Lies Come Easy

by Steven F Havill

  She nodded quickly. “Pretty much. He brought over some gun that Al wanted to borrow for the hunt.” She looked pained, then her expressive face cycled through a number of expressions before settling on resigned sympathy. “I think it’s so sad when someone gets to a point where nothing is worth living for. I mean to leave that little boy…”

  Boot falls on the wooden porch interrupted her. The door opened and Al Fisher stepped inside. He closed the door carefully, not releasing the latch, as if unsure whether to stay or leave.

  As she had been during Al’s visit to the Sheriff’s Office, Estelle was struck by the family resemblance, even though Al was several inches shorter than his brother, with a well-padded, stocky build. A baseball cap was crammed down on his skull, with his longish brown hair pulled back into a careless ponytail.

  “Saw your rig.” He released the door latch and stepped across to Estelle, who stood and extended her hand. His hand was rough, his grip perfunctory. “Mr. Fisher, this is Lieutenant Jackie Taber.”

  “Hi.” He didn’t offer his hand.

  “Mr. Fisher, there are one or two things we’d like to ask if you have a few minutes.” Or even if you don’t. “Things we didn’t cover when you stopped by the office earlier.”

  Maria rose quickly and lifted her jacket off a peg by the door. “I have some things to check in the greenhouse. I’ll do that so you have some privacy.” As she passed Al, she stroked a hand affectionately down his left arm. At the door, she hesitated and looked back at Estelle. “Do you have anything else for me?”

  “Not at the moment. Thank you, Maria.”

  “So.” Al stepped closer to the wood stove, opened the door and peered inside. Apparently satisfied, he clanged the door closed and straightened up.

  “First of all, I appreciate your contacting us, Mr. Fisher.”

  “That’s okay. And it’s Al. Call me Al.”

  “There are some questions remaining concerning the handgun that your brother apparently used to take his life.”

  The young man grimaced as he turned and sat down heavily on the love seat near the Christmas tree. He shook his head slowly, the oscillation continuing as he said, “I don’t know why he felt he needed to do that.” He looked up first at Estelle, then Jackie Taber. “I’ve been thinkin’ and thinkin’ about that all day, and I can’t come up with a thing. I mean, why wouldn’t he want to watch Derry grow up? There’s got to be joy in that, doesn’t there?”

  “It’s hard for us to judge what he was going through,” Estelle replied. “When Darrell came down here Friday night…he brought the handgun with him?”

  Fisher hesitated. “Yeah. He did.”

  Estelle regarded the man for a long moment. “Earlier, when you came down to the office, you told me that you didn’t take the gun on the hunt.”

  The young man leaned forward, both hands holding his forehead as if he expected his skull to pop. “Look, he did bring that gun down with him. And, yeah, I had it in the truck with me Saturday goin’ over to the hunt. But I never used it. It just stayed in the truck, in one of those zip-up cases. And then I dropped it off at his house when I got home.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Oh, Christ, I don’t know. Maybe five o’clock. It was just startin’ to get dark.”

  “And then you left his house to come home?”

  Fisher nodded. “Weather wasn’t all that great.”

  “Did you get a pig?”

  The question took him by surprise, and his face brightened. “Yeah, I got one. I couldn’t believe it. I parked the truck, and I heard ’em over in the brush. I walked like fifty paces, and there he was.”

  “So,” and Estelle paused, her gaze roaming the vast surface of the Fishers’ living room boulder. “That’s quite a drive, no?”

  “I guess I make it in three hours or a little more. Just shoot over to Artesia and Hobbs, and then cut off north a ways.”

  Lieutenant Taber smiled, almost good-naturedly. “You broke a few speed limits to make that drive in a little more than three hours.”

  Al Fisher looked surprised, and then cunning. “Well,” he said, “maybe once or twice.”

  “You left here pretty early, then. Saturday morning, I mean.”

  “Way early.”

  “How did you hear about your brother’s troubles the previous night?”

  “Penny called me on my cell on Saturday and told me what happened. What the judge had said, and about bail and everything. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, she was so hoppin’ mad. Anyways, I called Maria right away, and told her to run a check up to Posadas for Darrell’s bail.”

