skeletons (24 page)
“In what?”
“I don’t know. Some say he has vast sums on deposit in Mexico City.”
“‘Little Devil.’”
“Yes. But he had a master teacher. Who lived to a ripe old age, revered by all who did not know him. He died in 1963. He was ninety-one. On his retirement in 1946 he was honored in a resolution passed unanimously by the Legislature of New Mexico. As a symbol of the transition from the lynch law of the frontier to the jurisprudence of a civilized society.”
He cleared his throat apologetically. “Which brings us up to the present, Mr. Butters. Make your choice of villains. But if you want the ultimate villain—there he is.”
Charles S. Vaught Jr. pointed at the portrait centered on the wall behind the bench.
I refused to look. I recalled only too well that hatchet face. And the eyes, the eyes on fire.
She rushed past me.
Opening the gate in the rail, she sped past the judge, stepped up behind the bench.
The room was gloomy. We could not have known what she intended. Had we known, though, neither of us would have stopped her.
From the wall Tyler Vaught took the portrait of her grandfather, turned, raised it high above her head.
Smashed it over her father’s desk.
Smashed until it was a skeleton of canvas and paper, paint and wood.
Then dropped it, stepped down, took a chair at the other table, apart from her father, apart from me, put her head down, buried her face in her arms.
Cried. Soundlessly. As she had in our hotel room while telling me what Pingo Chavez had done to her when she was a girl. A corpse crying.
I could not comfort her, nor could her father. She was beyond comforting.
“She was right,” I said to him.
“Right?”
“The trials. She said from the beginning they were the answer. So I kept plugging. So did Crossworth and Sansom, probably. You never mentioned Philip Crossworth to me, did you?”
“How could I?”
“Maybe they were getting warm, warmer. Coming too close to the tower,” I speculated. “So they had to be killed. So do I, now. I’ve been in the tower. I know.”
“And now that you do?”
“I have to decide, don’t I?”
“As you do, there are certain things I wish you would consider.” He sat down again. “Excuse me, I’m very tired.” He looked at his daughter, removed his horn rims, rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Mr. Butters, I hear many cases without benefit of jury. I must hand down many verdicts by myself. I exert myself to be impartial, to weigh honestly the arguments on both sides, plaintiff’s and defendant’s. Now, in a sense, you must judge, you must decide. Allow me to speak in behalf of the heirs to this—this outrage. I sympathize with your shock, your revulsion, and Tyler’s. You, the outsider, have it in your power to unlock the tower to the public. Can you reckon what the press and television will make of the opportunity? A feast. A morbid orgy. No one will blame you if you do this. Murder will out, I suppose, and should. But consider the consequences. Consider what some of us here in Harding have already suffered. Imagine how we feel each spring on ‘Buell Wood Day.’” He let me imagine for a moment. “This tower has been a curse. It has ruined lives—mine, my wife’s, Francis Word’s and his two sons’, Coye Turnbow’s and his son’s—perhaps even Tyler’s to some extent. It has tainted families to the third generation. Daughters were never told. Francis Word could tell Tom and Allan only with his dying breath. Sixty years of shame. Of guilt. Of agony.”
He was getting to me, which was not supposed to happen. Not to the new, merciless, macho me. And besides, it was he who was supposed to be over the barrel, not me. As he proceeded, I began to pace up and down the rail.
“Remember when we first met a few days ago?” he asked. “I made the comment then that I could see no purpose in exhuming the past. I say it now, Mr. Butters. It seems to me the sins of the fathers have been more than sufficiently visited upon the sons. And the daughters. They committed a heinous crime. But we have not. To put the contents of this tower on national display—what possible redress will that afford those poor Mexicans? Will it restore Buell Wood to life? Justice delayed is justice denied, I grant—but in this wretched matter, justice was too long ago denied to make any difference now. A clock may be stopped. It cannot be made to run backward. Therefore I plead with you, Mr. Butters. You sit in judgment now. The dead are at rest. But the lives of the living depend on your decision. I hope with all my heart–”
“Goddammit!”
I had stumbled over a SPITTOON. I gave the thing such a kick that it sailed down an aisle to a wall. I swung on my witness.
“Goddammit, Judge, let’s cut the oratorical crap and get back to the facts! Where does young Doc Shelley fit in this dirty damned picture?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
“Well he does, somewhere. I heard him on the phone to Pingo Chavez my first day in town. I’d been asking about Sansom’s hit-and-run, and he was asking Chavez what was going on. What’s Chavez got on him?”
