“You find out anything more yesterday?”
She eyed the Jeep with interest. “Well, as a matter of fact,” she said. “Linda and I did some scouting. If this is the vehicle, then he parked just ahead of your old heap, disabled it, and then drove on down the road about two-tenths of a mile, right where that rise in the prairie drifts down to join the arroyo. He parked there, and hiked in.” She raised both hands and brought them together, like two paths converging. “He flanked you, sir.”
“Huh.” He turned and flipped his flashlight in Linda’s direction. “You didn’t tell me about that.”
“No, but I would’ve,” Linda replied cheerfully.
“We found the place where he might have taken the shot,” Taber added. “Nice little barricade of rocks, a couple of places that made a good rifle rest. Paces out to about four hundred yards, plus or minus.” She frowned then added in her characteristically precise, military fashion, “Odd, number one, that he didn’t hit you. And odd, number two, that he didn’t take a second shot. That giant bush that you used as cover wouldn’t have covered much. Had he taken the time, he would have had a comfortable view.”
“Yeah, well.” He took a step closer to the Jeep, resting a hand on its left tailgate latch. “And then? He spends the rest of the day thinkin’, and then come dark, he parks here, and maybe shoots himself in the head. One shot, right under the chin.” Torrez abruptly interrupted his narrative, as if embarrassed that he’d talked too much. “Or maybe not,” he said after a moment. “Maybe someone was in the Jeep with him, and reached over to jam the gun hard into the flab under his chin. Bang. One shot.”
“Which way are you leaning?”
“Why would he shoot himself?” Torrez asked, not expecting an answer.
Taber’s shrug was deep and slow. “His grief and remorse were so wretched at missing an easy rifle shot at you earlier that he just couldn’t face himself another minute.” She kept a straight face, but Linda Pasquale’s smile was huge. “That’s if we’re talking the same Jeep and the same shooter.”
“It is,” Torrez muttered. “You can match up the tires later, but I know Goodyear Wrangler tracks when I see ’em. There’s going to be two Jeeps involved? I don’t think so. Got the rifle right here. Maybe the shooter too. Just some leftover questions, is all.”
“Such as.”
“Why’d the killer leave the .45 behind?”
Taber frowned. “I can think of a couple reasons. Number one, what better way to make sure he isn’t caught with it on down the pike? What kind of gun is it?”
Torrez motioned to Sutherland, and in a moment the deputy returned with the bagged and boxed gun. Taber looked without touching.
“Okay. That’s pretty generic. A trace is going to be a challenge. But the slug didn’t exit, so we recover that and we know a little more.”
“Yep.”
“So the slug matches the gun, and the killer doesn’t need to worry about something as incriminating as that in his possession.” She shrugged. “That’s my wild-hair, early morning guess, and it’s not worth a whole lot.” She straightened up, and turned slowly in place. “It’s what’s outside the yellow ribbon that’s interesting.” She turned back to Torrez. “Another car? Did the killer drive in here behind the Jeep?”
“No tracks that I saw,” Sutherland offered.
“At least none that we haven’t driven or walked over,” the sergeant said gently. “There shouldn’t be anyone parked in here at all, and here we all are.”
“I mean, when I drove in to check the Jeep, I didn’t know if there was anyone here,” the deputy said. “I mean…”
“Gotcha,” Jackie smiled, clearly hearing Sutherland’s discomfort. “And I would have done exactly the same thing. We pull up behind a vehicle parked along the highway, and we don’t cordon the scene off first, do we? So we’ll see what we can see when the sun comes up.” She held up an index finger. “Somebody either rode in here with the Jeep victim, then what? Walked away? And to where? Or,” and she raised another finger, “they drove in behind him in a separate vehicle, had a meeting, did the deed, and then maybe backed out and away he goes.” She thrust her hands in her pockets. “Do you have the State Police coming with all their goodies?”
“Yep.”
“Do you want the generators?”
“We got morning comin’ here pretty quick.”
“Have you figured out any new theories about why someone was willing to take a potshot at you, sir?”
“Nope.”
