Twice Buried

by Steven F Havill

  “If it’s a homicide, Linda, then every minute counts. Every minute that goes by in an investigation makes the trail just that much harder to follow.”

  “But isn’t there a working deputy already on the scene?”

  I braked hard and turned off on County Road 27. The rear end of the patrol car fishtailed on the gravel and Linda transferred her grip from the dash to the door’s courtesy handle.

  “Yes. But he won’t investigate. All Paul has done is secure the scene.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “He makes sure no one tromps around and wrecks evidence. He makes sure nothing changes…the crime scene looks exactly the way it did when he found it. That’s all he does. Unless there’s someone standing over the corpse with a smoking gun or a bloody wrecking bar. Then I might let the deputy make an arrest.”

  Linda nodded and put her hand up on the ceiling as she saw the first cattle guard approaching. We sailed across it without much of a thump and she brought her arm back down.

  “And often evidence is time-related. So,” and I shrugged, “if weather conditions permit and if traffic permits, then we don’t let the moss grow.”

  We were well away from the village and any other ranches. With no moon and a growing cloud cover, the prairie was a blank, featureless black void except for the bright tunnel bored by the patrol car’s headlights. We rounded a sweeping curve whose radius gradually tightened until we were down to twenty miles an hour—and that seemed too fast as juniper limbs almost brushed the fenders. Up ahead the wink of Encinos’s flashers was our beacon.

  As we approached I could see a second vehicle on the shoulder of the road, far enough over that its wheels were nearly in the bar ditch. I didn’t have to see the magnetic sign on the door panel to know who owned the Suburban.

  Deputy Paul Encinos stood by the front fender of his county Ramcharger, waiting. The dome light was on and I could see Tony Abeyta inside. Encinos raised his flashlight in salute as I pulled up behind his four-by-four.

  “Should I stay in the car?” Linda asked.

  “Yes,” I said and turned off the red lights.

  The northwest wind had a bite as I stepped out of the car and I remembered the cloud banks I had seen earlier in the day, building in the west over San Cristobal mesa. I snapped my Eisenhower jacket closed and tucked my flashlight under my arm.

  “What’s up?”

  Paul Encinos pointed across the road with his flashlight. If I tried hard, I might make myself believe that I could see the body. But it was just a dark lump that could as easily have been bunch grass. “Tony and I were going to drive out this way as far as the Triple Bar T gate. I saw your orders on the bulletin board to close-patrol this stretch. And there he was.”

  “How’d you happen to see him?”

  “I had the spotlight on and was swinging it back and forth across the pasture there, trying to see dogs running or whatever.”

  “Good man. Then you jumped the fence and walked over?”

  Encinos shook his head. “No, sir. I used the binoculars and I could see that the victim was dead.”

  I held out my hand and Encinos gave me the field glasses. He aimed the spotlight from the car until the corpse was centered in the pool of light. After a minute fussing with the adjustment I could make out that the body was lying roughly parallel to the roadway. The binoculars shortened the distance enough that I could see what was left of the man’s face. Unless there was a grass clump in the way, even my old eyes could tell that the man’s skull was missing from the bridge of his nose up.

  “And you didn’t climb the fence?”

  “No, sir. I didn’t want to mess anything up. Nobody’s been over there since we arrived.”

  I nodded and handed the binoculars back. “Cut the top two strands of the fence,” I said, pointing directly across the road. “Watch where you step.”

  Where the roadside fence ran along the ditch, the ground was tough bunchgrass and soil that was not much more than the bald top of an ancient limestone outcrop. A jackhammer wouldn’t have left many prints. I scanned the roadway carefully while Encinos rummaged in the trunk of his car for wire cutters.

  “Just let it snap back,” I said when it looked like the two deputies were going to try and coil the wire after the cut. The remaining two strands were low enough that even I could hoist my bulk over without difficulty. “Walk the fence line along the road and along the two-track,” I said, pointing at the road to Reuben’s shack. “See where entry was made if you can.”

  I walked a direct, careful line to the corpse, concentrating on the ground at my feet. Nothing marred the crumpled limestone. What dry grass blades had not been mowed down by cattle or deer stood pale and unbroken in the glare of the flashlight.

  The corpse was lying on its side. Brown boots, blue jeans, lightweight down jacket over a brown cotton work shirt. Stuart Torkelson hadn’t changed his clothes since we’d talked earlier, not fifty yards from this spot. His head was a mess, with most of the forward vault of the skull missing.

  I knelt down on one knee. There was a small puddle of blood under Torkelson’s head and another near his belt buckle. I frowned. If the realtor had dropped where he’d been shot, he’d be lying in an ocean of blood, bone, and brain tissue.

  I swept the light in a circle, gradually working the beam out from the corpse. Stuart Torkelson had weighed 260 if he’d weighed an ounce. If he’d been shot first and then dragged, some marks would show, however faint. I stood up.

  Encinos’s and Abeyta’s lights had stopped at a point about twenty feet up the two-track from the cattle guard. In the distance I could hear a siren and knew that the ambulance and coroner were only moments away. “What did you find?” I called.

