As Burkhalter led the hobbled Mo down the stairs, out into the cool, fresh desert night and finally to one of the county Suburbans, I took a brief statement from Ms. Beauchamp. The Amtrak folks wanted their train to roll. They were in no mood to chat. Although she was clipped and all business, in her eyes I could see a touch of sympathy for Mo Arnett.
She explained succinctly how she had seen Mo sleeping at that four top, an enormous puddle of drool leaking onto the table. “I mean, he looked just plain worn out, you know. I felt sorry for him, and there’s plenty of blankets, so I fetched him one,” she said. “That’s when I saw the gun in his waistband.” After that, the decision to isolate and call the nearest police had been simple enough. The Coconino Sheriff’s Department had received-and thankfully read-the BOLO.
After I finished with the Amtrak folks, with names and addresses and the like, they didn’t waste any more time. Train #3 had been delayed long enough. I saw plumes of diesel shoot upward from the two engines, and the Santa Fe Chief started to roll, spooky quiet. In the back of Burkhalter’s Suburban, Mo Arnett twisted his head around to watch-whether as a train aficionado or a sorrowful fugitive wishing he were westbound, I couldn’t tell.
“What were you going to do out in California?” I asked as Mo settled back awkwardly.
“I don’t know,” he managed, not sounding like much of a fan of anything.
Chapter Thirty-nine
As it turned out, The Great State of Arizona did not want Maurice “Mo” Arnett. They were entirely satisfied that I had conducted the arrest, nailing a fugitive from New Mexico’s justice. Our DA and theirs chatted, no doubt made promises, and the great wheels of the legal system turned and groaned and spat Mo out in record time. As the tires of Jim Bergin’s Cessna cleared the runway at Winslow, heading home to Posadas, the sun was working on its zenith, burning ferociously through the Cessna’s tinted Plexiglass. I managed a wonderful cat nap, Estelle sifted through notes, and I doubt if the miserable Mo even shut his eyes.
Mo sat in the left rear, directly behind Bergin. The boy was a sorry sight, wrists cuffed and then along with his ankles chained to the seat frame now that we were airborne. Since I’d slapped the cuffs on him, he hadn’t bothered with a song of denial. He hadn’t sung-or said, or sobbed-a word. He slumped in the crowded little seat, now and then snuffling snot and leaking tears. He held a barf bag between his knees, but hadn’t used it. He was so fatigued and stressed that he didn’t take any pleasure in rubbing hips with Estelle Reyes. Perhaps her own quiet presence only served to remind Mo what he was going to miss for a long, long time.
Jim Bergin did the talking, and although the day was clear and the air smooth, he filed IFR. The FAA certainly knew 592 Foxtrot Gulf’s location every step of the way. About 90 minutes later, I awoke with a jolt, looking down to see the western hip of Cat Mesa outside of Posadas. Taking care not to yank a muscle out of true, I cranked around and looked back first at Mo and then at Estelle. She almost smiled, and except for a trace of dark circles under her elegant eyes, she didn’t look the worse for a sleepless night. Mo wouldn’t return my gaze, but kept his eyes locked on the rugged terrain below. I’d have given a lot to know what thoughts were roaming through that young brain.
“You got yourself a welcome party.” Bergin pointed.
I looked down and saw the airport with two police cars parked on the apron, lights flashing. As we turned into the downwind leg for runway 28, I saw another vehicle as well, a white pickup truck tricked out with contractor’s tool boxes and headache rack.
“Oh, that’s just what we need,” I muttered. I felt motion behind me, and watched as Estelle unlocked Mo’s ankle chain. I had explained to her in Arizona that the prisoner was to be free of restraints that locked him to the aircraft during both take-off and landing-and I hadn’t needed to mention it again. That was a marvel to me, since my own memory was as full of holes as a garden colander.
