Privileged to Kill

28

I opened the massive, carved oak front door and held it for Wesley Crocker. Even as the first wash of familiar aromas wafted out to greet me, so too did the curse of my life-the distant jangling of the damn telephone far out in the kitchen. I ignored it, knowing that it would go away if it wasn’t important.

“Now say, sir,” Crocker murmured as he stood in the tiled foyer. “This is…” And he stopped for want of anything better to say.

“It’ll do,” I said. “Let me show you where you’re going to be staying.”

“Is that your phone, sir?”

“I suppose.” I led him down the short hall. “Watch the step,” I said when we reached the living room. He maneuvered his crutches carefully on the polished tile, trying to divide his attention between where he was hobbling and the view.

I used my eldest daughter Camille’s bedroom as a convenient guest room-it was the farthest from my own burrow on the other side of the house. And since I rarely had overnight guests, the linens went untouched for months at a time.

“Here’s a place to sleep,” I said, and Wesley Crocker leaned against the door, a wistful expression on his grizzled face.

“Ain’t seen that many teddy bears in one spot in some time,” he said.

“My daughter’s. She takes a few every time she visits. She doesn’t visit often. Anyway, it’s a comfortable bed. Let me show you the bathroom.” I turned and realized the telephone was still ringing. “It’s right here on the right. Let me get the damn phone.”

I crossed the living room quickly and picked up the phone from the kitchen counter. I knew who it was before I heard the voice, since only one person had the patience to let the thing ring thirty times.

“Gastner.”

“Good morning, sir,” Estelle Reyes-Guzman said as if we hadn’t spent most of the night together. She sounded bright and efficient. “Do you have Wesley Crocker with you?”

“Good morning, and yes, I do. Why?”

“I just wanted to make sure that he got from there to there in one piece.”

“He did.”

“Actually, I wanted to tell you what Bob Torrez found out. I got him to dig around in that pile of scrap metal, and he found the two-sided tape that sticks the deer whistler base to the truck.”

“What about the plastic base itself?”

“No, sir. But he said he and Eddie Mitchell would scour the intersection again and come up with it. If it’s there, they’ll find it.”

“What else did he have to say?”

“He said that the bolts holding the front bumper on didn’t come with the truck. They’re longer than they should be, for one thing. For another, they’re not chrome, and the bumper was. He said the bolts always match the bumper.”

“Huh,” I said. “So if the kid bought a grille guard, then it stands to reason it came with mounting bolts that would replace the originals.”

“Yes, sir. And if he was in a hurry to take the guard off after a collision, he might not have had time to hunt up the original bolts.”

“Or might not have thought of it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you talked again with the Wilton kid?”

“No, sir. I wanted to stay clear of him until we had something definite to go on. I told the deputies the same thing.”

“And the sheriff as well, I hope.”

“He went home to bed, sir.”

“Smart man. So should you. What about Tom Pasquale?”

“He’s been checking in regularly with dispatch, sir. Vanessa Davila left the trailer shortly after you took them home. She walked as far as MacArthur Street, then turned around and walked home.”

“That’s almost a mile, round trip. She isn’t the type for exercise. I wish we knew what’s going around in that head, if anything.”

“That’s one of the reasons I called, sir. I came home for a little bit…just in time to fix breakfast for Francis and the kid.”

“I’m sure they appreciated that.”

“One can only hope. But I went through Maria Ibarra’s things again.”

“There wasn’t anything there, Estelle.”

“Well, sir, there was, but not where we looked the first time. Can you stand a visitor for a few minutes?”

“Sure. I was just about to put the coffee on. I was giving Crocker the tour.”

She chuckled, but didn’t say what amused her. I hung up and turned to see Crocker hobbling across the living room. “Kitchen,” I said, sweeping my hand around. I pointed at the refrigerator and then at the stove. “Food.” I pointed at the telephone. “Sister in California when you get around to it.” I realized I was sounding like a parent, and grinned. “I’m no nurse, so you’re just going to have to make yourself at home.”

I stepped down into the living room. “The television works, and I have one video. And books, since you like to read. I have lots of books.”

Crocker hobbled just far enough to reach the first set of bookshelves, where the multivolume set of New Mexico statutes gathered dust. “You know, a man can learn a lot of history just through readin’ the laws,” he said.

“Sure. Given enough free time.”

He moved slowly along the east wall bookcase, from statutes to natural history to Grant’s memoirs and the rest of my Civil War collection. He turned and grinned at me, nodding. “I guess I could just kinda sit here and read for a bit,” he said.

“Make yourself at home. I come and go at all hours, so don’t wait on me for anything. You want some coffee?”

“Why, that would be fine,” he said absently, but I could see he was lost in the book titles again.

As I put the grounds in the filter and filled the pot, I watched him inch along the shelves, now and then stopping to pull a volume toward himself a quarter of an inch. He hesitated in the Civil War section.

“That book on Joshua Chamberlain is particularly good,” I said as I walked back into the living room and grunted into my leather chair.

Crocker frowned. “I’d like to look at that,” he said. “It always surprised me that he lived to be such an old man after being so terribly hurt in the war.” He said it quietly, just as an observation in passing, not to impress me. But I was impressed.

I tented my hands and waited until he moved another couple feet into the section of Revolutionary War and War of 1812 books. In order to reach those, he had to step past a collection of family photographs. I saw his brow furrow.

“Did your wife pass on?”

“Yes.”

He nodded as if that was all he needed to know, which indeed it was.

“You have a passion for military history,” Crocker observed.

“I’ve always believed that our wars define us,” I answered. “And that’s not an original observation by any means. But let me ask you a question, Mr. Crocker.” He turned with one hand still resting on the shelving. “How is it that a man who has spent his life traveling, observing, learning”-I paused, my hands still in front of my mouth-“and remembering…How is it that you can spend so long doing that, and when it comes to suspicious, maybe violent, activity within one hundred yards of you, you see nothing?”

Crocker dropped his hand to his crutch and stood quietly, eyebrows knit.

“And how is it that you can walk down a quiet street,” I continued, “and not see the single vehicle that struck you? Not see it either coming or going. Now how is that? Someone who can see the faint wagon rut traces of Bennett’s Road from a mile away doesn’t notice whether it’s an automobile, a pickup truck, or a tractor trailer that hits him. How is that?”

I hooked my hands behind my head and let the leather recliner cradle me. Crocker looked back at the books, but I knew I was right. He sure as hell wasn’t thinking about the War of 1812.