by John A. Daly
“It snowed overnight,” Jefferson replied. “The falling snow covered them up.”
“It shouldn’t have covered them up completely. The back of the building was protected from the wind. There weren’t any drifts. Whoever was back there should have left foot impressions in the snow, if not detailed prints.”
“I’m not following,” Jefferson reluctantly admitted.
“Oldhorse asked me if it was possible that whoever had hung the pig had come inside through the front door, walked through the building to the back porch, and then done it. That would explain the lack of foot impressions in the back. I didn’t see how that was possible though. I had locked both doors when I went home for dinner. They were both still locked when I came back. There was no sign of jimmying. No one broke in.”
Jefferson felt his heart drop to his stomach. “An inside job,” he whispered to himself.
“Jefferson, does Martinez have a key to the office?”
The officer swallowed hard. His hand shook as he raised the walkie-talkie close to his mouth. “Yeah. He does. There’s a spare on the key ring I gave him for the plow truck.”
“Jesus,” replied Lumbergh. “He’s got to be working with Montoya. He must have been the second person in Sean’s house last night!”
Jefferson glared at Martinez from across the road, his complexion turning pale. Martinez was staring back. He looked emotionless as he tugged on what appeared to be a rubber band looped around his wrist. The officer forced himself to grin, hoping to conceal the anxiety he felt thundering through his veins. He turned his back to the intern again, uncertain that he could maintain a poker face.
“How in the hell could they know each other?” asked Jefferson in such a quiet, quivering voice that he had to repeat himself to Lumbergh.
“We’ll figure that out later. Listen, I’m on my way back. I’ll be there soon. Don’t let him leave, and don’t let him know we’re onto him. That’s the safest play right now if we want to find Sean. Got it?”
Jefferson nodded his head, glancing down at his sidearm. He fought back the urge to grab for it.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Got it.”
He clipped the walkie-talkie back to his side, and when he turned to Martinez, he saw that the intern was sliding into the front seat of his car. Jefferson gasped.
“Wait!” the officer shouted out, a phony smile forced onto his face as he hustled across the street with his arm raised.
Martinez lowered his window.
“I need those mug shots from you!” said Jefferson.
Martinez squinted. “They’re in your jacket pocket, Officer Jefferson,” he said with a grin.
Jefferson remembered that he had indeed folded the sheets in half and shoved them in his liner pocket.
“Oh!” he said, awkwardly fumbling his hand around inside his jacket. “Yep, there they are!”
Martinez nodded politely and cranked the engine.
“Wait!” yelped Jefferson again, his mind desperate to discover the right words to keep Martinez from leaving. He placed his hand along the inside rim of the car door, obstructing the intern from rolling up his window.
A dubious expression formed along Martinez’s face.
“Well what’s your hurry, intern?” said Jefferson, his mouth suddenly feeling dry. “Why don’t you just stick around for a few minutes?”
“Why?” Martinez replied, the cordial smile returning to his face.
“Because. . .I was going to . . . show you the crime scene. I mean, if you still want to see it.” Jefferson coughed.
“I can see it now?”
“Yeah. Sure. Why not? You brought up a good point about needing to gain some experience in this type of thing.”
The plastered grin remained on Martinez’s face, but his eyes went blank—dead as if there was suddenly nothing behind them. His head lowered in the direction of Jefferson’s walkie-talkie that dangled from his side, seemingly examining it for a moment. When he lifted his face to again meet Jefferson’s contrived, urging smile, the officer saw something different in his demeanor—something unexplainably dark and treacherous.
Martinez began snapping the rubber band on his wrist in rapid succession. His grin rose at its corners and twisted into what could only be described as an exuberant grimace that suddenly seemed larger than his face itself. It was as if he were wearing a rubber Halloween mask that was being pulled from the back of his head as tightly as possible in order to distort it into only a caricature of its original form.
Jefferson’s heart stopped. His eyes exuded apprehension that he tried to hide but couldn’t.
In a flash, Martinez’s body went low and his hand slid in under his seat.
Jefferson instinctively went for his sidearm, but the adrenaline rushing through his body gave him trouble with his holster strap. When Martinez rose back up, Jefferson caught a glimpse of a dark gray revolver clenched in his hand. Jefferson immediately lunged toward the front of the car, dropping flat to his chest and taking cover in front of the grill.
A barrage of gunfire erupted that echoed off the surrounding hills and rocks as if it was being returned from far away. From the snowy ground, Jefferson ignored the pain of his rough landing and fumbled for his gun as bullets sliced through the air just inches above his head.
“Mentiroso!” Martinez shouted wildly from inside the car. “Todos ustedes son unos mentirosos!”
