“Relax, Torker,” I said. I knew that Stuart Torkelson would sell a tourist land that had less water puddled on it than on a horned toad’s back-but he wouldn’t sneak around at night tossing spiked dog biscuits to other people’s pets. “Reuben was in town today, and according to Carla at the post office, he was wearing his gun. If he’d thought it was you who killed his dogs, you would have known it by now. He knows where your office is. And he’s had a week.”
“That’s a cheerful thought,” Torkelson said. He took a deep breath. “I’m out and around here all the time, Bill. Tell you what. If I see anything, or anybody, that looks fishy, I’ll sure as hell give you call.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“And say,” he said, brightening, “I hear you’re off to Mexico in a little bit.”
I grinned. “That’s the nice thing about a small town. If you ever forget what you’re doing, just ask someone…they’ll know.” I patted Torkelson on the arm as I moved toward the door of the car. “Estelle’s having the christening for her son next week. I’m the godfather.”
“He’ll be a mean little hombre then,” Torkelson said with a chuckle. “Tell Estelle and that meat-cutter husband of hers that she needs to move back to town.”
“I’ll tell her. It won’t be anything different than what she’s heard from me before.”
I got in the car, slamming the door against the heat and the dust. Torkelson stepped close one more time. “You know, I came real close to selling her and her husband a house over on Bustos Avenue. Real close. Damn near closed on the deal. And then she got that job up north.” He threw up his hands. “Go figure.”
“I hope you sell some property to these folks, Torker,” I said.
He brightened. “You ever been in Martinez Tubes?”
I shook my head. “And the second half of that story is that I never intend to go. Crawling over sharp rocks and through bat shit isn’t my idea of a good time.”
“Hey, you’d be surprised.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“You know Herm Klein from the BLM in Las Cruces?”
“No.”
“Well, him and me and a couple others went in one of them tubes that’s almost two thousand feet long. Year-round ice, even.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t Lechugilla down at Carlsbad Caverns measured in miles, Torker?”
He grinned and slapped the doorframe of my car. “You gotta start somewhere, Bill. Mark my words-when they make that tube complex a monument, then you ask me which land’s worth money and which isn’t. I’m in on the ground floor this time.” He glanced over his shoulder. “If that crazy old fart don’t blow my head off first.”
“He won’t,” I said. “He’s harmless.” I watched Stuart Torkelson trudge back to the Suburban where the folks were probably wondering what the confab had been all about. I pulled out onto the county road and headed back toward Posadas.
In the rearview mirror I saw Torkelson gesticulating this way and that, and the heads twisting to follow his orchestration. He was probably telling his clients that they could always expect to have efficient law enforcement should they decide to relocate to the open prairie. They probably believed him.
8
As I had begun to suspect, an afternoon’s investigation turned up nothing new concerning the death of Anna Hocking. My deputies found no fingerprints that belonged to anyone other than Anna or Sheriff Holman.
That was predictable, I suppose. After almost three years as sheriff, Martin Holman still didn’t know how to treat a possible crime scene.
Window sills and door knobs were clean, as were light switches and broom handles. Even the clean two-quart bottle of orange juice turned only one set of prints…Anna’s. That set me even more firmly on course. The elderly lady had wanted a late snack of juice and maybe toast with jam. There was no jam in the refrigerator, but lots downstairs.
There’s nothing much stronger than a nighttime snack craving-and so she’d decided against all better judgment to just hobble down the stairs one more time.
Deputy Eddie Mitchell talked with the neighbors, but at the nearby trailer park, the Sloans weren’t home and the Ulibarris hadn’t heard a thing until all the police cars arrived.
It wasn’t a neat and tidy package, but it would do until something else broke. I was satisfied. I wasn’t so confident about Reuben Fuentes.
Late that Saturday afternoon I was sitting in my office with my boots off and my feet comfortably propped up on the corner of my desk. I imagined that I was smoking a cigarette-it’d been five months, seven days, four hours, and twelve minutes since I’d had my last one. I missed them, but doctors told me my heart didn’t. I hooked my hands behind my head, closed my eyes, and thought.
“Sir?” The voice jarred me, and I swung my head to see who’d intruded. Deputy Bob Torrez stood there like a new recruit, file folder in hand, bags under his eyes.
“You need to go home, Roberto,” I said. “There’s nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow or Monday.”
Torrez stepped across to my desk. “I just wanted to show you this picture, sir,” he said. He opened the folder and slid an eight-by-twelve glossy toward me. I swung my feet down and leaned forward. The picture was slightly fuzzy, but I could see the pattern of what appeared to be a tennis shoe print on a clean surface.
I held the picture up and frowned, moving my head a little this way and that until I had the clearest shot through my trifocals.
“Where’d you take this?”
“I was going to show you last night, but we got busy,” Torrez said in his usual serious fashion. “Remember I’ve been checking into the breaking and entering at Wayne Farm Supply? I found this one print inside, on the floor near where they apparently entered the building.”
“How’d you take this? I’m impressed.”
“Sergeant Bishop showed me a trick he’d learned from Detective Reyes when she was here,” Torrez answered. “We laid a flashlight down on the floor and rolled it until the beam picked up what we thought might be footprints. At that kind of an angle, it shows up everything.”
“And this print showed.”
“Right. This is one of two that did. When whoever broke in stepped into the shop proper, where the floor’s real dirty, they didn’t leave any usable traces.”
“Let me guess. The second print was left on his way out, along the same route.”
“Yes sir. It didn’t turn out as good. Smudged.” He dug another photograph out of the envelope and handed it to me. I would have been hard-pressed to tell what it represented if I hadn’t been told.
“So,” I said leaning back. “The kid breaks in by prying open part of the steel siding of the building. He squeezes inside, leaving a print on the polished office floor before he hits the shop. He steals about a thousand bucks’ worth of tools, and then leaves. That about it?”
“That’s it, sir.”
“Anything interesting taken, other than the usual hand tools and such?”
“Not that Mr. Sanchez knows of. He finished up an inventory this afternoon, and I stopped by on my way here. Just hand tools, an engine hoist, and a couple of chain saws.”
“An engine hoist? Isn’t that kind of big to get out through a hole in the wall?”
“It was one of those kind that you hang from the ceiling joist of a garage.” Torrez held his hands up to form a circle about as big as a basketball. “Like so. Couple chains hang down from it.”
“So what’s your next step?”
He tapped the folder. “The print shows that the sneaker wasn’t too worn. The cuts are nice and sharp. So I’m guessing it was pretty new. I was going to go down to Payless tomorrow and see if I can get a match for the brand.”
“What makes you think the kid, if it was a kid, bought the shoes here in town?”
Torrez shrugged. “Just a hunch, sir. I’ve got three or four names on my list, and none of ’em have the kind of money to drive to Cruces to shop. I’ll start here at home.”