Apache Country

by Frederick H. Christian

  “Where the hell is everybody?” he said.

  “We had a few nine-one-ones.”

  “Anything serious?”

  Easton shook his head. “Nah. Two guys trying to break into that computer warehouse out on Shawnee Road. Mills and Everly are checking it out.”

  “Cochrane around?”

  “He just left,” Easton said, hoping it sounded offhanded. “What brings you down here on a Sunday afternoon?”

  Joe shrugged. “Might ask you the same question,” he said. “Shouldn’t you be home playing piano games with Jessye?”

  Easton gestured at the pile of files on the desk and Joe nodded sympathetically.

  “Damn paperwork. You got coffee on?”

  “Help yourself.”

  The sheriff got a mug off the shelf and filled it. Easton could feel his eyes watching him. Then the phone rang and he froze. What the hell did he say if it was McKittrick? It rang again and Joe frowned.

  “You going to get that?”

  Easton picked up. It was Grita: could he stop off at the market and bring home some fresh chilies? He told her yes and hung up, feeling a cold sweat of relief on the back of his neck.

  “Something bothering you?” Joe said. He didn’t miss a damned thing.

  “Grita,” Easton said. “She needs some chilies. She’ll scalp me if I forget.”

  “Never seen her make you that jumpy,” Apodaca said off-handedly. He hitched his hip on to a corner of the desk and sipped his coffee. “How’s Jessye, by the way?”

  “Mad at me,” Easton said. “For working Sunday.”

  “Anything more on the Weddle thing?”

  “Cochrane talked to the Twitchells. Didn’t get anything.”

  “What about RPD?”

  “I was just about to call Henry Sanchez when you came in.”

  Apodaca held up a hand. “Okay, okay, I’m in the way,” he said.

  “Joe!” Easton protested. “I just got in myself. Let me call Henry and I’ll get back to you.”

  Apodaca nodded and went out, taking the coffee with him. Cochrane had been right, Easton thought. He and Joe really didn’t know each other any more. Somehow time and the changes in both their lives had eroded the closeness that had developed between them back in the early days when he first joined the Sheriff’s Office, when Joe was doing the job Easton had now.

  Right from the start Joe Apodaca had gone out of his way to give him a much rougher ride than most rookies got. Mostly, he imagined, because of the Easton “tradition.” His grandfather Robert Perry “Rip” Easton had been a Riverside law enforcement officer back in the 1890s, when the legendary Pat Garrett and John Poe were still around to be compared with.

  Rip Easton and his family – he was one of six children – had come to New Mexico from Lampasas, Texas, when there weren’t more than four hundred souls living in Riverside. He had served the city first as its constable, then chief of police, sheriff, justice of the peace, and finally, judge. His photo still hung in the City Council chambers. He was one of the mildest-mannered men you ever met, Easton’s father told him, and he never bothered anyone. Unless, he added as a chilling rider, they bothered him.

  “You better live up to your name, Easton, or I’m going to bust your butt,” Joe had warned him. “Your minimum performance level will be set at excellent. Good won’t even count.”

  He had meant it, too. But Easton had been young then; at that age you can eat the world and come back for the moon. He had made Officer of the Year four years straight and promotion to sergeant in the process. The following year, the same year he and Susan got married, Joe ran for sheriff and won. He turned out to be a good choice. Nobody’s man but his own, they said. But behind the pragmatic exterior the sheriff presented to the world Easton had detected a suppressed anger. And as he got to know him better he learned enough about Joe’s background to guess its origins.

  Joe Apodaca’s father had been a construction worker, one of the many brought in by the Macco Company in 1960 to build the silos when Riverside’s Air Force Base was selected as a support facility for nine Atlas ICBM launch complexes. For a while it was like the Gold Rush in and around Riverside, but round the clock construction to meet skin-tight deadlines created pressures that ended in disaster. Early in 1961 a thirty-ton Lorain crane fell to the bottom of the completed shaft of the liquid oxygen complex. The explosion of its fuel tanks killed six workers and injured nineteen more. Max Apodaca was among the dead.

