One Perfect Shot

by Steven F Havill

  “Wilbur, you’d know,” George said.

  “What would I know?”

  “Does Mark Arnett still run the silhouette matches? I know he did for a while, there.”

  “Well, sure he does,” Wilbur said, and found himself a chair. I knew Wilbur was one of the morning Geezer Group that gathered at the shop. In another few minutes, two or three more old guys would arrive at George’s shop, and the coffee and donuts and tall tales would start to fly. “Sure he does.” Wilbur looked up at me. “You lookin’ to get into competition, Sheriff?”

  “Been thinking about it,” I said. “The idea appeals to me.”

  Wilbur nodded eagerly. “You bet. Arnett’s the one to talk to on that, all right. He generally posts the schedules.” He twisted and peered across the small room at the bulletin board, then grinned again at Estelle. “You can arrest me anytime, little lady.” His impression of John Wayne lacked something, but another thought jarred Wilbur loose from his ogling of the little lady. “He’s been trying to pry some land loose from the county for a decent shooting range, you know.”

  “I knew there was some interest along those lines.”

  “Oh, sure. Other than the gravel pit, which isn’t open all the time, there’s no good, close place for us to go. I mean out on the prairie, or up on the mesa, sure, but nothing real close or real handy. We’ve been figuring the county has lots of space out north of the airport there, against the mesa. Hell, that’s only seven miles from town.”

  “Seems logical,” I said. Deputy Torrez was already at the door, and I didn’t want to linger. “You gents have a good day,” I said. George muttered something, and Wilbur grabbed the dog’s collar. We made our exit before the chitchat locked us in for another hour. I promised George that I’d take him to lunch in the near future, but his “Yeah, yeah” didn’t sound as if he was holding his breath waiting.

  “You want me to go talk with Arnett?” Torrez said as the door closed behind me.

  “No. Let me.” I stood in the sun for a moment, letting it bathe my pulse back down where it belonged. My car’s passenger door closed, and I saw Estelle was already settled in.

  “Good eyes,” I said as I slid into the seat. She’d opened a door for us that I’d missed.

  “I didn’t know if Mark Arnett was related to Mo,” she said, scanning her notes.

  “Oh, he’s related, all right. Indeed he is. Mark, Mo, and little sister Maureen. Mom is Mindy.” I thumped the steering wheel as the LTD cranked into life. “Cute, eh?”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Talking to Mark Arnett would have involved a trip to Deming, where he was estimating a roofing job. Mom Mindy was in her office at the rectory of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, and I wasn’t in the mood to confront her. She ran the church with an iron fist, leaving Father Vince Carey free to save souls. Mindy knew everything about church operations, about every member of the congregation. But first, I was interested in what young Mo had to say without mom hovering over his shoulder.

  We cruised around the block to north Fourth. No one appeared to be home at the Arnett casa, and I parked just around the corner on Blaine with a clear view of Zipoli’s place and the various neighbors, including Jim Raught’s address. A short stroll took me across the street, and I knocked on front, side, and back doors of the Arnett’s trim little place. Nothing. The garage was closed and dark.

  As I recrossed the street, I was close enough to the office to use my handheld on car-to-car, where there were fewer eavesdroppers. “PCS, three ten.”

  “Go ahead, three ten.”

  “PCS, find out what vehicles are registered to Mark or Mindy Arnett.” I spelled the last name for him and provided the address. Deputy Robert Torrez’s oldest sister was manager of the local Department of Motor Vehicle office, and on several occasions she had made investigations a whole lot easier than us trying to stumble through the computer’s innards to find what we wanted.

  “Ten four, three ten.”

  Back in the car, I dug the Posadas phone book out of the center console. Rebecca Pasquale was listed at 313 South Tenth, just a few blocks south of Bustos, the main east-west drag through the village. She worked at one of the dry cleaning establishments, and her ex-husband Manny tried his best in Las Cruces. The last time I had seen Manny, he was selling newspapers at one of the major intersections near the plaza.

