Double Prey

Chapter Thirty-nine

All that they knew for sure, Estelle thought ruefully, was that the crushed truck had come from Gus Prescott’s collection. That was all. The questionable recollection of another rancher had offered that Eddie Johns had driven a black, three-quarter ton Ford diesel crew cab. She could imagine the bemused expression of District Attorney Dan Schroeder.

The undersheriff was tempted simply to confront Gus Prescott with the question, but knew the risks of that. Tipping one’s hand prematurely was a dangerous poker move…and even more so here.

She forced herself to remain patient as Cameron Florek took his time with his mammoth fork lift, shifting the carcasses of the crushed vehicles from trailer to ground. An hour later, the burned pancake of a late-model pickup was transferred to Florek’s smaller flatbed car carrier and delivered to the Quonset hut behind the barbed wire fence in the county boneyard.

Then, using wrecking bars, an assist from the fire department’s Jaws of Life, and considerable sweat and cursing, the officers unfolded the truck’s corpse one bend at a time.

Sheriff Robert Torrez glared at the heap that leaked driblets of oil and other bodily fluids on the floor of the impound building. “No engine. No tranny. No wheels, no brake rotors or calipers. Hell, this thing’s been stripped like a derelict in downtown Juarez.”

“You know what puzzles me?” Bill Gastner said. “This crate was burned, but only sort of, you know what I mean? Look here.” He rested his hands gingerly on one crushed front fender, and pointed at the firewall. “Windshield is gone, of course, and that’s where the VIN impression used to be. That’s all ripped to hell and gone. But all this shit?” He leaned farther in and pointed at some of the firewall connections. “The fire didn’t reach there. In fact, just not much at all in here.” He straightened and backed a step or two away. “In fact, it’s sort of a surface burn…a scorch.”

“Somebody got there quick with an extinguisher,” Tom Pasquale offered.

“Yes, but. Look at it…the whole thing is nicely toasted, know what I mean? On the outside. ”

“Front seats are gone, so they didn’t melt. But they left the back bench in.”

“And that’s an odd combination to me,” Gastner said. He turned and looked at Estelle, who, along with Linda Real, was saving images with a variety of cameras. “This was burned long enough ago that the sheet metal has had time to patina pretty nicely. It’s hard as hell to tell what color the thing was, at least from a distance. You dig around inside, and you can see that it was black, but it takes some work.”

The sheriff had been kneeling at the back of the wreck, and he stood slowly, beckoning Tom Pasquale. “Need to unfold that,” he said cryptically. The that was the tailgate of the truck, now crushed forward into the bed, the side bed panels folded inward to lock it in place. The tailgate itself had folded in a ragged line, collapsing in on itself. The sheriff beckoned to Estelle. “See in there?” He held his flashlight for her. By looking into the tunnel formed by the folded tailgate, she could see the remains of an emblem.

“Part of it left, anyways,” Torrez said. “Be careful with that,” he added as Tom Pasquale brought the jaws close. “If that’s a dealer emblem, I don’t want it wrecked.”

For nearly half an hour, they worked, the metal screeching and groaning as it was peeled back layer by layer. With a come-along looped to a building support at one end and hooked to the fender with the other, they spread the crushed bed apart, freeing the tailgate a bit at a time.

“Sure as hell be easier if they’d left the license plate on it,” Torrez grunted at one point. “But this is gonna be almost as good.”

As the envelope of crushed tailgate was pried open, they could see a fragment of burned pot metal lying askew. The adhesive that had affixed the name plate to the tailgate’s surface had been tough enough that the plate had broken in two places.

Torrez waited patiently as Linda Real moved in close with her macro lens, and when she finished, pushed the two pieces of name plate together. “Borderland Fo,” he recited. “Paso, Texas.”

He looked up at Estelle. “We need to get Mears over there ASAP. Borderland Ford will have records. Then there’s no question. He…” The sheriff was interrupted by the jarring buzz of the building alarm, and then a tentative rap on the metal door.

Abeyta shot the bolt and opened the door a couple inches. “Good morning sir,” he said, and turned to the others. “Herb Torrance?”

“Ah,” Estelle said. “I asked him if he’d stop by. Bill and I will be right out.”

