by Don Travis
Today it was a town of somewhere around 9,000 souls that served as the seat of Cibola County and the gateway to the El Malpais National Monument and the El Malpais National Conservation area. El Malpais translates into the Badlands, a name reinforced by a vast area of black lava spewed from volcanic eruptions. New Mexico was conceived in violent contractions of the earth’s crust and born in pyroclastic flows.
Eighty or so miles after leaving Albuquerque, I exited the highway via Ramp 81 and picked up Santa Fe Avenue, the town’s main drag. The Harper home, a redbrick pitched roof similar to but a little larger than others in the neighborhood, sat on a broad, manicured lawn on East Sargent Street. Melanie must have been keeping an eye out for me because she exited the front door with a small basket on her arm, locked the house behind her, and crawled in beside me as I watched from the driver’s seat.
“Cag’s at work. We’re meeting him there,” she announced without preliminaries.
The attractive, stuccoed El Malpais reception center occupied the high ground at Exit 85 at the west end of town. Melanie sent me scooting for one of the shaded tables in a picnic area while she disappeared inside. A moment later she headed for the table I’d selected, trailed by her tall, hirsute husband. The mustache and patriarchal beard were his most noteworthy attributes, as they were when I first saw him in Albuquerque. His uniform lent him an air of authority missing back then.
I liked Cagney Harper the moment he opened his mouth to say hello and gripped my hand in a firm shake. Belhaven must have been prejudiced against facial hair if he failed to get along with this fellow. We spent a few minutes discussing sites of note in the immediate vicinity: Acoma Sky City, the Ice Cave and Bandera Volcano, El Malpais itself, El Morro National Monument, and a host of others within a couple of hours’ drive. I was familiar with most, which put me up a notch or two in his estimation. Before long I was comfortable enough to broach the question of his father-in-law’s attitude toward him.
“I wasn’t good enough for his daughter.”
Melanie hugged his arm. “Little did Dad know.”
“He thought Melanie should have married a doctor or a lawyer, not a BLM slug.”
“Supervisor slug,” she put in.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it,” he replied. “I didn’t have anything against him. What father ever figures his little girl’s marrying up to her potential? But he was so obvious about his feelings, it was just easier to skip the family functions.”
Neither of the Harpers objected to my prying into their daily lives. I looked for things suspicious and patterns that might clue me to something hidden. What emerged was the picture of a man devoted to his work and his woman, and a woman totally wrapped up in her man and his work. She had been a homebody until recently when she took an afternoon and evening job with a local store. He’d recently started working part-time at a grocery store. Their circle of friends tended to be restricted to neighbors and people Cag worked with.
Both of the Harpers taking on jobs struck me as odd but began to make sense when we discussed their children, a boy and a girl, both college age. Cagney Jr. attended Virginia Military Institute, while Marcie was in her freshman year at the Grants’ campus of New Mexico State. It was probably simple-minded prejudice on my part, but I associated military institutes with “salvaging” young men and women who had taken a step or two down the wrong path.
“Why did your son decide on VMI?” I asked.
“We encouraged him,” Cag answered.
“Disciplinary problems?”
Melanie spoke up. “My Aunt Lucinda suggested the school might be good for him. And her husband was able to get Cag Jr. enrolled.”
My questioning the couple about their son’s choice of school was the only time I sensed any dissembling. I didn’t push things. Hazel would be able to find out if the boy was ever in legal jeopardy.
I left Grants with an invitation to return and join Cag on the two-and-a-half-mile Gooseberry Springs Trail to the top of Mount Taylor. Standing at around 11,300 feet, the mountain was the southernmost of the Navajo’s four sacred mountains. They call the peak Tsoodzil, meaning Blue Bead Mountain or Turquoise Mountain.
I CALLED the office on my hands-free phone on the drive back to Albuquerque to ask Hazel for a more thorough search on the Harpers, including their offspring. She’d already found signs of financial distress in the family, despite Cag’s decent-paying job as a midlevel manager with BLM and Melanie’s trust fund from her mother. She also informed me she learned they’d hired an attorney to expedite the payment of Belhaven’s insurance policy.
