Easy Errors

by Steven F Havill

  “Where would I go?” Reuben enjoyed the ambience of the Broken Spur Saloon when he could afford it, and he was one of the few people the saloon owner, Victor Sanchez, would be civil with.

  “Herb Torrance had some problems at his windmill and stock tank. The one close to the canyon? Somebody blew holes in both. Could have been as many as four guns involved.”

  Reuben’s shaggy eyebrows shot up. “You don’t say?”

  “I do say,” I was tempted to respond, but instead asked, “I was wondering if you heard any of the shooting. It’s not far from your place, as the crow flies.”

  “You know,” and closed his eyes, “a couple of times, maybe that’s what I heard, just before dark, but I wasn’t paying attention. The damn coyotes were bothering the dogs, and then they all went crazy. Those coyotes, they love to tease.”

  “But the gunshots?”

  “Well, maybe.” He shrugged noncommittally. “There was sure some traffic on the road, but there always is, you know. And then it sounded like somebody drove into the ditch, maybe up beyond Herb’s place. That’s what I thought probably happened, because I heard this loud bang, like someone ran into something. Those voices carry sometimes.” He nodded as if that was the whole story.

  “Nobody stopped by to use the phone?”

  He shook his head quickly as if that were a silly question. “You ask Herb. Maybe somebody stopped there.”

  “I’ll do that. But you say it sounded as if someone drove off the road…up above, you mean? Up north of the intersection of Bender’s Canyon and the county road?”

  “Some distance up there,” but then Reuben shrugged. “That’s not much help, no?”

  “Every little bit.” I knew that if he remembered something else helpful, he’d tell me, so I changed the subject. “Who’s working on the flood control with you? You have some help horsing those railroad ties around?”

  “Oh, we got more help than I need. They’re eager, you know. They make me work harder than I want to.”

  “They’re accepting donations for the materials?”

  The crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened, and he waited for the other shoe to drop.

  “Consolidated Mines called,” I said. “They’re a little concerned about their stash of railroad ties going missing—just a few at a time, mind you, but still. One of the workers saw you and one of your volunteers loading your truck.”

  Reuben didn’t try any excuses. He could have argued that the pile of ties, outside the fence and so temptingly close to the road, looked free for the taking. “How much do they want for them?”

  “Ten bucks apiece is what they mentioned to me.”

  Reuben grimaced and ran the arithmetic through his head. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I can ask Father Anselmo, but you know…Tres Santos doesn’t have much money.”

  “Consolidated might donate what you need.” I paused. “If you ask them before you take them. Tell them what the project is.”

  He sighed eloquently, and I added, “Right now, they’re looking for two hundred and forty bucks—for the twenty-four ties that have walked off so far.”

  Reuben gave that silent, shaking laugh of his once more, and looked resigned. “They got the number down already.”

  “They do,” I said. “If you stop by and talk a donation out of them for the rest of what you need, I’ll make sure the two-forty is covered.”

  Reuben looked a little vexed. “You don’t need to do that.”

  “I know I don’t. Will you take a few minutes tomorrow morning to go talk to them? I met with JC Powell earlier, and maybe he’ll work with you. He’s the yard foreman up there. Either that, or he’ll know who to contact.”

  “I’ll see what Father Anselmo says about this.”

  “That’s a good idea. Maybe he’ll go with you to chat with the mining folks. Nothing like an official Roman collar to help move things along.”

  The folks from Pennsylvania emerged from the church and nodded at us.

  “Thank you, Sheriff,” the pastor called. He detoured over to us and pumped my hand, then shook Reuben’s as well.

  “You folks have a safe trip home,” I said.

  “You bet. Thank you.”

  I watched the daughter, who stopped near the front of the huge RV and pensively rested a hand on one of its headlight rims. She gazed off toward the village of Regál, mouth just a little slack with wonder. No Golden Arches broke the skyline, no box stores, no 7-Elevens. Just the grand protective buttress of the San Cristóbals behind them, and the vast sweep of the Mexican plains to the south. Maybe I was judging her through stereotypes. Maybe she loved what she saw.

