Apache Country

by Frederick H. Christian

  “What surprises me is that you believed him,” Ellen said.

  “I’ll confess, I didn’t know what to do. I suppose if I were to dig down deep inside I’d find I was trying hard not to believe him. But then I remembered something. When Joe and I got to the crime scene he knew where Adam’s body was. We hadn’t talked to CSI, nobody. I must have filed it subconsciously, because it didn’t surface until Ironheel told me what he’d seen.”

  “What did you do?” Ellen asked.

  “I realized his life was in danger, maybe mine too, so I took the whole thing to McKittrick, told him everything. He came up with the idea of getting Ironheel into an FBI witness protection program until Apodaca was arrested and indicted. I didn’t know McKittrick was part of it until he sent a couple of hit men to kill us.”

  “Olin McKittrick,” Ellen hissed. “Damn him, damn him!”

  She looked up at Easton, her face strained and pale. He could only imagine what pain she was experiencing, a blowtorch searing away decades of comfortable assumption and trust. She’d always been the strong one, the rock. He could only hope she would have enough strength to get past this.

  “We can bring him down,” he said to both women. “All of them. But we need your help.”

  “We’ll help you,” Ellen said. “Count on it.”

  Her voice was assured, her posture confident again. It was as if, like a soldier, she had dreaded the battle, but now it had commenced, she was able to summon up the courage she needed. “What can we do?”

  “Do you think you could get Joe Apodaca away from his house for a couple of hours?”

  “I think so, but I’d need some sort of reason,” she said. “Why?”

  “I want to squeeze some information out of his wife.”

  “But Alice is …” Ellen began, then stopped herself. Easton knew what she had been going to say: she’s a drunk.

  “Tell him you’re making arrangements for the funeral and you need to talk everything through with him,” he said. “Traffic arrangements, who to invite, catering, all that stuff. Think you could bear it?”

  Her chin came up a fraction, as though he had challenged her.

  “Yes, David, I think I can manage that. When?”

  “Soon, tomorrow, in the evening maybe.”

  “You want me to call him now?”

  Easton smiled. “There’s time. But be careful, Ellen. He’s not a fool.”

  “Neither am I,” she said crisply.

  “A question,” Ironheel said, frowning. “We’re going into Riverside?”

  “Me, yes,” Easton said. “You, no.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We’ve got to convince Apodaca and McKittrick we’re a long way away from there,” Easton said.

  “Ah,” Ironheel said. “I make a distraction. Nzaadyú. Far away. Yes?”

  “Somewhere on the Reservation,” Easton said. “If they think we’re up in the mountains, they won’t be expecting me down in the valley.”

  “Daiaá daabini’,” Ironheel said. “Our thoughts are alike.”

  “Okay,” Easton said. “Here’s the plan. James will leave for the Reservation tomorrow, while it’s still dark. Once he’s there, he’ll let the dogs see the rabbit. It’s Federal property, so the Sheriff’s Office can’t just bring in an army in and take over. While they’re figuring it out, I’ll be heading toward Riverside in the trunk of Ellen’s car.”

  “What about the roadblocks?” Ellen reminded him.

  “I think I know a way around that,” Easton told her.

  “This dog and rabbit thing,” Ironheel said. “How long you want it to last?”

  “Two days should be enough,” Easton said. “Think you can stay out there that long and not get caught?”

  “If Rambo could do it,” Ironheel said, “So can I.”

  And this time the smile really did touch his lips.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  At 9:18 a.m., the beat-up HP Pavilion in Joe Apodaca’s office gave the little warning buzz that signaled incoming e-mail. He clicked it open and recognized the logo on the letterhead of Cellnet Southwest’s Albuquerque branch. Below a short note from the regional supervisor was a list of all the calls placed within the last twenty-one days on the cellphone Easton and Ironheel had stolen from the elderly couple in Peachtree Canyon.

  Apodaca printed out a copy, taking it back to his desk. There were seventeen numbers on the list, all area code 575. Only one of the calls had been made in the last three days. He picked up the phone and dialed. The long flat note of the “unobtainable” signal brought a frown to his forehead. Quickly breaking the connection, he called another number and identified himself to the operator who replied.

  “Urgent police business,” he told her, gave the required code and waited while she verified it on the great computer in the sky.

  “How can I help you, Sheriff?” the operator asked.

  “I need a subscriber name for this number,” he told her, and read out the number.

  “One moment, please.”

  He waited patiently, imagining her keyboarding the details into her computer terminal, waiting while the machine did its search. He heard a click as the operator came back on the line.

  “The subscriber is a Ralph H. Twitchell. That’s T-W-I –”

  “I know how to spell it.”

  “Do you need an address?”

  “I know that too,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “Y’welcome.”

  So the call had been made to the Casey ranch. Apodaca shook his head. He knew Ralph Twitchell had gone to Santa Fe for three or four days and was not due back until tomorrow. Which meant his wife had taken Easton’s call.

  Unless it was … Ellen Casey?

  He made another call, this time to the Casey home in Riverside.

  “Señora Casey is visiting her daughter at the ranch, Sheriff,” the maid told him. “Do you have the number?”

