Bag Limit

by Steven F Havill

  “Comes a time when that’s tough,” I said. “Let me just ask you flat out. How much do you trust Connie French?”

  Melinda looked directly at me. Her eyes were sad but unwavering. “Connie’s a nice person,” she said. “She’s a hard worker, she’s dependable, she’s accurate.”

  I smiled. “That’s not what I asked, Melinda. Is she capable of doing something like this?”

  “I would hope not.” She saw the expression flicker on my face and quickly added, “I know, I know. That’s not an answer either.”

  “But…”

  “But that’s the best I can do. Sure, she’s capable of doing it. So am I. I didn’t, though, and I would sincerely hope…sincerely hope…that she didn’t either. She’s another one who hasn’t had a life that was just a bed of roses. I know her brother’s worried about her, too.”

  “Scott? When was the last time you saw him?”

  “I talked with him just the other day, as a matter of fact.”

  “Do you remember the day?”

  “It would have been Friday.”

  “During regular office hours, that was?”

  “Yes. He came in when—” She stopped suddenly and just stared at me. “He came in when Connie was out on her lunch break. We’re supposed to close down from noon to one, but we don’t. So many people need that time to run errands. So we split lunch. But that’s when he came in.”

  “What did he want, do you recall?”

  “He just asked when Connie worked.”

  “And you told him?”

  “Yes, I did. I told him that Connie went out to lunch, and she’d be back at one, if he needed to see her. I guess it wasn’t important.”

  “Did he ask what days she worked?”

  “Yes. Although I can’t imagine that he didn’t already know. I mean, he’s in and around now and then. Why wouldn’t he know something as simple as that?”

  “He may just never have paid attention to those details before,” I said.

  “He’s a cop,” Melinda said quickly. She reached out and tapped the back of my hand, just enough to make the connection. “I’d be willing to guarantee that he pays attention to all kinds of things.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  By the time we left the Motor Vehicles Division field office, the sun had dipped below the boot of the San Cristóbal Mountains. The air was still. The last vestige of clouds formed a thin lenticular wisp about thirty thousand feet over Regal Pass. In another hour, we’d be able to stand in my backyard, away from all the streetlights, and see every star in the heavens. And they wouldn’t give me any answers, either.

  I drew in a deep breath of the nippy fall air and stood on the sidewalk with my hands jammed in my pockets as I watched Melinda Torrez lock the MVD’s front door.

  “Thanks, Melinda,” I said.

  “I don’t know what for,” she replied. “If there’s anything else, let me know. This whole thing makes my skin crawl, I can tell you that. Will you let me know what happens?”

  “Without a doubt.” She nodded and slipped into her little truck. Estelle had opened the door of the county car and was about to get in when she saw that I had settled against the front fender. I slouched there, arms folded over my belly, one boot crossed over the other. I don’t know what I was looking at—the scenery was limited to a spread of old adobe buildings renovated to look younger than they were, county gas pumps, and three Sheriff’s Department vehicles parked in a neat row between the two elm trees that marked the front entrance of the Public Safety Building.

  My back was to her, but I heard Estelle step around the car. She appeared at my right elbow.

  “So what do you think?” I asked.

  “Too many possibilities,” she said quietly.

  I grinned. “I was afraid you were going to say that.” I turned to look at her. As always, I was struck by how slight she was, even with the extra bulk of the nifty quilted vest that she was wearing. “How well do you know Melinda?”

  “I know her pretty well.” Estelle didn’t elaborate, but it would be tough to work for a decade in a tiny department in a tiny village without forming some lasting friendships—and without learning where most of the dark corners were.

  “Well?”

  “What are the possibilities?”

  “It would be easier to imagine what isn’t possible.”

  “All right. Start there.”

  “For one thing, Melinda is telling us the truth. I can’t conceive of her issuing some wild kid a fake license so that he can go buy booze whenever he wants to.”

  “Especially a relative.”

  “Especially that. Especially when one of Melinda’s own brothers was killed by a drunk driver. In fact, Melinda was one of the prime movers and shakers when the state was trying to drum up support to outlaw drive-up windows at liquor stores.”

  I stared off into the distance again, chewing on my lower lip. Estelle stepped down off the curb. That put us at eye level with each other.

  “Now,” Estelle continued, “would Melinda allow someone else to do the dirty work? Did she know about it? No. I don’t think so.”

  “Me either,” I said. “Do you know Connie French?”

  “I think I’ve met her a few times. I’d be able to pick her out of a crowd, but that’s it.”

  “So if she issued the license, she did it on the sly, when Melinda wouldn’t know about it.”

  “That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that she’d bother. What’s there to gain?”

  “Just a favor for a friend,” I said. “People have done worse for less. Maybe she had a crush on the kid. Who the hell knows.”

  “You haven’t talked to her yet, then?”

  “No. All this reminds me of what downhill skiing must be like. Not much time for side trips.”

  Estelle smiled. “Well, speaking of side trips. If Connie French didn’t issue the license, then that opens a whole new series of possibilities.”

