Threepersons Hunt

by Brian Garfield

  Victorio said, “He won’t tell us much now, will he.”

  “That’s why he’s dead.”

  “What?”

  Watchman knew it in his guts but there was no way to explain how.

  Victorio took two paces toward him. He looked baffled. “You trying to say Joe wiped him out to keep him quiet?”

  “How would I know?” Watchman almost snapped it. He turned away and got down on his back and slithered underneath the rear corner of the pickup; it was the only corner that still left enough clearance to crawl under, and that was only because it was propped up on a twofoot boulder.

  The drive shaft had telescoped against itself and burst. The two halves of the front axle had jabbed themselves into the ground at odd angles and the engine had fallen through the frame to lie on the rocks. There was no sign of the tail pipe or muffler; they had to be somewhere up on the cliff. The shattered oil pan had made a viscous puddle behind the engine and Watchman could see the socket of one headlight where it lay on the ground like a severed eyeball. The fuel tank was bent and dented but it hadn’t burst and there had been no fire; there must have been a slow leak somewhere because he could smell the fumes. They weren’t strong enough to alarm him.

  The cable that ran from the emergency-brake handle to the rear wheels had frayed and burst; one end of it lay curled near Watchman’s nose. That was mechanical; he was looking for the hydraulics and he found them and traced the hoses up along the base of the cab, crawling an inch at a time through a space that barely accommodated his shoulders. He was acutely conscious of the possibility of the wreck slipping off its uncertain moorings and pinning him beneath; he moved with great care.

  It was not inspiration; the logic was that if the truck hadn’t been pushed it must have been disabled, either by accident or by design, and when a vehicle was going to have to negotiate mountain roads the best and easiest shot was at the brakes or the steering. He expected to find a cut brake hose.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing under there? This thing’s perched like a golf ball sittin’ on a wobbly tee.”

  He pulled himself back with elbows and toes and slid out from under. When he sat up Victorio was making exaggerated brow-mopping and mouth-whooshing gestures of relief. “Man I’ve had enough coronaries for one day. Don’t do that.”

  Watchman moved his feet under him, got up and went around to the front of the wreck. Victorio trailed along. “You didn’t find anything, did you?”

  “Not what I expected to, no.”

  “That mean anything?”

  “Find me something to pry this up with.” He was trying to lift the hood but it was wedged fast.

  “Uh—shouldn’t we report this to the police?”

  “I am the police. See if there’s a jack handle or something back there.”

  Victorio went around back. Watchman got down on his knees and bent low with his cheek along the ground, trying to look up past the end of the broken axle under the fender. He couldn’t see much and what he could see was twisted beyond belief.

  The brake hoses were pretty mangled under the frame but there were no indications that they had been tampered with. A knife would have left a neat cut and the only breaks he’d seen had been jagged, traceable to the crushing and ripping the truck had suffered during its long end-for-end tumble.

  He heard Victorio crunching toward him. “I couldn’t find the handle. This do?”

  It was the thin rectangular steel jack post, perforated where the bumper-jack device was supposed to ride up and down on its ratchet. Watchman hefted it. It was about the size of a crowbar and only a little lighter. “If I can squeeze it in. Lend a hand.”

  They jammed the bar under the crumpled edge of the hood and heaved down on it. The metal gave but didn’t pop open. Watchman moved the bar farther to the back and they tried again. He heard Victorio grunt with effort. They both had their full weight on the bar when it gave; it sent Victorio asprawl.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I guess so.” Victorio scrambled to his feet. There was a small rip near the shoulder of his suit jacket. He limbered his joints as if to test them for cracks and contusions. “I’m okay.”

  The hood had popped partway open and Watchman pushed it up as far as it would go. He propped the bent jack-bar under it and looked down into the tangle of rusty metal where the engine had once squatted on its mountings.

  The battery had squirted acid everywhere. Spark-plug wires dangled from the twisted distributor and the broken blades of the fan had imbedded themselves in the surrealistic mess of radiator grille.

