Dead Weight

by Steven F Havill

  I turned to Bob Torrez. “And before we get busy, I need to ask you something.” I pointed at Tom Pasquale. “And you stay close. I need to talk to you in just a minute.”

  Pasquale hadn’t said a word in the darkroom, and he’d been a shadow while we discussed the machine. When I spoke to him, he nodded as if he’d been waiting for the ax to fall.

  Torrez accompanied me back to the front curb where 310 was parked. “I talked to Judge Hobart and Don Jaramillo at lunch today,” I said.

  “Jaramillo’s not being much help with any of this,” Torrez said. “I’d expect him to be doggin’ every step of this investigation, but he’s been staying about as far away as he can get.”

  “I can think of all sorts of reasons for that,” I said, “but that’s not what interests me just now. He’s just an assistant DA with politics on his mind, and nobody’s going to be very popular with this case, no matter what happens. We can cut around him if we have to, go straight to Schroeder. But what did surprise me is that he mentioned something about asking for a court order to run a DNA test on Jennifer Sisson’s unborn child.”

  Torrez frowned and leaned toward me as if he hadn’t heard right. “On the kid? The fetus, you mean?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Torrez said. “I know I said that to Sam, back there in his office, but that was just to jerk his chain a little bit…make him nervous.”

  “I understand that. And I knew that’s what you were doing,” I said. “But did you bring up the idea to him? To Jaramillo?” Torrez’s eyebrow cocked at me in surprise, but he didn’t reply. “Don Jaramillo told Judge Hobart and me that you had suggested to him a paternity test on Jennifer Sisson might not be such a bad idea.”

  “Jaramillo’s a liar,” Torrez said matter-of-factly. “As simple as that. I never suggested that to him. Like I said, you were there and heard what I said to Sam Carter. That’s it. I haven’t mentioned the idea to anyone else.” He looked hard at me. “I don’t think we’re going to go around sticking needles in the bellies of teenage girls. If Jaramillo thinks Hobart’s going to go for that, he’s more of a jerk than I think he is. And unless he came up with the idea himself, there’s only one place he could have gotten it—and that’s from Carter himself.”

  “That was the conclusion I’d reached,” I said. “If Carter thinks you’re actually going to do a test, he might well start to panic, afraid of what would happen if it ever leaked out…and all it takes is one blabby nurse or lab tech.”

  Torrez hitched up his gun belt, his face twisted with annoyance. “Maybe I’m wrong, but knowing exactly who’s the father of Jennifer Sisson’s child doesn’t tell me who pushed the levers on that backhoe over there.”

  “It might give a suggestion of who might want to,” I said.

  “Not even that. If Kenny Carter is the father, why should he want to kill his future fatherin-law?”

  “Self-defense springs to mind, Roberto.”

  “That murder wasn’t self-defense, sir,” he said. “You don’t drop a tire on someone in self-defense and then squash it flat with a backhoe in self-defense. It’s a murder carried out by someone who thought he was goddamn clever, is what it is.”

  “What do you want to do, then?”

  Torrez gazed off down the street. “I want a few answers from the lab first,” he said. “And then I think it’s time we haul Grace Sisson into custody and put her under the lights. The one thing I’m sure of is that she knows a hell of a lot more than she’s letting on. She’s good. She sits still and watches us watching her. That all by itself makes me nervous. If she wanted to find out who killed her husband, she’d be cooperating with us. Or at least going through the motions.”

  He turned and nodded at the house. “I’d like to give her one more night to think about it. Tomorrow morning, we’ll pick her up.”

  “And we have nothing to hold her on,” I reminded him. “One phone call, and at the most one quick preliminary hearing, and she walks. You’ll be lucky to hold her for an hour.”

  “Sure. But she doesn’t have to know that. She doesn’t know what we’ve found in that backyard. Or not found.”

  I shook my head in frustration. “I don’t know. Go with the prints off the bar first and the blood sample. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Deputy Pasquale appeared in the driveway, and I beckoned him over.

