Nothing But Trouble Read online

  Leo touched the brim of his cowboy hat. “I have a few questions, ma’am. Can I have your names?”

  “Isaac and Priscilla Klingman,” the man said grudgingly, casting a wary eye at Leo. “What is this about?”

  “We’re trying find a fellow who may have stolen a saddle from Matt Thornton over in Duncan.” Leo handed Mr. Klingman Martinez’s photo. “Do you recognize him?”

  “Isn’t Arizona out of your jurisdiction?” Klingman asked as he scanned the photo.

  “A bit. Does he look familiar?”

  Isaac Klingman shook his head and handed the photo to his wife. “I’ve never seen him,” she said.

  “Who leases the Shaw land?” Kerney asked.

  “I do,” Klingman replied. “Can’t get him to sell it to me.”

  “Do you have use of the barn?”

  “Shaw keeps it locked up tight. I don’t go near it, or the house. That’s the deal.”

  “Have you ever seen a white van parked outside?” Kerney asked.

  “Yep, but not for long. After it pulls in, it gets put away in the barn. Stays there until he leaves.”

  Leo took the photo back from Klingman’s wife. “Until Shaw leaves?”

  “Can’t say that I know who comes and goes all the time. Sometimes it’s Shaw, sometimes not. There’s another man who shows up about twice a month driving the van. Comes in the evening, so I’ve never gotten a good look at him. Parks in the garage and then leaves after an hour or so. Heads west on the highway.”

  “How long has this been going on?” Leo asked.

  “A year or more. Maybe two.”

  “Can you remember the last time you saw the panel truck?” Kerney asked.

  Kingman shook his head.

  “I remember,” his wife said. “I was driving back from town and it was stopped on the side of the highway with a flat tire. I didn’t get a good look at the driver, but Nathan Gundersen’s truck was parked behind it.”

  “When was that?” Leo inquired.

  “A week ago last Thursday, the evening our ladies’ quilting society meets.”

  “Gundersen lives down the road.” Isaac Klingman nodded to the left, eager to be rid of his visitors. “Maybe he can help you. Turn in on the second lane. His house is the third one on the right.”

  “Thank you,” Leo said.

  Klingman grunted.

  Gundersen wasn’t home, but Kerney spotted his pickup truck parked on a farm road that cut through the pastureland toward the river. He had the tailgate down and was encouraging a six-month-old calf up a ramp into the bed of the truck. He nodded in recognition at Kerney as he tied the calf to a side railing, dropped the ramp, and closed the tailgate.

  “What brings you back here with the sheriff? Is it about Walt Shaw?”

  “Not exactly,” Kerney said. “That calf looks sickly.”

  “It is,” Gundersen replied. “The vet thinks it’s influenza, but he can’t come out until tomorrow, so I’m taking the patient to him. Don’t understand it, though. The calf was vaccinated along with all the others.” Gundersen glanced at Leo. “What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

  “I understand you recently stopped to help a man driving a white van with a flat tire.”

  “Can’t say I was any help at all.”

  Leo held out the photo of Martinez.

  “That’s him, all right,” Gundersen said.

  “Was that a week ago last Thursday?” Kerney asked.

  Gundersen nodded. “I’d say so. Are you a police officer too?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Gundersen pulled off his gloves. “Sure had me fooled.”

  Leo put the photo in his shirt pocket. “Did anything unusual happen when you stopped to help?”

  “He wasn’t a very pleasant fellow. When I pulled up behind him, he scowled and waved me off before I could even get out of my truck. Sent me on my way without so much as a word.”

  “Were you able to see inside the van?” Kerney asked.

  “No.” Gundersen turned his gaze to the calf. “If you gents don’t mind, I’d better be off to the vet’s. I don’t want to lose this youngster.”

  They watched Gundersen drive away. In a nearby holding pen the mother cow lowed miserably for its departing calf. “All we’ve got is circumstantial evidence,” Leo said. “Not enough to arrest Martinez or get a search warrant for Shaw’s barn. Do we pull Martinez in for questioning?”