  It had to be there and he spotted it, down past where the frontmost engine-mount had been.

  “You found something?”

  “Have a look.”

  Victorio peered in past his shoulder.

  “So?”

  “Tie rod.”

  “I’m no auto mechanic. What’s that mean?”

  “The tie rods are the gizmos that keep both your front wheels pointed in the same direction. When you break a tie rod it leaves you with no steering control at all. Both front wheels toe out in opposite directions. Sometimes a front wheel falls off. That’s what happened here.”

  “Okay, so he broke a tie rod. What of it?”

  “It didn’t break,” Watchman said. “It was cut. You can see the way it sheered off. Somebody took a hacksaw and cut three-quarters of the way through it. The first time he put enough stress on it, it broke.”

  The broken end of the twisted steel rod glimmered faintly. The broken surface was smooth except for a thin section shaped like a first-quarter moon; that bit was jagged where it had broken of its own accord. It wasn’t more than an eighth of an inch thick.

  “We’ll need experts to confirm it,” Watchman said, “but it was a hacksaw.”

  Victorio looked at him with evident awe. “You knew,” he said.

  “It had to be something like that.”

  “But you knew what to look for.”

  “Like I said,” Watchman answered, “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  12.

  He got the keys out of his pocket. “Take my car and get to a phone. We’ll want the County Sheriff’s people.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’d just as soon not give anybody a chance to monkey with the evidence. I’ll wait here.”

  “It’ll be dark in an hour.”

  “Then you’d better quit standing here jawing and get yourself to a phone.”

  “Shouldn’t I tell Pete Porvo?”

  “Tell him if you want. It’s a murder case, it’s out of his jurisdiction. But we might be able to use an extra hand. You’d better tell the county people to send plenty of flashlights and a long cable with the wrecker.”

  “You think they’ll be able to haul it out from way up there?” Victorio looked up at the shelf of the road far above them; it was a good four hundred feet and most of it sheer.

  “They’ll want the cable to get the corpse out of here. It’d be pretty hard trying to manhandle him up that cliff.”

  “Okay.” Victorio turned away but then he hesitated. “You gonna be all right?”

  Watchman could feel the automatic against his spine. He nodded and waved Victorio on his way.

  He had another look at the tie rod and it was still hacksaw-shiny, he hadn’t been mistaken about it. He walked a complete circle around the wreck, not sure what he was looking for; in the end it occurred to him and he put the back of his hand against the block of the engine underneath the truck. It wasn’t cold but neither was it tactably hot; the sun had only moved across the hilltop within the past half hour and that might account for the residual warmth in the metal. He turned and made his way up the steep incline, using his hands, until he came to the body. The face had been battered but it was still visibly Jimmy Oto’s face. He lifted Oto’s left arm and it moved without too much stiffness; he heard the ends of broken bones grate together and he dropped the arm back to its original position.r />
  No rigor mortis yet so it hadn’t been more than a few hours. Sometime today, probably sometime since noon.

  Time-of-death was no reliable indicator in this case; the tie rod could have been cut any time in the past few days. It was brutal enough to chill Watchman, the idea of it; Oto often carried a whole truckload of friends around with him and whoever had done this must have known that. Known it but not cared.

  13.

  Ten minutes later a car stopped on the bend above him and a man in a big black hat walked to the rim to look down. The man studied the scene and turned to speak to someone in the car; then he walked back to the car and it started down the steep slant of the road.

  The sun no longer reached into the hollow. Shadows blended the boulders and the high air had a little chill. Watchman went through Jimmy Oto’s pockets but there were only the usual licenses and identification cards in the creased old wallet which also contained seven dollars and a pair of condoms that had worn circular welts into the leather.

  In the open glove compartment of the wreck he found half a pack of dry forgotten Camels and a flashlight that didn’t work, and the registration for the truck, and an untidily refolded map.

