Before She Dies

by Steven F Havill

I held up my hands. “Not unless there was a traffic violation of some sort, or some other reason to be suspicious.”

  “Right.”

  “Nick, who has access to these temps?”

  He snorted and thumped his fist on the arm of his chair. “Every goddamned person in the building, one way or another. I mean, they aren’t kept in a vault or anything. Shit, most of the time, they’re lying right here.” He tossed the pad of permits across to the narrow bookcase that rested against the wall beside his desk.

  “And your office isn’t locked?”

  He made a snort of derision that I took as a “no.”

  “You know, you were tellin’ me that the deputies stopped a late-model pickup truck. And your gal, there, the one who got all mucked up…”

  “Linda Real.”

  “Yeah. She recalls seeing a temporary in the back window. Now, is that permit going to be mine? When you and your posse haul somebody’s ass in for that shooting, is the whole world going to come down on me? God, that pisses me off.”

  I ducked his questions, since he knew the answers as well as I did. “Who buys these things for you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who actually goes over to the DMV office and picks up the new permits. The new pack. Or packs. Whatever.”

  “Well, hell, whoever is free. Me, Rusty, Manny, Carlos. Becky goes down sometimes. You know. Whoever. It’s not like going to Fort Knox or anything. It’s just another one of those goddamned errands. Paper, paper, paper. Remember when you could just give a man his money and walk off with the car?”

  I laughed gently. “Now they just walk off with the car.”

  “Shit. That ain’t funny.”

  “We’ll look into it, Nick. I don’t know what to tell you, unless we get lucky.” I removed a page from the legal pad and jotted down the missing numbers. “If these show up somewhere, we’ve got a starting point. We’ll get ’em on NCIC.”

  “Do you want me to kind of snoop around here? See what I can find out? I mean hell,” and he leaned forward and dropped his voice to a whisper, “I ain’t got that many employees. I ought to be able to turn something.”

  I held up a hand. “Not yet. Don’t do anything.” I had a mental picture of Nick pulling a tremendous magnifying glass out of his coat pocket as he sifted through his building. “Don’t talk to anyone about this at all.” This time, I lowered my own voice. “And I mean no one, Nick. Let us try and fit it all together.” I stood up and folded the piece of paper with the temp numbers. “And by the way, in the small world department, remember the Weatherfords?”

  “How could anyone forget. I thought those noisy kids of theirs were going to camp out in my showroom.”

  “They got as far as Weatherford, Oklahoma.”

  “The first day? That ain’t bad.”

  “No. To Weatherford, period. Their new Suburban was stolen right out of the motel parking lot.”

  I don’t know what reaction I expected from Nick Chavez, but it wasn’t the one I got. He froze in his seat, and then his eyes narrowed ever so slowly. He leaned one elbow on the edge of the desk and cupped his jaw in his hand with his fingers covering his mouth. I suppose it was one of those gestures with which a psychiatrist would have a heyday.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You know,” he said through his fingers, “I saw that Suburban.”

  My pulse kicked up ten notches, booting my already impressive blood pressure skyward. “When?”

  “Goddamn, I saw it.” He lowered his hands and sat up straight. “I thought I was crazy, and didn’t think much about it earlier. But goddamn it, I saw it.”

  “When?”

  “I was coming to work, and I saw it go through the intersection of Grande and MacArthur. I was startled, see, ’cause this one was absolutely identical to the one the Weatherfords bought here. I mean absolutely. It even had the goddamned temporary tag in the back window, because I looked in my rearview mirror and saw it. And I remember thinkin’ to myself, ‘I thought they left, but maybe not.’ Maybe they decided to stay another day. Except she wasn’t drivin’ it.”

  “Who was?”

  “Beats me. I didn’t get enough of a look.”

  “What time, Nick?”

  He closed his eyes. “I got here at five minutes before eight. I looked, ’cause I needed to talk to the service manager, and he always walks through the door at eight sharp, like he’s some kind of digital freak. So, subtract from there. MacArthur up to here is about a minute and a half, give or take. So, seven minutes before eight, maybe.”

