Dead Weight (3 page)
Dr. Arnold Gray dropped me back at the modest flat-roofed two-story structure that Posadas grandly called its Public Safety Building. As I walked inside, a trash can by the pay phone reminded me that my first inclination, to tear the anonymous note into shreds before it could do any damage, was probably a good one. The whole idea of someone sanctimoniously tapping out a little message that could ruin either a career or a life made my stomach churn.
But I wasn’t naive, either. In a department with a dozen employees, there was always an off-chance that one of them wasn’t as pure as the driven snow.
When I walked in, Gayle Torrez glanced up from her desk. Hell, I’d known her since she was a skinny twelve-year-old. She’d started working for the Sheriff’s Department when she was eighteen, had been with us for a decade, and was now married to Undersheriff Robert Torrez. If the note rang true, was she in on the scam? Was he?
I dropped the white envelope in my center desk drawer and slammed it shut until I could figure out what to do about the damn thing. After taking a minute to straighten my face so the anger wouldn’t show, I strolled out to Dispatch. Gayle was on the phone, the pencil in her right hand doodling little spirals on the scratch pad. Every once in a while, she’d stop spiraling and the pencil point would tap a few times on the pad as she listened.
“Sure,” she said. I leaned against one of the black filing cabinets and waited. The pencil tapped another series. “Sure.” She nodded. “I know it does.” I took a deep breath and looked off into the distance. “Let me pass it on to the village for you. Maybe they’ll listen to me.” Gayle sat patiently through another long string and nodded as if the nod were carried over the wires. After a few more noncommittal pleasantries, she hung up.
“Another dog,” she said, jotting in the big logbook by her elbow. “You’d think it would be too hot to bark.” She looked up at me. “What’s wrong, sir?”
“Wrong?” I asked.
“You looked peeved,” Gayle said.
“The damn car, I suppose,” I replied, and she accepted that with an understanding nod. I pushed myself away from the filing cabinet. “I need the dispatch logs for last month.”
“Just June’s?” She reached across to the steel bookcase under the window and pulled a slender black volume off the shelf. I took it and started back to my office.
“No calls for a while, all right? And when Bob comes in, I’d like to chat with him.”
“He’s home right now if you need him,” Gayle said.
“No,” I answered quickly and shook my head. “Just whenever he comes in this afternoon is fine.” Gayle didn’t ask what I wanted with the dispatch logs, my privacy, or her husband, and I felt better. Gayle Torrez worked hard at being the best dispatcher I’d ever met, making her a perfect match for her husband. Undersheriff Torrez worked the four-to-midnight shift, as well as twenty or thirty other odd hours during an average week. He avoided the boredom of working the day shift whenever he could.
Back in my office, I slumped back in the cool of my old leather chair, swung my feet up on the corner of my desk, and browsed through the logs. The volume included April, May, and June, and I concentrated on the last month, assuming that if there was any validity to the charge against Pasquale, the incident that had precipitated the note would be a recent one, not something from the distant past.
The logs were simple, black-on-white abbreviations of any activity that included radio conversations with the patrol officers. But their nebulous character could be frustrating. On June 3, for example, an entry read:
18:36, 303, 10-10.
That was followed by
18:59, 303, 10-8.
Deputy Thomas Pasquale’s vehicle was 303, and at 6:36 p.m. civilian time, he had announced that he was out of service, at home, no doubt engaged in something as exciting as eating a sandwich. Twenty-three minutes later, he was back in service—and there was no way to determine from the log where he was or what he was doing.
After studying the log for half an hour, I looked at my legal pad jottings. During the twenty-two days that he had worked in June, Deputy Pasquale had called in 137 requests for vehicle registration checks…the sort of routine action a deputy took when he stopped an unfamiliar vehicle for a traffic infraction or because something in the driver’s manner had piqued his attention.
A rate of six or seven registration checks a night was average. On one extreme was Undersheriff Torrez, who might request one check a week; on the other, rookie Deputy Brent Sutherland, with us for three months, whose idea of a good time was running routine checks at three in the morning on cars parked in the Posadas Inn parking lot, down by the interstate.
Of Pasquale’s one hundred and thirty-seven registration checks, one hundred and two were on vehicles stopped on one of the four state highways that cut up Posadas County like a little withered pizza. That was logical, too, since the state highways carried the most traffic.
I frowned. If my numbers were right and my bifocals didn’t lie, eighty-four of the traffic stops were logged on New Mexico 56. That particular ribbon of asphalt, at the moment damn near liquid under the fierce sun, wound southwest from Posadas across the two dry washes that New Mexicans loved to call rivers, up through the San Cristobal Mountains, to plunge south through the tiny village of Regal and then into Mexico.
My frown deepened, even though State 56 was the logical route for traffic stops. The snowbirds flocked up and down that route, either headed for who knows what in rural Mexico or turning westward at Regal, headed to Arizona. The only highway to carry heavier traffic was the interstate, but for the most part, deputies stayed off that artery, leaving it to the state police.
