Apache Country (13 page)

He got himself a glass, sloshed some
Glenkinchie into it, and sat in his armchair staring into the empty
fireplace, reviewing over and over again in his mind the
implications of the extraordinary accusation James Ironheel had
made and the utterly convincing picture he had painted of the
killings at Garcia Flat. And trying to figure out why they had
happened.

Murder concludes arguments, pre-empts
rivalry, quells jealousy, removes obstacles, prevents revelations.
What could Joe Apodaca have needed – or feared – badly enough to
make him kill Robert Casey in cold blood? Servos fideles habeo
probos / Que sex in numero / Qui me docent quad id scio / Quis, quo
modo, cur, ubi, quas et quando. Who, how, why, where, what and
when? Start with who.

Could Joe Apodaca be a murderer? This wasn’t
just some civilian, this was the man who had been his role model
since the very first day he joined the Sheriff’s Office. Tough,
decisive and fair, all the things Easton wanted to be, he had been
first a mentor, and then a friend. Even though that closeness had
eroded in recent years, Easton still found it almost impossible to
imagine any scenario featuring Joe cold-bloodedly slaying Robert
Casey then standing by while an accomplice butchered Adam. Yet how
could he not believe it?

Okay, if it happened, why?

Joe Apodaca was first and foremost a cop. He
had always been a cop. It was his life, his identity, everything he
believed in, everything every cop believed in. If you lived by the
law, to break it was a kind of treason. You didn’t just betray
yourself: you betrayed everyone. Easton was just not able yet to
properly accept the possibility that Joe Apodaca had done that. The
man he knew could not, would not be a killer. Because if he was
indeed the killer, then what had happened to the man he knew?

He looked out the window. A spectral moon lit
the trees around the house and the yard looked like a movie set for
a ghost story. An immobile layer of mist the color of sorrow hung
over the cornfields, exactly matching his somber mood. As he got up
and poured another whisky he found himself looking at the
photograph of Susan on top of the bookcase, a head-and-shoulders
shot taken by a friend one evening at a barbecue. He wondered what
she would say if she were here now. Like Ellen Casey, she had never
cared for Joe.

I can’t generate any real affection for him,
David. I know he’s your friend, but I can’t. I’ve tried, but
there’s nothing there to warm to.

Susan, Suze, Suzalita, but never Sue. She
hated that diminutive. They had been together seven years, a
lifetime, an instant. Sometimes he awoke in the middle of the
night, still smelling the scent of her skin, still hearing her
voice, as though it had been only an hour ago she was there. Suze,
Suze, tell me what to do.

Can’t you see what I mean? You give him one
hundred percent of yourself one hundred percent of the time. But no
matter how much you give, he never opens up to you. To anyone. It’s
almost as if he can’t. Like there’s something dark, something mean
inside him that he can’t let anyone see.

Her dislike was immovable. And Easton would
find himself defending Joe, pointing out how Joe had nursed him
along when he first joined SO. “Oh, don’t give me that ‘Where would
I be today if it weren’t for Joe?’ ” speech, she would snap. God,
he thought, she used to get mad.

Can’t you see what a manipulator he is? Don’t
you see how he uses you? Why do you go on letting him do it?

She had wanted him to run for sheriff, but he
always balked. Upfront, he gave as his reasons the fact he hated
the whole idea of doing lunch, making speeches, pressing the flesh.
Susan said the real reason was because he didn’t want to have Joe
think he was in competition. Maybe there was something in that.
Maybe if Susan had lived he might have done it. If she’d lived
there were a whole lot of things he might have done ... well, no
point thinking about that.

Concentrate, concentrate.

In any other circumstances, he would never
have even given the idea Joe was a killer serious consideration,
much less contemplated rolling over on him. But it was no longer
just a matter of what Ironheel had told him. He simply could not
disregard the other, chilling recollection that had come to him as
he drove home, the scene that kept running over and over inside his
head like a video loop.

They were at Garcia Flat standing beside the
body of Robert Casey, watching the criminalists at work. The sun
was broiling hot. There were flies everywhere. The flat copper tang
of death hung in the air.

“Come on,” Joe said, starting up the gully on
foot. “The kid’s body’s up there by those big rocks.”