  “The damn license could have come from anywhere,” I said.

  “Exactly. But there is something that tells me the license came from here.” She nodded at the dark building. “From what you told me, Scott Gutierrez has been around most of the weekend, in one way or another.”

  “He works in this part of the country. And he has relatives here.”

  “He works in the area, true. But he lives in Deming. Now, you said that he arrived at the scene when Matthew Baca was killed. He apparently spent a good deal of the night in the area, with or without his partner. He was first at the scene when Robert called for assistance the next morning…not at his home in Deming, or not at the field office. And if he’d been on duty with what’s-his-name that night…”

  “Bergmann.”

  “With Bergmann, then he wouldn’t have been assigned to work the border crossing the next morning. But there he was. And he was around, still using a government vehicle, when you guys chased Dale Torrance into the Broken Spur.”

  “Sure. I thought about all that. And it makes sense to me.”

  “It does?”

  “Sure. He’s an eager young cop. He works long hours. So what?”

  “Sir…you work hours like that because you can’t sleep, and because this entire county is as much home to you as your adobe house on Guadalupe Terrace. But follow it through. Who is sitting in the dark behind the church in Regal in the middle of the night? Isn’t that when you said you and Buddy talked to him?”

  “Yes. After Jackie Taber saw him drive through the village.”

  “And he’s going on a hunting trip with his sister and stepfather the next day? He’s going to be in great shape for that. He’ll spend the day sleeping under a tree somewhere.”

  “What are you telling me, Estelle?”

  “Scott Gutierrez is looking for something.”

  “That’s been my assumption. And it only makes sense that it has to do with the license. Why else would he be interested in anything Matt Baca is up to? Why would he go inside their hou
se? A neighbor claims to have seen his vehicle there, when he had no reason to be on the property at all. And when I told him that we’d found a fake driver’s license, he left Regal. What’s that sound like to you?”

  “That he knew what was going on,” Estelle said. “That he was looking for the license.”

  “And now tell me why.”

  “Too many possibilities,” Estelle said, and I scowled with frustration. “The one that comes to mind first is that he’s protecting his sister. If Connie issued that license, and if Scott can find it first, then she’s off the hook. It’s just the say-so of witnesses that Matt Baca used a fake ID.”

  “That thought had crossed my mind,” I said, but I shook my head. “All this for one stupid fake license? I don’t believe it. She’d lose her job and God knows what all else. Scott Gutierrez would lose his…and God knows what all else, too. All for some smooth-talking little punk who convinces Connie that if she issues him a fake ID, the whole world will spin faster and truer? Jesus.”

  Estelle smiled, and even in the poor light, it appeared to me that maybe there was a trace of sympathy there.

  “People do stupid things, we both know that. Why were you chasing Dale Torrance?”

  That prompted a loud laugh, the sort that reduced my blood pressure a couple of points. “Because he stole eighteen head of cattle so that he could buy his girlfriend a diamond ring or make a payment for her on a new pickup truck, or whatever the hell the money was for,” I said. “And he’s too stupid to realize that the love of his life wasn’t just all that impressed. And he’s too thick-skulled to figure out that if he stops for gas at a neighborhood station, someone might remember him?”

  Estelle held up her hands in surrender. “You see what I mean.”

  “Clearly.”

  “There’s one other possibility that we need to explore, though.”

  I stood up and brushed the fender dust from the back of my pants. I didn’t bother to correct her use of the “we.” “What’s that?”

  “Suppose that the license that was issued to Matt Baca wasn’t the only one.”

  I looked hard at Estelle for a minute. “That thought has crossed my mind.”

  “Exactly.”

  I slumped back against the car. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” I said.

  Chapter Forty

  The undersheriff was in the process of pouring a carafe of water into the coffeemaker when we walked in. Maybe it was just my glasses that needed cleaning, but the water appeared amber, as if it had been used more than once.

  With practiced ease, Torrez slid the empty pot under the drip and motioned for us to join him in his office. “I want to show you something,” he said. That was an improvement over sitting in a blue funk. Inactivity didn’t suit the man.

  As he rounded the corner of his desk, he pushed the computer screen so that it turned to face us.

  “I finally figured out what I wanted to look for,” he said. “This is for the past twelve months.”

  Estelle scanned the screen-load of data far more quickly than I, but she didn’t have bifocals to deal with. “I don’t follow,” I said. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”

  “How many arrests were there statewide for fraudulent or altered driver’s licenses, sir?” Torrez asked. He sat down behind the desk.

  “Six, it looks like.”

  “That’s six in an entire year, for the entire state.”

  “Right. That’s what it says. Not something that happens all that often.”

  “What the numbers tell us,” Estelle added, “is that there were only six instances when the perpetrator was apprehended. Not necessarily the number of times the violation occurred.”

  “Well, sure,” I said. “We don’t know how many attempts there were. Or for that matter, how many successful operations.”

  Torrez smiled grimly. “Even more interesting…how many incidents were there of an illegal license being issued by a MVD office?”