  “I think where they crossed over,” Encinos’s quiet voice replied. “Come look.” I retraced my steps, hopped the wire and walked around the corner of the fence to where the two deputies waited.

  “The top wire is loose,” Deputy Abeyta said.

  “That could have been that way for days…months,” I replied.

  “I don’t think so,” Paul Encinos said. “The staple is right here.” He held the flashlight close to the ground. “It hasn’t been out of the wood very long. See the ends? They’re not rusted like the part that was exposed.”

  He raised the light and held it three inches from the staple that secured the second wire. “And see? If you look real close you can see bright metal on the crown of this one, where it was pounded back in.”

  I straightened up with an audible cracking of joints. “Maybe. Maybe not. There might be fifty explanations for that.”

  “Yes, sir,” Encinos said. My skepticism hadn’t convinced him.

  “If Torkelson was shot out here somewhere, we’ll find blood, bone, and bits of brain tissue. Somewhere. If the place is clean, then he was shot somewhere else, brought here and dumped. But I don’t believe that.”

  “Why not, sir?”

  “Because it would be too much of a coincidence. The last place I saw him alive was right here, and he told me about an earlier confrontation of sorts. If he had enemies in town who killed him there, why would they choose this spot as a dumping ground? It doesn’t make sense.” I turned as first the ambulance and then another sedan rounded the corner and pulled to a jarring halt behind my car.

  “Tony, go tell them to stay put for a while. We’ll call ’em when we’re ready.” The officer trotted off and I turned to Encinos. “We’ll take a set of photos of the body and the area tonight. Especially these staples. Use the close-up attachment. You up to that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Fine. And I want sequence and grid photos. Start at the roadway and work your way in to the body. Then document the area around the body about five feet at a time as far out as you’ve got film. We might not be able to see a damn thing, but at least we’ll have some backup in case this weather brews some snow or rain. As soon as you’ve done that, let me know.”

  I started back toward the vehicl
es, then stopped. “Are your keys in the Dodge?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I need to borrow it for a few minutes.” I wasn’t about to crash and jar my way up the two-track and across two arroyos in the Ford sedan at night. That was one reason. The other was that I could leave Linda Rael, her notebook, and her camera parked in harmless ignorance while I went to visit Reuben Fuentes.

  12

  Dark closed in around the little cabin like a tight envelope. With no moon and obscured stars, the pockets under the piñons and junipers sank into absolute black. The lights from the Dodge were brilliant and harsh, cutting across the junk, the old bus, and the Ford Bronco. I parked and switched off the headlights. Without them, I couldn’t see Reuben Fuentes’s little cabin twenty feet beyond the front bumper.

  Gradually my eyes became accustomed to the ink, and I could make out a glow drifting out of the single high window on the west wall. It was the window over the sink, and the wash of light was so faint that it was like looking at a star that shows up best when caught in the peripheral vision.

  I opened the door of the Dodge, grimacing against the bright dome light. As I stepped out, I saw the slight figure backlighted in the now open doorway of the cabin.

  “Buenas noches, Don Reuben,” I said and shut the truck door. I cradled my flashlight under my arm without turning it on.

  “Come inside,” he said. He turned and vanished into the shadows. I felt a wave of relief that Reuben was all right, untouched by what had happened down at the road.

  I stepped through the doorway and saw a single lamp across the room in the corner by the fireplace. The bulb couldn’t have been more than ten watts, the light further muffled by a dark brown shade that had once been burlap before the moths and spiders got to it. A book lay in the chair.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you so late, Reuben,” I said, pushing the door closed behind me.

  “You want a beer?” He shuffled toward the refrigerator and I quickly held up a hand.

  “No, really. Thanks just the same.” My refusal had no effect. He opened the small door and brought out first one brown bottle and then another. He set one by the sink and frowned.

  “I don’t know where the opener is,” he said almost in a whisper. He rummaged through the detritus around the sink.

  “It’s a twist-off,” I said. I reached over and opened one of the bottles, then handed it to him. I left the other on the counter, unopened.

  “Siéntese,” he said, indicating one of the two straight chairs. I chose the one without the cat.

  “How have you been?” I asked.

  “Since this morning? Bien.” He picked up the book that had been in his chair and sat down. “You have news of Estelita.”

  “No. That’s next weekend, Reuben.” I leaned forward, rested my forearms on my knees, and folded my hands. There was no fire in the fireplace, but the cabin was snug and warm. “We’ve got us a problem down by the road.”

  For a minute I thought he’d forgotten my presence and had started reading again. But after a bit he closed the book and carefully laid it on the small lamp table next to his beer bottle. His hands composed themselves in his lap and in the dim light I couldn’t tell if he was regarding me with interest or simply had his head pointed in my general direction.

  “What kind of problem do you have?” Reuben asked.

  “One of your neighbors got himself shot.”

  “Lo siento. It happened earlier?”

  “Yes. We think so. We don’t know when, for sure.”

  Reuben shifted a little in his chair and groped in his shirt pocket for a cigarette. He tamped both ends with care and then lit it with a kitchen match that he scratched against the stones of the fireplace. The smoke smelled too good…I damned near asked him for one myself.

  “I heard two shots, señor. Two. I think it was two.”

