“Three,” Bernie said. “The one in there. He’s the one who hit me. His name is Winson, or Winsor, or Willson, or something like that. Winsor I think it was. He was the boss of the other two. He’s the one who hit me and he’s the one who said I had to be killed. One of the others—a big tall man, looked like an athlete, sort of red hair, sort of looked like an Irishman, but he spoke Spanish, and Winsor said his name was Budge C. de Baca, like that old Spanish family in New Mexico—anyway, he worked directly for Winsor, and from what Winsor said, he had assigned Budge the job of killing me.”
“Killing you? Killing you?” Chee said.
Bernie ignored him. “The other one was wearing army fatigues and his name was Diego de Vargas and he spoke Spanish, too. And that bunch of pipes—”
“Bernie,” Dashee said, “where are those two men? Are they armed? Do they have your pistol? Did they drive away? Where did they go?”
“They went away,” Bernie said. “And I don’t know where my pistol is. And do you want to hear this or not?”
“Sorry,” Dashee said, and looked repentant.
So Bernie told them what happened in the shed, about the yellow round ball arriving, the sacks of cocaine taken out of it, and about the big man whispering to her that she should tell Winsor she was with the DEA and that she could be bribed. And all the rest of it, skipping back to report how de Vargas had taken her pistol but somehow Budge had gotten it.
“And then when Budge acted like he wasn’t going to kill me, and was telling Winsor they couldn’t get away with it, then Winsor told him to do it like, like ...” Here Bernie’s voice faltered. She paused a moment with her hands over her face. Then went on. “Like they had killed some woman named Chrissy, by throwing her out of an airplane into the ocean. Except they would throw me out over the mountains down in Mexico.” She paused again, then hurried through it. “Then Winsor cocked his rifle and swung it around at Budge, and I was sitting there on the table right beside his chair, and I kicked at his arm and he hit me with the rifle.”
Bernie stopped, looked at Chee and then at Dashee. Both seemed to be holding their breath, silent, waiting.
“Then, he shot, right beside my ear. Or maybe they both shot. And the next thing I knew I was lying on the table with one of those bags under my head, and Budge was using a handkerchief or something to stop the bleeding on my cheek and asking me how I felt, and it was then he said he didn’t kill Chrissy.” She stopped, looked at them, awaited the next question.
“Bernie,” Chee said. “I want you to stop being a policeman. I want you to do something safe. I want you to marry me. I’ll get rid of that trailer and we’ll find a nice house and—”
And Dashee said, “Damn it, Chee, hold that for later. Let Bernie tell us where those two bastards went. They’re getting away.”
And Bernie said: “Oh, Jim, I don’t want to be a policeman anymore.”
And Dashee said: “But where did they go? They’re driving off somewhere right now. Getting away.”
“I don’t know where they went,” Bernie said. “While Budge was getting the blood off of my face he was talking to Diego de Vargas. Talking about flying. They would fly down to some place in Mexico. He had left this woman down there. Chrissy. To keep her safe from Winsor. He said he was in love with this Chrissy, and would go down there and marry her, and then they would take her somewhere Budge had friends, and Vargas could sell the airplane and they would both start over. And, I don’t know, I was trying to listen but I was feeling dizzy, and I was still scared, and they were talking mostly in Spanish. It was confusing.”
“That airplane. Where is it?” Chee asked. “I guess this Budge must be the pilot for that man in the building, must be his personal pilot. There’s probably some sort of airport at the ranch. At least a landing strip.”
“Let’s go find that airplane,” Dashee said.
Chee was looking up. “I think we’re a little late again.”
The sleek white shape of the Dessault Falcon 10 appeared just over the ridge beyond the playa valley—trailing the sound little jet engines make when accelerating.
“Flying south,” Dashee said. “In ten minutes he’s over Mexico. Home free.”
“I heard him telling this Diego de Vargas guy about Chrissy. She was a law clerk for Winsor, and Winsor told her he would marry her, and she got pregnant, and he ordered Budge to kill her so she wouldn’t tell Winsor’s wife.”
“They’re getting away,” Dashee said, still staring toward the south where the Falcon had vanished.
“I hope so,” Bernie said, sounding slightly woozy. “He really was in love with this Chrissy. He was telling that other man, the Mexican, about her. About how the boss told him to kill her but instead he took her down to Mexico and just told the boss she was dead. He was going there to get her.”
“Hey!” Dashee said. “Going where?” He turned to Chee. “We can get him there. Where was he going?”
Bernie held her hand up to her forehead, touched the bandage over the bruise. “I don’t remember,” she said.
