Out of Season

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The instant that Sergeant Robert Torrez switched on the ignition of his unit, the radio barked into life, catching dispatcher Ernie Wheeler in mid-sentence.

“…seven, PCS. Try channel two.”

A few seconds of silence followed, and I reached forward and turned the volume up slightly. By then, we were headed out of the airport parking lot onto State 78.

“Three-oh-seven, PCS. Do you copy?”

Static followed, and I keyed our mike. “PCS, three-ten is ten-eight.”

“Three-ten, PCS, ten-four. Did you copy a transmission from three-oh-seven?”

“Three-ten, negative.”

My telephone chirped and I dug it out of the jumble of papers between the seats. “Gastner.”

“Sir, Mrs. Boyd just called.” Linda Real’s tone was clipped and businesslike, but the words came so rapid-fire that I had a hard time keeping up. “I’ve still got her on line one. Apparently her husband received a telephone call-she doesn’t know from who-and then he left the house on the run. Mrs. Boyd said he was really angry. And he took a gun with him.”

“Linda,” I said, “slow down. Boyd left the house with a weapon after receiving a telephone call? Is that what his wife is saying?”

“That’s right, sir.”

I swore under my breath. “And she didn’t know who called?”

“No, sir.”

“Ask her again.”

I heard mumbling in the background, and about a minute later, Linda came back on the line. “She has no idea. She said that her husband listened and that she heard him cuss a couple of times. And then he said, ‘Thanks a lot,’ and hung up.”

“Is Johnny’s brother home? Edwin?”

“Just a minute, sir.”

I could picture Linda with a telephone against each ear. I watched the highway in front of us as the white lines and the double yellows blended into a high-speed blur.

“Sir, she said Edwin’s not home. He went into town earlier.”

“Probably to the goddam bar,” I muttered. Edwin liked the sauce anyway, and a hurting knee would encourage him even more.

“Yes, sir,” Linda said without a trace of surprise in her voice. “Ernie has been trying to raise Sergeant Mitchell on the radio, but apparently they’re in a dead spot. And he hasn’t responded to the phone. Ernie said for me to contact you while he kept on trying the radio.”

I only half heard Linda’s explanation as my mind raced ahead. Bob Torrez had come to the same conclusion I did, because he accelerated hard. “Linda, tell Mrs. Boyd to stay in the house and to stay off the telephone. We’re going to head up that way. And, Linda?”

“Sir?”

“I don’t want any other traffic getting in our way. Tell Ernie that. Everyone stays put until they hear from me. While you’re there, give me the Finnegans’ phone number. Ernie knows it by heart.”

She did so, and before I dialed, I took a second to tighten my shoulder harness, hoping that Torrez remembered that the intersection of State 78 and County 43 involved a right-angle turn.

While I tried to fit my fat finger on the tiny buttons of the damn phone, I glanced at Torrez. “I wouldn’t put it past old George Payton to have called Johnny,” I said. “Maybe he figures it’s the least he could do for him.”

Charlotte Finnegan answered the phone on the second ring. Her “Hello” sounded like the whimper a child might make peeking around a door into a darkened room.

“Mrs. Finnegan, this is Sheriff Gastner. Let me talk with your husband, please.”

“This is Sheriff Gastner?”

“Yes, ma’am. Is Richard there?”

“We don’t have a very good connection,” she said reprovingly. “I can barely understand you.”

“Mrs. Finnegan, this is Sheriff Gastner.” I slowed down and exaggerated the enunciation as if she could read my lips across the phone lines. “I need to talk with your husband.” I braced my feet against the firewall as I saw the signs announcing the intersection with the county road.

Even as we squawled around the corner and emerged wheels-side-down heading northbound on 43, I heard Mrs. Finnegan say, “Richard went into Posadas, Sheriff.”

“He’s in town?”

She laughed apologetically. “I was rearranging the pantry and discovered I was out of canning lids.”

That stopped me short. I frowned and braced my free hand against the dashboard as we blasted up a series of tortuous ess curves below Consolidated Mining’s access road. “You were what?”

“I was out of canning lids. I know it’s early, but I find that if I don’t do things just when I think of them, why, when I need something, it’s not there. Now Richard came in earlier and mentioned that he needed several rolls of duck tape for morning. You know he’s working on that pipeline. And so as long as he needed that, I just added to the list.” She sounded most pleased with herself. “I believe the Day-Night market on Grande has both the tape and the canning supplies.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Finnegan. When he comes back, tell him I called. Good night.” She sounded like she’d have liked to settle into an all-evening confab, but I cut her off.

“Huh,” I said to myself and dialed dispatch. “Ernie,” I said, “have Tom Mears or whoever is available swing by the Day-Night store. Ask Peggy-I think she’s the one who works there at night-if Richard Finnegan stopped in sometime this evening to buy a few things.”

“That’s it, sir?”

“That’s it.” I switched off and for a few minutes, watched the darkness slide by. “Canning lids,” I said to no one in particular. “He went into town to buy canning lids. Canning lids in springtime.”

