The Fourth Durango

by Ross Thomas

  “It’s unlisted.”

  “I know.”

  Virginia Trice looked up at the ceiling, back down at Vines and recited the number from memory. After Vines thanked her and began dialing, she moved farther up the bar.

  The mayor answered with a hello halfway through the call’s third ring.

  “This is Kelly Vines.”

  “You must have the wrong number,” B. D. Huckins said and hung up.

  Chapter 33

  After hanging up on Vines, the mayor returned to her chocolate-brown leather easy chair and smiled an apology at Sheriff Charles Coates, who perched on the edge of the cream 1930s couch, a cushion away from Sid Fork.

  Sensitive about his average height, which he felt insufficient by southern California standards, the forty-two-year-old sheriff’s backside rarely occupied more than six inches of anything it rested on. He usually sat as he sat now, leaning a bit forward, hands clasping his knees, heels slightly lifted-obviously all set for hot pursuit.

  When standing, the sheriff looked neither short nor tall, possibly because of his glistening black cowboy boots with their one-and-a-half-inch heels. Once reporters had discovered he was height-conscious, they delighted in asking him how tall he was because of his unvarying reply: “Same as Steve McQueen alive and barefoot-five-ten and a quarter.”

  As B. D. Huckins sat back down in the leather easy chair, the six-foot-three, twenty-eight-year-old deputy sheriff asked whether she got many wrong-number calls. The deputy was Henry Quirt, who had been relegated to the only other chair in the living room-the one that was really more stool than chair and forced his knees up until they were almost level with his breastbone. The deputy sat on the low stool at the late night meeting in the mayor’s house not only because he policed his section of the county from a Durango base, but also because Sheriff Coates had decided a witness might prove useful-even invaluable.

  The mayor answered the deputy’s question about wrong-number calls by replying, yes, she did receive quite a few of them. The sheriff said that although he couldn’t prove it, he thought unlisted phone numbers got more wrong-number calls than listed ones The mayor asked the sheriff whether she could get him and his deputy something, perhaps a beer.

  “Not a thing, B. D., but thank you.”

  “I’d like a beer,” Fork said, rising from the couch. “But I’ll get it myself.”

  “Well, if you’re having one, Sid, I guess I will, too,” Coates said.

  Fork looked at Deputy Quirt. “Henry?”

  “No, thanks.”

  As Fork headed for the kitchen, Sheriff Coates said, “I apologize again for dropping by so late, B. D.”

  The mayor looked at her watch. “It’s only ten forty-eight.”

  “But since I had to be over here in Durango anyhow-and wasn’t that a terrible thing about Ivy Settles? Just awful. How’s his wife taking it?”

  “Hard.”

  “If there’s anything at all I can do…” Coates left his offer dangling-incomplete, undefined and, in Huckins’s opinion, meaningless.

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  “But the real reason I dropped by so late, B. D., is I need to talk a little politics.”

  “Who with?”

  “Why, with you, of course.”

  Huckins kept her expression polite, her voice neutral. “Sid’ll probably want to hear this.”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised.”

  They sat in silence until Fork returned with two open bottles of beer and handed one to Coates. “Need a glass, Charlie?”

  “What for?”

  Huckins waited until Fork was again sitting on the cream couch and had drunk some of his beer before she said, “Charlie wants to talk a little politics.”

  Fork turned to examine the sheriff, as if for the first time. He inspected the glistening black boots, the tight tan whipcord pants and the forest-green Viyella shirt that was tailored to emphasize the flat stomach, deep chest and the shoulders that seemed a foot thick and a yard wide.

  The chief’s slow, careful inspection finally reached the sheriff’s face with its landmark chin, bad-cop mouth, stuck-up nose that never sunburned or peeled and, finally, the blue eyes that crinkled on demand and were shaped like long teardrops. Topping all this was a wealth of dark brown gray-flecked hair that every seven days was trimmed to Marine Corps specifications.

  “Politics?” Fork said after his inspection. “Christ, Charlie, you don’t even have any opposition this year.”

  Coates nodded, studied the floor to demonstrate the gravity of what he was about to say, and looked up quickly, first at Fork, then at Huckins. “It can’t go beyond these walls.”