  I did some mental calculations. If the thieves had taken the Suburban at midnight, eight hours averaging fifty miles an hour would see four hundred miles—and that wouldn’t see them to Posadas. But if they took the lightly traveled back roads, like Route 70 across the Texas panhandle, they could average much faster with ease. It was possible.

  “You really think it could have been their truck?”

  Nick shrugged. “How many can there be with a paint job like that in this area?”

  “Why…” and I stopped. I had planned to ask why the car thieves would bother bringing the unit back to Posadas, but the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to tumble together.

  “Nick,” I said, rising from his comfortable seat, “you’re going to be here all day?”

  “Sure.”

  “Keep this conversation to yourself, all right?”

  “Goddamn right.”

  “If this works out the way I think it will, I’ll buy that,” and I pointed at the Blazer on the showroom floor.

  Chapter 32

  Victor Sánchez watched me pull into the parking lot of the Broken Spur, but he didn’t stand on ceremony. He walked inside using the side door and let it slam shut in my face.

  I followed him into the utility room beside the kitchen.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “You snakebit or something?” I said. The utility room was neater than the last time I’d seen it. Victor continued unloading the sacks of paper products that he’d brought in from his truck.

  “I’m busy,” he said, his back still turned to me.

  “Then I’ll wait until you’ve got a minute,” I said pleasantly. I leaned against the edge of one of the prep sinks and crossed my arms over my stomach. Victor ignored me. While he muttered and arranged—and rearranged—his dry goods, my eyes drifted around the room.

  There was nothing unusual, nor did I expect there to be. That’s why what was obviously a rifle barrel arrested my gaze. The gun stood behind the back door, in company with several old brooms and a squeegee-mop. I pushed away from the sink, walked over, and hefted the antique. It was an old junker, one of those single-shot break-open things that cost about $49.95 when they’re new.

  I pushed the lever and the breach opened. It was loaded. I slipped the little .22 shell out and turned it this way and that in my hands. It would do to kill a jackrabbit who made the mistake of holding still, or maybe a rattler by the back door.

  “That ain’t the gun that killed the deputy,” Victor said.

  I turned and looked at him, the shell in one hand, gun in the other.

  “I can see that,” I said.

  “Leave it loaded.”

  I put the cartridge back in the gun and set the weapon down in the corner.

  “I got five minutes,” Victor said. “What do you want? Where’s the girl?”

  “The girl?”

  “The one who works for you. The detective. Reuben’s niece.”

  “She’s in the hospital with a broken leg.”

  “That’s too bad,” Victor said—and he said it about the same way he’d say, “cut up this bunch of celery.”

  “I wanted to ask you about someone else,” I said, and walked back to my leaning spot against the sink.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of stickin’ your nose in other people’s business? I’ve got a business to run here. I ain’t got the time.”

  “Victor, you’ve got
all the time in the world.”

  He glanced over at me, his ugly round face framing unblinking eyes. No doubt Victor was a real charmer as a bartender. I could imagine a disconsolate traveling salesman pouring out his heart and soul to Victor during a Christmas Eve drinking binge at the Broken Spur. Right at the climax of the salesman’s sob story, just before he rose from his stool to walk into the restroom to blow his brains out, Victor would say, “Look, you want any carrot sticks or not?”

  “I oughta just throw you out.” He said it without much conviction.

  I shrugged. “You could do that, I guess. Hell, old and fat as I am, it wouldn’t take much.”

  “You people are bad for business.” He gestured toward the parking lot. “That car out there…ain’t nobody going to stop while it’s here. If it ain’t parked there, then you guys sit down at the windmill.”

  “Help me put somebody in jail, and we’ll leave you alone,” I said.

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “I want to know about Tammy Woodruff.”

  He laughed a short, harsh bark. “What you think, you’re going to put Tammy in jail, now?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just want to know a little more about her.”

