Before She Dies (20 page)

Chapter 32

Victor Sánchez watched me pull into the parking lot of the Broken Spur, but he didn’t stand on ceremony. He walked inside using the side door and let it slam shut in my face.

I followed him into the utility room beside the kitchen.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“You snakebit or something?” I said. The utility room was neater than the last time I’d seen it. Victor continued unloading the sacks of paper products that he’d brought in from his truck.

“I’m busy,” he said, his back still turned to me.

“Then I’ll wait until you’ve got a minute,” I said pleasantly. I leaned against the edge of one of the prep sinks and crossed my arms over my stomach. Victor ignored me. While he muttered and arranged—and rearranged—his dry goods, my eyes drifted around the room.

There was nothing unusual, nor did I expect there to be. That’s why what was obviously a rifle barrel arrested my gaze. The gun stood behind the back door, in company with several old brooms and a squeegee-mop. I pushed away from the sink, walked over, and hefted the antique. It was an old junker, one of those single-shot break-open things that cost about $49.95 when they’re new.

I pushed the lever and the breach opened. It was loaded. I slipped the little .22 shell out and turned it this way and that in my hands. It would do to kill a jackrabbit who made the mistake of holding still, or maybe a rattler by the back door.

“That ain’t the gun that killed the deputy,” Victor said.

I turned and looked at him, the shell in one hand, gun in the other.

“I can see that,” I said.

“Leave it loaded.”

I put the cartridge back in the gun and set the weapon down in the corner.

“I got five minutes,” Victor said. “What do you want? Where’s the girl?”

“The girl?”

“The one who works for you. The detective. Reuben’s niece.”

“She’s in the hospital with a broken leg.”

“That’s too bad,” Victor said—and he said it about the same way he’d say, “cut up this bunch of celery.”

“I wanted to ask you about someone else,” I said, and walked back to my leaning spot against the sink.

“Don’t you ever get tired of stickin’ your nose in other people’s business? I’ve got a business to run here. I ain’t got the time.”

“Victor, you’ve got all the time in the world.”

He glanced over at me, his ugly round face framing unblinking eyes. No doubt Victor was a real charmer as a bartender. I could imagine a disconsolate traveling salesman pouring out his heart and soul to Victor during a Christmas Eve drinking binge at the Broken Spur. Right at the climax of the salesman’s sob story, just before he rose from his stool to walk into the restroom to blow his brains out, Victor would say, “Look, you want any carrot sticks or not?”

“I oughta just throw you out.” He said it without much conviction.

I shrugged. “You could do that, I guess. Hell, old and fat as I am, it wouldn’t take much.”

“You people are bad for business.” He gestured toward the parking lot. “That car out there…ain’t nobody going to stop while it’s here. If it ain’t parked there, then you guys sit down at the windmill.”

“Help me put somebody in jail, and we’ll leave you alone,” I said.

“Who are you talking about?”

“I want to know about Tammy Woodruff.”

He laughed a short, harsh bark. “What you think, you’re going to put Tammy in jail, now?”

“I didn’t say that. I just want to know a little more about her.”

“So would every other
tachón
in the county,” Sánchez snorted.

“I know she was a little wild, Victor. That’s why it’s important. She may have known something about the other night,” I said. “Give me five minutes.”

“You could write a book about that
ramerita
.” He pushed a six-pack of paper towels into perfect alignment on the shelf, then stood facing the shelves with his hands on his hips. I didn’t say anything, and finally he turned around and regarded me. “You want some coffee?”

“Sure.”

He walked through the swinging door to the kitchen and I followed. The coffee was a lot fresher and more fragrant than I was used to and I didn’t bother drowning it with milk and sugar.

Cup in hand, he beckoned me out toward one of the dining rooms off the main barroom. We sat down at a chrome-edged table, Victor turning his chair sideways so he could lean against the wall. I turned mine so my belly wouldn’t crowd the table.

“What’s she done now?” Victor asked.

“We’re trying to find one of her boyfriends.”

Victor almost smiled. “You got a good cutting horse? It’s a big herd.”

“So I’m beginning to understand.”

“What’s his name?”

“We don’t know.”

He regarded me with interest. “Not such a good time for you, eh?”

I thought about the last week. Victor was right. “No. Not such a good time.”

He took a sip of his coffee and then lit a cigarette. “Why don’t you ask her?”

“We can’t. She’s dead.”

The coffee cup had gotten halfway to Victor’s mouth before his hand stopped. He didn’t say anything for a long time. I didn’t break the silence. Without taking a sip, he set the cup back down. “How did she die?”

