Mexican Hat Page 7

  “Not even Charlie Perry?”

  Stiles groaned. “That prissy, uptight asshole? If he gets his hands on this case, we can kiss it goodbye. It will disappear into the woodwork. By the time the party’s over, you’ll wish we had just kept our mouths shut and done the investigation on our own,” Stiles predicted.

  AN HOUR AFTER the arrival of an assorted cast of characters that included the county sheriff, three of his five deputies, a rookie state police officer who had never seen a dead body before, two Game and Fish officers who were general nuisances, and the officious Charlie Perry, who arrived with Carol Cassidy and several others, Kerney admitted that Jim’s prophecy had come true. Finally, when the search-and-rescue team arrived like a posse on horseback, hoping maybe somebody else might be lost and in need of their services, Kerney gave up, found Stiles, and broke him loose from his Game and Fish buddies. There were tight pockets of people scattered across the meadow holding earnest conversations about who was going to do what.

  “This is a disaster,” he bitched, pointing to the three helicopter pilots standing next to their aircraft, scanning the meadow with binoculars.

  “I told you so,” Stiles reminded him. “Think about it. What else is there to do in Catron County for recreation? Drink? Watch videos? Go to church? Poach game? That gets boring after a while. It can’t be sex. The birth rate keeps steadily dropping. This is much more fun. In fact, it doesn’t happen often enough to suit most people.”

  “How can you stand it?” Kerney asked. He watched the state cop line up the search-and-rescue team and send them across the meadow in a field sweep, looking for evidence.

  “These are my friends and neighbors,” Stiles said solemnly. “Good people, one and all. Look. Fred Langford just walked right over the poacher’s nest without blinking an eye.”

  “Thank God we took pictures,” Kerney said, grimacing. “Who’s the medical examiner?”

  Stiles answered with a straight face. “Petra Gonzales. She was a dental assistant in the Navy. She’s almost finished with her training.”

  Kerney stifled a snicker.

  “This is just round one,” Stiles commented. “Wait until they start fighting over who gets to be in charge. I bet they divvy it up. The state police will give it to an investigator out of Socorro, the sheriff will make local inquiries which will lead absolutely nowhere, Charlie Perry will assign it to himself, and we’ll get to write a report on the poaching incident that everybody will want for their files. End of story.”

  “And who’s interviewing Dr. Padilla at the hospital in Silver City?” Kerney asked.

  “Nobody, yet,” Jim answered. “They’ll get around to it as soon as Petra announces Hector’s death was a murder.”

  “Can we trust her to do it?”

  “The exit wound in Hector’s back is pretty hard to miss,” Stiles reassured him. “If you want more, we’ll have to do our own investigation.”

  “We?” Kerney queried.

  Stiles grinned. “Why not? You got something to lose?”

  “Not really.”

  Stiles slapped him on the back. “Neither do I. Besides, my uncle is the chairman of the state Game and Fish Commission. How’s that for job security?”

  “That should keep you on the payroll.” Kerney looked at the sky. Maybe four hours of sunlight left, he figured. Enough time to get back to the Mangas campsite before dark. “What are we waiting for?” He started for the horses.

  “You got a plan?”

  “First we talk to the lookout at the fire tower, then we visit everybody who lives on the road to Mangas. How many cars travel that road in a day?”

  “I’d say no more than ten,” Stiles answered, quickening his pace to keep up with Kerney. “The highway department says it’s one of the lightest-traveled roads in the state. They want to make the Forest Service maintain it. Only five families live on that road.”

  “Maybe somebody saw something.”

  “Is this real police work, Kerney?” Stiles was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Yeah, but don’t get your hopes up.”

  Carol Cassidy stopped them before they could leave the meadow. She greeted Jim Stiles and turned her attention to Kerney. “Are you taking off?”

  Stiles answered before Kerney had a chance. “Yep. We’ll leave it in the hands of the experts.”

  Carol laughed, an amused, throaty chuckle. “It is like a zoo out there,” she agreed. “If I knew what to do, I’d put it right,” she added, looking directly at Kerney, waiting for him to volunteer.

