Nightzone (9 page)

Chapter Ten

It wasn't just “one more time,” and by the third recitation, my blood pressure had spiked and my hands were clamped tightly enough that I was in danger of squeezing the arthritis right out of them.

Lieutenant Mellon had found himself a bone, and he wasn't about to let it go. I knew the drill, though, and took several deep breaths to help wait it out. He was entirely justified, and I knew it. I didn't have to like it.

“When you first drove by the scene, Sergeant Taber was issuing some sort of verbal commands,” he said slowly.

“It appeared so.”

“You had time to drive a few feet, turn your vehicle in a U-turn on Grande, and then pull into the parking lot of the motel.”

“Yes.”

“And on top of that, you had time to pull to a complete stop, and then get out of the vehicle.”

“That's right.”

“How many seconds was that, do you suppose? The whole episode.”

“Not very many. A few.”

“A
few.”
Mellon tapped the pad. “And it wasn't
until
you arrived and got out of your vehicle that Mr. Baum brought the shotgun to bear, and then fired the single shot. Until that time, Sergeant Taber had control of the situation.”

“Control? You don't know that, I don't know that, and I wouldn't be a damn bit surprised if the sergeant didn't know that either. Had she not
seen
a weapon, or heard confrontational language of some sort, there would be no reason for her to back away, hand on gun in a defensive posture. If Mr. Baum had piled out of his RV waving his hands and obviously perturbed, the scenario could well have gone down differently. The fact that Sergeant Taber appeared to be at the ready, hand on weapon, indicates that she perceived a clear threat.”

Mellon mulled that for a few seconds and jumped to another road. “I understand you tend to spend the nighttime hours out and about. In fact, I'm told you even witnessed the incident out on the prairie where the young man was killed after cutting a power pole.”

“Yes. From twenty miles away, if you want to call that witnessing.”

“How did that happen, exactly? You on top of the mesa…pretty desolate place for one o'clock in the morning.”

“There is no law, or even code of behavior, that dictates where and when I have to be anywhere,” I snapped.

Mellon smiled and held up a placating hand. “So you're out in the boonies, just looking for something to occupy your time. At one o'clock on a February morning.”

“You should try it. It's good for the blood pressure.”

He ignored that. “When you saw the flashes of light, you immediately drove down the mesa, alerting dispatch as you did so?”

“Not immediately, no. I watched for a while. When it became apparent that there might be a prairie fire, and when I saw a vehicle headed northbound that
could
have been at the scene, yes. Then I called the S.O.”

“Why did you feel you needed to do that?”

I took a few seconds to frame my answer, then replied, “Something had obviously happened out on the prairie. There appeared to be a vehicle speeding away from the scene toward town. That's what I reported to dispatch. The whole scenario deserved a look by somebody.”

“By you?”

“No. I just sort of gravitated toward town. I was starting to feel the chill a little, and a cup of coffee seemed like a good idea.”

“You weren't headed out to investigate those flashes of light?”

“Hell, no. I figured that if the incident actually turned into something—which it did, obviously—that investigators would want a deposition from me. Which they did.”

“At what time did you decide to drive out to the electric-line site to see for yourself, then?”

“I didn't decide that. Sheriff Torrez asked me to.”

“He was where at the time?”

“On west Bustos, out at the scene of the Kenderman shooting.”

“And you arrived there shortly after the event.”

“Yes.”

“Now who asked you to go
there
? To the site of the officer's shooting?”

“No one. I went on my own. By that time, I was listening to dispatch, another deputy had responded, and I knew something had gone down. As it turns out, I was probably the only person to see the suspect's truck northbound from the power-line site, heading into town. I told dispatch he was headed toward town, and dispatch asked Officer Kenderman to intercept. So…” I let the rest of it go. Had I not called the sheriff's office, Officer Kenderman might still be alive. But that's not the way it worked.

“I see. And hours later, as you were heading home after a very long night, you see another deputy in what you assume is jeopardy, and you stop to render assistance.”

