Assumption (21 page)

Terry Lowell was walking toward Ogden. Ogden was standing on the stream just above the hatchery, far enough away that the hatchery office was out of view. The light of the moon was diffused behind a bank of drifting clouds.

“What are you doing?” Terry asked. The patch sewn to the sleeve of the man’s right shoulder was starting to come away at the top. Threads frayed. Everything was fraying.

“What am I doing?” Ogden said. “What do you mean, what am I doing?”

“Here, with that shovel.”

“You should leave, Terry. Go get in your truck and drive away,” Ogden said. He could feel that his eyes were red. They burned. He looked up and saw clouds moving clear of the ridge. “Really, you should get out of here.”

“What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?” Terry asked again and again.

“Really, Terry,” Ogden said. The water in the stream seemed to slow. A crow landed in a nearby tree and cawed wildly. Ogden pulled his Sig from his holster.

Ogden jumped. He was awake. Light had crept over the top of the mountain and was making the sky pink. A bearded man was looking out through the curtain at Ogden’s rig. Ogden looked at his watch. Seven fifteen.

He got out and walked to the door. The house was little more than a shack. It was set up against a bluff, the huge rock looming over it and making the house look even smaller. There was a rock chimney and a weak pulse of smoke rose out of it. Ogden knocked even though the man had seen him approaching.

“Awful early in the morning,” the man said. He was old, maybe eighty, maybe older.

“Sorry about the hour,” Ogden said. “Are you Cyril Hempel?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I’m Deputy Walker from the sheriff’s department.”

“What you want?”

“Do you have a son or a grandson, a relative, by the name of Conrad?”

“No Conrad.”

“Do you have any male relatives?”

“I got a spinster sister down in Albuquerque.”

“Male.”

“I got a son named Leslie.”

“Does he ever use the name Conrad?”

“Why would he do that?”

“Is he about six feet, light-­colored hair, tattooed? Slightly receding hairline?” Ogden tried to see past the man into the house.

“That sounds like my son, but I ain’t seen him in weeks. But that ain’t unusual.”

“Do you have a daughter? A grandson?”

“Hey,” the man said. “What’s this all about. No, I ain’t got no daughter.”

“And you don’t have a grandson named Willy or Billy or William or anything?”

“I’m not sure I’d tell you if I did, but I don’t, so I don’t have to worry about that. Like I said, I haven’t seen my so-­called son Leslie in a couple of weeks.”

“You say that’s not unusual?”

“Not really. He’s a drughead. He’s on that meth and he looks like shit that’s been stepped on. If you find him, arrest him for me and then get him straight and I’ll give you a whole American dollar. What do you say about that?”

“Where does Leslie live?”

“Hell if I know. He’s a druggie, like I said. Where do druggies live? I don’t look for him. I stopped looking for him years and years ago. You should see what them drugs done to him. Find him and shoot him and I’ll give you two American dollars.”

“Do you know a boy named Willy Yates? Do you know anyone named Yates?” Ogden heard someone in the house. “Somebody here with you?”

“My girlfriend. Got a problem with that?”

“Mind if I ask her a couple of questions?”

Hempel turned and called into the house, “Penny, put on a robe and come here. Man’s got a question for you.”

A young, almost pretty woman in her mid-­twenties came to the door. She clutched an orange robe close to her narrow frame. Ogden looked her bony face, her green eyes and dark hair, then down at her bare feet. The toenails on her left foot were painted black, the toenails on the right were unpainted.

“Do you know Mr. Hempel’s son?”

“I’ve met him.”

“Do you know where he might live?”

The woman looked at Hempel and back at Ogden. “Not really, but there’s a lab in the hills south of Hondo. I think that’s where he gets his stuff.”

“How do you know that?”

“I hear things.”

Ogden looked at Hempel, could see he was getting irritated. “Thank you, ma’am. And thank you, Mr. Hempel. Again, sorry to bother you so early.”

Hempel slammed the door.

Ogden drove back toward Plata. He was sick of the inside of his truck. Then he thought that it was preferable to the inside of a prison cell. He didn’t call in to the station. They would have called him if he was needed to come back. He drove through town and then aimlessly along the back roads east of Arroyo Hondo. He had a notion of where the meth lab the woman was talking about might be. It was an old Quonset hut that some so-­called hippies had lived in during the sixties and early seventies. The meth lab was constantly moving and was operated by a rotating stream of Mexican mafia or so popular lore held. Whoever they were, they were scary, scary enough that they were given a wide berth by local and state cops, not to mention the DEA and their famous impotent war on drugs.