“I don’t know. He grew up in California, and moved back here to practice. I can only guess that after he arrived, or soon after, the sheriff brought him into the tower, too. To show him what his grandfather had done.”
“It fits,” I said. “But explain me something else. I drove down to La Casa de la Justicia—you know, the shrine, the flame, the graves? Well, I dug up two of the four. They’re empty.”
“They’re what?”
“You heard me. What’s that mean?”
“I can’t–”
“Why in hell would anyone go to the trouble to—”
“No, I’m not surprised.” Charles Vaught pushed himself up by the arms of his chair. “Certainly. Why yes, of course.”
“Of course what?”
“I’m sure Chavez built La Casa himself—it’s on his property. Don’t you see? It would divert curiosity from the tower. And when he finished, he himself invented and circulated the myth about the Mexicans being buried there. He’s very cunning. Now that I think of it, I’m certain he did, because to the best of my recollection that myth is fairly recent around here. Three or four years, in fact.”
“Three or four years?”
“I never heard it before that.”
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute!”
The opaque screen again. A signal. A white dot of light in my brain.
“Judge Vaught. Could it be four years?”
“It could.”
Signals. Several dots of light. In a directional sequence.
FOUR YEARS.
COMPREHEND.
“Jesús,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Jesús Christ yes!”
I dropped my hands to the rail, held myself. “Yes. Oh yes.”
He waited. I moved one hand to the other, punched my Pulsar. 11:01.
“All right, Judge,” I said. “All right, I’ll deal. Not because I give a damn about Harding or what happens to it. I might have, before tonight, but not now. This town has just about destroyed me. No, I’ll deal because of Tyler and because I need help. So I’ll buy help. I’m off. After I leave, go home and make two phone calls for me. First, call a man in El Paso named Henry Snackenberg.” I got out my wallet, found the card, handed it to him. “Here’s his name and number. If he can’t be reached, talk to Alvah Helms, his boss. Identify yourself. Tell whichever of them that Jimmie Butters asked you to call, he’s about to blow the whole frigging lid off over here, he’s driving down to La Casa de la Justicia—they know where it is— and to meet me there as damned fast as they can. Faster. Got that?”
“I think so.”
“The second call. Wait ten minutes after the first—no, make it fifteen. Then call the County Sheriff’s Department across the street. Tell the guy on duty you were working late at the courthouse and you saw me hanging-hanging, ha—around and you thought Chavez might be interested. Got that?”
“Yes. But a call like that could kill you. Are you sure you—”
“No. It will keep me alive. I won’t be here—I’ll have fifteen minutes’ head start. No, put in those calls, Judge. They’re as important as any you’ve ever made. Now, one more thing.”
I went to Tyler at the other table, sat beside her. “Tyler, listen to me. I want you to go home for a while with your father.”
She raised her head. She was a shambles. Her eyeliner had streaked, her cheeks were smeared with tears. She recognized me, she understood what I’d said, but how much the night’s revelations had undone her, how many marbles she was really playing with at this point, mentally, I had no way to tell.
“Just for a few hours, maybe less,” I said. “Then I’ll come by for you and we’ll hit for El Paso.”
“No,” she said.
“Tyler, yes.”
“I won’t, not with him.”
“You will, goddammit. I can’t let you loose on the streets, I can’t leave you here, I can’t take you with me— you’ll have to spin your wheels.”
“Please, Jimmie, don’t ask me to—”
“I’m not asking, I’m ordering,” I snarled. “I’m down to the bottom line of everything—and you’re not fouling me up any further. If you want the truth, Tyler, you do as I say.” I pushed back my chair, spoke to the judge. “She’ll go. Will you take her with you?”
“Gladly.”
“That does it, then. Stay there till you hear from me. Make those calls, then hold the fort. When I get in touch, either in person or by phone, Pingo Chavez will be behind bars. Then you and Mr. Turnbow and Doc Shelley get those bones out of this tower and decently buried. Forever.”
As he grasped my meaning, Charles Vaught’s face seemed to break. I thought he might collapse. He placed both hands flat on the table before him, held himself as I had.
“Oh Mr. Butters. Jimmie.”
“Is it a deal?”
“Thank God.”
