Dead Weight

Chapter Thirty-five

Time hung heavily that afternoon. I was too tired to sleep, too confused to relax, too hot and sweaty to socialize.

My musty adobe house on Guadalupe Terrace was just the burrow I needed, and I headed there after leaving Tom Pasquale standing on the hot sidewalk in front of the Sissons’.

Even without an air conditioner, the temperature differential was enough to prompt a groan of relief when I stepped inside and shut the heavy carved door behind me. After a shower and change of clothes, I settled in the kitchen, made a pot of coffee, and then sat, staring into the swirls of steam coming out of my cup.

I hadn’t taken a sip, and I have no idea how long I sat there, mesmerized, trying to think about absolutely nothing. I must have succeeded, because the phone’s first ring practically sent me into orbit.

I answered a little more gruffly than I meant to, and a moment’s silence on the other end prompted me to repeat myself. Finally a small voice said, “Bill?”

“Yes?”

“This is Carla. Carla Champlin.”

I took a deep breath and moved my right hand away from the coffee cup so I wouldn’t spill it-just in case there were more surprises.

“How are you doing?” I said, trying not to sound as if I was talking to someone who’d just stuck a shotgun in my face.

“I…well, I…better,” she said, and then some of the old brusque postmistress efficiency came back into her voice. “The dispatcher said that you’d be home, and I just called to tell you that I’m really terribly sorry about what happened this afternoon,” she said.

“That’s all right.”

“Well, no, it isn’t. It most certainly isn’t.”

“These things happen,” I said.

She hesitated, then said, “I’m just awfully glad that it was you in the RV, not someone else.”

Of course if I’d had a coronary and dropped dead on her mobile carpeting, she wouldn’t have been so glad, but I didn’t say that. “Carla, let’s just forget it happened, all right? I haven’t given it a second thought. You shouldn’t, either.”

“I just hate being an old fool, that’s all,” she said. “I can’t even imagine what that young couple must think. Or Judge Hobart, either, for that matter. Honestly. I don’t know what came over me.”

I didn’t see any bombshells on the horizon, so I risked taking a sip of coffee. “Tom and Linda will be out of the house this evening. They’ve found another place, and just between you and me, I bet they’ll take a little better care of it. I think you taught them a good lesson.”

“Um, well,” she said, not ready to be placated, “none of it was necessary. Especially with all of you people being as busy as you are right now.”

“Carla,” I said, not needing to be reminded that I should have been busy just then, “I appreciate your thoughts. We all do. Just give me a buzz if you need anything.”

She sounded a little miffed that she was being cut off and took the offensive. “All right then,” she said and hung up.

I chuckled and put the phone down and immediately thought about Grace Sisson. If Carla Champlin, a half-crackers old lady with steel rebar for a backbone, could apologize for being ridiculous, perhaps we could expect a miracle from Grace, too. I contemplated making a casual, only half-official visit with the woman and her daughter but then rejected that idea as unlikely to produce anything except another vitriolic eruption.

Bob Torrez’s strategy was probably sound. Let the woman stew overnight without knowing what the deputies had found in the backyard and then put the pressure on in the morning-perhaps after someone other than myself had had a sleepless night.

I refilled my coffee, shut off the machine, and left the house, heading for Bucky Randall’s construction site just north of the Posadas Inn on Grande Avenue. He’d been Jim Sisson’s last customer, and although any connection between that job and Jim’s murder was pretty dubious, it was worth the shot. At least one of the deputies had already touched bases with Bucky, but another perspective wouldn’t hurt. Normally people didn’t kill each other over flat tires or some other construction glitch, but it was a crazy world.

I had heard various rumors about what kind of motel-restaurant combination was going in at the Randall location, from steak house to seafood joint to saloon. At the moment, the property was flat and dusty with a touch of white alkali frosting the soil, not a tree or shrub or cactus in sight.

Machinery-presumably Jim Sisson’s big new front loader-had taken a chunk out of a small dune, leveling it away from the highway. Various ditches mapped the property as the contractors piped and wired.

Several vehicles were gathered around one corner where a crew worked with a transit, shooting across to an array of plumbing near the access hole for the village water meter. I stopped 310 beside one of the trucks, a red Dodge with a T.C. RANDALL CONSTRUCTION, LORDSBURG, NM logo on the cab.

