A Foreboding Felony
by
Constance Barker
Copyright 2019 Constance Barker
All rights reserved.
Similarities to real people, places or events are purely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Thanks for Reading
Chapter One
One Dead Indian
A hot breeze came from the desert to brush gently over her face as she stared at the short man with thinning hair who shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Sure, I know the dead guy,” he said. “I recognized him right away.”
Officer Terri Johns of the Ruidoso Downs Police Force wasn’t having the best day she’d ever had, although it was, in a perverse way, a significant one. The man lying face down on the sand was her first dead body she'd had to deal with in her career. That part made it kind of exciting, if a little spooky. She had point on the case too, which meant she’d get to follow the investigation to its end. But this could’ve come on a day when she didn’t have a mandatory meeting with her son’s school principal. The call had been terse, but the secretary said it was about marijuana and that was unsettling. What the heck was Sandy, her kid, doing getting caught smoking pot? That didn’t seem like him. Pot still wasn’t legal in New Mexico, except for medical marijuana, which meant him getting caught smoking it could mean a lot of trouble for both of them. She hoped it was just a screw up, that maybe he covered for someone. Even that would still be serious, of course. There wasn’t getting around that.
Terri took out her notebook and copied down the man's information from his driver's license and handed it back to him. “Is he a friend of yours?”
“Not really. We just worked together on and off.”
“Over there?” She nodded her head in the direction of the race track.
“Sometimes."
Getting information was like pulling teeth. "What kind of work do you do?"
"Odd jobs, whatever is needed,” the man, whose name was Bill said. He spoke with a shrug. “Me and him worked a few construction jobs around town. We were grunt labor.” He pointed into the distance. “We helped build the new Walmart—that was good work for a couple of weeks." He seemed proud of it. "Of course that was a year ago.”
“So you found him lying here, just like this?”
“I called it in, didn’t I? The operator said I had to wait for you to get here, and here I am. I don’t want no trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
His eyes flicked from one side to the other. “No kind.”
“When I check the database, will I find out you have a record, Bill?” She asked the question in a kindly voice, beginning to understand his nervousness.
“Yes’m. I did time for a couple of robberies. I'm on parole.”
Given that his honesty saved her chasing that down there was a chance he was telling the truth about the rest of it. “What were you doing walking way out here?” she asked him. She looked around. “What's out here besides sand?”
He pointed down the sandy road toward a desolate looking trailer. “Home. I live over there. I finished mucking the stables and was heading home.”
“That’s your trailer?”
“I rent it from the stable manager.”
She nodded. “What can you tell me about the dead man?”
“Jake?”
She glared at him. “Is that his name?”
“It's what I called him."
"What else do you know... about him?"
He looked off into the distance and ran a hand through his thin white hair. “He used to be a farrier.... one of the folks who took care of the horses’s hooves.”
“I know what a farrier is,” she told him. That information didn’t help much, but she wrote it down. It might lead to something. Besides, she didn’t have any other leads to pursue at the moment. Bill didn't know beans, but she was killing time while she waited for the medical examiner to arrive. He was still en route from Ruidoso. “I know what a farrier is,” she said again.
“I just meant that he worked for himself.”
“Not a track employee?”
“Nope. Just for different horse owners. He was doing okay until track management brought in a blacksmith service company.”
“So they cut out the freelancers?”
“Yup. They said it gave them better quality control. We figured it was more about profit. Thing is, then Jake had to scramble like the rest of us, taking whatever work there is around.”
“Can you tell me anything about him that might be helpful? Like do you know where where he lived, or maybe what tribe he is from?”
“Oh,” he said. “No. I always assumed he was an Apache. That’s a just guess though. He never said.”
“What kind of Indian is named Jake?” Officer Johns asked, not expecting an answer. She’d moved here from Kansas five years ago, right after the divorce. In that time she hadn't had a lot of dealings with the Indians, except for arresting a couple of teens for shop lifting, things like that. The tribe had its own police force to deal with crimes on the reservation.
The man scratched his head. “Never thought about that. Sometimes they don’t tell whites their real name,” Bill said. “I don’t know why that is. And then some have pretty ordinary names, same as us.”
“Too bad he didn't work for the racetrack," she said, mostly to herself. If he'd been on the payroll that would mean that the head office would be able to give her some leads. Since it was a murder, she needed all the information she could get. The Chief would expect her to roll on this case. "Do they collect information on casual laborers?"
Bill pursed his lips. “Not so you'd notice. There's a company that contracts with the businesses, like the tracks, for a lot of manual work. They hire guys like us to do it. It's pretty much a cash proposition." He laughed. "I'm, thinking.... they put us on the books an Indian name could be a real pain, I suppose.”
