Apache Country (8 page)

“Mind if I ask you something, Dave?” Sweeney
said. He looked uncomfortable, like a parent bringing up the
subject of sex with a daughter.

“Sure,” Easton said.

“This Ironheel guy – is he nuts or what?”
Sweeney asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Sun-up this morning, it’s quiet as the grave
in here, then bam, Ironheel starts making this racket, sounded like
a goddamn banshee. Scared the guys in the drunk tank shitless. I
mean, I was like, Jeez, you know, what the hell is that? Ran down
there, he was standing in his cell all but buck naked, making this
screechy noise.”

Easton frowned. “Screechy?”

Sweeney’s brow knitted. “Hell, I can’t dupe
it. Like he was skinnin’ a live cat, know what I mean? So I yelled
at him to knock it off, but I might as well not been there.”

Easton grinned. “This was at sun-up, you
say?”

“Near enough. One minute not a goddamn sound,
and the next all hell breakin’ loose.”

“He’s an Apache, Hal,” Easton said. “Could be
he keeps to the old ways.”

“Howzat?”

“In the old days Apache men used to say a
prayer to the sunrise every morning.”

“You think that’s what it was? Noisiest damn
prayer I ever heard.”

“I wouldn’t have tagged him as the praying
type,” Easton said thoughtfully. “We live and learn. Don’t let it
throw you, Hal.”

He checked the clock again. “Holler if Weddle
needs me for anything, okay?” he said.

Hal put two fingers together and touched them
against the point of his forehead. By the time Easton got to the
door he already had his nose back between the pages of Hustler.

The paperwork waiting on Easton’s desk drove
all thought of Jerry Weddle clear out of his mind. Only when he
looked up at the clock and saw it was after eight did he remember
the lawyer again. What was taking the guy so long? He dialed 822
and got Sweeney.

“That lawyer still there, Hal?”

“Hell, no, he left about a half hour ago,”
Sweeney told him. “Took off like his ass was on fire.”

Odd, Easton thought. He had felt certain that
as soon as Weddle got through talking to Ironheel he would want to
see the dossier DeAnn had put together containing copies of the
arrest reports and the crime scene photographs and protocols. It
wasn’t like the guy had three weeks to put his case together.

“He say anything before he left?” he
asked.

“Something about having to make some urgent
calls,” Sweeney said. “I told him he was welcome to use the office
phone, but he nixed that, said it was confidential.”

“He talk to anyone else down there?”

“No, sir.”

That being the case, there could only be one
possible explanation for the lawyer’s abrupt departure. Ironheel
had told him something that had put a very large hair up his ass.
Something Weddle didn’t want a deputy to overhear. But what?

He picked up the phone to call the Frontier
Motel, then hung up without dialing. If his hunch was correct, he
would need to talk to Weddle face to face. It was so much more
difficult to lie one to one than it was on the phone.

He signed out, got into his Jeep and headed
north on Main. Although it was still short of full dark, the lights
were on everywhere. The evening air was balmy and there was only a
little traffic. About a quarter of a mile from the motel he saw
flashing lights up ahead on the left side of the divided highway
and foreknowledge swept over him like surf. He put on the dome
light, touched the siren to stop the traffic as he made a U-turn
over to the west side. A uniformed cop waved him into the motel’s
parking area, where three patrol vehicles were parked askew with
their radios squawking. Security arcs had been brought in and
turned on full, bathing the narrow parking area in front of the
motel units in hard white light.

Off to the right he saw an RPD deputy talking
to Charlie Goodwin. Even at this distance Easton could see the
lawyer’s face was pasty white, like he was in shock. Clipping his
badge on to his shirt pocket, he got out of the vehicle and crossed
to talk to the deputy, a tall, rangy-looking guy with a long chin
and gingery hair. His nameplate said CUMMINGS.

“What have we got, Billy Charles?” he
asked.

“Homicide,” Cummings said grimly. “Looks like
a robbery. Victim’s a guy named Weddle, an attorney.”

No point acting surprised, Easton decided.
The minute he had seen the police lights he had known who the
victim would be.

“Any details yet?”

Cummings shrugged. “Shot twice, probably a
handgun,” he said. “You can check with the boys. They’re in
there.”