By the time I arrived back in the office, Hazel had located a juvie record on the Harper son. Strangely, it wasn’t sealed. Charlie had friends in police departments all over the state—including the GPD—and learned the two charges were drug related. Possession for personal use. Cag Jr. apparently contracted a heroin habit. This explained why he was a year older than his sister, but both were freshmen in college. The son had been in rehab.
Charlie’s cop friend painted a broader picture, which explained why the juvie record was no longer sealed. The kid, a budding and promising athlete, got in over his head and stole from his parents to support his habit. Still unable to pay for his drugs, he’d been pressured into dealing, which was a separate, more serious charge. The boy required trips to three different centers before he was able to claw his way back to sobriety. I asked Charlie to find a licensed investigator in Lexington, Virginia, to check on Cadet Harper.
SATURDAY MORNING I decided to go to the downtown office where I could spread all the case files out on the conference table in order to go over details one more time. I’d no sooner gotten settled than Gene made a rare appearance in the office. I usually went to him or lured him out of APD headquarters with the promise of a meal, but here he was, bigger than life.
“This is a rare honor.” I indicated a chair in front of my desk. “What’s the occasion?”
“Can’t a guy have a chat with his old running buddy?”
“A man can, but he doesn’t very often. What’s up?”
Gene got up and closed the door even though we were alone in the office. “Morale, that’s the problem. Has Guerra said anything to you?”
“Not to me. I don’t know about Paul, but I can ask.”
“I told you a while back we might be having a Department of Justice investigation. Way things are going, I’d bet on one sometime next year. The department’s down 10 to 15 percent. Hard to fill new academy classes.”
“Bad publicity or bad pay?” I asked.
“Some of both. City canceled some promised raises, and that hasn’t helped. We’re competing with pretty big departments for officers. Denver, Phoenix. And they pay better than we do.”
I shrugged. “We all suffer through hard times.”
“Says the man with a trust fund.”
“Trust funds suffer along with everything else when things go bad.”
“Twelve million bucks would have to suffer a hell of a lot before you’d even notice,” Gene said. “At least police shootings are down.”
I asked about the police chief. “What about Huddleston?”
“He’s tired of it all. Trying to decide whether to bow out now or to see it through the investigation. He’d like to go now but probably needs to stay and protect his ass.”
“That would be my assessment,” I said. “How about you. You solid?”
“So far as I know. And my position will be a little bit stronger. My promotion’s approved. Becomes official first of the month.”
“Great. CID?” I asked, meaning the Criminal Investigations Division.
He nodded.
“That’s commander rank. Acting or permanent?” I asked the question because temporary rank was often assigned until a new department head got some time under his belt.
“Permanent, thanks to Huddleston. His parting gift.”
“Not a bad one. When’s the celebration?”
“Not till after I’m settled in the office. I’ll let you know. Anything new on Belhaven?”
I filled him in on the visit to the Harpers in Grants. He promised to do an official records check on each member of the family. I prompted him to do the same thing for Harris.
“I’ll ask around the Grants PD about the Harpers,” he said as he got up. “I know a couple of guys over there. Maybe they can add something about young Harper’s situation.”
He got back to me sooner than expected, but it wasn’t about the Harpers. He called Monday morning to say that Wick Pillsner had been shanked in the Metropolitan Detention Center.
Chapter 22
I YELLED an explanation to Hazel on the way out the door. According to Gene they’d taken Wick by ambulance to the University of New Mexico Medical facility on Lomas. On the drive up the hill to the university, I pondered what this meant for my investigation of Belhaven’s murder. Maybe nothing; maybe everything. I reached Paul on the hands-free to let him know what was going on and cautioned him to watch his back. If an unknown someone was closing doors behind him, he had an awfully long reach to penetrate the detention center. Still… better safe than sorry.
