“Martin, think on that one, will you? Stuart Torkelson obviously wasn’t minding his own business. If that had been the case, he’d be home in a comfortable bed right now. He wouldn’t be dead. What we’re going to have to find out is what he was doing out here. And what someone else was doing out here.”
Holman took a deep breath and jammed both hands in his coat pockets. The rain was still light, but the small drops were icy cold, driven by the wind out of the west.
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to talk to Reuben again. In the morning. And I’m going to call his grandniece as soon as I get back to the office. And I’m going to wait until the medical examiner has something concrete to go on before jumping to conclusions.”
“What’s it going to take before you figure you have enough to make an arrest?” Holman asked.
“You mean before I’ll take Reuben Fuentes into custody? A whole lot, Martin. A whole lot.”
He shook his head. “I think you’re too close to this one, Bill. I really do.” He stepped around me as if he was going to join the deputies at the hole. But he stopped, turned, and added, “If Reuben Fuentes wasn’t related to Estelle Reyes-Guzman, he’d be in the lockup right now. And you know it.”
Martin Holman’s sudden attack of spine surprised me. But he was dead wrong on all counts. Maybe he was just playing the hard-driving sheriff for Linda Rael’s benefit. That was all right, as long as he didn’t get in the way, or do something stupid on his own.
I touched Linda’s elbow. “I’m going back to the office. Want to come along?”
“Aren’t they going to rebury the dogs?” she asked. Her voice was small and she was shivering.
“No. They’ll take them for analysis. The old man didn’t press the issue, but as long as we’ve gone this far, we might as well find out what killed ’em. You never know.”
She saw the black plastic bags laid out on the ground and she turned away. “I’m ready,” she said.
We were nearly back to the village limits when she asked, “What happens now?”
I shrugged. “We wait for the medical examiner’s report on Torkelson’s corpse and any of the other physical evidence. A couple of the deputies will be working out there all day tomorrow, double-checking that we didn’t miss anything. We’ll interview the old man.” I shrugged again.
“Do you think he did it?”
“Don’t you start, now.”
She almost laughed. “Well, everyone’s heard the stories about him.”
I swung into the department parking lot and pulled up next to the gasoline pumps. “Linda, we can’t arrest a man based on what folks say they’ve heard…or what they haven’t heard. We’ll do what the evidence tells us to do.”
It was pellet snow, then, pinging off the windshield. I was loath to stand outside another minute, pumping gasoline into the county gas-guzzler. But I’d thrown enough fits in the direction of young deputies who’d put a half-empty patrol car away that I was trapped now. I shrugged my coat tighter and got out.
“Besides,” I said over the top of 310 as Linda prepared to make a break for the warmth and coffee of the office. “If Reuben Fuentes was guilty of murder, he wouldn’t have just sat up there in his little cabin, letting us dig the hell out of his field.”
She nodded and started to walk inside. But she stopped and turned around. “Do you call in other agencies?”
“What do you mean?”
“The state police, maybe. You know, for help.”
“If need be, of course. But our people are pretty good at what they do, Linda.” She pulled her coat tighter against the wind and walked inside.
While I waited for the nozzle to click off, I thought about the old Mexican in his tiny shack. At first I had thought that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to bring him into town for the night, for his own protection. But there were some pieces that didn’t fit.
Reuben Fuentes might be damn near senile, maybe half blind and almost stone deaf when he needed to be…but let someone sneeze near his land and he was out the door with pistol or rifle or shotgun in hand.
Hunters didn’t roam his property during deer season without challenge…and earlier Stuart Torkelson hadn’t read two numbers off his tape measure before the old man was at his backside. And now, the old man had allowed a revival-sized crowd of people to tramp one of his pastures, dig his earth, and disturb the eternal rest of his hounds. That wasn’t like him.
I screwed on the gas cap, snapped the door closed, and sat back inside the car to jot all the bookkeeping gibberish in the log. I’d committed some real boners in my twenty-three-year career in law enforcement, generally because I had assumed, with complete certainty, that I was right at the time. I knew that Reuben Fuentes hadn’t shot Stuart Torkelson. My unflinching certainty was making me nervous.
15
By eight-thirty that morning, we were handed one of the missing puzzle pieces, Martin Holman issued an order, and I couldn’t put off calling Estelle Reyes-Guzman any longer.
I closed my office door against interruptions and found the number I wanted on the roller file. The signals were traveling no more than thirty miles as the crow flies—probably less. But for efficiency, I might as well have been calling the moon.
Finally a small voice came on the other end.
“¿ Hola?”
“¿ Quien es?” I asked.
“Tinita,” the tiny voice said, well named.
“Tina,” I said, “is your father or mother home?”
A long pause followed my sudden excursion into English. “Tina?” I repeated.
“¿ Hola?”
I closed my eyes with frustration, trying to remember back forty-seven years to when I was a high school junior and Mrs. Hempsted had tried to twist my hopelessly Scotch-Irish tongue around Spanish I.
“Hija, quiero hablar with…con your madre or padre.”
That brought a response. The kid probably thought she was talking to a drunk. “Un momento,” she said primly. A couple loud clanks as the phone was dropped on the table were followed by a bellow of startling proportions from such young lungs.