Easton could see him as distinctly as if it
were a movie, hear his voice as clearly as if he had taped it,
pointing up the arroyo with his chin.

Up there by those big rocks.

By those big rocks.

Those big rocks.

And hammering away in his brain, over and
over, the same question: how did he know? No matter how often he
reran the tape of their conversation in the Jeep, he knew
absolutely and for certain that never at any time had he told Joe
the location of the bodies. There had been nothing on the radio.
After they reached Garcia Flat, no one apart from the cop keeping
the log had spoken to either of them. The CSI team up the arroyo
working on Adam’s body had been invisible from where he and Joe had
been standing. So there was only one way Joe could have known where
Adam Casey’s body was.

“What am I supposed to do, Suze?” he said
aloud to his wife’s photograph, but in his heart he already knew.
The decision had been made for him the moment Ironheel opened his
mouth. Knowing that didn’t make him look forward any more eagerly
to the morrow. Too, the extent of the responsibility awed him.
Blowing the whistle on Apodaca would effectively condemn the
sheriff to death. But not at the hands of the State: a convicted
law enforcement officer who wound up in the penitentiary didn’t
last very long.

He found himself wishing Grita was around,
but she’d gone to bed long before he even got home. Not that it
mattered; although perhaps talking it over with her might have
eased his immediate disquiet, morning would still come and he would
still have to deal with the problem.

He got up and poured himself another whisky,
just a small one this time, drank it, then sprawled in the armchair
until the alcohol emptied his mind. The next thing he knew he was
cold and he awoke shivering. He looked at the clock and swore
softly: it was after three. He locked up the house and climbed the
stairs quietly, avoiding the one that creaked, peeked into the
nursery to check on Jessye, and then fell into his own bed.

He was asleep in an instant.

He awoke feeling sleep-deprived and bleary,
the weight of what he knew still lying on his mind like wet cement.
Untypical self-doubt assailed him. In the bright Sunday morning
sunshine, with Jessye prattling away at the kitchen table, the
proposition that Joe Apodaca was a killer seemed even closer to
impossible than it had the night before. Yet there was no way he
could ignore what Ironheel had told him. He tried to take some
interest in what his daughter was saying, but he could see from
Grita’s frown that he wasn’t making much of a job of it.

“You up late last night?” she asked.

“Had a couple of drinks,” he said. “Fell
asleep in the chair.”

She h’mphed. Splains it.

Because of the unpredictable priorities of
his job, Easton always tried hard to at least keep Sundays
uncluttered for Jessye. So when he broke the news that he had to go
into town, he got a priority ticket to Grita’s doghouse. The fact
he couldn’t tell her why made it worse.

“How long you goan be
down
there?” she growled, like ‘down there’
was a department of Hell.

“Hour or so,” he said. It must have come out
unconvincing because she her scowl got even scowlier. Heard that
one before, it said. Feeling the chill, he poured himself another
cup of coffee, went into the den, and sat down at the piano.

He was no Paderewski, but if he heard a tune
a few times, he could play it pretty well by ear. He always thought
maybe he had inherited some of his mother’s talent – she had
studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. It was her walnut
Challen baby grand he was sitting at. He liked to play show tunes,
Rodgers and Hart, the Gershwins, Cole Porter. It was also a kind of
therapy. Whenever he had a case that wouldn’t come unstuck, or a
problem he could not figure out, he would wander into the study and
sit and play a musical game he had invented.

Begin with something like “I Get A Kick Out
Of You,” then when you get to where the word “do” occurs in “my
idea of nothing to do,” you switch to a different song, “Do It
Again,” for instance. So it might go Flying too high with some guy
in the sky is my idea of nothing to ... Do, do it again, I may say
no, no, no, but oh, please do it… Again, it couldn’t happen again,
this is that once in a lifetime, this is a … Dream, that’s the
thing to do, Just watch the smoke-rings climb in the … air with the
greatest of ease, the daring young man on the flying trapeze, His
actions so graceful all girls he could .. Please, say you’re not
intending to tease, speed that happy ending and please, tell me
that you … Love, is a many-splendored thing, It’s the April rose
that only grows in the early … Spring is here, why doesn’t my heart
go dancing …

Often he would play for an hour, maybe even
more, until a solution or a new way he could approach the problem
surfaced. Right now, though, the idea of playing musical games held
no appeal at all. He closed the lid of the piano gently and turned
to see Jessye framed in the doorway. She was wearing a tee shirt,
multicolored leggings from T.J. Maxx, and white Nikes with purple
check marks. Her hair was tied in bunches with ribbons. Cute as a
wagonload of pandas, but clearly not happy.