“How’s that?”
“Imagine the pencil pushers trying to convince the people at the IRS and social security that the guy’s name really is ‘walks-over-hot-rocks,’ or whatever his folks came up with. Better the way it is, paying us in cash. It's easier all around.”
“And probably marginally legal.” There would be illegal immigrants getting work in a system like that.
Bill shifted his weight, clearly uneasy talking about what might be legal with a uniformed police officer. “Seems a lot of people around here wouldn't eat if the people who do the hiring did everything by the book.”
She had to agree. "I don't care about that," she assured him. Even if it wasn’t a particularly enlightened human resources process, Terri had to admit it made a certain amount of sense given the local economy. �
��Too bad you don’t know what tribe he’s from. The tribal council could help, but there's more than one brand of Apache.”
“I’m only guessing he’s Apache. If he is, odds are he’s a Mescalero. Most of 'em around here are.”
She nodded at the irony of his use of those words. The odds. Her own bitter experience had taught her that the only odds that meant anything were the ones that showed that they always favored the house. Her boyfriend hadn’t paid attention to that little detail and now the casino not only had the odds in their favor, they also owned his house. That was also the reason he was her former boyfriend, Terri Johns reminded herself. That had been stressful. The idiot had lost money and then made the brilliant decision that he could win it back. After showing that much bad judgement, he’d somehow expected her to let him move in with her and Sandy.
No way, that was happening. When he told her what had happened she’d dropped him like a hot potato. There was no future in sticking with a guy who was dumb enough to lose his house playing blackjack. His good looks and charming manner were not enough for her to forgive a lack of sense. And she didn’t want Sandy exposed to that kind of thinking more than it was possible to avoid.
It was likely the guy would wind up like Bill, the loser who'd found the body of the dead Indian that was front and center in her professional life.
Those thoughts nagged at her as she waited for the medical examiner. She was eager to start tracking down the victim, find out more about him, but she was required to wait.
Bill shuffled his feet, kicking up some dust, acting impatient. She’d told him he couldn’t leave yet and he wasn't going to risk getting her angry. She itched to at least check the body for identification, but procedures said that had to wait until after the medical examiner was done. In general, Terri disliked and mistrusted procedures because.... they were too general. Given that this was her first dead body, she wanted to be really careful and not do anything wrong. Having the ME screaming at her or telling her boss she was an idiot would just add to the badness of the day.
Just to be doing something, she got a roll of crime scene tape and wandered over to the body. She circled it, wanting to mark off the scene. That was the protocol but the protocol wasn't applicable to open land. There wasn’t a thing to stick the tape to. The few bushes around were only knee high. She wondered if there were any stakes in the patrol car. She couldn’t remember seeing any. On the up side, there wasn’t exactly a crowd of onlookers to keep back from messing it up. Just her and this guy Bill and maybe a jack rabbit or two, or some scorpions.
She looked over at his trailer. It sat unprotected in the middle of an area that was just as barren as where they were, without a tree in sight. “You walk to the race track every day?” she asked him.
“Yeah.”
She waited to see if he'd elaborate, and when he didn't. Terri walked the perimeter looking for footprints or tire tracks. If she found any she could photograph them with her cell phone, but didn't see anything obvious. The road hadn’t been graded in a long time, if ever, and there were a lot of tracks, including tractor tracks. She wondered why anyone would bring a tractor out here: Where would they be going? To visit Bill?
A car came down the road, raising a cloud of dust as it pulled up by her SUV. Terri wandered over to see who it was and a heavyset man with a red face hopped out. Then she saw the sticker on the car’s door: MEDICAL EXAMINER, RUIDOSO, NEW MEXICO.
Finally.
“Officer?” he asked as she walked up to the man.
“Johns,” she said. “No one has touched the body.”
He looked at the crime scene tape and smiled. “I don’t see how you plan to use that but bless you for giving preserving the crime scene a college try, Officer Johns,” the man said. He walked over and looked at the body, lying on its side, the face caked with dirt. He looked up. “You didn’t even roll him over?”
“No,” she said. “I haven’t touched him.”
“And where is the person who found him?”
She jerked her thumb at Bill, who flinched. “Did you touch the body?” the ME asked.
“Nope. I ain't about to, neither.”
“You didn’t check to see if he was alive?”
“I ain’t no doctor, but I could tell by the flies around him that he wasn’t lying there waiting for me to do CPR.”
The ME nodded. “You are likely right. And of course, if we searched you we wouldn’t find his wallet or money out of his wallet?”
Bill lowered his eyes. “Thought about it,” he said. “But I know Jake didn’t have money.” He grinned. "Besides, if I took it I wouldn’t of called 911 and hung around.”