  “I won’t breathe a word,” Fork said, “unless it’ll do me some good.”

  Almost everything in Coates’s face smiled except his mouth. “Still the merry prankster at forty, right, Sid?”

  “Thirty-nine. And before you invite yourself into somebody’s house, you oughta know if you can trust them or not.”

  “B. D. knows the answer to that, don’t you, B. D.?”

  The mayor said, “Get to it, Charlie.”

  Coates edged forward another inch on the cream couch, leaned another inch in Huckins’s direction and spoke in the hushed tones of the seasoned conspirator. “Old man Sloop’s going to step down as county supervisor in nineteen ninety.”

  “Why?” she said.

  “To pursue other interests.”

  The mayor shook her head. “Billy Sloop celebrated-or at least observed-his sixty-eighth birthday last week. He’s been a county supervisor for fourteen years and doesn’t have any other interests to pursue. So how much have you got on him, Charlie?”

  “Enough.”

  “Why tell me?”

  “Because I’m going to announce for his job and I want your endorsement.”

  “When’re you going to announce?”

  “Two days after the election-November tenth.”

  “Why then?”

  “Because that’s the day Billy’s promised me he’ll let it out that he won’t be running for reelection in nineteen ninety after all, and my announcement will give me the jump on everyone else.”

  “And you want my endorsement?”

  “Sure do, B. D.”

  “You know I never endorse anyone except at the city level.”

  “Thought you might make an exception.”

  The mayor sighed. “Cut the crap, Charlie. What d’you really want?”

  “I want to help you clean up Durango.”

  “It’s not dirty,” Fork said.

  The sheriff turned to the chief of police, making no effort to hide his contempt. “Four murders in two days? A serial killer on the loose? If anybody else gets killed here, they’ll start calling it Beirut, California. I can bring my task force in and nail that sucker in ten days max, Sid, maybe even seven.”

  “That’s not fast enough,” the mayor said.

  Coates’s look of contempt vanished, replaced by one that made him seem honestly puzzled. “I don’t follow you, B. D.”

  “It’s simple. Durango is an incorporated municipality that provides its own law enforcement.”

  “I don’t need any civics lesson.”

  “Politics, not civics. You said you wanted to talk a little politics so that’s what I’m doing. Let’s begin with Durango. It has an elected mayor who’s its chief executive. Me. I hire its chief of police, who’s sitting right next to you. Sid. I hire him with the City Council’s approval and he reports to me. That means law enforcement is ultimately my responsibility. That’s what I’m elected to do and if I can’t do it, the city will elect itself a mayor who can. But if I invite the county sheriff and his task force in to do what the police chief and I’re supposed to do, then even the dimmest voter’ll get the idea that B. D. Huckins and Sid Fork are incapable of maintaining law and order, which would give this same dimmest voter a fine reason to vote for a new mayor who’d hire a new chief of police. You following me so far?”
>
  Coates only nodded.

  “I like living in this town, Charlie. I like being its mayor. I know maybe two thousand people in Durango by their first names. I belong here and can’t even imagine living anywhere else. What’s more, I plan to go on being mayor for as long as I can get elected because I’m a damn good one-the best this town ever had. But what you’re asking me to do is commit political suicide by jump-starting your campaign. Charlie Coates for county supervisor-the man who cleaned up Durango in a week or maybe ten days. Well, that’s not fast enough, Sheriff, because the killer, whoever he is, will be arrested by Durango cops and put behind Durango bars in Durango’s jail by the fourth of July and that I can absolutely guarantee you.”

  The mayor paused, smiled almost sweetly and said, “So there’s really no logical reason to bring in your task force, is there?”

  It was B. D. at her best, Sid Fork decided. On the attack, not giving an inch, her voice low and as cold as ice water and those gray eyes drilling right through old Charlie’s thick skull. Fork decided to lend a hand.

  “I don’t know about that guaranteed July the fourth deadline, B. D.,” he said.

  “Why not?” Huckins said, faking a note of asperity to make it sound as if she had no idea what Fork’s answer would be.