Ogden watched the exterior of the structure from about fifty yards, sitting on the hood of his rig. There was no movement except for a tassel-­eared squirrel that ran back and forth between two juniper trees. Ogden slid down to the ground, walked around, and reached into his truck, shut off his radio. He took off his uniform shirt and put on a flannel one he kept in the back bay. He walked along the dirt road toward the building. The place and the area around it were still, quiet. The morning was cool and a breeze made it even cooler. He knocked on the old metal door. It had a rainbow-­painted window in the middle of it. He knocked hard, with his closed fist, and the loose glass rattled.

A dark-­skinned mustachioed man opened the door and glared at Ogden. He wore a red baseball cap with Carhartt written on it. This man wasn’t a meth user. He wasn’t high and he wasn’t sleepy. He was, as Warren would have said, fit and ready to hit. “What you want?” he asked with an accent.

“
Hola,
amigo. I’m looking for a white man named Leslie Hempel,” Ogden said.

“Don’t know him.”

“He’s got a tattoo on his arm and blond hair. Maybe he goes by the name Conrad.”

“Go away.” The man started to close the door.

Ogden put his left palm flat against the door. His right hand was wrapped around the pistol in his pocket. “No, I need you to think about this.”

“Are you crazy?” the man asked.

“Pretty much.”

After a pause and a look back into the hut, the man stepped from the door. There were two other men inside, as unfriendly and tough-­looking as the first. Ogden stepped inside and saw that in fact this was a meth lab.
Was
a meth lab. They had disassembled their equipment. One man was a little shorter than the first. He wore a flannel shirt not unlike Ogden’s and khaki pants. His sneakers were strangely clean. The third was a flyweight. He wore a white wifebeater and jeans, had a cross branded onto his shoulder, and had a diagonal scar across his face. The mustachioed man stepped in front of the door as Ogden entered. Ogden could feel his pulse quicken as he watched the men’s hands. He was in a bad place and he didn’t wait, couldn’t hesitate. He pulled the pistol from his pocket and at the same time sidestepped the man who had let him in. He grabbed him by the hair and pushed the barrel of the little pistol into the man’s face, past his mustache, into his mouth.

“No estoy interesado en que los hombres.
”

“What do you want?” the flyweight asked.

“I’m looking for a man. His name is Hempel.”

“We don’t know anybody’s name, stupid. We sell drugs.”

The man had a point and Ogden understood and even agreed that he was stupid. More so now that he had pulled out a weapon. “I don’t want any trouble with you,” Ogden said and felt ridiculous. “I need you to put your guns on the table.”

The two men pulled pistols from their waistbands and put them down.

“Knives, too.”

The flyweight tossed away a switchblade.

Ogden’s arm was getting tired. The mustache wasn’t fighting, but he was big and heavy. “Where does my friend keep his gun?
¿Dónde está su arma?
”

“In his belt,” the flyweight said.

Ogden reached down, grabbed the mustache’s cheap 9mm and pushed him away. “Okay now, I just want to talk. Move over there.” He herded the men toward a corner away from the door, away from their guns. He walked to their weapons. There was a white five-­gallon pail of what Ogden was sure was ammonia beside the table and he dumped the guns and knife into it. The men started to protest, but stopped. “Okay. I’m looking for a white male, about six feet, light brown or blond hair, and a tattoo on one of his arms. His last name is Hempel. His first name is Leslie. He might use the name Conrad.”

“We don’t give a fuck what somebody’s name is,” the mustache said. “You don’t know who you fucking with.”

“I’ll ask again. Have you seen anybody who looks like that?” Ogden asked.

“Unless they got boobies they all look like that,” the flyweight laughed.

“Tattoo,” the mustache said to the other two.
“¿Que habla Meth-­mouth?”

“This dude got no teeth?” the flyweight asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Meth-­mouth,”
the flyweight said, nodding. “We don’t know his name. He sleeps around here someplace. In the woods, maybe. We don’t know.”

No teeth. Ogden hadn’t noted that the man Terry was arresting had no teeth. He was barking up the wrong tree, he thought. But this was all he had. “I’m going to wait outside,” he said. “If this door opens, I’m going to shoot without looking who it is.
¿Entiendes?
”

Ogden backed out through the door and immediately broke into a stumbling sprint toward his truck. He glanced back once he was behind the wheel and saw no one and no movement of the door. He started the engine and drove away, kicking up dust and gravel. Ogden drove back south, then west toward his little trailer. He tried hard to remember every detail of the previous day. He was trembling, even beginning to doubt himself, his memory, to doubt everything. Felton said he had seen no boy, was particularly adamant about that. Ogden found himself wondering if there had in fact been a boy.

