“You didn’t see him leave in company with anyone?”
He shook his head. “But I was occupied,” he added.
“Who was sitting nearest him at the bar when you came in? Do you remember?”
Prior took a deep breath and looked off into the distance. “Let’s see. Alex Taylor is workin’ the bar.” He turned and looked at the others who had drifted toward the yellow ribbon like flies to flypaper. “Stubby Moore, over there. Emilio Garcia. His brother there too. Juan. Jim Burdick and his wife. They were all kinda there, but I don’t recall who was sitting where.”
“Thanks. Don’t go anywhere,” I said. I strode over to Jim Burdick, who was standing near the back bumper of one of the patrons’ vehicles, an arm protectively around his wife Peggy’s plump shoulders.
He still smelled faintly of automotive grease and his face was pale. He didn’t release his hold on his wife when he turned to greet me.
“Jim, who was Finnegan with tonight?” I said without preamble.
“He come in alone, as far as I know,” Burdick said.
“Did you talk with him?”
“I was going to. He’s ordered a rear axle seal for that truck of his, and I was about to tell him it come in today. But then he up and left, just all of a sudden.”
“Had he been talking to anyone?”
“No, not that I remember.”
“He looked like he wanted to say something to that rancher,” Burdick’s wife said.
“What rancher, Peggy?”
She looked up at her husband. “Who was that? Sitting at the table by the window? Remember? He was all by himself and when we came in, you kind of waved at him?”
“At the table?” Burdick said, puzzled.
“Right by the window.”
“Oh. That was Ed Boyd. But he left.”
“And then so did Mr. Finnegan,” Peggy Burdick said. “I remember, because I heard Mr. Finnegan mutter something. I couldn’t hear what it was. But I remember that he’d ordered a drink, and he left before Alex could get it to him. He tossed a couple bucks on the bar and just left.”
“Edwin Boyd was here?” I glared hard at Burdick.
“Yeah,” he said helpfully. “But he left.”
“I bet he did,” I muttered and spun around, only to crash into Neil Costace. I pointed across the lot at Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s figure as we both regained our balance. “Go get her,” I said. “Meet me at her unit right there.”
I slipped into Estelle’s sedan and grabbed the mike.
“Three-oh-three, three-ten.”
“Three-oh-three.”
“Tom, has there been any vehicular traffic past you in the last few minutes? Going northbound on Forty-three?”
“That’s negative, three-ten.”
“All right. I want you to go inside the Legion Hall and find Johnny Boyd. Tell him that I need to talk with him right now. We’ll be there in less than a minute.”
“Ten-four.”
Neil Costace and Estelle appeared at the car door, and I pushed myself out.
“Edwin Boyd,” I said and for the first time, saw a look of surprise on Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s face.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“What’s Johnny Boyd doing here?” Costace asked as we turned left at the end of Pershing Park and headed toward the American Legion Hall half a block ahead.
“He’s angry,” I said. “That’s my best guess. Instead of going home and stewing, and facing questions from Maxine, he came down to the Legion Hall to cool off.” I glanced around at Costace in the back seat. “And no doubt he’s telling some wonderful tall tales about what happened tonight.”
“They don’t have to be too tall,” Costace murmured. “And his brother is at one bar, he’s at another. It’s odd that they’re not drinking buddies.”
“Evidently they’re not,” I said. “Each to his own.”
Tom Pasquale had pulled his patrol car up so that he was parked nose to nose with Boyd’s truck, and in the wash of light cast by the sodium vapor light, I could see the young deputy standing beside Boyd. As we approached, a bright glow marked the end of Johnny Boyd’s cigarette. Estelle braked hard and pulled to a stop.
“Now what the hell is going on?” Boyd asked as we got out. A scant three blocks’ distance and a handful of trees in Pershing Park separated us from a view of the Pierpoint, and the winking emergency lights were clearly visible.
“Johnny,” I said, and reached out a hand to take the rancher by the shoulder. “Where did Edwin go tonight when he left the house?”
