skeletons (5 page)

I did the peripheries, too. On the northern edge, squeezed between the Southern Pacific tracks and the interstate, was a huddle of smaller dwellings made of wood, of unpaved streets, of mailboxes smeared with Mexican-American surnames. On all four sides the land rolled away into cattle ranches and irrigation agriculture. To the south, in the direction of Columbus and the border according to my map, three conical peaks called the Tres Hermanas, or Three Sisters, I was later told, up-thrust close to one another.

So this was Harding, New Mexico. Most burgs bypassed by interstate highways kicked and screamed and went up the economic wall. Harding could not, apparently, have cared less. It sat there on its arid plain like a rock, sun-warmed and self-sufficient. If, under its placid ass, rattlers and scorpions lurked, they had long ago shed their fangs and unscrewed their stingers. It was a town with a bumper sticker on its heart: “Harding—Love It or Leave It.” And nobody ever left, except Tyler Vaught. Oh yes, and Max Sansom. In a WOODEN BOX.

I parked on Gold Street to wait for five-thirty. The business establishments within my view included the Rio Mimbres Realtors, a Sears Catalogue Sales, the Manhattan Café
(Especidistas en Comidas Mexicanas),
the Harding Saddlery, a Ben Franklin five-and-ten, and a pool hall which vended liquors. The street hummed. I counted pickup trucks till I grew weary. I counted tall men in big hats till I grew spiteful. Why I couldn’t imagine, but my car attracted much attention—oblique from adults, unabashed from youngsters. At one point the sidewalk was actually blocked by a rabble of urchins. I forgot to say that my wheels are those of a 1958 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith two-door saloon, its coachwork by Freestone & Webb. Fenders and paneling are black, the top and top of the bonnet a brilliant cardinal.

When I bounced into the reception room the nurse was just leaving. I identified myself, gave her a syphilitic smile. She paled, said the doctor would see me now, and sidled around me out the door.

I did a double-take at Dr. Jack Shelley II. Long and burly, no older than I, a black handlebar mustache, a white jacket, and boots which, when I said I’d come to see him in his capacity as county medical examiner, he promptly cranked up to his desk top. I said I was out here from New York to check on the death of the writer Max Sansom, and wanted to have a look at his Accidental Death Report.

“Help yourself.” He waved at a file cabinet. “Top drawer, first folder. Matter of fact, the only folder. I’ve only been on the job three weeks—appointed to fill an unexpired term.”

I got out the folder and gave the one-page typed carbon a quick run-through. “Multiple abrasions and contusions.” “Fractures of patellae.” “Fractures of phalanges and metatarsais.” “Disintegration of recognizable features.”

“What does this add up to?”

He lit a cigarette, leaned back in his swivel, discoursed. He’d been summoned from the sack by the Sheriff’s Department around three in the morning of April 30, had driven out, examined the victim, who lay some ten feet off the interstate due north of town. Medical evidence indicated beyond doubt an involvement with a moving vehicle. Victims were sometimes hurled clear by impact, if high speed, or sometimes pulled under the vehicle, if low speed, became entangled with axles and/or suspensions and were dragged, which was obviously the situation in this case. “To be nontechnical, the guy was a mess. He had no clothing on the underside of his body, and no skin. He had no shoes because he had no feet, unless you call bone stubs and strings of tissue feet. He had no kneecaps. Finally, he had no face.” Shelley blew smoke and made a face at me through it. “Gruesome.”

I liked him. He exuded a soapy, adolescent energy, and I’d have bet my butt he’d married a nurse as burly as he and humped her four times a week and almost broke down the bed.

“Anything else?” he inquired.

“Was there an inquest?”

“What for?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what Sansom was doing out by the interstate.”

“Did he drink?”

“Is the earth round?”

“There you are.”

“Have they found the vehicle, or the driver?”

“No way. Thousands of cars and trucks every twenty-four hours on that highway, east and west, coast to coast. I’m sure Sheriff Chavez has done what he can. Ask him.” He essayed a smoke ring, failed. “Deceased a friend of yours?”

“Deceased was a bastard.”

“Really?”

“The only reason I’m here asking questions is because someone asked me to. She was born here. Tyler Vaught.”

“The judge’s daughter? I’ve heard of her. Jet set and all that.”

