Out of Season

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

As we charged down the hill that night, I didn’t have much time for reflection, and I certainly didn’t want to distract Robert Torrez with conversation. The county road into town was twisting, gravel-strewn on the corners, and populated with dimwitted deer and skunks, and an occasional drunk who strayed out from town.

The Bronco handled about as well as any truck, and it didn’t take much imagination to picture us somersaulting down the mesa face in a pile of smoking, groaning metal.

We shot past the old quarry and I keyed the mike.

“Three-oh-three, three-ten. Ten-twenty.”

If he was where he was supposed to be, I knew exactly what Tommy Pasquale was doing when he heard my call for his location. With a homicide just two blocks away, he was chafing at the bit. For the second time that night, he was being asked to sit off on the sidelines while something interesting was happening just out of sight. As he heard my voice, I could picture his hand flashing up to the gearshift of his patrol car, ready to pull it into drive, and his foot poised, ready to mash the accelerator to the floor.

“Three-oh-three is on Pershing at the Legion Hall,” Pasquale said, and I could hear the tension in his voice. He had the discipline not to add, “Just where Sergeant Mitchell told me to be.”

“Three-oh-three, ten-four.” I knew there was no rear exit that Boyd could slip out of to return to his vehicle. If he left the building, Pasquale would see him. “Stay on him,” I said, “and let me know the instant he moves.” And when Pasquale responded with an audible twinge of impatience, I could picture his hand slipping off the gear lever.

“Three-ten, three-oh-seven. ETA?”

I could hear excited voices in the background, and Eddie Mitchell’s tone was brusque.

“Three-ten is just passing Consolidated. About six minutes out,” I said.

By the time we roared into the village, down Grande Avenue, past Pershing Park and across Bustos, the main east-west village street, I could see a fair collection of winking red lights up ahead, a couple belonging to one of the village units.

The Pierpoint Bar and Grill was a narrow, dark little building that shared the South 100 block of Grande Avenue with the Posadas Register’s modern, metal-sided and uninteresting plant. Tucked well off the sidewalk, its parking lot fronted Rincon Street, a dead-end lane that snaked back behind the newspaper building.

Torrez braked hard, skirted a group of spectators and turned into Rincon, damn near rear-ending Chief Eduardo Martinez’s bargelike Oldsmobile. The old car was parked with its massive butt out in the street as if Eduardo had been too flustered to know what to do with it.

I caught a glimpse of Eddie Mitchell and Tom Mears at the far east end of the narrow parking lot, standing beside Richard Finnegan’s pickup truck. One of the part-timers who made up the three-man village department was unwinding a yellow tape. There were too many pairs of legs in the way to be able to see anything else.

It didn’t surprise me that Richard Finnegan was a patron of the Pierpoint. Many local ranchers were-their pickup trucks filled the small parking lot at any given hour, the patient dogs that were their constant companions standing in the back of the trucks or lying on the toolbox, waiting with lolling tongues marking time.

Chief Martinez waddled over toward me as soon as he saw me disembark from the Bronco. I always got the impression that crime surprised Eduardo…that he thought of it as something that eventually would just go away if only we had enough nice parades and summer festivals in Pershing Park.

I readily admitted that we treated his department as if it didn’t exist most of the time…which, in point of fact, it didn’t, since a combination of what Posadas could pay a certified officer, and what little area there was to patrol within the village limits, resulted in an officer turnover rate that approached the monthly.

“What the hell happened, Chief?” I said. With the portable radio in one hand and a flashlight in the other, Bob Torrez strode past me, making a beeline for the village officer, who was doing his best to keep the spectators back. I saw a look of relief on Eduardo’s face when he glanced over and saw Torrez’s approach.

“They found him in the parking lot, right next to his truck,” Martinez said. He put his hands on his hips. “Richard Finnegan, from up north of town? You know him, I guess.”

“Of course.”

“He’s got a knife stuck in him. Dead as a fish, man.”

I glanced over toward the corner of the parking lot and caught a glimpse of the body near the back bumper of the truck. Mitchell and Mears were in discussion, and I saw Mitchell point off toward the street.

“I think he got in a fight with somebody. I’m not sure who just yet,” the chief said.

“A fight in the bar?”

“I guess it started there,” Eduardo said. “Then I guess they came outside somehow.”

The absurd image of that in Martinez’s report skirted through my mind. They went outside somehow. I shook my head, trying to focus. “Who’d you talk to?”

“Well…” Martinez pointed off to his left, toward the side door of the Pierpoint, where a group of nervous patrons had gathered “…Lonnie Prior says he saw Mr. Finnegan leave the bar.”