“Hello?” a teenage voice said after a minute. “Who’s calling, please?”
I knew that Felicia Diaz was fourteen, and that sounded about right for this voice.
“Is this Felicia?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, good. Felicia, this is Undersheriff Bill Gastner up in Posadas.”
“Good morning, sir.”
She was so damn polite I wanted to bottle her manners and sell them to parents of American teenagers.
“How’s your family enjoying the holidays?”
“Fine, sir. Even Roberto is home for a week.” Roberto Diaz was twenty-two or so and studying to be a dentist. Where he found the money for that was a mystery to me. I heard a voice in the background and Felicia said, “One moment, please.” She did a good job of covering the speaker of the phone, but I managed to hear her say something that included policia in it.
“Sir, here is my father.”
“Thanks, Felicia. You have a good holiday. See you next week at the christening.”
Roman Diaz’s voice was hearty and heavily accented. “Señor Gastner. Good to hear from you!”
“The same, Don Roman. How’s the family?”
“Fine, sir. Fine. When are you coming down? And let me assume that you need to reach Estellita?”
“You read my mind. I sure do. Is there any way you could send someone down the lane?”
“Tinita is on the way,” he said. “Do you want me to have Estelle call you or—”
“I’ll hold on if I might.” I had a good connection and didn’t want to risk losing it. Roman Diaz and I exchanged pleasantries about the weather, family, and the upcoming christening of Estelle’s infant son.
In no more than five minutes, our conversation was interrupted by a shout from Tinita’s tiny lungs. When Estelle came on the line she was breathing hard.
&nb
sp; “Make yourself comfortable, doll. We’re going to be talking a while. This is Gastner.”
“Now what have you done?” She said it as a joke, in between breaths. “Are you in Posadas?”
“Of course. Where did you think I’d be?”
She laughed. “No way of telling, sir.” She took a deep breath. “How are you?”
“Fine. I really am. We’ve got a little problem of a different sort up here.”
“Oh? Que?” Her voice, once she found her breath, was rich and velvety.
“You remember Stuart Torkelson?” When she didn’t respond immediately I added, “He’s a realtor here…has been for years.”
“I know the name. I’m not sure I ever met him…wait. A great big man? White hair like one of those people in the silver hair commercials?”
“That’s him.”
“Right. He tried to sell Francis and me a home once. And I saw him again at a Lions Club luncheon where I was the guest speaker. He introduced me. What did he do?”
“He got himself killed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. How?”
I hesitated. “Someone shot him.”
“Right there in town?”
“No. About seven miles southwest of the village.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “Out by Uncle Reuben’s place?”
“Yes. One of the deputies was close-patrolling the area after an earlier complaint we had, and he found the body. About fifty feet off the road in that big pasture that fronts on both the county road and the old man’s two-track.”
“And he’d been shot?”
“Yes. Twice.” I told her every detail of what we’d found, including Torkelson’s tale of his confrontation with Reuben earlier.
“I don’t think so, sir,” she said when I’d finished.
“Neither do I. But it’s harder to argue with Martin Holman when he’s got the medical examiner behind him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, earlier I was operating under the assumption that a shotgun was used for the head wound. We didn’t move the body, and we didn’t do much of an on-site examination. The weather wasn’t cooperating, it was dark—that sort of thing. We took a half million photos and figured the examiner would tell us all we needed to know.”
“Sure. The deputies did a grid search for shell casings and the like?”
“Yes. And found nothing. But that’s not the point. The belly wound was caused by a heavy-caliber handgun, fired from far enough away that there was no flash burn, no powder. The slug hit him just above the belt and drove right on through. Through and through.”
“So no recovered slug.”
“That’s right. But Estelle, this is where I went wrong, I guess. The head wound was pretty massive. Lots of skull case missing, that sort of thing. I saw the wound and assumed shotgun, held close.”
“I don’t think Reuben ever owned a shotgun in his life.”
“That’s what I was figuring. But the medical examiner says the head wound was caused by a handgun, probably the same caliber as the other wound…and the damn thing was held so close that the corona was only a couple inches in diameter.”
“Under the chin?”
“Almost. The point of entry was right on the left jawbone, just in front of where the bone starts to curve upward toward the ear. The M.E. says the bullet hit that heavy bone and mushroomed right away.”
“Huh,” Estelle said. “And let me guess the bad news. Uncle Reuben was carrying one of his guns when he and Torkelson had their set-to a week ago?”
“That’s what Torkelson told me.”
“And he was wearing it in the post office too?”
“Yes. Three witnesses. No doubt about it.”
There was a long moment of silence and then Estelle said, “It doesn’t look good, sir.”
“Nope.”
“You find a corpse shot to death on the property of a person who you know carries a gun and who has been known to use it in the past and you’re bound to make certain conclusions.”
“Yep.”
“And Sheriff Holman wants you to arrest Reuben?”
“At least hold him for a preliminary hearing.”
“I suppose I can’t blame him. But he doesn’t know Reuben Fuentes like I do…or like you do.”