“We think she was murdered, Victor. Up on San Patricio Mesa.” He knew who lived near the mesa as well as anyone.

He frowned and looked off into the distance. Then, so softly I could hardly hear him, he said, “This is bad.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Did you talk with the Torrance boy?”

“Yes.”

“He followed after her with his tongue down to here,” Victor said, and dropped his hand to his crotch. “But that’s not so strange. At one time or another, I think she gave a turn to everyone in the county, except maybe old Francisco Peña.”

“Brett Prescott?”

“Sure.”

“Who was she with Sunday night?”

“I didn’t see her Sunday night.”

“Patrick Torrance was in here then?”

“I already told you he was.”

“And you didn’t see her come in that night? The boy told me that she did.”

Sánchez shrugged. “If she did, it was when I was in back. You could ask my son. Maybe he saw her. She even made a pass at him one time. I told him to mind his own business. He’s too stupid to know any better.”

“Who was tending bar that night?”

“I was.”

“And you didn’t see her?”

He looked at me with remarkable patience considering his temperament, but he didn’t bother answering the repeat question.

“Do you know who drives an older model pickup truck with a wrought-iron stock rack on the back? Pulls a big stock trailer once in a while? Whole rig covered with mud?”

“Half the ranchers in the county, maybe. You want more coffee?”

“No thanks. No one in particular?”

He shrugged. “If I saw the vehicle standing in front of me, maybe I could tell you. Otherwise…” He ground out his cigarette.

“Did you think there was anything unusual about the way Patrick Torrance was acting Sunday night?”

“I didn’t notice.” He looked at his watch. “You know, I got concerns of my own. I don’t pay any attention.”

I didn’t pursue the questions any further. Being the “see nothing, hear nothing” bartender that he was, nothing I could say was likely to jar Victor loose. He could sit on a keg of gunpowder, and when it exploded, he’d say, “You know, I might have heard something, but I couldn’t be sure. I was too busy.”

I left the bar feeling better, though. Victor hadn’t told me not to come back. That was a start.

I pulled out on the state highway from the parking lot and drove south, passing the turnoff to County Road 14. I stayed on the highway as it curved up through the western pass of the San Cristobal Mountains. On the south slope, after a series of switchbacks guaranteed to keep drivers of huge, clumsy RVs alert, the highway swept down through the intersection with State 80 running east and west and finally past the ancient village of Regal.

That settlement, counting twenty-five people on a good day, was a quarter mile off the highway, and the dirt approach road was hard-packed clay and stone. It wound across an arroyo and passed within ten feet of the carved front doors of the IglÉsia de Nuestra Madre. The year 1849 was carved in the cornerstone of the mission, the second oldest structure in the village. An even older mission, now in ruins, lay half a mile to the east, it was part of one of the least visited historical monuments in the state.

Like so many ancient Mexican settlements, the streets of Regal were sunken dirt channels that meandered from yard to yard, with the adobe houses fronting immediately on the byways. If I wasn’t careful, I could catch the front fender of 310 on someone’s porch swing.

As many houses were abandoned as occupied, and they varied from neat, tidy little four-room adobes with steeply pitched metal roofs and brightly painted window trim to crumbling piles of rain-melted adobe blocks with broken windows, shattered door casements, and junk-strewn yards.

I idled up one nameless pathway after another, threading the patrol car right through yards and winter-dormant gardens. And one dog after another joined the chase, escorting me through town.

What few names were posted either above doorways, on long-abandoned mailboxes, or in the small yards were musical and familiar, Martinez, Sánchez, Chavez, Misquez, Hernandez. As I drove by one small house with M. Esquibel on the bent peeling mailbox, I saw an old man making his way one shaking step at a time around the side of his home, eyes glued to the ground, cane placed carefully for each step. In one arm he carried half a dozen sticks of firewood.

He ignored me, perhaps not even hearing the quiet idle of my car’s engine, or perhaps not seeing well enough to catch the motion.

Around the other side of the house was a small adobe barn, remodeled sometime during the current century to serve as a garage. The wooden door was down, making the structure unique. It was the only outbuilding I’d seen in the village whose contents weren’t both visible and spilling out far beyond the confines of the original structure. But it fitted the rest of the yard, neat and tidy.

I watched Señor Esquibel disappear into his house. I didn’t know him, but I was willing to bet he’d been born within a hundred yards of where he now labored to stoke his wood-burning stove.