“That’s a lot of work, for sure. Following you all the way out there, working the location to his advantage, jigging your truck…a creative thinker. Or at least a determined one.”
“Yeah, well.”
“And about three months before the election, too,” and she smiled at the dark look Torrez cast her way.
“It don’t have nothin’ to do with elections,” he said.
“I don’t know. Maybe Lieutenant Adams has it in for you.”
“Yeah, sure,” Torrez said, and motioned to Deputy Sutherland. “You want to get them comin’? Otherwise we’ll be here all day.” If they were able to secure the crime scene investigations unit from the State Police, it would be Lieutenant Mark Adams who would assign it. The Lieutenant’s relationship with the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department was good-natured and cooperative—if he could call in the rig, he would.
Chapter Seventeen
With a hundred other things that he could, and probably should, have been doing, Sheriff Robert Torrez entered the county commission chambers at six minutes before nine, leaving the crime scene out beyond the interstate to his staff. Had the strange little man from Tucson, Dominic Olveda, not been presenting, Torrez would have had no compunction about skipping the meeting—and wouldn’t have much cared if none of the other members of the department had been able to make it, either. He, or someone else from his department, was not so much required to attend as it was expected.
Naturally enough, the Sheriff’s Department was always the target of those who chronically complained about County services…especially the expense of the sheriff’s operations. But as an elected official, the sheriff marched to his own drummer…until voters said otherwise. Try as they might, the county commission could not tell him how to run his department. Paybacks, if necessary, came at budget time.
The meeting would last all day, but guests like Dominic Olveda were prodded to the microphone early on the agenda so they didn’t have to wait for all the committee reports, budget minutia, or haranguing citizens.
As he entered the building, Torrez skillfully avoided the foyer, where a couple dozen politicos gaggled. He didn’t want to field the inevitable questions about the election three months hence. Twenty people could throw their hats in the ring as far as he cared. He knew that in a county as tightly knit as Posadas, he would probably win.
And if he did not, he was sure that Lieutenant Mark Adams would, even though many voters didn’t much cotton to the State Police, or that Adams actually lived in Deming, well outside Posadas County. True enough, he owned a modest home in Posadas that he rented, but was he planning to move there if elected? Adams had implied that he would, but he’d never come right out and said so.
Of more importance, Bob Torrez knew that Adams was retiring from his state job in October, and the two lawmen had agreed that the election loser would become a captain in the Sheriff’s Department, replacing Eddie Mitchell, who had left to join the Secret Service, working in Bethesda, Maryland.
It was always possible that a spoiler might come out of the woodwork—possible, not probable. The third candidate, Jerry Steward, had run for sheriff on three previous occasions over the years, his lengthy and often inarticulate diatribes filling the editorial page of the Posadas Register. No one took him seriously. For a brief time twenty years before, he had been a deputy in Bernalillo County, and that stint appeared to be his entire foundation of law enforcement, or even administrative, experience. His platform was consist
ent—the county bureaucracy mismanaged funds to a criminal extent.
Steward was not alone in wanting the top lawman spot. Even the current county manager, Leona Spears, had at one time thought that she did, and she ran for sheriff once, her campaign failing to yield even double-digit returns.
Slipping through the far left of the multiple double doors servicing the chamber, Torrez saw that the audience was going to be SRO by the time the foyer drained into the room. A huge and colorful map of Posadas County was projected on a screen down front, the screen and projector skewed so that the image was visible to both commission and audience.
County Manager Leona Spears, dressed in a conservative and generously cut brown suit, had already taken her seat at the manager’s desk near the far right wing of the commission dais. Papers were stacked neatly before her to right and left. She saw Torrez and clapped a hand to her chest as if in cardiac arrest, then favored him with a wide smile and a waggle of her fingers. She bent to one side to talk with the Monica Xavier, the county clerk. Xavier enjoyed the honor of having more relatives in Posadas County, in and out of office, than even the current sheriff, whose list of cousins, nieces, nephews, uncles, and aunts was truly spectacular.