“Why?” The answer came out automatically, a standard response to questions that Johnny Boyd considered no one’s business but his own. And then he glanced to the south, toward the congregation of flashing lights. I saw the expression on his face change as he put two and two together. “What’s happened?”
“Richard Finnegan is dead, Johnny.”
He looked at me quickly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean just that. He’s dead. I don’t know the details, except that he was stabbed to death outside of the Pierpoint Bar and Grill just a little while ago.”
He took an involuntary step backward, and when he reached for the cigarette in his mouth, he fumbled it and it fell to the sidewalk in a cascade of sparks. Tom Pasquale was standing beside him and evidently thought the man had lost his balance. He reached out a hand to take Johnny by the elbow, and the rancher reacted as if he’d brushed against an electric fence.
“Now wait a minute,” he said. “I’ve been inside the Legion Hall ever since I drove into town.”
“Johnny—” I started to say.
“No.” He held up both hands and took another step backward. “I know what all of you think, or you wouldn’t have been snooping around my property earlier. But this is just plain crazy. I didn’t have anything to do with Richard Finnegan getting himself killed.”
“Johnny, stop it,” I snapped. “I’m not the least bit interested in what you’ve been doing since you came to town.” That wasn’t altogether true, of course, but it served the purpose, Boyd’s eyes narrowed and he glanced first at Neil Costace and then at Estelle. “We have reason to believe that Edwin was involved somehow,” I said, and Johnny’s head snapped back around.
“What?”
“At least one of the patrons saw your brother at the Pierpoint. Edwin was there, sitting by himself. Richard Finnegan came in, and witnesses say that shortly after Finnegan entered the bar, your brother got up and left. And then so did Richard Finnegan. And now Finnegan is dead.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Boyd moaned.
“Johnny, we need to know—” But that’s as far as I got. Boyd smacked his forehead as if he’d been struck by a vicious migraine, reeled past me, found his balance and dashed to his truck. Tommy Pasquale found his feet before anyone else, but by the time he caught up with Boyd, the rancher was already in the truck and slamming the door.
The electric locks of the fancy rig banged shut before the deputy could grab the door handle, and then the engine sprang to life. Johnny Boyd jerked the vehicle into reverse, trying for some space between his truck and the front of the patrol car. As he did so, I could see Pasquale’s right hand snake down, reaching for the holstered automatic on his hip.
“No!” I bellowed. “Let him go, Tom!” The pistol was out, the momentum of the draw bringing the weapon up so that the muzzle stared Johnny Boyd full in the face, only a single piece of safety glass between the two. “Tom!” I roared again, lunging toward him. “Hold your fire! Let him go!”
Boyd jerked the gear lever into drive, wrenched the wheel, and the big truck roared out into the street.
“Now listen,” I snapped, and held out a hand toward Pasquale. “Put that thing away.” He holstered the automatic and I grabbed him with one hand and Neil Costace with the other as if they were two recalcitrant urchins.
“Here’s what I want you to do. If he goes north past the mine—that’s if he takes the usual route in to his ranch, I want you t
o follow him, red lights off. Don’t push him. He’s not thinking straight, and I don’t want him shoved into some arroyo, or you either. Just stay well behind. Estelle and I are going to take the state road, the long way around through Newton. Maybe Edwin went that way. It’s smoother, for one thing. If Johnny goes that way too, just let him go. You continue up the hill. Go in the front way.”
“You don’t want us to take him into custody?” Pasquale asked, and even though it was his “I’m just checking to make sure” tone of voice, I damn near lost my temper. I had taken two or three steps toward Estelle’s car, and I whirled around, hands on my hips.
“You don’t get close to him,” I snapped. “You do exactly what I told you to do. You stay behind him and don’t spook him. Keep your eyes open and use your head.”
“Yes, sir.”
I glanced at Costace. “Ride with him,” I said, and if he didn’t nod eager agreement, at least he didn’t say no, nor did he take time to point out to me that he wasn’t one of my deputies. “Now let’s get on with it.”