Parked next to the garage was his wood supply, a stock trailer a quarter filled with split piñon and juniper.

I spent another fifteen minutes in Regal. I didn’t drive over to the border crossing gate less than a mile away. Deputy Howard Bishop had already talked to the officers there, with little success. It was a day crossing area only, with the gates locked at night and no officers on duty after six. The border patrol had the same details on our case as anyone else. They’d be watchful and even helpful when they could.

Easing 310 back out on the paved road, I glanced at the dash clock. Jim Bergin’s Beech Baron would be approaching Gillette, and in another four and a half hours Patrick Torrance would be back in Posadas. Then we’d start constructing a face.

Chapter 33

Deputy Bishop winked the lights of his patrol car at me as we passed on Bustos Avenue. I turned into the small parking lot of Kenny Pace’s Western Wear and waited while Bishop swung around and pulled in behind me.

Howard Bishop was one of those big, sleepy-eyed characters, loose-jointed and tending toward flab. The two major loves of his life were his wife, Aggie, and collegiate football. He’d married Aggie right after the two of them had graduated from Posadas High School. The closest he’d ever come to collegiate football was watching it on television.

“Howard may look like he’s slow, but he’s got a mind like a banana slug,” Sheriff Holman had once said in a rare moment of amused pique. That description was both unkind and untrue. Bishop had an exasperating allergy to paperwork, but generally was an intelligent, honest, fair cop.

He adjusted his Stetson and folded his dark glasses into his shirt pocket before getting out of the car. I walked back and leaned against the front fender of 307.

“Sir, I talked to twelve different people about Tammy Woodruff.”

“Anything of interest?”

Bishop laid his clipboard on the hood of the car and ran his finger down a neatly printed list of names. “These here are the people I talked to. Neighbors, mostly. Seems like Tammy didn’t have too many close friends. Except whatever cowpoke she was going out with at the moment.”

“Who are the boyfriends?”

“Torrance and Prescott most recently. But Jane Ross—Tammy’s boss when she was working at Ross Realty?—Mrs. Ross says that Tammy talked a lot about some guy she’d met down in Cruces during the half year she spent at the university.”

“That’s not surprising. And she was in Cruces more than two years ago.” I knew that Tammy Woodruff’s work and school record had been as checkered as her romance list. She’d briefly tried a dozen or more occupations before evidently deciding that the best career for her was living off her father’s incomprehensibly soft heart—at least until a suitable, deep-walleted boyfriend could be found. “Who were Tammy’s girlfriends?”

Deputy Bishop looked puzzled. “She was spending all her time chasin’ the boys, sir.”

“She has to have a girl friend, Howard. Someone for girl talk. We know that wasn’t her mother. And the odds are good that if she does have a best friend—girl friend—then there’s a well of information there.”

“I don’t know,” he said dubiously.

“Start with the high school yearbook for the year they graduated. Look at the pictures in the activity section. Maybe rodeo club. Who the hell knows. Talk to Glen Archer. He’s been at the school ten years or more, so he was principal the year Tammy graduated. See who her girl pals were. And then see if she was still hanging out with one or more of ’em.”

I silently cursed the bad luck that had put Estelle Reyes-Guzman in a wheelchair. She could talk information out of a stone, and in a tenth of the time it would take the other deputies. As I watched Howard Bishop ease his county car back out onto Bustos Avenue, I wondered if I had been focusing on the right set of tracks. I sat in 310 with the door open for a few minutes, watching the light traffic of Posadas.

Sheriff Martin Holman had talked to the Woodruffs the night of Tammy’s transfer from crushed truck to ambulance to helicopter, as had Sergeant Torrez. The couple had been hit hard by their daughter’s death, and since those terrible moments had been holed up in their Posadas Heights home.

A scant twelve hours had passed since the first rap on their front door by Martin Holman. Twelve hours wasn’t enough time to think about the healing process—that would take months, even years. But Karl and Bea Woodruff might be able to think again, if someone with a light touch talked to them.

I closed the door of 310 and headed for the hospital. When I arrived, Estelle Reyes-Guzman was helping Linda Real deal with the reporter’s bizarre mother. Mrs. Real had decided it was an appropriate time to visit and complain. She glared balefully at me, but didn’t repeat her earlier litigious threats.

Estelle agreed with my suggestion, and Robert Bales, the hospital administrator, suggested we use his office. I went home, showered, shaved, and donned a fresh uniform. And then I drove across town to Karl Woodruff’s home.

