Nightzone (15 page)

“You need rest more than the chile,” she added. “How about cashing a rain check tomorrow?”

“I'll check my busy schedule.”

I knew there were going to be lots of bags under lots of eyes before the sheriff had this mess cleaned up. If the killer had been driving a truck that belonged to Curt Boyd, that closed one loophole, but didn't get us far. Didn't get
them
far. Curt Boyd's companion at the fatal power pole party remained a shadow. It was hard for me to believe that the young teacher would be able to live one life with roommates and girlfriend, and another entirely separate life with a cold, calculating eco-terrorist and killer. Some how, the two paths must cross, or at least touch.

Back at the Posadas County Sheriff's Office, and with a little bit of reluctance, I took my leave, so weary that for a moment I forgot where I had parked. That wasn't a difficult mystery, since there were only a half-dozen vehicles in the lot, all but one with government plates.

I settled into my SUV, started it, and waited until all the digital nonsense on the dash had calmed down before pulling it into gear. I wanted to go home, and I didn't. The night, clear and calm, was so damn comfortable that I knew I sat on the brink of waking fully. I didn't fight it. With an evening where things out of place would shout their existence, I was loath to ignore the opportunity. So I compromised.

Slouched comfortably in the fancy any-which-way power seat, the police radio turned low, I took “the loop,” a path I'd worked out years ago that allowed me to cover most of the village without retracing or crossing my own path. The hunting would have been better with two inches of fresh snow, but the brilliant night sky that would have warmed Miles Waddell's heart didn't promise moisture.

As the clock ticked past eight that evening, the village was already winter-night quiet—a few kids out and about, one or two renting videos at Tommy's Handi-way convenience store when I paused there for some of his awful coffee. The First Baptist Church parking lot was empty, but there was some life at the VFW, a squat, ugly little building up on North Fourth that used to be the Baptist church's home.

No one was parked in the abandoned drive-in theater out on County 43, no one was trying to cut a late deal at Chavez Chevy.

I lowered the window and dumped out the last of the fetid coffee as I turned south on McArthur Street by the Hamburger Heaven. Business there was as slow as anywhere else, but it only took the aroma of a single broiling burger to waft out, setting off the hungries. Not to succumb to the temptation this early in the evening meant I was seriously off my feed, but I wasn't sure I had the energy to chew.

The struggle to keep my eyes open kept me occupied as I drove home to my own comfortable burrow on Guadalupe, no longer trying to X-ray every shadow or peer behind every building, no longer trying to see the lurking shadow of a blue Nissan.

Chapter Fifteen

At one time, my residential lot off Guadalupe had been a five-acre parcel, worth enough to make any realtor salivate. I'd kept a half-acre and given the rest to Dr. Francis and Estelle Guzman. It had been a good move. The Medical/Dental Clinic built there had prospered, and I took a quiet pleasure out of occasionally cruising the spacious parking lot and seeing all the license plates from Chihuahua and other points south.

The attached pharmacy was still open, with two or three cars parked in front. Out of old habit, I looped through the parking lot, glancing at license plates. There had been a time when I might run them through dispatch. I returned to my own driveway. I damn near fell asleep waiting for my garage door to open, and when it scrolled shut behind me with a gentle thud, the thought occurred to me that I could just slump in my car seat and snooze without all the hassle of dismounting.

“Come on,” I said aloud. Supporting myself against the wall, avoiding a rack of long-abandoned paint cans, I reached the interior door that took me into the small utility room. Moving by automatic pilot with my hand skimming the rough adobe walls, lights weren't necessary. Miles Waddell's dark zone mesa had nothing on me. The old adobe was a proper burrow, and the tiny night light on the kitchen wall—allowing me to always find the coffeemaker at the oddest of hours—was enough without polluting the whole house.

The darkest room in the house was the bedroom, and by the time I reached it, I'd shed my jacket, hat, and the replacement Smith and Wesson that had become my companion an hour after I'd surrendered the other one to the undersheriff for the sort of pointless testing that only lawyers love. I sat on the side of the bed for a moment, considering. Then I just let gravity win, using a last burst of energy to swing my feet up.