“Sure enough. Except I wasn't heading home. I was on my way out to talk with a rancher friend of mine.”

“But a long night before that, nevertheless. And yet you claim that you don't roam the county at night actually
looking
for…” and he waved his hand in the air, “
episodes
that might demand your attention.”

When I didn't answer, he carefully laid the BIC down again and folded his hands. “Sir?”

“I roam when and where I please, Lieutenant.” If I clenched my jaws any tighter, he would have heard enamel chipping. “I go out at night because it's more pleasant than lying in bed alone, staring at the goddamn ceiling. That's one of the joys of insomnia, Lieutenant.” I took a long, slow breath. “The very fact that at one o'clock in the morning, I was sitting on a favorite rock way the hell and gone on top of Cat Mesa, looking at stars and thinking great thoughts, would indicate that I wasn't looking for ‘episodes' demanding my attention. On the other hand,” I said, and then stopped, choosing my words carefully. “If I happen upon something, upon some situation that demands response, I don't like to think that I would hesitate to render whatever aid I could until the appropriate authorities arrive.”

Dan Schroeder shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. “Bill, when you drove by the motel parking lot, was Sergeant Taber out of her vehicle?”

“Yes.”

“But at that moment, there was no other officer anywhere in the vicinity. At least to the best of your knowledge.”

“That's correct.”

“Huh,” the district attorney grunted. He shook his head. “You have a sheriff's radio in your personal vehicle, do you not?”

“Yes.”

“But it wasn't turned on?”

“No.”

He frowned and spun his pen between two fingers. “Was there any way for you to tell whether or not the sergeant had walked over to the RV and engaged in an argument of some sort with the driver?”

“I don't think so. There wouldn't have been time. I never actually saw her approach the RV, counselor. Not during the brief time that I could see her as I drove by. She positioned herself toward the front of her Expedition. That's what I saw her do. By the time I turned around and then arrived in the parking lot myself, she was putting space between herself and Mr. Baum. That's what she's trained to do when there's a threatening situation with a weapon involved. So no. I don't think she'd had time to walk over to the RV.”

“Could the discharge of the shotgun have been an accident?” Mellon asked.

“Doesn't matter to me,” I said. “He had it pointed for action, that's all I know. If he was worried about firearm safety, the gun would have been unloaded and in a gun case back under his bed. But it's obvious to me that he brought it out to use it, loaded and locked and ready to go.
That's
what counts.”

“Before this incident, you were eating breakfast at the Don Juan, weren't you.”

“Yes.”

“Again, alone?”

“No.”

“Who was with you?”

“Miles Waddell, a local rancher.”

“Ah,” Mellon said. “You two discussed the investigations currently underway down at his property?”

“We did not. He knows better, and so do I.”

“What did you talk about?”

“That would be none of your business.”

The wrinkles around Mellon's ice-cube eyes deepened a touch. “Just a companionable breakfast with old friends.”

“Correct.”

“And all this at the culmination of a long, difficult night.”

I had had worse nights, but I couldn't recall the exact circumstances. I remained silent.

“Let me remind you of what people are going to think,” Schroeder said, the politician's side of him finally surfacing.

“I don't care what they think,” I snapped, but the district attorney held up a mollifying hand.

“I'm sure you don't, Bill. But with the circumstances…” He pushed his legal pad a few inches away as if it were beginning to smell. “They're going to see you as out hunting something to do. First you arrive on the scene of the fatality down by Waddell's—”

“No, I didn't. I called in curious activity from a vantage point on a mesa-top twenty miles from that power line. By the time I was
sent
to the scene by Sheriff Torrez, several regular officers were already there, including Undersheriff Reyes-Guzman. I had stopped at the scene of Kenderman's murder, but didn't get out of my vehicle. And then,” and I held up a hand to fend off the district attorney's poised remark, “I was assigned to talk briefly with Frank Dayan, which I did, telling him essentially nothing. Okay? Then I went to have some goddamn breakfast, and shared a table with Waddell. I then intended to visit a project of his out on the mesa. I was following him out of town, in point of fact, when I stepped in the middle of the Baum incident. Now, I
could
have looked the other way when I drove past the scene of Sergeant Taber's traffic stop, but I didn't. I'm not wired that way.” I straightened a crick out of my back and tipped the empty coffee cup, hoping that more coffee had somehow generated itself from the trace of sludge.