  But it was the Pasquales’ cycle-riding son, Thomas, who interested me at the moment.

  I’d like to claim that brilliant detective work located the kid. Not so. We were rolling across the old irrigation bridge, headed for the intersection of Twelfth and Bustos, when I saw the bike rider. Dressed in bumble bee Spandex, with helmet low over his eyes and hi-tech riding glasses reflecting the sun, the kid blew through the stop sign, weaved around first one car and then another, and sprinted across Bustos, taking the right hand lane westward. I was sure he didn’t see us—by that time, my county car had drifted into the shade of the Don Juan de Oñate restaurant.

  As he passed directly in front of us, I recognized Tommy Pasquale, focused on the highway in front of him, oblivious to traffic from the side roads. Maybe his peripheral vision was gecko-sharp. He didn’t look my way, but powered west. Bustos eventually left the village and became the pothole studded state highway 17, heading westward out of Posadas County.

  “One of our boys,” I mused, and watched the kid crank up to speed. Traffic was light, of course—other than a few ranchers or lost tourists, there was little reason to take this particular route. A high school kid playing hooky might head out to the desert for some personal reflection. Maybe. I had had intimate experience with four teenagers when my own brood worked their way through the impossible years, and deep reflection wasn’t a common course of action. Tommy Pasquale was riding as if he needed to burn out the kinks.

  When the certified speedometer in the LTD touched twenty-one miles an hour, I was pacing the kid, holding fifty yards behind him. Twenty-one may not seem like light speed, but young Thomas was burning the calories. I’d read enough sporting magazines to know that maintaining anything over twenty miles an hour on the flat and level—and with a hint of head wind—took conditioning and muscle. How long this kid could keep it up was anyone’s guess, but his whole body spoke determination.

  The young man never looked behind him. He hunched into the breeze, hands down on the drops, pumping like a machine. Keep that up, and in an hour, he’d be in Arizona.

  “Let’s see what he has to say,” I said, and reached for the switch on the radio console. I waited a moment until an oncoming pickup truck towing a stock trailer rumbled past east bound, and then waited again until a long stretch of guard rail slipped by. I lit the roof rack and touched the siren’s yelp mode for a single whoop. That won the cyclist’s attention. His rhythm broke and he cranked around on the saddle to look at us.

  I pointed at the shoulder, and he collected his balance again and paid attention as he slowed without turning off the pavement. In a moment he twisted his feet sideways to pop the pedal clips and drifted to a stop. He hopped off and lifted the bike from the macadam onto the grass-dotted shoulder, setting the machine down as carefully as if it were made out of glass.

  The county car’s tires crunched off the pavement, cutting through the grass, goatheads, broken bottles and all the other crap that lines our nation’s highways. No wonder the kid was so careful. I lifted the mike.

  “PCS, three ten is ten six with a bicyclist, mile marker 34, State 17.”

  “Ten four, three ten.” T.C. Barnes didn’t ask what I was doing, but the ten-six request meant we wouldn’t be interrupted unless a storm broke loose somewhere in the county.

  “Always,” I said to Estelle Reyes. “No matter how inconsequential, no matter how innocuous. Always keep dispatch informed, especially when you’re going to be out of the car.” Do as I say, not as I do. There were m
any times when I was loath to blab over the air the details of what I was up to but a rookie didn’t need to start out that way.

  Tommy Pasquale watched the performance, standing on the shoulder side of his bike, one hand on the bars, the other on the saddle, probably wondering what he’d done to warrant a traffic stop. I turned off the roof rack, leaving the four-ways on. As I stepped out of the car, he took off his helmet and dark glasses, a courtesy that impressed me.

  “Good morning, sir,” he said carefully, and that impressed me even more.

  “It is that,” I replied. “You apparently haven’t heard that the minimum vehicular speed on all paved roads in the county is now twenty-five miles an hour? I clocked you at twenty-one.” His face went blank, and I laughed. “Just kidding, Mr. Pasquale.” I stepped far enough off into the bunch grass that I could keep an eye on traffic, should there be any. I let the kid wonder how I came to know his name.

