Out of Season

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Edwin Boyd had been accurate as hell in what he’d remembered. Thirty-six inches down, the massive bucket of one of Posadas County’s front loaders struck the roof of the car, and in another twenty minutes, the pathetic, crushed thing was hauled out and parked on the surface. Chris Lucero, the county employee who’d been shagged out of bed to dig up the prairie, shut down the machine and looked first at the car, then at me.

“Fun times,” he said.

It wasn’t, and the dozer had done a fair enough job of crushing the little tin can that it took Bob Torrez and Tom Pasquale nearly an hour using power jaws to pry part of it open. With a little imagination, the occupants appeared to be two men.

Richard Finnegan apparently had thought that the burial was adequate to cover his tracks without him having to attend to any other details. The Texas license plate was still intact, and came back as registered to a Vernon Dorrance of Houston. Mr. Dorrance had originally been seated behind the wheel-that much we could tell-before the weight of the dozer and the three weeks underground smeared him and his partner together.

The wallets were in place, in the hip pockets of Mr. Dorrance and his hunting buddy, Paul Friedel. A business card told us that Vernon Dorrance was actually Vernon D. Dorrance, Attorney at Law. There were credit cards and a blank check, but no cash.

Much of the rear of Mr. Dorrance’s skull was missing, the sort of damage that would be done by a high-velocity rifle bullet. What had killed Mr. Friedel wasn’t obvious, but I had no doubt that Dr. Francis Guzman would tell us within a few hours.

In the trunk of the car were two fancy, high-powered rifles and two boxes of ammunition, together with a few other odds and ends packed in two small suitcases, including a camera with ten photos taken in living color. If we were lucky, at least one of the exposures would show a proud great white hunter kneeling beside the antelope he’d stalked across the vast wastelands of Posadas County…a photo taken just before he stiffed his guide out of a day’s pay.

I left the final inventory to Sergeant Torrez, but what the two men had been after seemed clear to me. How and why they’d tangled with Dick Finnegan was just a guess on our part, and only one person would know the answer for sure.

Charlotte Finnegan invited us in for coffee. That wasn’t what I needed most at four o’clock in the morning, but playing hostess gave her something to do.

By then, she’d known for four hours that her husband was dead. Father Eugene Starkey had been with her most of that time after the deputies had left, but no one else had seen fit to pay her a visit-not that she had many neighbors who were on the night shift. One of the deputies told me that a sister who lived in Albuquerque was on her way down to stay with Charlotte until she decided which way to lean.

When Estelle and I arrived, we had known for two hours who was in the car.

I accepted the cup of coffee with a hand that wasn’t all too steady.

“How about a sandwich?” Charlotte asked with that sort of eager brightness that takes so much effort when all you really want to do is puddle. “I’ve got some nice sliced ham and some of that wonderful dark rye bread.”

“That would be nice,” I said, and looked down at my hands. Some of the prairie was still under my nails, and that brought back the image of the car and its ripe contents. “You mind if I wash up a little?”

The bathroom down the hall was neat as a pin, with the fake porcelain sink buffed spotless. I felt as if I were kicking Charlotte yet again as I watched the water and soap spot the finish. I used the dark towel with the roadrunner embossed on it and wiped out the sink when I was finished.

As I made my way back down the hall toward the living room of the mobile home, Charlotte stood with the sandwich on a paper plate in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other.

“Thank you,” I said, and sat down with a sigh on the sofa beside Estelle. Charlotte wilted into a rocking chair next to the television.

“Charlotte, did you ever hear the names Vernon Dorrance and Paul Friedel?”

“Mercy, no. Are they coming by?”

“No.” I took a sip of coffee. “Did you know anything about your husband’s selling antelope hunts?”

“Oh, he did that all the time.” She leaned forward and clasped her hands. “See, my sister’s former husband is a travel agent, and he sometimes makes arrangements for guided hunts.”

“Any time of year?”

“Oh, yes. That’s the wonderful thing about it, my husband told me. If the game animals are on your own ranch, on your own land, you can hunt any time of year without a license, just like the Indians do on the reservation. At first, I didn’t believe that. I guess it sounded just too good to be true. So one day I called the sheriff’s office-your office-and spoke to the sheriff himself. He told me that he didn’t know, but that he’d find out for sure and call me back. He didn’t, mind you. But I felt better just having checked.”

“Is that right?” I said, and took a bite of the sandwich, reflecting that the Department of Game and Fish would be amused at the creative interpretation of their game laws. “Do you remember an incident about three weeks ago with any hunters?”

