The Fourth Time is Murder

Chapter Twenty

“The magazine writer is in town,” Estelle said, and when Sheriff Bob Torrez looked at her blandly as if to say, So what? added, “She may want to talk to you at some point.”

“People in hell want ice water, too,” the sheriff said affably.

“She followed me in from Regál. We’re going to meet here after a bit.”

Torrez shifted so that he could stretch out both legs past his desk, and Estelle nudged the door closed and then pulled one of the metal folding chairs out of the corner. The sheriff’s office was long on function and short on amenities or color. He never spoke of the two years he’d spent in the army decades before, but apparently he’d been impressed with the use of drab as a foundation style.

He opened his desk drawer and took out the same pistol that she had showed Bill Gastner, reached across the desk, and laid it directly in front of Estelle. “I did some studying,” Torrez said cryptically, as if that explained everything. She reached out and hefted Deputy Dennis Collins’ department sidearm. The slide was locked back, with an empty magazine in place.

“These have inertia firing pins,” Torrez said after a moment. “Could be, if that gun is loaded, cocked, and locked, it could fire if it falls and hits the muzzle just right.”

“Except it fell against the truck, back sight first,” Estelle said. “And not very hard, at that.”

“I know it did. I’m just sayin’. If that don’t happen, it means that either something else was wrong with the gun or it was cocked, locked, and his finger pulled the trigger when he grabbed onto it.”

“That’s most likely,” she agreed.

Torrez leaned forward and folded his hands on his desk. “Not that it matters a whole hell of a lot,” and then he sat back abruptly as if he’d caught himself talking too much.

Estelle laid Dennis Collins’ gun back on the sheriff’s desk. “I suspect that you could pick any gun, made by anybody anywhere in the world, and if you worked hard enough, you could invent a circumstance where it might go off unintentionally.”

Torrez nodded once. “And if you take any gun and pull the trigger, it’s going to go off…unless there’s something wrong with it or the ammo. Collins was too quick gettin’ it out of the holster, then he fumbled it, and then he flat ran out of luck.”

“I think that’s exactly what happened,” Estelle said.

“We got to make sure that the fumble don’t happen again.”

“Any word yet from the boy’s father? He impressed me as the sort who won’t let go. My impression was that he thinks he can lay the blame for this whole mess right on the deputy’s head.”

“Don’t care about him,” Torrez snapped. “He’s all mouth. He can do what he wants. If he wants to sue us, let ’im. I could give a shit. I’ve been thinkin’ about what we need to do.” What he said next surprised Estelle. “I think Collins is a good, solid kid. I don’t plan to just throw him away.”

“Do you want suggestions and input, or have you already decided?” Estelle said, and she saw the sheriff’s left eyebrow edge up a little.

“You can input all you want,” he said, and held up both hands, waiting.

“Well, first of all, we need to take a long, hard look at our own training and qualification program,” Estelle said. “Dennis went through the academy last summer, and then he had to qualify here. I don’t think he’s a shooter in his leisure time, and I’m willing to bet that before the other night, he hadn’t actually fired a box of ammo through this pistol since he had to go through the department’s qualification…and when was that, October?”

“Well, he’s going to start,” Torrez said. He pointed at the filing cabinet across the room. Resting on top of it was a stack of heavy paper nearly six inches high. “That’s a thousand targets,” he said. “It’s all we had in the vault, and that’s what he shoots before he goes back on duty. Each target is a full magazine, starting with the gun holstered. Draw against the clock. He’s going to shoot at three, seven, and fifteen yards, and three hundred rounds or whatever it works out to be for each distance.” He rose carefully, as if his bones were fragile, and edged around the desk. He slid one of the targets out of the plastic pack. “He puts the date here, the time, the score, and one of us initials it.”

“That’s an ambitious program,” Estelle said, both impressed and relieved that Torrez hadn’t taken the simple route and told Dennis Collins to go sell real estate.

“Yep. And by the time he’s done, maybe he won’t drop the damn gun again. He’ll be able to draw and fire in his sleep. He’ll be a damn Sundance Kid.”