  “Not one.”

  He leaned forward and turned the screen partially back so that he could view it. “Not one.”

  “Your sister showed us how it might be done,” I said. “All a clerk would have to do is void the thing from the permanent record. Then you’ve got the license in hand, but with no record of it on file.”

  “And…” Torrez said, rising from his chair. He held a pencil in both hands, and I could see the wood bending as he pursued the thought. “Suppose an officer stops John Doe for a traffic violation, and asks to see a license. Let’s say that Mr. Doe has a fake license, just like the one that my cousin had.”

  “Unless the cop knows him, or has some reason to suspect the license, he’s going to accept the license as long as the photo matches. As long as it’s an official license from a MVD office, there would be no reason to question it,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Torrez said. “In point of fact, there is no way for the officer to question it, at the time of the stop. We can’t access Motor Vehicle Division records through normal channels. We can’t just punch in the number on the license to make sure it’s what it seems to be.”

  “You could call a MVD office on the phone and ask,” I said. “But who’s going to bother to do that. Unless something tipped off the officer that it might be necessary.”

  “Right. And those records there”—and he nodded at the state compilation of violation statistics—“indicate that’s not happening.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “What I got to thinking,” Torrez said, “was pretty simple. What if my cousin’s little prank wasn’t just an isolated thing? What if he got the license not because it was an original idea with him, but because he knew that he could? Maybe he knew somebody else who had one, or heard about it. Family or not, I’ll be the first to tell you—my cousin wasn’t exactly a rocket scientist.”

  I sat down and looked at Estelle. “That’s what you were thinking, isn’t it? That Matt might not have been alone in this?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “A risky business,” I said.

  “Well, not really,” Torrez replied, and pointed at the screen. “That shows how risky it is, right there. They’re not being apprehended, that’s for sure.”

  “If it’s happening at all. The lack of numbers may mean just that, Roberto—that we’re dreaming up a problem that doesn’t exist. Give me a better reason.”

  “Money,” Torrez said promptly. “What if you could sell a license for, say, five hundred or a thousand bucks a pop. That’s a nice little bit of tax-free budget helper.”

  I frowned. “That’s not what I meant, but I just answered my own question. I know that anyone will sell anything, given the right price, legal or not. Who’d want one, though? And that’s pretty simple, too. What one document makes the whole of the United States fair game? A driver’s license. That’s what cops ask to see. We don’t ask to see a Social Security card. We don’t ask for a credit card. We ask for a driver’s license.”

  Estelle nodded. “If I’m a trucker living in Mexico and I want to tap the big money north of the border, I need a license,” she said. “A commercial driver’s license would be my ticket. No green card complications, no tests to take, none of that nuisance. Nothing. And the money on this side of the border is a whole lot better.”

  I pinched my thumb and index finger together, holding up the imaginary license. “With a valid driver’s license, this country is mine. I can travel where I want, work wherever. A fake Social Security number does the rest, if the employer is playing by the rules and paying over the counter. Otherwise, even that doesn’t matter. I’d be willing to bet that a third of the workers in Posadas County don’t have W-4 forms filed on ’em.” I gestured at Estelle.

  “Hell, here’s a young lady who could just as easily be a current resident of Michoacan, Mexico, as Michigan or Minnesota. Estelle, you walked through a couple of international airports on your trip down here, and how many times were you asked for identification?”

 
“Never, sir.”

  “Exactly my point,” I said. “Once you get yourself past customs, get in the county, cops don’t check papers. And if you were stopped, they’d want to see a driver’s license. Even those of us with half a brain know that cops have profiles. Avoid the profile and avoid the confrontation. Just because someone has black hair, black eyes, and talks with an accent doesn’t mean they need a green card.”

  “There’s a catch, though,” Torrez mused.

  “Sure there’s a catch,” I said. “If the driver’s stupid and gets himself a ticket, even a routine ticket for driving his rig thirty-seven in a thirty zone, then the fake number on his license goes into the computer. Somewhere down the line, some bells and whistles are going to go off.”

  “But not at the time of the actual traffic stop,” Torrez added. “If the driver’s careful, he could use the fake license for a long time.”

  “Hell, a lifetime. And if he does get in hot water, he goes back to Mexico for a while. If the ticket was in New Mexico, hell—drive into Texas or Arizona for a while. No big deal.” I grinned. “Our interstate cooperation is legendary, as we all know.”

  “You want some fresh coffee?” Torrez asked, sounding more as if he were searching for a way to wind me down from my soapbox than anything else.

  “Hell, yes. It’s been almost two hours since I ate last. I’ve got some empty corners down there. You want anything, sweetheart?”

  “No thanks. I’m fine,” Estelle said. Minnesota hadn’t changed any of her habits. I waited until Robert returned with coffee for himself and me. “So…do you want to know what your sister said?”

  “She wouldn’t do it,” he said with conviction.

  “No, she wouldn’t. Estelle and I agree with you on that. And if she knew it was happening in her office, she’d blow the whistle.”