Apache Country (9 page)

“Did you hear the shots?” he asked her. “See
anyone driving in or out?”

She shook her head. “I was watching TV in
back. You sit out front here all day staring at that goddamned
parking lot, your brain starts to rot.”

“Where’s Carl, by the way?” he asked.

“Artemisia. He drove down to see his mother
this morning. Listen, how long do you think it will it be before
they take him, uh, the body...?”

“As soon as CSI gets done. Say a couple of
hours max. They may have to do some digging in the bathroom. RPD
will reimburse you for any damage that’s done.”

She gave him one of those Yeah, sure looks.
Easton shrugged. Nobody said it had to be fair. He thanked her and
went back outside. The CSI unit had arrived.

In the narrow parking area a deputy was
putting up a second perimeter tape the way Easton had suggested. He
ducked under it and went over to the doorway of the motel room to
watch the criminalists at work. It was always a pleasure to watch
professionals doing what they did best and the Riverside CSI team
was as good as anything the big cities had.

The routine never varied. First the crime
scene was carefully photographed, measured and diagrammed. Then, as
the coroner’s deputies began their detailed examination of the
body, the criminalists would start checking every inch of the room
for fingerprints, footprints, weapon evidence, foreign objects,
tissue, blood.

Wearing disposable coveralls, masks and
surgical gloves – AIDS and norovirus added a lot more dangers to
police work – technicians would locate, log, photograph and take
samples of any and all blood drops, spatters, and smears, while
others examined the surfaces of light switches, door handles,
plumbing traps, sinks, towels and bedding. Color-reactive chemicals
would be used to detect trace blood. Carpeting, sub-flooring, floor
and wall cracks would be checked for blood seepage, while any rags,
mops, sponges, paper towels, trash cans, clothing hamper, or
washer/dryer at the scene would be examined for evidence of cleanup
attempts. In this particular homicide, there probably hadn’t been
any, but they would look anyway.

Everyone worked purposefully and
methodically. Nobody hurried, nobody took any short cuts. Not just
because they were professionals who took pride in their expertise,
but also because they knew they might one day have to testify in
court as to what they did here, and how and why they did it.
Everything was done strictly by the book; that was why the book was
there.

Immobile at the center of this scene lay the
body of the victim, still half in and half out of the bathroom.
Technicians had already put plastic bags on Weddle’s hands to
preserve any biological evidence on them or beneath his
fingernails, but otherwise he was still just as Charlie Goodwin had
found him, physically present but utterly absent. It was a warm
night, and beneath the bright indoor lights erected by CSI the dead
man’s skin was already beginning to take on the sickly greenish
tinge of postmortem lividity.

For no reason at all, Easton suddenly
remembered his college philosophy teacher likening life to a trip
on a cruise ship that never stopped traveling, with death as a
stopover excursion. Every day new passengers came on board, and
others were dropped off, never to return. The only thing you didn’t
know was when it would be you. Today it had been Jerry Weddle’s
turn to disembark, and now he was on his way to the undiscovered
country.

Smiling at the memory, Easton saw James
Sánchez coming across the parking lot toward him. Medium height,
solidly built, with dark, intelligent eyes and a smooth, unlined
face that gave away little of what he was thinking, Sánchez was
wearing a dark blue silk jacket, pale blue shirt open at the neck
and Levis over cowboy boots. He looked more like a weekending CPA
than a detective. For Easton’s money he was RPD’s best detective,
and also one of his favorite people.

“How’s it looking, James?” Easton asked

Sánchez stuck out his lower lip. “Right now
everything says crime of opportunity. Perp thinks the place is
empty, comes in using a key. He’s looking for money, plastic,
jewelry, whatever. But Weddle is in the bathroom. He hears the perp
or the perp hears him, and it hits the fan.”

“That second shot bothers me,” Easton
said.

“Me, too,” James replied thoughtfully. “It’s
untypical. More like a hit. What are you doing here, by the
way?”

Easton explained the connection and Sánchez
nodded. “I know you, Dave,” he said. “Something about this you
don’t like?”

Easton took a few moments to reply. “Look at
this guy, James. Cheap shoes, off the rack clothes, a four-year-old
Honda Civic. How much would he have had in his wallet?”