“He needs someone with him for the first few go-arounds to make sure he doesn’t have any dangerous habits. You’ll do that?”

“Could. Me or Eddie or you. But I was thinkin’ of asking Bill to do it. What the hell, that old gunny ain’t got nothin’ better to do.”

“He might just like that.”

“Anybody else wants to go along and do the same thing, they can,” the sheriff said. “We’re requalifyin’,” and he paused while he leaned forward to examine the calendar on the wall beside the filing cabinet, “on August second. Everybody. That gives us two and a half months to do what we gotta do to be ready.”

“And this is everyone?”

“Every single everyone,” Torrez said emphatically. “Includin’ me.” He turned and frowned at Estelle. “And that’s includin’ you. And Eddie. And everyone.”

“That’s ambitious,” she said. “Changes in the scoring?” The actual scores needed for police qualifying had always impressed Estelle as abysmal, and cheating the system wasn’t unusual, either. She was aware of the standard, budget-saving arguments. Cops were required to make correct decisions that sometimes-although rarely in these far-flung rural areas-required that their weapon be drawn.

But cops weren’t required to shoot out a gnat’s eye at fifty paces with a handgun. They didn’t need to. That’s what shotguns or sniper rifles were for. Hitting center mass on a man-sized target at seven yards didn’t require the skills of an exhibition shooter. And, she reflected ruefully, an entirely different set of skills was required if the “man-sized target” was shooting back or flailing with a butcher knife. It was almost entirely mind-set, not gun-set.

Torrez smiled, an expression that Estelle thought the sheriff should do more often. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “There’s changes in the scoring. I’ll post ’em as soon as I talk to some folks. A whole lot higher scores this time around.” He rested back in the chair and changed subjects as effortlessly as a breeze shifted. “What the hell was Marsh up to?”

Estelle took a moment to organize her thoughts. “I talked with Betty, and then visited with Joe Baca and Serafina Roybal. It appears that Chris Marsh was delivering checks from a Canadian sweepstakes.”

“You gotta be shittin’ me.”

“No. Not one of them noticed his name tag enough to read the fake name he was using. But they all remember the face.”

“You mean he was doing one of them scam things, like the Nigerian stuff?”

“At first, that’s what I thought. But no…there’s something going on here that’s a little different. The first contact Marsh had with anyone in Regál-that we know of, at least-was a couple of months ago. On December fourteenth, he delivered a check for a little more than three thousand dollars to Serafina Roybal. In exchange, she gave him a cashier’s check for five hundred bucks or so. To cover what the sweepstakes company called taxes and exchange rate. I have the original letter.” She pulled out her pocket notebook and flipped pages. “Thirty-two fifty in winnings, five fifty-two in fees. She netted twenty-six ninety-eight.”

“That’s until the check bounces,” Torrez said. “Ain’t that the way these things work?”

“And that’s the catch. The check didn’t bounce, Bobby. It cleared just fine, and the money is sitting in Serafina’s bank account. I had Gayle track down the telephone number and address that was listed on the stationery for the sweepstakes company in Calgary. It’s a real place. No one answered because it’s the weekend, and I’ll pursue it more on Monday. But the business exists. At least it has a storefront. The Calgary PD is willing to cooperate in any way they can, if we feel the need. Anyway, there has been plenty of time for the check to clear, which evidently it did.” She leafed through the notebook.

“And then it gets bizarre. Marsh delivered a second check, this time for about twenty-eight hundred even. He collected a personal check from her this time for about five hundred. He told her that the company didn’t usually do that, but he apparently made the decision so Serafina wouldn’t be inconvenienced.”

“Go figure. She could have just stopped payment.”

“But she didn’t. She had no reason to. The winning check was good.”

“You’re shittin’ me. So she won twice, is what you’re sayin’.”

“Exactly. And Marsh made a point of telling Joe and Lucinda when he delivered their first check that multiple winners were common…that he thought it might be some sort of computer glitch.”

“Glitch, my ass.”

“The multiple wins thing is part of it somehow. I’m sure of it. What better way to sucker somebody in.”