I hadn’t seen Woodruff since the two of us had talked in his drugstore Monday. When he opened the door, he looked like his own father. Dark circles under red eyes, drawn cheeks, blotchy, pale complexion—even his hair looked more heavily streaked with gray.

“Bill,” he said, and held open the storm door.

“Can you give me a few minutes, Karl?”

“Of course.” He beckoned me inside.

After he had shut the door, I put my hand on his shoulder. “Karl, is Bea here?”

“She’s resting.”

“It’s really important that we talk with you both, Karl.”

His brow furrowed and he looked at his watch. “We’re expecting some relatives from out of town before long.” He managed a smile. “You picked the one time when the place hasn’t been full of neighbors. I had to shag everyone out so Bea could have some peace and quiet.”

“I understand. And I know it’s not a good time for me to be here, either. I wouldn’t be bothering you folks if I didn’t think this was important. What we really need is to talk with both you and Bea. Detective Reyes-Guzman and I.”

“Oh,” Karl said, and it came out as more of a groan, the kind of noise he might have made as he pulled out a really deep sliver.

“We have an office we can use at the hospital, if you would.”

“The hospital?”

“The detective was injured last night. She’s in a wheelchair and can’t travel yet.”

Woodruff frowned and looked at the floor. After a moment, he shook his head and half turned away. “Give me a few minutes,” he said, and walked across the living room toward the hallway.

Five minutes turned into ten, and just about the time I was looking about for a comfortable chair, Woodruff reappeared.

“Can we meet you there in twenty minutes?”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll be happy to drive you down there and back.”

He smiled faintly. “That won’t be necessary.”

The couple had their own private sense of time, because it was more than an hour later when Karl and Bea Woodruff settled into the leather chairs in Robert Bales’s office. Estelle Reyes-Guzman had drawn her wheelchair up near one of the large brown hassocks and propped her leg cast up. That and having a checkered afghan loaned by the hospital auxiliary draped around her shoulders made her look frail and vulnerable.

Bea Woodruff winced as she looked at Estelle’s plasterwork, arm sling, and forehead stitchery. “You should be home in bed,” she said. I saw her back straighten a little as she focused on someone else’s troubles.

Estelle smiled and reached out a hand, taking Bea Woodruff’s in hers. “I’m fine,” she said. “Really.” She leaned forward in the wheelchair, still holding Bea’s hand. “Mr. and Mrs. Woodruff, we have reason to believe that your daughter’s death was not accidental.” The room fell silent and Karl and Bea’s eyes were locked on Estelle. Tears flowed down Bea’s cheeks, but she ignored them, letting them drip off to make tiny dark blotches on her blue linen dress.

“We feel that there is no way, no physical way, that Tammy could have driven up that road as far as she did, given the level of intoxication in her blood that the medical examiners believe existed.”

Again, the couple remained silent. “Mr. and Mrs. Woodruff,” Estelle said, “we believe someone was with your daughter Sunday night and again on Monday. Someone she knows. Perhaps someone she had come to trust.”

“What can we tell you?” Karl Woodruff asked. “I mean, who would do such a thing?”

“That’s what we need to know, sir,” Estelle said. “Do you know Patrick Torrance?” Estelle’s voice was almost a whisper.

The Woodruffs nodded, and Karl started to say, “But he’s…”

“We don’t believe Patrick Torrance had anything to do with your daughter’s death, Mr. Woodruff. I know it looks that way, with the crash happening on County Road 14 on the way to the Torrance ranch. But the evidence just isn’t there. We also have heard that Tammy had been seeing Brett Prescott.”

Karl Woodruff nodded. “We thought well of him, too. And I’ve known the family for years. Surely…”

“Can you think of anyone else she was seeing?”

Bea Woodruff leaned back into the dark leather and rested her head, eyes closed. Karl sat hunched, his hands covering his face.

“I hadn’t seen my daughter for three weeks,” Bea Woodruff said finally. She rocked her head from side to side. “Three weeks. We had some stupid…some stupid little argument, and she wouldn’t come over to the house.” The woman groped toward her purse, and Estelle leaned over with a box of tissues.

“What was the argument about?”

Bea Woodruff honked, dabbed her eyes, and waved a hand in dismissal. “You know. One of those silly things. I had talked to Jane Ross—she and I are such good friends—and Jane agreed to offer Tammy another chance at the realty. You know, I always thought that Tammy would be so good at that. She’s so good with people, you know.” She leaned her head back again and closed her eyes. “I just mentioned it to Tammy, and she exploded. Such a temper she’s always had. Told me to stop meddling. That she didn’t want to earn a living ‘selling land to fat, rich Texans.’ Those were her exact words.”