  Kerney nodded. “I think I know where to find him.”

  The day had turned uncommonly humid. Kerney looked at the sky. A line of squalls was building to the south, broken by a daunting sun fueling a gathering wind. It could be storming fiercely in the Bootheel, dropping hailstones the size of quarters. Or clouds of dust could be whipping across the flats without so much as a drop of rain hitting the ground. “Let’s go,” he said.

  All night, Buster Martinez had worried about the Santa Fe cop’s interest in his saddle. He’d read somewhere that cops could get information about stolen merchandise from a computer back East in some government office that kept national records. Hopefully, Buster had thrown Kerney off base by telling him he’d gotten the saddle in Nevada. If push came to shove, he’d say that he bought it off a guy for cash money at last year’s National Pro Rodeo Championship Finals in Las Vegas. He’d been there during slack season and could prove it.

  At the Shugart cabin Martinez and two day hands, Ross and Pruitt, loaded cattle into stock trailers the film company had hired to move fifty head to the copper smelter. They’d trailed the animals up from an adjacent pasture where the herd had rested overnight. According to one of the truck drivers the cows would be used in a scene at the copper smelter sometime soon. A big holding pen had been thrown up where the animals would be fed and watered until needed.

  Except for the heavily foraged, harshly trampled grass, the soft cow pies surrounded by fly swarms that littered the land, and the numerous tire ruts in the ground, all signs that a movie had been filmed in the valley were gone. Above Martinez’s head the sky crackled with thunder and a lightning flash cut through the thick cloud bank that had settled over the valley. Suddenly, the light drizzle changed to a torrent of hard, howling, windblown rain that pelted Martinez’s face.

  He dismounted, lashed the last of the cows up the ramp into the stock trailer, slammed the tailgate closed, and turned to see Ross and Pruitt riding at a hard gallop, making for the safety of the partially standing wall of the old line shanty. As he remounted to join them, car headlights lurched over the crest of the ranch road. Through sheets of rain he could see the light bar on the roof, the five-pointed sheriff’s star on the door.

  Martinez hesitated. Were the cops coming for him? He could think of no other reason for them to be here. Under another lightning flash he held his horse in check and waited until the squad car drew near. He saw Kerney’s face through the windshield, saw him curling his forefinger at him in a come-here gesture, and the thought of going to jail again made him bolt. Getting arrested and locked up on a DWI for one night had been bad enough. He spurred his horse toward Granite Pass.

  Behind him he heard the sound of the squad car in pursuit. The hard rain beat against the packed earth, pooling and running into the draw that led to the pass. Martinez pushed his mount into the draw, forced it up an incline, and clattered it into the rocky canyon mouth. The sound of the engine receded and he turned in the saddle. The squad car stood snout up on the lip of the draw, wheels spinning, digging to gain traction. But behind the car, riding Pruitt’s dapple gray, came Kerney, head down, low in the saddle, at a full gallop.

  Martinez gave his horse free rein. Rainwater gushed down the cliff face, submerging the narrow trail. The horse stumbled on a rock, pitched, recovered, and wheeled into a mesquite that sent it spinning. Martinez clamped tight with his knees, kept pressure off the bit, and let it come to a stop. Twenty feet down the trail Kerney sat watching him on Pruitt’s soaked and dirty dapple gray.

  “Can you hear me?” Kerney called out over
the roar of the storm.

  “I can,” Martinez yelled back, blinking hard to keep the hammering rain out of his eyes.

  “Do you have a weapon?”

  Martinez raised his hands to show that he did not.

  “Would you like to stay out of jail?” Kerney asked.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Let’s get out of this storm and we’ll talk,” Kerney said.

  Martinez nodded and approached. “I didn’t steal my saddle.”

  “Of course you did,” Kerney replied with an easy smile. “But if you cooperate, that saddle may buy you your freedom.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  With the saddle in the trunk of the unit and Martinez cuffed and behind the cage in the backseat, Leo and Kerney returned to Lordsburg. The storm had passed, leaving behind a misty drizzle under a low sky, the sweet smell of moist air, and standing water in the streets.