“Ain’t breakin’ the bank, though,” Torrez mused. “A few thousand ain’t much of a jackpot.”

“No, it’s not. That’s part of the puzzle, I’m sure. The thing we have to remember is that Chris Marsh wasn’t a legitimate deliveryman. The company on his name tag doesn’t exist. Jackie scouted that on the Internet.”

“So why’s he doin’ it? Odd way to play Santa Claus. Unless he’s settin’ somebody up. Is he cheating the Canadians?”

“That’s one possibility, Bobby. I’ll follow up on that Monday. But here’s what I’m thinking. Serafina won twice, and word of that’s going to go through the village like wildfire. A month or more before that, the Bacas won a legitimate state lottery jackpot. And that’s a lot of money.”

“Like more than a hundred grand, I heard.”

“That’s right. After taxes, it’s a nice old age pension. Well, then, consider what happens next. A month later, more or less, Serafina wins twice, two nice little nest eggs. She’s a bright woman, Bobby. I don’t think she’d fall for sending money off into the blue, in hopes of getting a prize.”

“People do it all the time.”

“I know they do, and maybe she would fall for it. But I don’t think so. I would hope that she wouldn’t. But this way, she is face-to-face with a personable young man who looks the part…uniform, name tag, white truck with a logo on the door. When one of the package delivery folks comes to our door, we trust them, don’t we? Just like the mailman.”

“I’m wondering now if that’s part of it,” Torrez said.

“I think it is. Remember COD? You take the parcel, and the postman or delivery agent collects the COD fee. We trust them to do that, right? We’re used to it now. We sign the gadget, and take the package, just like Christmas. That’s what Serafina did. And the check she received was good. Both times. At least the bank hasn’t said otherwise, and it’s been weeks-plenty long enough to notice a bogus check. And how long does it take the good news to spread?”

“Minutes, maybe. And then?”

“And then he does it again, this time with Joe and Lucinda. The first time, they won a little bit more than Serafina.” She lifted the page. “Eight thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars. They handed over a bank check to the driver-Chris Marsh-for just over fourteen hundred. That means their net winning is almost seven thousand.”

“That’s enough to make ’em short of breath,” Torrez muttered.

“Indeed it is. And the driver delivers, just like with Serafina. And this time, he plays off her experience, telling Joe and Lucinda that it hasn’t been unusual for someone to win more than once…maybe it’s even a computer glitch back at the home office.”

“Oh, sure,” Torrez said. He frowned. “But they got the money, am I right? The check was good?”

“It was good. There again, there’s been a couple of weeks for it to clear. No problems. But I’m beginning to think that Marsh’s making the comment about multiple winnings is enough to get them thinking, Oh gosh, maybe we’ll win twice, you think? And sure enough. The big one. The letter comes telling them that they’ve won $178,900, the big one. And what’s the risk? They don’t have to send money off to Nigeria or someplace like that. The handsome young man will come to their door with his official truck and his official this and that, and trade checks. He gives them a check for $178,900, and they hand over a cashier’s check for $30,413. They’re ahead $148,487. A nice chunk of change.”

“If the check is good,” Torrez said. “Don’t make no sense to me that it is. I ain’t never heard of a sweepstakes working like that. I never understood how those things made money.”

“In the legitimate world, I think it’s just a different way of spending your advertising budget,” Estelle said.

“Any chance of rousting Terri out of his weekend for some answers?” Terri Mears, the identical twin of Sergeant Tom Mears, was chief operating officer of Posadas State Bank.

“He’ll cooperate, I’m sure. The problem isn’t on this end. No one in some other financial institution is going to be working. We’d have to find someone in Calgary who has computer access after-hours, or at the issuing bank in Las Cruces. That’s going to take as long as just waiting a day until Monday morning.”

“If we have to, though…”

“If. And all this prompts the question of what Chris Marsh is doing with a fake ID, maybe a fake sign on his truck, and maybe a fake electronic signature board.”

“And all of that seventeen percent shit sounds official.” Torrez held up the letter that Estelle had handed him. “Listen to that nonsense: ‘those charges amount to 16.981 percent…’”

“Very official. And the comment about ‘by law’ is convincing.”

