Bag Limit

Chapter Twelve

Fifteen minutes. Maybe half an hour. Maybe an hour. The unaccounted for minutes in the Baca household formed their own little black hole. In the predawn hours, the undersheriff had come and gone, as had Father Anselmo. Josie Baca had arrived in Regal and picked up her two children. There hadn’t been much of an argument-at least no objection that Sosimo had voiced, no chair-throwing shouting match.

Shortly after his wife’s departure with the two little girls, Sosimo Baca had found himself left alone with his sister and her small brigade of moral support-all of whom knew exactly what direction his life should take at that very moment-three women who knew what was good for him.

It didn’t surprise me that Sosimo had decided then and there that of all the things in this world that he needed most, his old battered truck headed the list-no doubt along with a nip or three. And so he had left the little adobe in Regal…sometime that morning, most likely before eight o’clock.

Without the children or the father to fuss over, Clorinda Baca and her two sisters-in-law had left the house about the same time…whenever that was. And an indeterminate time later, little Mandy Lucero, innocent of all the upheaval in the Baca household, had arrived for a day of play with the Baca girls. What she found instead was an empty house-and Sosimo’s corpse in the backyard.

Another hour spent with Mary Baca and Sabrina Torrez failed to produce anything useful. We talked to them separately, we talked to them together. The black hole of time during which Sosimo Baca had returned home to die in his own backyard remained inviolate.

“The aunties,” I muttered as I watched the women leave. “We need to find someone who looked at a goddamn clock this morning, Robert. Nobody knows when they did a damn thing.”

The undersheriff stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the small living room. For a moment, the house was silent. The deputies had finished out in the kitchen, but I wasn’t optimistic that the prints they’d lifted would shed much light.

“Illegals, you think?” I asked, knowing full well that would be the most lame scenario. Mexican nationals streamed across the border at night in an unchecked flow. It wasn’t hard to find a place to hop the fence out of sight of the Border Patrol agents. I knew folks who routinely-and illegally-crossed into the United States on a daily basis to work, their own version of a commute. We knew that illegals frequently took their rest inside La Iglesia de Nuestra Senora, the small Catholic mission on the knoll at the east end of Regal. The place was never locked, and the handful of wooden pews served as a peaceful resting spot.

“No, sir, not illegals,” Torrez replied. “It makes no sense that someone is going to hop the wire, and then walk all the way over here, through all the barking dogs, to pick on about the least promising place in Regal. And last night-early this morning-there wasn’t even a car parked in the yard. Nothing to steal, if that’s what someone had in mind.”

“And any help they needed or wanted, Sosimo would have cheerfully provided, I’m sure,” I added.

“That’s right,” Torrez said. He had stepped over to the east wall and examined a small photo that hung in a cheap gold frame beside a gaudily painted crucifix. “Most of them don’t come to the United States to get themselves arrested.” He reached out and straightened the photograph.

“Happier times,” I said, looking past him at the portrait of a younger Sosimo, his wife, and three children. Matthew looked to be eight or nine, a sober, black-haired child frowning at the camera. Lucinda was backed in tight against her father’s knees, and Josie cradled the infant Linda in her arms. They were posed in front of a small flower garden, with the freshly painted fence behind them.

“Why did Josie leave him?”

Torrez thrust his hands in his pockets. “Nothing we haven’t heard a thousand times before, sir. She grew up here in Regal, and I guess she probably thought Sosimo was her ticket out of here. He was working for the railroad over in Lordsburg when they got married. And then he inherited this place from his father, and that was that. He quit the railroad, settled here, and Josie couldn’t pry him loose.”

“She’s been trying, though,” I said.

“Sure. You’ll get a different story depending on which relative you talk to. But the bottom line is that she met somebody else who promised her more than my uncle could-or would-and she jumped at the chance.”

“That was two years ago?”

“About that. Remember when we arrested Matt and two of his buddies for breaking into the farm supply? That happened just after Momma left.”

“For all of that, Josie only got as far as Lordsburg? She decided to try her luck there again, eh.”

Torrez nodded. “The big city.”

“Well, compared to Regal, I suppose it is. Is she still living with the guy?”

“I don’t know, sir.” He grinned. “But by the time Deputy Taber gets through with her, we’ll know all the gritty details.”

I glanced at my watch. “And that should be now. Let me find out what she’s got. And Perrone should have a preliminary for us. In the meantime, I want this place turned upside down. Every hair, every print, every everything. And by the way, do you know who lives in that corner house? The one where the porch is parked right in the damn road?”

Torrez stepped to the single, dreary front window. “Right there? The white adobe with the blue trim? That’s Emilio Contreras.”

“I don’t know him.”

“No, but you know his wife, Betty.”

“In the assessor’s office. That Betty? I’ll be damned. Are they related to you?”

Torrez smiled. “No, sir.”

“One of the few. Where’s he work, do you know?”

