Red, Green, or Murder

Chapter Sixteen

“Swing in here a minute,” I said, but the undersheriff had already read my mind and turned off County Road 43. We jounced across a few yards of impromptu parking lot and parked facing the four-strand barbed wire fence that marked U.S. Forest Service property. Fortunately, the quarry wasn’t announced by a historical marker, and couldn’t actually be seen from the highway. But in the bunch grass, the well-worn trails leading to the fence and beyond suggested that there was something attractive over there through the trees.

I was convinced now that Patrick Gabaldon hadn’t taken the rig south of the border. In fact, it seemed to me that Patrick would have done everything in his power to prevent such an episode-and that didn’t bode well. The abandonment of the cattle and his dog told me that somehow, Patrick had run afoul of someone whom he’d either befriended along the highway or who had materialized out of nowhere up on the lonely mesa top. That someone had taken the rig, but no one would be fool enough to attempt a border crossing hauling a body in the back of the trailer.

If the perpetrators were familiar with Posadas County, they would know about the quarry and its dark, deep, foul waters.

For a few minutes we concentrated on the parking area, flash-lights criss-crossing the informal turn-out beaten into the weeds over the years by traffic, an area about the size of a tennis court.

In the failing light, it was difficult to distinguish one set of tire marks from another, but nothing unusual drew my attention. A big pickup pulling a long, twin-axle stock trailer would leave characteristic tracks, and I didn’t see any that came close. We didn’t see any blood stains, although in that light, on that terrain, it would have required a quart or two to make a visible mark.

“What do you think?” I asked, and Estelle stopped and ran her light beam along the top strand of the Forest Service fence. “I can’t imagine somebody lugging a corpse all the way over to the quarry,” I said. “But I can’t imagine a lot of things. You up for a look?”

“We need to do that.”

I used my weight to crush the fence’s top wire down until I could scissors across, then with a boot on the second and tugging upward on the top wire, created a generous hole for Estelle to duck through. A moment’s hike through dust-frosted scrub brought us to the east edge of the attractive nuisance that the Forest Service wished would just go away.

The quarry yawned as a sink hole approximately eighty feet across with huge limestone benches along one side that once upon a time had been damn attractive lounging spots between skinny dips. The crater had been blasted out of the side of the mesa in the 1920s, when some genius decided that there might be something really valuable in the spring-soaked limestone. There wasn’t. The only remains of industry was a concrete block about the size of a Chevrolet on the west bank, with eight rusted bolts projecting from the top. I was surprised that sometime in the past an enterprising kid hadn’t slapped a diving board to those block bolts. Then he could have had us dragging the waters for his corpse.

The spring water continued to drizzle through the years, keeping the quarry filled and probably a little less than toxic. As far as I knew, there was no outlet other than seepage and evaporation, and in the past five dry years the level of the quarry’s dark, rank waters had dropped, exposing another six feet of limestone walls scarred by the blaster’s drill marks.

I scanned the quarry carefully though binoculars, following the beam of my heavy flashlight. The bloated dead thing on the opposite side, nudging up against one of the benches, was too ripe to be Pat Gabaldon.

“Are we missing anyone else?” I asked, my question half in jest.

“Not to my knowledge, sir,” Estelle replied soberly.

I started around the quarry, staying back from the edge, meandering around the hummocks of dry grass and weeds that were dotted here and there with runty little junipers trying to gain a foothold on the inch-thick blanket of topsoil. The quarry’s water was fragrant enough and the level low enough that the randy high school kids would have to be really snoggered to enjoy soaking in what amounted to a quarter acre of spunkwater. Thinking of soaking my tender parts in that stuff gave me the willies.

As I made my way around the rim with Estelle close to my elbow, I paused now and then to play the light across the dark water, its surface scum an interesting admixture of various goopy things. Who knew what lay on the bottom. The Posadas Fire Department had once pumped it empty back in 1986 when the McKelvy youngster went missing. After that experience, I knew that the quarry tapered down like a rough funnel, with ledges and crevasses marking the sides, the bottom forty-one feet from the rim…a far cry from the bottomless mystery of legend. Timmy McKelvy hadn’t drowned in it then, and as far as I knew, no one had since.

We reached the far side, where the contour of the hill rose sharply to the rocks and trees of the mesa flank. I could see that the mule deer hadn’t been so lucky. The carcass had lost most of its fur, the hind legs entangled in rocks along the edge. An interesting soup mix. I took a deep breath of relief, but that was tempered by knowing that if the bastard-or bastards-had managed to toss Pat Gabaldon’s body into the dark waters, it would be another couple of days before it bloated enough to float to the surface.

The water level was fifteen feet below the rim where we stood and on the opposite side, at least eight. I handed my binoculars to Estelle and tracked her flashlight with mine as she scanned the quarry edges again.

“No loose rocks, no fresh scuffing,” she whispered, as if loath to disturb the quiet. “I don’t think so, sir.”

I squatted down and found a fist-sized rock, straightened up and made sure of my balance. “Put your light out on the water,” I said, and the undersheriff did so. I tossed the rock out into the center of the quarry. The splash was satisfying in the quiet of the evening, and we watched the concentric circles reach out to the quarry walls. The splash broke the surface scum in dozens of places and patterns. “How long do you suppose it would take for the scum to blend back into a uniform layer?” I asked. “I don’t think anybody has been here, and sure as hell, I don’t think anybody has thrown something as bulky as a body in here recently.”

“Maybe not,” Estelle said. She switched the light back and forth one more time. “Probably not.”