  “I do,” he said. He picked up the phone again and dialed Olin McKittrick’s private line.

  “Get your ass over here,” he said when McKittrick answered. “Now.”

  ~*~

  Below Pacheco, the road made an elongated ‘W’ through the hamlets of Sundown and Wayside. A couple of miles after that, it became a twin highway that ran due east all the way into Riverside. Unless they had moved it, Ellen Casey told Easton, the police checkpoint she’d spotted on her way up would be where the divided highway began. The second was at the truck crossing just outside town.

  “Drop me somewhere around here,” he told her as she drew level with the blacktop turnoff that ran south from the highway to the Diamond A ranch. She looked better today, more composed. The crisp black Donna Karan suit and the simple white shirt with a cameo brooch at the throat fastening made her look businesslike and efficient. He wondered what she and Kit had talked about after what he had told them. How did you begin to deal with something like that?

  He shook off his somber thoughts and concentrated on the present. By now Ironheel would be back in the mountains above the Mescalero Reservation. He pictured him out there, moving steadily, tirelessly. Well, now it’s my turn, he thought. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to the fifteen mile cross-country hike that lay ahead of him, but he had to get through the police cordon somehow, and this was the only way it could be done.

  “You’re sure you’ll be all right?” Ellen Casey said.

  “I’ll be fine,” he replied. “I’ve got all day.”

  “God bless you for this, David,” she said. She put her hand on his shoulder, leaned across and kissed him on the cheek. She smelled of Nina Ricci.

  Easton got out of the car and watched as she drove off toward town, then negotiated the barbed wire fence bordering the highway and headed southeast toward Blackwater Draw. The morning sun was bright and hot, only faint wisps of white cloud in the sky. Around about now, he thought, Ironheel would be letting himself be seen up around Mescalero, and telephones would soon begin ringing.


  The bait was out. But would the fish bite?

  Chapter Forty

  “District Attorney Olin McKittrick,” McKittrick snapped into the two-way security squawk-box at the entrance to the Casey ranch. “Urgent police business. Open up, please.”

  He was still unsure how to handle Kit Twitchell, and his annoyingly inconclusive discussion with Joe Apodaca about the implications of interrogating her hadn’t helped him decide. Although they both knew the cellphone call to the Casey ranch proved only that Easton – at least they agreed it could only have been Easton – had contacted the ranch, to his way of thinking the fact it had happened at all suggested strongly that Easton believed or was hoping Kit Twitchell would help him. There didn’t seem to be any way he could have known Ellen Casey was at the ranch.

  “Kit Twitchell and Easton used to be an item, remember,” he had said to Apodaca. The sheriff shook his head.

  “I also remember Robert Casey shot that romance down. And that Easton was pretty bitter about it.”

  “Then why would he call her? What would he want?” McKittrick had queried.

  “Money, food, assistance. The more important question is, if he asked her for help, would she cooperate?”

  “You think she would?”

  Apodaca pulled a face. “Hard to figure,” he said. “But on balance I think not. Old times’ sake is one thing, but she’s Ralph Twitchell’s wife, for Chrissake, she’d have too much to lose.”

  “But … she might? It’s a possibility?”

  “Like I said, hard to figure,” Apodaca replied.

  “I’ll call her now,” McKittrick said and reached for the phone. Apodaca stopped him in the act of lifting the receiver.

  “Phone’s out,” he said. “Line’s probably down.”

  McKittrick made an impatient sound. “Don’t they have a cellphone?”

  “No reply there, either.”

  “So?”

  “One of us better go talk to her.”

  “Me, you mean?” McKittrick said.

  “You get along with those people, Olin,” Apodaca pointed out. “You know damned well I do not.”

  It was true, as far as it went. McKittrick got along with the Caseys because he needed to, although he had never really liked them. To his way of thinking the Caseys had always come on like they thought they were Riverside royalty, and Ralph Twitchell and his wife ran them a close second. If he ever established that either Ellen Casey or Kit Twitchell had given even the smallest of helping hands to the two fugitives, it would give him a great deal of pleasure to noisily and publicly rub their snotty noses in it.

  “I’ll drive up there now,” he decided aloud.

  “Had a feeling you might,” Apodaca had said as he headed for the door. It had unsettled him when it was said, and he still wasn’t quite sure what the sheriff’s inference had been.

  Tapping his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel, McKittrick glanced at the digital clock on the dash. It was a little after ten-thirty; he’d made good time coming up from town. Electronic static crackled in the speakers and a voice he recognized as Kit Twitchell’s came through, breathy, tinny.

  “Mr. McKittrick, oh, thank God you’re here! Wait a second and I’ll buzz you in. Come right up, please, as fast as you can.”

  Kit Twitchell’s agitated greeting was not at all what he had been expecting and it unsettled McKittrick even further. He hated it when situations got away from him. He got back into his car as the gate swung open and proceeded up the graveled drive that led to the turning circle in front of the big house. As he came to a stop, the porch door opened and Kit came out. She was wearing dark blue jeans with a white silk blouse. Her hair was loose and her face was without makeup and she looked distraught.

  “Thank God,” she said again. “How did you get here so quickly?”