  She favored us with a pretty good imitation of a Mona Lisa smile as she boarded her family bus. I wondered what she was thinking.

  With a great belch of dense gray smoke, the RV clattered to life, its engine still complaining about Mexican gasoline.

  “Pennsylvania,” Reuben mused. “You know, I’ve never been there.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  County Road 14 is a snaky byway that winds north-south through the western portion of Posadas County. I like to think of it as a limp piece of spaghetti draped over the tines of a fork. CR 14 crosses three state highways: NM 56 in the south, just a few miles removed from Bender’s Canyon and carrying the bulk of border traffic; old NM 17, pretty much belting the center of the county and now little used after the interstate’s addition of various entrance/exit ramps; and NM 78, giving quick access across the northern portion of the county, running by the municipal airport, and eventually ducking out of Posadas County near the tiny hamlet of Newton. In addition, the interstate splits the county across the middle.

  Despite the twists and turns, CR 14 is smoothly graded by the county. Herb Torrance once served as a county commissioner, and maybe that helped encourage the regular maintenance. If the driver pays attention, the county road can be driven quickly—it can even be sort of fun with its roller-coaster twists and turns. I could see that Chris Browning, in a panic at the nasty turn of events, might choose to head north to the interstate entrance ramp. If there was a medical emergency, and it now appeared that there surely had been one, maybe two, why hadn’t he just turned south, stopping for help at the Broken Spur Saloon? No matter how nasty owner Victor Sanchez might be, he wouldn’t deny a phone call for an ambulance.

  But Chris Browning could do the simple numbers. If he hustled to the saloon for help, sure enough, Victor or his helper would call an ambulance, after all kinds of questions. Our county Emergency Services were eager volunteers, but their response time was just fair. By the time the volunteers on duty got themselves together, called in the rest of the crew, and charged out with the ambulance, several minutes would have passed. If they’d been called to the saloon, that was twenty-eight miles. They’d drive out there, then drive back with a patient—or patients.

  My hypothesis was that Chris had decided on a one-way trip, straight to the emergency room. He’d taken the gasping Orlando Torrez with him. But Darlene Spencer? Why was she left, lying there hemorrhaging, dying of a head wound? She wasn’t that heavy. Easily enough, Chris could have dragged her to the Suburban and lifted her inside in an effort to rescue both Darlene and Orlando.

  Monday morning quarterbacking was about as productive as gossip. Deputy Robert Torrez, a newbie investigator by any standards, had it right. Methodically chase the evidence. Measure, collect, mark, inventory. With no willing witnesses, that was all we could do.

  I crossed Regál Pass northbound, shortly passed the Pennsylvania RV with a cheerful wink of the lights, and followed the twisting state highway the eight miles to CR 14. Northbound on that graded gravel surface, I slowed to a fast walk, sticking to the center of the road. The intersection with Bender’s Canyon Road, offering access to Reuben’s place off to the left and the canyon playground to the right, came and went. I slowed ev
en more, all the windows down, the radio turned low.

  Two miles north of that intersection lay the Torrance ranch, the house visible off to the right when travelers burst out of a dense tangle of water-starved mesquite, juniper, and cacti. The terrain was humpy-bumpy, and so was the county road, snaking this way and that. Why, in their infinite wisdom, the road planners hadn’t just graded a nice straight line, filling in the dips and rills, remained a mystery. At one point, the road crossed a shallow arroyo and then snaked around the end of a small mesa, rock outcroppings acting as guard rails.

  I spiked the brakes, slowing to a walk. And then I stopped. The fresh tracks scuffed gravel and dirt where the vehicle had slid off the narrow road, down into the bar ditch, and managed to find the only stump on that side of the road. Big, barkless, and probably good for another thousand years before wearing away, the stump was at least fifteen inches in diameter and two feet high, cut in the days when loggers or firewood-harvesters ignored the policy that asked them to cut ’em low and treat the slash to reduce the fire hazards.