  “Darrell didn’t call you, then. He spent the night before his hearing with Judge Tate in jail, but he didn’t call you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “But sometime later—when you were on the road bound for a pig hunt—Penny was able to reach you.”

  “That’s how it was.”

  “And with all this trouble at home, you continued on with the hunt?”

  “By the time she called me, I was already in Texas.” He shrugged. “And I mean, what else could I do?”

  “What time was that?”

  “What time was what?”

  “When Penny was able to reach you. When the two of you discussed the bail issue.”

  “Right around eleven or so. Maybe a little later.”

  “Eleven our time, or Texas time?”

  Al laughed good-naturedly. “What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?”

  “A cop’s habit,” Lieutenant Taber said pleasantly. “How much did the pig weigh?”

  “The pig…”

  “Your hunting trophy.”

  “Oh, how much did he weigh?” He frowned and closed one eye, figuring. “Right at five-hundred-twenty.”

  “Wow.”

  “Well, yeah, but there’s hogs rippin’ up that country that weigh a whole lot more’n that. We’re not talkin’ those little javelinas here.”

  “So what do you do with a quarter ton of pig carcass?” Taber had been jotting notes, but now folded up her notebook and slid it in her pocket, as if her questions were just chit-chat.

  “It goes to a game locker. I got a guy that butchers and wraps for me. Even with payin’ for that, it’s still a good deal.”

  “I would think so,” Jackie said. “Which processor do you use?”

  “Phil Lockley, up in Glenwood. Well, just south of Glenwood. Like down in Pleasanton. Do you hunt?” Estelle said nothing, but pictured the route to Glenwood—a north-south highway connecting Silver City and Reserve, with Glenwood in between. Other than a few rough roads up into the Mogollon Mountains, there were no east-west roads until NM 12 left Reserve and curved northeast to Datil. Al Fisher had been smoking asphalt.

  “I’ve been known to try for elk,” Jackie Taber said. “When I’m lucky enough to draw the license.”

  “I hear you there. I’ve been tryin’ to draw for a bull elk tag for years, man. No luck yet.”

  “It’ll come when you least expect it,” the lieutenant said. “Just about the time you have a dozen other things to do, even in a tiny town like Regál. You used to work for the gas company, didn’t you?”

  “Used to. I’m on my own now.” He smiled, obviously proud of himself. “A world of opportunity on e-Bay, Lieutenant.”

  “Al, do you know Connie Suarez?” Estelle’s question clearly caught Al Fisher by surprise.

  “Connie…”

  “Suarez. She lives over behind Lupe Gabaldon’s place, just where you pull off north of the church, Betty Contreras’ road.”

  “Well, sure. Everybody in Regál knows everybody else.” He grinned. “If you ever forget what you’re doin’, just ask anybody. They’ll tell you.”

  “Strangers stand out, don’t they?” Jackie interjected.

 
“Oh, yeah.” Al nodded vehemently.

  “Then you probably know Myron Fitzwater.”

  Fisher frowned. “Is that the guy who hangs with Connie? That the one?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Then I don’t know him.” Fisher waved his hands as he mentally backpedaled. “I mean, I know who he is. I’ve seen him a time or two. But I don’t know him. I think he works over in Arizona most of the time. That’s what I’ve heard, anyways. Connie works at the school, otherwise she’s home. Like now, I mean, with Christmas vacation and all. You can ask her.”

  Lieutenant Jackie Taber had stepped close to a huge windowsill trellis that was dotted with cherry tomatoes. “I can’t grow these to save my life.” She stroked the underside of one of the leaf clusters. “What’s your secret?”

  “TLC from Maria, mostly,” Fisher replied. “She does really, really well. Both of her thumbs are green.”

  “I’d like to tour your greenhouse sometime.”

  Fisher laughed, then settled into the cunning, squinty-eyed expression that Estelle had already decided she didn’t like very much. “Well, you want to tour as a cop, or a gardener?” he asked.

  “Oh? It makes a difference?”

  “Yeah. One you need a warrant for, the other you don’t.”