Charlotte looked puzzled. “Three weeks.” She brightened, then almost immediately frowned. “Oh, my, he was so angry. If I’m remembering the same incident you are, that must be the one. My, he was angry. Two men had come to hunt, sure enough. On a Sunday. The first Sunday in April. I remember now. And then Richard said that after they took a really nice trophy antelope, they refused to pay. He showed them just where to hunt, and everything. And then they refused to pay. Honestly.”

I leaned over and held out the two drivers’ licenses to Charlotte. “Are these the men?”

“Oh, I never met them. He just told me that they’d argued, and that finally he’d been able to convince them that New Mexico laws were different than the laws in Texas. I remember that. So they were from Texas.” She nodded and handed the licenses back to me.

“But you never saw them, or their vehicle?”

“I saw the car from a distance. A little blue thing. Really quite pretty.”

Not anymore, I thought. Neither the coffee nor the sandwich sat any too well, and shortly after that, we left Charlotte to Father Starkey.

“With the jack handle that Torrez found beside Finnegan’s truck in town, and with this, I can’t imagine Judge Hobart wanting to bother with a Grand Jury,” I said as we drove back down the hill toward Posadas. “Edwin Boyd just defended himself. It’s as simple as that.” I looked at the clock on the dashboard of the car and groaned.

“My God,” I said, and Estelle glanced over at me.

“What?”

“The county commissioners’ meeting is in about five hours.”

“Are you going to it?”

“Oh,” I sighed, “I don’t know. What’s the point? They’ll do what they want to do whether or not I’m there. Besides, the service for Martin Holman is the day after tomorrow. I’m supposed to attend, and so are you. And Janice asked if I’d say a few words. I need some time to think about that.”

Estelle reached across and patted my arm affectionately. “You’ll come up with something.”

“If I’m awake.”

“A Don Juan de Onate breakfast burrito will see you through today and the commissioners’ meeting,” Estelle said. “And as far as tomorrow is concerned, I think Martin Holman would have been pleased to know that his photos provided the critical evidence to solve a quadruple homicide.”

“Let me write that down,” I said. “Maybe that will make Janice feel just a little better.”

I showered, shaved, and managed a half-hour nap…enough to keep me awake long enough to meet Neil Costace and Estelle at the Don Juan for an early lunch. A blizzard of depositions and reports ruined the rest of the day, along with a twenty-minute meeting with the county commissioners. I was duly appointed sheriff of Posadas County, and Sam Carter looked satisfied. I didn’t ruin his day by mentioning his tape-recorded hobby.

On Tuesday, despite Janice Holman’s wishes, the memorial service for Martin Holman and Philip Camp filled the First Baptist Church on Bustos. At her request, the law-enforcement officers who attended were dressed in civilian clothes.

At the appropriate moment, Pastor Jeremy Hines motioned to me and I got up to face more than two hundred sober faces. Janice Holman, sitting in the front row, was looking down at her hands, and in a moment of cowardice, I found myself hoping that she would continue to do so. I knew that she had never thought much of her husband’s midlife passion for law enforcement.

I looked down at the lectern where, if I’d had any sense, my notes would have been. I thrust my hands in my pockets. “You know,” I said finally, “Martin Holman used to joke that he never seemed to be able to get anything done. Balky legislators, no money, not enough manpower, outdated equipment.” I smiled. “All the rewards of winning a hard-fought political campaign.” Five rows back, Sam Carter looked pained. “But I just want to say that Martin Holman accomplished far more than he would ever take credit for. He brought a small, rural law-enforcement department out of the Stone Age and into the modern world of computers and instant data checks. And he did that despite criticism from several dinosaurs, myself foremost.”

A light chuckle rippled through the audience, and I frowned. “More important, he insisted on the up-to-date training that has created some of the finest law-enforcement officers in the country. The young men and women who work for Martin Holman’s department receive job offers from some of the most prestigious law-enforcement organizations in the country.” I hesitated, then added, “He even made it possible for some of us to continue doing what we love best, long after some other administrator would have told us to go home and take up needlepoint.

“He would have been pleased to know that the evidence he gathered Friday afternoon also made it possible to resolve a most perplexing, tragic case.” I saw Janice Holman shift uncomfortably. She looked up at me, and I nodded at her.

“But most important, Martin Holman was a good, honest human being who tried his best to make this world a better place for his family and his friends and his community. I don’t think we can ask any more of a man than that. I’m going to miss him.”

I nodded again and sat down. Estelle reached over and patted the back of my hand. Knowing the answer perfectly well, I leaned over and whispered, “Have you talked with Sam Carter yet about the tape recording?”

Estelle Reyes-Guzman looked heavenward.

“I’ll take care of it tomorrow,” I whispered. “It’ll be a nice change of pace.”