The anonymous note claimed that Pasquale was shaking down Mexican nationals, and at first blush State 56 would be the logical highway for that activity, were it not for the border crossing a mile south of the hamlet of Regal. That crossing was open from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., with the stout gate securely locked the rest of the night. Foot traffic was no problem, if travelers didn’t mind a little barbed wire. Vehicular traffic was out of the question.
If the Mexicans were crossing in Arizona, then ducking east through the mountains, 56 might be a logical route. I ran the numbers for April and May and found comparisons that differed by insignificant percentage points. Deputy Pasquale was consistent, if nothing else.
“And so what?” I said aloud.
I tossed the yellow pad on my desk, dropped the log on top of it, and leaned back, eyes closed. After a moment I picked up the log again. Deputy Tony Abeyta shared the swing shift with Pasquale and Torrez. Ten minutes later, I knew that Abeyta made forty-six traffic stops in June, barely two a night. Only eight of them had been on State 56.
There were explanations for that, too, but trying to crunch numbers only made me impatient. I was no statistician—and on top of that, I didn’t believe that statistics would give me the kind of answer I wanted.
The conundrum was simple. If Tom Pasquale was innocent of the charges spelled out in the note, he deserved kid-glove handling. He would need all the help I could give him. He didn’t deserve to lose sleep over the charges; he didn’t deserve the beginnings of an ulcer…In short, he didn’t deserve what some slimeball was trying to do to him.
If, however, Tom Pasquale was guilty of using his badge, uniform, and gun as magic wands to create pocket money, then he deserved every ounce of the world that would come crashing down around his ears. And I’d be the one to kick the globe off its pedestal.
I left the office before Undersheriff Torrez came in, assuring Gayle that what I wanted wasn’t important and that I’d catch him sometime later in the evening. I took the unmarked car and drove home, drenched with sweat by the time I pulled into the driveway.
Inside, I sighed as the silent coolness of the old adobe seeped into my bones. No thundering swamp cooler, no whining refrigerated air—just musty coolness seeping out of the old twenty-four-inch-thick walls that rested in the shade of enormous spread-limbed cottonwoods.
While a fresh pot of coffee dripped, I leafed through the mail that I’d picked up earlier in the day and then ignored. All of it could remain ignored for a while longer. For several minutes I sat with elbows on the counter, chin propped in my hands, staring out across the dark sunken living room while the coffee trickled into the urn.
Whoever had written the goddamned note had already accomplished part of his goal. Without any hints of ownership, the note just sort of floated there in the ether, generic typing on generic paper. All I knew for sure was that the author wasn’t the world’s hottest speller or grammarian.
But the young deputy’s name had been mentioned, and I found myself trying to imagine whom Deputy Pasquale would stop and when he’d make the decision that the driver was an easy target, how he might twist the screws, and what he might do with the money.
If I drove over to his house, the one about which Carla Champlin was building a head of steam, would I find a flashy new boat in the yard, a fancy new truck parked in the driveway, and Deputy Pasquale sitting there on the porch sipping imported beer and wearing a new pair of snake-hide boots? Maybe he’d make enough scam money to pay for some water, at least making his landlady happy.
With disgust I bit off a curse and poured myself a cup of powerful coffee. With that in one hand, I juggled the telephone off the cradle and punched the auto dialer for the office. Gayle Torrez answered.
“I’m going to be occupied for most of the evening, Gayle, but I’ll have my phone with me, if you need anything.”
“Yes, sir. Did you need to talk to Robert? He’s right here.”
“No, that’s all right. Ernie’s on Dispatch tonight, right?”
“Yes, sir. He’s here, too, if you need to talk with him.”
I almost said,
“I don’t need to talk to anybody,”
but instead bit it off and settled for, “No, that’s fine. Just pass the message along. Have a good evening.”
I refilled my cup, snapped off the coffeemaker, and ambled through the cool maze of rooms to the inside door leading to the garage. The Blazer was tucked in between towering piles of junk that I’d never gotten around to sorting, and I grunted into it, careful not to nick the door against the aluminum stepladder.
As the garage door spooled open behind me, the engine kicked into velvety life, and I felt better. By the time I had enjoyed a massive burrito dinner at the Don Juan de Oñate Restaurant, the sun would be on its way toward the back side of the San Cristobal Mountains. Things would start to cool down.
I could drop the windows and idle around the county in the cool of the night, listening and watching. If I was really lucky, I wouldn’t find a damn thing.
I backed out carefully, made sure the garage door lowered solidly into place, and turned out on Escondido, past the trailer park by the interstate and then northbound on Grande. I hadn’t driven more than four blocks before I saw the white-and-blue Posadas County patrol car coming in the opposite direction.
It flashed by, already well over the posted speed limit. Undersheriff Robert Torrez was behind the wheel, and he glanced my way at the same time the radio in the Blazer barked twice. I lifted a hand in salute, wondering why I had been expecting that it would be Deputy Thomas Pasquale, heading south toward State 56.
The Don Juan was quiet, and I slid into my favorite booth, the one whose window looked out across the parking lot toward the San Cristobals to the southwest. The blinds were turned to ward off the evening sun, and I could feel the heat through the glass. Bustos Avenue stretched flat and hot east-west, bordering the restaurant’s parking lot. Traffic was light.
