Bag Limit (13 page)
The discovery of the license did a lot for my mood. I was impressed as hell that somebody had thought to look behind the seat of the car in the first place. I certainly hadn’t. And I was doubly impressed that Deputy Tom Pasquale hadn’t just rummaged behind the seat and grabbed the thing without thinking—as he would have done just a couple of years before. He’d been methodical and careful, and it had paid off.
The license provided a new piece for the puzzle. Everything on it was right, too right—except Matt Baca’s birthdate. That had been sealed in plastic as December 13, 1979. With that in hand, Matt had grown up fast.
Discovery of the fake license restored my faith in Tommy Portillo, too. Under normal circumstances, I had occasion to visit his convenience store a dozen times a month. It would be nice to be able to wish him a pleasant day and mean it.
A high-quality forgery of a state license was no small crime, and it wasn’t something Matt Baca could do in his bedroom with a rubber stamp and lettering kit. Someone who could make such a fine copy would see no reason to stop at just one.
With any luck at all, the smooth plastic would reveal some high-quality fingerprints—Baca’s, Portillo’s—and if we held our breath just right, maybe some surprises.
But even if luck smiled on us, a whole landslide of unanswered questions remained. On top of all that, Dale Torrance was still enjoying the profits from his recent foray into cattle rustling, and that needed resolution.
On the way out of the county barn, I explained what I knew of the case to Torrez, and he shook his head in wonder. “Give me a couple hours to finish up a few odds and ends, and we’ll take a run out there,” he said. “Something else you might want to check, by the way—you know who Dale is trying to impress, don’t you?”
“Impress? Stealing cattle is a hell of a dangerous way to impress somebody. Who?”
“He hangs out around Christine Prescott a lot.” He grinned. “At least his tongue hangs out a lot. What better reason to want a wad of cash, don’t you think?”
“And how do you have this gem of information?” Remembering Torrez’s habit of bar-baiting, I could picture him watching the Broken Spur from his parking spot east by the windmill, binoculars in hand. The undersheriff grinned, and I waved a hand in protest. “Better yet, don’t tell me. Holler at me when you’re ready to go on out. We’ll pick up Cliff on the way.”
I slid into the Bronco, fumbling for a moment before I found the keys. The old engine settled into a fitful rumble. It sounded as tired as I felt. I dug out the cell phone and auto-dialed dispatch.
“Gayle, I’m going to be home for a little bit. If Cliff Larson calls there, have him come over to the house. Otherwise, I don’t want to talk to anybody.”
My plans called for a fresh cup of coffee, a shower, and a Saturday afternoon nap. I’d been running for the better part of thirty hours without conking out, and was acutely aware that the gears in my inner clock were starting to slip and miss.
I wasn’t one of those fortunate souls who could catch a little shut-eye at the office or in the car. The previous sheriff had been fond of referring to me as “badgerlike.” Whether that referred to my disposition or to my preference for diving back into my own private hole when I needed rest and relaxation I wasn’t sure, but I preferred the latter.
The thick, carved door of my rambling, dark adobe home on Guadalupe Terrace locked out the world’s noises and the eighteen-inch mud walls muffled them into silence. It was a good place to think.
South of the interstate exchange, I turned the grumbling Bronco off Grande onto Escondido, then took the hard right onto Guadalupe. Parked directly in front of my garage door was a blue Corvette, one of those models with the enormous humpy fenders and pointed shark nose. I idled the Bronco in behind it, close enough that I could read the Texas license.
Puzzled, I climbed out and walked the length of the car, pausing to rest my hand on the hood. It was still warm. A sticker on the front bumper allowed parking at Chase Field Naval Air Station in Beeville, and I grinned. “Well, I’ll be damned,” I said aloud, and turned toward the house.
The front door was locked. I finally sorted out the right key and let myself in. The interior air lay undisturbed. I walked quickly back to the kitchen, confirming that no one was inside. It was when I paused for a moment that I heard the faint voices, out behind the house.
The adobe, a vast, sprawling structure built room by room until everyone had run out of ideas, sat on the front edge of five acres. Those five acres separated me from the interstate and from neighbors. The acreage’s location made it perfect for a truck stop or motel, and I knew with grim satisfaction exactly what the land was worth.
I stepped to the back door, shot the bolt, and pulled it open. The five acres were a mini-wilderness, choked with whatever would grow without attention. Immediately behind the adobe, a series of enormous cottonwoods presided, their canopies stretching autumn-bare branches over the house. The thick carpet of leaves crackled underfoot.
