Scavengers (29 page)

She lifted it carefully by the wooden stock. The scope was loose, perhaps jarred in the fall. The gun’s caliber, .44 Remington Magnum, was stamped on the barrel. She turned the gun over and looked at the hammer. Sure enough, it was tucked under the body of the scope difficult to reach. The small part that would have made it easier to use was tucked in an evidence bag in Posadas.

Chapter Thirty-nine

“Do you have a minute?”

Estelle looked up to see Sheriff Robert Torrez standing in the door of her office. With the clock ticking at double speed before Benny Madrid’s arraignment that afternoon in District Judge Lester Hobart’s court, a sea of paperwork still needed to be processed and a dozen phone calls returned—including one to a federal prosecutor in Las Cruces who’d taken an interest in the border-crossing exploits of the Madrid brothers. Whether he was going to queue up with Mexican authorities to wait his turn was still open to question.

“No, but that’s okay,” Estelle replied. She saw the dark circles under Bob Torrez’s eyes, but knew that his fatigue was nowhere near as consuming as his disappointment at missing the final chase. Isidro Madrid had simply run the wrong way, and the sheriff had been left to protect Lucy and Wally Madrid from their duct-taped, cuffed, and hobbled son in the bathroom. “Your office?”

Torrez nodded. “You need a break anyway,” he said.

She patted him on the arm as she slipped past him. “
I
need a break, Bobby? You look like you qualify for the walking dead yourself.”

“Tomorrow at this time, we’ll all be wondering what to do with ourselves to stay busy,” he said. “What’s the word on Isidro, by the way? Did Francis know yet?”

The moment that the Posadas EMTs had sliced off Isidro Madrid’s fancy running shoe and released the sea of blood and gore, it was obvious that it would take more than a Band-Aid before Isidro would be able to limp into his court arraignment.

“He’s working with Brownell, the orthopedic surgeon from Deming,” Estelle said. “The general consensus is that Isidro’s heel bone is never going to be as good as new. ‘Dusted it’ is the way Francis described it.”

“Good shot, then. You should have aimed a bit higher, though. Saved us all a lot of work.”

“The thought crossed my mind.” She followed him to the cubbyhole down the hall that he called his office. She was surprised to see Tom Pasquale sitting like a schoolboy waiting for the principal. Torrez motioned Estelle to the remaining chair and closed the door. The small office was stuffy, smelling of old leather and aftershave.

“Did you have a chance to read this yet?” Torrez picked up a folder from his desk and handed it to Estelle.

“Yes, I did.” She leafed through Eurelio Saenz’s deposition, four pages of single-spaced typing. Deputy Jackie Taber had been thorough, guiding the young man through the narrative, from the moment he had made the foolish decision to sell the .44 magnum carbine to his second cousins. Maybe the long, sorry tale had helped to keep his mind off the fire of the cactus thorns and the battering of his ribs. “The
azote
loosened his tongue, at least.”

“Maybe that’s what we should try on Isidro,” Torrez said.

“Believe me, that thought crossed my mind, too.”

Torrez laughed. “That’s what Tom tells me.”

“He’s right.”

Torrez hooked his hands behind his head and leaned back. “Benny’s a good singer, though,” the sheriff said with satisfaction. “He’s telling us what we need to know. I think he hopes the DA is going to cut him a deal if he sings loud enough.”

“He’s dreaming.”

“True. But…” He stopped and held up his hands. “The little bastard can always hope. He says that he stayed in the
taberna
when Isidro took Rafael and Lolo out to test drive the old pickup truck. Isidro and Benny had convinced Eurelio to sell the truck to the boys, do you believe that? Benny says he never went along for the test ride. He says that both he and Eurelio stayed in the bar, and that when Isidro came back, he told him that Rafael and Lolo didn’t want the truck after all, and that they’d hooked a ride home with someone else.” Torrez puffed out his cheeks. “And Benny believed him when Isidro said he slipped jumping out of the back of the truck and cracked his head on the bed rack. Next he’s probably going to tell us that he slept through the whole thing with Eurelio out there on the desert.”

“It would be tough to sleep through something like that,” Estelle said.

“For sure. Anyway, what I wanted to talk to you about…remember I mentioned some time or other that Tom had some interesting information about the Popes?”

Estelle’s eyebrows lifted with curiosity. She had no recollection of that particular conversation in the great flood of events during the past few hours. The fire at Eleanor Pope’s seemed a year in the past.