  “This is Estelle Reyes, new with the department. We’re doing a little tour this morning, and when I caught sight of you back there crossing Bustos, it reminded me that we had wanted to chat with you.”

  He reached out a gloved hand and shook hands with Estelle. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. A husky, powerfully-built kid already breaking six feet tall, Tom Pasquale ran a hand through his rumpled, sandy-brown hair as if concerned that the attractive young lady might catch him at something less than his best.

  “Thomas, I wanted to talk with you about Larry Zipoli,” I said, and the kid grimaced, his hand stopping at mid-skull for a second.

  “Aw, jeez,” he said, sounding like a teenager from 1955. He dropped his gaze to the grass around his fancy cycling shoes. “That is so bad.”

  “You knew Mr. Zipoli pretty well?”

  “Sure. Mr. Z was cool.” He glanced at Estelle as if her ears might be too tender for all this. “Well, sort of, anyway.”

  “Why ‘sort of?’”

  “Well, you know.” I waited for him to finish the thought and could see the march of conflicting emotions across his face. He looked back toward town.

  “When was the last time you talked with him?” I prompted.

  “Well, it ain’t been too long.”

  I smiled. “Up on the mesa the other day?” He looked puzzled at that, so I added, “On the county road out of town?” The light dawned.

  “Yeah, me and some of the guys…talked with him for a few minutes. He was workin’ the bar ditch. And he had some trouble with the grader. That old thing leaks like crazy.”

  “Some of the guys?”

  “Yeah. You know. A couple of us were takin’ the hill.”

  The hill. Only an attraction for the young, I thought. Pump up the mesa for five miles, even the paved portion of County Road 43 so steep that the effort threatens to explode your heart, sweat drenching the Spandex, tires cutting groves in the hot asphalt. What fun. Of course, if you were a teenaged adrenalin junkie speed-freak—and I don’t mean the chemical—then maybe the trip down the hill was a fair trade. Glorious wind roaring in the ears, wheels a blur, that patch of sand maybe strategically placed at the apex of a corner…

  “Who was with you?”

  “Just some of the guys.”

  “Just some?”

  “Like a couple of the guys.”

  “But today you’re solo.”

  He ducked his head and glanced back toward town again as if the truant officer might be hot on his trail.

  “I’m surprised you’d miss the first day of the first week, Thomas. Kinda tough to slip behind from the get-go, don’t you think?”

  “Not much going on, sir.” He made a face. “I was going back this afternoon to catch Spanish and metals.” He shrugged. “Anyway, nobody does anything these two days. Except in Spanish and metals.”

  “They hit the ground running, do they?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When you talked with Mr. Zipoli up on the mesa road, did he mention any kind of troubles he might have had with anybody? Any arguments? Anything like that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “He didn’t seem worried or apprehensive to you?” The youngster shook his head. “How long did you guys spend there?”

  “Just a few minutes. Mr. Z was finishing up something he had to fix on the grader. I think he had a leak somewhere in the hydraulics that was getting worse. We just shot the breeze for a few minutes.”

  “Did he have any refreshments with him?”

  “Sir?”

  “Did Mr. Zipoli offer you anything to drink? It was a hot day, after all.”

  “No, sir.” The two words were simple enough to say, but Thomas Pasquale had trouble with them, and his eyes flicked toward Estelle, as if maybe there’d be an ally there. The kid wasn’t a practiced liar.

  “What, a can of beer or something like that?”

  Pasquale took a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”

  I let that answer hang in the bright sun for a moment. “You’re starting for the Jaguars this year.” I knew the starting line-up, and knew that as a ninth-grader two years before, Thomas had warmed the varsity bench for the first few games, then played a little, and then, the previous year as a sophomore, had hit pay dirt. Big and husky for his age, he loved the tackle business.

  “Practice this afternoon, right?” I added.

  He nodded. “I won’t miss it, sir.”