  “Ma’am?” Kerney said, as innocently as possible.

  Carol laughed again. “I can see that you two will make quite a team.” Her expression became thoughtful. “What would you have done, Kevin, if this crime had happened in Santa Fe when you were chief of detectives?”

  “I’d kick everybody who doesn’t belong off the meadow, assign my best people, and give it top priority,” Kerney answered.

  Carol nodded as Kerney spoke. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

  “Let me guess,” Stiles interjected sarcastically. “You’re going to ask Charlie Perry to handle the case.”

  Carol didn’t laugh. “Don’t do that to me, Jim,” she snapped. “I am not going to get sucked into sniping at a colleague.”

  Stiles clamped his mouth shut, swallowed hard, and nodded. “You’re right. Sorry. I was out of line.”

  “No damage done,” Carol replied, turning her attention back to Kerney. “Kevin, I want you full-time on this investigation until further notice. Tell me what you need and I’ll try and get it for you. Use your discretion on how you want to proceed and keep me informed. But remember, your police powers are limited.”

  “I understand. I’d like Jim to work with me, if that’s possible.”

  Carol’s eyes widened in mock disbelief. “I said use discretion, Kevin, not poor judgment.”

  Stiles groaned and clutched his chest. “That hurts. I am truly mortified, Mrs. Cassidy.”

  “Good,” Carol responded with a chuckle. “I’ll call your boss, Jim. He’s sat at my dinner table too many times to turn me down if I ask for a favor. It won’t be a problem.”

  “Good deal,” Jim said, his eyes dancing with pleasure. “Thanks.”

  Carol nodded. “Get going,” she ordered the men.

  After Carol left, the two men mounted and started down the trail. Jim Stiles looked over his shoulder, brushed his mustache with a finger to force down a smile, and said, “Hot damn! Real police work.”

  Kerney shook his head and rolled his eyes in response. From the meadow behind them the sound of Carol’s voice, magnified by a bullhorn, floated down the trail. She ordered the area cleared of nonessential personnel. One of the helicopters fired up and soon flew over the men as they pushed the horses through the canopy of the forest.

  AMADOR ORTIZ watched his crew through the windshield of the truck, one foot propped against the frame of the open door. He reached down and changed the frequency on his radio so he could listen in on the sheriff’s traffic from Elderman Meadows. Nothing but static. He switched back to the state police channel. The state cop was asking for an ETA on the forensic team. He saw a shadow move across the windshield and looked up. Kevin Kerney was standing by the open truck door.

  “Keeping up with the local news?” Kerney asked.

  Amador nodded. “Who’s the guy that got killed?”

  “A Mexican national.”

  “How long has he been dead?”

  “It’s hard to say. Maybe twenty-four hours. Did anything unusual happen while you were camped here last night?”

  “Nothing.” Ortiz watched Jim Stiles put the horses in the trailers.

  “Did you have any visitors?”

  “No.” Amador scratched his armpit. “Why all the questions?”

  “Was there any traffic on the road?”

  “Just a few campers and trucks pulling boats down from the lake.”

  “You saw nothing? Heard nothing?”
>
  “That’s what I said. Stop playing cop with me. If the guy has been dead for twenty-four hours, do you think whoever shot him would still be hanging around?”

  “Sometimes it happens.”

  Amador snorted. “Not likely.”

  “Did you leave the campsite at any time last night?”

  “No.”

  “Thanks, Amador.” Ortiz’s crew had knocked down the fence to the temporary equipment pen and were finished loading stuff onto the flatbed truck. “I’ll see you around.”

  “Maybe,” Ortiz answered. He pulled the truck door closed, cranked the engine, and waved at his crew, who were waiting for him. The men piled into the flatbed cab and followed Ortiz as he drove away.

  Kerney found Jim bent over the trailer hitch to his truck. Jim unfastened the safety chain, pulled the pin to the hitch, and lowered the tongue to the ground.

  “No need to pull the horse trailer up to the lookout station,” he said as he stood up. “I’ll leave it here.”

