Out of Season (13 page)
“He’s tired, too,” I said as Wheeler signed off with the repeated number gibberish that the FCC demanded.
Wheeler turned to regard Estelle and me. “Eddie’s been up on the hill working around the lake and in that area, hoping maybe there was someone camping that we missed in an earlier sweep.”
The lake was nothing but a deep, black-water-filled hole, the remains of an old quarry just up the hill beyond Consolidated Mining’s operations. It was a popular party spot, despite the Forest Service fence and half a dozen signs warning of imminent danger to life and limb if anyone took a plunge into the cold water.
“Call him in and send him home,” I said to Wheeler. “Tell him I said so.”
I heard quiet footsteps behind me and turned to see Linda Real. She held another fistful of photos. She managed a game smile, but I could see she was among the walking dead herself.
“You might want to look at these,” she said and handed the photos to me.
“I might. I might also want to get some sleep. You can do the same. The feds will be here in full force tomorrow, transferring the wreckage to the hangar. I need people bright and in gear come morning.”
I tapped her on the shoulder with the photos. “That’s a condition of employment, Linda. Your first sixteen-hour shift is over. We’ll see you here at eight sharp.”
She started to say something about the pictures, pointing toward one of them. I held them away from her.
“Linda…” and when I was sure she was hearing me, I added, “Go home. Now. Just forget explanations. Just turn around”—I took one shoulder and urged her in the proper direction—“and walk out the door. Get in your car, go home, and get some rest. It’s that easy.”
“Well said, sir,” Estelle murmured, and I glanced sharply at her. She grinned at my mock reproof. “I’ll see you here in the morning,” she added. “We’ll run up to the Boyds’.”
And my advice to others turned out to work pretty well. I took the pictures home, dropped them on the kitchen table and started the coffeemaker. While it popped and gurgled, I spread out the photos. With a powerful twinge of regret, I realized just how much I would have liked to ask Martin Holman what had attracted his attention to this scrubby section of prairie.
And I had to give him credit. Aerial photography was not easy without the proper equipment. It was hard to stick a camera against the Plexiglas of the aircraft’s cabin and shoot past the reflection, the haze, the bouncing. Even without a magnifying glass, I could count the vanes on the windmill. The rudder was latched to the side, braking the mill and keeping it stationary. On the rudder, the name of the manufacturer was clearly legible.
The windmill’s sucker rod drew water up and into a pipe that fed a circular stock tank. The tank looked to be about twelve feet in diameter and perhaps three or four feet deep. The shadow cast by the west wall of the tank cut a dark line across the other side. I squinted hard, couldn’t make out the detail, and grunted to my feet. I rummaged in one of the kitchen utility drawers and found one of several magnifying glasses that I owned—all of which took turns being lost somewhere in the house.
With that, I could see that the tank was less than a quarter full. “Huh,” I said. The area around the windmill was beaten flat by cattle hooves.
A second photograph showed what had been not much more than a dark shadow in the first print. Sure enough, off to the northwest of the windmill were the remains of an old stone building. The roof itself had caved in, exposing the top of the stone walls and the ends of several of the roof beams.
The county—in fact, most of the state—was dotted with similar structures, some built just after the First World War, some thrown together as late as the 1950s. In almost every case, the homesteaders had found that the vagaries of the New Mexico climate made their lives miserable. It would have been more pleasant living as a street person somewhere. And in almost every case, it was the lack of water that drove them away.
In good times, a twenty-foot-deep, hand-dug well in a lucky spot might produce bountiful water for a little while. Then it would take the expense of drilling fifty or sixty feet, and a windmill to suck the water to the surface. And finally, if the ranchers had the money and the patience, the major well-drilling rigs would smoke down through hundreds of feet of rock, sometimes finding usable water, sometimes not.
I looked at the photo of the stone house for several minutes, sipping coffee, wondering what life in that little twelve-by-sixteen shack must have been like fifty years before, when a trip into town was an hour in a jolting Model A Ford, itself twenty or more years old by that time. Maybe Martin Holman had wondered the same thing and that was what had prompted him to take the photo in the first place.