A microphone stand took up aisle space on either side of the center audience section for citizens who wished to vent, and Torrez slipped into one of the seats on the outer aisle, as far from the nearest microphone as he could get. The hall had been built during the flush years when Consolidated Mining promised to make Posadas the industrial gem of New Mexico. With seating for a hundred, the chambers still filled on occasion, and this appeared to be one of them.
Just when he had about talked himself into leaving, a hand dropped on Torrez’s left shoulder, and the sheriff looked up into Dr. Arnie Gray’s kindly face.
“Sheriff, how’s this gorgeous day treating you?”
“That would be a long story, Doc.”
Gray, a several-term chairman of the county commission and a busy chiropractor, flashed a comforting smile. “I hear ya.” His angular face went sober. “What’s this I hear about Bill Gastner? Stroke or something like that?”
“Hip,” Torrez said. He squirmed upright in the seat, untangling his boots from the chair in front of him, then stood up. His burly six feet four accentuated Gray’s stick figure—six-six and gangling.
Gray’s face formed a big O of recognition. “Hip,” he grimaced. “That’s bad at his age. Well, any age. He went to Albuquerque?”
“Cruces.”
“Oh, well, that’s good. He’s got someone with him, I hope. I mean family-wise.” Gray raised a hand in salute at someone across the room.
“Sure.”
“Ah, good.” He reached out and patted Torrez’s arm. “I’d better get this show on the road, or we’ll be here until midnight.” He turned, then stopped abruptly. Drawing closer, he dropped his voice. “What do you know about this Dominic Olveda fellow?” When Torrez didn’t reply immediately, Gray added, “He’s come around to see me a couple times. Very polished.”
“We’ll see,” the sheriff said.
Gray apparently took that answer to be as good as he was likely to get. “Leona has spoken with him at some length, I understand. So this should be interesting.”
“Yep,” Torrez said, not meaning it. Something about public meetings made him itch. Estelle Reyes-Guzman handled the gatherings with aplomb, able to think quickly and eloquently on her feet. When the undersheriff couldn’t attend with her succinct monthly report, Sergeant Jackie Taber had filled in on a number of occasions. And Commission Chairman Gray noticed. He paused again and regarded Torrez with a knowing grin. “Are you actually going to do some campaigning this year?”
“Don’t think so.” Torrez’s reply prompted Dr. Gray’s smile to grow wider still.
“Lieutenant Adams has lots of friends, you know.” He nodded across where the State Policeman, in full uniform, was talking with two of the other commissioners, smiles big, body language buddy-buddy.
“Yep.”
The sheriff saw that Dominic Olveda was already seated, managing to enter the hall without causing a caucus of his own. A large briefcase took up a second seat beside him. This time, he was dressed in a conservative dark blue pinstriped business suit.
Airport Manager Jim Bergin slipped down the crowded aisle and Olveda glanced up, then quickly collected his briefcase, nodding to Bergin in invitation. Bergin slid into the seat, looking self-conscious. In the decades that he’d run the FBO at the airport, under contract to both village and county, Jim Bergin had been a steady hand, neither lax nor particularly ambitious to pursue new possibilities. Torrez knew that Bergin found baffling County Manager Leona Spears’ eager politicking on behalf of new runways, taxiways, hangers, and electronics, since he saw no great swell of new business on the horizon. He still chuckled at Miles Waddell and the rancher’s NightZone development.
Torrez found it interesting that Bergin had chosen to sit immediately in company with Dominic Olveda, thereby at least appearing to support whatever it was that Olveda wanted to develop. He sighed, wishing not for the first time that his undersheriff wasn’t tied up in Las Cruces.
Olveda finished shuffling papers just as Dr. Gray rapped the gavel. In the back of the hall, Bob Torrez tried to make himself comfortable, slouching down with one knee braced against the seat in front of him, turned slightly away from the heavy woman who had wedged herself in the seat beside him. She and two companions beamed at Torrez. He couldn’t ignore them, since the heavy woman whose elbow prodded his ribs was Veronica Espinosa, née Veronica Torrez, oldest daughter of cousin Milton Torrez and his late wife, Adele.
She leaned closer yet. “You should come to these more often,” she whispered. “They’re fun.”
