“And Miss Champlin wants you evicted.”
“Say what?”
I nodded. “She contends that the house you’re renting has been damaged to a point where she’s losing her investment.”
“Sir, that’s-”
I held up a hand to cut him off. “That’s what Miss Champlin said. I pass it on to you for what it’s worth. If there’s a problem, it’s between you and her.”
“Why didn’t she just come and talk with me?” Pasquale said. “I wouldn’t think that’s so hard.”
“She said that she’s tried, on several occasions.” Pasquale looked puzzled, and I spread my hands. “That’s what she says. I’ve known Carla Champlin for a good many years, Thomas. She’s an…interesting…person. You happen to be her target of the month.”
“What am I supposed to do, then?”
“I wouldn’t presume to tell you, Thomas. Maybe plant some petunias. I don’t know.”
“It’s the motorcycle,” he said flatly.
“The Harley in the front yard?”
He nodded. “I’m trying to buy it from Mears. The other day I had it inside the house. It’s got something wrong with one of the carbs, and I didn’t want to get sand in it, so I rolled it inside and put it in the back bedroom. I put papers down and stuff.”
“And…”
“She happened to drive by when Linda and I were rolling it back outside.”
“I see,” I said, and grinned. “Were you wearing your leather motorcycle gang jacket at the time?”
“Maybe I should have been,” he muttered. “If I owned one.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I told Carla Champlin I’d mention it to you, and I have, so…”
Pasquale nodded and reached for his hat again.
“One more thing before you go,” I said.
“Sir?”
I hesitated again. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but I knew I wasn’t good at dissembling. Tom Pasquale would find out sooner or later, and I wanted it to be from me, not from an article in the newspaper or from someone on the street who couldn’t wait to pass on juicy gossip. I opened the top drawer of my desk and took out the photocopies I’d made of the three letters received by the county commissioners and Frank Dayan.
I reached across and handed them to Pasquale. He read them one at a time with his lips forming the words silently. By the second one, his face had drained of color.
Chapter Fourteen
“Dr. Gray tracked down and gave me that,” I said. Deputy Pasquale still hadn’t found words, so I continued, “And then Sam Carter caught up with me while I was having dinner last night…or two nights ago. I lose track.”
“All three are the same,” Pasquale murmured. “Except for who they’re sent to.” He looked up. “What’s Frank Dayan planning to do, did he say? Did he give this to you personally?”
“Yes. We spent a good deal of time together last night, wandering around the county and trying to figure out what the son of a bitch who wrote this had in mind. Frank said he has no intention of doing anything about the note.” I managed a smile. “No front-page expose in his paper. Not even the classifieds. And I think he’ll keep his word.”
“I don’t understand, then.”
I turned my chair sideways and hooked a boot up on the corner of my desk. “Neither do I, Tom. It interests me that the creep didn’t just send the note to me in the first place.” I spread my hands. “That would be logical, but a couple of reasons have occurred to me why he might not do that. Instead, he targets at least two of the five commissioners and the publisher of the local newspaper. That’s who I’ve heard from so far.”
“I never did any of this, sir,” Tom Pasquale said.
“You don’t have to convince me.”
But the young deputy obviously felt that he did, and added, “I usually don’t even stop cars with Mexican plates. Not unless they’re doing something really wild and crazy. And every stop I make is logged, so there’s a record.”
I held up a hand. “Relax. This is the way I look at it. Either you’ve got yourself an enemy who’s trying to make your life miserable, or the target is the department that you have the misfortune to work for. Someone’s trying to make us look bad and happened to pick you as a good place to start.” I shrugged and swung the other boot up.
“Who knows who we’ll hear from next? Maybe we’ll start getting cute little letters telling the world that I’m feathering my retirement bed by selling stuff out of the evidence locker over at the flea market in Las Cruces on the weekends.” I paused and regarded Pasquale for a moment, just long enough that he started to twist in his seat again.
“Your landlady would like to crucify you at the moment, Tom, but this crap isn’t the style of a crazy woman. And it’s not the sort of thing some kid that you busted one too many times would do. My suspicion is that some damn fool has a grudge against this department and enjoys making some trouble. Somebody who understands the power of rumor.”
Pasquale took a deep breath. “What should I do, sir?”
I put my feet down, swung around, and leaned forward, clasping my hands together in front of me as if I were about to begin a prayer session.
“My first inclination would be to ignore it, but I’ve been thinking about it some, and damned if I want to do that. What I really want to do is hang the son of a bitch who wrote these.” I picked up the three letters and then let them fall to the desk. “Whoever it is thinks he’s pretty slick. The thought occurs to me that if he’d written one of those notes to me, or to any member of this department, we could try to nail him for filing a false complaint.”
“But he didn’t do that,” Pasquale said. “And those letters aren’t signed.”
“Nope, he didn’t…and they aren’t. There’s a claim of documentation, but obviously we’ll never see any of that.” I leaned back. “And these aren’t signed statements, as you point out. What I’d like to do is find out who wrote the notes-be able to prove it-and then go after ’em for libel. I’ve never sued anybody in my life, but this seems like a good opportunity to start.”
“I don’t have money for a lawyer,” Pasquale said, his voice almost a whisper.
“No. But I do, and it’d give me immense satisfaction to make this bastard squirm.”
“The only trouble is,” Pasquale said, “even being in the right, even being able to prove it’s just libel, some of the shit rubs off.”
I grimaced in sympathy. “Yep. Welcome to the world, Thomas.”
“What if someone really is stopping Mexican nationals?” Pasquale said. “What if someone else is doing it and blaming it on me?”
“Then we try our best to catch ’em at it.” I grinned. “I’d enjoy that, too.” I picked up the copies and slid them back inside the brown case folder.
“Maybe there’s something we could pick up from those,” Pasquale said. “Prints or something? Characteristic letter strikes, something like that?”
“That’s being done,” I replied. “These are copies. I sent the originals to Las Cruces. In a day or two, we’ll know all there is to know. But in the meantime, don’t hold your breath. I don’t think we’re going to find that they were printed on a 1936 Royal typewriter with half of its e missing. Life is never that simple. But speaking of little things…” I pushed back my chair and stood up with a crack of joints. “You spend a lot of time down on State 56.” I looked down and regarded the yellow legal pad with my statistical computations.
“Of the 137 registration checks you requested through Dispatch last month, eighty-four were logged while you were working that particular stretch of highway.”
I saw the flush creep up Thomas Pasquale’s neck and cheeks and knew what he was thinking. He started to say something, but I held up a hand. “About the same the month before that, and ditto for May. What your logs show is that you cover that particular highway pretty thoroughly.” I rested a finger on the logs as if marking my place. “What I want you to think about is anything you’ve noticed during that time. Anything that, thinking back now, is a little unusual.”
“I don’t follow, sir.”