  Joe was seven when it happened. There was no insurance. Marge Apodaca had to sell their neat house on South Lea and move with her three sons to a rundown frame shack on the shabbier end of Jefferson near Melendez Park. Living in the Hispanic quarter –to the cops it was and always would be “Chihuahua” – the boys had to hang tough and get street smart real fast, and it cost. James, the oldest, was fatally knifed in a rumble between the Mexican Virgins and his own gang, the Pirates. Robert took the Timothy Leary route, tuned in, turned on and dropped out. Joe alone made it through high school. After he graduated, he spent a year at the Academy before becoming a deputy in the Artemisia PD. He had been a cop ever since.

  Through the window Easton could see Joe on the phone. He thought of all the times Alice Apodaca had cooked supper for him, how he and Joe would take their food outside and eat on the little bench he’d built around the trunk of the pecan tree in the backyard, drinking beer and talking shop. He had sometimes wondered, even then, why he was the only one in SO who was close to Joe. Only now did he understand how that must have looked.

  The phone rang. It was McKittrick.

  “Can you talk?” he said.

  “Go ahead,” Easton told him, closing his office door.

  “I got hold of Mack Pepper at DOJ. He’s pulled out all the stops and okayed immediate funding. They’ve set up a meet. Ironheel will go into a WPP tonight.”

  “My God, that’s amazing,” Easton said. “When? Where will it be?”

  “How well do you know Rio Alto?”

  “Try me.”

  “There’s a motel, the Bavarian Lodge.”

  “Got it.”

  “Good. Be there at four p.m. Look for a black Buick Lacrosse in the parking lot, tinted windows, engine running. That’ll be the DOJ. They’ve insisted on having a recognition code. You say ‘Apache’, they say ‘Chiricahua’, okay?”

  “Obviously gave it a lot of thought,” Easton murmured.

  McKittrick ignored him. “Here’s your cover story. Judge Rainbolt has granted a change of venue to Doña Ana County, so Ironheel has to be taken to Las Cruces to await trial and I nominated you for the job. Can you handle him alone?”

  Good question, Easton thought. “Hopefully,” he said.

  If McKittrick appreciated the wry understatement he gave no sign of it.

  “The papers are on their way down to you now.” he said. “Any questions?”

  “Small problem. The sheriff came into the office a little while back,” Easton told him. “He’s still here.”

  “Shit,” McKittrick hissed. “Can he hear us talking?”

  “No, he’s in his own office.”

  “Give me a few minutes. I’ll pull him out of there so you have a clear run.”

  Easton hung up, then went over to the door and opened it. After a little while he heard Joe’s phone ring. He watched Joe pick up, listen, speak briefly, then cradle the phone. Then Joe got up, walked across and popped his head around Easton’s door.

  “Olin McKittrick just called,” he said. “He’s at the Country Club. Got something urgent we need to talk about. Think maybe he’ll break the habit of a lifetime and buy me a beer?”

  “Miracles do happen,” Easton grinned.

  Apodaca nodded and left without looking back. Easton went over to the window and watched him get into his car and drive away. Then he picked up the phone and dialed 822.

  “Easton,” he said. “Who’s this, Carmody?”

  “Yo, Chief.”

  “I just had a call from the DA
. Ironheel has been given a change of venue. You know what that is?”

  “Sure, he’s got to be tried in another judicial district.”

  “I have to take him over to Las Cruces right away. You familiar with the procedure for releasing him to me?”

  “Can’t say I am, Chief,” Carmody said. “You want to refresh my recollection?”

  Easton smiled. Carmody spent a lot of his time acting as a court bailiff. That was where he picked up such lawyerly phrases.

  “It’s pretty straightforward. Judge Rainbolt’s office sends someone over here with the papers. I sign them and bring them to you. You countersign, keep one copy. Then you release the prisoner into my custody and I take him over to Cruces. He’ll be held there until his trial comes up.”

  “Sounds simple enough,” the deputy said. “When does all this happen?”

  “Five, ten minutes max after I get the papers,” Easton said. “Which ought to be any time now.”

  “Unusual doing stuff like this on a Sunday, isn’t it?”