  “Ah,” Jackie said, nodding. “I understand.” She touched one of the little ripe tomatoes with an index finger. “May I?”

  “’Course you can. Help yourself.”

  She plucked the tiny fruit and rolled it around the palm of her hand as if she’d never actually seen a cherry tomato before, then popped it into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “Oh, wow.”

  “Three or four of us get together with a produce sale over at the church on Saturdays. Maria is always there. Rotten as the weather’s been, she was even there for a little while yesterday. It’s a good deal. I mean, nothing like we have in the summer, when all the fruit comes in, but there’s enough greenhouse produce to make it worthwhile. You should stop by next week. We start at nine in the morning.”

  “Except when you’re pig hunting.” Taber smiled. “But I’ll do that. Thanks for the tip.”

  “Interesting,” Estelle said a few minutes later as they climbed back into the Expedition. “For a guy who just lost his only brother, Al Fisher seems pretty upbeat.”

  “Operating with a magical clock will do that for you,” Taber said.

  “A magical clock…”

  “Leave before dawn and drive all the way over into the Texas boonies, jump out of his truck, shoot the hog that’s conveniently standing right there waiting for his turn to be slaughtered, then drive all the way back to Glenwood to drop off the carcass for butchering? Come on. And who helped him do all of this? A five-hundred-pound hog, for cryin’ out loud. How’d he even get the carcass into the back of his truck, even if it was field-dressed? And still be home in time to return his brother’s gun? Why would he do that, anyway? He could have returned it any old time.”

  All the while she was talking, Jackie Taber was thumbing her phone. “No Phil Lockley listed for Glenwood. There’s Custom Meat Processing a little south of there, in Buckhorn. Maybe our man Phil works there.” She glanced sideways at Estelle. “Or not.”

  “Al Fisher impresses me as the sort of guy who once he starts spinning a story, just keeps spinning away, getting more and more creative as he goes. He likes to hear himself talk. Is a phone contact given for the processor in Buckhorn?”

  “There is. Two strikes against us, though. It’s Sunday, and nobody is apt to be working. And cell service down here is rotten. We need a landline. Or give dispatch something to do.”

  “And while we’re down here, I want to take a few minutes and talk with Connie Suarez.”

  “About?”

  “About nothing in particular. Just to touch bases with her. See what she’s heard from her boyfriend. He’s gone missing, and I’m curious about that. If he doesn’t show up soon, she’s going to be hosting visitors from the Feds. When one of their own goes missing, they won’t just sit on it. They’ll expect all the cooperation we can give them. I’d like to be up to speed. She can tell us when she saw her boyfriend last.” They thumped along the rough two-track, skirting an apple orchard and a collapsed adobe barn. “You know where Connie lives? That trailer just across the road from Lupe Gabaldon’s place?”

  “I do.”

  “Let’s see if Al Fisher is right. Let’s see what Connie has heard…see how the Regál grapevine works.”

  The Suarez mobile home, one of those creations that designers thought fashionable in the sixties with its silly tack-on fins and garish tri-color paint job, was sandwiched into a small site dominated by winter-naked dwarf fruit trees, a small shed, and a fading Oliver tractor once owned by Connie’s father, Nick. The tractor hadn’t been started in more than thirty years. All four tires were sun-split and flat. When she’d been a teenager, Estelle had seen Nick Suarez on the Oliver, the brush hog trailing and clattering, as he thrashed weeds along the roadside. Connie’s late-model Subaru Outback was parked in the open shed.

  Despite its age, the mobile home was tidy. Estelle stepped out of the Expedition and then stood quietly, surveying the homestead. She waited until Jackie Taber had finished checking in with dispatch, and then crossed the yard to the small metal front steps. She pushed the doorbell button with one knuckle and heard the simple, two-tone gong inside. The trailer remained quiet.

  “I’ll check around back,” Taber said.

  “She probably walked over to a neighbor’s house for Sunday tea,” Estelle said. What passed for a “street” in Regál snaked along the side of the rock falls, past the adobe that had belonged to Lupe Gabaldon back when Estelle was growing up, and whose adobe walls no longer rose true and trim from the stone foundation. Lupe had hauled in a new home, but could look out an east window and watch time take care of the old adobe. The roof had collapsed, allowing the rain to dissolve the adobe wall bricks. In another decade or two, it would be just a ragged remnant, the blocks rounded smooth.