  Kerney’s attempts to draw Martinez out during the ride were met with stubborn silence.

  “I told you I didn’t steal the saddle,” Martinez said as they pulled to a stop at the Sheriff’s Department near the courthouse.

  Kerney glanced over the front seat at Martinez. “Then why did you run?”

  “Because I don’t like jails. Are you charging me with a crime?”

  “Right now, we just need to gather some facts,” Kerney answered. “If you cooperate, it shouldn’t take long. Maybe you bought the saddle because it was too good a deal to pass up. Maybe you didn’t actually know it was stolen, but in the back of your mind you wondered if it might have been.”

  “You said that I stole it.”

  Kerney got out and opened the door to the backseat. “Because you ran. It made you look guilty as hell.”

  Martinez stepped onto the pavement. “Like I told you, I got scared about going to jail.”

  Kerney uncuffed him. “That’s perfectly understandable.”

  Inside, Leo guided them to a cramped, tiny room used for interviews and interrogations. It contained an old video camera on a tripod, a narrow table, two metal folding chairs, and a half-dozen sealed cardboard file boxes stacked in a corner. From the dust on the table it was clear the room hadn’t been used for its intended purpose in a long time.

  Kerney pulled out a chair. “Make yourself comfortable, Mr. Martinez. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “We’ve got to log the saddle into evidence. First things first. Would you like some coffee?”

  Martinez nodded.

  Kerney closed the door and went looking for Leo, who was in his office with the saddle on his desk. “He wants coffee.”

  “I’ll have it brought in,” Leo said. “You gave him a ready-made out.”

  “Deliberately. He’s not going to admit guilt easily. I want him to feel free to tell me his story. How quickly can you run a financial history on him?”

  “It’s in the works.” Leo picked up the phone and asked his secretary to take Martinez a cup of coffee.

  “I’ll start without it,” Kerney said. “Get me what you can as soon as it comes in.”

  Martinez looked a bit more relaxed when Kerney returned to the interview room. He had his legs stretched out under the table and a mug of coffee in hand.

  Kerney sat back in his chair and smiled. “Tell me how the saddle came into your possession.”

  Martinez nodded, took a sip of coffee, and put the mug on the table. “I bought it off a guy in Las Vegas last December. He’d had a bad run at the tables and needed the money.”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “In a diner off the strip. The guy came up to me at my table and asked if I’d be interested in a great deal. Took me outside to the parking lot and showed me the saddle. I bought it on the spot.”

  “How much did you pay for it?”

  “A thousand.”

  “That’s a lot of money to be carrying around.”

  “I got lucky at the craps tables.”

  “Who was the guy?”

  “Just another cowboy in town for the pro rodeo finals. He said he was from Utah. I don’t remember his name.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Tall, maybe your size but younger.” Martinez paused and thought for a long moment. “Oh, yeah, he had a crooked nose. You need to look for a tall man with a crooked nose.”

  “What kind of vehicle was he driving?”

  “I think it was a Dodge truck. Extended cab. He had the saddle in the backseat.”

  “That’s helpful information. Do you know if he was competing in the rodeo? If so, that could narrow our search.”

  Martinez shook his head and reached for the mug. “He didn’t look like a contestant.”

  “Was anyone with you at the diner who saw the man?”

  Martinez tensed his shoulders, pulled his hand back from the mug, and gave Kerney a hard look. “No. Why didn’t you ask me all these questions at the corral when you made such a big deal out of admiring my saddle?”

  Kerney smiled reassuringly. “I had no reason to question you then, Mr. Martinez.”

  “Yeah, but that didn’t stop you from thinking I was some sort of criminal because I’ve got a custom-made saddle.”

  “If you had told me all this at the ranch instead of trying to flee, we could have avoided inconveniencing you.”

  Martinez drained his coffee and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt. “You cops always think the worst of people.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s often the case. I’ve a few more questions about the truck the man was driving. Whatever you can recall could help us find him.”