Again the ME nodded. “Fair enough.” He turned to Terri and pointed to the crime scene tape in her hand. “Might save that for when you know where he was actually killed. It looks as if this poor devil was dumped out of a moving car.”
She nodded. “I guessed that the body was dumped, but why do you think it was tossed from a moving car?” she asked.
“Well, I’m probably going to have to find me some post-mortem injuries to corroborate that theory, but...." he pointed to a bloody spot on the back of the victim's head. ".... for now I’ll go with the fact that he stuck the back of his head on a rock and now his face is pointed down. That suggests he rolled over.” He used the toe of his cowboy boot to scuff a blood stain near the body. “There’s also the fact that he was shot and probably bled out. While the ground here is pretty damn thirsty, it doesn’t look like it soaked up that much blood. Not as much as our friend here had to have pumped out.”
“Good call,” Terri said. She’d noted the lack of blood herself. “Maybe you should be a cop.”
He beamed. “I’d be a great cop. Unfortunately, it doesn’t pay enough,” he said. “No offense, but I still have student loans left from med school.”
“I understand that for sure. Is there anything else you need from our witness?”
“Not a thing.”
She turned to Bill. “You can go. But don’t go far. If you need to leave the area, notify my office first.”
“Sure,” he said.
The ME nodded toward his car. “If you’ll help me get my gurney out and bring it over here, we can go through his pockets and see what we might find, and then I’ll haul the poor devil back to town. He's been lying there too long already. The sun is going to destroy any DNA evidence the killers might’ve left behind.” He stuck a hand in his pocket and sighed. “Besides, I have a new intern.” He chuckled. “It will be fun to make her cut him open and that will give me a chance to see if she’s got the stomach for the job.” Then he grinned. “As you can tell, I’m easily amused.”
They went to the car and pulled out the gurney. As they approached the body he handed her Latex gloves and they both put them on. “Feel free to search him,” he said. He watched as she went through the man’s pockets, retrieving a bloody wallet and keys. he held out a plastic bag and she dropped the keys in it.
In this way Officer Terri Johns got her latest reminder that police work wasn’t all glamor. She opened the wallet and fished out the driver’s license, holding it as if it was contaminated. “So, Jake was his real name,” she said, putting the wallet in the bag with the keys. “Jake Ravenwing.”
“What a relief,” the ME said. She heard the sarcasm in his voice. “Now we can all sleep nights.”
“Except for Jake,” Terri said.
“Jake is done with everything,” he agreed.
She turned the wallet upside down. “And Bill was right about him not having any money.”
“That's your department,” the ME said.
As she put the wallet and license in the plastic bag, Terri felt a sadness. It wasn't so much for the dead man. She could be honest about that. After all, she didn’t even know him. No, she felt sad for the situation, and for herself. Now she would have to write a report and then track down the man’s family so she could tell them he was dead. She had to bring them bad news and that part of t
he job was unpleasant.
Once she'd done all that, she had to go to Sandy's school and find out what sort of trouble her son was in. It still seemed odd that she was getting a call like that. She promised herself to withhold judgment until she knew the facts, heard both sides of the story. Even your own kid was innocent until proven guilty. But if he was guilty....
Life could get way too complicated at times.
Chapter Two
A Cowboy Song
Roger Tanner stared through the windshield of the rental car, looking out across the open spaces that bracketed the two-lane road. Anyone seeing him could tell he was a happy man. And from his perspective, he had every reason to be happy. The car hummed along contentedly under crystal-clear skies, Charli Gordon, aka Bonita Bonito (according to the Indians they’d met) and the woman he loved sat next to him, and they were on a grand quest, with no schedule.
The sum total of those things made him feel so damn good that he threw his head back and broke out in song.
“Now, 'way down yonder in the Indian Nation,
A cowboy's life is my occupation...”
Charli turned to look at Roger. It amazed her to see how much fun he was having. After all, he'd been thrust into all this chaos that surrounded her. And yet, he was positively joyful. Way past upbeat. “What in the world are you singing?” she asked. “In a rather tuneless manner, I might add.”
He grinned. “That happens to be the great American classic song Oklahoma Hills by Woody Guthrie.”
She jerked her thumb to point behind them. “You do realize that Oklahoma is that way, don’t you? This is New Mexico, cowboy.”
He laughed. “The only other cowboy song I could think of, other than Roy Rogers’ and Dale Evans’ Happy Trails, was Streets of Laredo and that’s Texas. I’d be happy to switch up though; do you know any good New Mexico cowboy songs?”
“Not off hand.”
“How about a Santa Fe trail song or two?”
“Not that I can recall.”
“Then here is a travel alert. We are stuck, however temporarily, with this limited repertoire, I’m afraid.”
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