“Posadas Unicom, Cessna five niner two foxtrot gulf is downwind, two eight.” Jim’s greeting was enunciated clearly, and I’m sure boomed out of the outside speakers above the door of his FBO. For ordinary civilians unused to the world of aviation, there’s something official about the landing process for an airplane. A car just slips into the driveway and stops. But it always seemed to me that airplanes have this ritual, this governmental procedure that gives them some kind of mystique.
We banked steeply into base, and then final approach, Jim announcing our presence again so that some other airplane didn’t try and share the same bit of airspace. The fat tires touched the asphalt a hundred yards beyond the threshold so gently that the transition from flight to ground was seamless. Jim had plenty of time to brake for the first intersection to the taxiway.
“Posadas traffic, niner two foxtrot gulf is clear the active,” Bergin radioed, and then glanced at me. “Stewardess service is shitty, but we made it.” He taxied to the far side of the pumps, well away from the reception committee, and shut down. As the prop ticked to a stop, he jerked a thumb rearward. “Best to exit toward the rear.” He nodded ahead. “Even if it ain’t spinnin’, it’s a bitch to crack your skull against that prop.”
Airplanes aren’t my choice for graceful exits, but I made it without bruise or laceration. Without being asked, Estelle had a secure grip on the chain leading to Mo’s handcuffs, and she handed the kid off to me. I got rid of the chain, leaving Mo with just cuffs behind his back. I slipped an arm through his.
I guessed that this was the moment the boy had been dreading the more than any other-stepping out of the plane, his life essentially over by his way of thinking, but still having to face mom and pop.
Mom Mindi remained in the truck, but Mark Arnett had joined Deputy Robert Torrez and Sheriff Eduardo Salcido. Salcido was firm on both feet, so apparently he’d come to an understanding with his doctors. I didn’t have to worry about Bobby saying more than he should to Arnett. He’d honed his taciturnity to a fine art. The sheriff, and I loved him like a brother and respected his judgment in most things, could be chatty.
As the prisoner, Estelle, and I left the airplane, the sheriff moseyed forward. He wasn’t concerned about Mark Arnett, but Bob Torrez was. The tall deputy circled behind the sheriff to within easy arm’s reach of Mo’s father. When fifty feet separated us, Salcido stopped abruptly and turned, blocking Mark Arnett with a hand on his chest. “Give us some space,” he said, and then removed his hand and motioned to Torrez, who remained with Arnett as the Sheriff then continued toward us.
“Any troubles?” the sheriff asked.
“None whatsoever,” I replied. “Mo was cooperative every step of the way.” Well, almost. “I appreciate Schroeder clearing the way for us so promptly.”
“You bet,” Salcido mused, but he was gazing at Mo Arnett with interest. “Have things been explained to you, son?” The boy said nothing, but managed a slight nod. “Do you understand them?” Another nod. Salcido pushed out his lower lip, still regarding the boy. “Okay, then.” He glanced at his watch. “The arraignment is set for four o’clock this afternoon. That gives us a little time to clean him up and get the paperwork in order. Schroeder said he’d be with us this afternoon with Ruth Wayand.”
“Hey!” Mark Arnett had used up all his patience. He managed three paces forward when Bob Torrez grabbed both his arms, but the man twisted away. Backing away from Torrez, Arnett couldn’t have missed the deputy’s next move. Handcuffs appeared in Torrez’s hand, and Arnett held up an index finger in the big deputy’s face.
“Now you just back off,” Arnett barked. A husky, strong man with a short fuse, he wasn’t used to confrontation. “I got the right to talk with my son.”
I didn’t want to take time explaining to Mark Arnett that, no, he didn’t have that particular right at that particular moment.
“There’s no cause to be leadin’ him around like some goddamn convict,” Arnett shouted, but turned his attention to the three of us. With one hand held out to fend off Torrez and the other stretched
out toward me, Arnett took a couple more steps. The deputy shifted with the cuffs, but Salcido stopped him in his tracks with the slightest of nods.
Arnett advanced to within a dozen feet. The sheriff intercepted him, forcing Arnett to look around him to make eye contact with his son. A quick glance, and then Mo continued his examination of the asphalt at his feet.