When I next looked its way, the dim three-inch numerals of the clock on the bureau said it was nine thirty p.m. I'd slept for less than an hour or for a full twelve—either way, I felt as if I weighed three hundred pounds. The expensive pillow-top mattress that my eldest daughter Camille had insisted upon had a firm grip on every stiff joint. So why wake up? Why not just roll over and sink once more into a few moments of oblivion? I had started to ponder that very question when the phone rang.

My land line—the one making all the racket—was out in the kitchen, by design. If it were bedside, I'd answer in my sleep and probably embarrass myself. This way, if the caller let the phone clamor long enough, I'd get up, find it, and be coherent enough to swear fluently.

The ringing passed five, and I heaved out of bed, making my way through the short hall and around the corner.

“What?” I growled.

“Got two things,” Sheriff Robert Torrez said, and his voice was so soft that I had to cover one ear with my free hand and stuff the receiver into the other.

“They better be good, in the middle of the goddamn night.”

Bobby didn't rise to that. Instead his tone sounded as neutral as if I'd said, “Why, thanks. I was expecting your call.”

“Estelle and me are going to run over to Deming. Thought you might want to come along.”

“For what?” I looked outside and saw pitch black. The nap had been less than an hour.

“Deming PD found the truck.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“And why do I need to see it? All I saw was headlights from twenty miles away. What am I going to recognize?”

Silence, so I let him off the hook. What the hell…I enjoyed their company.

“All right. That's just what I need right now, a ride to Deming.”

“We'll be by in about five minutes.”

“Yup.” I sounded as if a late night road trip outbid the pillow top. But if I hustled, the coffee would be done in time.

“Nathan Baum died, by the way.”

That news punched me silent. No wonder Bobby had called.

“I guess a blood clot,” the sheriff added. “Something like that.”

Normally, the sheriff's vintage understatement would have amused me—Baum died, “
by the way…
a clot, or “
something like that.”
I didn't try to find the right thing to say.

“I'll be here.” I hung up. I would have liked to say that I swung into action like a well-oiled machine. I fumbled the coffeemaker, forgetting the filter and spilling the water. But what's better than gritty cowboy brew in the middle of the night? While it gurgled, I charged around my face with an electric razor and, knowing I'd be stuck in a vehicle with others who might not appreciate a storm of perfume, settled for a little witch hazel aftershave.

As I poured the coffee into a large Thermos cup, I heard a vehicle crunch on the gravel in front of the house. I had almost reached the front door when I remembered the four-inch Smith and Wesson, and found it tucked under my jacket on the foyer bench.

The sheriff was driving one of the new extended Expeditions, and Estelle got out as I emerged from the house. She held the SUV's front door for me. “I curl up easier than you do,” she said. “Did we wake you up?”

“Thank you. And yes.”

As I slid into the big tank, the sheriff did an unexpected thing: he reached over, extending his hand. His grip was powerful but not crushing, almost as if he was trying to transmit a little sympathy with the greeting. He watched as I managed the shoulder harness, and didn't ask about my hardware which the short jacket didn't conceal very well.

“Schroeder said nothing's changed,” he said, leaving it to me to figure out to what he might be referring. I assumed it was Nathan Baum's death and my contribution to it.

“Clot broke loose from the surgery?”

Estelle leaned forward, no doubt pleased that the security cage was
behind
her seat, not in front of her. “Francis said the autopsy will clarify it, but he thinks that's likely. Probably from the massive hip surgery. For a few minutes, they thought that they could bring him through it, but it didn't work out that way.” Her hand touched my left shoulder. “The cancer was advanced, by the way.”

“The way it goes,” I said. “He didn't have to offer an invitation with that shotgun.” But no matter what the Monday Morning Quarterbacks who hadn't been there said, there was a monumental difference between wounding someone—causing a world of hurt and complications—and
killing
them…no more phone calls from granddaughter, no more pride in what the son might be accomplishing, no small satisfactions, no good coffee, no more Christmas mornings with the family. Just dead.