  “So would every other tachón in the county,” Sánchez snorted.

  “I know she was a little wild, Victor. That’s why it’s important. She may have known something about the other night,” I said. “Give me five minutes.”

  “You could write a book about that ramerita.” He pushed a six-pack of paper towels into perfect alignment on the shelf, then stood facing the shelves with his hands on his hips. I didn’t say anything, and finally he turned around and regarded me. “You want some coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  He walked through the swinging door to the kitchen and I followed. The coffee was a lot fresher and more fragrant than I was used to and I didn’t bother drowning it with milk and sugar.

  Cup in hand, he beckoned me out toward one of the dining rooms off the main barroom. We sat down at a chrome-edged table, Victor turning his chair sideways so he could lean against the wall. I turned mine so my belly wouldn’t crowd the table.

  “What’s she done now?” Victor asked.

  “We’re trying to find one of her boyfriends.”

  Victor almost smiled. “You got a good cutting horse? It’s a big herd.”

  “So I’m beginning to understand.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “We don’t know.”

  He regarded me with interest. “Not such a good time for you, eh?”

  I thought about the last week. Victor was right. “No. Not such a good time.”

  He took a sip of his coffee and then lit a cigarette. “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “We can’t. She’s dead.”

  The coffee cup had gotten halfway to Victor’s mouth before his hand stopped. He didn’t say anything for a long time. I didn’t break the silence. Without taking a sip, he set the cup back down. “How did she die?”

  “We think she was murdered, Victor. Up on San Patricio Mesa.” He knew who lived near the mesa as well as anyone.

  He frowned and looked off into the distance. Then, so softly I could hardly hear him, he said, “This is bad.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Did you talk with the Torrance boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “He followed after her with his tongue down to here,” Victor said, and dropped his hand to his crotch. “But that’s not so strange. At one time or another, I think she gave a turn to everyone in the county, except maybe old Francisco Peña.”

  “Brett Prescott?”

  “Sure.”

  “Who was she with Sunday night?”

  “I didn’t see her Sunday night.”

  “Patrick Torrance was in here then?”

  “I already told you he was.”

  “And you didn’t see her come in that night? The boy told me that she did.”

  Sánchez shrugged. “If she did, it was when I was in back. You could ask my son. Maybe he saw her. She even made a pass at him one time. I told him to mind his own business. He’s too stupid to know any better.”

  “Who was tending bar that night?”

  “I was.”

  “And you didn’t see her?”

  He looked at me with remarkable patience considering his temperament, but he didn’t bother answering the repeat question.

  “Do you know who drives an older model pickup truck with a wrought-iron stock rack on the back? Pulls a big stock trailer once in a while? Whole rig covered with mud?”

  “Half the ranchers in the county, maybe. You want more coffee?”

  “No thanks. No one in particular?”

  He shrugged. “If I saw the vehicle standing in front of me, maybe I could tell you. Otherwise…” He ground out his cigarette.

  “Did you think there was anything unusual about the way Patrick Torrance was acting Sunday night?”

  “I didn’t notice.” He looked at his watch. “You know, I got concerns of my own. I don’t pay any attention.”

  I didn’t pursue the questions any further. Being the “see nothing, hear nothing” bartender that he was, nothing I could say was likely to jar Victor loose. He could sit on a keg of gunpowder, and when it exploded, he’d say, “You know, I might have heard something, but I couldn’t be sure. I was too busy.”

  I left the bar feeling better, though. Victor hadn’t told me not to come back. That was a start.

  I pulled out on the state highway from the parking lot and drove south, passing the turnoff to County Road 14. I stayed on the highway as it curved up through the western pass of the San Cristobal Mountains. On the south slope, after a series of switchbacks guaranteed to keep drivers of huge, clumsy RVs alert, the highway swept down through the intersection with State 80 running east and west and finally past the ancient village of Regal.