  “Keep me posted,” I said to Torrez, and watched him amble off, head down, deep in thought. I leaned on the fender of the car and crossed my arms.

  Tom Pasquale stopped two paces away. “Sir?”

  “Thomas,” I said, “did Linda get a chance to talk with you?”

  “Just a little. She said that Miss Champlin pulled a gun on you.”

  “Well, strictly speaking, I suppose that’s true. It turned out to be an old unloaded shotgun, more of a stage prop than anything else. But for a few seconds there, it was a magic moment.” I grinned. “I need to ask you to do me a favor.”

  “Sure.”

  I held up a hand, interrupting myself. “And first, I know just as goddamn well as you do that none of this is any of my business. But chalk it up to me being a little worried about an old friend, OK? Here’s what I’d like. I’d like you and Linda to take the rest of the afternoon off, starting five minutes ago, and get yourselves moved out of that place on Third Street. Can you do that?”

  He hesitated. “Well, sure, I guess, but—”

  I shook my head. “At this point, it has nothing to do with right or wrong, or tenant rights, landlord rights, leases, ruts in the yard, motorcycle oil on the floor, or any other goddamn thing, Thomas. It has to do with you doing me a favor.”

  “Well, I don’t see, then—”

  I cut him off again. “I want you out of Carla Champlin’s way, Thomas. And not for your sake, either. For hers.”

  “Is she nuts or what?”

  “Well, some of both, probably. Or headed that way. I want to defuse this thing, today. And tomorrow, I’m going to ask that one of the home health workers from Social Services stop by and chat with her. In the meantime, let’s get you and Linda out of the line of fire, all right? I told her that you two can camp out in one of the guest rooms at my place, if you need to.”

  “Thanks, sir, but that won’t be necessary. I’ve got a cousin who said he’s got a place he’d rent us. Maybe for a few bucks less than what I’m paying now, too.”

  “Then go for it. Tonight. All right? And I’m serious. Not in the morning, not tomorrow afternoon. This very evening.”

  Tom looked like he wanted to say something else but swallowed and settled for, “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” I turned to get into the car. “That’s one thing out of the way.” I stopped abruptly and glared at the young deputy. “Linda used the word fiancée. Is that right?”

  He ducked his head and actually blushed. “We hadn’t told anybody yet.”

  “Secrets around here seem to be department policy,” I said wryly. “Well, congratulations. You take good care of her.” He stammered something in return, but I didn’t hear it. I slid into 310, wincing as the hot vinyl seat scorched my backside.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Time hung heavily that afternoon. I was too tired to sleep, too confused to relax, too hot and sweaty to socialize.

  My musty adobe house on Guadalupe Terrace was just the burrow I needed, and I headed there after leaving Tom Pasquale standing on the hot sidewalk in front of the Sissons’.

  Even without an air conditioner, the temperature differential was enough to prompt a groan of relief when I stepped inside and shut the heavy carved door behind me. After a shower and change of clothes, I settled in the kitchen, made a pot of coffee, and then sat, staring into the swirls of steam coming out of my cup.

  I hadn’t taken a sip, and I have no idea how long I sat there, mesmerized, trying to think about absolutely nothing. I must have succeeded, because the phone’s first ring practically sent me into orbit.
>
  I answered a little more gruffly than I meant to, and a moment’s silence on the other end prompted me to repeat myself. Finally a small voice said, “Bill?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Carla. Carla Champlin.”

  I took a deep breath and moved my right hand away from the coffee cup so I wouldn’t spill it—just in case there were more surprises.

  “How are you doing?” I said, trying not to sound as if I was talking to someone who’d just stuck a shotgun in my face.

  “I…well, I…better,” she said, and then some of the old brusque postmistress efficiency came back into her voice. “The dispatcher said that you’d be home, and I just called to tell you that I’m really terribly sorry about what happened this afternoon,” she said.

  “That’s all right.”

  “Well, no, it isn’t. It most certainly isn’t.”