“Canning late snow peas,” Torrez said, but he didn’t crack a smile. We roared up the steep section of twisting macadam that passed Consolidated Mining, and a few moments later as we crested the hill above the reservoir, I tried the radio again. But either Mitchell had his radio turned off or he was in one of the many areas in the county where the signal couldn’t reach one of the repeater towers on the west end of Cat Mesa or across the county to the peak of San Cristobal.

“PCS, three-oh-three is ten-eight.”

Deputy Pasquale hadn’t had any more sleep than any of the rest of us, but he was in his element. He couldn’t even say routine numbers without sounding eager.

“He’d be a good one to have at our backsides,” I said and keyed the mike. “Three-oh-three, work your way up County Forty-three to the intersection with the ranch road. Wait on the pavement.”

“Ten-four.”

“Make sure you wait on the pavement,” I repeated, and Pasquale acknowledged. In another couple of minutes, we reached the turnoff, now so well-used by the airplane salvage team that the dusty tire marks of vehicles turning onto the highway from the dirt road had left a pronounced arc on the dark asphalt.

“Kill the lights,” I said, but Torrez’s hand was already moving toward the switch. The moon wasn’t up, and Torrez tapped the little toggle switch down low by the emergency-brake release. The tiny bulb mounted on the back side of the bumper, what he affectionately called his “perpetrator light,” cast just enough glow that he could see the edge of the road in his peripheral vision.

I buzzed down my window, straining to see ahead. We had 3.8 miles before we reached the first intersection, the two-track that wound off to the south, up the back side of Cat Mesa to where Dick Finnegan was fiddling with his spring and his piping. I wasn’t sure exactly what reference Torrez was using to keep the Bronco on the road, but he kept the speed moderate, looking off into the distance as if he could actually see where we were going.

The smell of dry sage was strong as the night air wafted by my face. I realized I was straining to hear more than to see. We reached the intersection, and Torrez stopped and switched off the engine. Both of us sat holding our breath, listening. Not enough wind stirred to rustle the few stalks of bunchgrass that hadn’t been trimmed by cattle.

For a full minute, we sat listening, and then I could hear a car coming up 43 east of us. By the way it was being flogged, I knew that it was Pasquale. Why he hadn’t chosen a career driving the NASCAR circuit, I didn’t know, but every once in a while, his prowess-or recklessness-behind the wheel came in handy.

I twisted around in the seat and saw the headlights in the distance sweep an arc across the prairie as he turned into the dirt road without putting the high-slung vehicle on its roof in the ditch.

I picked up the mike. “Stay right at that intersection, Tom,” I said. He keyed twice to acknowledge. “No one comes in or out this road until you hear from me.”

“Three-oh-three, ten-four.”

Torrez started the Bronco and we idled ahead, still listening. Another 2.2 miles brought us to a main intersection, this one a well-worn two-track to the north, and I knew it led to the block house windmill.

“Do you know where this shooting area is?” I asked.

Torrez nodded. “It’s on the same route as we took to the crash site, except there’s a fork up a ways, and instead of bearing left up onto the flat, we stay to the right. It’ll kinda snake around and then it ends up in a little box canyon. Boyd’s got one of his corrals there, too.”

“Then as the crow flies, it’s not far from the Boyds’ house.”

“Maybe two thousand yards,” Torrez offered.

“And about three miles if you have to drive it.” I leaned forward, staring into the darkness. The prairie was spooky, dark shapes looming up out of the darkness to slide by as we passed. The crunch of the tires on the gravel was inordinately loud, a sound that the silence of the prairie amplified to broadcast our presence for hundreds of yards.

“How far are we?” I asked.

“A mile or so,” Torrez said.

“All right. Let’s-” and I damn near choked on the words as the gunshots pealed out over the prairie. They came in rapid sequence, first three and then two more, so fast that the sounds were gone before the next heartbeat. I slammed forward against the harness as the Bronco jarred to a halt. We both held our breath, listening.

“Lights,” I said. “Let’s make some noise.”

Torrez pulled on the lights, and the sand and cholla and creosote bushes sprang into stark life, softened here and there by the remains of bunchgrass.

“And I want them to know it’s us,” I said and reached down and threw the little toggle switch that turned on the light bar on top of the Bronco. “Even if he’s just shooting at coyotes.”

Bob Torrez’s reply to that wishful thinking was to trigger the electric release for the shotgun that rode in the center vertical rack. I pulled the weapon out and set the butt on the floor between my feet.

I was a fair enough shot if the sun was just right and the ground under my feet was level, if the target was stapled into position downrange and the wind wasn’t blowing, if I had remembered the correct pair of glasses.

Not one of those conditions was in play just then, so a shotgun filled with five rounds of double-ought buck was a comfort. But what made my skin crawl was considering where those five, quickly fired rounds had gone.

“No one shot back,” I said aloud. Torrez didn’t answer.