Bag Limit (12 page)

Chapter Sixteen

From the Broken Spur Saloon, there was no easy way to reach Newton, a simple thirty-five miles due north as the crow flies. County Road 14 snaked up that way from its intersection with State 56, a stone’s throw from Victor Sanchez’s saloon, but if we drove north on CR14 fast enough so that we wouldn’t spend all afternoon eating dust, we’d be pissing blood instead. The road was bad in spots, awful in others. Sometimes it was little more than a rock-strewn slash gouged through the rimrock by the county’s battered road grader.

Instead, we drove the twenty-three miles back to Posadas, then headed out of town again, this time northwest on State 78. As we passed the airport, Larson actually goosed the pickup up to the speed limit for a while, and less than an hour after our last sip of coffee at the Broken Spur Saloon, we turned right on 0910, out of Posadas County and eastbound to the hamlet of Newton.

In the center of Newton, across from the small convenience store, Our Lady of Sorrows Church, and the cinder-block community center, we turned south on a wide, paved street that had probably suckered in more than one tourist. Wide and paved for a hundred yards or so, it narrowed to gravel, still smooth and well crowned. Newton had grown by a couple of mobile homes since summer, and a run of new chain-link fencing enclosed the yards along the shoulder of the road.

Two miles farther, we passed the small metal sign that announced the Posadas County line, and gravel gave way to two ruts worn in the prairie. Another sign cheerfully announced that
COUNTY MAINTENANCE ENDS
.

“Now this here leads us over to the stock pens,” Larson said, ever the thoughtful tour guide. We turned onto an even worse two-track and ahead I could see the corrals, stark against the cholla, greasewood, and scant bunchgrass. Maybe planning someday to corral angry Cape buffalo, Miles Waddell had used railroad ties liberally.

Larson let the truck roll to a stop fifty yards from the corral where the two-track split, one branch leading to the loading chute, the other toward a windmill. “Let’s hoof it from here,” he said.

With no mesas to block it, the wind was hard and cold, blowing in from Arizona. I pulled my jacket collar up around my neck and scrunched my hat down hard on my head. Before we’d walked twenty paces, I heard a vehicle.

“That would be Waddell,” Larson said. We watched the big pickup jounce toward us, wind scudding the dust in swirls through the cholla. He parked next to the state truck. Larson raised a hand in greeting. Two men rode with Waddell, and they all piled out, ducking their heads against the wind so they wouldn’t end up chasing their hats through the cholla.

“Hello, Miles,” Larson said as the trio approached. “I expect you know Sheriff Gastner.”

“’Spect I do,” Waddell said, and extended his hand. “How’s everything goin’ with you? Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Things are going okay,” I replied. His grip was firm, the skin of his hand rough as an old fence rail. It wasn’t the wiry, redheaded Waddell who interested me just then. I eyed the two men with him. The taller one, going to fat and bundled against the growing November nip in an expensive parka, eyed first Waddell, then me, then Cliff Larson, as if waiting to be told what to do. I had either met him, or seen him a time or two, but couldn’t bring his name to mind.

The other man was shorter than Waddell, a compact bull of a man with a broad face and heavy features. He wore a black baseball cap without logo or insignia pulled down on his head so that the bill was a couple of fingers above the bridge of his nose, military style.

Waddell reached out a hand toward his companions, pointing at the taller of the two first. “Sheriff, this here is Mark Denton. He’s one of my partners.” I shook hands with Denton, and he pumped my hand eagerly. He didn’t look much like a rancher. “Mark lives over in Animas,” Waddell added. “And this is Ed Johns.”

“Mr. Johns,” I said. His grip was perfunctory along with the slightest of nods, but as if an electrical switch had been thrown, the moment our hands touched I remembered who he was. “You still with Catron County?” I knew that he wasn’t, but didn’t recall the circumstances of his parting company with that Sheriff’s Department.

“Nope,” he replied, and let it go at that.