“Thank God hell. Thank me.”
I I : 1 4
I I : 1 4
I I : 1 4
Blowing back the dark blocks to the Ramada. Attempting to be as anonymous as a fart in a windstorm.
I snuck up on the motel from the rear, cat-footed to a corner, bent a private eye around it. A county sheriff’s car with a uniform at the wheel was parked where he could keep a fix both on the Rolls and the door of 114. Waited.
Waited five or six minutes. Suddenly the prowl car revved up, backed out, and burned rubber as though he’d just had an urgent call from HQ. Which he might have.
Quick like a fox I hopped into the Rolls, took off, circled the rim of town to stay off main streets. At the Columbus road I set the compass due south.
Old girl, I said to the Silver Wraith, I am sorry to keep you up late and run all this petrol through you when you are used to being pampered. But stick with me tonight, take me where I have to go, then take me to El Paso and then, Britannia baby, you will rule the interstates.
Eleven miles. I stayed under 55 mph. No more speeding tickets. Besides, I wanted to give Snackenberg as much time as I could to get over here and rendezvous with me. And time for me to sort out and position on the stage, like a director, my cast of characters. If Judge Vaught followed instructions, Snackenberg should be on his way here hell for leather. Chavez should be surrounding the courthouse and ordering his goons to shoot me on sight. Helene Vaught had to be safely in San Carlos now, Davis with her. Davis’ replacement would be puffing into the Ramada to watchdog me unless he’d heard by radio I wasn’t there. And the Vaughts, father and daughter, would be in the family manse, keeping a candle in the window and having a happy father-daughter chat.
I turned off under the “LOS ESQUELETOS” sign for the third and last time. Doused the lights. Idled along the sand road. No moving vans tonight. No nondescript sedans on my tail. The skin on my chest itched under my shirt. Abrasions healing. Then off the road to the right, along tire tracks through greasewood and mesquite. I stopped, cut the engine, got out, took off my coat, laid it on the seat, went around to the boot, opened it, got out the shovel.
La Casa de la Justicia. The crude rock-and-mortar pedestal, flame burning. The mounds of four graves.
I stood for some time under the lopsided moon. Looking. Only moonlight. Listening. Only wind.
No eeny-meeny-miny-mo tonight. I had opened the third grave from the left, the name on its wooden cross “Taurino Garcia,” the first time. The second trip, the day before yesterday, the left-hand grave, that of “Juan Sanchez.” Like the grave of Garcia, it had since been refilled and reshaped.
I dug into the second mound from the left. The earth was hard-packed. I started at the foot. Had excavated no more than two feet down when I struck something. Stooped. Touched something in the soil. Picked it up.
TOE?
Dug around it. Picked up more shards of what had to be a human skeleton.
FOUR YEARS.
If I had not played eeny-meeny. If I had only opened this grave the first time or the second.
PHILIP CROSSWORTH.
Dropped the bits of bone. Girded myself. Moved to the mound on the right, the last unopened. Dug.
With the third shovelful, a sound escaped from the earth. A sigh. Then a hellish stench.
Guts going. Held my breath. Dug. Lifted the shovel. A hank of something on it. Picked it up.
Dark.
Hair.
BEARD.
On my knees. Puking up everything I had eaten for weeks. And goddamned lucky I was on my knees.
Or I’d have been cut in two by fire from some kind of automatic weapon.
Ran like hell for the Rolls. Bullets raced me, beat me. Zinging from a formation of big boulders east of La Casa.
Gophered under the car, burrowed, grubbed at sand with elbows and fingernails to get far under, heard bullets spatter steel in the classic Freestone & Webb coachwork above me.
A roar in my ears.
Firing stopped.
AN AIRCRAFT? HERE?
Scrabbled from under the Rolls to see a Cessna 182 land on the sand road, bumping, brakes squealing, still rolling as three men in plainclothes leaped out guns in hands. One, tall and lank, loped toward me like a giraffe.
“Jimmie! You all right?”
“Hank! Get down!”
TOO LATE.
A burst of fire from the boulders.
He whirled, arms wide, seemed to crumple in sections-legs, body, arms.
Two sedans dusted up behind the Cessna on the road, braking, bucking. On the door panels the insignia of the Border Patrol. Four men in green uniforms unloaded, took cover behind the cars, commenced firing at the boulders. 30.06 rifles with infrared scopes.