The diminishing whine of the jet’s engines was replaced by the thunking sound of the Border Patrol’s helicopter. It came in low, looking for the best landing spot. Only a moment later, that noise was joined by the siren of a State Police car bumping its way down the track toward the building site.
“They’ll take you to the hospital at Las Cruces, Bernie. It’s the nearest one. I may have to stay here with Cowboy to try to explain all this. He reached into the car and hugged her to him, gingerly. Stay there. I’ll come and get you.”
“I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere for a while,” Bernie said. “I’m the only witness.”
26
Bernie was right. First to arrive was a New Mexico State Police sergeant with a patrolman. They were informed only with a secondhand, passed-along version of what Bernie had told her Border Patrol dispatcher. The sergeant wanted to know which one of them had done the shooting, where was the gun, who was the victim, was that stuff in the little packages some “controlled substance.” Chee’s efforts to add some clarity to this were interrupted by Dashee, who showed his credentials as a U.S. Bureau of Land Management enforcement officer. Dashee began an account of how the cocaine had arrived, which was interrupted by the arrival of a Guadalupe County Sheriff’s car, occupied by a deputy and an undersheriff. This produced a flurry of discussion of who had jurisdiction here, which reminded Bernie that she, as a Customs patrol officer of the U.S. Treasury Department, was actually the officer in charge. But Bernie’s head was still aching, and the bruise hurt. She wisely decided to stop resisting the orders of the paramedic who had arrived in the Border Control copter, to recline on the stretcher and take the pain pills he was pressing on her.
The undersheriff sent his deputy back to the Tuttle Ranch headquarters to confirm the plane was missing and to join the State Police patrolman in making sure roadblocks were at work in case the two unaccounted-for males had driven away in the victim’s missing Range Rover. About then, a dark blue Ford roared up and braked to a stop in a billowing cloud of dust.
Chee had been standing beside the copter, holding the hand of Bernie, who was looking very, very sleepy now. “Who’s that?” Bernie asked.
“Blue Ford sedan,” Chee said. “Two men getting out. Well dressed. Must be the FBI.”
A few minutes later, the taller of the two came hurrying over. He flashed his FBI shield, said he was Special Agent something-or-other, checked Chee’s identity, and looked at Bernie.
“Officer Manuelito? Right? You must have heard those two men talking after the shooting. Did you hear where they were going?”
“She’s in pretty bad shape,” Chee said. “Possible concussion. You should wait until—”
“Stand aside,” Special Agent said, motioning Chee away. “No time to wait. We want those men.”
But Bernie had drifted off into morphine-induced dreams. Or perhaps she was pretending. And thus the paramedic and the copter pilot flew her
away to the hospital at Las Cruces, and she missed the arrival of an SUV occupied by Drug Enforcement Agents, and the resulting dispute over which of the agencies had jurisdiction, which was eventually resolved by the arrival of someone representing Homeland Security, who declared himself in charge of the FBI, the DEA, the Border Patrol, the Department of Land Management, and the Navajo Tribal Police.
Sergeant Chee didn’t argue. He was rushing Cowboy Dashee to the BLM vehicle to begin a high-speed journey to Las Cruces to make sure Bernie was being treated gently. And to take her home.
27
Some time passed before Chee could take Customs Patrol Officer Bernadette Manuelito anywhere. First there was an X ray, which showed no fractures, and then stitches to close the deep cut below her hairline, all of which led to two days of doctor-ordered bed rest in the hospital. There she was visited by an amiable FBI agent named Jenkins. He was black, middle-aged by Bernie’s standards, and delighted her by bringing up the same questions that had been troubling her. Why had she been sent to that Tuttle Ranch gate site? What had her supervisor told her she was looking for? How about the “special arrangement” to cooperate with the ranch? And how had the photograph Henry had taken of her, wearing her Big Thunder pin, gotten so quickly into the hands of Mexican drug dealers?
That, above all, stimulated Jenkins’s interest, turned him away from nagging her about where she thought Budge and Diego might have gone, or what their real names might be. It sent him out the room to use his cell phone where she couldn’t hear him. When he came back, he was in a hurry. Just asked Bernie if she had anything else to tell him, said: “Well, thank you then,” and was gone.
The nurse came through the door after him.
“There’s someone out in the hall waiting to see you. You ready for a visitor?”
Bernie was at the closet, getting her uniform on. “I’m ready to get out of here. Go home.” She stopped buttoning her shirt, made a wry face. “Is it another policeman?”
“It’s your young man.”
It was the first time Bernie had heard anyone call Jim Chee “her man.” But now, she thought, the nurse had it right. And it sounded fine.
