Ernie looked up at me and his eyes focused on the coffee cup.
“You want some?” I held up the cup.
He shook his head. “No, sir. I’ve had enough to float my kidneys as it is.”
I glanced at my watch. “Why are you here?”
Wheeler shrugged and yawned. “The sheriff thought it was a good idea to have someone around after he pulled Pasquale off.”
I nodded and pushed open the door. Crocker was up and dressed, sitting easily in a wheelchair. That didn’t surprise me. That Estelle Reyes-Guzman hadn’t beaten me to the punch did.
Crocker grinned at me as I stepped in the room.
“Well, good morning, sir,” he said, and nodded vigorously. He thumped the arm of the chair. “They won’t let me walk on out, so I got to sit in this thing.”
“Beats crawling,” I said. “When are they going to spring you?”
“The good doctor said the minute you walked in the door.” I grunted something not particularly gracious, and Crocker’s good humor faded. “They got me those fancy iron crutches, over there, and I can manage just fine. Maybe there’s a little room somewhere’s that I could rent for a week or two.”
I rubbed my eyes wearily and shook my head. “No. In the first place, a wrecked knee isn’t for a week or two. And if you try and bounce around on it too much right away, it’ll be for life.”
Crocker looked stricken. “Well, I sure don’t want to cause no trouble.”
“Things are what they are,” I said. “I think the best thing to do is call your sister to come and fetch you.”
If I had stuck an electric cattle prod up Crocker’s ass, the reaction wouldn’t have been more immediate. His face collapsed into a grimace and he held up both hands as if to ward off another attack, leaning back in the wheelchair so far I thought he might flip the thing.
“Kind sir,” he said, and I swear there was a tremble in his voice, “don’t ask her to do that.”
“Real close family, are we?”
Crocker took a deep breath, keeping his hands up to fend off any more punches. “Sir, if you talked to my sister, well, then you know what kind of woman she is.”
“I have an inkling.”
“Sir, she just cannot”-he stopped and fumbled for words-“she just…” He looked up at me. “In all these years, anytime I’d call, all she could think to say was some comment about when I was going to stop ‘this silliness.’ That’s what she called it. ‘This silliness.’ She couldn’t bring herself to ask me how I was, or ask what I’d seen, or ask where I was goin’ next.” He lowered his hands to his lap and stared at them. “And that’s why I just stopped callin’ her ever, don’t you know.”
“Well,” I said, and then let it trail off.
“She’d fix it somehow so’s I could never leave again. I know she would,” he said. “I’d rather make my way along the road on crutches than face her.”
“We can’t let you do that,” I said. “You got in the way of traffic once already. But I guess there’s no hurry. We need you around for a few days until we work out a few details. Maybe that will give you time to think of an alternative.”
“I could always steal a car or something, and get myself thrown in jail,” Crocker said with a lame smile.
“Theft is not your style,” I said.
“No, sir, it’s not.”
“Then we’ll think of something.” I picked up his fancy aluminum crutches and laid them on the bed. “Don’t forget those. I’ll go get the nurse. And then we can get out of here.”
And fifteen minutes later, we were out in the fresh October sunshine, Crocker sucking air from the exertion of swinging from the wheelchair to the front seat of the patrol car. The cast around his injured knee was a small, light, high-tech thing made out of aluminum and fiberglass that accomplished with a few ounces what the old thigh-to-ankle plaster had done a decade before.
I waited patiently until he had settled into the seat.
“I haven’t had any breakfast yet,” I said. “How about you?”
He waved a hand. “Oh, now, they gave me a little something.”
“I bet they did,” I chuckled. “Let’s go get something decent. You think you can hobble into the restaurant?”
“I should think so,” he said, “but really, don’t go out of your way on my account.”
“Don’t worry. You’re going to pay for it this time,” I said, and pulled 310 out of its parking slot. Wes Crocker apparently didn’t know what to say in reply, and I noticed that he rubbed his jaw with that nervous tic so many of us use when our brains are racing pell-mell trying to puzzle out an answer.
***
There was something about a good breakfast that always brought out the best in me. I could cheerfully skip any other meal of the day or night-and frequently did. The time to make up for those omissions was over a breakfast burrito as only the Don Juan de Oñate could serve it. I ordered two, and the platter must have weighed four pounds when it came.
The aroma of the fresh green chili cleared my head. Even the ringing in my ears settled down a decibel.
Crocker and I ate in silence for a few minutes until the worst of the wolves were at bay.
“How do you make out on your travels?” I asked, resting my fork for a while.
“Well, now,” Crocker said, and wiped his lips, “the good Lord has seen fit to bless me with my health, so…” He shrugged.
“That’s not what I meant.” I reached over with a fork and indicated a sausage link that he had pushed to one side. “You going to eat that?”
“You just go ahead,” he said and started to lift his plate.
I speared the tidbit and wrapped it in the tail end of the burrito’s blanket where the stuffing had ended. “A man’s got to eat. And food costs quite a bit of money these days. What do you do, work a few days here and there to pay for things?”
Crocker ducked his head and frowned as if he were expecting a broadside from his sister.
