Santa Fe Dead

46

DETECTIVE ALEX REESE was about to leave his office for lunch when his phone rang, and he picked it up. “Detective Reese.”

“Detective Reese, this is Luisa, you remember?”

“Give me a hint.”

“Out at the airport? Santa Fe Jet?”

“Oh, of course, Luisa. What’s up?”

“Well, you gave me your card and asked me to call you if I thought of anything else?”

“Yes, I did. Have you thought of something?”

“Not exactly, but I know where I saw that Timmons guy from Austin.”

“Where?”

“Driving a stagecoach.”

“A stagecoach?”

“In a movie. I remember that I knew the movie was made in Santa Fe, because I could see the Jemez Mountains in the background. I can see the Jemez from my mother’s house.”

Reese drew a quick breath. “Do you remember the name of the movie, Luisa?”

“No, it was several weeks ago, and it was on TV, on one of the cable channels, because there weren’t any commercials.”

“Thank you, Luisa,” Reese said, “you’ve been a big help, and I appreciate it.” He hung up and ran down the hall, where three other detectives were leaving for lunch. “Hang on, everybody, we’re ordering in, on me.”

“What’s up, Alex?” one of the detectives asked.

“We’re going to the movies. Hal, get those DVDs of the Donald Wells productions. You can draw straws for this, but I want somebody sitting there with a remote control on fast forward. Stop when you see a stagecoach. I’m looking for a stagecoach driver with a handlebar moustache and a big hat. When you find it, get a very good print made from the best frame, then go to the credits and look for the name, Jack Cato. He should be the driver.”

Everybody shuffled into the conference room, where a TV set was set up. Reese was elated. He called the D.A. with the news.

BOB MARTÍNEZ WAS pleased. “What about the airplane you think he used?”

“It’s registered to a plastic surgeon from L.A.; he hasn’t returned my calls yet.”

“Keep on him.”

JACK CATO HAD finished his day’s shooting, which involved being dragged behind a horse for four takes. He went back to the livery stable to shower in the rough bathroom there, then he put on some clean clothes and went back to his little office. He retrieved an item he had bought and tore the plastic wrapping off, then inserted batteries. He tried it; it worked. Then he put it back into the drawer. He wanted to get Mrs. Keeler on tape.

DON WELLS DROVE by the stable and saw Cato’s truck still there. He pulled up to the building and stopped. There was a light on in the office. He got out of the car and walked inside. Cato was sitting at the desk, writing checks, and he looked up. “Hey, Don.”

Wells sat down.

“I’m just paying some bills; today was payday.”

“Go ahead, Jack. I’ll wait.”

Cato wrote two more checks and sealed them into envelopes. “Okay, I’m done. What’s up?”

“I want you to take a little trip, Jack.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t much care, but out of the country. You like Mexico, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but I’m not sure I can afford a vacation right now.”

Wells tossed some bundles of money on the desk. “That’ll give you a running start. It’s twenty-five grand. With what you’ve got saved, you should be able to live well down there.”

“How long do I need to be gone, Don?”

“I think you should look at this as a permanent change of address.”

“But what about my job?”

“That’s going to have to go. I’ll be shooting in Mexico from time to time; you can work then, and I’ll put you in speaking parts. Also, I’ll make some calls to a couple of people I know in the film business down there. You should be able to make a good living playing gringos in Mexican pictures. You’ll live a lot better there than here.”

Cato opened a desk drawer and put the paid bills inside, then he pressed a button on his new purchase and left the drawer open. “Don, what’s going on? Why do you want me to leave the country?”

“Because I have a feeling the Santa Fe police are on to you.”

“You mean on to you, don’t you?”

“It’s the same thing, Jack. If one of us goes down, we all go down. You see that, don’t you?”

“Don, I think if we just hang tight, everything will be fine.”

“If it gets to be fine, I’ll let you know,” Wells said. “Then you can come back. But in the meantime, we have problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“I’ll take care of Tina and Soledad, send them away for a while, but then there’s Grif Edwards.”

“You don’t have to worry about Grif, Don. I mean, he’s not the smartest guy in the world, but he’ll stand up.”

“Let me describe a situation, Jack, and you tell me what you think about it. You’re Grif Edwards, and you get arrested. The cops tell you they’ve got evidence that puts you in my house in Santa Fe at the time of the murders; they tell you that they’ll go easy on you if you’ll implicate others, maybe even tell you you’ll walk if you turn state’s evidence. You’re Grif Edwards; what would you do?”

“Okay, I get the point. What would make you feel more comfortable, Don?”

“Get Edwards to meet you in Mexico; see that he doesn’t come back.”

“You know, Don, if I stay at Centurion, I can retire with a pension in a few years.”

“Here’s what I’ll do, Jack: Right now, I can’t probate my wife’s will, because I’m still a suspect. But with the four of you unavailable to the police, I’ll be cleared in a few weeks or months. Once that happens, and her estate is settled, every year, the first week in January, I’ll send you twenty-five grand in cash. That’s a lot of money in Mexico, Jack, and it’s as much as you’d get from a pension. A buck goes a long way down there.”

“How long will you send the money?”

“For as long as we both shall live,” Wells said. “If I die, you’ll have to go to work. If you die, well, you won’t need the money. Fair enough?”