“So where's the kid?”

“She's back with her mother.”

“And the father?”

“Don't know,” Torrez interjected. “That's one of our problems. But we got some paperwork now.” We swooshed up the interstate ramp, and it was evident that we weren't going to waste a lot of time in transit.

“It turns out that there was a restraining order filed against him,” Estelle explained. “Against the son. Apparently George Baum originally had visiting rights on a regular basis, and blew that this summer when he took off with the little girl to visit Grandpa. Mom went ballistic and won the court order after he punched her. She wouldn't press charges.”

“Ah…that kind of guy.”

“Lots of education, lots of computer savvy, and unfortunately lots of temper. He's talked himself out of a string of jobs over the past couple of years. From what we're told, George Baum is the sort with all the answers, and everyone else is an idiot.”

“You've been busy,” I said. “So where is he, do you think?”

“I wish we knew. All we know for sure is that he isn't at his home in El Paso. One of the nurses
thinks
that he came to the hospital in Las Cruces briefly. They're not sure. He wasn't allowed to see his father. The old man was in the operating room at the time. George ranted and raved, and made a few threats. Your name came up.”

I lurched this way and that, trying to get comfortable with seat belt and coffee mug. “I'm sure he just wants to thank me. What can I say.” I nodded and sipped the awful coffee. “Now Deming.”

“Curt Boyd's truck is parked in a storage unit there, just off the main drag,” Estelle said. “DPD says the unit's renter is as puzzled as we are. He's the one who called police.”

“After touching everything that could be touched,” I added cynically.

“Actually, no. The lock was off, the door open a few inches. That tipped the owner off. He called DPD without touching a thing. Without going in. And as soon as the officers saw that the truck was a candidate for our BOLO, they contacted us.”

I watched the lane markers and signs blur by, trying to imagine why Perry Kenderman's killer had chosen a little rental cave in Deming to ditch the truck. A portrait was beginning to emerge, and this killer was quick to take action, quick to think his way out of the box when he made mistakes. “This guy makes me nervous,” I said, and twisted around to look at Estelle Reyes-Guzman. “What's the team in Las Cruces sending you?”

“Mitchell went down earlier,” the sheriff said, and I guess that covered it as far as he was concerned. Captain Eddie Mitchell was a no-nonsense kind of guy, a creative and fearless investigator, and “procrastination” wasn't in his lexicon.

“I hear the feds already talked with Boyd's roommates?”

“In the process.” Torrez braked hard as a motorist carrying Arizona plates on his Pontiac pulled out to pass a tractor trailer truck just as we rocketed up behind them in the passing lane. The sheriff knew the vehicular confrontation was his fault, given that he was running far too fast without his emergency equipment switched on to clear the path. We sat patiently at 75 until the Pontiac, safely past the truck, pulled back into his lane.

When we passed, I could see the shadow of the driver and hear his thoughts about government officials traveling on junkets at taxpayers' expense. The sheriff let the big SUV creep back up to 90 again, and five miles out of Deming, a west-bound state police cruiser in the far lanes winked his red lights at us.

“You're expected,” I said. Torrez didn't reply, but of course he was. Every cop within two hundred miles stood on high alert, without the luxury of diving into a pleasant nap. And sure enough, as we shot down the Deming exit, there was a city PD cruiser parked on the shoulder. Torrez reached down and turned on the red lights, and as we drew up behind the cruiser, the cop pulled out to lead the way.

Chapter Sixteen

The storage units were off on a side street south of the main drag. Two long buildings housed two dozen units, and the entrance was blocked by a second city police cruiser. Behind him was a Border Patrol unit and a newer model pickup that I knew belonged to Sheriff Blair Escobedo. As we pulled to a stop, a New Mexico State Police cruiser joined us.

“Too many people,” I muttered.