  He spread the map on the ground. It was a Topographical Survey drawn to a scale of 1:5,000 and it showed every footpath and every building that had existed in 1966, the year of its preparation.

  There were no pencil marks on it but just the same the reason for Jimmy Oto’s death now became somewhat less baffling. The map showed the northeast quadrant of the Florence district and it included part of the State Prison at the right-hand side.

  There was no consciously audible warning but Watchman knew the man was behind him, knew what direction and how far.

  He rose like a corkscrew, turning the half-circle in smooth synchronization with the rise to his feet.

  His senses had misled him in one respect: it wasn’t one man. There were two of them.

  They were coming at him without sound from the rocks below. The larger one in the hat looked vaguely familiar; he was the one who’d stopped the car and got out for a look fifteen minutes ago but Watchman had seen him somewhere before that.

  It was the small one who brought it back. The toothpick rolling from one side of the mouth to the other.

  They swarmed in too fast for him to try for the automatic under his shirt. As soon as he had begun to rise they had abandoned stealth and rushed. The little one came first and Watchman parried the knife-wrist with his left hand and brought the heel of his right hand up under the man’s nose. The toothpick lanced his palm but he heard the crush of cartilage, felt the spurt of blood on his palm. Watchman got a grasp on the knife-wrist and flung the man back into the path of his partner.

  The two Apaches went down in a tangle and Watchman kicked the knife out of the little one’s hand; the man was bleeding at nose and mouth and didn’t care much about the knife any more.

  Watchman backpedaled quickly while they got loose of each other; he yanked the automatic out from under the back of his shirt and leveled it.

  The little one rocked back on his haunches with both hands over his face. The one in the big hat got to his feet and scowled. He wasn’t armed. He said, “Man that ain’t fair.”

  “I didn’t know we were playing a game,” Watchman said. “Turn around and hit the truck. Hands on the roof.”

  He made a mistake; he got one pace too close and the Apache swung on him, going for the automatic. It spun out of Watchman’s grasp and then the Apache was turning against him with the effortless fluid movements of a man whose musculature was in perfect tune. The fist rammed the angle of Watchman’s jaw and his head rocked back in sudden agony; he wheeled to one side shaking his head to clear his vision.

  The Apache trusted that punch too much: he attempted it again and Watchman was ready. He went under it, pulled his head aside to let it slide over his shoulder.

  Slugging the Apache was like hitting a padded rock. It had no visible effect. Watchman threw his foot between the Apache’s ankles and heaved.

  The Apache was trying for a clinch but Watchman’s foot tripped him and Watchman’s rigid hand bladed him across the back of the neck. The big hat fell off and the Apache stumbled to his knees.

  Watchman crossed the six feet of earth with two strides and snatched up the pistol. He jacked the slide and fired.

  The bullet screamed off a rock two feet from the Apache’s boot; it left a white smear and the ricochet echoed up the canyon in pulsing waves of sound.

  It had the sobering effect Watchman had intended. The Apache got up slowly and lumbered to the truck and laid his arms out across the roof, palms down.

  The little one was sitting on the ground swaying slowly, moaning.

  Watchman frisked the big one and took a folding knife out of his pocket. He stepped back and glanced at the little one, walked over to the discarded pigsticker and put it in his own pocket for safekeeping. “Come over here and sit down with him.”

  The Apache lumbered through the rocks to his bleeding partner and hunkered down. “Christ you smashed his face all to hell, man.”

  “You could get ten years apiece for this little ballet.”

  “Hell we got carried away.”

  “You could get carried away in a box if you pull something like this again.” Watchman stood with the sweat drying on him. “What’s your name?”

  “Sanada.”

  “Full name.”

  “What the hell. Danny Sanada.”

  “What about him?”

  “Name of Nelson Oto.”

  “Oto.” Watchman glanced at the dead body up in the rocks above the truck. “His brother?”

  “Yeah, yeah. You do that to him?”

  “No.”

  “Well Nels thought you did.”