“And that was three weeks ago?”

The woman nodded. Estelle looked at Karl. He was working his hands as if he had a ball of putty between them.

“Sir, do you know anyone else with whom she may have been associating?”

Karl shook his head. “I learned a long time ago that Tammy and I could stay on the best of terms if I didn’t pry,” he said softly.

Estelle shifted in the wheelchair, moved her leg a fraction, and then cradled her face against a fold of the afghan in her right hand. She looked like a little kid.

“Who was Tammy’s best friend?” Estelle asked. Both of the Woodruffs looked puzzled. “Her very best friend.”

“You mean, like a girlfriend?” Bea asked, and Estelle nodded.

“During high school, for example. I know she was popular, but most youngsters have got one person as a friend who’s special above all the others.”

Bea almost managed a smile. “Oh, she and Elena Muñoz were inseparable since ninth grade. And oh, that Elena. Do you know her?” She looked at Estelle. “I think her parents are from Mexico.”

“I know her parents,” I said, and both of the Woodruffs snapped around as if they were surprised to discover that I was in the room.

“Well,” Bea said, “she was a wild one, I guess. You’d never guess it to look at her. Little slip of a thing. Beautiful hair down to her waist. Face like an angel. But she hated school, my goodness how she hated school. She skipped so much during her sophomore year that they finally suspended her.”

“That makes sense,” I said.

“Doesn’t it, though,” Bea replied. “And she never went back. Then Tammy started to skip. Half the time she was with Elena, and who knows what troubles the two of them together could concoct.”

“And after Tammy graduated?” Estelle asked.

“No one, really. Not that I’m aware of,” Bea said. “I know she still spends time with Elena. I saw them coming out of one of the clothing stores a week or so ago as I was driving by. They had their heads together, giggling like a couple of little kids. I remember because I’d been feeling so badly for her…for Tammy, I mean. I so wanted her to be happy. And I saw her that day, and she looked so carefree, so radiant.” Bea leaned her head to one side, eyebrows arched as she reminisced. “Packages in one hand, arm-in-arm with a friend.”

Mrs. Woodruff began to cry again, and Estelle covered the woman’s left hand with her own, and a handy tissue. I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable with this recitation of the Woodruff family scrapbook. Estelle caught the agitation and shot me a quick look of impatience. I folded my hands on my lap.

“Do you know where Elena Muñoz works now?”

Bea shook her head, but Karl Woodruff replied, “She works at the Laundromat on Bustos and Second.”

“We may want to talk with her at some time,” Estelle said. “Had Tammy been drinking more recently?”

The abrupt change of subject startled Bea Woodruff and she glanced over at her husband. His eyes remained locked on the parquet floor tile.

“I don’t think more…” she started to say, but Karl interrupted.

“A
lot
more,” he murmured.

“How do you know?” Estelle asked, and somehow she kept any accusatory tone out of her voice.

“I could smell it from time to time, on her breath. When she came into the pharmacy. I saw an open bottle once in her truck.” He shrugged helplessly. “Of course, I should have said something.”

“What did she drink, mostly. Beer? Hard liquor? Maybe scotch, vodka, things like that?”

Woodruff nodded. “What difference does it make now? Beer, wine. She was particularly fond of rye whiskey.” He snorted. “The cowpuncher’s drink, I guess. I don’t know for sure what she liked or didn’t like other than that.” He looked up at Estelle, into those wonderful dark eyes. “She drank to excess. We know that. And it killed her. We know that, too.”

“Sir, would you look at this list? These are the items that were found in the cab of her truck at the accident scene. Either in the cab or in the immediate area.” She slipped a single sheet of paper out of her leather folder and handed it to Karl Woodruff.

He read the list and grimaced, then made a little whimpering noise as he looked away. “Jesus,” he said, and handed the list to his wife.

Bea Woodruff read the list and I saw her jaw quiver.

Estelle leaned forward. “Sir, we know that there is no way that Tammy was able to consume all that alcohol and still operate a motor vehicle. She would have been unconscious.” She reached over and indicated one of the items on the list. “A couple of six-packs, maybe. A few shots of rye, as you say, maybe at the Broken Spur on the way. But half a quart of vodka on top of everything else? Not someone her size. It would have put her in a coma.”

I saw the muscles of Karl Woodruff’s jaw clench. “She wouldn’t have drunk that stuff, anyway.”

“Sir?”