Potshot

Chapter 37

I was in the Chiricahuas County Sheriff's Department talking with their chief homicide investigator. The room was cinderblock. The windows were tinted. The air-conditioning was high. The metal desk and chairs and file cabinet and small conference table were forest green, perfectly complementing the light green walls. All of it was brightly lit by a bank of overhead fluorescents, which perfectly complemented the sunlight coming in through the windows. The chief investigator's name was Cawley Dark. He was a thin, leathery-looking guy wearing starched blue jeans and snakeskin cowboy boots, a white oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a Glock 9, high on his waist just in front of his right hip. On the forest green metal bookcase behind his desk was a big photograph of three teenaged girls clustering around a blond horse with a white mane.

"Buckman was shot three times," he said. "With a 9-millimeter weapon. We did an autopsy, couldn't match the slugs to anything. Wife says he was threatened by some people from the Dell. We say, `Who?' She says, `I don't know.' We say, `Would you recognize them?' She says, `Certainly.' "

"Pick up anyone from the Dell?" I said.

Dark smiled.

"Everybody we picked up was from the Dell," he said. "It's what we use for a ghetto, out here."

"And?"

"And she says none of them are the guys. She thinks."

"Anybody else look at them?"

"Nope."

"He got shot in the middle of the day on the main street in Potshot and no one saw anything."

"Amazing isn't it," Dark said.

"You have any reason to believe it wasn't the way it's been described?" I said.

"Nothing I know says it didn't happen that way," Dark said.

"But?"

"But nothing I know says it's right." Dark said. "You want coffee?"

"No thanks."

He got up and went to a coffeemaker on top of the file cabinet and poured himself some coffee from a stained pot, and came back and sat down. He took a sip and shuddered.

"Goddamn that's awful," he said.

"Glad I declined;" I said.

"After you called," Dark said, "I checked on you in Boston. Got booted around a little. Ended up talking to a state guy named Healy."

"One of my biggest fans," I said.

Dark made a wobbling metz metz gesture with his right hand.

"What do you think about Potshot?" he said.

"A mess," I said. "What do you think of the police chief down there?"

"Walker? Odd duck. I don't know how good he is but he's better than anyone else. The last two quit and left the area."

"Always been a small force?"

"No," Dark said. "For awhile they had an actual police force. Then one of them got killed. And most of the rest sort of dropped out and went away, one at a time."

"Who killed him?"

"Probably the Dell, but we have no evidence."

"Why don't you roust them out of there anyway?" I said.

Dark grinned.

"I'm just a homicide cop," he said. "That's SWAT team stuff."

"And why doesn't the SWAT team do it?"

"Got no legal basis for it for one thing," he said. "Far as we can prove, nobody in the Dell has committed an indictable offense. And, just to complicate things, The Preacher claims that the Dell is a religious organization and any effort to control them is an abridgement of their religious freedom."

"And no one wants to get into another Waco situation," I said.

"You bet," Dark said.

"So you think Walker is in the bag?" I said.

"With the Dell? He's survived in a job that no one seems able to keep."

"You feel the others were run off by the Dell?"

"That's what I figure," Dark said.

"And you can't prove it?"

"Nope. Even talked to one of the previous police chiefs, fella named Mizell. He wasn't talking about anything. But he seemed to be living comfortable."

"You think they bribed him?"

"I had to guess," Dark said, "I think they did both. They told him if he stuck around they'd kill him, so he left. But to keep him quiet, they gave him a separation bonus."

"But Walker has stayed," I said.

"Yep. He's either tougher than a rabid skunk," Dark said. "Or…"

"Or they like him just the way he is," I said. "Maybe they figured they couldn't keep running these guys off without one of them deciding to testify. They're paying them off anyway, so they got a guy they didn't need to run off, and paid him to stay and keep his mouth shut," Dark said.

"Or maybe he's just stubborn," I said.

"I'd be more likely to believe that if he was dead."

"Cynical," I said.

"Probably. You alone?"

"No, I have a few friends with me," I said.

"According to Healy you can't help yourself. You'll annoy The Preacher enough so sooner or later he'll take a run at you."

"Guys just like to have fun," I said.

"Well if they kill you, try and get them to leave clues around," Dark said. "I'd love to bust everybody down there."