I swung open the door and started to pull myself out just as one of the young men near the transit headed my way. At the same time, my cell phone chirped, and I slid back into the seat, both feet outside the car.

I found the phone and flipped it open. “Gastner,” I said, and glanced at my watch. It was ten minutes before six-the construction crews were on overtime.

“Sir, this is Ernie Wheeler. Mrs. Sisson just called and said she needs to see you. She said it’s an emergency.”

I swung my feet inside the car, shook my head at the young construction foreman, and said into the phone, “Is Torrez still over there?”

“Yes, sir. But she insists that she talk to you.”

“I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

“I’ll tell her, sir. She’s still on the line.”

Without explaining to the puzzled contractor, I backed clear of the trucks, then headed north on Grande toward MacArthur. By the time I’d reached the Sisson address, I’d run every scenario I could imagine through my head, right down to the pipe dream where Grace Sisson stretched out both wrists toward me, ready for the handcuffs, and said, “Take me. I did it.”

Torrez’s patrol car was still in the driveway, parked behind the Blazer that Howard Bishop favored. The Sissons’ Suburban was parked at the curb, and I pulled in behind it. I slid the cellular phone into one pocket, then snapped open my briefcase and rummaged for the tiny microcassette recorder. The gadget was smaller than a pack of cigarettes. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d used the recorder even after Estelle Reyes-Guzman had convinced me of its value. The tapes were so dinky that my fat fingers fumbled them all over the place, and the control buttons were worse.

I squinted at the thing and saw that it was loaded. I pushed the record button and dropped the recorder, into my shirt pocket.

Bob Torrez and the deputies were still out back, and I wondered if Grace Sisson had mentioned a word to them. The undersheriff appeared before I reached the steps to the front door, and I stopped.

“She asked me where you were,” he said. “I suggested she call Dispatch if it wasn’t something I could help her with.”

I nodded and then shrugged. Grace Sisson jerked open the front door between my first and second knock.

“Come in,” she said, and held the door at the ready, the way a person does when a rambunctious mud-covered pet is about to barge in on the heels of polite company.

“What can I do for you, Mrs. Sisson?” I asked.

She shut the door solidly behind me, then stood with her arms crossed, regarding me. “Do you have any idea why I asked that you come over here?”

“None whatsoever,” I said. “All I’m told is that you wanted to talk to me and that you didn’t want to speak with one of the deputies or with the undersheriff.” I shrugged. “So…here I am.”

“My daughter is gone,” she said abruptly.

Fatigue and an almost endless list of other excuses had deadened my brain, and it took a few seconds for that to sink in.

“Did you hear me?” Grace snapped.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.”

“Well?”

“What time did she leave?”

With a grimace of impatience, Grace Sisson rolled her eyes. “Who’s got cops crawling all over my property all day long, watching every minute? Ask one of them.”

“That’s helpful, Mrs. Sisson.” I stepped toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

I stopped and turned slowly. “I tell you what. When you’re ready to be civil and tell us what we need to know, then give me a buzz. If your daughter’s missing, I’m sorry. If you want to report her as a missing person after she’s been gone twenty-four hours, feel free. You’re the parent here. We’re just the cops. You might check with her friends. That would be my suggestion. If we find her on the street after ten p.m., we’ll bring her home. No charge.”

I reached for the doorknob, and Grace Sisson held out a hand. “No, wait.”

That’s as far as she got, since she had enough brains to know that if she fired any more shells at me, I’d be out the door. But anything less was difficult for her.

“Ma’am, I know you don’t want to talk to us. I know you’ve got a world of problems right now. But if you’ve got something to say to me, just take the easy road. Spit it out and get it over with so I can get to work.”

She took a deep breath and said, “Jennifer wanted something from the place across the street. I told her I didn’t know if we could do that or not.”

“You mean because of the deputies?” She nodded. “Mrs. Sisson, this property is under surveillance. So are you. The reason for that is that you’ve decided we aren’t worth talking to, and so we have to dig for the answers to all our questions without your help. But you’re not under house arrest. You can go anywhere you like. Any time you like. And we’ll follow along.”