He pointed with his chin at the open door of
one of the motel units where two deputies were unreeling yellow
tape to set up a crime scene cordon.

“Who called it in?” Easton asked. Before
Cummings could answer Charlie Goodwin stepped forward, tugging at
his sleeve.

“It was me, Dave,” he said. His voice was
fluty, like he couldn’t quite get it under control. “Walked in,
there he was, dead.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Twenty minutes, half an hour ago. I couldn’t
believe it, the guy just lying there dead, the blood. I nearly
puked.”

“What were you doing here?”

“I was just telling the deputy here. Weddle
called me, said he had to see me right away, he had something
extremely important to discuss. When I got here he was … all that
blood, Jeez, I was, you know, it took my breath away. Then I ran
over to the office and called the cops.”

Easton looked at Cummings, who nodded. “RPD
logged the call at nine oh-nine,” he confirmed.

“Who responded?”

“Petersen and Gale.”

“They still here?”

“Over in the unit. And before you ask, yeah,
Petersen already called CSI, and yeah, we notified Ab Saunders. Doc
Horrell, too.”

As if on cue, Easton heard the rise and fall
of a siren. CSI, he though, there’d be no rush for an ambulance.
Leaving Charlie Goodwin with Cummings, he walked over toward the
motel unit. The deputy guarding the door was in his mid-forties,
stolid, unexcitable, an old-fashioned cop. His name was Hank
Gale.

“Hank, you keeping the log?” Easton said by
way of greeting.

“Ahuh,” Gale said.

“Billy Charles says you and Peterson
responded.”

“Ahuh.”

“No sign of life when you got here?”

“Na,” Gale said. “Guy was as dead as smoked
herring.”

“Door open or closed?”

“Open,” Gale said. “Everything’s just like we
found it.”

“Light switches?”

“Da-ave,” he said patiently, stretching the
word to make it a mild protest.

“Just checking,” Easton smiled. “Look, I know
this isn’t my jurisdiction, Hank, but it might be worth having a
deputy canvass the mob by the entrance in case anyone saw somebody
in the unit, a car leaving the area, anything. And get a list of
the license plates of every car in the parking lot, okay?”

“Right,” Gale said gruffly. “Thanks.”

“Where’s Petersen?” Easton asked.

“Inside, doing video.”

“Okay if I go in?”

Gale shrugged and entered Easton’s name in
his log book as Easton put on the plastic shoe covers and surgical
gloves. He checked his watch and jotted down the time he had
arrived and the weather conditions. Force of habit.

The room was standard motel modern, plain
without being ugly, beds with carved wooden headboards and big
lamps on the bedside tables that gave off just enough light so you
wouldn’t fall over the furniture. An armchair and a glass-topped
table stood between the air-conditioning unit beneath the window
and the king-sized bed. A twenty-one-inch TV occupied a corner of
the room facing the bed.

Immediately inside the doorway a briefcase
lay open on the floor, papers scattered. Head and shoulders inside
the bathroom, body twisted by a hip jammed up against the door
frame, Jerry Weddle lay face up, one arm thrown over his head, the
other across his body. His eyes and mouth were wide open, as if
death had surprised him. Which it probably had, Easton thought.

Deputy Petersen, a burly giant with arms like
tree branches, had already laid twin lines of tape from the doorway
to where he was standing, establishing a single entry path to the
crime scene. He nodded to acknowledge Easton’s presence, placing
his feet carefully as he moved about.

“SO got an interest in this?” he asked.

“Will have,” Easton told him.

The big RPD deputy shrugged and got on with
what he was doing. Easton squatted down beside the body, taking
care not to touch it or anything else. Jerry Weddle had been shot
once in the chest and once in the head. The front of his neat white
shirt was bloodstained and speckled with powder marks. Easton
lifted the front of the shirt very carefully with the pushbutton
end of a ballpoint. The chest entry wound was a small hole perhaps
an inch to the right of the sternum. By craning over, he could see
the victim’s back. There was no exit wound. The bullet was still in
the body.

The head wound was just above the right
eyebrow, maybe half an inch to the right of the median. He didn’t
need to look for an exit wound. An eight inch wide puddle of blood
and brain matter had spread across the floor under the dead man’s
head.