“Hey!” A shout from off to my right drew my attention, and I turned and watched two men walking toward me from the rear of the property. I’d been told a number of times that my youngest son looked more like me than I did. He scuffed through the leaves with his hands in his pockets, turning his shoulders just enough to dodge a bramble or low-hanging limb. Wide through the shoulders and thick-waisted, William C. Gastner, Junior, was going to have to work hard to avoid tipping the scales a little more each year until the copy of his father was complete.
I couldn’t recall just then if his son Tadd was a junior in high school or if Tadd was a senior and some other grandchild was the junior. Whatever the case, this grandson towered over his father by a good three inches, taking his height from his mother’s side of the family. He smiled broadly as they approached, a pleasant, open face with the clear, olive skin inherited from his grandmother’s Peruvian blood.
Without a word, Buddy took his hands out of his pockets and bulldozed into me with a powerful hug. About the time I knew I was turning blue, my grandson said, “Okay, it’s getting late. Time to go.” My son and I stepped apart, and the kid added, “My turn.” He opened his arms wide and clamped me in his own version of a vise hug. His mother’s side of the family hadn’t contributed much padding to his frame.
“I’ll be damned,” I said finally, looking at the two of them. “Isn’t this something. What’s the occasion?”
Buddy shrugged. “Tadd here talked me into stretching the beast’s legs on Interstate Ten.”
“That’s a hell of a stretch, but what a great idea.” I thumped Tadd on the arm. “That’s quite the car you have there. What time did you leave?”
“We pulled out of the driveway at oh three hundred hours, right on the dot,” Tadd said. He scrutinized his watch, one of those enormous things with all the knobs, buttons, and dials. “Eleven hours and twenty-five minutes.”
“That’s not bad for seven hundred and fifty miles, counting stops.”
“Seven hundred eighty-one miles in six hundred eighty-five minutes,” Tadd said instantly. “That’s sixty-eight point four miles an hour, on the average.”
“On the average.” I laughed. “I wish I’d known you were coming. I could have had a brass band out front, or something. Or a checkered flag. Come on inside.” I turned toward the door. “Did you call dispatch, or what?”
“No,” my son said, “but we swung by the office when we saw you weren’t home. Gayle Sedillos told us where you were, and that you’d be heading home in a few minutes. So I thought, what the hell. We’ll just come back and tour the grounds.”
“It’s nice that she let me know,” I grumbled.
“Nah. I told her not to,” my son said. “Leave it as a surprise. One of those spur-of-the-moment things. I tried to call you last night, but I guess you weren’t near a phone.”
“Not if I can help it. And she’s Gayle Torrez now, by the way. She and Bob finally did it.”
“Well, good. It took ’em long enough.” We stopped by the back door and my son stood with his hands on his hips, regarding the house. “The place looks great, Dad.”
“A jungle.”
He turned and nodded toward the back forty. “I was trying to find the spot where that old man buried his wife. Way out back. Remember that? Tadd thought I was making up that story.”
“Right across the street from the old Apodaca place. Directly across,” I said. “There’s a tangle of box elder saplings there now. I think their roots found the village water line.”
“We weren’t even close to the spot, then.”
“There’s not much to see now, except a little scuffed dirt.” I ushered them inside.
“So how does it feel having just a couple of days to go as
el alguacil mayor del condado
? ” Buddy asked. “Are you going to wake up on Wednesday and regret not being stud duck?”
“I’m going to wake up feeling wonderful,” I said without elaborating. “How about some coffee? Or there’s some beer in the fridge, I think. Or better yet, how about some real food? You guys must be starving.” I looked at the clock. “I’ve got an hour and a half before I need to be at the office.”
“The Don Juan,” Buddy said.
“That’ll work.” To Tadd, I said, “You hungry?”
“The bottomless pit is always hungry,” my son said before Tadd had a chance to answer.
We took the Bronco, with Tadd sitting in the backseat behind the wire mesh like a good prisoner.
“This thing is the pride of the fleet?” Buddy asked. He reached forward and traced a finger along the major windshield crack. “It reminds me of a couple of the old Orions they retired down at the base.”
“We’ve had an expensive couple of days,” I said. “This is the only thing with wheels at the moment.” I backed the Bronco out of the driveway, the gravel in the transfer case growling loudly.
“So what’s at five o’clock?” Buddy asked as we rattled our way up Grande.
“I told the livestock inspector that I’d help him take a kid into custody. Remember the Torrance family? They own the H-Bar-T out west of town, on County Road 14?”
“Vaguely.”
I shrugged. “Well, no reason you should. One of their boys pulled a stupid. He rustled a bunch of roping calves and trucked them on over to Oklahoma to sell. Only he knows why.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. That’s what he did. Bob Torrez says that the kid has a girlfriend. Or maybe more accurately, would
like
to have a girlfriend. Who the hell knows. From what I know of the girl, I’d put my money on it being a one-way romance.”