“Grita said you’re going to the office?”

“’fraid so, honey.”

“But it’s Sunday, Daddy,” she protested, the
exaggerated slump of her shoulders and childish exasperation making
it near-tragic. “And you promised about Sundays.”

“I won’t be long,” he said. “We can still go
out later.”

Jessye shrugged, and in her childish gesture
he saw her mother shrugging the same way, and for the same reason.
They had both learned from bitter experience what ‘later’
meant.

“You go to church with Grita, okay? I’ll be
back by the time you get home.”

“Promise to play Duets,” Jessye demanded.
“Cross your heart?”

“Cross my heart,” he said, hoping he sounded
more confident than he felt. “Now come on and give your old Daddy a
big squidge, huh?”

She ran in and hugged him and he smiled
because it was a fierce hug and that meant I love you and he hoped
by the time he got home he would be able to make up for
disappointing her. Their Sundays had become almost ritualized.
First breakfast, then church. After they got home he would get
coffee and look through the newspaper while Jessye read the funnies
or drew beards and mustaches and eyeglasses on the photographs of
people in the parts of the paper he’d finished with. Then, because
he hardly ever got to listen to her piano practice, it would be
time for “Duets.” Jessye would sit next to him on the piano bench
and take the one-fingered melody line, while he did the harmony,
“Aura Lee,” maybe, or “Camptown Races.” Her favorite was “Heart and
Soul” because she loved the vamp.

It was hot again. The sky was enormous, a
vault of bright brazen blue with just a few wisps of herringbone
cloud. He passed no more than a dozen cars on his way downtown.
Anyone who was going swimming or fishing was already heading west
toward the mountains, or maybe south to Brantley Lake. As he drove
he could still hear Jessye’s voice following him to the car. Don’t
be lo-o-ong. He pushed the thought aside, reflecting as he did that
one of these days, he was really going to have to stop thinking
fleetingly of Jessye and then pushing the thought aside.

Diana Krall was on “Let’s Fall in Love” as he
pulled into the SO parking lot and switched off the stereo. There
were only a few squad cars parked around. It was always pretty
quiet on a Sunday, although that didn’t mean crime observed the
Sabbath any more respectfully in Riverside than it did anyplace
else. During the course of the day, apart from the usual slew of
traffic citations, RPD might also have to deal with anything from
drive-by shootings to DWIs, burglaries to domestic violence. The
duty officers responsible for County law enforcement – one sergeant
and three deputies on each shift – would be processing current
cases and updating paperwork on earlier ones. In a typical month,
that would involve raising paper on maybe fifty or sixty cases
ranging from shoplifting to rape.

Before going to his office, Easton checked in
at the jail, breathing a small sigh of relief when he saw the
deputy on duty in the receiving office was Jim Carmody. At least he
didn’t have to deal with a surly Jack Basso this morning.

“How’s our star prisoner?” he asked
Carmody.

“Fine,” Jim said sourly. “Now.”

Easton grinned. “He wake you early, Jim?”

“Someone shoulda warn’ me,” Carmody grumbled.
“Hollerin’ and carryin’ on lahk that. Soun’ like two hawgs tryin’a
sing Gospel.”

“He probably feels the same way about the
Creed,” Easton said. “Listen, when you change shift, tell whoever
takes over that anyone wanting to see Ironheel– and I mean anyone
and any reason – they have to clear it with me first. Okay?”

Carmody nodded his understanding. Another
deputy might have pointed out that in SO’s chain of command,
several people could veto or simply ignore Easton’s order – Joe
Apodaca, Wally Paul, and Olin McKittrick for openers. But
initiative wasn’t Jim Carmody’s forte. Give him an order and he
carried it out.