“So what did you find out?” Waddell asked. He thrust his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders, and looked expectantly first at the livestock inspector and then at me. When Larson’s answer was too long in coming, he added, “You know, I talked to Kirk Payne, over in Broadus. We was over there, just a bit ago.”

“And what did he have to say?” Larson asked.

“Well, I think it’d be worth your while to talk to him.” Waddell nodded. “He says that Dale Torrance stopped there Friday morning early, and filled up with diesel. He was pullin’ a livestock trailer, and Payne says that it looked like the kid was pullin’ a load.”

I frowned. “Dale Torrance? And pulling a load of what?”

“Well, cattle, I suppose,” Waddell said, as if the matter were settled.

Cliff Larson glanced at me. “I stopped by the store in Broadus yesterday, askin’ around. Payne told me the same thing. He says it was a load of calves that Dale had.” With a shrug, he added, “Can’t picture young Dale havin’ anything to do with stealin’ stock, but stranger things have happened, I guess.”

“Now wait just a goddamn minute,” I said, and I could feel my blood pressure rising by leaps and bounds. I didn’t like people pussy-footing around me, feeding me only what they thought I should know. I took hold of Cliff Larson’s sleeve. “Show me these tracks.” The others started to follow, and I held up my hand. “Stay put, gents. Give us a few minutes before we track all over every goddamn thing in the neighborhood.”

It wasn’t the truck and trailer tracks that concerned me. Blown sand
might
yield a track cast that
might
be good enough for a bluff, but not for court. I held my tongue until we were sheltered by the mass of the corral and loading chute.

“See, he backed right in here,” Larson said. “Pretty clear. Last set of tracks right there.” He bent down. “Nothin’ on top. That’s the last set.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sure enough. Now listen. What the hell is going on here? You’ve got a whole bushel of things you aren’t telling me, Cliff. What’s this about Dale? What other little surprises do you have going here?”

Larson sighed and glanced back at the three men, now lounging against the front of their pickup. “Kirk Payne says that he saw Dale with a stock trailer, loaded, early Friday morning, right around six o’clock. He was fillin’ up with diesel. Sixty bucks’ worth in cash.”

“And so?”

“I happened to talk to Herb Torrance on Friday, just kind of casual like. Saw him downtown, as a matter of fact. At the bank. He was goin’ in as I was comin’ out. I asked him if they were plannin’ to move any stock, told him that I was goin’ out of town for a few days, and if they needed anything, maybe it’d be good to catch me before I left.”

“And Herb said they weren’t,” I added.

“That’s right.”

“Was this before you knew about the theft?”

“Sure enough was.”

“So you hadn’t talked to Kirk Payne, either.” Larson shook his head slowly. “Did you talk to Dale since then?”

“Not yet.”

“Shit,” I muttered. “Dale would have needed a permit from

you, wouldn’t he? If he had cattle trailered as far away as Broadus…and he was obviously heading somewhere else, since he was fueling up.”

“Yeah, he would.”

“But neither he nor his father received a travel permit from you in the past few days?”

“Nope.”

“Have you talked to Herb since?” I asked, and Larson just shook his head again. Try as hard as I might, I couldn’t see an easy way around it. Maybe there was a logical explanation, but I found myself stalled. “Trouble is, Cliff, we both know Herb Torrance too well.”

“Now that’s a fact.”

The epitome of the hardworking, law-biding rancher, Herb Torrance made a living as best he could in tough, hardscrabble country—and kept his good humor at the same time. I counted him a good friend. We’d had a few hard times with his eldest son, Patrick, a couple years before—woman trouble that had blindsided the boy into making ill-considered mistakes. That had worked itself out.

Dale Torrance was nineteen, I knew, and had decided to work at home, despite his father’s encouragement to take a couple years and see if university life held any attraction. I knew that the boy loved the rodeo circuit, and chasing the silver buckles would keep him flat broke most of the time.

With my hands in my pockets I faced into the breeze, taking a deep breath as if I could smell answers on the wind. “What else?” I asked.