Jefferson fumbled again for his firearm as metal chards from lead entering the hood of the car sprayed in every direction. This time, the officer managed to remove the gun from its holster. He struggled to control his rapid breathing, and when the firing stopped for a moment, presumably because Martinez needed to reload, Jefferson was left with no choice but to act.
He shoved his hand up over the top of the hood and began firing into the windshield, keeping his head low and his aim blind.
He heard the transmission inside the car switch gears, and before he could process what was happening, the car sped into reverse. The tires spun quickly, but managed to gain enough traction to put some distance between the car and the officer.
Jefferson knew that he was now a sitting duck without any cover. “God-dammit!”
He rose to a knee and continued firing at the car’s windshield, desperate not to give Martinez a chance to capitalize on his advantage. He saw most of his earlier shots had entered the passenger’s side of the windshield. There was no one visible behind the wheel. Martinez had to be ducking down.
Jefferson continued firing his gun until it was empty. He reached into his side for another clip. Martinez’s head popped up from about twenty yards out. The same sadistic smile still lined his face. He quickly cranked the steering wheel hard to the right. Brake pads squealed before the car did an almost perfect 180-degree turn along the slippery road.
Before Jefferson could switch out the clips in his gun, Martinez was already building momentum in the opposite direction. He whipped his walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Chief! Martinez knows we’re onto him! We exchanged gunfire! He’s headed back toward town!”
The Sunfire disappeared from view around a row of white trees. All Jefferson could
do was pursue on foot, but he only lumbered forward a few steps before slipping and crashing down to his hands and knees on the road.
When he pulled himself up to his feet, he saw a small pool of red snow before him. He looked down at his stomach and found the side of his shirt around his waist saturated with blood.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” he whimpered in panic. He placed his hand over where he believed a bullet had entered his flesh.
Lumbergh’s jaw tightened when he saw Martinez’s car whip into view up the road. The Pontiac tossed clumps of snow through the air behind it as it sped directly toward the police cruiser. Having heard Jefferson’s panicked message over the radio, he knew the intern was armed and desperate.
He spotted something flop out from the driver side window of Martinez’s car, and a second later, gunshots popped off. Lumbergh gasped and pulled his own gun from its holster. Being right-handed, he knew he couldn’t swing his gun outside his window as Martinez had. He hugged the steering wheel with his thighs and began firing through his own windshield. A loud crunch accompanied each new hole that was punched through the glass, leaving a splintered mess in its wake.
Lumbergh knew he’d connected with Martinez or his car as the intern suddenly lost control. The Sunfire slammed grill-first into a large pine. Wide sheets of snow dropped from the tree’s upper limbs and blanketed the car.
Seeing how demolished the front end of Martinez’s car was, Lumbergh knew the intern wasn’t going anywhere.
White smoke poured out from under the Pontiac’s hood as Lumbergh slid the cruiser to a stop and exited the vehicle. With his gun drawn, he cautiously approached the car and ordered Martinez to raise his hands and hold them outside the window.
To the chief ’s surprise, Martinez did just that after groggily shaking his head.
“Slowly. Grab your gun by its barrel and toss it out onto the road, Martinez!”
The intern complied, a freakish smile forming on his face. He didn’t appear hurt.
Within seconds, Lumbergh was pulling Martinez from the car and slamming him chest-first down to the frozen road. Only when the chief placed his knee deep between Martinez’s shoulder blades did the intern begin to squirm.
Lumbergh used his good arm to hold the intern’s wrist against his back. A switch seemed to flip on inside Martinez and he began screaming hysterically as if he were being tortured. Lumbergh struggled to slap on the cuffs.
“Mentiroso!” the intern wailed repeatedly.
Rapid footsteps suddenly approached from behind Lumbergh. Before he could turn his head, Jefferson plopped down to his knees beside him. The officer angrily yanked Martinez’s wrist up to his shoulder blades, forcing an end to the intern’s temper tantrum. Martinez howled in agony.
The two men cuffed Martinez’s hands behind his back. Martinez moaned pathetically in either pain or defeat when they yanked him to his feet. Lumbergh opened the back door of his cruiser after a quick pat-down.
“I’ve been shot,” moaned Jefferson, pressing his hand to his side. “I don’t know how bad it is.”
The chief ’s head whipped to his officer’s scared face, then down to his side where his shirt was saturated with blood. Lumbergh snarled and grabbed Martinez by the back of his neck. He slammed Martinez’s head violently into the roof of the car, just above the opened door.
Martinez’s moaning ended. It was replaced with a silent, gaping cringe and glazed eyes. The intern fell forward into the backseat. With the help of Jefferson, Lumbergh shoved the rest of Martinez’s body inside and slammed the door behind him.
Lumbergh attended to his officer, peeling off his jacket and holding it to his wound. Jefferson looked at him as he did, eyes riddled with anxiety and uncertainty.
