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The kitchen of the Broken Spur smelled of grilled chicken, chile, and onions, spiced by the tang of broiled hamburger and good strong coffee. Under other circumstances, it would have been a marvelous place to spend some time. No one was in the kitchen, though. Three burger patties spat and dripped on the grill, and off to the side, a mound of hash browns sizzled—all untended.
From the other side of a narrow doorway, I heard a shout, then another shout followed by a loud metallic bang, as if someone had walloped the bar top with a frying pan. Immediately on its heels came something akin to a rebel yell.
I made my way through the kitchen to the swinging door into the barroom. My hand was about to push it open when it slammed inward toward me, the painted plywood surface smacking the palm of my hand and sending shock waves rippling up through my elbow and shoulder.
Jerking backward, I stepped first on Larson’s foot, heard him grunt, and then regained my balance by using him as a wall.
Victor Sanchez halted in the doorway. He was breathing heavily, mouth firmly clamped shut in a thin line livid with anger. His nostrils flared with each inhalation. His black eyes regarded me for about the count of three, and then he turned slightly to indicate over his shoulder.
“That worthless little sack of shit is in there,” he said. “Get him out of here.” I saw his eyes shift and narrow. Undersheriff Robert Torrez strode through the kitchen door from outside, followed by Deputy Tom Pasquale.
Sanchez pushed past me, studiously ignored Torrez and Pasquale, and picked up the grill spatula. He dabbed gently at the patties while the grease hissed.
I pushed the doorway again and entered the saloon.
“Ho!” somebody said, and from off in the corner somewhere I heard somebody else reply to that observation with a snicker. At about the same time, Tony Abeyta appeared in the main entrance, with Scott Gutierrez’s blocky form behind him. I hesitated for a moment to let my eyes adjust to the smoky darkness of the place.
One man was standing at the bar, both arms under him as he stood on his tiptoes, leaning his weight on the lip of the counter so that he folded at the belt buckle. It gave him a good view of the floor behind the bar, an area of apparent interest for him and several others.
“Nobody needs to call the cops,” the guy leaning over the bar said as he glanced our way. The snicker repeated itself, maybe with good reason. Damn near half of the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department, with backup from the U.S. Border Patrol, had secured Victor Sanchez’s saloon.
Mindful of my elbows and all the neatly stacked glassware, I made my way behind the bar. About halfway up, right behind the draught beer dispenser handles, order gave way to mess, the floor covered with busted glasses and two bottles that lay on their sides, gurgling themselves empty on the rubber mat.
Christine Prescott got to her feet when she saw me approaching. Two men were with her, and about that time I could see the soles of a pair of boots, toes pointing up.
Christine wiped her face with the back of her hand and said something to one of the men. He glanced over his shoulder, saw us, and scrunched to one side. Christine pushed past him.
“Are you all right?” I said when she was close enough that I didn’t have to yell. I reached out a hand and rested it on her left shoulder, looking her hard in the eye.
She nodded and turned, not out from under my hand, but so that she could look behind her at the figure on the floor. She turned back and took a deep breath.
“Victor clocked him when he grabbed me,” she said.
“Okay. Stay put.” I squeezed her shoulder once and then slid on past. Dale Torrance lay on his back in a welter of glass, chips, dip, and peanuts. Kenny Salazar moved out of my way, but the other young man whom I didn’t recognize remained near Dale’s head. He was holding a folded bar rag against the kid’s scalp.
I used the shelf under the bar as support and dropped to my knees. With two fingers I felt the left side of Dale’s neck. The pulse was strong and rapid.
“I think he’s okay,” the man holding the rag said. “He just fetched a good clip upside the head with that billy.”
I looked where he was pointing and saw the wooden fish billy on the shelf. I grinned. Victor Sanchez was one of a kind. He had made efficient work of the situation and then went right back to his job. Whoever had ordered the burgers and hash browns wouldn’t be inconvenienced for a moment.
Dale Torrance’s face bore the blank expression of someone who’d finally drifted into deep sleep and was planning to stay there for a long time. His breathing was steady. “Is he bleeding badly?”
