Heartshot (6 page)
Hewitt and I had arranged to meet at home for dinner, and he showed up just about the time the lamb chops turned to charcoal. I had forgotten about teenage—or near-teenage—appetites. He finished three chops to my one.
“You coming off a week-long fast, or what?” I asked.
“I think I got a tape worm or something,” he said. “You cook good, though.”
“Most people who live alone do. It’s either that or eat out all the time. I do too much of that as it is.”
“Your wife died eleven years ago?” He looked at me over the top of an ear of corn.
“Yes.”
“Airplane crash, wasn’t it?” He had done his research thoroughly, but I had no intentions of discussing the past—especially those few minutes long ago when the airliner had fought a wind shear and lost.
“Did you make any progress today?” I asked, ignoring his question. He glanced down at his plate, embarrassed, then shook his head.
“Not really. Well, maybe some. I don’t know. Tonight, maybe. I found out a couple places to check out. The burger place on Grande is one. I can probably even get me a job there. Kids hang out in that parking lot like flies on a dead dog. And there’s a place out in the National Forest, too. I don’t know just where.”
“You mean out at the lake? Up past the old Consolidated mill?”
“No, no. Way the hell and gone out in the forest. There’s some place where they can have campfires and a bunch of rocks keeps the fires out of view of the fire tower.”
“Oh.” I nodded and rescued another chop before they all disappeared down the human garbage disposal. “That’s out County Road 21. Turn on Forest Road 420. About a mile, and turn off on Forest Road 562. Big limestone outcrop on the south side of the canyon. They call it ‘the Rec Room.’ They don’t use it much anymore after the forest fire three years ago. That kinda spoiled the view. And the Forest Service sits on it pretty hard. If you get on the right road, you can’t miss it. All kinds of graffiti on the rocks around there. You got a map?”
“Yeah. But I got to work on getting somebody to take me out there. No way you’re going to let me take your Blazer, is there, Gramps?” He grinned widely.
“You got that right, punko.”
“Maybe I can just hot-wire it sometime.”
I ignored the thoughtful look on his face and asked, “Who’d you talk to, anyway?”
“I only found out this information after hours of resourceful digging.”
“I bet. Who?”
“I stopped by the library. One of the clerks seemed to know all about it.”
“If it was Mary Ellen Coburn, it’s because she has three high-school-age kids. Hefty gal with freckles?” Hewitt nodded. “I’m surprised she talked to you.”
“I was my most persuasive self,” Hewitt said and grinned. “And speaking of persuasive, you never told me your department had the best-lookin’ detective in the state. I saw her riding with Bob Torrez today.”
“You mean Estelle Reyes.”
Hewitt wagged his eyebrows. “How’d someone like her hook up with you guys?”
“She’s from Mexico, about five years ago. Graduated first in her class at the Police Academy in Santa Fe. Hell of a good cop. She does more good in plain clothes than in uniform… spends most of her time as our juvenile officer.”
“Plain clothes…no clothes,” Hewitt said, and grinned some more.
“And her fiancÉ will slice you thinner than salami,” I said.
Hewitt groaned and looked sickened. “Tough dude, huh?”
“He’s a vascular surgeon in Las Cruces.” I smiled pleasantly. “Keep your mind on your work.”
Hewitt nodded and held up his hands philosophically, then pushed his plate away and stretched like a contented cat. “God, that was good. I wish we could get sweet corn like that up in Gallup.” He glanced at his watch. “Got about two hours till dark. Guess I’ll roam a little, then maybe twist some headlights or something.”
“Twist headlights?”
Hewitt looked startled that I didn’t know. “Yeah. Twist ’em. You get a Phillips-head screwdriver, and when the cop goes in for coffee, or in the office or something, you twist the hell out of the adjustment screws on one headlamp.” He crossed his eyes wildly and cackled. “The cop car cruises around looking moronic. They can never figure out why the kids always know it’s them coming up the street.”
I looked skeptical. “And the cop doesn’t notice? They’re that stupid up in Gallup?”
“No, but, you’d be surprised. With the streetlights and all, it works pretty good with city cars. Not for the country, of course.”
“Of course. I can see that the younger generation of Posadas is going to profit mightily from your sojourn here, however short.”
“You betcha.” He stood up and shook his pant leg as if he had a dog attached. I glanced down and then did a double take.