Grace accepted that without a snide retort, and I chalked it up to slow progress. “So did she go over there? Across the street?”

“Yes.”

“What time?”

She turned and glanced at a small wall clock in the kitchen. “About twenty minutes ago.”

“About five-thirty or so, then. Give or take.”

“Yes. And she didn’t come back.”

I raised an eyebrow at Grace. “So let me ask a foolish question. Did you walk over there? It’s maybe a hundred yards, at most. Or call?”

“I called. She isn’t there. They told me that she had been there for a while but left.”

“And you have no idea where she might have gone?”

Grace shook her head. “I’m just afraid…”

“Of what?”

By this time, I could see the misting in the woman’s eyes and realized that Grace Sisson was wrestling with a fair-sized dragon. “Grace,” I said quietly, “it’s just you and me. If there’s something I need to know, then now’s the time.”

She turned and walked into the living room, plopping down on the burgundy corduroy sofa. She clasped her hands between her knees and nodded at the overstuffed chair opposite. From the faint, cloying smell of oil mixed with cigarette smoke, I knew it was Jim’s television chair. I sat down, rested my forearms on my knees, clasped my hands together, and regarded Grace with sympathy. The broken mirror still hung on the wall behind her chair.

“So tell me,” I said.

“We’ve been arguing all day,” she said. “Jennifer and I. All day long, back and forth. If she doesn’t keep that baby, it’s going to kill her grandparents. First Jim dying, and now this. It’ll be something she’ll regret until the day she dies.”

I frowned. “Was Jennifer raped, Mrs. Sisson?”

She looked as if I’d slapped her.

“No, she wasn’t raped,” she snapped. “My God, what do you think? If she was raped, then you’d have heard from me long before this.”

“Then I’m not sure any of this is our concern.”

“It is if he takes her somewhere for an illegal abortion. She’s only fifteen years old, Sheriff. Do you understand that? Fifteen years old.”

“I understand that perfectly well, Mrs. Sisson. And you think that’s what she’s doing? Looking for a quick way out?”

Grace Sisson nodded. “Of course that’s what she’s doing. That’s what we argued about all day.” She pulled a folded piece of paper out of her pocket and held it out to me. It was just a piece of school kids’ notebook paper, with large loopy handwriting at the top. “Mom,” I read. “I need some time to think. I’ll be OK. Jennifer.”

I looked up at Grace. “She left this when she was supposedly going across to the burger place?” Grace nodded, and I added, “Maybe she means what she wrote.”

“Jennifer doesn’t think about anything, Sheriff. That’s why she got pregnant in the first place. She’s not into introspection.”

“Who’s the father?”

“I assume that it’s Kenny Carter.”

“But you’re not sure.”

“No, I’m not sure.”

“Do you have any ideas who else it might be?”

She was too long answering. “No.”

“Was Kenny over here Tuesday night?”

This time, she looked at me steadily, with no petulance, no evasion, no rudeness. When she spoke, it was as if each word were timed with a metronome. “I…really…don’t…know.” She took a breath and added, “I really don’t know who killed Jim.”

Every instinct told me that she was telling the truth. I said, “We’ll find out who killed your husband, Mrs. Sisson. And we’ll find your daughter for you.”

Undersheriff Robert Torrez was waiting by 310 when I came out of the house. “You survived Grace,” he said.

“Two wackos in one day, Roberto. It’s got to be something in the village water.”

He laughed. “No more prints, by the way,” he added.

“I didn’t think we’d be that lucky.”

“So what now?”

I straightened up, stretching my shoulders, the early-evening sun feeling good after the refrigerated air in the Sissons’ house. “I guess I’ll get me a burger. Want to come?”

He glanced across at the Burger Heaven and made a face. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Gayle’s got something. Why don’t you come over? She’d like that.”

I reached out and patted him on the arm. “Some other time. I appreciate the offer and I know what I’m missing, but I need to check out one little thing. And you might stay close to the radio. I’ve got a feeling that it’s going to be a busy night.”