“Bill and I?” Gastner grunted. “I’m getting too damn deep in this.”

“Your impressions are always welcome,” Estelle said. “After all, you’re the reason we’re here at the moment.”

Herb Torrance, owner of the H-Bar-T ranch, had retreated away from the door, and now leaned his forearms on the hood of his truck, hands clasped together as he watched the performance on the other side of the boneyard as two county employees worked with a hoist to sling a repaired back tire onto a county road grader.

“Hey,” he said as Estelle and Gastner appeared from the Quonset. At a distance he could be confused with someone from one of the utility companies, dressed entirely in a brown double pocket work shirt and brown trousers. A grubby baseball cap with the bill folded just so rested on the back of his head.

“I saw this comin’,” he said. “I figured you were going to show up on my doorstep sooner or later.” He shook hands with both of them, then relaxed back against his truck again.

“I appreciate your stopping by,” Estelle said.

“Well,” Torrance said with a resigned smile, “you said you wanted to see me, so here I am. We got a mess, don’t we? Pretty quiet neighborhood I live in most of the time.”

“Sir, tell me about Eddie Johns.”

Torrance’s leathery face remained impassive, and he pointed at Bill Gastner with his chin. “Hell, you know that son-of-a-bitch as well as me.” He looked back at Estelle. “Waddell tells me that you found Johns up on the mesa.”

“We think so, sir.”

“Been there a while? That’s what Miles said.”

“It appears so.”

“Well, that don’t surprise me. I was gonna call you, but then figured what the hell…if you wanted my two cents, you’d call.”

“Why doesn’t it surprise you, sir?”

Torrance laughed. “I never could see why Miles encouraged that guy. I mean, what’s to come of it?” He shrugged. “Never cared for him much. You know, one time he tried to buy a piece of property from me. Wasn’t interested. Johns didn’t seem ready to understand that. He got real pugnacious. That don’t work so good with me.”

“I really have two things to ask you, sir,” Estelle said. “First of all, were you in the Broken Spur last week-it would be Thursday, we think. Freddy Romero rode through the saloon parking lot on his four-wheeler. Do you recall that?”

“Sure.” He shook his head slowly, ice blue eyes never leaving Estelle’s face. “Sure sorry that had to happen. That trail’s a dangerous place.”

“You saw him that day?”

“Nope. Miles said he did. Now, I sure as hell heard him. That’s the noisiest God damn thing, that little buggy.”

“Gus Prescott was at the Spur as well?”

“Well, yeah. He was.”

“Did you leave the Spur shortly after that, sir?”

Torrance frowned. “You’re askin’ me to remember something longer ago than breakfast, young lady. But sure enough. I had things to do. I only stopped by to see if Gus was going to have his road grader fixed by this time next week. He ain’t, so there we are. But hell,” and he smiled, “it’s only been two years.”

“You and Gus talked about that?”

Torrance laughed hoarsely. “About fifteen seconds. From what I can gather, his grader’s gone south for want of parts that he can’t afford to buy. But you’ll talk to him about that.”

“And then you left the saloon?”

“I did, and then just about the time I was pullin’ out of the parkin’ lot, Gus left the saloon, too. Don’t know about Miles.”

“You drove home?”

“Guess I did.”

“And Gus?”

“And Gus what?”

“Did you happen to notice which way he went? Toward Regál, or back north to Moore?”

“Neither one, I don’t guess. He went up through the canyon.”

“The back trail?”

“That’s what him and me were talkin’ about. There’s a section in there that just tears my truck all to hell. I’ve been tryin’ to get him to grade that-there ain’t no one else with a machine, except for the county, and they won’t do it. Got about a hundred yards that’s more like a quarry than a two-track.”

“Ah,” Estelle nodded.

“If he’d turned east at Bender’s, he’d likely have seen the kid on the four-wheeler, but I guess he woulda turned west on the canyon road. Just too bad, the whole thing.”

“Sir, do you know what kind of vehicle Eddie Johns drove?”

“Well…” Torrance looked up at the blank sky, eyes narrowed to slits. “Been a while. Big old pickup, as I recall.”

“An older model?”