“I’m just curious about the logistics of life on the road, is all,” I added. Shari arrived with the coffeepot and we both waited until she left. “I mean, you’re obviously fit. You’re not starving.”
“Well,” Crocker said slowly, “I take work now and then, but say, I don’t do it for the money. No.” He shook his head. “That just don’t appeal.”
“What about when you worked for Tom Lawton? What made you decide to stay on there and work?”
“The wagon place? Well, now, that’s an easy one, sir. You see, I stopped at this little café in Button-that’s Button, Utah-just down the road from where his place is. And there on the bulletin board on the wall behind the cash register they had one of his flyers tacked up. I read it, and I got to thinking about a man who’d make a living today working on something that hasn’t seen regular use for a half a century.”
“And so you rode out to his place.”
“I did that. Yes, sir. And the good Lord provides. He was working on his tractor when I rode up, and I could see his new fence, just about half finished. So I figured”-Crocker paused and sipped his coffee-“so I figured that this man, this Thomas Lawton, could tell me just about everything a man would ever want to know about wagons and such.”
“And that took three days?”
“Well, I didn’t see no reason to head on out until that fence was just the way he wanted it. We talked about wagon trains, and freight wagons, and buckboards, and buggies-” He waved his hand at the wonder of it all. “It’s interesting to know just what kind of hardware moved things along, don’t you know.”
“You haven’t worked since leaving Lawton’s place?”
Crocker pursed his lips and thought a minute. I knew it wasn’t a hesitation to refresh his memory. “No, sir. See,” and he leaned forward against the table, his coffee cup between his rough hands. “I get a little something every month from the government. It ain’t much. Tied in with my days in the military. But it’s all I need.” He grinned. “I don’t go in much for buyi
ng souvenirs. You’d be surprised how far two hundred bucks will take you when you don’t spend much of it.”
“I can imagine,” I said, and almost added, Especially when you panhandle a few meals along the way. “How does the government get the money to you, if you don’t have a permanent address?”
“Well, now, that’s one thing my sister will do, bless her heart. Every now and again, I send her an address where I’ll be for a few days. Then she up and sends along whatever money’s come in. Every two, three months, maybe.”
“What are you going to do for a new bike?”
Crocker grimaced. “I ain’t thought that one through yet,” he said. “Got to find a used one somewheres.” He shook his head. “I sure hated to see the last one go. My, that was a brute of a machine. Would have lasted another century.”
I leaned back to give the burritos room to settle. “Do you make plans for where you’re going to travel, or do you just make up your mind each morning?”
“Oh, I get notions.”
“Notions?”
Crocker smiled and looked down at his coffee cup. “They don’t always work out just the way I’d plan ’em, but say, it’s all been interesting.”
“For instance.”
“Well…it isn’t the sort of thing to bore another man with, but there’ve been times.” He grinned again. “Like last summer. I got a bee in the bonnet to see Death Valley. You know, in California? I’d been reading this magazine that I got in a little town outside of Yosemite. It had a story in it about a wagon train getting stuck out in Death Valley in the middle of summer time. And I got to wondering just what that might have been like.”
“And so you rode your bike down into Death Valley?”
He nodded. “I rode into Stovepipe Wells on June 30. It was so bright out I was near to blind, and so hot that my bike tires sounded like they were rolling through molasses. Folks thought I was crazy, needless to say.”
“Needless to say they were right. Your sister also mentioned something about you getting stuck in a blizzard in the Dakotas.”
Crocker’s grin turned electric. “That’s about the only time I ever thought that maybe I’d made me a big mistake. See,” and he leaned forward again, “I just got done reading this book about the pioneers and how they managed to survive through some of those north country winters. Now me, I’m from down this way, and the only time I ever saw the North was in the finer times of the year. So…” He leaned back and shrugged. “I rode into Bismarck, North Dakota, on December 23. I’d had me a fair enough trip, comin’ up from the south. Hit a little storm in Kansas, and another one right at the Nebraska-South Dakota line, but neither one didn’t amount to much. I kind of got to thinking that all the stories were just that…stories. Well, I figured to take one of the back roads north out of Bismarck and visit old Fort Mandan. You ever been there?”
I shook my head.
“Well, it’s kind of along the Missouri River, there, just east of Washburn a hair. I got me about fifteen miles out of Bismarck, and I tell you what. That old wind commenced to rage down from Canada, and those big old storm clouds lowered right down on the prairie”-he smacked the table with one hand-“and snow pellets about the size of golf balls start shooting right down the road, right into my face. Let me tell you, I got to know real quick why some of them settlers never made it where they was going.”
“But you obviously did.”
“Well, it’s ranching country. I found me a barn and snugged down on the lee side, between a big old combine and an old semitrailer. Long as a man’s got something to break the wind, it’s not so bad. So I sat there, listening to that storm and watching that snow snake and curl around the buildings. It got dark, and the only thing I could see was the vapor light right by the barn. Watching that blizzard dance around that light was about all the entertainment I had for the better part of twelve hours.”
