Heartshot (5 page)
“That’s because I think that people who corral innocent bystanders with pictures and tales of their grandkids deserve to be shot.”
“Bill,” Holman said patiently, “even you are not that much of a curmudgeon. And once, not more than a month ago when we were all happier and more relaxed than we are now, you showed me a picture of one of yours.”
I shook my head. “I would never do that.”
“Then how do I know that down in Corpus Christi, Lieutenant William Gastner, Junior, and his wife Edie managed to keep little Kendal and Tadd clean long enough for a family picture? Lieutenant Gastner resplendent in flight suit? T2C Buckeye jet trainer in the background?”
“Checkmate, sir,” Estelle said quietly.
“I showed you that picture?”
“Yes.”
“It was a good one, wasn’t it?”
Holman laughed heartily and nodded. “Thank you. That was the first time I’ve felt good in the past two weeks. Anyway, I want White’s peach-fuzz to stay with you. What better yarn for local kids to swallow? A heavy metal shithead of a kid from out of town, occasionally bad-mouthing you as an old, worn-out symbol of law and order. Hell, that line alone ought to be worth five sales.”
Estelle nodded. “Good idea. Better that than trying to hide him in the back room here. Or putting him with strangers.”
“Big help you are,” I muttered.
“You’ll do it?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Of course you have a choice.”
“I bet. And I suppose you’re going to coach him on how to treat me as an old and worn-out…symbolically, anyway.”
“Bill, your skin is entirely too thin.”
I ignored that. “When’s he coming, Sheriff?”
“I called Chief White yesterday. The officer will meet you at Albuquerque International Airport Saturday at eleven A. M.
“Albuquerque! That’s almost three hundred miles from here!”
“Huh,” Holman said, pretending to be astounded. Then he turned reasonable. “It would look great for the kid to drive into Posadas in a Gallup patrol car, wouldn’t it? Or to drive into town at all, for that matter. Your son wouldn’t let him drive all the way from L.A. by himself, would he?”
“And so the idea is that he has supposedly flown into Albuquerque, and I go pick him up.”
“Right.”
“What’s wrong with Las Cruces?”
“The major airlines from L.A. don’t fly there, for one thing. Bill, picky, picky. Look, if you meet him up in Albuquerque, that gives you six hours or more for a private confab, right? Six hours to lay things out.”
“He’s right, sir,” Estelle agreed. “And besides, between now and then, you could drop a word here and there about picking up this kid. No big deal, but any scat helps.”
I looked at Estelle Reyes in astonishment. “‘Any scat helps?’ Where the hell did you hear that line? Christ.” She grinned, looking about fourteen years old herself. I held up my hands in surrender.
“Great,” Holman said. “And feel free to use a county credit card for gas.”
“You are all heart, Sheriff,” I said. A goddamned kid chasing kids, I thought. Hell, maybe Scott Salinger would talk to him. Maybe Salinger would sell him a nice, fresh kilo and the kid-cop would bust the case wide open. That’s all the little town of Posadas needed.
I reached the airport nearly an hour early, figuring to have time for breakfast and a leg-stretch before the long return drive. The place was busy. Everyone from real weirdos with turbans to an aging—relatively speaking—deputy U.S. marshal I recognized. He didn’t see me, and seemed in a hurry, so I didn’t bother hailing him. I probably missed some good war stories. In the corner of the restaurant, sitting back where it was dark, was a man who looked a lot like the city’s mayor. He was in earnest conversation with another man who looked a lot like a popular U.S. senator. After a few minutes, a local news crew complete with minicam arrived and interrupted the quiet meeting. The senator gave them five minutes, then he and the mayor went out to the plane.
A big family pushed their way into the restaurant: fat father, pudgy mother, and an assortment of youngsters who ranged from three feet six to six feet three. I munched on the wonderfully huge, sloppy Danish and made bets about where the family was from, and where they were bound. From Terre Haute, going to Marine Land. Best bet. They headed for a table back in the area just vacated by the senator. The oldest boy—he was doing a good job of pretending the rest of his family didn’t exist—changed directions without a word and headed straight at me. He was grinning from ear to ear and looking at me.
“Granddad!” he said altogether too loudly. “Here you are, hiding over behind the Danish!” I almost choked.
I wiped my mouth and stood up slowly. He extended his hand, still beaming. I had to take his hand, or it would look as if I were turning away my own kin. He gripped my hand in one of those hard two-handed squeezes, and to prevent him from shattering the arthritis I had been culturing in my right hand, I had to squeeze heartily in return.
“Gosh, you’re lookin’ well,” he said, and motioned at the chairs. “Don’t let me interrupt.” He sat down first, still with that goddamned grin all over his face.
“You’re observant,” I said flatly, and went back to the Danish.
He dropped his voice several levels, all the while looking for the waitress. “Your sheriff told Chief White that all I had to do was just find a man who had an old-fashioned military brush cut and a mustache like Don Ameche’s. I mean—” and he spread his hands expressively—”how many of you can there be?”