Off in the distance, the sound of sirens could be heard, growing closer with each passing moment. Knowing that officers from the sheriff ’s department would be there at any second brought only marginal relief.
“Let me look,” Lumbergh told Jefferson, dropping to a knee and attempting to inspect the wound more closely.
“What the hell does mentiroso mean?” Jefferson asked, not so much directing the question to the chief but rather thinking aloud.
Lumbergh glanced up at him. “It means liar.”
Chapter 17
“Where’s Lautaro Montoya?” Lumbergh asked in the most professional tone he could muster. His eye twitched from the agonizing restraint he was imposing on himself. “Where’s Sean?”
Alex Martinez was cuffed to a wooden chair in the secretarial area of the Winston Police Station, the largest room in the building. His left wrist was raw and red, not from the handcuffs, but from a rubber band he’d been wearing around it like a bracelet. It appeared that he’d been habitually snapping it against his skin, like a nervous tick. The band was removed at the station.
A uniformed county deputy stood behind Martinez with his arms crossed in front of his chest, ready to step in physically if the prisoner gave him a reason.
A dismissive chuckle dropped from Martinez’s lips as a large swollen and discolored bump on his head formed a shadow along the side of his face. Clad in a t-shirt and jeans, he leaned forward a bit to look down at his feet. One of his tennis shoes had been taken from him. His big toe hung outside a large hole in his worn and dirty sock.
“Why did you need my shoe?” Martinez asked. The sly grin on his face indicated he already knew the answer. His eyes lifted to meet the deadly serious glare that Lumbergh had trained on him. The expression on the chief ’s face only prompted a wider grin from Martinez. “The great police chief, Gary Allen Lumbergh,” the intern said mockingly. “The slayer of Alvar Montoya. Only, not really, huh?”
Lumbergh said nothing, unsure of Martinez’s meaning but feeling the need to let him get out what he wanted to say and with luck learn something from his words.
“Who’s this?” Martinez abruptly asked, acknowledging a portly man who was standing at Lumbergh’s side.
The man wore a brown uniform and a tightly trimmed goatee. He had dark, curly hair topped by a felt cowboy hat and his heavily browed face exuded a level of seriousness that mirrored Lumbergh.
“I’m Sheriff Richard Redick,” the man answered in a deep, authoritative voice. “Now answer the chief ’s question if you want things to go easier on you.”
Martinez’s eyes narrowed but his grin remained. “Dick Red-dick? Is that really your name, amigo? I bet that was a tough one growing up with. Yes?”
His Spanish accent was thicker than Lumbergh had ever heard it over the months Martinez had served under him. There had always been a trace of it, which made sense. Martinez had told Lumbergh the first time they met that he was born in Mexico, and that Spanish was his first language. It was clear now that he had spent far more time in the country than he had let on.
“How do you know Lautaro Montoya?” asked Lumbergh. “Are you related to him?”
Martinez rolled his eyes and shook his head. “No Chief. No somos familia.”
“Why did you go to work for me? What did Montoya tell you to do?”
Martinez chuckled again before shaking his head. An expression of disgust developed on his face. “I thought you were some kind
of super-cop, Chief. A hero like few others. I thought you were a man who single-handedly tracked down a homicidal maniac in the Colorado Mountains—a maniac responsible for more death and pain than any of you gringos will ever know. And when you found that man, you stared him in the eye without fear and put a bullet right between his eyes.”
Lumbergh said nothing. He wasn’t sure what Martinez was getting at, but at least he had him talking. He felt the best move was to let him continue, and perhaps he’d hang himself with his own words.
Martinez continued. “That’s the story they tell back in my village, you know? In front of fires. At night. They have murals painted of you on the outside of buildings and long walls, standing over Alvar Montoya’s corpse. Only you’re eight feet tall. Not the baby pig I now see standing before me.”
“What’s your point, Martinez?” Sheriff Redick barked, taking a step forward. His cheeks were red with vigor.
Lumbergh placed his hand on Redick’s arm. His cautioning eyes pled with the sheriff to let Martinez continue. Martinez did.
“They stick thank-you letters to those walls. They leave flowers. Old women. Children. Anyone who lost a loved one to the Montoya brothers. Some fall down on their knees and thank God for you. Hell, I even once heard talk of a Chief Lumbergh comic book being made. They probably would have given you a luchadore sidekick.”
The grin suddenly disappeared from Martinez’s face. His eyes formed a scowl, one that he centered in on Lumbergh.
“If they knew what I knew they’d spit on those murals,” Martinez said. “You’re a charlatan who isn’t worth two pesos.”
“What is it that you know, exactly?” asked Redick, adjusting his hat.
Martinez scoffed at the sheriff ’s question, shaking his head before letting his gaze fall to the floor.
Lumbergh took his turn. “If the Montoya brothers are responsible for so many terrible things in your village, why are you helping one of them?”