  It would have been a perfect seat for a weary hiker, until the ants living in it found his butt more edible than the drying hundred-year-old cellulose.

  I backed up a little and turned the car onto the shoulder. By the time I got out, I could hear another vehicle approaching southbound. Torrance’s pickup idled to a stop, and the rancher leaned on the windowsill, cap pushed to the back of his head.

  “Still prowlin’ around.”

  “Never stops.” My gaze shifted to the stump. The tire track, gouged deep in the ditch, showed that the wheel had been cranked hard to the left as the vehicle skidded. Torn stump wood was mixed with bright flakes of what could be chrome, with grease and dirt driven into the scarred wood.

  “Somebody hit that a good lick,” Herb said. “We see that all the time.”

  “This is recent, though,” I said. “Traffic hasn’t obscured the skid tracks a bit.”

  He glanced in his rearview mirror. “There’s lots of other places all along the road. County cuts down trees that are too close, like this one. And then they leave the damn stump.” This one had been cut so long ago that the saw-cut was gray, the rings sandblasted with age.

  Herb shook his head. “See,” and he appeared to be settling into raconteur mode, “when they gravel and grade this, what with all the curves and hills and such, why, it’s slippery as all hell. Kinda like driving on marbles. There’s enough straight stretches that you can get goin’ way too fast.” He grinned. “’Course, I don’t know why I’m tellin’ you all this. I guess you and the boys have scraped a few of ’em up from time to time.” He climbed down from his truck to join me.

  “Yes, we have.” I knelt at the stump. The impact had been hard. I bent down, shifting my bifocals for a better view. “That’s what that is.” Herb put his hands on his knees and bent over. “That’s a few flakes of chrome, driven right into the wood.” I touched it gently, careful not to move it. “Maybe a paint smear.” To the right of the stump, a piece of rubber lay in the dirt.

  “That tore right off the tire,” Herb observed.

  “Could be.” I straightened up. “Did you hear any of this?”

  “Sure didn’t.”

  “If it happened last night, yesterday evening sometime, I’d like to know about it.”

  “Hard to tell, ain’t it? I mean about the time and all. Hell, little rain as we’ve had, it might have crashed last month.”

  “Maybe so. But I just visited with Reuben, and he remembers hearing something that could have been a vehicle crashing over here. He heard that, but no voices.” I straightened up. “Did anyone stop by your place for help? To use the phone?”

  “Not a soul. ’Course, the TV was on, so nobody hears a damn thing.”

  “I know how that goes. Let me get some pictures of all this and the skid tracks, just in case.”

  “Hard as they hit, they still managed to pull away.”

  I grinned. “With a pretty bad shimmy, I’m willing to bet.”

  I collected the small camera case that had been riding on the floor in front of the passenger seat, and took my time making sure I wasn’t doing something photographically stupid. Cameras weren’t my forte, but I couldn’t see finding Sergeant Garcia for something this simple. The instant camera would spit out little usable prints that might save us some time.

  “I’ll get on out of your way,” Herb said. “You holler if you need anything.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  With the pack of six fresh pictures curing in the camera bag, I drove north, curious about one more little bit of information. Keeping the Crown Vic booted, just short of sliding into some immovable object, I roared north, past Herb’s driveway, past the intersection with NM 17, thumping over half a dozen cattle guards, until I reached the access to the interstate. That took twelve minutes. Add another five or six out the mile and a half of Bender’s Canyon, and in somewhere around eighteen or twenty minutes, the kids in the Suburban had reached the interstate. At a hundred miles an hour on that highway, they would have smacked mirrors with Riley Holmes’ Cadillac in about fifteen minutes, maybe a little less.

  I had heard the crash at 9:17 p.m. The kids had fled their little party in Bender’s Canyon sometime close to 8:30. Long shadows by then. A good time to be spooked.

  “Three oh eight, three ten.” I held the mike, not really expecting an answer. Bob Torrez should have been home, blowing Zs.