  “Because we’re going to have that sucker in jail by the second of July-the third at the latest.”

  Sheriff Coates advanced another inch on the cream couch, reducing the width of his perch to approximately four inches. “How long’ve we known each other, B. D.?”

  “Nineteen long years.”

  “More like twenty. I remember I’d just started on the same job Deputy Quirt’s got when you and Sid and the rest of ’em rolled in here from Frisco in that old GM school bus you’d painted up like an Easter egg. You parked where you shouldn’t’ve-on Seventh next to City Park-and the next morning I just happened by, woke everybody up and told you to move it before the city cops busted you. I even told you where you could park the thing. Remember that, Sid?”

  “Not really.”

  “We go back a long, long way, B. D.-you, me, Sid and Dixie. You got to be mayor; I got to be sheriff; Sid got to be chief of police; and Dixie, well, I guess Dixie got to be rich. But wasn’t there another guy with you all back then? Funny-looking short guy. Ugly. Called himself Teddy, I think. Teddy Smith? Jones? Something like that.”

  “Something like that,” the mayor said.

  “Wonder what ever happened to him?”

  “No idea.”

  “After the rest of your bunch left for Colorado, the four of you all moved into that old shack out on Boatright, didn’t you? Then Teddy just sort of disappeared-like he’d jumped into the ocean and drowned or something.”

  “He jumped on a bus,” Fork said.

  “Wonder where he went?”

  “No telling.”

  Coates shook his head sadly, as if at some old friend’s mysterious disappearance, and turned to the mayor. “B. D., if I thought bringing a task force in to find a crazy killer’d hurt you politically, I’d’ve never even suggested it. I didn’t think it would then and I still don’t. But I’ll accept your judgment.”

  “Good.”

  “Thing is, what if something happens and our killer’s not behind bars after all come July fourth?”

  “There’s another possibility, Charlie,” Fork said.

  “Possibility of what?”

  “Of his being dead by the fourth.”

  “Shot while resisting maybe?”

  Fork shrugged.

  “Not as much ink and airtime in that, Sid. Thing to do is bring him to trial and let it run forever.”

  The sheriff rose, placing his empty beer bottle on the coffee table that had been fashioned from the old steamer trunk. Huckins leaned forward and slipped a coaster beneath it. Staring down, watching her, Coates said, “I’d still like an answer, B. D.”

  “To what?”

  “To my ‘what if’ question. What if, despite all Sid’s efforts, the killer’s neither behind bars nor dead by the fourth of July? What if he’s still loose out there?”

  “Then I’d reconsider inviting your task force in.”

  “And if we collared him?”

  “I’d have to rethink my endorsement policy.”

  The sheriff beamed, crinkled his eyes and suddenly snapped his fingers as if he had just remembered something. He even said, “Damn,” causing Sid Fork to wonder whether the sheriff really had any future in politics where a modicum of acting ability is as necessary as money.

  “Almost forgot, Sid, but we found that pink Ford van up on One-Oh-One at a rest stop. Wiped clean as a whistle except for what ninety-nine percent of ’em always forget-the little lever that moves the driver’s seat up and back. Got three good ones off the left hand plus a partial thumb. The state and the Feds are both checking ’em out and if we get a make back, I’ll let you know.”

  The deputy, Henry Quirt, was now up and looming over Coates’s right shoulder. “You told me to remind you of that telex we got from Lompoc, Sheriff.”

  Coates snapped his fingers again, causing the chief of police to decide that the sheriff’s performance really needed a lot of work. “Shit-oh-dear,” Coates said. “Forgot that, too. Seems the FBI’d like to talk to a couple of guys about something or other that happened at the Lompoc Federal pen yesterday or the day before-I forget which. But the guys’ names are Kelly Adair and Jack Vines.”

  “The other way around,” Quirt said.

  Coates thought, nodded and said, “Yeah. Jack Adair and Kelly Vines. Anyway, Quirt and I, just on the off chance, stopped by the Holiday Inn on our way up to your place, B. D., but it seems Adair and Vines checked out around four this afternoon right after that old guy Sloan got it-can’t say I blame ’em-but didn’t leave any forwarding. So if you bump into ’em, Sid, ask ’em to give the Federales in Santa Barbara a shout.”