Warren Fragua was sitting on the step of Ogden’s trailer, playing with a stick. He didn’t look up when Ogden rolled in, got out, and walked toward him.

“What’s the word, Warren?”

“State troopers are down in Plata,” Warren said, spitting onto the ground between his feet. “A bunch of them.”

“They send you to arrest me?”

“If I see you, that’s what I’m supposed to do.”

“Looking bad, eh?”

“Not looking good.” Warren wouldn’t look up. “What can I do to help? I need to do something.”

“Did you find Willy Yates?”

“If that’s his name, he’s not enrolled in any school in northern New Mexico. No Billy, William, Wally, Wilson. In fact, no boy named Yates. Two girls. One in Santa Fe and the other over in Chama. Both mothers have different last names because of marriage.”

“You’re telling me there is no kid.”

“I’m telling you there is no Willy Yates enrolled in a school. Any ideas how I might find him?” Warren dropped the stick.

“None. I’m going to go to the hatchery and see if the guys up there saw anything unusual.”

“Don’t tell me that.”

Ogden sat beside his friend. He looked at the man’s boots. Fragua always laced his shoes up extra tight. The black leather was covered with dust. The heels were worn on the outside, Warren being slightly pigeon-­toed. An inch of white sock shone between his left boot top and his khaki pant leg. Ogden drew a circle on the ground with the stick that Warren had just dropped.

“You were friends with Terry, weren’t you?” Ogden said. “You two were close.”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry.”

“What’s going on, Ogden?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Last I saw, Terry had that guy in his truck and was driving away.”

“Had he called it in, that he was arresting somebody?”

“I thought so. Yeah, I’m pretty sure he did.”

Warren shook his head. “We’ve got to find who did this. For Terry. And for you, ’cause if we don’t, well, you’re shit out of luck, cowboy. They think your Sig fired the bullet that killed him.”

“That’s insane.”

“Maybe, but that’s the story. I guess it’s not conclusive, whatever that means. What do you want me to do?”

“Find that boy.”

“What about the guy? What about Conrad Hempel?”

“Find the boy, Warren. You can’t chase two rabbits.”

Ogden left his county rig and drove away in his pickup but did not go back to the hatchery. He remembered that the main office for some reason had been closed that day and he hadn’t seen anyone walking the fish ladder or the raceways. So there was no reason for him to go the hatchery. Also, he had told Warren that he was going there. Warren was too honest to hold in the truth for too long, especially when Bucky looked him in the eye. He was driving up into the mountains to the yurts. The felt-­covered structures had been erected in the sixties, just one in a slew of failed utopias in northern New Mexico. Now, perhaps there were more utopias than anyone had ever dreamed, inhabited as they were by like-­minded or no-­minded drug users. That was at least the common perception. Ogden was fairly sure the man the Mexicans called Meth-­mouth was not Conrad, but he was a Hempel and it was the only lead he had to follow. There were policemen out looking for him, he knew that, but though this was small-town America, the space was also huge. If he wanted, he could get lost forever in these mountains. The thought crossed his mind.

The yurts were relatively high, at about eight thousand feet, too low for the aspens to grow but thick in the firs. Another tassel-­eared squirrel ran across the old mining road and reminded Ogden to focus on his driving. Ahead in the trees he saw glimpses of white and yellow, the yurts. He pulled his truck off the road and into some brush, covered it as best he could. He approached the village.

A light drizzle began to fall. It was near midday now, oddly colder than it had been earlier. His empty stomach rumbled. There was a mucky trail and he walked along beside it, his boot prints looking huge next to a pair of small barefoot prints. There was an empty plastic milk jug hanging from a branch, bending the branch over so that the jug almost touched an oily-­looking puddle. A few yards away a metal garbage can had been ransacked, probably by a bear, Ogden thought; the lid was still held down by straps hooked onto the can’s handles, but the sides had been folded up and resembled a pair of wings. He could smell the musk of some animal, maybe a bear, more likely a raccoon, certainly not a skunk. The rain fell not so much harder, but in a way that made it seem it would never go away. He would have felt it fully but for the canopy of forest. A couple of magpies landed beside a yurt and pecked at some discarded food. He stepped over a used condom, then stepped cautiously by what he knew was human waste. He approached the nearest yurt. The bold magpies merely hopped away from him,
dragging strings and flaps of food, bread, and some kind of cold cut. Ogden knocked.