Estelle was already behind the wheel of her unmarked car when I slid into the seat. Johnny Boyd had a one-minute head start, and considering the way he was flogging his pickup, that was enough to keep him out of sight until we’d cleared the village and hit the two-mile straightaway on County Road 43 that led due north toward the intersection with State 78, at the foot of the mesa just below the landfill entrance.
We covered those two miles in a blur, and as we approached the intersection, I saw a pair of taillights heading up the hill, just entering the first set of switchbacks below the mine. Judging by their rate of speed, they belonged to Boyd.
“We see him,” Costace’s voice said over the radio. Estelle moved into the left lane, giving Pasquale room to pass as we slowed for the turn onto the state highway. He did so, flogging the Bronco until its V-8 screamed.
State Highway 78 cut across the western half of Posadas County diagonally, exiting the county at the northwest corner. About the only road in the county that was straight for any appreciable distance, that night it was devoid of traffic. Estelle was tense, both hands on the wheel, the pencil beam from the spotlight lancing out far ahead, searching for the glint of startled eyes in the road.
We flashed by the airport, the final set of lights before the darkness of the prairie turned our headlights into a white tunnel.
“If Edwin went this way, he’s got about a fourteen- or fifteen-minute head start, and that means no matter how fast you go, you won’t catch him before he reaches the ranch, unless he’s puttering along at thirty miles an hour.”
“Even with his old truck, he’ll do better than that,” Estelle said.
Eighteen miles out of Posadas, a single set of taillights popped into view. Well before I could judge that they were small, low, and close-set, Estelle had drifted the car into the left lane. I reached down and flipped the switch by the radio console that activated the grille wiggle-waggles, and the little Subaru station wagon jumped to the right like a kicked puppy.
“They won’t be drowsy for a few minutes,” I muttered as we blasted past. I turned the red lights off. For the rest of the run to the Newton intersection, Estelle kept the car ballistic, the speedometer registering well over a hundred miles an hour.
And even as we awakened the sleepy little hamlet with our passing, it was clear to me that Edwin Boyd hadn’t nursed his old truck along. As we turned onto the dirt road southbound from Newton, not a trace of dust hung in the air from his passing.
I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It would have been almost impossible for Johnny Boyd to beat us to the ranch coming in from the county road to the east. That meant, with just a bit of luck, that we’d reach the ranch before he did, or before the two officers on his tail did. That was the only comforting thought just then.
CHAPTER FORTY
We slid into the Boyds’ front yard, and the billows of dust drifted off like great ghosts, illuminated by the single arc light.
A figure materialized on the front step and before I could make out who it was, Estelle said, “Maxine.” The woman bustled across toward us, and I pulled myself out of the car. I could hear the roar of vehicle engines in the distance.
“Maxine,” I said, and she surprised me by catching me by both arms as if she wanted to be sure I would stay rooted in place. “Where’s Edwin?” I asked. “Did he come here?”
“Not five minutes ago,” she wailed, and then the words came out in a flood. “He’s so upset, and he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, just that he was in awful trouble somehow, something about Dick Finnegan being killed in town. And then he left. I’ve been trying and trying to get ahold of Johnny, but I don’t know where he is. And then I thought I should call Charlotte Finnegan…but I just couldn’t. Not until I knew for sure. I was just on the telephone with your office when I saw you drive in. Oh, Sheriff…”
“Where did Edwin go, do you know?” Estelle asked, her voice warm and gentle.
Maxine shook her head. “He just kept saying, ‘They’ll be along soon. They’ll be along.’ He didn’t say who. And when I tried to make sense out of what he was saying, he just said, ‘I’ve killed Dick Finnegan. They’ll be along directly. They know where I’ll be.’ What does all this mean, Sheriff?”
I didn’t try to shake loose from her grip, but I turned my head as Johnny Boyd’s pickup truck rounded the corner below the barn. “Which way did Edwin go, Maxine?”
“Oh, thank God he’s back,” she said, ignoring my question.
The pickup truck came in much too fast and slid to a stop in a shower of stones, narrowly missing the rear end of the patrol car and stopping within a hairsbreadth of the back wall of the house.