  “There a warrant out for them?” Fork said.

  “No, the Feds just want to dialogue a little.” He turned to Huckins. “Of course, I can’t say if anybody else is after ’em or not. But on the other hand, everybody’s got enemies, right, B. D.?”

  “So they say.”

  Coates thanked her for the beer, said good night and left, trailed by his six-foot-three deputy. After the sheriff’s black Lincoln Town Car with the twin whip antennae pulled away, B. D. Huckins turned from the window to Sid Fork.

  “He knows it’s Teddy,” she said.

  Fork nodded.

  “But that’s not why he wants to bring his task force in.”

  “No.”

  “What he really wants is to prove we’ve somehow been fiddling the books, send us to jail and ride that right into the county supervisor’s office.”

  Fork thought about it, nodded and said, “It might work. But not if I find Teddy.”

  “Well. Can you?”

  Fork moved over to Huckins, tilted her chin up and kissed her. “I don’t have to find Teddy,” he said. “All I have to do is make him want to find me.”

  Chapter 34

  The thirty-nine-year-old frame and stucco house was on the southeast edge of Durango in the Explorer subdivision that consisted of three short streets named Lewis, Clark and Fremont. There would have been more houses on streets named after other explorers if the novice developer, a former high school history teacher with a modest inheritance, hadn’t run out of both money and buyers during the recession of 1949.

  At 12:20 A.M. Sid Fork was parked on Fremont under a fragrant thirty-nine-year-old magnolia, waiting for the light to go off in the third house from the corner. It was a TV set’s bluish light and, since the house boasted no dish antenna, Fork was almost certain that those inside were watching a rented videocassette on their VCR. With luck, he thought, it might even be a short one-maybe a forty-five-minute X-rated feature.

  After the bluish light went off at 12:32 A.M., Fork gave the occupants another twenty-nine minutes to go to bed and perhaps even to sleep. By
1:01 A.M. he was pounding on the front door. It was opened less than a minute later by a sleepy-looking Henry Quirt, the deputy sheriff, who wore a white T-shirt, pale blue boxer shorts and aimed a short-barreled.38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver at the chief of police.

  “Christ, Sid, it’s one in the fucking morning.”

  “Mind pointing the piece someplace else?”

  After Quirt lowered the pistol to his side, Fork said, “I was already in bed myself, Henry, when it just hit me all of a sudden.”

  “What?”

  “Be better if I told you about it inside.”

  Before Quirt could respond, a woman’s voice called from the rear of the house. “Who is it, honey?”

  Quirt turned his head to call his answer. “Sid Fork.”

  “What’s he want?”

  Quirt hesitated before calling his second answer, “Business.” He looked back at Fork, all sleepiness gone, and said in a voice that only the chief of police could hear, “It is business, isn’t it, Sid?”

  Fork waited in the living room for the deputy sheriff, who had said he wanted to put some clothes on. Out of habit, Fork inventoried the room, pricing its contents that included a matching couch and easy chair that were protected by clear-plastic slipcovers. Of more interest was the triangular maple whatnot stand in one corner whose five shelves held nine chrome-framed photographs, at least two dozen miniature china cats and kittens and five conch-like seashells that Fork guessed were from Florida.

  There were four nicely framed prints on the walls, all of them pastoral scenes, which Fork placed in nineteenth-century Europe, probably France, and decided he didn’t much like. He scuffed the edge of his right shoe along the beige nylon carpet, put its price at $4.95 a square yard wholesale and moved over to the built-in bookcase that contained a Bible, a fairly new set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and nine paperback novels that turned out to be Harlequin romances.

  The room’s focus, however, was on its home entertainment center-a large oak stand with staggered shelves that held a 21-inch Sony TV set with an attached VCR and a complicated-looking audio system that could play LP records, tapes and compact discs. Two La-Z-Boy recliners were aimed at the center. On top of the TV set was a boxed videocassette. Fork went over, read the label, which said it was Debbie Does the Devil, and tried to remember whether he had ever rented it.