  “Ours not to reason why,” Easton said. “Get him ready, okay?”

  “No probs, Chief. You want him cuffed and shackled?”

  “Just cuffs,” Easton said. “Skip the rest.”

  “Jeez, you sure? This guy—”

  “He’s not going to make a run for it. Just do like I say, I’ll be fine,” Easton said.

  “Okay, Chief,” Carmody said. Easton could almost hear him frowning, but he knew the deputy would do exactly as he was told. Carmody always did.

  “Any reporters still hanging around outside?” he asked.

  “Haven’t seen any.”

  “Let’s keep it that way,” Easton said.

  “Ten-four, Chief,” Carmody said.

  A few minutes later Easton heard the coffee-grinder chatter of a motorbike in the street outside and saw a kid in a leather jacket coming into the building with an envelope in one hand and a yellow crash helmet in the other. By the time he got to the front desk Easton was there waiting. He snatched the envelope out of the kid’s hand, signed the slip on his clipboard and the kid left.

  Back in his office Easton strapped on his holster, then checked the weapon, a lightweight Glock 9mm automatic. Aesthetically they were junk, but on the street these days even the pushers had Uzis so you needed something that put plenty of lead in the air fast.

  He went over to the parking lot, got into his Jeep, and drove around to the entrance of the jail. CCTV cameras would record his arrival and departure, so there would be no keeping his involvement secret once the manure hit the fan. At least by the time it did, Ironheel would be well out of harm’s way. He went inside and put the papers on the counter in front of Carmody.

  “Ready to rock ‘n’ roll, Dave,” Carmody told him proudly.

  Ironheel was sitting on a chair inside the security door, hands folded in his lap, long black hair falling forward over his eyes. He was still wearing the prison jump suit and slippers but the shackles had been taken off. As Carmody opened the security gate to let him out Ironheel looked Easton straight in the eye.

  “What is all this?” he said.

  “You’ve been given a change of venue. Your lawyers convinced a judge it wouldn’t be possible to put together an impartial jury in Riverside,” Easton explained. “So I’m taking you to Las Cruces, where you’ll be held to await trial.”

  “Nobody else going? Just you and me?” Ironheel said.

  “Wrong,” Easton said, lifting his arm to show him the Glock. “You and me and my friend.”

  As they went out into the sunlight Ironheel paused on the threshold, looked up at the sky and drew in a long, deep breath, as if he’d been waiting to get clean air into his lungs.

  In the jeep Easton checked his watch. Seventy miles to Rio Alto. Say an hour. Maybe another hour or so getting Ironheel installed in the safe house, then an hour back. As he pulled out of the compound Ironheel spoke, his voice tight with unease.

  “Something going down, Easton,” he said. “I can smell it.”

  “Trust me,” Easton said.

  “I got a choice?”

  “No,” Easton said. “You don’t.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Turning west, Easton checked off the familiar sights as they slid past: Chamber of Commerce on the right, RPD headquarters on the left, Valley Bank, First Presbyterian Church. Stopping for the lights at Union, he checked the mirror. Nothing back of him. He eased his grip on the wheel. He hadn’t realized how tense he was. Just to be on the safe side, he hitched his belt around SO the holster was on his left, out of Ironheel’s reach. If he noticed the action, Ironheel gave no sign of it, his face as unreadable as rock.

  The road ran ahead of them like a ruled line, climbing up into the foothills, the grade so gentle it was easy to forget that like a lot of New Mexico, it was already a mile above sea level. An endless procession of cloned cumulus marching northward filled the sky; off to the right, a turkey vulture soared over Blackwater Hill. Dirt roads criss-crossed the broken land, leading to ranches hidden behind sand colored bluffs.

  Ironheel remained silent. Maybe Apache did that to keep the pinda’ lick’ oye at arm’s length, Easton thought, remembering his conversation with Ironheel’s sister. Twenty miles slid beneath the wheels before Ironheel spoke again.

  “Well?” he said, as if there had been no break in the conversation.

  “Well, what?” Easton growled.

  “You not taking me to Las Cruces. Right?”