  “I’m not concerned that you might,” I said easily. “Of course, if Coach Page had driven by while you were hitting the suds with Mr. Zipoli, you wouldn’t have to worry about it, would you?”

  The stricken expression on the boy’s broad face gave me a surge of satisfaction. Maybe he’d think a little, now and then. I took a deep breath, head tipped back, examining the kid’s face through the lower choice of my bifocals. “You know, son, at this point, I just don’t care about whether or not you and some of your pals shared a brew with the county road grader operator. Now, if I had driven by while that was going on, Mr. Zipoli would be facing all kinds of charges. At the very least, he’d have lost his job. Maybe even faced some jail time. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.” The words came out as a strangled whisper.

  “But Mr. Zipoli is dead.” I reached out and tapped the boy gently over the left eyebrow with an index finger. He didn’t flinch. “Somebody put a rifle bullet right through the windshield of his road grader and blew his goddamned brains all over the inside of the cab.” An exaggeration, of course, but it had the desired effect. “That’s what interests us at the moment.”

  The kid’s face paled several shades. “I don’t know anything about what happened, sir. I really, really don’t.” His gaze didn’t waver.

  “I don’t guess that you do, Thomas. But we’ll talk with every soul we can think of who might have crossed paths with Larry Zipoli just before he was killed. Right now, the list is damn short, son, and you and your friends are included. Who were you riding with the other day?”

  “Just the guys, sir.”

  I grinned. “Look, son, I know you don’t want to rat anybody out, okay? I understand that. And I already told you…at this point, I don’t care if you guys had a goddamn orgy up on the county road, and wobbled home stinkin’ plastered. You follow me? We already know that Mr. Zipoli had beer with him…maybe some of the hard stuff as well. We already know that. So.” I sighed. “I don’t care what you and your buds did—or did not do—for a few minutes up on the mesa yesterday. But I do need to know who else was there that afternoon. I need to talk with them, but they won’t know you’re the one who gave me the names.” I reached out a hand, made a fist, and thumped him gently on the shoulder. “One way or another, Thomas. And it’ll save a whole lot of valuable time if you’ll tell me what you know.” I thumped him again, just a bit harder.

  “See, the thing is, Thomas, the killer is s
till out there somewhere. Now, exactly why he or she pulled the trigger, we don’t know. But we will know, Thomas. I guarantee you that. Larry Zipoli showed you guys some good times. You owe him for that.”

  For a long moment, Thomas Pasquale occupied himself with a bit of loose handlebar grip tape. He smoothed the frayed end in about eight directions, but his mind had no idea what his hands were doing.

  “Jason and Mo,” he said finally. “It was just the three of us.”

  “Jason Packard and Mo Arnett?”

  “Yes, sir. Just the three of us.”

  “Mo and Jason…they’re into this as much as you are?”

  Thomas grinned, showing a chipped tooth he’d probably earned sometime when he’d taken up aviation with his bike. “Jason more so, Mo hardly at all. We’re trying to get him on the team. Me and Jason.”

  Jason Packard, a junior classmate of Pasquale’s, looked like a cyclist—medium height, not an extra ounce of pudge, hair cropped short, a thin, hatchet face that would split the wind. I didn’t know the boy very well, other than being able to pick him out of a crowd when reminded of his name. I knew his stepdad, Lance Frank, a man who was joining the legion of unemployed as Consolidating Mining collapsed. Frank had fallen for Jason’s mother, decided that ranching was the life for him, and made a hash of the whole affair—alienating Jason at the same time.

  Mo Arnett had made it to his senior year without drawing the attention of the Sheriff’s Department or the village police. I could pick him out of a lineup as well, but that was the extent of my background on him. A little on the pudgy side, but medium everything else, as I recalled. Medium height, looks, intelligence…nothing to make him a standout. The latest page of my memory had Mo Arnett lighting M-80’s, or cherry bombs, thrilling his neighbors.

  “Of the three of you, who’s the fastest?” I asked.

  “Jason,” Thomas replied without hesitation. “I can outsprint him for a little bit, but not for any distance. And on hills, forget it.”