. It wasn’t Joe.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “I’m pretty sure he was taking the rap for somebody else. Knowingly.”

  Victorio stared at him, the expression not changing at all; as if his face were frozen. Finally he licked his lips. “So that’s how she got that money.”

  “That’s the way I tote it.”

  “You know that does make a morbid kind of sense.”

  “Joe was in Cibecue the night Calisher was shot. Does that help?”

  “You mean where was I? Hell I was in Tucson. Law school.”

  “It’s only four, five hours’ drive from Tucson up to Rand’s ranch. Calisher was killed late at night. You could have driven up there, killed him, driven back to Tucson and made your morning classes.”

  “Why the hell should I kill Calisher?”

  “I have no idea,” Watchman said.

  “Only an amateur tries to make facts fit a theory,” Victorio said. “You could be right that Joe didn’t kill him, but that doesn’t mean I did. Christ I don’t think I ever met Ross Calisher more than two or three times in my life, and those times it was only at rodeos up here.”

  “The way you felt about Maria, you might have been just as jealous as Joe if you found out she was sleeping with Calisher.”

  “To tell you the truth I never bought that story about her having an affair with Calisher. She wasn’t like that.”

  “Reverend LaSalle thinks she was just about the fastest thing on wheels.”

  “LaSalle’s got the imagination of a horny old maid. Maria was fast with her lip, she annoyed a lot of people around here because she liked to talk back when she thought it was called for. Sure she had wit, but she didn’t sleep around.”