Chapter Thirty-six

Benny Fernandez had opened Burger Heaven seventeen years before, and for a few years the business had blossomed into one of the most successful teen hangouts in Posadas. Benny had understood some basics about a kid business: give ’em lots of food for not very much money and free refills on the watery fountain drinks, and don’t harass ’em when they get so noisy that they drive out the adults. That was his policy.

When Benny died in 1991, his wife had tried to carry on, but she had mistakenly believed that high school kids could be prim and proper, quiet, and well behaved. She’d raised prices and improved food quality, cleaned the place up, and restored order-and lost business. Five years later, she’d sold the place to Nick Chavez’s nephew.

Nick owned the Chevy-Olds dealership across the street, and if nothing else, Buddy Chavez could count on his Uncle Nick to send the salesmen and service crew across at lunchtime. But Buddy Chavez was also smart. He turned up the music, piled on the fries, used humongous cups, and brought back free refills. He didn’t care if kids were rowdy, and he kept the place open at night until the Posadas police cruiser drove by to remind him about the curfew.

I stepped into Burger Heaven and sucked in my gut, remembering with a pang of longing just how good all that stuff with quadruple-digit cholesterol tasted. The smell of deep-frier grease three days past its prime hung heavy in the air.

For a summer weekday dinner hour, the place was busy. Two brave tourists-white-maned, with white pasty northern skin, she in an orange jumpsuit and he in white seersucker trousers and a golf shirt-were the only folks I didn’t know.

Buddy Chavez saw me, gave the table he was wiping a final negligent swipe with the cloth, and headed my way, pausing just long enough to twirl the soggy cloth into a snap for one of the three kids sitting near the jukebox.

“Hey, Sheriff,” he said, and the elderly tourists heard him and gave me the once-over. I sort of wished that I had been wearing spurs or something equally authentic.

“Buddy, let’s talk,” I said, and took him by the elbow, gently steering him toward the small office off the kitchen. He shouted something to one of the counter kids about the air bottle in the diet Coke dispenser and then shrugged at me.

“You got to keep after ’em every minute,” he said. The office door had sagged enough that it wouldn’t latch, but Buddy banged it into the jamb so it stayed closed. He motioned me toward a chair.

“No, I won’t be a minute. I need to know something about Jennifer Sisson, Buddy.”

“Jeez, wasn’t that an awful thing, though,” Buddy said. He was carrying fifty pounds too many, and he dabbed at the sweat on his neck. The closed door shut off the icy cold air from the restaurant, and the west side wall of his office was radiating heat into the room like a sauna.

“Jennifer came in here earlier. In fact, just a few minutes ago.”

Buddy frowned. “She did?”

I smiled at him. “You’ve been here all afternoon?”

“Sure. Since ten this morning.”

“Then you know she was here.”

“Well, okay. I saw her. Sure.”

“Who did she leave with?”

“Hey now, I don’t keep track-”

I cut him off. “Buddy, look. It’s no big deal. You told deputies a couple of days ago that you didn’t hear or see anything across at the Sissons’, and I believe that. Hell, it was dark, and whatever happened over there took place in the backyard, out of sight. But Jennifer Sisson came in here today, sometime around five-thirty.”

He nodded vigorously, and the fat under his chin shook. “She was here, Sheriff. Honest to God.” He held up his hands plaintively, as if he wished the one answer might end the conversation and let him off the hook.

“I know that,” I said patiently. “I asked who she left with.”

“Why would I know that?”

“Because you do, Buddy. You’re being evasive, and you’re sweating like you’re standing out in the sun.” I smiled pleasantly at him again. “And in a minute, I’m going to start wondering why.”

Buddy Chavez leaned against the door. “Look, Sheriff. I don’t want to start anything. I really don’t. Just ask the girl who she was with. That makes more sense. Or Jennifer.”

“It might make sense,” I said, “if I can find her. If some helpful soul hasn’t dumped her in a ditch somewhere.”

Buddy’s eyes opened wide and he paled a shade or two. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m too tired to kid anyone,” I said. “Who was she with?”

He gulped a time or two and then managed to say, “I think it was Sam Carter.” He could see the surprise on my face, I’m sure.

“You think? You think that it was Sam Carter?”