Cliff Larson looked down at the ground and scuffed dust with the toe of his right boot. “The calves are in Lawton, Oklahoma. I know that much.”

“Jesus Christ, Cliff,” I snapped.

“Okay, now here’s the deal,” Larson said, holding up both hands as if to ward off blows. “It don’t take no rocket scientist to figure this one out.” One hand froze in the air and he stopped, taking time to think. “If it was Dale, and I got no reason to think that Kirk Payne wouldn’t know, then he was eastbound with those calves. Broadus is ten miles from here more or less. Gettin’ fuel was just somethin’ Dale didn’t think about. So he goes east.”

“And there’s millions of choices where he could go,” I said. “Why Lawton?”

Cliff grinned. “I learned over time that if there’s a way a relative could be involved, it’s worth it to check that out first. Families just kind of work that way.”

“And there’s Torrance relatives in Lawton?”

“Nope, but there is in Hulen, just a bit south. I called an inspector friend of mine over that way, and asked him to do some checking around. He says word has it that there’s a dealer or two around Lawton who might be persuaded to bend the rules a little.”

“Take stolen cattle, you mean?”

Larson nodded. “He checks to see if there’s any critters that he might call into question, and sure enough. He checks one of the stockyards and finds himself about eighteen head of yearlings with the Waddell brand. That simple.”

“Who is the relative that lives in Hulen?”

“That’s Herb Torrance’s younger sister. She’s married to some farm equipment dealer over that way.”

I heard voices and looked back to see Miles Waddell and his two buddies walking toward us. Apparently their patience was running thin.

“The cattle are being held in Lawton, then?” I said.

“Yep.”

“What’s the timetable for Miles getting them back?”

“Well,” Cliff said, and hesitated. “The livestock is impounded, all right. But feed bills run high. Authorities want us to move pretty quick. They don’t want to baby-sit a herd of cattle if they can help it.”

“I’m sure of that. I wonder what the hell Dale thought he was doing.”

“Beats the hell out of me,” Larson said. “I ain’t got that far yet.”

I smiled at him and shook my head in exasperation. “And you’re taking off to Illinois?”

“Got to,” he said. “No way around it.”

“Around what?” Miles Waddell said as the three men reached us.

“Miles,” I said. “we’ve got a lead that we’re following up. Give us until Monday, all right?”

“Shit, by that time, my stock will be a thousand miles down in Mexico, brands changed to read ‘Lazy Runnin’ Mex’ or some damn thing.”

“I don’t think so, Miles.”

“Well, I tell you what. “We was going down to talk with the Torrance boy. That sure as hell seems like the place to start.”

“Forget it, Miles.”

He looked sharply at me, catching the tone in my voice. “Listen, Sheriff,” he said, “eighteen head of stock don’t come cheap. I ain’t going to stand around with my head up my ass, hopin’ that those calves will kick the boards out of whatever pen they’re bein’ held in and wander their way on home.”

“You’ve got a business to run, Miles. Why don’t you just do that, and let Cliff and me do what we’re paid to do.”

“Look, I’m just sayin’…”

“I know exactly what you’re saying, Miles. This isn’t a hundred years ago. Stealing cattle is a felony. So is transporting livestock across a state line without proper permits.” I thrust my hands in my coat pockets and regarded Waddell for a moment. “And so is playing vigilante.”

His eyebrows shot up at that. “Look, Miles,” I said. “We’ve got us a royal mess here, a royal screwup. You just give us time to straighten things out. It’s not going to accomplish anything to have you three gentlemen bust in on Herb Torrance and his boy with this situation. Let us talk with them. You’ll get your cattle back. Guaranteed. All right?”

“Goddamn yes, I guess it is,” Miles Waddell said. “You don’t have to get so jumpy. I never said anything about playing vigilante. I just want what’s mine. That’s all.”

“Then give us a couple of days. It’s a bad weekend, Miles,” I said. “We’re all just a little bit on edge.”