  That settlement, counting twenty-five people on a good day, was a quarter mile off the highway, and the dirt approach road was hard-packed clay and stone. It wound across an arroyo and passed within ten feet of the carved front doors of the IglÉsia de Nuestra Madre. The year 1849 was carved in the cornerstone of the mission, the second oldest structure in the village. An even older mission, now in ruins, lay half a mile to the east, it was part of one of the least visited historical monuments in the state.

  Like so many ancient Mexican settlements, the streets of Regal were sunken dirt channels that meandered from yard to yard, with the adobe houses fronting immediately on the byways. If I wasn’t careful, I could catch the front fender of 310 on someone’s porch swing.

  As many houses were abandoned as occupied, and they varied from neat, tidy little four-room adobes with steeply pitched metal roofs and brightly painted window trim to crumbling piles of rain-melted adobe blocks with broken windows, shattered door casements, and junk-strewn yards.

  I idled up one nameless pathway after another, threading the patrol car right through yards and winter-dormant gardens. And one dog after another joined the chase, escorting me through town.

  What few names were posted either above doorways, on long-abandoned mailboxes, or in the small yards were musical and familiar, Martinez, Sánchez, Chavez, Misquez, Hernandez. As I drove by one small house with M. Esquibel on the bent peeling mailbox, I saw an old man making his way one shaking step at a time around the side of his home, eyes glued to the ground, cane placed carefully for each step. In one arm he carried half a dozen sticks of firewood.

  He ignored me, perhaps not even hearing the quiet idle of my car’s engine, or perhaps not seeing well enough to catch the motion.

  Around the other side of the house was a small adobe barn, remodeled sometime during the current century to serve as a garage. The wooden door was down, making the structure unique. It was the only outbuilding I’d seen in the village whose contents weren’t both visible and spilling out far beyond the confines of the original structure. But it fitted the rest of
the yard, neat and tidy.

  I watched Señor Esquibel disappear into his house. I didn’t know him, but I was willing to bet he’d been born within a hundred yards of where he now labored to stoke his wood-burning stove.

  Parked next to the garage was his wood supply, a stock trailer a quarter filled with split piñon and juniper.

  I spent another fifteen minutes in Regal. I didn’t drive over to the border crossing gate less than a mile away. Deputy Howard Bishop had already talked to the officers there, with little success. It was a day crossing area only, with the gates locked at night and no officers on duty after six. The border patrol had the same details on our case as anyone else. They’d be watchful and even helpful when they could.

  Easing 310 back out on the paved road, I glanced at the dash clock. Jim Bergin’s Beech Baron would be approaching Gillette, and in another four and a half hours Patrick Torrance would be back in Posadas. Then we’d start constructing a face.

  Chapter 33

  Deputy Bishop winked the lights of his patrol car at me as we passed on Bustos Avenue. I turned into the small parking lot of Kenny Pace’s Western Wear and waited while Bishop swung around and pulled in behind me.

  Howard Bishop was one of those big, sleepy-eyed characters, loose-jointed and tending toward flab. The two major loves of his life were his wife, Aggie, and collegiate football. He’d married Aggie right after the two of them had graduated from Posadas High School. The closest he’d ever come to collegiate football was watching it on television.

  “Howard may look like he’s slow, but he’s got a mind like a banana slug,” Sheriff Holman had once said in a rare moment of amused pique. That description was both unkind and untrue. Bishop had an exasperating allergy to paperwork, but generally was an intelligent, honest, fair cop.

  He adjusted his Stetson and folded his dark glasses into his shirt pocket before getting out of the car. I walked back and leaned against the front fender of 307.

  “Sir, I talked to twelve different people about Tammy Woodruff.”

  “Anything of interest?”

  Bishop laid his clipboard on the hood of the car and ran his finger down a neatly printed list of names. “These here are the people I talked to. Neighbors, mostly. Seems like Tammy didn’t have too many close friends. Except whatever cowpoke she was going out with at the moment.”