Wick’s family stood around the waiting room as I joined Gene and a uniformed officer whom I took to be a detention center cop. Gene cleared my arrival with a “he’s okay” endorsement to the sergeant, whose name tag read Ryan. The man continued his explanation of what happened.
“Like I said. Pillsner was in the shower. A detainee entered the area, walked straight over to him, and stabbed him in the back with a homemade shank without saying a word. We hustled Pillsner here to UNM immediately.”
“Who was the perp?” Gene asked.
“Lowlife loser. Not too bright. Name’s Lanigan. Elmer Lanigan. Three-time loser waiting for trial on felony assault and rape charges.”
“Any idea what prompted the attack?” Gene asked.
“Lanigan claimed Pillsner made a move on him. Said he didn’t put up with that shit.”
“You believe him?” I asked.
The sergeant shrugged. “At this point I got no idea. Coulda been a beef of some kind. But there’s no complaints about Pillsner molesting or propositioning other prisoners. Except for Lanigan’s.”
“He could’ve been paid to do it,” Gene said.
“Anything’s possible. Lanigan was locked up before Pillsner arrived and hasn’t had any visitors, but another inmate mighta brought word to him. The man’s not all there.”
“How’s Wick?” I asked.
“Still on the operating table,” Gene said. “According to the doctor we talked to, he suffered two wounds high on his back delivered with moderate force. Neither are believed to be life-threatening, but they won’t know that for sure until they finish with him.”
We waited another hour before a medic showed up to deliver the news. He came to us first because his patient was in the custody of the police. Wick would recover. He was to be housed in a secure area of the hospital until he could be returned to the detention center. We could not talk to Wick because he was still under the effects of anesthesia. The surgeon left us to go talk to the injured man’s family.
We remained long enough to watch the family’s reaction to the doctor’s news. Once the surgeon left, Wick’s wife, Virginia, gathered her children around her and talked to them quietly. As Gene and I walked through the waiting area to the parking facility, Virginia Pillsner stopped me with a hand on my arm.
“This is your fault, B. J. Vinson. All your fault.”
Gene, who was right behind me, stepped between us. “No, ma’am. This is Wick’s fault. Nobody else’s.”
Once outside I assured my old partner I was okay and not suffering from guilt or remorse. His comment was right on the mark. Wick was a murderer and a thief. I simply happened to be the one who found him out.
GENE ALLOWED me to watch the interrogation of Elmer Lanigan with him at APD headquarters. We observed through a two-way mirror as Sergeant Don Carson, who succeeded me as Gene’s riding partner after I was shot, faced the accused assailant. As Don went through the preliminaries of Mirandizing and identifying the inmate, I studied the human wreck sitting opposite him. Although the man declined a lawyer, Gene was cautious enough to make sure a public defender sat in on the interview.
“Do you know why you’re here, Mr. Lanigan?” Don opened.
“Cause I shanked the queer son of a bitch—”
“Mr. Lanigan,” the lawyer interrupted.
“Shut up. Anybody can see I done nothing wrong. Evil’s got no right being in the jail house with me and my friends. He wanted to do me, so I done him first.”
“What do you mean by do you?” Don asked.
“Don’t answer—”
“You know, put his hands all over me, and God knows what else.”
“Why didn’t you just report him?” Don asked.
“He dissed me, man. Nobody disses Elmer Lanigan and gets away with it. But everything’s all right. I checked it with God first, and he said to go for it. Put the unnatural fornicator down. So that’s what I done.”
“The Lord told you to do it?” Don asked.
“Clear as day. Just like he told me about that pervert in Kansas City back in ’09.”
“Mr. Lanigan!” the public defender exclaimed.
Lanigan came up out of his seat as far as his manacles allowed. “You shut up and get outta here! You don’t, I’ll figger you’re dissing me too.”
“He stays, Mr. Lanigan, and for the record, I recommend you listen to what he has to say. But tell me about this man in Kansas City.”
Between interruptions by the public defender, Lanigan calmly told of killing a man he’d picked up in a gay bar for the fifty dollars the victim carried. Then he told of another attack in Denver a year ago. With difficulty Don brought him back to Wick.