“No tracks, no nothing,” I repeated, as if saying it enough would make it so. “We need to get back to the car before I end up having to walk on my hands and knees.” My growing apprehension wasn’t because of my unstable waddle around the quarry’s rim. It was akin to that of parents when their kids had missed curfew and then an hour later still hadn’t shown their faces. That’s enough time to invent all kinds of awful scenarios.

A few minutes later, as I settled in the passenger seat of Estelle’s cramped county car, I closed my eyes and waited for a brainstorm. None brewed. I looked across at the undersheriff as she jotted notes on her log. As usual, I couldn’t tell what was going on in that agile mind.

“I need great ideas,” I prompted. She took ten seconds to finish her notes and then slid the small aluminum clipboard back into its boot. The car started with a guttural whisper. “I need to know what your intuition tells you.”

“I think,” she said carefully, and pulled the Crown Vic into gear, “I think that the sooner Captain Naranjo either finds the truck, or finds whoever drove it south, the better.”

“That’s not what I wanted to hear,” I grumbled. “Hell, I can intuit that far ahead. That’s not why we pay you the big bucks, sweetheart.” That prompted a rare laugh from Estelle, and I added, “The clock’s ticking.”

“And we have a million square miles of desert, on both sides of the border, where he could be,” Estelle added, and that didn’t make me feel any better. “And nothing to give us a hint, or sense of direction.” She held up one hand as if she were offering me a grapefruit. “We know Pat was up here, earlier this afternoon.” Bracing the steering wheel briefly with her knee, she held up the other hand. “And Herb Torrance’s truck was seen at the border crossing not long afterward. A couple of hours.” She glanced at me. “And that’s it, sir. That’s it.”

“Somewhere between here and there, then. Who’s got the nearest tracker dog now? Gordon?”

“Lt. Gordon, over in Cruces,” Estelle affirmed. “If he’s not tied up with something else.” I put one hand up and braced it against the door sill as she drove down the paved road, past Consolidated Mining’s bone yard. She slowed enough that a flash of the car’s spotlight illuminated the secure, heavy chain-link entry gate. “And that might tell us something. If there was a struggle back up there in the pasture and they dragged Pat off into the trees somewhere beyond where we searched, then the dog will find him. If that’s not what happened, the dog will tell us that Pat left the area-either in the truck or in some other fashion.” She frowned. “If Pat was still up on the mesa, it seems to me that Socks would have stayed with him.”

“I don’t know about that. If the cattle are loose,” I said, “his first loyalty is to work. He had the opportunity, once the cattle were back in the pasture, and work was done. I’m no dog whisperer, but he didn’t give any indication that made sense to me. So, let’s give Gordon a call,” I said. “Get his dog up here. That’s something. I can’t just sit around and hope this thing through.” I pointed at an oncoming pickup truck, an older model. “That’s Herb. Stop a minute.”

The light not being the best, the rancher almost didn’t slow, but at the last minute he lurched the truck off the road as I hustled toward him. In the cab, Socks danced on the passenger side, tongue lolling-the news wasn’t good.

He nodded. “No sign of the boy,” he said. “His truck’s still at the ranch.”

“Well, we haven’t found a damn thing,” I said. “Bobby and Tom Pasquale are still nosing around up the hill. I’m going to give the Cruces P.D. a call and see if we can’t get one of their search-and-rescue dogs up here. Hell, I don’t know, Herb. We just don’t have much to go on.”

Herb groped a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and took his time lighting it. “What do you think, though?” he asked after a moment.

“Your rig is in Mexico, and I think that eventually we’re going to find it. Pat’s somewhere between here and there, and if I were a betting man, I’d wager that he got the worst of the deal. That’s as optimistic as it comes just now.”

Herb exhaled slowly. “Well, shit,” he said. He stroked the top of the dog’s head with his thumb. “You heard about services for George?”

For a second, I was ready to ask, “George who?” but then I caught up. “I haven’t,” I said, “but then again, I haven’t heard much of anything from the real world this afternoon. We’ve been chasing shadows.”

“I don’t get it,” Herb said, and he could have been referring to the whole day.

“You have lots of company,” I said. “How’s Dale?”

“He’s a mess. You ought to see the x-ray of his knee.” He shook his head helplessly. “They got pins goin’ every which way.” And he might be the lucky one, I thought.

“It’ll turn out fine,” I said instead. “He’ll sit around the house for a few days until he gets the itch, and then he’ll try to figure out how to ride a horse with his leg in a cast.”

“It’s more’n just a damn cast,” Herb said. “Like walkin’ around with the whole damn hardware store bolted to his leg.” He shrugged philosophically, but I could imagine that his worries were growing. His son Dale and Pat Gabaldon were the sum of his ranch hands, and the work burden on his wiry old shoulders would now triple. On top of that, I couldn’t imagine that Dale had any health insurance, and a new knee didn’t come cheap.

“Lemme know,” Herb said finally, and pulled his truck into gear.

Even as I recrossed the narrow county road, Deputy Tom Pasquale’s SUV cruised down the hill, and he raised a hand in salute as he pulled to a stop. “Sheriff’s hangin’ out for a few minutes,” he called to Estelle.

Bobby Torrez would do that, enjoying some silent time alone, mulling whatever it was that needed mulling. He’d still be there when Herb arrived, and the two of them would mull some more. Maybe something would come of it.

As if she could sense my slump, Estelle said, “We have word out to everyone. State police, Border Patrol, neighboring counties-if Pat’s to be found, it’ll be soon, sir.”

“Sure enough,” I said. “I wish I shared your optimism.” I glanced at the time. “You headed back home now?”

“Yes. Are you ready to finish dinner?”

Normally, of course, that would have been a silly question. “Thanks, but I think I’ll just mosey around for a while,” I said.