Torrez parked the patrol car on the north side of the store, next to Sam Carter’s black Explorer.
As the automatic doors swung open to greet us, Taffy Hines looked up from register one, black marker in hand. She had what looked like a proof of the weekly full-page grocery ad spread out on the conveyor. A weekday midmorning obviously wasn’t hustle time for shoppers.
With a slight smile, she pointed over her shoulder with the marker. “His Nibs is in the office,” she said. “I assume that’s who you want to see, unless you’re here to actually buy something.” She grinned good-naturedly.
“Thanks,” I said. “We need to see Sam.” I stepped close to her and paused. “I’m sorry if you’re getting sucked into this mess.”
Taffy straightened up, marker poised. “Sheriff,” she said, voice even and low, “I could really care less. You just do what you have to do.”
“I appreciate that,” I said, reaching out to touch her lightly on the forearm. If he bothered to look, Sam Carter could see us through his mirrored observation window, so I didn’t bother with subtlety, didn’t bother trying to make the visit look as if we’d just dropped by to pass the time of day or to check bargains on cookies.
As I opened the swinging door with the EMPLOYEES ONLY sign, Kenny Carter was coming down the back stairs from the office. He saw Torrez and me and stopped on the bottom step. His shoulders sagged just a touch, and he leaned against the wall.
“How you doin’, Kenny,” I said. He straightened up and glanced toward the exit door at the rear of the building. “Nobody’s going to bother your Jeep, son. Can we talk for a minute or two?”
Sam Carter emerged from the office door and stood on the narrow landing at the top of the steps.
“What have you got to tell me?” he said.
I shrugged. “I think it’s time we had a little chat, Sam.” I stepped forward toward the stairs, giving Kenny the choice of blocking my path, trying to bolt past me, or retreating uphill. The stairs were too narrow for both of us. He retreated, and Torrez and I trudged up the stairway behind him.
“Come on in,” Carter muttered. “I’ve got a lot of things I need to be doing, so I hope this won’t take too long.”
He sat down in his chair by the idling computer and waved a hand toward a single straight-backed chair over by the bookcase. The row of catalogs and binders threatened to explode off the shelf, and I pulled the chair out so I wouldn’t be caught in the avalanche.
Kenny stood by the corner of his father’s desk, trying his best to look unflustered. He wasn’t very good at it. He toyed with a can of soda that I guessed he’d brought up from the Jeep, took a perfunctory sip or two, and then set the can on the narrow windowsill. Maybe it was Bob Torrez’s towering presence that made Kenny nervous. If he wanted to bolt out the door, he’d have to go through the undersheriff, and that clearly wasn’t going to work.
“Let’s just cut right to it, Sam.” I shifted on the chair, trying to avoid the crack in the wooden seat.
“I’d welcome that,” he said, and I knew he didn’t mean it.
“Kenny here knows the Sisson family, and he had contact with them recently.”
“Now how do we know that?” Carter snapped.
I sighed. “Sam, I think now is the time to stop playing the games, all right? We’re not all blind and deaf. We talk to people. We know that Jennifer Sisson is pregnant, and we know that particular situation has to be partly responsible for some of the hell that family has been through recently.”
Carter started to shift in his chair, and I leaned forward, watching his face closely.
“And it’s no secret that Kenny here has been keeping company with the young lady,” I added, turning to Kenny. “Am I right?”
He bit his lip and took a bit too long to nod agreement, as if he needed the time to calculate his odds. He was a pretty good-looking kid, lanky and tough, with a bit more height and weight than his father and some of his mother’s darker complexion.
“So then. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put it together.” I leaned back, regarding Kenny. “More than one person assumes that you’re the father of Jennifer Sisson’s child. What do you say?”
“Now who says she’s pregnant?” Sam Carter barked, the first to be about two steps behind.
“You’re going to tell us that she’s not?” Bob Torrez said quietly.
Sam jerked around as if he’d been touched with a cattle prod, and he glared at Torrez.
“Well…”
“And it really doesn’t matter who told us, does it?”
“Of course it matters,” Carter exploded. “Jesus, you can’t just go around spreading rumors like that, getting people all worked up.”
“Yes, she’s pregnant,” Kenny Carter said before his father had a chance to take another breath. “So what.”
“Listen, Son-” Sam started, but Bob cut him off.
“The fact that Jennifer is or isn’t pregnant doesn’t matter, Kenny. At least not to us. At least not yet. What matters is that we find the person who killed James Sisson.”
“What, and you think that my son knows something about that? Don’t be ridiculous. And for one thing, nobody’s even proved it to be murder yet. It’s just all theory on your part. Lots of publicity.”
Torrez pushed himself away from the door and walked to the desk. His head was a scant inch below the ceiling fixture. “Earlier this morning, Kenny, we drove to your job site south of Deming, as you well know. When Mrs. LaCrosse called out there and tipped you off, you ran back here as fast as your little Jeep could go, short of getting a second traffic ticket.” He stopped and grinned at the expression on Kenny Carter’s face.
“Yeah,” Torrez added, “it’s a small world. But for starters, let’s establish some relationships. Jennifer Sisson is pregnant-everyone seems to agree on that. Are you the father?”
“Now listen,” Sam Carter said, but Torrez held up a hand.
“No, I’m not,” Kenny said from between clenched teeth. “I don’t know who knocked her up, but it wasn’t me.”
“All right.” Torrez nodded pleasantly. “Fair enough. How do you know it wasn’t you?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sakes,” Sam said, and he managed to find a small clear area in the landfill that was his desk so that he could slap the desktop with the flat of his hand. “What the hell does it matter, anyway? Whether the boy is or isn’t?” A vein pulsed on the side of his neck, and he was red enough to have spent the whole day out in the sun. “Hell, Kenny, tell ’em the truth, if that’s what they want to hear.”
“I told them the truth.”
“And on Tuesday night, did you have occasion to go over to the Sissons’ place?” I asked.
“No.”
“You didn’t go over and talk to Jim Sisson?”
“No.”
“Did you know whether or not Jim knew that his daughter was pregnant?”
“I wouldn’t know. But I don’t see how he couldn’t know.”
“Did you know what Jim’s reaction to that news might be?”
“How could I know that? If I was him, I’d be pissed. She’s only fifteen, or something. What do you expect?”
“Would he blame you, do you think?”
“Yes. And that’s what a couple of the guys told me. Jennifer was telling her friends that it was me. Like she was proud of getting knocked up, or something. But I don’t know for sure. I haven’t talked to him in a while. If he was all mad at me, that’s the last place I wanted to go.”
“Were you on friendly-enough terms with him before?”
“I guess.”
“You guess,” I said. “When was the last time you talked with Jim Sisson?”
He frowned. For once Sam Carter kept his mouth shut. He gazed at his son, face flushed with anger.
“Last week, maybe.”
“That recently?”
“Something like that. Jennifer and me had an argument and broke up. At least we hadn’t talked in a while. I was figuring that maybe we could get back together, you know? I mean…you know. I like her. I’d see her out on the street, but she wasn’t about to talk to me. I saw Jim comin’ out of the auto parts place one day last week, when I was goin’ in. I think it was Saturday, maybe. He was like, ‘I haven’t seen you around in a while,’ and I said, ‘No, I think Jenny’s mad at me for something,’ and he was all, ‘Well, that’s how women are,’ and then he asked me where I was workin’, and I told him LaCrosse’s, and he said that was good. And that was it.”