“Edwin was here, not more than five minutes ago,” I shouted as Johnny Boyd sprang from his truck. The rancher stopped as if I’d struck him. “He’s left already, so he must have passed you. He didn’t head out to the north.”
“He ain’t done that, or the law that’s behind me, either.” Even as he said that, the department Bronco idled into the yard with an astonishing display of self-restraint on its driver’s part. Pasquale pulled up so that his vehicle was almost touching Boyd’s back bumper. In order to leave, the rancher would have to either move the county vehicle or take the back bedroom off the ranch house.
Johnny strode toward me. “Maxine, where is he?” he snapped.
“Johnny, he wouldn’t tell me where he was going. He drove out just the way you came in. He said you all would know where he is. That’s all I know. That’s really all I know. That’s all he said. He was in such a state.”
“He drove right out there?” Boyd said in disbelief, looking at the east driveway.
“Right out there,” she said. “Not five minutes ago.”
“And he didn’t come back?” She shook her head. “Well, what the hell…” Boyd said. He swept off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “He ain’t gone far, then. And how the hell would we know where he was headed?”
“Estelle, turn off the car,” I said, and then shouted at Pasquale to do the same. “Now be still a minute.” One of the dogs in the house was yapping, and I heard the quiet thump of the door as Neil Costace got out of the Bronco. After that, the silence fell heavily. We all listened hard, and finally could hear it—the distant sound of an engine, laboring in low gear.
“Now that’s got to be—” Johnny started to say, and I held up a hand sharply. For another few seconds, the sound continued, but it was impossible to sense the direction from which it was coming. The sound floated this way and that across the prairie, and then abruptly ceased. “That’s over by the juniper drag,” Boyd said. “South of here.” He started back toward his truck.
“Johnny, wait,” I said. “What’s he doing?”
“Now how would I know that?” the rancher retorted without turning. He thumped a hand on the front fender of Pasquale’s Bronco. “You going to move that, sonny, or do you want me to drive through you?”
�
��Hold it,” I snapped. “Goddam it, just hold on. It doesn’t make sense for any of us to run into this blind. Your wife just told me that Edwin admitted killing a man and that he’s spooked. You don’t go charging after him.”
Johnny turned and took several steps toward Maxine. “He told you what?”
Maxine reached out a hand to her husband. “Johnny, what’s happening? Edwin said he killed Dick Finnegan. That’s all he would say. And that you all would know where he’d be. Then he just drove off.”
A second engine note drifted to us then, the deep, guttural sound of a heavy diesel. “What’s that?” I asked.
Boyd listened, his brows knit. “That’s the dozer, Sheriff.”
“A bulldozer?”
He nodded.
“If that’s Edwin, what the hell is he doing?”
“There’s a pasture south of here where we’ve been chaining down juniper the past few days. Nobody’d be down there but him or me, so that’s got to be Edwin.” The diesel roar increased, and I could hear an occasional metallic clank of the tracks.
“Goddam,” Johnny Boyd muttered. “You can see some of that juniper where we’re workin’ from over behind the barn.” We followed him around the black hulk of the long, low three-sided structure, past the enormous framework of the windmill tower. I didn’t have my flashlight and walked like a flat-footed old drunk, trying to keep my balance.
“There,” Boyd said from some point in the darkness ahead of me. His ranch yard might have been second nature to him in the dark, but to me, it was a featureless black box. I looked in the general direction of where “there” might be and saw a faint wash of lights.
“That’s the dozer,” Boyd said. “I don’t know what the hell he’s doing. Or where the hell he’s going. That isn’t where we’ve been working. He’s headin’ off to the south and east.”
“William’s Tank,” Estelle said quietly, and she turned and made for the car.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“Ride with us,” I said to Johnny Boyd, and he hesitated. Maybe he was wondering what Estelle knew and he didn’t. If that was the case, he had company. But she had already reached the vehicle, and I knew better than to stand there and demand explanations from her. “Look,” I said, “your brother’s in deep trouble. There are some things I need to know before there’s any kind of confrontation, and I think you can help.”
Out of Season Page 24