“And whose windmill is this?” I said aloud to the quiet kitchen. I didn’t recognize it, but that meant nothing. That was another question for Johnny Boyd. Maybe he knew just where it was…and maybe he knew just why Sheriff Holman had wanted a photo of it.
I would have liked to talk to the rancher right then, but my heavy eyelids told me that it made sense to wait. The windmill wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was Johnny Boyd. Come morning, he’d have half an army swarming around his ranch.
The next morning, Estelle surprised me by suggesting that we drive to the Boyds’ ranch by way of Newton, the tiny hamlet in the neighboring county that was due north of the Boyds. Straight lines were usually my habit in getting from point to point, but if my chief of detectives wanted to approach the ranch from the back by circling in from the north, that was fine with me.
The traffic up to the crash site would be heavy, both coming and going. We’d eat a lot less dust by slipping in the back door. We drove out of town on County 43, but before that route started its long climb up the mesa past Consolidated and the lake, we turned west on State 78, the main arterial that ran past the airport.
The state highway angled northwest, and in another twenty miles, we were out of Posadas County. In ten more miles, we passed the sign for the Petros Farmers’ Market and then Estelle slowed for the right turn onto a narrow, paved lane that led along the base of a series of rolling, low hills to the tiny hamlet of Newton.
What Newton’s claim to fame had once been, I didn’t know. Maybe it grew out of feeble attempts at mining. There was certainly no timber close by. Perhaps it was one of the myriad little villages that had once been active trading centers scattered across the state, places for the various dryland farmers to bring their produce or livestock. There wasn’t much left to trade anymore.
On the outskirts of Newton, perched on a mound of reddish dirt fill capped with asphalt, was the new post-office building, a little modular structure that would have looked right at home in Ohio. The Circle JEB ranch paid rent on P.O. Box 17.
Beside the post office—and separated from that federal property by a row of wrecked cars, a fair-sized collection of used irrigation pipe, and three or four tractors that would never again rumble to life—was a store labeled only as “Baca.”
I knew Floyd Baca, and knew that he had taken over the family business from his father just after World War II. Floyd Baca had seen more than seventy New Mexico summers as the sun baked Newton silent each day. I didn’t know what kept him there, and wouldn’t have presumed to ask. Besides, I’d spent nearly thirty years in Posadas without much excuse. Few folks claimed that town as the center of the universe, either.
In addition to the post office and Baca’s, downtown Newton included Our Lady of Sorrows Church, sitting back from the highway and almost touching the cinderblock corner of the Newton Community Center. Scattered around the nucleus were a dozen homes in various stages of disrepair, at least half of them empty. From the center of that village, we were just about eight miles north of the Boyd ranch.
We turned south on County 805, a road that was wide and level and paved as far as the village limits—about a hundred yards from the Baca store.
After two miles of smooth, well-crowned gravel, we reached a small sign announcing the northern boundary of Posadas County. The metal signpost had been nicked by the road grader sometime in the recent past, no doubt as it was turning around to return to Newton. The county sign hung askew, pointed down at the greasewood. Ten paces beyond, securely on Posadas County turf, was another sign, this one promising that “County Maintenance Ends.”
Despite the warning, the road was in good condition, and in another mile we reached an intersection where two narrow lanes met the main road, one from the southeast and one from the northwest. In the center of the right-hand island of bunch-grass stood a small, neatly lettered sign that pointed south along the main route and read, “Boyd 2 Miles.”
“You could get around this way from Posadas pretty fast if you had to,” I said. We passed through a low basin where the greasewood and Klein’s cholla along the road were as high as the car. Dust seeped inside and I could taste the fine, powdery grit.
“You’re going to miss all this come next week,” I said, and Estelle turned and smiled at me.
“Yes, I am,” she said, and I didn’t doubt for an instant that she was telling at least a partial truth. I thought she might elaborate, but in typical Estelle fashion, she let the three-word response do all the work.
“Leo Burkhalter tells me that Eddie Mitchell has applied to his department,” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
I looked at Estelle in surprise. “You knew already? When did you hear that he was going?”