“As
you
well know,” I directed at Mellon, “when someone fires a shotgun at a peace officer, or at anyone else for that matter, you don't just stand there with your head up your ass, waiting to
see
if the creep is going to fire again. You don't politely ask him what his intentions are.
If
he had dropped the gun and locked his hands on top of his head, I wouldn't have fired. He didn't do that.” I picked up the coffee cup as I pushed my chair back, rising stiffly. “Somebody in this place has to have some.”

The opening door damn near knocked the cup out of my hand. Sheriff Torrez loomed, tagged shotgun in hand. I was surprised to see Torrez, since as far as I knew, Kenderman's killer was still on the loose, and that would be priority one with the sheriff, not monkeying around with Baum's duck gun.

“Fresh one.” He nodded at the coffeemaker behind dispatch.

I held my cup up toward the others, but apparently they were interested only in business. By the time I returned to the conference room, Mellon was examining the shotgun. The sheriff had stood the gun upright, recoil pad on the conference table.

“Estelle happened across this.” Torrez's remark was directed toward me, barely more than a whisper. He reached over and pulled the charging lever back sharply. Hesitating only a second for all of us to see that the gun was empty, he released the bolt and let it slam forward. Had there been rounds in the magazine tube, one would have been chambered.

Lifting the shotgun six inches straight off the table, he held it thus for a moment, then let it slip to thud against the wood. The click of the internal hammer falling was loud.

“Screwed up somehow,” he said. “It don't take much of a jar to set it off.”

“Wear and tear?” I asked.

Torrez shook his head. “Don't think so.” He turned the gun and pointed at first one screw and then another. The screw slots showed signs of an ill-chosen screwdriver, the buggered metal in sharp contrast with the rest of the gun's choice condition. “Joe Hobby got in there, is what I'm guessin'.”

“Could that damage account for it?” Schroeder pointed at the butt stock just behind the receiver where one of my rounds had gouged the wood and removed the shooter's right thumb at the same time.

“Don't think so. Anyways, it's something we'll look at,” Torrez said. “He's got other problems, too. Late-stage pancreatic cancer, for one thing. Docs say that his odds are slim and none.” He looked at me as he hefted the shotgun off the table. “Your shots maybe will speed up the process a little. That's about all.”

“Have you talked with his son yet?”

Torrez shook his head. “CYF is goin' into that right now. It's a mess. All we know is that Baum picked up his granddaughter in San Diego where she was living with her mom. Took her from the neighborhood daycare. They were headed to El Paso where the son lives. Maybe. CYF hasn't found him yet as far as I know.”

“Did Mr. Baum know that he has pancreatic cancer?” Schroeder asked.

“Yep. He was under treatment by the Cancer Center down in El Paso. Until last week, when he skipped his chemo treatment and headed out on his own.”

“Stupid, stupid,” Schroeder said in wonder. Then he frowned. “I want the son—what's his name?”

“George Baum.”

“George—I want him in custody ASAP, Sheriff.”

“We're workin' on it,” Torrez nodded. “Maybe stupid runs in families. He shouldn't be hard to find.”

“What's Nathan saying, anyway?” Schroeder asked. “Did the son put him up to this or what? Is this just a wild ass stunt to break the daughter's custody of the child?”

“Don't know. Baum's not in any condition to talk with us yet. He's still under.”

The district attorney glowered at the table, shaking his head slowly. “Is this one of those suicide-by-cop deals? You think that's what he wanted? He knows he's caught, so…”