Torrez took that as agreement and said, “You remember in the hospital I said that I had some interesting news for you that was going to make you want to arrest somebody?”

Estelle nodded. “Yes.”

“Collins is working on the insurance deal involving the Popes.” He turned to Pasquale. “Tell Estelle what you told me,
Tomás
.”

Pasquale cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably on his chair. He hadn’t spoken a word since Estelle and the sheriff had walked into the office—something of an accomplishment for him, Estelle reflected. In fact, he had studiously avoided opening his mouth, trying to blend in with the institutional green of the painted heater duct behind him. “Well, my motorcycle, you know?” he said, beginning in midthought.

“Your motorcycle?”

He cleared his throat again and leaned forward, forearms on the padded winds of the chair. “Yeah. You know, that big bike I bought from Tom Mears. When I first got it, I had a bank loan on it for a few months, and in order to do that, the bank required collision insurance.” He held his hands out, palms up. “That was costing me an arm and a leg. So”—he looked embarrassed—“I borrowed a thousand bucks from Linda so I could pay off the loan. That way, I could drop the collision. Anyway, that’s what I did.”

He straightened in his seat and took a deep breath. “Then I happened to run into George Enriquez, and he said that he could cut me a pretty good liability policy for the bike that would save me some money. That he had an insurance company in his pool that gave bikers who qualified pretty good rates.”

“Bikers who qualified,” Estelle echoed.

“That means you have to own a bike,” Torrez quipped, and Pasquale looked even more uncomfortable.

“And so that’s what you did? You went with him? You dropped your collision with…”

“Arizona Mutual. Yeah, I dropped the whole thing with them and went with this company that Enriquez suggested.”

“That was NMI?”

“No. Some other company in his pool, he said. I guess I didn’t pay much attention. Anyways, Collins was lookin’ through what he could find of the Popes’ financial papers and couldn’t find anything on insurance. The Popes had their cars insured with Enriquez. He found the insurance cards in the glove box of Eleanor’s car. When they went through her checkbook, they found a check for a payment dated about three months ago. But they apparently didn’t have home owner’s insurance.”

“What’s this have to do with your motorcycle, Thomas?” Estelle asked.

“Well, see—” He hesitated. “Linda talked with Mrs. Pope not too long ago, down at the insurance office. She remembers Mrs. Pope commenting about how everything is going up,
including
her home owner’s. But it turns out that Mrs. Pope didn’t have home owner’s with his agency,” Pasquale said, as if that cleared things up.

Estelle frowned. “So what are you telling me?”

Pasquale shifted again. “Well, I don’t have any paperwork that shows I have insurance with Enriquez, either. I mean, I got a proof of insurance
card
for the bike. Enriquez’s secretary typed that out right there in the office when I took out the policy. Enriquez gave me a statement sheet that showed my payments, and said I’d be getting the regular policy from the company in a couple of weeks.”

“And did you?”

The deputy shook his head. “Never got one. Nope.”

“Did you check with Enriquez about where your policy might be?”

“No.” Pasquale examined the nail of his left index finger. “It wasn’t something that I was too concerned about.”

“So where is all this leading?” Estelle said. She glanced up at the clock above the file cabinet. What she wanted more than anything else was a nap about 36 hours long.

“Well, I got to thinking,” Pasquale said, and Estelle saw Robert Torrez’s boot shift as the sheriff toyed with interjecting something. He let Pasquale continue. “What would be the point of burning down your own home if you didn’t stand to collect some insurance? Denton Pope was sure up to something, but what did he stand to gain if there wasn’t insurance? I mean, what was the point?”

“Murder comes to mind,” Estelle said.

“Maybe he was tired of life with mother,” Torrez added. “If he was trying for a tricky homicide, he succeeded. Or suicide, in this instance.”

Estelle sat silently, looking at Pasquale. But it was clear that the gush of words had subsided. “Why don’t you just call up Enriquez and say, ‘Hey look, George, I need a copy of my motorcycle insurance policy. I’ll be over this afternoon to pick it up.’ Wouldn’t that be the simplest thing to do?”

“I was going to do that,” Pasquale said hastily. “I just got to thinking, is all. Like about the check.”

Estelle sighed and glanced at Torrez. “The check?”

“Well, when I got the policy, I asked for comprehensive coverage as well as liability, and Enriquez said it was expensive, but he’d see what he could do. He called me in a day or so and said that he’d been able to add it to my policy—”

“Which you don’t have.”