“So what’s at five? Are the courts getting so bad now that you have to make an appointment to arrest somebody?”
“Not yet. We’re making progress in that direction, though.” I shot a smile at my son. “We just wanted a few minutes to get all our cards in order. It also gives Cliff Larson, the livestock inspector, a bit of time to communicate with the Oklahoma folks and find out what they want to do at their end.”
“Amazing,” Buddy said. He watched first Grande and then Bustos slide by. “Posadas hasn’t changed much, Dad.”
“Nope.”
“You think you’ll stay here?”
“Sure.” I surprised even myself by answering so quickly. “It suits.”
Buddy grinned and turned to glance at his son, as if my reply had confirmed an earlier conversation between the two of them.
“I hope you can stay a little while,” I asked. “This isn’t just a one-nighter, is it?”
“We thought we’d stay through Wednesday,” my son replied, and braced himself as I thumped the Bronco up into the Don Juan’s parking lot. “If you’ve got room and can stand the company. Aren’t Francis and Estelle coming down sometime soon?”
“Tomorrow.”
He nodded. “We can stay down in the Posadas Inn, if that makes it easier.”
“Like hell, not when we have four bedrooms to fill. Estelle and Francis can take Camille’s room, and their two terrors can bunk in your old digs. You and Tadd can take the third. I’m just sorry Edie couldn’t come with you.”
“Couldn’t fit Mom on the luggage rack,” Tadd said.
“She wanted to come, but she has got classes she can’t afford to miss,” Buddy said. “Lawyer stuff, you know. She has just the one semester left before she takes the bar exam.” He grinned. “Getting a little bit nervous about it all.”
“She’ll do fine,” I said. We parked and entered the restaurant. My usual booth was empty, and we slid in. For the next thirty minutes, we ate and talked, and I was amused at the number of times Janalynn Torrez, our waitress, found an excuse to return to the table, either with water or coffee. My grandson had her eye, that was for sure.
I had just cleaned up the last bit of lettuce, cheese, and green chile when she appeared again, this time carrying the telephone. I groaned. My own phone was out in the Bronco, hidden under the refuse where it belonged. Janalynn handed me the damn thing, managing to do so without taking her eyes off my grandson.
“Thanks,” I said, and turned sideways, elbow on the table. “Gastner,” I said.
“You about ready to go, sir?” Robert Torrez asked.
“Yep. Give me five minutes to finish up here and then run my son and grandson home.”
“We’ll pick you up on the way.”
I switched off and sighed. “So much for peace and quiet,” I said.
Cliff Larson rode with the passenger window open, letting the brisk air suck out the smoke from his incessant cigarette. I had traded the aging, clanking Bronco for the unmarked sedan that Howard Bishop had just parked, its interior still pleasantly warm.
A thousand yards behind us were Undersheriff Robert Torrez and Deputy Thomas Pasquale.
During the past two hours, Larson had done more than encourage his emphysema. He’d spent time on the phone, and added to our log of information. None of it improved my mood.
The dealer in Oklahoma, Mickey Emerson, caught with stolen cattle and ready to make any kind of deal that might save his own hide, had cheerfully told Comanche County sheriff’s deputies everything they wanted to know. And it all pointed at Dale Torrance, the nineteen-year-old kid from Posadas, New Mexico.
Emerson had a copy of a transportation permit for the eighteen calves signed by Cliff Larson, and the sheriff’s investigator in Oklahoma faxed us a copy. Mickey Emerson had used that document as all the background he needed to cut a bill of sale. He didn’t look at it too closely. He paid Dale Torrance in cash, $285 for each late yearling steer—a nice bundle, even though considerably below the market price at the time.
“Pretty slick,” Cliff mused. He had his briefcase open on the seat beside him, with the year’s file of permits. “But dumber’n a post. Dale used permit two eight one oh eight.” Larson held up the clipped file. “I wrote that to his dad earlier in the summer when he was movin’ stock from the home ranch over to a Forest Service lease on Johnny Boyd’s spread.”
“He didn’t even change the number of the permit?”
“Hell no. Course, that’s harder to do.” He held up the permit, assuming I could glance over and see the number at the bottom of the page. “He did fudge some other changes, though.”
“And the name? How did he pass that off? The cattle belong to Miles Waddell, not Torrance.”
“Well, see, that’s the beauty of usin’ correction fluid, and then makin’ a fresh copy on somebody’s copier somewheres.”
“The permits aren’t color-coded?”
“Hell yes, they are. But who’s going to keep track of that? White, blue, goldenrod, yellow, green. You think if he got stopped by a trooper on a spot check that the cop would give a damn? Or even know in the first place?” He grinned. “State police would say that’s not their job. And a cowpuncher with a load of calves in a goose-neck trailer ain’t all that suspicious in ranchin’ country. And Oklahoma authorities don’t have the same system we do. And it don’t appear that Mickey Emerson looked all that close. Or wanted to.”