“Give me a few minutes to get dressed and then send him in,” Bernie said.
EPILOGUE
And so it was. The Sinister Pig was dead, the Pig Trap end of the Sinister Pipeline was safely in the hands of the federals, with the FBI, the DEA, and the Customs Service pushing and shoving for media credit and TV time. Now the TV crews are gone from the south gate of Tuttle Ranch, and the scimitar-horned oryx are grazing there again and all the other players are gone.
First to go were Budge and Diego de Vargas in the Falcon 10, which seemed to belong to the late Rawley Winsor but which, officials of his A.G.H. Industries would be surprised to know, was actually on the A.G.H. inventory. The Falcon is now in the hanger of another of A.G.H. subsidiaries, refueled and refurbished, waiting for Diego to fly it to Jamaica where its paint job and license numbers will be suitably revised.
Budge had flown south too, serving as copilot and instructor, using the Falcon’s phone to call the Mazatlan hotel where Chrissy was installed, telling her what had happened and that he would be at her hotel in two hours.
When the Falcon pulled into the transient aircraft space, she was there waiting. A passionately romantic scene ensued. But who can tell what the future holds for such a pair.
Bureau of Land Management Security Officer Cowboy Dashee, having been the only officer left at the scene with even a hint of jurisdiction, was stuck at the south gate locale until sundown, answering the questions of various other federal officers and working on the explanation he would give his BLM boss for why he was involved in a drug bust more than two hundred miles south of where he was supposed to be.
Joe Leaphorn, the retired Legendary Lieutenant, who had been nowhere near the south gate, didn’t escape the aftermath. Professor Louisa Bourbonette, back from her oral history roamings, handed him the telephone.
“Joe,” she said, “it’s someone named Mary Goddard, and she sounds angry.”
She was. “Mr. Leaphorn, I remind you that when we exchanged information you promised me, a solemn promise, to tip me on any pertinent developments. I thought I could trust you.”
“Well,” said Joe, “ah—”
“Listen to this headline from my competitor’s front page: ‘Socialite Mogul Slain in Drug Raid.’ ”
“I know,” Leaphorn said. “But I wasn’t—”
“Wasn’t what?”
“Down there,” Leaphorn said. “Anyway, your story was the missing money from the tribal trust funds. All that royalty money that—”
“My story was why Stein was killed. The guy with the phony Carl Mankin credit card.”
“I still don’t know.”
“Well, your people out there do,” Goddard said. “Let me read it to you.”
Leaphorn heard the sound of paper rustling.
“Here it is: ‘Officer Manuelito said the conversations she overheard between Winsor and the two men working indicated Stein was killed because the drug dealers believed he was investigating their efforts to use pipeline cleaning devices to smuggle cocaine in from Mexico.’
“ ‘She said Winsor had come to believe that Stein was actually working for a prominent senator—seeking evidence of pipeline use to illegally divert oil or gas shipments in the Interior Department scandal.’ ” Goddard stopped. “What do you say to that?”
“My only excuse is ignorance.”
“Ignorance! I heard that you provided the tip that something funny was going on with that old pipeline.”
“Not exactly,” Leaphorn said.
“Well, no use yelling at you. What can you tell me now?”
“All I know is what I’ve been reading in the Farmington Times,” Leaphorn said. “Nobody cares about that Stein killing anymore. Maybe the next time we have a big story out here I can make it up to you.”
“Big story out there? Fat chance.”
Leaphorn should have said almost nobody cared about the Stein case. Sergeant Jim Chee still cared. He was now sitting at his desk staring at the computer screen in his crowded trailer home on the banks of the San Juan River. Stein had been murdered right in the territory he was responsible for. Even though the FBI had taken over and declared it a hunting accident he had to write a report on it. He was down to the concluding paragraph, and what could he say in conclusion?
He typed: “Evidence developed in a subsequent drug investigation strongly suggested”—someone was tapping at this screen door—“that Mexican interests in a drug-smuggling venture ordered Stein killed, believing he might reveal their plan.”
It was Bernie, a neat bandage protecting the stitches on her face and the remains of her bruises still visible.
He ushered her in, noticed she was eyeing the interior of his trailer with an unusually intent interest. He hugged her.
“Bernie,” he said, “you are absolutely beautiful, and if you’ll marry me, I will never let anyone hit you with a rifle again.”
Bernie returned the hug. “In that case, I’ll marry you, providing you help me push this trailer down into the river so we can build a real house here.”
About the e-Book
(JULY, 2003)—Scanned, proofed and formatted by Bibliophile.
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