Torrez laughed, his handsome face breaking into a rare smile. “This is the age.” It had taken him two decades to accept interagency cooperation, and then to actually work to enhance the process. Gone were the days of jumping astride a good horse and thundering across the prairie, alone after the bad guys. Too damn bad.

A Deming PD lieutenant approached, and he walked with one hand on Sheriff Escobedo's right shoulder as if he had to hold the sheriff in place to finish a conversation. I knew Escobedo well, a law man with a tough county to shepherd. There were rare times when he even worked hard at it. A former Marine, former county commissioner, former a lot of things, he'd tried for years to hire Robert Torrez away from Posadas County. I forgave him that, and chalked it up to good sense in choosing his officers. But he had no patience with the federal government, holding all their agencies in almost bigot-like contempt. When you're in a county squatting right on the border, forced to work alongside the Border Patrol, Immigration Services, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and on and on, that's a painful quirk to nurture.

The sheriff didn't look in a mirror often enough, either. Togged out in one of those quasi-military uniforms with the circle of five stars on each collar, Escobedo looked less like Commander of Allied Forces Ike Eisenhower than he did a character actor portraying a Mexican Federale
jefe
in a grade C spaghetti western. I was a large, too-heavy fellow myself, but Escobedo's belly made me look downright anorexic. It hung over his Sam Brown belt in great slabs.

The lieutenant wound down in his lecture to the sheriff as they drew within hand-shaking distance, and the five of us went through the formalities.

“You knew my dad,” the lieutenant said to me, and I scrutinized his name tag again. He was as trim and fit as Escobedo was a slob.

“Colin Martinez?”

“That's him,” Lieutenant Paul Martinez beamed.

“What's he up to now?” Colin and I had worked some interesting interagency drug stuff years before, and I always was pleased when the operations ended and I could go home. Colin Martinez believed that if he thumped enough heads, the drug trafficking problem would fade away.

“He retired last year and moved to Tampa,” the lieutenant said. “He's heavy into the swinging widower scene.” The son had inherited his looks from his father, who no doubt was cutting a swath.

“Ah,” I said. Somehow, Martinez's comment about the “swinging widower scene” sounded like something my eldest daughter would say, ever hopeful that my social life might blossom. Thank God she lived halfway across the country.

“So,” Sheriff Escobedo rasped. “Tell me about all this. What did Kenderman walk into? Took him by surprise, or what?”

“Yup. Traffic stop.” Torrez pointed his own index finger at his skull and pulled the trigger. He nodded toward the storage building, in no mood to stand and chat. “Show me what you got.”

“It hasn't been touched,” Lieuetenant Martinez said as he led us to the right-hand row of units.
That in itself was a miracle,
I thought. Mid-way between two of the outdoor security lights, number eleven's door gaped open a foot. “The owner says this is exactly the way he found it.” Martinez stopped a pace short of the door. “He walks up and sees the door is open, and then sees the lock on the ground over there. He forgot to snap it in place. The latch wasn't tight in, and the door drifted up.” He pointed without moving forward, and the beam of his flashlight haloed the brass padlock that had been dropped into the corner of the doorway. “So he rolls the door up some more, he says without handling it, sees this strange truck parked inside, and then sees that his motorcycle is gone. So he calls us.”

“He,” Torrez prompted.

“The owner's name is Brandon Smith. Brandon C. Smith. Lives over on Fairway. Just a couple of blocks.”

“Where is he now?”

Martinez turned and pointed across the street. On the front porch of a modest little block home, half a dozen people had gathered. “A biker buddy of his lives right over there. I told Smith to stick close until we get to him. You want to talk to him?”

“Yup. Not now.” Torrez knelt in front of the door, regarding the plastic bag that now covered the lift handle. Someone, not trusting even a responding cop's impulse, had protected the handle from unthinking fingers. Torrez nodded in satisfaction, and then dropped down to a push-up position so that he could peer under the door…a tough maneuver for such a big man. Supported on toes and elbows, the sheriff swept his flashlight this way and that. Finally satisfied, he arose with a grunt.