  Martinez said the truck was black in color. He said it had a chrome rear bumper. He said the truck had a diesel engine. He recalled hearing it when the cowboy drove away.

  Kerney wrote it all down.

  Leo stepped into the room, gave Kerney a folder, and left. Kerney scanned the information. Martinez owned a manufactured home on an acre of land in Hachita that he’d bought outright over a year ago, and was making monthly payments on a top-of-the-line new four-wheel-drive pickup truck. He had two bank cards and a gasoline credit card, and the monthly transaction records showed that he paid the balances in full regularly.

  All in all, Martinez had been living quite well over the past several years, an unusual circumstance for someone in a traditionally low-paying occupation.

  Martinez leaned forward in his chair. “What’s that you’re looking at?”

  “Just some additional information about the saddle,” Kerney lied. “Did you know it’s worth almost five thousand dollars?”

  “That much?”

  “Yeah,” Kerney said as he scanned Martinez’s credit card purchases. “It was taken from a saddlemaker’s shop in Duncan, Arizona. Ever been there?”

  “I’ve passed through it once or twice. Not much there worth stopping for.”

  “That’s what I hear.” Kerney stood and waved the file folder at Martinez. “Now that we know who the rightful owner is, the saddle has to be returned. I’m afraid you’re out the thousand bucks you paid for it.”

  Martinez shrugged and smiled. “Easy come, easy go. Like I said, I bought it with money I won gambling.”

  “I’ll tell the sheriff to cut you loose. If you like, you can wait in the reception area. I’ll give you a ride back to the ranch.”

  “No jail?”

  “That’s right.” Kerney patted Martinez on the arm. “You’re a free man.”

  He escorted Martinez to reception and then dropped in on Leo.

  “That was quick,” Leo said from behind his desk. “Did he confess?”

  “I didn’t even try to take him that far.” Kerney handed Leo the gasoline-credit-card transaction report. “Look at the dates of his gas purchases. Every two weeks he fills up his tank, drives to Phoenix, Ruidoso, or Albuquerque, and then gasses up again for the return trip home on the same night. What kind of ranch hand does that kind of traveling, especially at night du
ring the week? Or has the kind of money to buy a house outright?”

  “None that I know of.” Leo brushed his mustache with a finger. “He’s making deliveries. But what kind, and why to Phoenix, Ruidoso, and Albuquerque?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So why not lean on him?”

  “Because it would only tip our hand. If his pattern holds, Martinez will be on the road again soon. I’m betting another plane will be landing at the Sentinel Butte Ranch any day now. If so, we can take down Martinez, Shaw, and the supplier all at once.”

  “You’re talking about a stakeout.”

  Kerney nodded. “It needs to be put in place as soon as possible.”

  Leo scratched his chin. “I don’t have the personnel to mount an operation like that.”

  “The state police should be willing to help out. I’ll talk to Chief Baca in Santa Fe.”

  Leo nodded. “Do you want in on it?”

  “Yes, I do,” Kerney said. “Let me know the plans.”

  On the trip back to the ranch, with his freedom no longer in question, Buster Martinez became less apprehensive and a bit more talkative. He embellished the story about the tall cowboy with the crooked nose, suddenly remembering the man had told him that he was on his way to a new ranch job in Texas. It was obviously pure fabrication, but Kerney pretended to swallow it, and thanked Martinez. By the time they hit the Jordan ranch road, Buster had graciously agreed to treat his encounter with the police as nothing more than a misunderstanding.

  They found Walter Shaw outside the barn. The movie set had been struck and the ranch headquarters, now restored to its original condition, looked neat as a pin. Martinez’s expression clouded with worry as Kerney explained the events of the day to Shaw. He licked his lips and averted his eyes from Shaw’s gaze.

  “Ross and Pruitt told me what happened,” Shaw said amiably when Kerney finished. He patted Martinez reassuringly on the shoulder. “I’m glad it got straightened out. Can’t afford to lose a good hand like Buster.”