“I went to JFK with her a few days ago when they flew in the body.” I gave him my best third-degree eye. “She thinks Sansom was murdered.”

“Well, he was. In a sense.”

“But not by hit-and-run.”

“She should see a shrink.”

“Maybe. Anyway, I’ll talk to her father and mother tomorrow and read the transcripts of some old trials and ride back where I belong.”

He flickered. “What old trials?”

“Oh, one when they tried her grandfather, the gunslinger.”

“Sure. Our folk hero. Chamber of Commerce puts on a big shindig in his memory here, every spring. Buell Wood Day.”

“The other when they caught four Villistas after the raid on Columbus. 1916 I think it was.”

“I draw a blank there.”

But he was still flickering. He stood up, too abruptly, loomed six inches over me, stuck out his hand. “Well, nice to meet you, Mr. Butters. Have fun in our fair city. By the way, what do you do for a living?”

“Write.” I rose, shook, put the folder on his desk. “Children’s books.”

“No kidding. I’ve got three myself—two girls and a boy. Unfortunately, they’re glued to the tube.”

“Unfortunately. Thank you, Doc.”

“Hasta la vista.”

I left, closed his door, walked to the reception room door, opened it, closed it, tiptoed back to his office door. Because Dr. Jack Shelley II was dialing a phone. Fast.

“Pingo? Jack Shelley. What the hell’s going on? I just had another oddball from New York in here—and believe it or not, another writer.... I let him read my report.... Because it’s a matter of public record, that’s why.... And listen—Tyler Vaught again. She thinks Sansom was murdered.... Pingo, what the hell’s going on? You’re damn right I’m concerned—I’m a licensed physician—I wrote the report.. . “ PINGO?

Harding County Courthouse may have been red-hot architecture when constructed in 1910, but I thought it a red-brick heap. It was two-story, with a wooden two-pillar portico painted white, and undistinguished in every aspect but one. Soaring from its center was a tower which stuck out against the morning sky like a sore thumb. Much too high and mighty for its base. The original idea, I supposed, had been to throw up something which could be perceived for miles, something symbolic of the statutory— as opposed to the lynch—law which had now come to these western wastes. But the tower was simply too damned big. It weighed upon the courthouse like a guilty conscience. As an afterthought, perhaps, it had been given an added function—to tell the time. On each of its four sides was a white clockface with black hands and numerals. I punched my gold-plated-light-emitting-diode-second-minute-hour-month-date-digital Pulsar, accurate within a minute a year. 11:14. I looked up at the clock. The old baby was right on the button.

Harding Courthouse was set in a small oval park, circled by Silver Street, beautified by a stand of ancient mulberry trees. There was a green lawn in front, and the statue of a World War I doughboy, rifle and bayonet at the ready, his helmet and heroism hallowed by birdshit. I climbed steep concrete steps, entered a rather grubby interior. Green walls. A water fountain. Recruiting posters. A candy bar machine. Office doors with signs: County Treasurer, Tax Assessor, Clerk and Recorder, Attorney. On the wall near the foot of a central staircase was an arrow pointing up and the info that on the second floor were the courtroom and the offices of Judge Charles S. Vaught Jr., Third Judicial District, Harding, Cienfuegos, and Maria de la Luz counties.

“I am Mrs. Helder, Clerk of the Court,” said the lady in the anteroom. “May I help you?”

“I am B. James Butters. May I see Judge Vaught?”

“The judge is in chambers this morning. May I ask your purpose?”

It popped out. “I’m his son-in-law.”

ZAP.

I tried to make things better. “Or was. And will be again I hope.”

Which made them worse. She left me hastily, returned slowly, gestured at a door. I walked in.

“Butters.”

“Yes, sir.” I almost said “Your Honor.”

“You are, or have been, my son-in-law.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are not now.”

“No, sir.”

“But you may be again.”

“Yes, sir.” It was explanation time. “I’m from New York. I write children’s books. Tyler and I were married for three months last year. Then she left me for someone else, so we divorced. Now we’re back together again—permanently, I hope. You didn’t know any of this?”

“Mr. Butters, I have neither seen nor heard from my daughter in thirteen years.”

He hadn’t offered me a seat. I took one, opposite his desk. “Unless it’s too personal, Judge, why not?”

“You would know better than I. I wrote her often at first, without response. She has independent means.”