  “These things happen,” I said.

  She hesitated, then said, “I’m just awfully glad that it was you in the RV, not someone else.”

  Of course if I’d had a coronary and dropped dead on her mobile carpeting, she wouldn’t have been so glad, but I didn’t say that. “Carla, let’s just forget it happened, all right? I haven’t given it a second thought. You shouldn’t, either.”

  “I just hate being an old fool, that’s all,” she said. “I can’t even imagine what that young couple must think. Or Judge Hobart, either, for that matter. Honestly. I don’t know what came over me.”

  I didn’t see any bombshells on the horizon, so I risked taking a sip of coffee. “Tom and Linda will be out of the house this evening. They’ve found another place, and just between you and me, I bet they’ll take a little better care of it. I think you taught them a good lesson.”

  “Um, well,” she said, not ready to be placated, “none of it was necessary. Especially with all of you people being as busy as you are right now.”

  “Carla,” I said, not needing to be reminded that I should have been busy just then, “I appreciate your thoughts. We all do. Just give me a buzz if you need anything.”

  She sounded a little miffed that she was being cut off and took the offensive. “All right then,” she said and hung up.

  I chuckled and put the phone down and immediately thought about Grace Sisson. If Carla Champlin, a half-crackers old lady with steel rebar for a backbone, could apologize for being ridiculous, perhaps we could expect a miracle from Grace, too. I contemplated making a casual, only half-official visit with the woman and her daughter but then rejected that idea as unlikely to produce anything except another vitriolic eruption.

  Bob Torrez’s strategy was probably sound. Let the woman stew overnight without knowing what the deputies had found in the backyard and then put the pressure on in the morning—perhaps after someone other than myself had had a sleepless night.

  I refilled my coffee, shut off the machine, and left the house, heading for Bucky Randall’s construction site just north of the Posadas Inn on Grande Avenue. He’d been Jim Sisson’s last customer, and although any connection between that job and Jim’s murder was pretty dubious, it was worth the shot. At least one of the deputies had already touched bases with Bucky, but another perspective wouldn’t hurt. Normally people didn’t kill each other over flat tires or some other construction glitch, but it was a crazy world.

  I had heard various rumors about what kind of motel-restaurant combination was going in at the Randall location, from steak house to seafood joint to saloon. At the moment, the property was flat and dusty with a touch of white alkali frosting the soil, not a tree or shrub or cactus in sight.

  Machinery—presumably Jim Sisson’s big new front loader—had taken a chunk out of a small dune, leveling it away from the highway. Various ditches mapped the property as the contractors piped and wired.

  Several vehicles were gathered around one corner where a crew worked with a transit, shooting across to an array of plumbing near the access hole for the village water meter. I stopped 310 beside one of the trucks, a red Dodge with a T.C. RANDALL CONSTRUCTION, LORDSBURG, NM logo on the cab.

  I swung open the door and started to pull myself out just as one of the young men near the transit headed my way. At the same time, my cell phone chirped, and I slid back into the seat, both feet outside the car.

  I found the phone and flipped it open. “Gastner,” I said, and glanced at my watch. It was ten minutes before six—the construction crews were on overtime.

  “Sir, this is Ernie Wheeler. Mrs. Sisson just called and said she needs to see you. She said it’s an emergency.”

  I swung my feet inside the car, shook my head at the young construction foreman, and said into the phone, “Is Torrez still over there?”

  “Yes, sir. But she insists that she talk to you.”

  “I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

  “I’ll tell her, sir. She’s still on the line.”

  Without explaining to the puzzled contractor, I backed clear of the trucks, then headed north on Grande toward MacArthur. By the time I’d reached the Sisson address, I’d run every scenario I could imagine through my head, right down to the pipe dream where Grace Sisson stretched out both wrists toward me, ready for the handcuffs, and said, “Take me. I did it.”