  “I take it you’re planning to interview the man at the fire tower,” Kerney remarked. “Is there something you’d like me to do?”

  Jim blushed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound pushy.”

  “I’ll let you know if you get too obnoxious. Go ahead. Meet me at the Luna office when you’re done. You can introduce me to the good folks who live along the Mangas Valley road.”

  Stiles smiled in relief. “You got it.”

  4

  The blare of the alarm brought Karen out of a deep sleep. With one eye she squinted at the clock radio. God, it was only six in the morning. She reached out, hit the off button, rolled onto her stomach, put the pillow over her head, and tried to go back to sleep. Then she remembered: she had agreed to meet Phil for breakfast in Reserve. She groaned, kicked the blanket off, got up, and walked into the living room.

  Elizabeth and Cody were bundled in sleeping bags on the floor, fast asleep. They had been such dears during the move back to the ranch. As a reward to celebrate the final day of unpacking, she had rented their favorite movies, made popcorn to munch on, and let them stay up late. It had been great fun.

  She tiptoed around her children, went to the small bathroom adjacent to the kitchen, and ran a tubful of water. There was time for a long soak before she needed to dress and leave. She wondered what Phil wanted to talk about. He was so insistent that they meet alone and away from the family as soon as possible.

  Karen took off her panties, stepped into the deep cast-iron tub, and sank into the water. It felt wonderful. Coming back home had been the right thing to do, she decided. It had been a happy place for her as a child, as it would be for Cody and Elizabeth.

  IT WAS SUNDAY MORNING, and Cattleman’s Café on the main highway through Reserve, the premier drinking, dining, and recreation center in town, opened early, serving up good food along with local news, politics, and gossip. With no newspaper or radio station in the community, Cattleman’s was the de facto communication center for the county.

  Kerney and Jim Stiles sat in the back dining room drinking coffee while they waited for breakfast to arrive. Dog-tired, Kerney was more than willing to let Jim do the talking. They had both been up all night, but Kerney thought Jim looked good for another nonstop twenty-four hours, while he felt like one of the living dead.

  Two young cowboys were at the pool table in the front barroom. One of them, his cowboy hat pushed back at a jaunty tilt, looked no more than sixteen. He bent low over the table, studied the angle of the cue ball, and made an excellent bank shot into a side pocket. His companion, a slightly older kid with a broad, open face, grimaced as the ball dropped. Both boys wore holstered pistols in plain view, and the two older men sitting at the bar were also packing weapons on their hips. As far as Kerney knew, the state law prohibiting firearms in drinking establishments had not been repealed.

  Stiles stopped talking, and Kerney nodded, not sure what he was agreeing with. “Isn’t there a law against weapons in bars?” he asked.

  Jim responded with a laugh. “Of course there is. But the county commission passed a proclamation last year urging all citizens to arm themselves to protect home, family, grazing rights, and timber sales. Most people around here believe in home rule, so as far as they’re concerned the proclamation supersedes state law. Besides, it’s damn inconvenient to have to shed your weapon every time you want to play a game of pool or have a drink, and the sheriff isn’t going to enforce a law that everybody violates. That would be political suicide, especially in an election year.”

  “Do you agree with the sheriff?”

  “Hell no, I don’t. But there isn’t a damn thing you or I can do about it, unless you want to start a gunfight.”

  “I’ll pass,” Kerney replied. He had been in one too many gunfights already. The knee that had been shattered in a shoot-out hurt bad. It felt as if the steel pins that held it together were grinding against bone.

  While Stiles slugged down the rest of his coffee and waved his cup at the waitress to signal for a refill, Kerney mentally reviewed the events of the night. They had found the Padillas’ abandoned trailer, and then waited four hours for a search warrant. Omar Gatewood, the county sheriff who showed up with the warrant, refused to let Kerney and Stiles conduct the search and did it himself. About the time Gatewood finished, Charlie Perry arrived and demanded to be briefed. With dawn breaking, Kerney and Stiles decided not to get involved in a jurisdictional tug-of-war with either man, so they left.