The man shook his head and drew the cloth away. The club had caught Dale right above the left ear. The scalp laceration oozed blood, the tissue already beginning to swell. The man put the cloth back. “Don’t move him,” I said. “We’ll get an ambulance here.”
“He ain’t going anywheres,” the man said, and I pushed myself to my feet. Bob Torrez was talking on the cell phone, and I beckoned to Tony Abeyta and Tom Pasquale.
“Make sure he doesn’t move,” I said. “If he regains consciousness, don’t let him sit up. Don’t let him roll over. Don’t let him do a damn thing.” They nodded and slid past me.
I took Christine by the elbow. “Give me a few minutes,” I said, and she nodded. “Where’s a good place to talk?”
Before she had time to answer, the kitchen door swung open and Victor appeared, three plates expertly balanced on his left arm. He moved around the small room as if the troops weren’t there, but on his way back to the kitchen he paused at the door. He glared at me and jerked his chin toward Christine.
“I got to have my help,” he said. “Don’t be wasting her time.” With that, he disappeared back into the kitchen.
“What a sweetheart,” Cliff Larson said.
Christine Prescott led us out into the dark foyer and then into the small nonsmoking dining room. No one was there at the moment, which wasn’t surprising. Victor did as little as possible to encourage the room’s use. Why he bothered with it, I didn’t know, unless the health department had ordered him to have it available.
The girl sat at the table nearest the east-facing window, and she kept glancing toward the door—no doubt awaiting another appearance by her boss.
“Christine,” I said, “what was Dale after?”
“Me, I guess,” she said. Her voice was husky.
“What did he say to you?”
Christine took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Really weird,” she said at length. “He ran in from the back, from the kitchen. He said something like, ‘Come on. We gotta go.’ I don’t know what he meant.” She shrugged.
“And then what happened?”
“Well, Victor was right behind him, maybe ten steps. I said something like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And then Dale grabbed my right arm. He said something like…let’s see. He said, ‘Come on. I’ll explain later.’ And that’s all he had time for. Victor came up behind him and took him from behind, one hand on each biceps, like this?” She stretched out her arms, hands clawed into clamps. I could picture Victor doing just that.
“When he did that, Dale jerked around and took a swing at him. I think he hit Victor on the right shoulder, kind of a glancing blow. And then Victor kind of drop-kicked him out of the bar and into the kitchen.” Christine half smiled and looked heavenward. “He opened the door with him, headfirst.”
“And then he came back in? Dale came back?”
She nodded. “He just ran in. He said, ‘Come on. I got the money now.’ He grabbed me by the arm, real hard. I said something like, ‘Let go of me,’ and that’s all the time he had. Victor caught up with him again, grabbed the billy from underneath the bar, and hit him with it. One pop.”
“And went right back to the burgers,” I murmured.
“Sir?”
“Nothing. Christine, do you know what Dale Torrance wanted?”
“Other than that I was supposed to go with him just then, no. I don’t.”
“Had you been seeing him?”
“Oh, yeah.” She smiled ruefully. “He kinda got so that he was hanging around here regularly, whenever he could. Most of the summer, as a matter of fact. Maybe too much. Victor said to make sure not to serve him any alcohol. And I never did.”
“Did he have a crush on you?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation or embarrassment. She grinned. “A
mega
-crush.”
“Did you ever go out with him?”
“Sure. A couple of times.”
I regarded her thoughtfully and she took that as a prompt. “Well, not really
out
,” she said. “I mean, once I went with him to pick up a horse that he’d bought from some guy over in Eunice. It was my day off, and I didn’t have anything to do. He called and asked if I’d go along, that he could use a hand.” She shrugged. “So I said yes. I didn’t see anything wrong with it. Dale’s kind of sweet. He’s fun to be with.”
“And other times?”
“Last week, he stayed until I was done work, at closing. My car was broke down again. He tried to fix it, but couldn’t. He just took me home.”
“That was it?”
“Well…” she hesitated, then added, “well, sorta that was it.” She actually blushed. “Stupid car,” she said. “That’s one thing I plan to do working here. Get enough money together to make a down payment on something that runs more than half the time.”
“Did you tell Dale that?”
“Oh, sure, I suppose. We talked about stuff like that.”
“And that’s all that happened? You don’t know what spooked him today?”