Sánchez shrugged. “Walk-ins like this, a
credit card with a five hundred dollar limit is enough reason to
waste someone.”

“I guess.”

“He local, this Weddle?”

“Albuquerque, I understand.”

“You talk to him at all?”

“Very briefly,” Easton said and explained the
circumstances.

“You get any sense of what sort of guy he
was?” Sánchez asked.

“Why don’t you ask Charlie Goodwin? He’s over
there in the patrol car with Billy Charles Cummings.”

“Need to talk to him anyway,” James said.
“Might as well be now.”

“Okay if I tag along?”

Sánchez raised one shoulder and led the way
out across to the patrol car. He opened the door and got in the
back and Easton got in on the other side.

“Want to talk to you, Charlie,” James said.
“You okay?”

Goodwin twisted around to face them. He was
in his mid-fifties now, overweight, out of shape. He smelled of
stale tobacco and he looked like a bum. He had on one of those
Banana Republic straw sombreros, a blue cotton polo shirt and a
crumpled blue and white candy stripe seersucker suit. It wasn’t
that he couldn’t afford decent clothes – he was a partner in a
successful Riverside law firm with branch offices in Santa Fe and
Albuquerque. The trouble was, Charlie was the tightest man with a
dollar you were ever going to meet.

He not only saved coupons, he collected his
neighbors’ discarded newspapers and snipped out theirs. He switched
off his engine going downhill to save gas, cursed at pedestrians or
motorists who came out of junctions and created wear on his brake
pads. It wasn’t anything to do with money. Charlie scrimped for the
pure joy of it. Paradoxically his wife June was a cheerful,
generous woman who sat on damn near every charity committee in
town.

“I’m okay,” he said. “A bit shaky. What do
you want to know?”

“Weddle,” James said. “Start with his
background. Any family?”

Goodwin blinked, and they realized he had no
idea whether Jerry Weddle had a family or whether he’d originated
on the third rock from the sun.

“How about a girl friend, Charlie? Or a
significant other we could contact?”

Goodwin shook his head. “I’d have to check
his personnel file,” he said. “Best I recollect he was sharing an
apartment over in Albuquerque with some guy who works for Sandia
Labs. Jackson, Johnson, something like that. Call the office,
they’ll give you the number.”

“That’s what I like about lawyers,” Easton
said. “The precision.”

Sánchez gave him a hard look. He shrugged
unrepentantly.

“How long has he been with the firm?” Sánchez
asked.

“He joined us about a year ago.”

“Fresh out of law school,” Easton
offered.

Goodwin looked surprised. “How did you know
that?”

“I’m right?”

“He came to us straight from ENMSU. We had
him working with Dick Etulain out of our branch office in
Albuquerque. Mostly domestic stuff, you know, divorces,
conveyancing, some Navajo Council work.”

“Never handled a criminal case, right?”
Easton said.

Goodwin looked uncomfortable and shook his
head.

“Ironheel is up for two counts of murder,
Charlie,” Easton said. “What the hell made you think Weddle to be
able to handle his defense?”

Goodwin blinked, his bloodshot eyes shifty,
as if he’d been accused of something obscene.

“Jeez, Dave, you got to understand, we were
like, running on empty. I had Walter down with summer flu, two of
our best people on vacation, two others in trial. When you called
me and said Ironheel needed an attorney, Weddle was all I had.”

Easton shook his head in disbelief but this
time kept his mouth shut. This was Sánchez’ show, not his.

“I understand he called you, that’s how you
got to be the one found the body, right?” Sánchez asked
Goodwin.

“He told me he had to talk to me.
Immediately. He said. there was something very important I needed
to know.”

“Was it about Ironheel?” Easton asked.

“I don’t know. He just said get over here
fast.”

“Did you see anyone near the unit when you
arrived?”

Goodwin shook his head. “Just … the door was
open, and I went in. And there he was on the floor.”

“You touch him? Touch anything in there?”

“Good God, no,” Goodwin shuddered.

“You getting all this, Billy Charles?”
Sánchez asked the deputy. Cummings nodded and held up his
notebook.