I patted Eduardo on the elbow and strode over to Prior. He was a short, wiry man who didn’t do much of anything other than make a concentrated effort to turn his pension from the U.S. Post Office into liquid good times.

I beckoned him off to the side and he grudgingly complied, keeping his eyes on the action across the lot. “Lonnie, tell me what you saw.”

“Well, shit,” Lonnie Prior said. “Not much, you know.”

One of the Posadas Emergency Services ambulances screamed to a stop on Grande, lights pulsing. At the same time, Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s unmarked unit slipped up to the curb.

“Whatever that ‘not much’ is, I need to hear it,” I snapped, and Prior took a step backward as if I’d slapped him.

“I saw Finnegan inside, that’s all,” he said.

“At the bar or at a table?”

“The bar.”

“Where were you?”

“At the pool table in the back.”

“How’d you happen to notice him?”

Prior looked nervous. “Well, he was there when I come in, you know. You know. All the regulars, and stuff. He was just one of them sittin’ at the bar.”

“Did you speak to him?”

“No. Nodded, maybe. Just like to all the others.”

“And then?”

Prior might have been thinking hard, or he might have been concentrating on Estelle’s lithe figure approaching from the street.

“And then?” I prompted.

“He left sometime,” Prior said. “I glanced up and saw him go out the door.”

“With anyone?”

“Now that-” He stopped as Estelle walked up to me.

“Richard Finnegan,” I said to her. “He walked into someone’s knife. I haven’t been over there.”

She nodded and didn’t pursue the vague “someone’s knife.” Instead, she walked back out onto Rincon Street and circled around the crowd of people to reach the scene.

“Did you see him talking with anyone? Arguing? Anything like that?”

“Nothing that drew my attention,” Prior said finally.

“You didn’t see him leave in company with anyone?”

He shook his head. “But I was occupied,” he added.

“Who was sitting nearest him at the bar when you came in? Do you remember?”

Prior took a deep breath and looked off into the distance. “Let’s see. Alex Taylor is workin’ the bar.” He turned and looked at the others who had drifted toward the yellow ribbon like flies to flypaper. “Stubby Moore, over there. Emilio Garcia. His brother there too. Juan. Jim Burdick and his wife. They were all kinda there, but I don’t recall who was sitting where.”

“Thanks. Don’t go anywhere,” I said. I strode over to Jim Burdick, who was standing near the back bumper of one of the patrons’ vehicles, an arm protectively around his wife Peggy’s plump shoulders.

He still smelled faintly of automotive grease and his face was pale. He didn’t release his hold on his wife when he turned to greet me.

“Jim, who was Finnegan with tonight?” I said without preamble.

“He come in alone, as far as I know,” Burdick said.

“Did you talk with him?”

“I was going to. He’s ordered a rear axle seal for that truck of his, and I was about to tell him it come in today. But then he up and left, just all of a sudden.”

“Had he been talking to anyone?”

“No, not that I remember.”

“He looked like he wanted to say something to that rancher,” Burdick’s wife said.

“What rancher, Peggy?”

She looked up at her husband. “Who was that? Sitting at the table by the window? Remember? He was all by himself and when we came in, you kind of waved at him?”

“At the table?” Burdick said, puzzled.

“Right by the window.”

“Oh. That was Ed Boyd. But he left.”

“And then so did Mr. Finnegan,” Peggy Burdick said. “I remember, because I heard Mr. Finnegan mutter something. I couldn’t hear what it was. But I remember that he’d ordered a drink, and he left before Alex could get it to him. He tossed a couple bucks on the bar and just left.”

“Edwin Boyd was here?” I glared hard at Burdick.

“Yeah,” he said helpfully. “But he left.”

“I bet he did,” I muttered and spun around, only to crash into Neil Costace. I pointed across the lot at Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s figure as we both regained our balance. “Go get her,” I said. “Meet me at her unit right there.”

I slipped into Estelle’s sedan and grabbed the mike.

“Three-oh-three, three-ten.”

“Three-oh-three.”

“Tom, has there been any vehicular traffic past you in the last few minutes? Going northbound on Forty-three?”

“That’s negative, three-ten.”

“All right. I want you to go inside the Legion Hall and find Johnny Boyd. Tell him that I need to talk with him right now. We’ll be there in less than a minute.”

“Ten-four.”

Neil Costace and Estelle appeared at the car door, and I pushed myself out.

“Edwin Boyd,” I said and for the first time, saw a look of surprise on Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s face.