Using his flashlight, Torrez lifted the door until it rolled all the way up. The light switch was immediately inside to the right, and Lieutenant Martinez started toward it. Torrez held out a hand.

“Wait a sec.” Without stepping into the storage unit, Torrez let the flashlight beam roam, digging into all the corners. The place was neat and clean. It appeared that the owner was using the unit as storage for a significant collection of paint cans, a handy inventory if he was a landlord.

The Nissan Frontier had been driven in nose first, and I could see only one set of truck tracks in the fine dust on the floor. Another set, this a single track, exited the unit along one side. A blue tarp, maybe one that had covered the motorcycle, had been tossed carelessly in the corner.

“And well, well, well.” Martinez pointed, and his body language said that he
really
wanted to step into the unit. On a side shelf formed by one of the braces between upright support girders, a well-used chain saw rested, along with a quart of oil and a small red gas can.

“Now why would he do that?” Estelle murmured.

“It might not be the one.” Torrez bent down and placed his flashlight on the concrete floor immediately inside the door track, then rolled it with his toe so that the beam shot a glancing pattern across the floor. He stopped when the beam reached a spot on the floor directly under the driver's door of the Nissan where a collection of shoeprints were visible on the dust-covered concrete. “What do you think?” He looked at Estelle, who had already unzipped a bulky camera bag and was attaching a large flash unit to her digital camera.

“Iffy,” she said. “Certainly not enough to identify anything beyond size. Maybe brand.”

“We'll do those first from the outside,” the sheriff said. “We got us a wait for the van anyway.” It turned out to be not much of a wait. Estelle had taken a series of exterior shots and was positioning herself with a telephoto to tackle a nice angle shot of the faint traces on the floor when the enormous black-and-gold State Police crime scene van oozed into the side street. That prompted a derisive groan from Sheriff Escobedo, who so far had been content to stand to the side, arms crossed comfortably over his mammoth belly.

“Now we'll be here all night,” Escobedo muttered. “I don't see nothin' we can't do right here ourselves without making a big state deal out of it.”

We?
I thought. So far, Escobedo's efforts had equaled mine, but Torrez ignored him. If the world of county sheriffs was a close brotherhood, I think that Bobby Torrez considered Blair Escobedo an embarrassing idiot brother—if he considered him at all. Of course, to Sheriff Escobedo, Perry Kenderman was just another name, another county's problem. I knew that in the past, Escobedo
could
be thorough and meticulous in the best of times, but this chilly night, he wasn't in the Posadas County sheriff's league.

Bobby Torrez might not have been able to quote Locard's Exchange Principle, but he sure as hell understood the Frenchman's concept that no one can commit a crime without leaving
something
behind at the scene—if not tracks, then fluid traces, prints, fibers, hairs, smudges…all of which could be easily missed or dismissed by investigators.

When the killer had driven Curt Boyd's pickup into this rental unit, and then stolen the motorcycle stored there, he'd obviously been stealthy and careful. He hadn't awakened the entire neighborhood, even though his heart must have been pounding in his ears like a kettledrum. I didn't know what model the motorcycle was, but if it was a big Harley, or even a snarling two-stroke dirt bike, its departure might have attracted some attention. That wouldn't have escaped Bob Torrez's attention.

If the chain saw carried the reddish sawdust of power poles, why leave it behind? The simplest reason was that he couldn't carry it on the bike. By off-loading it from the pickup, sloppy cops might assume that it belonged to the unit's renter.

Without doubt, the faint shoeprints left in the dust wouldn't be the killer's only mistake. If the saw was his, fine. In addition, there would be other evidence that he'd been in that small, plain chamber, and the crime scene techs and Estelle Reyes-Guzman would find it. I needed to stay out of the way, but I wasn't in the mood for chit-chat with Escobedo or anyone else. I considered sinking into a quiet, dark corner by the Dumpster, but the sheriff's Expedition was handier and a hell of a lot more comfy. I settled in to wait.