“If you’re talkin’ about that boy gettin’ killed down in Regal, I heard something about that.”

“So you know,” I said. “Give us a break. We aren’t going to drag our feet on this. Just the fact that I took time out to drive up here with Cliff ought to prove that we’re not about to let things slide.” Miles Waddell ducked his head in agreement.

“We’ll be talkin’ to ya,” Cliff Larson said as the three of them turned to walk back toward their truck. He let out a long breath and groped for a cigarette. “Jesus, Bill,” he said. “Give you the diplomat of the year award.” He snapped his lighter. “You want to go talk with Dale?”

“Now would be a good time,” I said. “What else do I have to do?”

Chapter Seventeen

Larson and I parted company at the Public Safety Building in Posadas for a few minutes. For one thing, if events conspired and we needed to take Dale Torrance into custody, I didn’t want to have to lash him into the back of Larson’s pickup truck.

I also wanted to talk to the undersheriff and bring him up to speed, since he was bound to inherit the whole mess in about seventy-two hours, whether he wanted it or not.

We were still operating on Cliff Larson’s version of “now” anyway, so I rationalized that a few more minutes couldn’t hurt. The truth was that I hadn’t figured out just what to say to Dale’s parents, Herb and Ann Torrance.

I agreed to pick up Cliff Larson at his home later that Saturday afternoon, after I’d had a chance to procrastinate. I knew there wasn’t much point in prolonging the inevitable. The whole affair cost me my appetite, but what the hell. The boy was old enough—hell, he wasn’t a boy anymore, either—to know that what he’d done was not only illegal but stupid to boot. One thing was for sure: he’d be a lot smarter after the Oklahoma and New Mexico courts were through with him.

I surprised myself when I discovered I was musing over the livestock inspector’s job offer. With a fresh cup of coffee in hand, I visited the Sheriff’s Department library—a single small bookcase in the corner of the conference room. I found a 1978 edition of New Mexico statutes Chapter 77 that covered the animal industry…everything from defining what a cow is to what fee to charge for watching a rancher dip his sheep. If the slim collection of statutes rested on the corner of my desk for a while, it might do some good.

Intending to brush up on the statutes that involved the Torrance kid’s transgression, I leafed through a few pages, opening at random to the section on “commuting” sheep. I grinned at the mental image of neatly coifed sheep carrying briefcases, waiting patiently in traffic.

“Sir?”

I looked up with a start. Gayle Torrez stood in my office doorway. “Sorry, sir. But the undersheriff asked if you would come over to the county maintenance barn.”

“I can do that,” I replied, and tossed the book of statutes on my desk. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, sir. He just called and asked for you. And by the way, Catron County returned my call. Edward Johns quit that department in March, ’99. Ortiz said that if he could have found an easy way to fire him, he would have. But Johns just quit. Sheriff Ortiz said that he had an attitude problem.”

“It’s hard to picture Eddie Johns working for Lorenzo Ortiz anyway,” I said. “What’s he doing now, did Ortiz say?”

“The last he heard, Johns was working for University Real Estate in Las Cruces. I called and confirmed that.”

“Real estate?” I frowned, trying to picture Johns showing a two-bedroom bungalow with white picket fence to a newly married couple. Warm fuzzies all over the place. “That’s a start. Thanks, Gayle. And now I need some wheels.”

The only vehicle remaining in our parking lot was an aging Bronco whose transfer case sounded as if it were full of gravel and whose windshield sported a fascinating pattern of cracks. I took it, figuring that if three was a charmed number, the old Bronco was a good choice for something to wreck.

The county barn one block south of Bustos on Fifth Avenue was a bulky Quonset building that overlooked the vast bone-yard of equipment, both functional and long-dead, that kept the county in business.

Puzzled, I parked the Bronco so it joined the lineup of other department vehicles. The confab apparently had moved from Regal to here. The massive roll-up door was closed, so I entered the shop through the white steel door with the single word
OFFICE
stenciled at eye level.