“We don’t know about the second check for the 178 grand, do we. That ain’t had time to clear?”

Estelle shook her head. “Lucinda Baca deposited it on Friday afternoon.”

“What time?”

“About three thirty or so.”

“Well, shit. What’d she wait so long for? She got it, what, Wednesday evening sometime?”

“Exactly. I don’t know why she waited, except she just did. Maybe they wanted some time to stare at it some, trying to figure out what to do with it.”

“You takin’ bets?”

“No. I have a sinking feeling, is what I have,” Estelle said. “If the setup was aiming at Joe and Lucinda all along, it worked pretty well. Counting Serafina’s two checks and the first one to the Bacas, that’s $11,800 or so invested. They copped a second check from the Bacas for $30,413. But when it shakes all out, that’s about twenty grand for profit.”

“That’s if the last check doesn’t go south,” Torrez mused. “Folks have been murdered for a whole lot less.”

“Oh, indeed. But maybe all this is just practice,” Estelle said. “Perfecting the system. That’s what I’ve been thinking. The way I see it, there are two roads to investigate. Either Chris Marsh thought he’d found some way to steal checks from this Canadian company-he was just waiting for the big one that he figured was coming-or the sweepstakes company itself is a scam, Marsh included. And that’s the way I’m thinking right now. If the company was legit, and Marsh was just waiting in the wings, I don’t see how he’d know what was coming through the pipeline.”

“I can’t figure that,” the sheriff said. “How’d they get the names, anyways? When Joe and Lucinda won the state thing, it was in the paper. Probably radio and TV, too. But Serafina wasn’t on nobody’s radar, was she?”

“We don’t know the answer to that, Bobby. But there must be dozens of ways. Mailing lists are commodities.”

“Well,” he said, swinging a foot up to rest it on the desk, “somebody climbed down to the crash site, found this Marsh kid, and then made sure that he wasn’t in no condition to talk. Took the paperwork, what there was of it, took the electronic receipt book, took the magnetic signs off the doors. Probably woulda taken Marsh’s name tag if it hadn’t been ripped off and lost.” He shrugged. “Somebody’s got something to hide, that’s for sure. Nilson and Abeyta are looking to find what they can about Marsh over in Cruces. There’s got to be something there. Somebody’s got to know something.”

“And there’s the Canadian connection,” Estelle said. “We need to know more about Canadian Publications Limited.”

“Sooner rather than later,” Torrez grunted. “And first thing, if that big check don’t clear? We need to give Baker a call. If the check is bogus, that takes it out of our hands.”

John Baker, an old friend and contact in the Albuquerque office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, would be intrigued, Estelle thought. “I was thinking of having a chat with him anyway,” she said. “It would be interesting to hear if he’s run across this one-or a variant.”

“If the check bounces, whether it came from Canada or Las Cruces, it’s their baby anyways,” Torrez said. “Bank fraud is either them or the Postal Inspectors, or both. A heads-up won’t hurt.”

“Oh, one other little thing,” Estelle said. “The telephone number in the woodcutter’s pocket? It’s the Contrerases’ number.”

Torrez glowered at her for a moment. “And so…”

“And so, I’m just about sure that Bertrand Anselmo wrote it.”

“No shit? Why would he do that?”

“Good question. The dead man’s name is Felix Otero. Joe Baca recognized him.”

For a long minute, Sheriff Robert Torrez stared at Estelle, or rather through her, it seemed to her, pondering the possibilities. “Did you just out and ask Anselmo about all this?”

“No. He’s spooked. I want to know more before I do that.”

“What did Betty have to say?”

“She didn’t recognize Otero. Or said she didn’t. Joe admitted seeing him around sometime, he doesn’t remember when. Anselmo was evasive.”

“Ain’t that interesting,” Torrez said. “This wouldn’t be the first time that Betty had a convenient memory lapse.”

“Neighbors know what neighbors are doing. Regál is a tiny village,” Estelle said.

“Ain’t it, though.”