He stood up. Weddle’s jacket lay on the bed.
He checked the pockets. No wallet, no money. He went back to where
the dead man lay, patted his side pockets, sliding his hand
underneath the body to check the hip pocket. Nothing there either.
Next he lay flat on the floor and checked the nap of the carpet for
drag marks; there did not appear to be any.

Using a pocket magnifying glass he examined
the bathroom door frame; there was a smear of blood on the right
hand upright. A picture of what might have happened was already
forming in his mind. It looked like Weddle had taken off his
jacket, thrown it on the bed, and gone into the bathroom. As he was
coming out, he was shot at close range through the heart. Then
whoever killed him put one through the head to make sure. Not a
fight, then. An execution?

“Anyone hear the shots?” he asked
Petersen.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Petersen said. “The
adjoining units are vacant. But maybe we’ll get lucky.”

We’ll need better than that, Easton thought.
Maybe and lucky were strangers to each other.

“What you think, Dave?” Petersen said.
“Walk-in?”

“Could be,” Easton said. “Any sign of forced
entry?”

“Mostly never are anymore,” Petersen said.
“Guys who pull these jobs are pros. They prefer places with proper
keys, not those plastic cards. They stay over legit, have a dupe
key made, take off. Couple of weeks, a month later, come back and
do the business: in-out, a quick grab-and-run deal, money, credit
cards, whatever’s lying around. Guy comes in expecting the room to
be empty, but Weddle is in the john. He comes out, sees the guy
lifting his wallet, he yells, the guy panics, bang.”

“Why the second shot?”

Petersen shrugged. “Why not? Some of these
assholes’ll shoot you just to see if the gun works.”

Easton wasn’t convinced, but he didn’t say
so. It wasn’t his case. Yet.

“Okay, I’m out of here,” he said. “I imagine
you guys might want to run this through NCIC for anyone with that
kind of MO. It’s worth a try. Keep me posted, will you?”

“No problemo,” Petersen grunted.

Easton logged out of the unit and headed
across the parking lot to the office. When Carl and Judy Ramirez
had bought the Frontier Motel about six years ago it was one
inspection short of being condemned. It still wasn’t motel
paradise, but it was clean and the showers worked. Carl had
painstakingly rebuilt the place with his own hands, one unit at a
time, while Judy charmed the customers at the reception desk. She
was a handsome woman with long, lustrous black hair and eyes,
dressed in a short, tightly-fitting dark blue dress that
accentuated the curves of her voluptuous figure and showed off her
legs. She looked up as Easton came into the lobby.

“Hey, Dave,” she said tiredly. “How’s this
for the end of a perfect day?”

“You know what it says on the T-shirt,
Judy.”

She shrugged. “Why’d the guy have to get
himself shot in my motel?” she said wearily. “I mean, shit, do I
not need this.”

“Don’t imagine the dead guy is enjoying it
much, either,” Easton said.

“Sorry,” she said, coloring. “I din mean to
sound uncaring. He a friend of yours or somethin’?”

Easton shook his head. “You heard about
Robert Casey and his grandson getting killed?”

“Yeah, it was on TV. Terrible thing.”

“We arrested a suspect. The man who was
killed here tonight was his lawyer. His name was Jerry Weddle.”

“That I knew.”

“What time did he check in?”

“Must have been about seven forty-five, maybe
a li’l bit later.”

“Alone?” he asked, and Judy nodded. “Do you
remember if he said anything?”

“Nothing memorable. You know, nice evening,
where’s the ice machine, like that.”

“Did he make any calls?”

She nodded. “He came back over here to use
the pay phone. I remember thinkin’, cheapskate couldn’t even call
from his room.”

“How many calls did he make, do you
know?”

She frowned, concentrating. “Two, no
more.”

“Could you tell if they were local or long
distance?”

Another small frown. “I’d say local. Only a
minute or two each one.”

It was Easton’s turn to frown now. He already
knew Weddle had made a call to Charlie Goodwin. But who was the
other one? He made a mental note to get the numbers from the phone
company records.

“Anyone else check in this evening? This
afternoon?”

Judy shook her head. “Business has been real
slow. We haven’t been full since last August. Now this.” She made a
resigned face.