  “When was this, Reuben?”

  “As I remember it was after the sun went down. Maybe seven o’clock. Maybe later. Maybe eight. I don’t remember with certainty.” He smoked in silence for a while. I was sure he was thinking the story through and I didn’t interrupt him. Finally he said, “I thought that it was probably hunters across the road.”

  “The shots sounded far away?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you drive down to see?”

  “No.”

  “Did you hear or see anything else? Out of the ordinary, I mean.”

  He shook his head. “So tell me…who was it?”

  “Stuart Torkelson, Reuben.”

  “¿ Verdad?” He frowned. “Somebody beat me to it, then.”

  “Beat you to it?”

  “You know, señor, that he and I have our arguments. He thinks he should have deed to every acre on earth, this man. And then sell it to foreigners from—” he waved his hand in frustration. No doubt folks from back east were foreigners to him.

  “We found him in your field, Reuben.”

  “What was he doing there?”

  “I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “No se,” the old man said. “If you mean the field down by the road, he was there earlier, too.”

  “I know. He told me this afternoon.”

  “I do not know why he was there.”

  “We’ll be going over that field and the area around it pretty carefully, Reuben. We’ll be down there the rest of the night and probably all day tomorrow.” I stood up and stepped over to the sink. I put the bottle of beer he’d offered me back in the refrigerator.

  The inside of the fridge was as dark and forbidding as the rest of the cabin. I had never won the Good Housekeeping seal of approval for my home’s cleanliness either, but at least I could still recognize many of the items in my refrigerator.

  I turned around, leaning against the edge of the sink. My eyes had adjusted enough that I could make out the mantel of the fireplace. A piece of what might have been lava rested there, its shiny black surface muted by cobwebs and dust. In almost the exact center of the mantel lay a large revolver.

  “I came by to ask your permission, Reuben. To ask if we can search the field. We might be able to find something that will help us.”

  “Claro.”

  As I spoke I made my way over to the fireplace and picked up the revolver. It was a single-action Colt, and it smelled as musty as everything else in the cabin. And it was fully loaded. I laid it back down. “If you see anything else, or hear anything, will you call me, Reuben?”

  He nodded.

  “Someone will be down at the cattle guard most of the night if you think of anything. Just holler.” He stood up with considerable effort and followed me to the door. The old man and his rude cabin were instantly lost in the shadowless night as I turned the Ramcharger around and drove back down the lane.

  The number of lights, blinking red and otherwise, had grown exponentially in the few minutes I had been gone. I parked the Dodge in the middle of Reuben’s lane, nose to nose with Sheriff Martin Holman’s black Buick.

  I had no more than opened the door when Deputy Tony Abeyta materialized. His face was animated.

  “We found where the shooting took place, sir.”

  “Good work. Where?”

  “Just over there, this side of that grove of piñons.” He aimed his flashlight and the beam stabbed across the pasture, the light lost in the sea of crisscrossed spots from three patrol units and half a dozen other flashlights.

  I frowned, puzzled, and muttered, “Why did they drag him almost a hundred feet after they shot him?”

  “Sir?”

  “Nothing, Tony. You got the place roped off?”

  “Yes, sir. And Bob is almost finished taking pictures.”

  Deputy Robert Torrez had climbed out of bed for this one, too. That didn’t surprise me. Before dawn, most of the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department employees would have trekked across this field for one reason or another. And that included the sheriff himself, Martin Holman.

  I stood at the barbed
wire fence, my right hand resting lightly on the top strand, as I watched Holman make his way across the rough ground toward me.

  The sheriff was medium height, medium weight, his hair medium brown, medium thick, and medium long. When I’d first met him, I’d thought that he was medium stupid, too. But he wasn’t, really. The used car lot he’d operated before the election made him a fair living. His brother still ran the place.

  He’d won the election on one of those sweeping tides of promises for fiscal responsibility to which voters fall prey periodically. During the first months of his tenure, he’d discovered that money hadn’t been wasted in the department. When we requested a new patrol unit it was because the piece of junk it replaced was just that—junk. He’d discovered that we were understaffed, undertrained, and underbudgeted in general.

  And my estimation of him had soared when Martin Holman started spending his time doing what he did best—lobbying legislators for more money. He was no cop, though. I tried my best to forgive his occasional gaffes when he decided to play at being one. We’d made it through three years of his tenure with few embarrassments.

  Holman reached the fence. He was breathing hard.

  “Christ, Bill,” he said.

  I didn’t know whether he was referring to the crime itself, the late hour and chilly wind, or my being absent when he arrived…or all of the above. So I said, “I was just up at Reuben’s.”

  “Well this is a hell of a thing, Bill,” Holman said. “First the Hocking woman and now this. I mean, Stuart Torkelson, for God’s sake.”

  I nodded in the darkness.

  “What the hell happened out here?” Holman asked.

  “We don’t know yet,” I said. “Torker got himself shot. Deputy Abeyta was telling me they found the spot where the shooting happened.”

  “Way the hell over there by the trees,” Holman said, waving a hand. “They’ve got the place roped off. I started to walk across and I thought Bob Torrez was going to chop my head off. Christ.”