“You’re kidding,” I said, pointing. He looked down, then up at me, puzzled. “An ankle holster?” I asked.
“Why not?” He pulled up the leg of his jeans. The little Smith & Wesson Model 19 rested in a suede holster with the Velcro strap just above his anklebone.
“You can run with that on?”
“Sure.”
“And you can get it out without dancing around on one leg like an awkward ballerina?”
“Sure.” He demonstrated, bending at the waist and pulling up his knee at the same time. One hand pulled pant leg, the other pulled S&W, all in one fluid, practiced motion. He snapped it back in.
“Huh,” I said, noncommittal. “I’ve seen ’em in the movies.” I started to gather dishes. “I don’t think I’d be happy with one.” Hewitt’s expression of polite amusement told me that he could imagine the result as well as I. Grab down, suffer back-muscle spasm, throw out trick knee, stagger sideways and sprain other ankle. Fall and land on left wrist, refracturing an old break. At least I would be left with a good right hand and the S&W for permanent pain relief.
“I wasn’t going to carry one at all,” Hewitt said, “but then I got to thinking.”
“That’s a good idea, thinking. And by the way, just for passing interest, I found out today that the father of one of the teenagers in that wreck purchased his own arsenal. His name’s Benny Fernandez. He owns the Burger Heaven you were talking about, down on Grande.”
“No shit? I mean, I know who he is, but he bought a gun?”
“No shit.”
“Who’s he going to blow away?”
I shrugged. “No one, we can hope. Perhaps it will rot in his closet until he gets tired of it and sells it.”
“What’d he buy?”
“A Beretta. The big kind. Like the military one.”
“Terrific.”
“He drives a white older model Cordoba, Yankee Charlie Xray one-thirty-six. He also owns a year-old charcoal-gray Continental, Charlie Delta fifty-nine-ninety. Keep an eye peeled when you’re floating around. I don’t know what he’s up to, but it isn’t quail hunting.”
Hewitt nodded and repeated the license-tag numbers, firmly planting them in his youthful memory. I added, “And a reminder about the Salinger kid. He’s mooning over something. Keep that in mind, too. I don’t think you’ll find him out and around much. He works at the home center days, but I don’t think he’s much of a night owl. But you never know.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to sleep for a couple hours or so, then cruise around some.”
“Don’t you have regular-shift deputies out?”
“Yes. Two on the road, four to midnight, and then one, midnight to eight.”
“But you still work all day, and then most of the night?”
“Yes.” I was about to say something more, but just shrugged. It never did any good explaining that work was also hobby, pastime, relaxation, and maybe even a little therapy. “If I see you twisting headlights, you’ll have your first experience trying to undercover yourself out of jail.”
He started with mock horror. “You’d do that, Gramps?”
“Certainly. Let them try to feed you. Probably bankrupt the county.”
***
I slept so hard I awoke soaked with sweat, feeling as if I’d been slugged. The old adobe house was dark as pitch, and I turned to stare at the digital clock on the nightstand. By squinting hard and really concentrating, I could make out that it was after ten. I got up, showered and put on fresh clothes. The hall light near the front door was on so that Hewitt wouldn’t stumble over the uneven floor bricks and break his neck. I left it on and went out. The air was velvety soft, black as pitch with no moon and no streetlights on my block. Not a breath of moving air stirred the cottonwoods that formed a thick umbrella over my house.
I slid into 310 and turned on the radio. It was silent. I almost pressed the mike to go 10-8, but decided against it. Miracle Murton was working, and if he knew I was out on the road, he’d do his level best to find something for me to do. Let him live in blissful ignorance…as usual.
Grande Boulevard dropped out of Posadas toward the east, and as I drove 310 out past the lumberyard, D’Anzo Chrysler-Plymouth, Laundromats, junk shops, tourist traps, and motels, and Benny Fernandez’s burger joint right in the middle of them all, I chuckled. There were about ten youngsters lounging around that parking lot, including a group of four who sat on the hood of a big 4-by-4 suburban. Leaning against the fender of that same vehicle, looking at home like the rest of them, was my “grandson.” Maybe he would do some good after all.