  “Three ten, PCS. Three oh eight made a run down to the one-hour photo in Deming.” Chad Beuler sounded as if he was reading a good book and didn’t want interruptions.

  “ETA back?”

  “Another hour, three ten.”

  “Ten four. Tell him to contact me the minute he gets back.”

  “Ten four.”

  I turned around and headed south, ready to look for other little bits. I could easily understand Deputy Torrez’ determination. Too many questions remained unanswered.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “We’re closed.” What a cheerful, welcoming greeting. Victor Sanchez glanced up at me as I entered the back door—the kitchen door—of the Broken Spur Saloon, a door with the equally cheerful, welcoming sign, “Keep Out.” I knew he wasn’t closed. Not at six-thirty in the evening, height of the dinner hour. Victor would think about closing sometime after midnight, when it was time to usher the drunks home.

  He couldn’t be too busy to talk, since there were only two vehicles out front, a Volkswagen plated to Delaware, the other a long-of-tooth Ford three-quarter-ton hitched to an empty livestock trailer, the whole battered rig licensed to Gus Prescott, a local rancher. I had eased the Crown Vic in behind the building, between Victor’s late-model Cadillac and the front steps of his mobile home, then radioed dispatch to tell them where I was.

  My entry wasn’t a surprise for Victor, since I’d rapped on the door at the same time I turned the knob. At least I didn’t catch a colander of reject greens that he was in the habit of pitching out the back door to feed the skunks and peccaries.

  Victor stood with his back against one of the big refrigerators, left arm across his comfortable belly with that hand buried in his right armpit, right hand holding a white porcelain cup of coffee. He didn’t look especially overworked.

  “I got me this fancy front door out there,” he said ungraciously. “You lookin’ for dinner?”

  “As a matter of fact,” I answered.

  “You’re looking for something else, too.” He looked me up and down, coming to what conclusion, I didn’t know. “Cheeseburger enough?”

  It took me a scant second to consider that. “That would be fine. And some of your delectable fries.” He made no move toward production, so I launched into it. With Victor, predictability was a losing battle beyond his cranky attitude. Location, location, location. That’s what kept customers coming, not his cheerful spirit. />
  “You probably heard about last night.”

  “Which part of it?” Victor’s big, square face, framed by a thick mane of heavily oiled raven black hair and a newly sprouted little goatee that tried to balance his mustache, showed no surprise or concern.

  “We had four kids killed, one of ’em right up here in Bender’s Canyon, the other three in an MVA just off the interstate at Posadas. I think—we think—that the four were all together down here at some point.” One of his black caterpillar eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Not here, not here in the Broken Spur, but in the canyon,” I added.

  He pushed himself away from the fridge, pulled open the door, and drew out a stainless steel bowl carrying a couple of pounds of ground beef covered in plastic wrap. He set it on the center butcher block table, and went to the sink where he methodically washed the armpit off his hands, then toweled them dry. Next came a generous handful of frozen fries, snapping and frothing as he placed the basket in the deep fat. My stomach growled.

  “Bad place up in there,” he finally allowed. But he turned his attention to the construction of a hefty burger. One egg, a generous pinch of chopped onion, salt and pepper, a modest amount of finely chopped green chilé, just enough to draw down through the burger the additional flavors of the strips of the hot chilé peppers with which he’d grace the top.

  “Yes, it is. Chris Browning was driving a two-tone blue Suburban. Darlene Spencer and a couple of the Torrez kids were with him.” Victor didn’t respond. “We’re wondering if at any time yesterday evening they might have stopped by here. Maybe to buy soda, chips…anything at all.”

  “Wouldn’t know about that.” Deftly, he slapped the burger patty on the hot grill, and without a wasted motion lay two wide strips of green chilé on the side of the grill under lowered heat. He drew a bun out of the bag, touched the down sides with oil, and slid them on the grill. He frowned at his creation, but he apparently wasn’t thinking about food.

  “You remember Bessie Montoya?” He glanced over at me, face expressionless.