“Well, it’s a huge department, compared to ours. And apparently they have an opening where he’ll be working Homicide. It’s a lateral transfer for him. He’ll go in there without losing his sergeant’s status.”
“And when,” I asked again, “did you hear all this?”
“He told me last week. But only that he had applied. I didn’t think he’d heard yet one way or another.”
“Huh,” I said, feeling just a tad hurt. “There’s nothing formal so far, I don’t think.”
Estelle read my mind and said, “He didn’t want to tell you until he knew for sure he was going.”
“Well, I suppose it makes sense. There’ll be lots of opportunities for him in a larger department.”
“And more regimented,” Estelle said. “I’m not sure I could work for Mr. Marine.”
“Burkhalter? He’s all right.”
Estelle grinned. “In a very, very strait laced sort of way. He’s full of himself, as Mama would say.”
“I was in the Marines, you know.”
“Yes, sir. But when you retired from the military, you didn’t take it home with you.”
“I see,” I said, not seeing at all. I reached out a hand to the dashboard as we thumped across a cattle guard and pulled under the arched, wrought-iron gate of the Boyds’ Circle JEB Ranch.
“Plus, there’s the university campus there,” Estelle added. “Eddie wants to work on his degree in criminal justice, and that’s pretty hard to do in Posadas.”
“I didn’t know he wanted to do that, either,” I said. “But I don’t know why it would surprise me.”
The road curved around a wart in the prairie, an out thrusting of limestone that sported a thick blanket of small barrel cacti. Just over the rise, one of Boyd’s windmills was clattering along at a great rate, and I could see the sunlight flashing silver off the gentle stream of water that trickled into the large stock tank.
Their house tucked under a grove of elms, about the only tree that seemed willing to put up with the scorching summers and dry winds of winter. If not appearing actually prosperous, the place looked as if there was at least a little hope in its owners’ lives.
Avoiding the ubiquitous adobe tones, the Boyds had painted the house a clean white with startling blue trim. The red-metal pitched roof would simmer most of the time, but the wind wouldn’t rip it off and the sun wouldn’t blister it to bits. One vehicle, a white-and-blue pickup truck, was parked in the yard.
“The welcoming committee,” I said as the first wave of dogs emerged from the various shadows around the house. Two heelers led the pack, followed by a black-and-white, one-eyed something and—looking incongruous out here in the middle of the cacti and cattle—two German shepherds, tongues lolling dangerously toward beckoning cactus thorns.
“You get out first,” I said gallantly. One of the heelers jumped up and put its grimy paws on the door. I could imagine its sharp claws tearing scratches across the expensive county decal. With good sense, Estelle hesitated. All the tails were wagging, so we were probably safe.
A lanky, stooped individual appeared on the front porch, whistled sharply, and the dogs retreated without a backward glance. He waved a beckoning hand at us in greeting.
We got out of the car, and the breeze was brisk and warm, enough to suck the moisture right out of a dog’s nose in the brief seconds between tongue swipes.
“Good morning,” the man said and stepped off the porch. One of the heelers advanced a pace or two behind him, and the man turned and muttered something. The dog retreated back into the shade. One of the shepherds emerged to circle around us, nose down and ears akimbo.
“Don’t worry about him none,” the man said. “He’s too gaddam dumb to figure out what to do.” He extended a hand to me. “Name’s Edwin Boyd. You’re Undersheriff Gastner, if I remember right.”
“Good to see you,” I said. I couldn’t remember ever actually meeting Edwin Boyd before, beyond a quick glimpse in a grocery-store parking lot at one time or another. He was taller than his brother, just as lanky, clean-shaven, and leathery-skinned. He wore a cap that had collected enough diesel fuel and grease and dust to disguise the logo above the bill. “This is Detective Estelle Reyes-Guzman.”
Edwin Boyd’s eyes twinkled as he extended a hand to Estelle. “Certainly a pleasure to meet you,” he said and touched the bill of his cap with his free hand. “We got us plenty of activity today, haven’t we?” He spoke with great care, as if feeling the need to be mindful of what he said.