“So he knew that you’d been going out with Jennifer?” I asked.
“Sure, he knew.”
“And that was the last time you saw him alive? Last Saturday?”
Kenny Carter nodded.
Torrez rested his hands on his utility belt. “And at that time did you know that Jennifer was pregnant?”
“Nope. And I don’t think Mr. Sisson did, either. If he had, he wouldn’t have been all calm and everything.”
“When did you hear that she was pregnant?”
“A friend of mine that talked to a friend of hers called me and told me.”
“When was that?”
Kenny Carter shrugged. “I don’t know. A day or so before her dad-”
“Maybe Sunday then? Maybe Saturday? It was after you saw Jim coming out of the store?”
“Yeah…it was after that.”
Torrez shook his head slowly. “Kenny, if we drove over to the Sissons’ right now and asked Jennifer who the father of her child was, what do you think she’d say?”
The kid’s expression was bleak. “I don’t know what she’d say,” he said. “I just know it wasn’t me. And I don’t know why she’d blame me, neither.”
“Give me a reason to believe that,” I said.
He looked at me for a long time, longer than most kids his age bother to think about anything. “Jennifer and me…well, the last time we…were together was early June. Like about the fifth or so. I remember ’cause I started with LaCrosse the next day, and Jennifer was sore ’cause I was going to be workin’ out of town.”
“And that’s the better part of seven weeks ago,” I said.
Kenny almost smiled. “And knowin’ Jenny, the second she knew she was pregnant, she’d blab it to her friends. That’s the way she is. Got to have something to talk about. Nothin’ much embarrasses her. And I know she wouldn’t wait for no two months to go by before she said something.”
“Maybe she wasn’t sure at the time,” I said.
Kenny glanced at me sideways. “Yeah,” he said, but didn’t elaborate.
“But she never actually called you, is that right?” Torrez asked.
“Nope. I ain’t talked to her in probably three weeks.”
I pushed myself to my feet. “Interesting,” I said, and reached across the desk to the windowsill. I picked up Kenny Carter’s soda can by the bottom rim. “Mind?”
He shook his head.
“Kenny, I want you to understand the serious nature of all this,” I said, and held up the can. “You can cooperate with us or not, just as you see fit. But a simple DNA test can establish whether or not you’re the father of that child. That way, we know that we have the story straight.” I didn’t bother to tell the kid that a DNA test was neither simple nor even a remote possibility.
“I’m telling you the truth,” he said. “I don’t know what an empty can of Coke is going to tell you, but I ain’t lying.”
“So that’s where we stand at the moment,” I said, nodding. “You want to tell us why you took off when you heard we were driving out?”
Kenny shot a quick glance over at his father, then at me. “I don’t know. I guess I just panicked, is all.”
“Just because we wanted to talk to you is cause to panic?”
“Well, I figured it was something serious, with you driving all the way down to Deming to see me.”
I turned and said to Sam, “Anything else you want to tell us, Sam?”
He got to his feet, careful not to kick the overloaded trash can.
“The sooner this ridiculous cat-and-mouse game is over, the happier I’ll be. I still say it was an accident that killed Jim Sisson, nothing else.”
“Maybe so, Sam, maybe so.”
Bob Torrez hadn’t finished, though. He reached across the desk and picked a cigarette butt out of the ashtray, holding it by the crushed, burned end. “You mind?”
“There’s fresh ones you could buy down by the registers,” Sam Carter said.
“No thanks. But as long as we’re running DNA tests on lip cells, we might as well cover all the bases.” Sam’s eyes narrowed, and any goodwill he might have harbored for Robert Torrez vanished. And he didn’t rise to the bait.
I smiled. “Thanks for your time.”
I took my time heading down the stairs, trying to keep the damn treads in focus around the bifocals. Out at the car, Bob Torrez dug a couple of plastic bags out of his briefcase and sacked the can in one and the cigarette butt in the other.
“Sam was pissed,” he said.
“Sure enough,” I replied. “If it turns out that the kid’s lying, he’s going to be more than pissed. Why the butt?”
I damn near fell into the passenger seat, always surprised when my insomnia-driven body decided it was time to poop out. Torrez stowed the two evidence bags carefully in his briefcase and snapped the lid shut.
“I guess I did that just to tweak Sam a little more, give him something else to think about,” he said. “Ah, I probably shouldn’t have.” He grimaced. “It’s the idea of the thing, see. If I was to mention to someone that we were running a paternity test on Sam Carter, well…”
I grinned at Bob and he shrugged and added, “Imagine the political miles that kind of rumor is worth. I wouldn’t do it, of course, but Sam doesn’t know that. A little worry is good for him.”
“I never thought of you as devious before, Robert,” I said.
“Me, neither.”
Chapter Thirty-one
I thought we’d made some progress with our fishing. For one thing, my large gut’s feeling was that Kenny Carter was lying. He was just too goddamn earnest and believable to be believed. And Bob Torrez agreed.
But since neither Jennifer Sisson nor her mother was protesting Kenny’s suspected paternity up and down the street, the kid had good reason to stonewall us until we could sledgehammer some holes in his defenses. The trouble was, I didn’t have a clue about how we might do that.
If he was lying about fathering Jennifer’s child, then there was a good chance some connection existed between him and Jim Sisson that Kenny didn’t want us sniffing into, and that idea intrigued me.
All of this seemed a profitable avenue to explore, if we could find a way, especially since we didn’t appear to have any others.
Bob Torrez dropped me off at the office, remarking that after a quick errand or two, he wanted to head south toward the little village of Regal and “check my freezer.” I knew what that meant. We all had our worry sites-I suppose my personal favorite was the booth at the Don Juan de Onate Restaurant. Robert, the unrelenting hunter, liked to cruise the boonies, watching the game animals that he would hunt come fall. I could imagine that as he sat on some knoll with binoculars glued to his eyes watching the phantoms of antelope or elk in the distance, the problems of the day might sift into some perspective.
As I walked into the office, I toyed with my own important decision-lunch or a nap. I checked my mailbox and found the ubiquitous Post-it note, this time telling me that Judge Lester Hobart had called. His office was no more than a hundred yards from mine, over in the new east wing of the Public Safety Building. But with the good judge’s gout, a walk of even a few yards was torture for him. I crumpled up the note, wondering if the judge had received his own version of the Pasquale letter, and went to return the call.
Violet Davies, the court administrator, answered the phone.
“Violet,” I said, “this is Gastner. What’s new in your life?” I could picture her pretty face framed with all the tight blond curls, breaking into the easy, bright smile that made nasty court appearances just a touch more pleasant for so many people.
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” she giggled. “Ah, well…” She let that thought drift off.
“Just one of those days?” I could hear a voice or two in the background. Her office was sort of like a nurses’ station in the hospital, open to the hallway that led to the courtroom’s back door, the judge’s chambers, and the other county offices beyond, but partially corralled by a low counter where she met the public.