“I don’t think he does, sir. He’s on disability of some kind. When he can get out of the house, he usually puts in time over at the church.”

“I’ll find him,” I said. “And by the time the deputies talk to every other living soul in town, we might get lucky.” I gestured toward the kitchen. “You don’t smash the hell out of a window and tear a screen door off its hinges without making a ruckus of some kind. Somebody had to have heard…it’s that simple. You breathe deeply in a place like this, and everybody knows about it.”

I went toward the front door, and my cell phone chirped as if the motion had triggered its tiny electronic brain.

“You boys campaignin’ pretty hard down there?” the caller said when I snapped the thing open. The reception wasn’t the best, but I recognized Cliff Larson’s cigarette-strained voice.

“If Bobby loses any more relatives, there won’t be anyone left to vote,” I replied. “Cliff, what are you doing? Sorry I didn’t return your call last night, but things got a bit hectic around here.”

“Gayle tells me that old Sosimo Baca passed away,” the state livestock inspector said.

“Yep.”

“And it was his son who got killed last night?”

“Hell of a deal.”

“Well, Christ,” Cliff said, and I could visualize him pausing to suck on the cigarette, just the way he did while leaning against a corral, one boot on the lower rail, scrutinizing the brand of each steer as it was herded by. He coughed and I waited for him to get to the point. “Listen,” he said finally, “I need to get together with you. I know you’re busy, but hell, there comes a time when you got to leave all that shit to the young bucks anyway, you know what I mean. What have you got left, about three days? Tuesday’s it for you, right?”

“That’s it,” I said.

“Well, then, there you go. I need a favor from you, and if you could break away from there for a few minutes, I’d appreciate it.”

I knew that “a few minutes” could be the rest of the day when Cliff Larson was involved. His idea of rapid response was second gear in his battered Ford pickup. In his mind, he was running on the same “few minutes” he’d been using when he’d called the office the night before. “What do you have brewing, Cliff? Can’t one of the deputies help you out?”

He paused. “Don’t think so, Bill. Let me tell you why. I got a little bit of a problem that I think maybe you can help me with.”

“What would that be?”

“I ain’t positive yet,” Cliff said. “But you know just about every living soul in this county, and I thought that maybe I could pick your brain a bit.”

I laughed. “I’m finding out there’s all sorts of folks in this county that I don’t know, Cliff. Who do you want to know about?”

“You know Miles Waddell, of course.”

“Sure. He’s what’s left of Waddell Brothers. They have a spread up north, outside of Newton, don’t they? Don’t they supply livestock for rodeos?”

“That’s it. Well, here’s the deal. Sometime Thursday, Miles thinks late evening, well after dark, someone backed a livestock trailer up to one of his pens and helped themselves to eighteen head of ropin’ calves.”

“That would be easy to do,” I said. “There aren’t very many watchful eyes up in that part of the world, and an awful lot of empty acres. And lots of trucks and trailers.” I looked across at Bob Torrez and then looked heavenward. “Besides, the village of Newton isn’t in Posadas County. Better to give Sheriff Hernandez a call.”

Larson made a rasping, coughing sound that might have been a laugh. “The village ain’t, but the corrals where Waddell keeps his stock are. The actual theft occurred in Posadas County, Sheriff.”

“Okay.”

“Well,” he said, stretching out the word, “it’s no big deal, but like I said, I’d appreciate the help. I’d appreciate your expertise.”

“What little of it there is left,” I said.

Cliff coughed again and cleared his throat. “Well now, I’ll take any help I can get. I trust your instincts, anyway.”

“It’s going to cost you lunch,” I said. “You know the Contreras place in Regal? Big adobe that sits right on top of the lane? White-painted front porch?”

“Sure enough,” Larson said.

“I’ll be over there. Either there or at the mission down the road. I don’t have a set of wheels at the moment, so if you want to cruise on down here and pick me up, that would be the easiest way.”

“Now be a good time?”

“As bad as any, Cliff.” Because I knew that Cliff Larson’s “now” could encompass any time between the next moment and the next weekend, I added, “If I’m not there, check with one of the deputies at Baca’s. They’ll be in touch.”

“Done deal.”

I closed the phone and glanced again at Bob Torrez. I shook my head in resignation. “I’ll be at Contreras’ if anyone needs me,” I said. “If Cliff Larson shows up, point the way. This is just what we need right at the moment. Somebody stealing a bunch of goddamn calves.”

“I heard you say up in Newton?”

“Yes. But unfortunately, the calves were corralled in our county, Robert.”

“Take three oh six. Tom can ride with me,” Torrez offered, but I waved a hand.

“I will if I need it, but right now, a walk sounds good. It’ll give me time to think,” I said. A hundred steps would take me to Emilio Contreras’ front door, and if necessary, another five hundred yards would take me to La Iglesia de Nuestra Senora. At the rate I walked, that would fit in with Cliff Larson’s schedule just fine.