  “Next time you might try asking first.”

  “Ask a cop?” Danny Sanada took out a pocket comb and slicked back his hair. “Yeah.”

  “Who sent you up here?”

  “Sent us? What you talking about, man? We live up here, Cuncon. Right over the hill there. We seen the wreck, we walked in from the bottom of the road. Seen you picking over him that way, Nels figured you was up to something.”

  The weapon in Watchman’s hand was getting heavy. He picked up Sanada’s hat and tossed it to him. Sanada put it on and turned his brooding stare toward Jimmy Oto’s brother who was beginning to whimper. “We ought to do something for him.”

  “It’ll stop bleeding,” Watchman said. “When did you two see Jimmy last?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  Watchman sat down with his back to a rock and let the pistol hang from both hands between his upraised knees. He spoke without heat. “If I push charges they’ll toss you away in jail like a squeezed lemon. Now that would be a waste of everybody’s time. Somebody’s hanging Jimmy’s scalp on a door right now and you could help find out who did that.”

  “So we was right. It wasn’t no accident.”

  “No accident. His tie rod was sawed through.”

  “Aw son of a bitch,” Sanada said. “You hear that Nels?”

  “I hear.” Nelson Oto’s voice had a stuffy twang; his nose was plugged with wreckage.

  Sanada said, “I didn’t see him since last night down to the Arrow. I don’t know about Nels. We was both working all day down to the sawmill, day labor.”

  Nelson Oto lay back slowly until his head touched the earth; then he twisted his face to one side so the blood wouldn’t run back into his throat. He had trouble getting his breath. “I saw him this morning.”

  “Where?”

  “Home, man. Before I went to work.”

  “What time was that?”

  “I don’t own no watch. Breakfast time. Man I don’t know—maybe six, six-thirty, seven o’clock. He said he had some money, he was going down to the post sometime today and get his bill paid up.”

  “Where’d the money come from?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the truth.”
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  “Was it from Harlan Natagee?”

  He couldn’t see Nelson Oto’s face very well. Sanada reacted to it sharply but it was more surprise than secretiveness. Nelson said, “Could be. I don’t know.”

  “How big was his bill at the store?”

  “Not much. He paid the whole thing off a week ago maybe. He just had the one week’s stuff to pay for.”

  “Where’d he get the money a week ago?”

  “I don’t know that neither. He had some private things working, you know.”

  “Like what?”

  “If I knowed that, they wouldn’t be private, now would they.”

  “Who was he hanging out with besides you boys?”

  “I got no idea. He had his own truck, he was out by himself a lot of the time.”

  “How many of you were in on the jailbreak?” Watchman asked.

  Sanada looked genuinely puzzled. Nelson Oto said, “What jailbreak?”

  “Joe Threepersons.”

  “Man you think we done that?”

  “I’m asking.”

  “Didn’t know a damn thing about, that,” Nelson Oto said.

  “Then why was there a map of Florence in Jimmy’s truck?”

  “I didn’t see no map. You see a map there, Nels?”

  “I never seen no map of Florence anyplace.”

  “There you go,” Sanada said. “Fuckin’ A well told.”

  The way they both talked they hadn’t been out of the Army very long. Watchman got his handkerchief out and inspected it for cleanliness. It wasn’t too bad. He took it across to Nelson Oto. “Here, clean your face off.”

  14.

  Under portable searchlights it was nearly midnight by the time the Apache County officials and technicians had finished in the canyon. They cordoned off the wreck and put two deputies on guard; Watchman heard the Undersheriff promise to relieve them by eight in the morning.

  There was a rustic unhurried manner to the operations of the Sheriff’s deputies, the County Coroner and Attorney’s men, the ambulance crew and the wrecker-crane operators; but they were professionals and did their jobs carefully. Fingerprint men dusted every inch of the wreck and afterward the entire steering assembly was dismantled and wrapped in manila paper and carried uphill through the rocks to the county station wagon.