I picked at my food, my irritation growing by the minute. I had time to dig my way through about a third of the Burrito Grande when my privacy vanished as Sam Carter appeared around the service island.
“Damn, he was right,” he said, and advanced until he was staring down at my burrito plate.
“Hello, Sam. Who was right?”
“Your dispatcher. Ernie Wheeler. He said odds were good that you’d be here.”
“And sure enough,” I said. “Pull up a chair.”
He slid into the booth, hands clasped in front of him, just like Dr. Arnold Gray a few hours earlier. It wasn’t yet six, and Carter’s Family SuperMarket hadn’t closed for the day. I was surprised to see Sam out and about, mingling with the public. He ducked his head, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing, and glanced back the way he’d come.
“You being followed?” I said, but he didn’t take it as the joke I’d intended. His eyes widened for just a second, and he leaned forward. The waitress appeared by the service cart, hand reaching for the coffeepot. I caught her eye and shook my head. She nodded and vanished.
“What’s the problem, Sam?” I said. “Two county commissioners in one day in this same booth…that’s something of a record for me.”
Sam Carter’s narrow face crumpled up in a grimace, as if he was genuinely sorry to have to talk to me in public…or in private, either, for that matter.
“Somebody sent me an anonymous letter,” he blurted out, and his hand darted for the inside pocket of his limp blue seersucker jacket.
With anyone else, I could have made a wisecrack about the man cheating on his wife or not paying mounting gambling debts or something of the sort. But Sam Carter’s life was a mess, and both he and I knew it. His senior cashier had filed a complaint against him a couple of months before, charging him with making obscene phone calls to her home after she’d refused his amorous advances at the store.
I knew the woman and somehow found it hard to imagine the weasel-thin Sam Carter, semibalding, with a mouthful of perfect false teeth, bending the stout, frizzy-haired matron backward over the sour cream display while he attempted a quick, passionate smooch.
Taffy Hines had complained and even been brassy enough to sign her name. Estelle Reyes-Guzman, my chief of detectives at the time, and I had talked to old Sam and pointed out to him the error of his ways…and made it clear to him what a field day the
Posadas Register
would have if the story ever went public—which it would do if he didn’t button his mental trousers.
As far as I knew, he’d behaved himself since then, but our relationship had turned a touch chilly. When the previous sheriff had died in a plane crash, Carter had talked me into taking the post until after elections—but that was not because of any love for me on his part. Next in line was Estelle Reyes-Guzman, and the county fathers weren’t about to accept a young Mexican as the first woman sheriff of Posadas County. They needn’t have worried, since that’s not the way the cards were stacked, anyway.
Still, there was no trace of gloat in his expression when Sam Carter pulled the white piece of typing paper out of his pocket. I knew what it was before he handed it to me but took it nonetheless, looking at it as carefully as I had at the first one.
I read it through, wondering how many copies the author had printed.
“What do you think?” Carter asked.
I took a deep breath and pushed my plate off to one side. “It’s enough to give me gas, I’ll tell you that much.”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
I looked at him for a long minute, then said, “I don’t guess I am. One of your brethren got a copy and shared it with me earlier in the day.”
“You mean one of the other commissioners?” he asked, and I nodded. “Which one?”
“It probably doesn’t matter,” I said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if all five of you got the same thing. Photocopies are cheap. You have the envelope?”
“Envelope?” he said.
“I assume it came to you in an envelope?”
“No…well, yes. It did. I didn’t even think about that. I’ll look for it.”
“That would be helpful.” I scanned the message again, and if my memory served me correctly, it was identical to Gray’s.
“Well,” Carter said, and watched as I carefully refolded the letter and placed it on top of my hat. “What do you think?”
I shrugged, hoping I looked far more casual than I felt. “It’s always welcome when concerned citizens give us these nice little tips,” I said, and smiled.
“This is serious, though,” Sam Carter said.
“Of course it is.”
“If this got out, it’d be a real mess.”
“Yes, it would. Did you show this to anyone else?”
He shook his head vehemently.
“But I tell you,” I said, and then stopped to take a deep drink of my iced tea, “it’s going to be all over the front page before we’re through, no matter which way it goes. The last thing we’re going to tolerate is a crooked cop…or someone writing libel about honest cops. We’ll find out which way it falls, and then you watch the headlines.”
Sam Carter leaned forward a bit. “You can’t just sort of…” and his voice trailed off as he made little chopping motions with his right hand. I didn’t have a clue what he was trying to suggest, and I didn’t want to pursue it.
“No,” I said. “I can’t. That’s not the way I work.” I smiled again, without much humor.
Sam reared back as if he’d seen an apparition seated across from him, maybe Don Juan in person. “You think someone would…” He stopped in midthought.
“Maybe they would, and maybe they wouldn’t,” I said. I pushed myself out of the booth, dropped a ten-dollar bill beside my plate, and patted Sam Carter on the shoulder as I stepped past him. “I try not to think too much at all these days, Sam. You take care.”