“I got to know,” Arnett said to the boy. “These men said that you shot Larry Zipoli. Is that true?”
I could imagine Mo Arnett’s public defender cringing at that moment, but what the hell. Maybe Mark Arnett did deserve to hear the boy’s answer, but father and son’s days would be filled with more court proceedings than either could now imagine. “This is not the time or place,” I said, tightening my grip on Mo’s left arm.
“No, you tell me.” Arnett’s face was an interesting shade of purple. “You go draggin’ our name through the mud, son…now you’re bein’ led back home in Goddamn chains, for Christ’s sakes.”
“We’ll take my car,” I said, and started to steer Mo that way.
“No. I got a right to know. I got the right to talk with my son,” Mark shouted. What had started as wet eyes became an uncontrolled gusher. He started to push past the sheriff, but that was like trying to walk through a brick wall. “You tell me what you did!” he cried.
Mo had started to walk between Estelle and me, but he hesitated and looked one more time toward his father. “It was an accident,” he whispered.
That wasn’t the answer that Mark Arnett wanted to hear. He slashed an arm to fend off Deputy Torrez. “How the hell can something like that be a goddamn accident?” he choked.
“Give us some time,” I said, but Mark Arnett was in no mood for platitudes.
“Goddamn time?” Arnett almost laughed as he waggled a finger in my face. “You’ll get goddamn time. I’ll be talking to my goddamn lawyer, is what’s going to happen.”
“That’s the best idea you’ve had so far,” I said.
Chapter Forty
I agreed with Mark Arnett about one thing. How could a kid take a Winchester from his father’s gun safe, grab a cartridge or two, then stalk Larry Zipoli, finally shooting him where he sat in the cab of the road grader, placing a bullet squarely through the brain, and then say with a straight face that it was all an accident? Trial lawyers were going to have a field day.
A small room full of people interested in that very question gathered an hour later in the conference room of the Sheriff’s Department-not because the boy was being granted special comforts, but because that room was the only one large enough for more than a handful of participants.
District Attorney Dan Schroeder, looking and smelling as if we’d interrupted him from a family barbecue, shuffled papers for five minutes before he clasped his hands together, leaned forward, and fixed his watery blue eyes on what was left of Maurice Arnett.
“Mr. Arnett, you are being charged with the unlawful death of,” and he glanced down at his notes, “one Lawrence C. Zipoli, a resident of Posadas, New Mexico, by rifle shot. You’ve been advised of your rights?”
“Yes, sir,” Mo whispered.
“You understand them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you want an attorney present?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you understand that you may very well be charged as an adult?” At the corner of the table, Ruth Wayand sat with her various notebooks, looking uncomfortable. Ruth and her Children, Youth, and Families outfit were present to guard Mo Arnett’s possible status as a juvenile. By the set of Dan Schroeder’s face, I knew that wasn’t going to fly. And I knew and respected Ruth, too. She’d fight for what she truly believed was right.
“Yes, sir.”
“When is your birthday, Maurice?”
“Next week. September third.”
“And how old will you be?”
“Eighteen.”
Schroeder nodded and glanced across at first the sheriff and then me, indicating that it was now my turn.
I sat on the edge of the table just to Mo’s left. “So, tell us how this miserable event happened,” I said.
Mo whispered something inaudible, and Schroeder reached out and tapped the tape recorder with his pen. “You’ll have to speak up, son. This gadget can’t read your mind.”
“I took one of my father’s rifles and a few cartridges.”
“How many?” I asked.
“Five.”
Five. The kid rode out to do his work with a pocketful of ammo. Some accident. “And then?”
“I borrowed my mom’s car and I was going to go out on the mesa and pop some cans.” He hesitated. “Then I saw where Mr. Zipoli had been working.”
“You went out specifically to find Mr. Zipoli?”
“No, sir.”
“But you knew that he had been working out there?”
“I…guess that I did.”
“How did you know where that might be?”