“Well, he didn’t actually come in. I was cleaning off a table, and I saw him pull into the parking lot, over there by the light pole. At first I didn’t recognize him…Well, I mean I didn’t recognize the vehicle. Well, I mean I did, but I thought it was somebody else’s. His kid’s maybe. That red Jeep Wrangler that Kenny Carter drives all the time. I thought it was probably Kenny. But then he opened the door just a bit, and he kinda waved, like this.” He held out his hand, palm up, and flexed the fingers rapidly.

“And at that point you recognized the person as Sam Carter?”

Buddy nodded. “Sure. Jennifer had picked up her order and was sitting with a group of kids over on that six top,” and he motioned toward a table at the east end of the restaurant “over by the door. She got up and left, and I saw her get in the car.”

“Why were you watching her, in particular?”

Buddy Chavez looked embarrassed. “Hell of a body, you know?”

“And fifteen years old, Buddy.”

He shrugged.

“You’re sure about the car.”

He nodded.

“And you’re sure it was Sam Carter. Not Kenny.”

He nodded, pursing his lips as if he knew something else juicy. “Oh, I’m sure.”

“You didn’t hear her say, ‘Here’s my ride,’ or something like that?”

“No. She just got up and I heard her say, ‘I gotta go. My mom’s waiting.’ And then she skipped out.”

“But her mom wasn’t in the car.”

“No.”

“You didn’t see anyone else in that Jeep with Sam? Maybe someone else sitting on the passenger side?”

“He was by himself. The back window on that rig was unzipped. You know the way they drive around with it out. I could see plain enough.”

“And when Grace Sisson called over here, were you the one who answered the phone?”

Buddy took a little bit too long answering but finally nodded and said, “Yeah, I guess I was.”

“And you told her that Jennifer had left.”

“Yep.”

“But you didn’t tell her with whom?”

He shook his head. “Nope. I didn’t figure it was any of my business.”

“And Grace didn’t ask?”

“Well…no, she didn’t.”

“So you didn’t tell her that you’d seen her daughter drive off with Sam Carter? Didn’t let his name slip, even casual-like?”

“Nope, I didn’t tell her.”

I had moved to the door, and Buddy stepped aside. I rested my hand on the worn brass knob. “That sort of puzzles me, Buddy.”

He peered out through the dirty window of the door, still leaning hard against it. “It ain’t any of my responsibility,” he said, and glanced at me quickly to see if I’d agree. But then he added, “Besides, I figured she knew.”

I regarded Buddy with interest. “Now why would you figure that, as disinterested as you are in the whole mess?”

“Well, she sees Sam Carter often enough. She can take care of her own business. It’s not any of my concern.”

My hand froze on the knob. “She sees Sam Carter ‘often enough.’ What does that mean? And who do you mean? Grace or Jennifer?” I had the nagging feeling that I knew exactly where the conversation was headed.

Buddy grimaced. “Come on, Sheriff. Please.” I ignored his entreaty and just glared at him. “Shit, they meet here all the time.”

“They who, Buddy?”

“Sam and Grace. I mean, she walks over to pick up some lunch, and Sam, he’s usually waiting out in the car, out in the lot. He never comes in or nothing. Just kind of casual, you know. She gets her lunch, then moseys on out. And ends up in his car. And then they drive off. Or once in a while just sit and talk, I guess. I don’t know.”

I grinned. “It would appear you see quite a bit. How often does this happen?”

He shrugged. “I don’t keep count. Once, twice a week, maybe. Well,” he said, and inadvertently started to look a little pleased with himself. “You know how it is. Like a couple of school kids. They’re tryin’ to be so clever and end up being more obvious than not.”

“And how long’s this been going on?”

“Couple of months.”

I reached out and took Buddy by the shoulder, digging my thumb in by his collarbone just enough that it got his attention. “Thanks, Buddy. And this is between you and me, all right? You don’t tell anybody else.”

“Wouldn’t think of it.”

“That’s good.” I gave his shoulder a parting shake. “That’s good. Hell, for all we know, the county commission chairman is just helping out with a little baby-sitting.”

“Oh, yeah,” Buddy said, and managed a weak laugh.

Back outside in 310, I turned the air conditioning full up and sat for a minute, staring out across the parking lot. “Sam, you goddamn old fool,” I murmured.