“Okay, Charlie, go on home,” James said. “We
know where to find you. Oh, and you’ll need to come by RPD tomorrow
and make a statement.”

“I wish I could be more help.”

“You did just fine, Charlie,” James told him.
Like shit, his voice said.

Easton looked out the window and saw Chief of
Police Ab Saunders getting out of his car. A short, broad, balding
man who moved ponderously and perspired heavily, he had on a tan
double breasted suit, and wore a broad-brimmed dark brown fedora
that wouldn’t have looked out of place in The Untouchables. He
always reminded Easton of the guy who used to play the TV
detective, Cannon.

“Chief Saunders just got here,” he announced,
for the benefit of Sánchez and the deputy. He checked his watch:
10:44. “Guess that’s my cue to fold my tent.”

They got out of the squad car and went over
to where Ab Saunders was talking to one of the deputies. Saunders
looked up as they approached.

“Any developments?” he said to Sánchez.

Easton stood aside as James quickly updated
Saunders. The fat man listened absently, his eyes following Charlie
Goodwin as the lawyer got into his Chrysler 300 and drove out of
the courtyard.

“What the hell’s Charlie Goodwin doing out
here?” he muttered.

“He found the body,” Sánchez told him. “We
just got through talking to him.”

Saunders picked up immediately on the ‘we’
and scowled at Easton, making no attempt to conceal his
disapproval.

“SO got an interest in this, Dave?” he said.
He sounded peeved, as if Easton was interfering in something that
didn’t concern him. Everyone in law enforcement knew Saunders was
very territorial. The guys at RPD said if a body were found lying
across the county line, Ab would measure it to confirm that more of
the corpse was lying in his jurisdiction than SO’s. Maybe even move
it over his side of the line a little to make sure. In other words,
when push came to shove, what was his was his. Including the
charm-school manners.

“I came up here intending to talk to Weddle,”
Easton told him. “Walked in on all this.”

“Talk to him about what, exactly?” Saunders
asked, his voice still edged with animosity.

“Couple of things I needed to clear up,”
Easton replied, not replying at all. “He was acting for James
Ironheel, our suspect in the Casey killing.”

“That’s a weird one. Never heard of an Ind’in
killing a white man before. You getting anyplace?”

“Not yet.”

“And you think there might be a connection
here?”

Easton shrugged. “Might. Your guess is as
good as mine.”

“Yeah, right. Well, thanks, ’preciate all
your help out here,” Saunders said.

In other words, take a hike. Easton shrugged.
There was nothing anyone could do about the fact Saunders had been
way back in the line when they handed out the graceful manners. And
anyway, strictly speaking, Ab was within his rights: SO might have
an interest but this crime scene wasn’t Easton’s jurisdiction. He
touched two fingers to his forehead as an adios to James and walked
back across the parking lot to his Jeep, wishing he could go
straight back home and take a shower, but knowing he must first
stop off at the office.

As he started the engine, a tall,
athletically built young man ambled over and tapped on the window.
He was wearing a blue denim shirt, chino pants, and Reebok shoes
with blue trim. It was Pete Thorne, a reporter for The Riverside
Star.

“Anything you can tell me, Dave?” he
asked.

Easton shook his head. “Not my case, Pete.
You’ll have to talk to the Chief or James Sánchez,” he said.

“Waste of time,” Pete said. “I’m on the
Chief’s shit list for some reason or other. Listen, let me run what
I’ve got by you, okay? The victim is Jerry Weddle, age twenty-six,
unmarried, works for Goodwin Massie. Lives in Albuquerque. Checked
into the motel around eight. Sometime in the next hour he was shot.
The thinking is a walk-in killing.”

“Very good,” Easton said, impressed. “They’re
estimating time of death as sometime between eight and eight
thirty, but don’t quote me on that till the coroner’s report is in.
There’ll be a full statement from RPD later.”

“Any connection between this and the fact
Weddle was representing the Apache you guys have got locked up for
the Casey killings?”

“Can’t answer that.”

“Can’t? Or won’t?”

Easton just waited. The younger man held up
his hands.

“Okay, okay, just one more question. I heard
Weddle was shot twice. Once in the body, once in the head. Wouldn’t
you say that was unusual?”