“That’s all he said?”
Peach-Fuzz grinned. “No. But…”
“But what?”
He waved a hand in amusement. He was tall and skinny all right, but with the conditioning of a mid-season track star. Fighting with him would be like wrestling a steel spring. He looked sober. “Undersheriff Gastner, it’s going to be a pleasure working for you. I hope we can run this thing to ground.”
“Run to ground?” I said. “You’ve been reading too much Sherlock Holmes. It’s a damn mess, is what it is. But we’re grateful for any help. So, Officer Hewitt, what does a grandfather call you? Arthur? Art?”
Hewitt grinned. “My real granddad called me Punk.”
“Smart man. Is he still alive?”
“No.”
I nodded. “Grandparents have a way of getting old.”
“He didn’t die of old age. He got shot.”
“Cop?”
Hewitt turned on that electric grin again. “No. He landed an oil company plane in the wrong place down in Peru. The natives were unappreciative.”
“You don’t seem overly grieved.”
The young cop shrugged, and when the waitress finally brought his coffee, he took several minutes finding enough sugar. “He wasn’t my favorite person. I’ll tell you about him sometime.”
“And there’s got to be something better than Punk, too.”
“Art would be fine.” He drained the coffee. “You ready to go? I’m looking forward to hearing all about the case.”
We left the restaurant and rode the escalators downstairs. A large crowd had gathered around the baggage conveyor, all hoping their suitcases hadn’t gone on to Fairbanks or Miami Beach. Art Hewitt slid through the folks, watched for thirty seconds, then darted a hand out. He came back with a large brown suitcase.
“You went to all the trouble of putting that on the baggage-claim conveyor before coming upstairs?” I asked in wonder.
“Sure. Neat touch, right?”
I stopped and looked at him. “You’re as much of a fruitcake as Sheriff Holman. Who in hell is going to tail me six hours north from Posadas County, Art? And for what reason?”
“You never know. Anyway, it saved me from carrying it upstairs. Where are you parked?”
I walked through the electric door and pointed. “Short-term lot.”
He squinted. “The Blazer, right?”
I chuckled. “What other background information did you dig up on me?”
“Lots and lots. Your oldest son doesn’t have a son, for instance.”
“Aren’t computers wonderful?” I put the key in the door of the Blazer. “And now you can forget all that and concentrate on what I’m going to tell you for the next six hours.” He climbed in and we rolled.
As he snapped the seatbelt, he said, “So tell me.”
Holman was waiting for me when I got to the sheriff’s office the following day.
“Good trip?”
“Yup. Hewitt is a smart kid.”
“What’s he doing now?”
I shrugged. “Hanging out.”
“Doing what?”
I chuckled and poured a cup of coffee. “I’m not sure what one does as a teenager hanging out, Sheriff. It’s been a while since I was one. If you told me to hang out now, I’d probably go home and go to bed.”
Holman looked a little concerned. “It’s been a long week.”
“And will get longer.”
“Did you hear about the citizens’ task force?”
“The what?”
“A certain Mrs. Wheeler has taken the bull by the horns, so to speak. She’s organizing a bunch of parents. Their aim is to do something about drug abuse.”
I sipped the coffee and slowly settled into my padded swivel chair. Holman sat down in the straight-backed chair under the window. “That sounds like something out of one of those dumb brochures. What is it that they plan to do?”
“I don’t know. They want someone from this department to help coordinate their efforts.”
“You mean someone to tell them what to do.”
Holman sighed. “Yes. I suppose it would be a waste of breath to ask you if you’re interested.”
“All too true.”
“They mean well, Bill.”
“Of course. But has anyone told them that
we
don’t know what to do?”
Holman smiled faintly. “No. No one told them that. I was sort of hoping that we wouldn’t have to.”
I tipped back in the chair as far as it would go and dug out a cigarette. “We have no leads, Sheriff. Maybe Hewitt will be able to dig up something by ‘hanging out.’ But I can’t believe that’s going to happen quickly. He told me this morning that he figured he’d break the case just about the time we were ready to kill each other.”
“He’s really ready to play this ‘difficult grandson’ bit to the hilt, then?”
“You’d better believe it. And I think he’s more than half looking forward to enrolling in school here. And remember, it was your idea.”
“I’ll remember.” He stood up. “You won’t refuse to talk to a parent group if they make a specific request, will you?”
“Of course not. But they might not like what I have to say.”
Holman looked wary. “And that is?”
“Well, for instance, five gets you ten that the meeting would be some evening, right?”
“Sure.”
I spread my hands. “It might be more productive for them to stay home and talk with their kids, instead of leaving them alone one more time.”
Holman grimaced. “Maybe I’ll ask Reyes. By the way, the DEA is in town. They’re going to be running a chopper out of the Posadas Airport.”
“Doing what? Running the border again?”
The sheriff shrugged and sidled toward the door. “Who knows. They didn’t want to talk to me. Maybe they think I’m the ringleader.”
I grinned. “Isn’t interagency cooperation wonderful?”