The French forensic pioneer Locard never said that humans would leave a
lot
behind. After three hours of fine-toothed combing, when the rest of the city had long since gone to bed after the late show, the list of evidence was predictably and depressingly short.

We had faint, ghostly shoeprints of the sort left by those fancy trainers, and I predicted that the photos of those, despite the angled-light tricks and enhancement toning, would reveal little beyond what Estelle had predicted. Dusting revealed a few decent latent fingerprints, including a clear set of three from the top of the truck's door—a natural place to touch and an easy spot to forget when giving the vehicle a quick wipe down. If the killer had worn gloves, the prints would belong to the truck's rightful owner, Curt Boyd.

I had watched them gather a fair selection of hairs from both front headrests. And, like the latent prints, if we had a killer in custody, matches might be possible. Without a killer, hairs and prints would molder, useless in their envelope in the evidence locker. If the killer had been fingerprinted before, there would be a chance that a match could be made. If.

“Not a hell of a lot,” Lieutenant Martinez mused as he strolled over to where I sat, door ajar. “Gloves or a wipe down. I'm betting gloves. Truck is dusty as hell, and a wipe down is going to leave lots of traces.” He'd spend several moments enjoying watching Estelle and one of the State Police techs working the cameras. “But we got us some big questions.”

Sure enough, we did. Like
why, why, why.
I'd been brooding about that very thing, but no epiphany had bloomed other than the obvious. The killer needed to dump the Nissan, and maybe it was as simple as finding a storage unit door ajar. If he could park inside and then snug the door down, who knew…it might be weeks or months before the owner showed up. And the killer had struck gold by an easy change of vehicles, if he could find the keys. Only the saw had been a complication.

I watched the sheriff across the street, where he had isolated one witness after another. Now, he and a huge, spade-bearded guy had ambled down the street away from ears, now standing on the dirt sidewalk. I assumed that this might be Brandon Smith, storage unit eleven's tenant. As Smith talked, I could see his beard bob up and down. The beard was one of those wonderful creations that would catch the wind and make moves of its own as its owner rode the bike.

The sheriff took notes in his bold, blocky printing, but I tried to stay optimistic. What was to find here? The killer took a bike, and in moments, Torrez would post that APB. By the time the bike was found, its rider would have commandeered yet another vehicle, and so it went. But we were establishing a trail, however faint.

What we needed were the connections. How did the killer find this spot, this empty cubbyhole where he could make a quick change? That was one corner of the puzzle. I leaned back against the cushy seat and mulled that for a while. My first conclusion was just too easy. Find an open unit, ditch the truck, take a bike conveniently ready for him? I wanted to plunge into that conversation the sheriff was having with Mr. Smith, but resisted.

I glanced at my watch. The cold had begun to seep into my joints, and I considered firing up the Expedition. I needed something to do, or I needed to be snuggled into my burrow, one or the other. The longer I sat and watched, the more I wondered about Sheriff Torrez. Estelle hadn't called me with the invite. It had been the sheriff himself, a man usually willing to let others deliver messages. And as far as I could see, he didn't need a damn thing from me.

I stayed out of the way and waited. Somebody found coffee, and a Styrofoam cupful found its way to me. Somewhere about halfway to the bottom, I dozed off, and then awoke with a snap as the tipping cup drizzled its contents down my pants leg. I straightened up and, human nature being what it is, swore eloquently and glanced around to see who might be a witness.

The sensible thing for a tired old man trapped by circumstances was to commandeer an empty back seat and curl up for a nap. Of course I didn't do that. Nor did I find Estelle or Bobby and suggest that we go home—we…they…had scrubbed this place until half of the State Police Crime Scene crew now stood around unemployed.

Finally, on his way back across the street, Sheriff Torrez walked head down, cell phone pasted to his ear. I had the awful thought that it was Captain Eddie Mitchell checking in from Las Cruces, and that Bobby would announce that we needed to drive down there.