“Fun” wasn’t the description Torrez would have chosen. He muttered a minimally polite greeting, offered a nod and a smile, and let it go at that.
During the prayer that followed the pledge to the flag, Torrez scanned the audience. He knew most of them, always puzzled that people would want to spend a day cramped in chambers, sharing flu germs, listening to the drone of the endless reports. Perhaps they were here to listen to Olveda, or to any of the other seven guests who had reserved space on the agenda.
“It’s always a pleasure to see the chambers full,” Dr. Gray intoned. He adjusted the microphone. “We have a lot on our plate today, so I’m going to ask that presentations be brief and concise.” He grinned. “And we know how that goes.” The audience murmured knowing amusement. “At this point, I’d like to recognize Mr. Dominic Olveda, from Development International.” He lifted a batch of notes that partially covered his agenda. “From Phoenix, I believe. No—make that Tucson. You’ve come a long ways to talk with us. Welcome, sir. The floor is yours.” Gray leaned back in his chair and laced his long fingers together over his belly.
“Thank you for according me this time.” The PA system amplified Olveda’s silky voice just enough. The man was no stranger to microphones. The map of Posadas County winked off the screen, replaced by an aerial view of the airport, a view facing west down the length of the runway. “The county is to be congratulated for taking steps to make the astronomical observatory theme center a reality. What is now called NightZone will surely attract visitors from all over the world. It will be…it is, one of a kind.” He turned and smiled at the audience. “I have visited several times in the past few days. Again, congratulations. Most impressive.”
He paused and smiled at the commission as if they’d actually done even an iota of the work involved in the development. “What we propose,” and the image changed first to an architect’s rendering, and then split to share the screen with a photograph of a sprawling building, “is a sister development of the Tres Lagunas hotel complex near Cochepek in Costa Rica.” The room was dead silent. “Tres Lagunas is a much larger development than what we’re seeking permission to build here, of course.”
The architect’s rendering enlarged to take over the scre
en. “And don’t misunderstand me. What we propose is in no way related to Mr. Waddell’s development, nor is intended in any way to be competition. It is only to take advantage of an opportunity that we see. An opportunity that his imagination and courageous development will in its own way, make possible.”
Bob Torrez pushed himself up so he could see around a coiffed head. He had not yet caught sight of Miles Waddell, but certainly the rancher would be here to defend his interests.
“First, a modest hotel,” Olveda continued, “on the current airport grounds, at the far west end of the runway-taxiway complex. We envision some fifty-two rooms, with all the ancillary features one would expect of such a facility: conference rooms, both restaurant and café dining, and so forth.” As Olveda spoke, images of the features wafted across the screen. “This area,” and his laser pointer circled an area east of the hotel, “is aircraft parking for patrons. Pilots may taxi right to the facility. And this,” and the laser touched a small but elegant building set well back from the taxiway, “is automobile rental. So you see, one can fly in, park, and rent. Or take a shuttle service to the narrow gauge rail facility. It would be that simple. And, as you can also see, we are well removed from the F.B.O., currently operated so ably by Mr. James Bergin on behalf of the village and county.”
He paused, and Dr. Gray lifted his pencil. “What you’re showing us now is the whole extent of the development that you’re proposing at this time? Very ambitious, I must say.”
“At this time, yes.”
Tobe Ulibarri, a commissioner since the last Ice Age, loudly cleared his throat. Even when saying “Good Morning,” he could sound confrontational. “Where the hell is the water for something like this coming from, Mr.…?” and he flapped a circle with one hand in lieu of a name.
“That is my purpose this morning, sir,” Olveda said. “I am delivering to the commission these proposal packages,” and he rested his hand on a pile of fat envelopes, “that will explain the project as we envision it. I wanted you to know from the beginning—in fact, the fundamental purpose of my visit today—that we are not asking the local governmental entities for a single cent of investment. The village water system, for example, was never extended the seven miles out to the airport. We propose,” and once more his hand settled on the envelopes, “to develop water resources, sewer resources, and whatever else we may need, funded entirely by Development International.”
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