“Makes me cold just to think about it,” I said. Shari Chino appeared at my elbow with more coffee, but I waved her off. Wesley Crocker tried his best not to look relieved when I picked up the ticket.
“Well, it was worth the wait. The storm broke, and I guess I had dozed off for a while, because when I woke up it took some work to shovel myself out of the snow that had drifted around all that machinery. That’s when the man of the house saw me. They were fit to be tied. They was mad that I hadn’t just come to the house, instead of waitin’ it out wrapped in a blanket under the snow.”
Crocker stretched his bad leg out, trying to find a comfortable position. “They fed me more’n two men could eat, but the best part was they hauled out two big old scrapbooks that they’d kept over the years. Showed me some pictures of blizzards that were storms. That’s what the wife told me. She said, ‘This wasn’t no storm. It’s when it don’t stop for a week that things get bad.’ I believed her.”
I thumped the table. “Let’s get you somewhere more comfortable. I’ve got a couple other things I’d like to ask you about.”
Crocker nodded eagerly, thinking that it was his traveling that piqued my curiosity.
28
I opened the massive, carved oak front door and held it for Wesley Crocker. Even as the first wash of familiar aromas wafted out to greet me, so too did the curse of my life-the distant jangling of the damn telephone far out in the kitchen. I ignored it, knowing that it would go away if it wasn’t important.
“Now say, sir,” Crocker murmured as he stood in the tiled foyer. “This is…” And he stopped for want of anything better to say.
“It’ll do,” I said. “Let me show you where you’re going to be staying.”
“Is that your phone, sir?”
“I suppose.” I led him down the short hall. “Watch the step,” I said when we reached the living room. He maneuvered his crutches carefully on the polished tile, trying to divide his attention between where he was hobbling and the view.
I used my eldest daughter Camille’s bedroom as a convenient guest room-it was the farthest from my own burrow on the other side of the house. And since I rarely had overnight guests, the linens went untouched for months at a time.
“Here’s a place to sleep,” I said, and Wesley Crocker leaned against the door, a wistful expression on his grizzled face.
“Ain’t seen that many teddy bears in one spot in some time,” he said.
“My daughter’s. She takes a few every time she visits. She doesn’t visit often. Anyway, it’s a comfortable bed. Let me show you the bathroom.” I turned and realized the telephone was still ringing. “It’s right here on the right. Let me get the damn phone.”
I crossed the living room quickly and picked up the phone from the kitchen counter. I knew who it was before I heard the voice, since only one person had the patience to let the thing ring thirty times.
“Gastner.”
“Good morning, sir,” Estelle Reyes-Guzman said as if we hadn’t spent most of the night together. She sounded bright and efficient. “Do you have Wesley Crocker with you?”
“Good morning, and yes, I do. Why?”
“I just wanted to make sure that he got from there to there in one piece.”
“He did.”
“Actually, I wanted to tell you what Bob Torrez found out. I got him to dig around in that pile of scrap metal, and he found the two-sided tape that sticks the deer whistler base to the truck.”
“What about the plastic base itself?”
“No, sir. But he said he and Eddie Mitchell would scour the intersection again and come up with it. If it’s there, they’ll find it.”
“What else did he have to say?”
“He said that the bolts holding the front bumper on didn’t come with the truck. They’re longer than they should be, for one thing. For another, they’re not chrome, and the bumper was. He said the bolts always match the bumper.”
“Huh,” I said. “So if the kid bought a grille guard, then it stands to reason it came with mounting bolts that would replace the originals.”
“Ye
s, sir. And if he was in a hurry to take the guard off after a collision, he might not have had time to hunt up the original bolts.”
“Or might not have thought of it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you talked again with the Wilton kid?”
“No, sir. I wanted to stay clear of him until we had something definite to go on. I told the deputies the same thing.”
“And the sheriff as well, I hope.”
“He went home to bed, sir.”
“Smart man. So should you. What about Tom Pasquale?”
“He’s been checking in regularly with dispatch, sir. Vanessa Davila left the trailer shortly after you took them home. She walked as far as MacArthur Street, then turned around and walked home.”
“That’s almost a mile, round trip. She isn’t the type for exercise. I wish we knew what’s going around in that head, if anything.”
“That’s one of the reasons I called, sir. I came home for a little bit…just in time to fix breakfast for Francis and the kid.”
“I’m sure they appreciated that.”
“One can only hope. But I went through Maria Ibarra’s things again.”
“There wasn’t anything there, Estelle.”
“Well, sir, there was, but not where we looked the first time. Can you stand a visitor for a few minutes?”
“Sure. I was just about to put the coffee on. I was giving Crocker the tour.”
She chuckled, but didn’t say what amused her. I hung up and turned to see Crocker hobbling across the living room. “Kitchen,” I said, sweeping my hand around. I pointed at the refrigerator and then at the stove. “Food.” I pointed at the telephone. “Sister in California when you get around to it.” I realized I was sounding like a parent, and grinned. “I’m no nurse, so you’re just going to have to make yourself at home.”
I stepped down into the living room. “The television works, and I have one video. And books, since you like to read. I have lots of books.”
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