“Well, no, I don’t guess so. He’s in real estate now, you know. Got to look good.”

“Real estate, then, ” Gastner corrected.

“Yup. Guess so. Pretty damn strange.”

“Sir, if you were to see Eddie Johns’ truck, would you be able to recognize it?”

Herb Torrance looked at Estelle skeptically. “Last time I saw him was what, four or five years ago? Something like that? Always wondered what happened to him, but didn’t care enough to ask. Last time I saw him, he was drivin’ a fancy rig. Seems to be it was dark blue or black, maybe. Think it was a Ford. That’s about as close as I can come.”

Estelle beckoned, and he followed her to the Quonset. She held the door for the rancher and for Gastner, and shut it securely behind them.

Standing with his hands on his hips, Torrance regarded the mess on the floor. He shifted a step or two to the side, looked some more, and then said, “Shows some use, don’t it.” He looked up at the others in the room, as if seeing them for the first time. “Bobby, you fellas workin’ to restore this? Your budget that tight, is it?”

“Just needs a little touch-up,” Torrez replied.

He pivoted at the waist and regarded Estelle. “You’re askin’ about Eddie Johns? Does this have something to do with that?”

“Yes, sir. It does.”

“This what’s left of his truck? Is that what you’re gettin’ at?”

“Can you tell us anything about it, sir?”

Torrance’s eyes narrowed a little, and he walked the length of the carcass, the expression on his face that of a rancher judging livestock. Estelle let him look without interrupting his train of thought.

“Couldn’t really say,” he said finally. “I guess this was black once upon a time, and I’d guess it was a Ford crew cab.” He held up both hands in surrender. “That’s my best shot, but then I guess you folks already know all that.”

“Sir, can you tell us why Gus Prescott would have this wrecked vehicle at his ranch?”

Herb Torrance looked genuinely surprised. “Now wait,” he said. “He did have a truck that belonged to Johns. Big old three-quarter ton. Gus told me about that. The story goes that Johns had it parked over at Giarelli Sand and Gravel in Deming when a kid driving an ore truck screwed up royally and drove right over it. Gus said he bought the wreck for salvage…wanted the engine, I guess. Well, now. This is the one?”

“It might be, sir. Did the truck catch fire in the accident?”

Herb chuckled. “Don’t think so.” He chuckled again. “Ah…” He shook his head in amusement. “I tell you, if Gus Prescott didn’t have bad luck, he wouldn’t have no luck at all.” He shook his head again. “Let me tell you about that. I was drivin’ to town one day and saw this plume of black smoke shootin’ up. Right over at Gus’ place. So I drove in, and by the time I get there, he’s standin’ there lookin’ at a smokin’ wreck. See, he was tryin’ to cut something off the truck-one of the bumper supports, I think. Anyway, before he knows it, the damn thing catches fire. He had this garden hose stretched all the way over from the house. That and a little fire extinguisher. He coulda set the whole ranch on fire. Damn good thing it wasn’t windy.”

“And that’s when he told you the truck originally belonged to Johns?”

“Yep.”

“When was this, Mr. Torrance?”

“Oh, hell, it’s been a couple years. Three or four, maybe. He just pushed the wreck over there in line with all the other junk he’s got. I guess,” and Torrance paused to scratch his scalp. “I guess he got out the engine and tranny. I know that he wanted to put the diesel in his own truck. Wouldn’t be surprised. He’s actually a fair hand as a mechanic.”

Estelle looked across at where Bill Gastner rested against a work bench. His arms were crossed over his belly, and he lifted both shoulders in a helpless shrug, a tinge of relief on his broad face.

“What’d he pay Eddie for this piece of junk?” Gastner asked. “Did he say?”

“He didn’t. Wouldn’t have been much, ‘cause Gus ain’t got much. Maybe they made a deal for some work. Don’t know. Gus didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”

“I never got the impression that Gus cared much for Eddie Johns,” Gastner continued.

A hint of wariness crossed Herb Torrance’s face. “You’d have to talk to him about that. Johns was all right, long as you didn’t have to be in the same county with him.” His smile was thin. “I’d be curious to know how he come to end up stuffed in that little cave.”

“Us too,” Gastner replied.