  “Right. Here’s the scenario: we couldn’t guarantee your safety in the Riverside jail,” Easton told him. “So the D.A. cooked up the change of venue cover story. We’re actually going to meet up with a Department of Justice team in Rio Alto. They’re going to put you into a witness protection program.”

  “Is that like where they change your name, take you to another city?”

  “If necessary.”

  “Supposing that doesn’t appeal to me?”

  “What are you saying – you don’t want to do it?”

  Ironheel did not reply.

  “Think carefully, Ironheel. If you don’t testify, Apodaca remains on the street. The only way he can stay there is with you dead.”

  “Apache hard to kill.”

  “You’re forgetting something,” Easton snapped back. “My life is on the line here, too.”

  “Your life is your problem.”

  Ironheel turned his head away and Easton recognized the gesture from their earlier exchanges. No more words. He signaled a right turn, slowed down the Jeep, and pulled over to the side of the road.

  “Let me make sure I’ve got this straight,” he said tightly. “You want Apodaca and the other man to go to jail for killing Casey and his grandson, right? You want to walk free. But only on your terms. That it?”

  Ironheel shrugged, as if the matter had nothing to do with him.

  “You want Apodaca to get away with what he did? And the other man, the one who cut the boy’s throat?”

  No reply.

  Try another tack, he thought. Something Grita had said came back to him.

  “Okay, Ironheel,” he said. “Here’s your choice. You either do this or we go back to Riverside and you take your chances on the system. If you live that long.”

  Ironheel looked at him levelly. “They get me, you got no case.”

  “Shit happens,” Easton said flatly.

  Ironheel nodded and for a moment Easton thought he saw a glint of respect in the dark eyes.

  “Why you doing this, Easton?”

  “It’s my job.”

  Ironheel shook his head “Agándíígo. You say that. But there’s something else.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know the right words, or even if there are any. But it’s about truth. Justice. I guess I still believe that right is good and wrong is bad. It’s … hell, I’m talking too much.”

  “Maybe not,” Ironheel said.

  Easton waited. He’d already learned that with Ironheel things happened at their
own speed. It was hot in the car and he wound down a window. The sound of the ever present breeze filled his ears. Minutes ticked by.

  “N’zhoo,” Ironheel said. “Let’s go.”

  “You’ll do it?”

  Ironheel shrugged. “There is a debt,” he said. “This will pay it. Tell me what will happen at Rio Alto.”

  “The DOJ team will take you to a safe location. You’ll be kept there until you testify before a grand jury. Later you’ll appear as a prosecution witness at Apodaca’s trial.”

  “How long will all that take?”

  Easton stuck out a lip and did some mental arithmetic. “Maybe six weeks, two months at the outside. This is a high profile case. They’ll want to get it into court as fast as possible.”

  “Dahitaa,” Ironheel said gloomily. “Months.”

  “Think of it as a vacation,” Easton said.

  Ironheel didn’t reply, so Easton started the car and hit the road. Around mile marker 308 the road twice made a long left followed by as long a right, an elongated ‘W’ that cut through the side of a bluff and down into the Alto valley before straightening up again for the climb toward Pacheco.

  Down on the river, unseen behind the trees on the left, was the Casey ranch. Hacienda would be a better word. Built before the Civil War, it was a beautiful two-story balconied adobe with double-hung windows and walls two feet thick. Tourists on the highway got only glimpses of such places, and never realized just how beautiful some parts of the Alto valley were.

  He thought about Kit, grieving for her son and her murdered father. They had known each other all through high school, although they never dated then. She was just the bright blonde daughter of some tycoon, always a leading player in the musicals the dramatic society staged each fall at the Riverside Community Little Theatre. Laurey in Oklahoma!, Julie in Carousel, Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof.

  Her real name was Caitlin. She had a lot of nicknames. Cat, Katie, Kit. Then around the time they graduated, things altered imperceptibly but inevitably, like a key change in a symphony. Their romance was as sweet and gentle as a lullaby until Bob Casey put an end to it, striking in the one place Easton had never expected to be attacked. Some time later, someone told him Kit had gone to Europe.