Dead Weight

Chapter Twenty-seven

We didn’t wait for the afternoon. Fifteen minutes after we left Sam Carter and his Dumpsters, we were headed up the ramp to the eastbound interstate and the thirty-minute jog to Deming.

It wasn’t that Kenny Carter had jumped to the top of any suspect list we wished that we had. But trouble in the Sisson household either centered around or was at least exacerbated by daughter Jennifer. She was their own little tropical depression, waiting to blossom. Kenny Carter was right smack in the eye of Jennifer.

Years before-hell, decades and decades before-I had been half of the team that coped with four teenagers, including two daughters. And I suppose there had been times when I viewed any teenage boys other than my own who roamed near our home as potential predators who had my daughters’ virtue in their sights.

Those days had passed, and both daughters had managed to survive adolescence, early loves and breakups, the stresses of college, and, finally, the early years of their own marriages without putting the family through seven versions of hell.

The Sissons hadn’t been so lucky, if luck was what it took. The script for Life with Jennifer might have been enough to drive Jim out into the dark solitude of the backyard, where he could take his fury out on something that didn’t talk back.

I could well imagine that if Jim Sisson had suspicions about Kenny Carter’s relations with Jennifer and if young Kenny had wandered into the yard that night wanting to talk to his girlfriend’s old man, then fireworks could well have followed.

If that scenario was true, one thing was certain: The boy hadn’t hung around the Sisson premises afterward, holding the grieving Jennifer’s hand. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually seen Kenny Carter-and I certainly hadn’t caught sight of him that night when we’d responded to the domestic dispute call. If he’d been there, the Sisson women, Jennifer included, were keeping mum. And that in itself was excuse enough for a chat with the lad.

I didn’t know Kenneth Carter well. I could pick him out of a crowd of teens, but that was about all. I didn’t know his habits. But he was a connection, tenuous as it might be. State Trooper Mike Rhodes knew a little of the relationship between his nephew and Jennifer, had seen them together enough that it had lodged in his memory. Sam Carter, the ever patient father, would probably be the last one to know-especially since he impressed me as the kind of father who wore pretty solid blinders when it came to his own kid.

“It’s interesting,” I said to Bob Torrez as we hurtled toward Deming, “that Kenny Carter didn’t work for Sisson.”

Torrez frowned. “Jim had two employees,” he said. “And bank records show that he was overextended. So I don’t know. One more wage, even at minimum, might have been more than he could take.”

“How much extended?”

“For this last financial quarter he had to take out a small loan just to meet the payroll obligations…let alone anything else.”

“You haven’t wasted any time,” I said.

“Judge Hobart was cooperative, as usual.” Torrez grinned. “And so was Penny Arguile, at the bank, once the court order was processed that allowed us in to look at the records.”

“Any big creditors knocking at the door?”

Torrez shook his head. “It seems to me more like a gradual buildup. Sort of like a rockslide. First a pebble or two, then some bigger, then bigger, then bigger. Pretty soon Jim’s got the whole hillside crashing down on top of him.” He glanced over at me.

“With some help, of course.”

“Grace Sisson was concerned about that,” I said. “That new front loader was one of the first things she mentioned when we talked to her this afternoon in Cruces. I would guess the damn thing was a bone of contention between Jim and her.”

“A twenty-seven-thousand-dollar bone,” Torrez agreed. “God knows what a new machine that size would cost, but a used one is bad enough. The bank records show it’s an ’82 model. Twenty-seven grand for a piece of machinery that’s eighteen years old.” He shook his head in wonder.

“Did you talk with Penny about that loan in particular?”

“She said the bank floated the paper with ‘some misgivings.’ They let Jim sign a five-year note, and she said that was longer than the bank likes to go. He asked for ten, but they refused.”

“So on top of everything else, on top of all his other debts, on top of his payroll, he’s paying out a chunk of money every month for that loan.”

“Five hundred and twenty-eight dollars and eleven cents, give or take. That’s at nine point seven five percent interest.”

“Jesus. He must have been planning to move a lot of dirt to pay for that.”

“Among other things, he was one of the bidders on the village’s project to extend the water line back behind your place, over on Escondido.”

“That’s nickel-dime stuff, though. A single ditch, maybe a mile of pipe at the most. A few trees to knock over, a little arroyo to fill. That’s if he won the bid in the first place. The profit from the whole job wouldn’t pay for one year’s payments on that machine.”

Torrez shrugged. “Maybe he was one of those folks who just loved machines.”

I shifted against the seat belt so I could rest my right elbow on the windowsill. “And young Kenny? What do we know about him?”

“We know that if he’s very lucky, he might graduate next year. He’s about a year behind, give or take.”

I looked at Torrez with surprise. “I didn’t know that.”

“An active social calendar.” Torrez grinned. “According to the principal, the kid has taken about all the vocational courses the school has to offer.”

“Which isn’t much.”

“No. But that means Kenny’s stuck with taking stuff like history and English and science if he wants to graduate.”

“Well, gee, what a shame,” I said. “And probably math…and stuff. How unfair can you get. He can’t just weld himself out of high school. At least he’s stuck with it so far. He hasn’t dropped out.”

“So far.”

“And Jennifer Sisson is going to be a sophomore.”

Torrez nodded. “If she stays in school.”

“They’ll be a cute couple along about February,” I said. “What other names do we have?”

“Jim Sisson’s two employees. Aurelio Baca has been with him for almost ten years and Rudy Alvaro is going on three. Both good, steady men. I don’t know too much about Baca except that he’s on a green card and lives just across the border, in Palomas. He’s got his own small plumbing business that he runs down there, on the side.”

“And Rudy?”

“He used to work for the village before he went over to Sisson’s. He’s one of my wife’s cousins.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me,” I said. “Did both men work Tuesday?”

Torrez nodded. “Baca left for Palomas at about ten after five. Rudy was still finishing up a few things over at the Randall job at six. He went straight home from there. He helped Jim trailer the front loader.”

“Did he come back to the yard to help him take it off?”

“He told me that Jim said he didn’t need to come back to the yard, that Jim thought that he could do it just fine by himself.”

“So nothing about either Baca or Alvaro piques your curiosity,” I said. “No loose ends?”

Torrez shook his head. “Not a thing.”

“Had Jim ever missed a payroll?”

“Nope. The Sissons have been rotating their utilities for a while-make the phone wait a month, then make the electric stand in line-but they’ve paid both Baca and Alvaro each week.”

“Huh.” I let my head slump back against the headrest. In the distance I could see the flat spread of buildings that marked Deming. “You think we’re wrong about this?”

“About Sisson’s death not being an accident, you mean? Not a chance, sir. Not a chance.” He glanced in the mirror and let the car drift into the right lane.

“People have been crushed accidentally by things like that before.”

“Yes, sir, I’m sure they have. Heavy equipment thinks up all kinds of neat ways to kill the operator. And if Jim had been found right close to the machine, maybe crushed up against the axle or something, I might have believed it. But not this way. The distances don’t make sense for it to have happened solo. My gut feeling is that someone took an opportunity, figuring that any investigation would just take the easy route. Big machine, dangerous wheel and tire combination, careless chain hookup. A dozen ways an accident could happen. But…” He stopped and thumped the rim of the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “If I’m wrong, you can let Leona Spears have the job in November.”

“Don’t say that, even in jest,” I said.