  Through a grove of elms, she could see the roofline of Betty Contreras’ tidy home to the east, just off the paved state highway. Betty’s husband had passed away the year before, too crippled to walk, too short of breath to try. Betty still commuted to Posadas Elementary School every day, determined to get in her fifty years before retiring.

  “Or Connie’s with Myron Fitzwater, eloped to Jamaica,” Jackie replied, and disappeared around the corner of the trailer, passing under the angled dining nook windows. She reappeared thirty seconds later and beckoned to Estelle. “She didn’t elope.”

  The curtains of both bedroom windows were open, and would have afforded a spectacular view of the ocean of rocks and boulders on the face of the San Cristóbal Mountains behind Regál.

  “Por Dios,” Estelle breathed. Connie Suarez lay in full view on the floor, her face turned toward the window, the bottom end of the bed obscuring her lower body. What wasn’t obscured was the massive flow of blood, now caked to a dull brown, that surrounded the young woman’s head.

  Taber retraced her steps back to the front of the trailer and climbed into the Expedition. She backed the truck along her route out of the driveway, taking care that her tires cut no new tracks, then parked to block the drive. Estelle could hear her on the radio. In this far-flung corner of the county, it would take a minimum of half an hour for the team to arrive, even flogging the horses. The victim’s half-open, glazed eyes and the brown puddle promised that there was no hurry on her account.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Suarez trailer’s front door was closed but not locked, but when Estelle tested it tentatively with gloved hands, she saw that the latch rocked in the jamb, opening new cracks in the wood. The metal trim, so thin that she could bend it with her fingers, was deformed and misaligned.

  Using her upper arm and shoulder, she put steady pressure
on the door and turned the knob gently. The deadbolt, although it clearly had torn out of the wood at some point, along with the knob latch, was retracted. Someone had closed the shattered door, taking care to keep the pieces together.

  A quick glance around the living room showed nothing amiss, and Estelle walked carefully down the narrow hallway, keeping close to the wall. In the master bedroom, she circled the body, then knelt and touched Connie Suarez’ neck with two fingers. The girl’s skin was cool, with rigor well developed.

  Estelle squatted, balanced on her toes with her arms folded across her knees, hands clasped in front of her mouth. The victim had apparently either been standing beside the bed, or perhaps even sitting on the corner of it, before falling in a crumpled heap. In addition to the lake of blood on the floor around the victim’s head, the blood spatter stretched across the queen-sized bed and marked the wall beyond. Estelle’s gaze followed the pattern to where a bullet hole was punched through glass and screen near the top of the window, just below the hem of the valance.

  Drawing a ballpoint pen from her pocket, Estelle reached across the body and lifted the skirt of the bed’s comforter. A semi-automatic pistol lay just beyond the girl’s right hand, the black rubber grips a scant quarter inch beyond the tips of her slender, almost slight, fingers.

  Without changing her position, Estelle pulled her handheld from her belt.

  “We’re going to need the whole crew, Jackie,” she said, keeping her voice down.

  “Ten four. The troops are rolling.”

  “We have the one victim in the master bedroom. I’ll check across the hall.” Estelle forced herself to move slowly, senses taking in every detail. By the time she covered the few steps to the door of the back bedroom, her heart was hammering, her sore ribs complaining at the tension. She took a deep breath. When Jackie Taber came back on the air, the radio sounded harsh and loud in the silence of the trailer.

  “Linda said she’s only twenty minutes out.”

  Estelle clicked the transmit bar in response. The two bathrooms and the remaining bedroom held no obvious secrets. The double bed was made, the comforter tight and smooth. The bathrooms included the usual accoutrements, including obvious evidence of a man’s continued presence. Estelle stood in the bathroom doorway, waiting for something to shout at her. The battered front door of the mobile home suggested an intruder, but there had been no apparent struggle after that—no overturned furniture, nothing out of place.