“Because earlier I saw him driving the grader out that way. And he’d been out there the day before, but the grader broke.” Mo’s voice had taken on a drone, as if he might be reciting a script. Maybe that’s what he’d been thinking about during the flight home.
“What time was this?”
“I don’t know. Early afternoon, I think.”
“Why wouldn’t you know for sure?”
Mo shrugged.
I asked, “Closer to one or closer to two?”
“Maybe one.”
“Maybe. Where did you park the car?”
“Just off the road. By the intersection.”
“Intersection of what?”
“Highland and Hutton.”
“Where were Mr. Zipoli and the grader?”
“The grader was parked a ways down Highland. Half way down the block, at least.”
“You saw him?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you think that he was in the vicinity?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“I couldn’t see him in the cab, and his truck wasn’t there. I mean, I didn’t see his truck. He sometimes tows it behind the grader.”
“What did you do?”
“I walked toward the grader a ways, and when I was sure I could hit it, I tried to shoot out the windshield.”
“How many shots?”
“Just one.”
I straightened a little to relieve my spine. “Now why would you do that? You had how many cartridges with you?”
“Five.”
“Why not fire five times?”
Mo shut his eyes, but that didn’t stop the tears. I reached across and slid the box of tissues within his reach.
“Why not five times, Mo?”
“It was really loud, you know.” He opened his eyes and looked up at me, just a quick glance. “’Cause I didn’t have ear phones or nothing. I thought someone might hear the shots and see me if they looked over that way. So I chickened out.”
“Chickened out? Too bad you didn’t chicken out before that first shot.” I stood up, kicked the chair out, and sat down, leaning my elbow on the table. “So you shot once. One time only.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Was the grader running?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you hear it running, or see exhaust from the stack, before you fired the shot?”
“No sir. Only when I walked closer.”
“How close did you get?”
“Maybe…I don’t know.”
“A hundred yards? The length of a football field?”
“No, sir. Not that far.”
“A hundred feet then? Fifty feet?”
“Somewhere around there.”
“And before you fired, you did not see Larry Zipoli sitting in the cab, watching you approach with the rifle?”
A strangled sob shook the kid, and I paused as he dropped his head onto his arms.
“Did you see him?”
“No, sir.”
&nb
sp; “I find that hard to believe, son. From a hundred feet away, you couldn’t see him, sitting there in the cab of the grader?”
“No, sir. I mean, after I shot, I walked a little ways off to one side. For a second or two, I was thinkin’ of putting one through the engine block.”
“Why would you do that? Why through the engine?”
Mo shrugged helplessly. “Just ‘cause.”
“But you were afraid someone might hear you.”
“I was thinking that.”
“But…”
“Then I saw Mr. Zipoli in the cab.”
“What did you do then?”
“I left. I drove home, put the gun and shells away, and threw up.”
“Threw up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I suppose when all else fails, that’s the thing to do,” I said. I confess I was having trouble feeling a whole lot of sympathy for this kid. “When your parents came home, they didn’t notice that anything was wrong?”
That wonderful shrug answered the question.
“Why did you decide to run?”
“I heard that you were talking to some of my friends. I figured it was only a matter of time before you got to me. So…”
“Why did you park at the airport, Mo? Were you thinking of taking a flight?”
He shook his head quickly, as if the very thought of flying gave him the willies. He’d been a quiet passenger in Jim’s Cessna, but that happens. Folks can trust a puddle jumper, but not a Boeing at 36,000 feet. “Just ‘cause.”
“You thought that might throw us off?”
Shrug.
“Where did you think you could go?”
Shrug.
“Is there someone out on the coast whom you know?”
“No, sir.”
“Where were you going to live?”
“On the beach.”
“Ah, the beach. Have you ever been out there, Mo?”
“No, sir.”
“So let me ask you,” I said after a pause that stretched so long Mo looked up to see if I’d fallen asleep. “Why, Mo?”
“Why what?”
“Why shoot Larry Zipoli, Mo?”
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