“Right. And I was glad I went ahead and bought it, ’cause remember that wind storm we had in early January? That wasn’t more than a week after I took out the policy. The wind took a limb off the elm tree in our front yard and that blew into my bike and bent the gas tank. I called Enriquez to see if my comprehensive covered it, and he had a check out to me that afternoon. A hundred and seventy bucks.”

“And that’s bad?”

“Well, no. I thought it was pretty cool. But when I’m thinking about it here recently, I remembered that it was a personal check. Not from the insurance company. Not from Enriquez’s company. It was one of his own personal checks. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I was just glad to get the money, you know.”

“George Enriquez paid you with a personal check? On an insurance claim?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I don’t suppose that you kept a copy of that check?”

Pasquale made a face. “Ah, no. I didn’t. I cashed it, and that was that.”

“Rates go up?”

“Pardon?”

“Did your insurance rates go up after that?” Estelle couldn’t repress a smile.

Pasquale hesitated. “Well, I guess they did, a little. Enriquez sent me a new schedule. But don’t they always?”

Estelle rubbed her face wearily. “Ay.”

“What are you thinking?” Torrez asked.

She sat for a long moment with her eyes closed, head bowed.

“Thomas, when you make your monthly insurance payments, how do you do it? Where do you send the check?”

“To Enriquez’s office.”

Estelle looked at him without lifting her head. “Where’s the
bill
come from?”

Pasquale looked puzzled. “The bill?”

“The bill, Thomas.
La cuenta
. Someone has to bill you.”

“Well, that’s another thing, see. He told me that with the kind of no-frills policy that he wrote me, the paperwork would be faster if I just paid his office. So I do.”

“Once every six months, or what?” Estelle knew what the young deputy was going to say before he opened his mouth.

“Well, no. It’s due by the fifteenth, each month.”

“Do you make out the check to him, or the insurance company?”

“I just write it to him. George Enriquez, CLU.”

“So you never receive mailings from National. No bills, no policy, no nothing.”

He shook his head. “Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

Both Torrez and Estelle laughed. “Yes,
Tomás
, it makes me wonder,” Estelle said. “It makes me wonder why you don’t call National’s regional office, wherever that is, and ask if you have a policy with them.” She smiled from the nose down. “That’s sort of an investigatory thing to do.”

She saw the flush creep up from Pasquale’s collar and felt a pang of sympathy for him. “And just imagine,” she added kindly. “You’re busy, you’re smart, you even work with the law all the time…and you step into something like this. Imagine Denton Pope and his run of luck. His grand plan was all for nothing, if he was after insurance. If George Enriquez was holding a fake policy, collecting every month from Eleanor, all he had to do was deny that she had a policy after the fire.” She held out an empty hand.

“So what do you think?” Torrez asked again.

“I think,” Estelle said, pushing herself out of her chair, “that Tom needs to make a discreet call to his insurance company’s regional office and find out the simple answer to his question. If there’s no policy on record, he could ask casually if there’s such a thing as a discretionary policy that the agent writes himself. And if the answer to that is no, and we all know that it will be, then we go from there. And you’re right, Bobby, the district attorney is going to be very interested. We would need to contact the state Attorney General’s office for some guidance in this.”

“There’s not just going to be these two cases,” Torrez said.

“No. Indeed not. What works once isn’t tried just once. Folks like to keep a good thing going,” Estelle said. “We need to move carefully. If the Popes thought they had insurance, but really didn’t…and Thomas thought he had insurance and really doesn’t…” She shrugged. “There’s no reason to believe that they’re the only two complaints. If George Enriquez has himself a little insurance scam going on the side, it’ll be interesting to find out how many people got suckered in.” She glanced at Pasquale. “Sorry, Tom.”

“So what should I do?”

Estelle smiled at him. “Well, you’ve got about this much paperwork to do for the Madrids.” She held her hand four feet off the floor. “We’ve got around-the-clock security at the hospital now, in two different rooms, to make sure that Isidro doesn’t hobble down the hall and jerk out Eurelio’s tubes. I’m sure you’ll take your turn at duty. If you can find time in all that to give your insurance company a call, then that’s the first step. If they say you have nothing on file, then maybe you could saunter on down to George Enriquez’s office and casually ask for a copy of your policy. I’d be interested to hear what he has to say.”