“Well…”

“Let me mention one other thing, Jack: If you stay in L.A., or anywhere else the cops can find and extradite you, you’re looking at life with no parole, at a minimum. And in New Mexico, they still have the death penalty.”

Cato sighed. “Okay, Don. When I finish this picture, I’ll go.”

“You finish the picture tomorrow, Jack. I want you to go home now, pack up your stuff and load your truck. Throw away what you can’t take with you. Tell the neighbors you’ve got a job back east, or you inherited some money. Write your landlord a letter; pay him anything you owe him. Tomorrow, when the picture wraps, don’t go back to your house. Give the employment office your resignation, leave the studio and don’t be seen in this country again. We’ve both got untraceable cell phones. If you have to communicate with me, do it that way. Don’t leave any messages. If I don’t answer, try me later, late at night.”

“That’s pretty final, Don.”

“It can get a lot more final, Jack.” Wells shook his hand, went back to his car and drove home to Malibu. He hoped to God that Cato had taken him seriously, because if he hadn’t, Cato was going to have to go, and Don Wells was going to have to see to it himself.

JACK CATO SAT at his desk and thought it through. He called the motor pool, and Grif Edwards answered.

“Hey, it’s me.”

“How you doin’?”

“Pretty good. I hear we’ve been cleared on that thing.”

“Yeah? That’s great news. How do you know?”

“Let’s don’t talk about it on the phone. Are you working late?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a ring job on a ’38 Ford, and I need to finish it tonight. I should be done by ten, ten thirty.”

“When you finish, come over to the stable. I’ll tell you what’s going on. There’s going to be more money, too.”

“See you around ten.”

Jack got his pry bar and went out to the privy behind the barn. He got the floor up, brushed back the dirt and opened the safe. He removed all the money and put it into a small, plastic trash bag, then locked the safe, rearranged the dirt and hammered down the floorboards.

He returned to the stable and went through his desk drawers to see if there was anything he wanted to keep. He stuffed a few things into the trash bag, then he typed out a letter of resignation, saying he had gotten a better job offer and was leaving Centurion immediately.

He got into his truck and left by the main gate, taking particular care that the guard recognized him. He drove around the studio property to the back-lot gate and let himself in with his key, then returned and parked the truck in the stable, out of sight.

He put on a pair of thin driving gloves and typed two letters. He put one into an envelope but didn’t seal it, then put it into his inside coat pocket. He put the other letter, the money from the privy and the small tape recorder in a lockbox welded to the underside of his truck, then he wiped the typewriter clean of any of his old fingerprints that might remain.

Around ten o’clock, Grif Edwards showed up. “Hey, Jack,” he said.

“C’mere a second and try out this typewriter.” He handed Grif a sheet of paper.

Grif put the paper into the machine and typed, Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. “Yeah,” he said, “it’s okay.”

“You want it? I’ll give it to you.”

“Thanks. I guess I can use it.” Edwards picked up the typewriter and put it into his car, then came back. “Why are you getting rid of it?”

“Because I’m moving to Mexico. You want to go with me?”

“Why are you moving down there?”

“Because Don Wells told me if I don’t, I’m going to end up in prison.”

“Holy shit! I thought you said we were in the clear.”

“I thought we were, until Don came by here after I called you and told me the cops were on to me. That means you, too.”

“Jesus, Jack, I thought our alibis were airtight.”

“Something broke along the way. I don’t know what.”

“So you’re going to Mexico?”

“Tomorrow after work. I’m gonna go home tonight and load up my truck. You want to go?”

Edwards shook his head. “I don’t know, Jack.”

“Well, you let me know tomorrow. In the meantime, I want to give you a present.”

“What’s that?”

“Come on, I’ll show you. You’re gonna like it.”

The two men got into Edwards’s car and drove over to the armory. Cato let them in and led Edwards to the little office, where he opened the steel gun cabinet. He picked up a Colt Officer’s.45, shoved a clip into it and racked the slide. He picked up a soft cloth on the desk, wiped the gun down, picked it up with the cloth and handed it to Edwards. “Remember this? You always liked it.”

“Oh, yeah, I used it in that cop thing we did, remember?”

“It’s yours, now. They’ll never have any idea where it went.”

Edwards hefted the gun in his hand and aimed it.

“Let me show you something about this weapon,” Cato said, taking it from him. Quickly, he held the gun, wrapped in the cloth, an inch from Edwards’s temple and pulled the trigger. Blood and brains sprayed on the wall behind him, and the force knocked him to the floor.

Cato picked up Edwards’s right hand and put some more of his prints on the weapon, and on the letter and envelope from his pocket, then he put the armory key into Edwards’s pocket. Still wearing his driving gloves, Cato took the typewriter from the backseat of Edwards’s car, then walked back to the stable, showered again and rolled his clothes into a tight wad. He put on clean clothes, collected the remaining stationery and envelopes in his desk drawer, then got into his truck and drove to the back-lot gate and let himself out, chaining it shut again.

He drove to Edwards’s house, found the key under the flowerpot and let himself in. He put the stationery into a drawer in Edwards’s desk, then set the typewriter on the desktop. He removed the envelope from his pocket and leaned it against the telephone on the desk.

He let himself out, then, on the way home, he ditched his blood-spattered clothes in a street trash basket.