  “Why were the Padillas at Elderman Meadows?” Kerney asked.

  Stiles waited for the approaching waitress to pour his refill and leave before answering. “Don’t know.”

  “Speculate,” Kerney urged.

  “Padilla is an old family name from around these parts. There’s even a Padilla Canyon north of Mangas Mountain.”

  “Do you think the old man is from around here?” Kerney queried.

  “It’s possible. But all of the original Padillas are long gone, as far as I know. My granddaddy bought Elderman Meadows when it was sold at auction for taxes back in the Depression, but I don’t know anything more about it.”

  The waitress brought breakfast, and Jim stopped talking. Kerney picked at his food. With part of his stomach gone, from a bullet taken in the same gun battle that had busted his knee and forced him into retirement, he ate lightly and carefully.

  “When we found Padilla, he said he’d come from a place called Mexican Hat. Are there any landforms in the area that resemble a hat?” he asked, watching Jim pack away his breakfast.

  Jim sighed. “I’ve been trying to figure that one out myself. There are none that I know of, unless he meant Hat Mountain down by Lake Valley. But that’s a good long ways south, on the other side of the Black Range. Maybe the old man was just babbling,” Stiles added.

  “Maybe,” Kerney replied, unconvinced.

  Cattleman’s got busy with breakfast traffic. Several customers joined the two men at the bar and ordered up a whiskey breakfast. A sign taped over the mirror behind the bar read:

  CONSERVE WOOD AND PAPER PRODUCTS.

  WIPE YOUR ASS WITH AN ENVIRONMENTALIST.

  Additional firepower came in with the new customers. The scruffy pine tables covered with plastic tablecloths in the dining area filled with people, mostly ranchers wearing pistols, and the sound of conversation grew. The sight of so many civilians with weapons made Kerney uneasy. He positioned his chair so he had a clear view of the room.

  “We need to look at the documents Gatewood took from the trailer,” he said, as Jim finished wiping the last of the egg yolk off his plate with a piece of toast. “If they were important enough for Padilla to bring along, they must have some meaning.”

  Stiles nodded and spoke between bites. “Can do. The sheriff will let me see them. Omar’s okay. Not smart, but okay.”

  “ ‘Not smart’ is an understatement. Do you know anybody who might remember the Padillas?” Kerney asked.

  “Just about any of the old-timers should
, I imagine. But in this county that’s sixty percent of the population.” Stiles rubbed a napkin across his mustache and mouth, crumpled it up, and dropped it on the empty plate.

  “That’s not what I wanted to hear.”

  “I know it, but maybe we don’t need to ask everybody over the age of seventy about the old man. José Padilla can tell us. We are going to talk to him, aren’t we?”

  “We aren’t. I am.”

  “You’ll need an interpreter.”

  “Yo cero que lo puedo hacer,” Kerney replied.

  Jim screwed up his face. “Estas lleno de sorpresas. Yo no sabia que pudieva hablar español.”

  “You didn’t ask,” Kerney replied. “Anyway, you seemed determined to give me a Spanish lesson yesterday. I didn’t want to spoil your fun.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Jim grumbled. “When do you plan to see Padilla?”

  “After I get some sleep.”

  PHIL WAS WAITING for Karen in his truck outside of Cattleman’s. There was no place for Karen to park in front of the fake old-west storefront that hid the metal skin of the building, so she left her car across the street. Phil saw her coming and opened the passenger door as she approached.

  “It’s been a long time, cousin,” Phil said as Karen got in the truck. She was wearing jeans, boots, and a brown sweater vest over a crewneck top.

  “Yes, it has. How have you been, Phil?”

  “Holding my own, I guess. Ranching doesn’t get any easier.” He shifted his position so that his back rested against the door. “I’ve got to ask—what in hell are you doing back in Catron County?”

  “It was time to come home,” Karen answered. “For a lot of reasons.”

  “Are you planning to take over the Triple H?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “Think you can handle it?”

  Karen smiled sweetly at Phil. “Do you think it’s too much for a woman to take on?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you thought it, didn’t you?”