“No, sir.” She looked across at Cliff Larson. He hadn’t said a thing, but he sure wanted a cigarette. He had held one unlighted, fiddled with it this way and that, for most of our conversation. Christine Prescott knew exactly who he was, too. She turned back to me. “You were after Dale for something?”
I nodded.
“Can I ask for what?”
“It appears that he took eighteen head of roping stock belonging to someone else.”
“No,” Christine said. She smiled in disbelief. “Why would he be so dumb?”
“I was hoping you could help with that,” I said. “He drove them out of state and sold them.”
“You’re kidding,” she said.
“No. I wish that for his sake we were.”
“What’s going to happen to him now?” Christine asked.
“First, he goes over to Posadas General to make sure his skull’s not cracked,” I said. “We’ll see from there.”
“Is Victor in trouble?”
I laughed loudly. “I don’t think so.” Off in the distance I heard the wail of a siren. To Larson I said, “Would you go out front and make sure he gets loaded all right?” Larson nodded and got to his feet, free hand already grubbing in the pocket of his jeans for his lighter.
When he’d left, I turned back to Christine. “There’s another question I need to ask you. It has nothing to do with Dale Torrance or this mess today.”
She folded her hands and waited. “Remember back to Friday night,” I said. That made it sound longer ago than the twenty or so hours that it actually was. “Last night. When Matt Baca came into the saloon. Remember?”
“Of course.”
“What exactly did he do?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Just that. What did he do. When he walked through the door, what happened?”
Christine frowned. “He walked in, kinda spaced. I could see that right off. He lost his balance a little and leaned first against the doorjamb, and then against the bar when he made it over that far.”
“What did he ask you?”
Christine bit her lip, brow furrowed. “He said, ‘I need two twelve-packs of Coors.’ I was busy making a margarita for another customer, and I said something like, ‘Not in this lifetime.’”
“And tell me why you said that. Right off the bat, no hesitation.”
“Because I knew that Matt Baca wasn’t twenty-one.”
“You knew that for a fact?”
Christine frowned again. “Well, no…I guess I don’t know it for a fact. But he sure didn’t
look
twenty-one. I’ve seen him around, you know. I know that he hangs out with kids who are a long, long way from twenty-one.”
“So you just refused him.”
“I didn’t have to. Victor happened to come out of the kitchen and saw him. Right away, he told him to beat it.”
“He didn’t ask to look at any ID?”
“No. He knows who Matt is.” She grimaced. “Who he was.”
“Okay. Now think back. When Matt asked for the beer, and you said, ‘Not in this lifetime,’ what did he do? Exactly?”
“What do you mean,
do
? He was just standing there.”
“You said earlier that he put one hand in his pocket, as if he were going to pull out an ID and show you.”
Christine looked up at the ceiling. “Yes. He was reaching into his back pocket when Victor came out of the kitchen.”
“Like for money? Or an ID?”
“Maybe. It could have been.”
“Which pocket?”
“Oh, wow.” She closed her eyes in thought, brought both hands up, and rested her fingertips on her temples. “Right. Right pocket. Right back pocket. I remember that because he was grubbing a fistful of peanuts out of the bowl on the bar in front of him. That was the hand closest to me. And I was on his left.”
“You’re sure?”
“No. But I think so. What difference does it make?”
I sighed. The wallet had been in Matt Baca’s left back pocket. If the fake ID had been tucked in his right pocket, I wouldn’t have seen it when I took the kid into custody at the house and searched his wallet. It looked like Tom Pasquale’s scenario was right on target.
“It probably doesn’t make any difference,” I said, and got to my feet. “Christine, thanks for your help. We appreciate it. Sorry to cause such a ruckus in your life.”
“What happens to Dale now?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “There’ll be an arraignment with Judge Hobart. The young man’s bought himself a whole string of problems. We’ll see what develops.”
We left the dining room just in time to see the gurney loaded with Dale Torrance’s quiet form wheeled through the foyer, maneuvered by the two white-uniformed paramedics. Holding the front door for them was a pale-faced Herb Torrance.
I took a step toward him, but before I had a chance to open my mouth to speak, Victor Sanchez’s gravelly, irritated voice stopped me.