The office included three desks and a variety of bookshelves, with every available flat surface covered in a vast avalanche of junk, from empty coffee cups to reams of computer verbiage to a case of oil filters with an invoice that, before the next week was over, would probably be filed by the gravity system. All of it was untended, but I heard voices out in the shop.

I stepped through the side door that sported the eye-level warning
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Perhaps there were a surprising number of people who wanted to tour the place, hoping to catch a tantalizing glimpse of a county road-grader having its blade changed.

The unmarked county car in which I had been transporting Matt Baca during those almost surrealistic early morning hours was parked in the far west rear corner of the building. It was snuggled between the sorry remains of the marked unit that had been T-boned earlier through young Baca’s efforts, and an elderly dump truck with its uncovered differential in a thousand pieces.

Skirting the yawning lube pit that had been built long before the county could afford a decent hydraulic lift, I made my way across the dark, oily concrete floor. A burst of light exploded inside the unmarked car, followed by another. Undersheriff Robert Torrez saw me and broke away from the party. I saw Tom Pasquale leaning inside the car, and could make out the top of Linda Real’s head where she manipulated the camera.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Sir,” Torrez said. “A couple of interesting things. First of all, did Alan get a hold of you?”

“Alan Perrone? No, why?”

Torrez glanced back toward the two cars. When he turned back, he lowered his voice. “He’s got some interesting preliminaries for us. In a nutshell, he thinks that Sosimo was struck, maybe more than once.” He put his hand on his own belly, just under the ribs. “And he thinks that at least one of those blows may have contributed to the rupture of an existing aortic aneurysm.”

I frowned. “He’s sure?” It was a pointless question, since I knew damn well that the sober, methodical Dr. Alan Perrone didn’t make wild guesses or jump to unfounded conclusions.

“Yes, sir.”

I took a step backward and leaned against the rear tire of one of the county’s tractors parked beside a set of welding tanks. I regarded the polished brass valves of the welder, but my mind wasn’t there. “So very likely there was a struggle in the kitchen, like you said. They bang around, smash the window in the back door, and somehow Sosimo breaks away and plunges outside, taking part of the screen with him. And by that time, if the aneurysm burst, he’s already dead on his feet.” I held out my hands. “And that’s it.”

“Could be.” Bob Torrez’s face was its usual, noncommittal mask, and he waited while I fumbled with the pieces of the puzzle.

“You have thoughts otherwise, Roberto?”

He shook his head. “That’s the way I see it. We just don’t know who was there.”

I thrust my hands in my pockets. “Let me ask you something. I know they’re family and all, but Clorinda and the other ladies…they’re quite a crew. Could one of them be involved somehow?”

A faint smile cracked Torrez’s face. “Sir, my aunt Clorinda can make up some of the wildest stories. But it’s against her nature to hide things, or try and cover-up. I think that if she had to hold a secret for any length of time, she’d explode.” He shook his head. “No, if Clorinda knew anything, she’d tell me. And she’d tell everyone else, too. I really think that what she says happened is just about what
did
happen, as far as she or the other ladies know. Sosimo left the house to find his truck, or just to get away from them…and when he did that, they left the house, too. There was nothing else for them to do there, with everyone else gone. And that’s all they know. They didn’t see Sosimo return. The next time they plug into events is when Elva Lucero telephoned them with the bad news.”

“We’ve got a goddamn fifteen-minute gap, maybe half hour,” I said. “A gap when nobody knows what the hell went on.” I pushed myself away from the tractor and nodded across the building where Linda Real continued burning up film. “And you didn’t call me over here to tell me about Perrone’s findings. What gives with my car?”

Torrez beckoned and I followed him through the litter of hoses, tools, and cartons full of who knows what.

“Deputy Pasquale had an idea,” Torrez said as we reached the front of the car, and he looked sideways at me.

“Oh-oh,” I said.

Pasquale heard us and turned around. He’d been using the roof of the car as a desk, filling out the plastic evidence bag label with a black marker. Surgical gloves clad his hands. He grinned at me and stepped away from the car. The backseat cushion had been removed and leaned up against the wall.