  “Quickly?” he frowned as he got out of the car. “What do you mean, what’s happened?”

  “Mother and I – wait, you mean you don’t know?”

  “Know what?

  “They were here,” she said. “Easton and the Apache.”

  Expecting to encounter evasion, equivocation, perhaps even lies when he confronted her, he was thrown completely off balance. Uncertain now how to proceed, he regarded her warily.

  “When was this?” he asked. “When were they here?”

  “This morning,” she said, hugging herself as if it was cold. “This morning, early.”

  “And?”

  “They told us they had to have food, clothing. We gave them what they wanted. And they went.” She waved vaguely toward the nearby hills.

  “Who is we?”

  “My mother was here, sleeping over.”

  “Is she here now?”

  Kit shook her head. “She went down to Brio to call the police. I thought – isn’t that why you got here so fast?”

  He frowned. “Why didn’t she call from here?”

  “One of them cut the phone wires. Ironheel, I think.”

  “Don’t you have cellphones?”

  “He took the sims.”

  She hugged herself again. He hesitated, perplexed and no longer certain exactly how to continue. Everything she was telling him jibed with the fact that they had been unable to reach the ranch by landline or cellphone. But …. drab years spent in even drabber courtrooms had instilled in him a conviction that even when people were telling the truth, they never told the complete truth. It would cost him nothing to wait and be wary. Play along, he decided. Play along.

  “You’re shivering,” he said, putting concern into his voice. “Perhaps we’d better go inside?”

  “Yes,” she said, and shivered again. “Of course. Please. Come in.”

  They went into the big living room. He had never been inside the house before. He looked at the Charles Russell paintings on the walls, the gleaming black piano, the solid furniture, the bookcases stacked with Ralph Twitchell’s collection of modern first editions, all material evidences of the kind of lifestyle that never needed to think about money. “I’m sorry,” Kit said. “It’s just … all this. On top of everything else. I don’t—”

  “I know how difficult these last few days must have been for you,” McKittrick said. Feigning compassion was another courtroom trick he was good at. “And you have my deepest sympathy in your loss. I wish I didn’t have to put you through any more aggravation, but I need you to tell me exactly what happened. Do you think you can do that?”

  “I … think so,” she said. The words came in a breathy rush now, as if it was a relief to be able to say them. “It was around midnight. The phone rang, I was asleep. It was David Easton. He said they were coming, we had to help them.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police right away?” he asked.

  “I told him that I was going to. But he begged me to wait, to give him a chance to explain. To tell me what was really happening.”

  A chill of apprehension touched McKittrick’s spine, but there was no hint of insinuation or hidden meaning in Kit Twitchell’s voice or expression. Wait, he told himself, be careful, wait, wait.

  “Please,” he said. “Go on.”

  “They got here around sunup, maybe six thirty. David … Easton came to the door. The Apache was with him.”

  “Wait a minute. How did they get past the security gate?”

  She looked surprised, as if the question had not occurred to her before. “I really don’t know. But wait … their clothes were wet. Could they have come across the river?”

  It was possible, he supposed. The Apache would know how. “They might have done,” he said. “Go on.”

  “He said they had to have food, clothes. If we didn’t give them what they wanted, they would take it anyway.”

  “They threatened you?”

  “Not in so many words… but they had guns. We were frightened.”

  “You said he told you he wanted to explain. What really happened.”

  She nodded and took a deep breath, like a swimmer preparing to dive
. “He said they hadn’t wanted to kill that man up in the mountains, Mose …?”

  “Kuruk,” McKittrick said. “Mose Kuruk.”

  “But they had no choice, he had been hired to hunt them down.”

  Did she know? Had he told her? Careful, be careful.

  “Go on.”

  “David … Easton said Ironheel didn’t kill my father and Adam, and he could prove it. That was why Kuruk was trying to kill them.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “He said he wasn’t a hostage. That Ironheel was a material witness.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “We didn’t know what to believe. We were frightened. We just wanted them to go away.”

  “How long were they here?”

  “They left a little before eight. Ironheel cut the phone line to make sure we couldn’t call anyone. They said no one must leave the house until they’d been gone an hour. My mother left as soon as she thought it would be safe.”

  McKittrick’s mind was racing now, half of his brain listening to what Kit was saying, the other half examining and rejecting possible alternative scenarios. On the one hand, she could be telling the truth: the phone company records Apodaca had obtained confirmed that Easton’s call to the ranch had been made a few minutes after midnight. The other timings were all about right.

  On the other hand, all of this could be an elaborately constructed fabrication containing just enough truth to make it believable. Easton would know they would check the phone records and could have briefed her accordingly. Then before they left, disable the ranch phones to consolidate the plausibility of the story.

  Which, dammit, which? It was too soon yet to tell. Wait, wait.

  “Let’s go back aways,” he said, picking his words with care. “I’m not sure I have this right. You say Easton claimed Ironheel didn’t kill your father and Adam?”

  She nodded, yes.

  There was no way around it. He plunged.

  “Did he say who did?”

  “He said he knew who it was but that it wasn’t safe for him to tell us,” she said. “That if we knew we would be in the same danger they were.”