In another block, I had proof that the kid worked fast. The village police car idled out of a side street, another part-time patrolman at the wheel. The car was comically wall-eyed, its right headlamp skewed downward. I didn’t want to be on the radio just then, but someone would tell him before the night was over, I was sure. The village was his problem, not mine. The village department was tiny, but the cops were sensitive. We always had to be careful not to step on their turf, unless asked. My plan was to swing east, gradually taking in the top half of the county.
“Three-oh-eight, PCS. Ten-twenty?”
“PCS, three-oh-eight. I’m about three miles up County Road 43, northbound.”
I listened to the exchange with interest. Bob Torrez couldn’t help sniffing around the accident site. He wanted to find something as bad as any of us.
“Ah, ten-four,” Dispatcher Murton said, and there was a long pause while Miracle’s brain churned. Predictably, he then went through the same routine with Howard Bishop in 307. Bishop responded that he was twenty-one miles southwest of Posadas, which meant he was probably cruising through the little hamlet of Regal. Even Miracle Murton could figure out that Torrez was closer to home. “Ah, three-oh-eight, swing around and ten-sixty-two at Chavez Chevrolet-Olds.”
“Ten-four.” As it happened, there was little that we, or any department, could do about the folks who sat in front of their scanners, listening to our dull number routines. With a half-measure of diligent listening, anyone could know with fair accuracy what we were doing at any given time. That in itself wasn’t so bad, unless the person had the scanner in his car, which was illegal but convenient. Only the big metro sheriffs’ departments had good patrol coverage, especially during the night hours. One deputy, or even none, to cover several hundred square miles was not unusual for us.
On impulse, I swung around and headed north, intercepting County Road 43 just as Torrez flashed by. My radio barked twice as Torrez keyed the mike to acknowledge that he’d seen me. And now any chance was better than none. If someone roaming up on the hill was listening to a scanner, he now knew that both deputies were busy and that he was as safe as church. In a few minutes, I passed Consolidated’s mill. The road was deserted. I slowed down to fifteen, punched off the headlights, lowered the windows and turned off the air-conditioning. The radio crackled, and I reached down and turned it off, too. Smooth as silk, 310 purred up the road, and after a minute my eyes adjusted to the faint light cast by the single small bulb on the underside of the left front bumper—a light Holman liked to call my “perpetrator light.” Hell, it was rinky-dink, but it worked. It threw just enough light in this case to catch the orange center line of the macadam road. The quarter-moon was peeking over the mesa, and before long I could make out outlines here and there.
Two miles below the lake, I damn near rear-ended a parked car. I swerved just in time, not so much because they were almost on the highway but because the sudden shape had taken me by surprise. I could see, faintly silhouetted as I went by, two heads merged as one low on the passenger side. After continuing on a few feet, I stopped, knowing that the flash of my brake lights would spring the two apart. I backed up the Ford until my windows were even with theirs and swiveled the spotlight until it bounced off the hood of their car. I could see clearly the two young guilt-washed faces. The girl was Beth Paige, a kid who worked as an office receptionist for the Forest Service. The boy was a stranger.
I looked Ms. Paige in the eye and asked, “Are you all right, miss?”
It was hard to tell in the harsh bouncing glare of the spotlight, but I’m sure she blushed. “Yes, officer,” she said, and managed a sheepish grin.
I wasn’t too bad at reading faces, and hers told me things were fine. “You might find a safer place to park,” I said. The boy nodded, and had the good sense not to retort that it might be safer if I would turn on my headlights. The spotlight snapped off and I cruised 310 on up the road. I glanced in the rearview and didn’t see any motion. No point in appearing too eager to comply, I suppose.
A few minutes later, gravel crunched under the tires as I swung in the lake road. Even if it’s washed with a full moon, there’s nothing much darker to me than an old quarry. That night, there was no full moon. The water was just a dull, black, shadowless hole. With 310 blocking the road, I turned on the spotlight. The beam lanced out and touched rock palisades, water, trees…and shiny metal. The car was parked well back in the shadows, and I wouldn’t have seen it at all with normally aimed headlights. I didn’t linger with the beam, but let it pass on by. Even in the brief flash, I had recognized the car. Without rolling forward, I turned on the radio and reached for the mike.
“PCS, three-ten.”
Gayle Sedillos’s voice cracked back, bless her. She must have come in early, and had taken over from Miracle. I told her where I was and that I would be 11-96 with Yankee Charlie Xray 136. She wouldn’t bother to run the plate, since the number was on a small note on the bulletin board right above the radio.