“When did Mr. Pillsner proposition you, Elmer? Can I call you Elmer?”
“Sure,” Lanigan said before screwing his eyes half-shut and glaring at Don. “You do it with respect, you can. But not like that beer guy. He said it with a sneer.”
“Beer guy?”
“Yeah. You know, the Pilsner man.”
“You mean Detainee Pillsner. When did he disrespect your name?”
“Night before I paid him back.”
“What did he do?”
“Asked me if I was any kin to Elmer Fudd. You know the dick with the shotgun always trying to blast the rabbit. But old Bugs Bunny is too sharp for him. Just like this Elmer was too sharp for the beer guy.”
Now I knew why Lanigan stabbed Wick, and it had nothing to do with an indecent proposal. Nor was he a hitman controlled by some unknown hand in the Voxlightner scandal. Hardwick Pillsner might have the moxie to run with the movers and shakers of New Mexico, but he wasn’t equipped to survive a prison environment.
THE NEXT morning Roy Guerra let Paul and me know John Pierce Belhaven’s finances showed considerable funds lodged with Garrick Investments… not his son’s brokerage house. Since Jim Garrick was my own stockbroker, I strolled over to visit him. His firm occupied the building on Third and Gold that formerly housed the local Merrill Lynch office, a four-block jaunt from my own locale. Jim greeted me enthusiastically, but not—as it turned out—because he managed my trust. He was pleased over the outcome of the Voxlightner mystery.
“Damned good work, BJ. I never accepted Barron had anything to do with scamming his family and friends.”
“A lot of people had trouble with that. Pleased things worked out okay.”
“Except for Wick, maybe.” He shook his head. “Hard to believe it about him too. But if I’m honest, it’s easier to see him in that role than Barron. It’d be like a game to Wick.”
“Murder’s a pretty grim game.”
“I figure he got in too deep and did what he thought he had to do. Wrong as hell, but that’d fit his mind-set, I reckon. Heard about what happened to him. He gonna be all right?”
“He’ll
survive the attack.”
Jim’s mouth went south in a frown. “Maybe this one, but if he gets what he deserves, he’ll be spending a lot of time in prison. Hope he learns how to behave there.”
“Wick’s got a lifeline. He knows how to make money. Once he settles down in a permanent cell, he’ll get another scam going. That’ll either make him a bigwig in the prison or get him killed for real.”
“BJ, I hope you’ll have the Christian grace to tell him that.”
“I think that message is already delivered.”
Jim felt comfortable enough with me to discuss some of the details of Belhaven’s business without disclosing confidences. He confirmed a lawyer was already probating the estate. Sufficient withdrawals had been made to satisfy Thackerson’s and Spears’s portion of the inheritance. And as I’d already learned, the estate’s administrator had also approved disbursals to both Melanie Harper and Harrison Belhaven. Jim let me know without saying that the amounts were modest pending the settlement of the estate. That was doubtless a lifeline to the Harper side of the equation… and likely provided needed relief for Harris as well.
As he had little else to say on the matter, I left and walked back to my office where I found Roy and Paul waiting for me.
“Find out anything new?” Roy asked after we were seated at my small conference table.
I relayed what little I’d learned and asked about their morning.
“Seems Harper Jr. was in more trouble than we thought,” Paul said.
“The lieutenant asked me to do a deeper background check on the kid,” Roy explained. “What we already knew was right. He’d been busted for heroin, but what we didn’t know was he got in a shootout with his dealer.”
“A shootout? With guns? Any bodies in the street?”
“Nobody was that good of a shot. When Cagney Harper Jr. couldn’t pay his bill, his supplier turned him into a dealer. The problem was, Harper kept dipping into his merchandise and getting deeper in the hole. Things came to a head when the dealer said he was going to put Harper’s sister on the street to cover Junior’s debt. The kid freaked and went after the dealer with his dad’s handgun. Traded some shots. Nobody got hit, but that brought everything out into the light and probably saved Harper’s life. Forced him into recovery.”