“I wouldn’t have thought that the livestock market was so hot that it’d pay. What did he get? Two eighty-five? That’s a good price, but what’s Emerson stand to gain at sale? A few bucks a head. As much as a hundred per calf at the most? Why did he bother?”
“Because he could,” Larson said. “Ever wonder why somebody goes to all the trouble to take a crowbar to a parkin’ meter for a few lousy nickels and dimes?” He shrugged. “I mean, first the son of a bitch has to steal a crowbar, right? For a few minutes of his time, Emerson picks up maybe a hundred bucks apiece, and that’s almost two grand that he didn’t have before.” He crushed out his cigarette. “I imagine you’ve seen a lot worse done for two thousand bucks.”
“Of course,” I said. “Over and over and over. And it still never ceases to amaze the hell out of me. This Emerson fellow is positive it was Dale?”
“One hundred percent. I faxed the Comanche deputies a copy of Dale Torrance’s yearbook picture. No question about it. Emerson said he’d swear to it in court. And he’s got Dale’s signature on his copy of the bill of sale.”
“They’re going to want to extradite him, I’m sure.”
“Don’t count on it. They’re willing to impound the cattle for us, but they want them
gone
. It’s a pain in the ass for them and Oklahoma sure as hell doesn’t want to pay feed bills on eighteen head of hungry steers that are New Mexico’s problem. But we’ll let Dan Schroeder figure all that out. Hell, even if they wanted to prosecute over in Oklahoma, they’d have to stand in line. By the time New Mexico gets through with old Dale, he ain’t goin’ to be a teenager no more.” I wasn’t sure that I shared Larson’s grim satisfaction.
About twenty-five miles west of Posadas we turned south on the washboard gravel of County Road 14. Torrez kept his distance. There was no point in eating our dust. More important, by staying far enough back, we wouldn’t look like an ominous convoy bearing down on the prey. The last thing I wanted was to spook the kid.
I didn’t know what would be going through Dale’s mind. I didn’t know if he felt confident that he’d pulled off the perfect crime, or if he was a little jumpy, looking over his shoulder like a scared jackrabbit. He wasn’t stupid by nature. He had to know that what he’d done would land him in a world of trouble if he were caught.
If the heat were turned on, Dale had an example to follow, and that made me uneasy all over again. When Dale’s older brother Patrick had gotten himself in a pickle a couple of years before, he’d headed for Gillette, Wyoming. His had been woman troubles, too—but in Patrick’s case, the gal who’d twanged his heartstrings was a real wild hare who didn’t think about the legalities of what she did for more than a couple of seconds. Patrick had decided that running
from
her was the smartest thing he could do at the time.
I didn’t think that younger brother Dale was going to run away from Christine Prescott. Less than twenty-four hours before, I’d gotten the impression that Christine was a good deal more than just a beautiful face and stunning figure. To be a successful bartender for Victor Sanchez’s Broken Spur Saloon, she needed to be hardworking, levelheaded, honest, and tolerant. Sanchez was barely on the up side of nasty. Her boss may have had the personality of a sun-struck rattlesnake, but as long as he stayed in the kitchen, none of his customers much cared, and Christine Prescott could cope with his moods.
We all assumed that Dale Torrance had stolen eighteen head of cattle for ready cash. Whether he needed that $5,130 to impress Christine somehow, or for some other reason only he knew, it couldn’t be news to Dale that a century before, that stunt would have earned him a new rope.
Five miles farther south, we passed under the entryway for the H-Bar-T. The archway was one of those fancy scenes plasma-cut into black iron, this one featuring a cowpuncher on horseback chasing a herd of cattle through the yucca, lariat in full loop over his head.
The Torrance home was as out of place in that bleak, stark country as a Rhode Island license plate. The two-story affair was one of those things offered in catalogs back in the fifties, the white paint trying its best to gleam after a season of pounding sun.
Just before the driveway, the ranch road forked, with a trail leading around a paddock, shed, and copse of leafless elms to an older model, red-and-white mobile home.
“I think we’re late for the party,” Cliff Larson said, and my heart skipped a beat. Herb Torrance’s pickup, habitually crusted with mud and range dust, was pulled up in front of the front steps of the house. Another older model pickup with dual back tires was nosed in beside the mobile home. No amount of road dirt could hide its battle scars, the fenders and flanks dented and torn from a long, hard life.
Parked immediately behind it, half blocking the driveway, was the truck we’d seen just a couple of hours before carrying Miles Waddell and friends.