“No, he doesn’t. But he’s the sheriff. And he’s got the district attorney’s ear. They sit at the same table during Rotary.” Estelle ignored the acid in my tone.
“You can’t talk him out of it? I mean, where does the sheriff think Reuben will go?”
“He thinks the old man will run to Mexico.”
“Por Dios,” Estelle said with considerable acid of her own. “Ahora el se las da de experto.”
“Speak English, dammit.”
“Sorry, sir. I said now he wants to be the expert. Why can’t he stick to talking with the legislature about the budget?”
“Come on, Estelle. He’s not as much of an idiot as we first thought, three years ago.”
“He is if he thinks Reuben would leave his place for Mexico.”
“There’s always a chance.”
“No, there isn’t. He’s so old and…and…caduco that he probably doesn’t remember what direction the border is.”
I let that pass and said, “Sheriff Holman wants to go out this morning and bring him in for questioning.”
This time, there was more than exasperation in Estelle’s voice. “This is going to kill him, sir. If he thinks for one minute that he’s going to jail for something…especially something he didn’t do, it’ll kill him.”
“Yes.”
“Should I come up?”
“Yes.”
“I can be there in an hour. Will you have Holman at least wait until I get there?”
“It’s a promise, Estelle.”
16
Holman returned to the office a few minutes later, after I told our dispatcher to bring him in. Hell, he’d been out tramping around that field long enough. I didn’t want him dreaming up any more complications. He stood in the doorway of my office, his hands in his coat pockets, Stetson pulled low over his forehead like a real goddamned lawman.
“I don’t think you’re right in this,” he said, sounding like some goddamned counselor.
“Yes, I am,” I said. I was blunt, but sometimes that was the only kind of instrument that worked on Holman.
“And if we wait to arrest the old man, what are you planning?”
“Look,” I said, exasperated. A fleeting memory surfaced of a former sheriff, Eduardo Salcido. Salcido had had the good sense to hire me, twenty-three years before. I’d learned his habit of telling people things once and letting it go at that. Martin Holman liked to hear the same song half a dozen times, maybe hoping that the words would change.
I moved my empty coffee cup two inches to the right, as if it were in my way. “Look, sheriff. We’ve got a uniformed deputy parked at the entrance to Reuben’s property, with the county road sealed off beginning at the intersection with the state highway.” I held up my hands. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s a waste. I mean, the damn road was open all night, when we were measuring and popping flashbulbs. Nobody’s going out there. Nobody’s going to touch anything. And most important, Reuben Fuentes isn’t going to slip out from under our noses and slide into Mexico.”
“I don’t see why you have to have Estelle Reyes-Guzman on hand before you do anything. She doesn’t work for us.”
“I know that.” I paused to take a deep breath, my patience running thin. “Reuben Fuentes speaks English about as well as you and I talk Spanish. I need someone he trusts to talk with him. Estelle is nearby, and obviously he trusts her. It just makes sense. I want him to understand what’s happening to him.”
Holman nodded slightly and straightened his Stetson. “I was thinking of signing up for beginning Spanish at the community college this spring.”
I stared at him for a moment in disbelief. I didn’t know what to say, but Holman saved
me the trouble.
“So…the minute Reyes-Guzman arrives, we go out,” the sheriff said.
“You’re not planning a cavalcade, I hope?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” I said, “that just Estelle and I go out and bring the old man in. That’s more than enough. Anything beyond that is just plain silly.”
Holman eyed me askance, his eyes carrying that practiced hard glint that television actors adopt when they’re playing the crusty lawman. “You know, it is possible that the old man did it,” he said quietly. “And if he did, then certain security measures are called for. Completely called for.”
“I suppose so. But he didn’t do it.”
“We’ll see.”
Holman left my office, headed who knows where—maybe to smear more prints out at Anna Hocking’s. And I waited, poring over what information the medical examiner had already sent to our office. It wasn’t much. And now that the long night had worn the first flush of excitement from the chase, Martin Holman and I seemed to be the only ones still worried.
Deputies Paul Encinos and Tony Abeyta went back to the highway, looking for speeders—and no doubt flashing their spotlight into every damn field and yard, hoping for some more action.
Eddie Mitchell, an officer who was even less excitable than Bob Torrez, volunteered to sit out in Fuentes’s driveway until we oldsters finally decided to do whatever it was that we were going to do.
I got the distinct impression that everyone in the department thought I was several cards short. Hell, I suppose the evidence agreed. We’d found a man blown to pieces in a field owned by a known crazy…and I was the one who was refusing to arrest our solitary suspect.
I saw Bob Torrez pass down the hallway and shouted at him.
“Estelle is on her way up, Roberto.” I suppose I wanted at least one person on the staff to agree with me.
“I heard, sir.”
The tall deputy stood in the doorway, a manila envelope under his arm.
“What are you working on?” I asked. I leaned back in the chair and hooked my hands behind my head. He lifted the envelope and gazed at it as if this were the first time he’d seen it.
“The arson investigator from Albuquerque sent back the second set of pictures I took of Sheriff Holman’s house after the cleanup,” he said. “I was going to go through them and see what he said.”
Twice Buried Page 9