“Terrific,” Holman said. “Get some rest. Soon. You look awful.” He left and as the door closed behind him, I muttered, “Thanks.” I was tired, but I needed to think. If I stretched out for two seconds, I’d be asleep, and I didn’t think well unconscious. I tossed away the coffee cup and grunted to my feet. It was a wonderfully clear day, hot and bright with puffy cumulus trooping out across the sky in even ranks. Within a block, I passed the village police unit. One of the part-time specials was sitting behind the wheel. He was reading something. Probably a Conan comic. Three months before, I had passed by and he was blowing z’s, right there in public, in broad daylight. I had done the only thing possible in the circumstance. I idled the county car right up beside him, so that my right headlight was just about even with his car’s door handle. Then I reached down and tapped my siren yelp. Had his head hit the roof any harder, it would have knocked him unconscious. He didn’t think well of me after that.
The memory of that incident woke me up a little, and I swung east and north, planning to loop around Consolidated Ore and then head on over to Tres Mesitas, where I could find a shady, isolated spot under a piñon tree for uninterrupted thought. Or sleep.
“Three-ten, PCS.”
“I don’t want to,” I moaned aloud, and reached for the mike. “Three-ten.”
“Three-ten, ten-twelve, ten-nineteen.”
“Ten-four. About four minutes.”
I had no idea who was sitting in my office, waiting to talk to me, but it might bring a change of pace. Maybe my errant grandson was already in trouble. I turned around and flogged 310 back to town, driving too fast just for the exhilaration.
George Payton was waiting in my office. George was short, fat, bald, and seemed like a heart attack waiting to happen. Whenever we both lit up cigarettes in his store, we usually joked about which one of us was going to kick off first. At least we were smart enough not to make bets.
“You taking me to lunch, George?” I said as I hung my Stetson on the peg behind the door. He wiped his flushed forehead and slumped a little more.
“Gets any hotter I’m going to melt. No, no lunch. I could have called, but I was over in the Motor Vehicles office, and decided to kill all the birds at once. Your dispatcher took pity on me and agreed to hail you in.”
I sat down. “So what gives?”
“Look, this is none of my business, Bill. But I guess you’re discreet enough that I should tell you.” He had my interest, and I leaned forward a little to encourage him. “You’re a good customer at my gunshop. Hell, I got lots of good customers. But Benny Fernandez has never been a customer of mine, right?”
“How would I know that?” I said, but a nasty feeling was beginning to settle in my gut. “What happened?”
“He stopped by this morning. He spent an hour looking, very carefully. I asked him if I could help him, but he waved me off. At one point he looked at me and said, ‘I’ve been doing some reading.’ Whatever that meant. Anyway, when he was finished, he bought an entire setup.”
“Meaning?”
George ticked it off on his fingers. “Nine-millimeter Beretta, that new one, like the one adopted by the army. Five boxes of ammunition. Not cheap plinkers, either, Bill. Two extra clips.” He stopped and looked at me anxiously. “Hell, it isn’t any of my business what people buy, as long as they can answer all the questions on the federal form. But, hey, I know what state of mind Fernandez has been in since that accident, or at least I can imagine pretty good. A man like Fernandez doesn’t buy hardware like that for busting rabbits.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“I just thought that maybe, maybe one of you guys should know. I probably shouldn’t have told you, but hell, I’m no priest or no lawyer. There’s no law I can’t mention it to you, is there?”
“I appreciate it. I have no idea where I heard it.”
Payton got to his feet and pulled his golf shirt away from his sweaty schmo-like body. “Yeah, well. The last thing we need right now is one of those gun-toting vigilantes who goes around blowing everyone away, you know what I mean?”
“I know what you mean.”
“I mean, if you came in and bought that stuff, I’d just think that maybe the county gave you a raise. And there’s about fifty other good customers who might buy it and I wouldn’t turn a hair. But Fernandez?” He scoffed. “I just thought you should know.”
I reassured him that he’d done the right thing, and started to show him out. He suddenly stopped and turned, hand on the doorjamb.
“You remember Cuffy Oates?”
“Yes.”
George nodded. “Man like him, never owned a gun in his life. Comes in the store, talkin’ about how he’s worried about snakes, and wants something for that. So I sell him a little inexpensive thirty-eight revolver. Remember that?”
“It wasn’t your fault, George.”
“No, but I never thought to question him any, either. So he goes home, turns on the television, sits down in the rocker and blows his brains out.” George shook his head, heaved a great sigh and turned away. “I’ll see ya, Bill. Take care.”
I watched him waddle off down the hall. It wouldn’t have made George feel any better if I’d told him that Cuffy Oates had tried suicide about five different ways before taking the sure way out. George wanted me to do something about Fernandez. I could have gone over to the restaurant and confronted the man, asked him what the hell he was planning to do with a 9 mm cannon that could fire fifteen rounds from one clip. But he had a right to it, just like anyone else. At least we had gained a little edge if he was after something other than rabbits.