Torrez didn’t add to his explanation, and I looked quizzically at Pasquale. “So tell me,” I said.

“Sir, we were searching the residence down in Regal, and I was going through the couch in the living room, looking under the cushions and what not. It was at that time that I realized that none of us had turned the car.”

“Turned the car,” I murmured, amused at the young deputy’s tendency to turn to Hollywood for his phraseology. The brief flash of amusement was replaced by the familiar sick, hollow feeling of seeing the broken window and having my mind replay the events of the night before. “So what did you find?” I leaned inside. Lying amid five years’ worth of dust and litter was a shiny, plastic laminated driver’s license. Catching the light, Matt Baca’s photo looked up at me.

“I’ll be damned,” I said and glanced up at Linda. She stood by the left rear car door, camera at the ready. “You were able to get all this?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Thomas, you knew this was here before you moved the seat?” I straighted up with an audible popping of joints.

“No, sir. But I got to thinking. It made sense to look every place that Matt Baca had spent some time. We knew that he had some sort of fake ID, and that he had to stash it somewhere. It wasn’t in the house, unless he plastered it inside one of the walls. And he didn’t have time to do that.”

“No fresh plaster,” I said.

“No, sir,” Pasquale said, taking me dead seriously. “And then I remembered that you said that you arrested him when he was lying on the couch. If he had a fake ID, he wouldn’t want to be caught with it. You said that it wasn’t in his wallet, which is the logical place to keep it.”

“That’s where his regular license was—the legitimate one,” I said.

“Yes, sir.” Without the least apology, he added, “When I was a kid and carried a fake ID, I always just slid it into my back pocket. Takes too long to fumble in a wallet.”

“Is that right?” I looked at him with amusement.

“That’s what got me to thinking about Matt. If he had a fake ID, he might just have slipped it into his other back pocket where he could get it easily. If he didn’t do something about it, we would have found it when he was processed for the detention center. And down at his house, he might not have had the chance to slip the fake license out of his pocket just then. You were watching him every minute.” Pasquale looked at me expectantly.

“But he did have the time once he was inside the car,” I said. “Lying on the backseat, with me busy driving. It’s dark, and he’s got lots of opportunity to work out his problem. He sticks it down behind the seat. And what are the odds that anyone would look there?” I regarded Tom Pasquale with interest. “Your prior education is coming in real handy, Thomas.”

Tom’s eyes flickered over to Bob Torrez, who remained studiously silent. “Just outstanding, Thomas,” I said. “Don’t you have to unbolt the seat to move it? It doesn’t just flip up like the seats in the SUVs, does it?”

“No bolts, sir. It just lifts up and out. Takes just a second. No problem.”

I frowned and turned slowly to the undersheriff. “Was Matt smart enough to figure all this out?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Slip the license down behind the seat. And we can take it one step further. Is he smart enough to kick out the window, knowing that the car will end up in the shop? When it does, he can come grab the license.”

Torrez looked skeptical. “I don’t think so, sir. It’s possible, but I don’t think so.”

“Does he know anyone who works here?”

“I imagine he does.”

“Well, then…maybe that’s it. But why run, then? That doesn’t make sense.” I turned to Tom Pasquale. “And you didn’t feel down in there first? Before you moved the seat?”

“No, sir. It’s too snug. And if there was something there, I didn’t want to touch it. I knew that we’d want photos. And I knew that it’d be easy for something to slip down where I couldn’t feel it anyways.” He shrugged. “So that’s what I did.”

I turned and grinned at Torrez, then reached out and took Tom Pasquale by the shoulder to rock him back and forth. “Wonderful, Tom,” I said. “Just outstanding.” I bent over and peered at the license again. “Damn, you’re good.”

“If Linda’s through, let’s get it out of there,” Torrez said, and Tom Pasquale jumped to it as if he’d been stuck with a cattle prod.