“Have you heard of a writer named Max Sansom?”

“He came to see me, as you have. He had the tact to tell me Tyler was living with him.”

“Sansom was never heavy on tact. Or talent either. You know about the hit-and-run.”

“Yes.”

“Tyler thinks he was murdered.”

Eyebrows. “Murdered?”

“She asked me to come out here and look into it.”

But he was being judicial, frowning, pursing his lips, considering the possibility of murder, coming at length to a decision. “I think,” he said, “you may disabuse her of the notion. Based on any evidence that has come to my attention, I doubt the death was other than accidental. In any event, I’m sure the Sheriff’s Department has investigated.”

“Well, she said to talk to you and her mother, so I will. It won’t take long—I should be on my way home by tomorrow. Oh—” I hesitated. This was the point at which young Doc Shelley had given something away. I went on the alert.

“She also said to read the transcripts of two old trials.”

“Trials?”

No reaction.

“Yes. First the one when they tried her grandfather, Buell Wood.”

He removed his horn rims, rubbed the bridge of his nose and his memory. “That would be 1910, the year this courthouse was built. My father was county attorney then. He prosecuted and lost, much to everyone’s astonishment. But it was not a mortal blow—he was later elected district judge and held the bench for thirty years. I succeeded him. And the other?”

“The four Villistas.”

“Yes. Six years later. Tyler has been obsessed with that since she was a girl—I presume because of his disappearance.”

‘Whose?”

“Wood’s. On the night the trial ended in acquittal—again to everyone’s astonishment, if not outrage. Wood vanished without a trace. It was all very mysterious, I must say, and particularly appealing to a child.”

My story instinct began to itch. “Maybe he went south of the border with the
bandidos.”

The judge permitted himself a smile. “Not very likely.”

“What did happen to them?”

“All I can provide is local legend. Conviction and hanging might have been a happier fate for them. As town tradition has it, they lost a ‘Texas horse race.’”

“Tyler mentioned that. What is it?”

“I’m not familiar with the details, but as I understand it, they were let go, given an hour’s head start, and advised that if they could reach the border—it’s thirteen miles—before being caught, they were free men. This was on foot. But half an hour later, a posse gave chase. Mounted.”

He shook his head. “Most regrettable. Barbarous.” He looked at me. “But as I say, all I pass on to you is hearsay. I don’t really know, and my father, who prosecuted that one, too, and unsuccessfully, never spoke of it to me. Probably for good reason.” He rose. The interview was over. “Why are you interested in the trials, Mr. Butters?”

“Tyler told me to be.”

“Why was Sansom?”

“She told him, too. He thought there might be a novel in it, a big seller.”

“Do you?”

“I write for children.” I stood. “Thank you, Judge. It’s been a pleasure meeting you. You don’t mind, then, if I have a look at the transcripts?”

“Not at all.”

“I assume Sansom did.”

“I presume so.”

“And I’d like to chat with Mrs. Vaught—will she be at home this afternoon?”

“Helen lives in San Carlos.”

“San Carlos?”

“North of here. Her address is 2100 Tamarisk Drive–can you remember that?”

“2100 Tamarisk Drive. But wait a minute, I—”

“Mrs. Vaught and I have been separated for many years.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” I think I blushed.

“Mr. Butters.” He came round the corner of his desk, stopped. “I don’t know what you will learn about Sansom’s death, and don’t, I am bound to say, particularly care. I found him a most disagreeable and repellent individual. I can’t conceive of any woman of character, my daughter aside, entering into an intimate relationship with him. But that is neither here nor there.”

He settled back on his heels. “The point I’m trying to make is that whatever you discover in connection with the trials, I hope you will not exploit. I see no purpose in exhuming from the past what may have been a very ugly episode in Harding’s earlier history. I see no valid reason why the sins of one generation—if sins they were—should be inflicted on the next. It can only pain and injure the descendants of those originally involved. I suppose every small town has a skeleton or two in its closet—why not keep the door closed and locked? What benefit can ensue from opening it? Don’t you agree?”

He was fervid. I was embarrassed. It was as though he had risen from behind the bench, parted his black robe, exposed himself.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“If I were you,” he continued, ‘I’d chalk the matter up to Tyler’s imagination and forget it. Don’t you think that the wisest, most humane course?”