  Torrez’s patrol car was still in the driveway, parked behind the Blazer that Howard Bishop favored. The Sissons’ Suburban was parked at the curb, and I pulled in behind it. I slid the cellular phone into one pocket, then snapped open my briefcase and rummaged for the tiny microcassette recorder. The gadget was smaller than a pack of cigarettes. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d used the recorder even after Estelle Reyes-Guzman had convinced me of its value. The tapes were so dinky that my fat fingers fumbled them all over the place, and the control buttons were worse.

  I squinted at the thing and saw that it was loaded. I pushed the record button and dropped the recorder, into my shirt pocket.

  Bob Torrez and the deputies were still out back, and I wondered if Grace Sisson had mentioned a word to them. The undersheriff appeared before I reached the steps to the front door, and I stopped.

  “She asked me where you were,” he said. “I suggested she call Dispatch if it wasn’t something I could help her with.”

  I nodded and then shrugged. Grace Sisson jerked open the front door between my first and second knock.

  “Come in,” she said, and held the door at the ready, the way a person does when a rambunctious mud-covered pet is about to barge in on the heels of polite company.

  “What can I do for you, Mrs. Sisson?” I asked.

  She shut the door solidly behind me, then stood with her arms crossed, regarding me. “Do you have any idea why I asked that you come over here?”

  “None whatsoever,” I said. “All I’m told is that you wanted to talk to me and that you didn’t want to speak with one of the deputies or with the undersheriff.” I shrugged. “So…here I am.”

  “My daughter is gone,” she said abruptly.

  Fatigue and an almost endless list of other excuses had deadened my brain, and it took a few seconds for that to sink in.

  “Did you hear me?” Grace snapped.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.”

  “Well?”

  “What time did she leave?”

  With a grimace of impatience, Grace Sisson rolled her eyes. “Who’s got cops crawling all over my property all day long, watching every minute? Ask one of them.”

  “That’s helpful, Mrs. Sisson.” I stepped toward the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  I stopped and turned slowly. “I tell you what. When you’re ready to be civil and tell us what we need to know, then give me a buzz. If your daughter’s missing, I’m sorry. If you want to report her as a missing person after she’s been gone twenty-four hours, feel free. You’re the parent here. We’re just the cops. You might check with her friends. That would be my suggestion. If we find her on the street after ten p.m., we’ll bring her home. No char
ge.”

  I reached for the doorknob, and Grace Sisson held out a hand. “No, wait.”

  That’s as far as she got, since she had enough brains to know that if she fired any more shells at me, I’d be out the door. But anything less was difficult for her.

  “Ma’am, I know you don’t want to talk to us. I know you’ve got a world of problems right now. But if you’ve got something to say to me, just take the easy road. Spit it out and get it over with so I can get to work.”

  She took a deep breath and said, “Jennifer wanted something from the place across the street. I told her I didn’t know if we could do that or not.”

  “You mean because of the deputies?” She nodded. “Mrs. Sisson, this property is under surveillance. So are you. The reason for that is that you’ve decided we aren’t worth talking to, and so we have to dig for the answers to all our questions without your help. But you’re not under house arrest. You can go anywhere you like. Any time you like. And we’ll follow along.”

  Grace accepted that without a snide retort, and I chalked it up to slow progress. “So did she go over there? Across the street?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time?”

  She turned and glanced at a small wall clock in the kitchen. “About twenty minutes ago.”

  “About five-thirty or so, then. Give or take.”

  “Yes. And she didn’t come back.”

  I raised an eyebrow at Grace. “So let me ask a foolish question. Did you walk over there? It’s maybe a hundred yards, at most. Or call?”

  “I called. She isn’t there. They told me that she had been there for a while but left.”

  “And you have no idea where she might have gone?”

  Grace shook her head. “I’m just afraid…”

  “Of what?”

  By this time, I could see the misting in the woman’s eyes and realized that Grace Sisson was wrestling with a fair-sized dragon. “Grace,” I said quietly, “it’s just you and me. If there’s something I need to know, then now’s the time.”