Apache Country (11 page)

“And was there?”

Ironheel nodded. “My sister.”

Joe Apodaca impatiently brushed past Easton
and confronted Ironheel again, his jaw thrust forward as he
spoke.

“You asked him to call your sister? Is that
what you’re saying?”

There was something almost like jubilation in
his voice. When Ironheel nodded in reply, the sheriff looked at
Easton triumphantly. There you are, his expression said. They
already knew Weddle had spoken to Charlie Goodwin. If the other
call had been to Ironheel’s sister, that was the end of the
mystery. It wouldn’t be hard to check.

“What’s your sister’s name?” Easton
asked.

“Joanna.”

“That’s Joanna Ironheel, yes?” Joe said.
“Where does she live?”

“Whitetail Canyon, up near Highcroft on the
Mescalero Reservation.”

“She in the book?”

Ironheel nodded. “What happens now? What
about the arraignment?” he said.

“You’ll still appear,” Easton said.
“Nothing’s changed.”

“Will the court appoint another lawyer?”

“You’ll get your lawyer,” Apodaca told him,
testily. “First, though, you need to tell us why Weddle went out of
here in such a hurry?”

Ironheel shrugged, his face immobile. “I told
you. He said something about having a lot of work to do.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all. Why don’t you believe me?”

“Make a guess,” Joe gritted.

The sneer made Ironheel’s brows knit in
anger. He turned slowly to face the sheriff, his whole body tense,
the dark eyes flashing anger. His voice was held-in tight when he
spoke.

“Is that right, prisoners don’t have to talk
to anybody if they don’t want to?”

Apodaca glared back at him. “That’s right,”
he rasped.

“Then you’re done here,” Ironheel snarled.
“Aal bengon yáá!”

He threw himself back on his cot, put his
hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling, stolidly
ignoring their presence. Easton had seen that stony face before; it
meant there would be no more talking.

He looked at the sheriff. In all the years
they had worked together he had never seen Joe lose control like
this. But there it was, as blown as a fuse. He raised his eyebrows
and cocked his head toward the buzzer on the wall. The sheriff got
the message and nodded curtly.

Easton pushed the buzzer and they stood in a
fraught silence until Hal Sweeney came hurrying along the corridor
and let them out. As the deputy slid the cell gate shut Easton
glanced back over his shoulder. Ironheel was looking right at him,
and once again he saw something unsaid in the Apache’s dark eyes.
This time there was no mistaking what it was. Please. Then the door
clanged shut.

Apodaca marched angrily down the corridor
ahead of Easton and Sweeney, his arms pressed tight against his
body, his face dark with inwardly-directed anger. He knew he’d lost
the plot and he was mad with himself. He didn’t speak until they
were back in the receiving office. Then he put both hands flat on
Sweeney’s desk and leaned forward.

“All right, Hal,” he said, without preamble.
“I want you to go over everything that happened here last night.
Don’t leave anything out.”

Sweeney nodded, watching the sheriff’s eyes
anxiously.

“You mean about that Weddle guy, right?”

“Right. How long did they talk?”

Sweeney thought mightily. “Ten, fifteen
minutes.”

“Then he asked to use the interview
room.”

“Right.”

“When they were through you took Ironheel
back to his cell, then let Weddle out. That how it went?”

“Ahuh, right.”

“Okay, how did he look?”

Sweeney looked puzzled. “How do you
mean?”

“Was he calm? Excited?”

Sweeney gulped. “Jesus Criminy, Joe I just
let him out is all. I didn’t look to see how he felt.”

Apodaca made an exasperated sound. “But you
said he left in a hell of a rush, right?”

“Like I told you. Couldn’t get out fast
enough,” Hal said with an anxious-to-please smile.

“And that’s it?” Joe sneered, laying the
contempt on with a trowel. “You’re supposed to be a goddamn cop,
for Chrissake!”

Hal Sweeney stared at him, his face flushed
with humiliation.

“What did he say?” Apodaca rasped
impatiently. “What were his exact words?”

Sweeney thought hard. “He said, I have to go,
make some calls. I said he could use my phone, but he—”

“You’re sure he just said ‘some calls’? He
didn’t use the word ‘important’ or ‘urgent’ or anything like
that?”

“Well, hell, I can’t swear he didn’t, Joe.
But—”

“All right, all right,” Joe said impatiently.
“So tell me this. If he was in such a goddamned hurry to make his
calls, why did he wait till he got all the way over to the Frontier
Motel to make them?”

Sweeney stared at him open mouthed. “Jesus
Criminy, Joe, how would I know?” he said.

Joe Apodaca shook his head impatiently and
turned to face Easton, as if Sweeney was no longer there. Then all
at once the tension went out of the sheriff’s body and his
shoulders drooped.

“Oh, shit,” he said, wearily. “Shit, shit,
shit.”

Easton said nothing, just waited.

“It’s all right,” the sheriff said after a
while. “Hal, I’m sorry. I blew that big-time.”

“Sure, Joe,” Sweeney said. His face wore the
sulky expression of a child who has been unfairly punished. Apodaca
shook his head again, more slowly this time.

“Shouldn’t have let that damn In’din get to
me like that,” he said.

“If it’s any consolation, Tom Cochrane felt
the same way,” Easton said. “He said trying to get information out
of that guy was like shoveling wind.”

“Goddamn it, he has to have told Weddle
something,” Joe said, taking off his hat and running a hand through
his cropped hair. “It’s the only thing makes any sense.”

“You want to go back and talk to him some
more?” Easton said.

“Don’t schmooze me, Dave,” Joe said flatly.
“I clammed him up real good.”

He was right about that, Easton thought. They
left Sweeney to lock up and walked out into the cool night air.
Across Virginia, SO was a brightly lit island in the surrounding
darkness. Joe Apodaca stretched, and rubbed the back of his neck.
All at once he looked tired and very old.

“Dave,” he said. “I feel lower than what the
dog did on the kitchen floor.”

“Know what you mean,” Easton put on a smile
he didn’t feel.

“Go home, get some sleep,” the sheriff said
gruffly. “That’s an order. Give my love to Jessye.”

“Yes, sir.”

Easton stood and watched as Apodaca walked
across to where his car was parked in its numbered slot, and waited
till he saw him pull out and head for home. He wondered if things
there were any better there these days. It was an open secret that
Alice Apodaca had a drinking problem. A picture of her popped up in
his mind, peering from behind the curtains of the house on North
Lea when he picked Joe up to go to the Casey crime scene, her eyes
bleary and unfocussed, as if the world outside was an alien
landscape she had no interest in exploring. Maybe that had
something to do with Joe’s anger, like referred pain.

Easton thought about Ironheel in his cell and
remembered Grita telling him how Apache hated confinement. Then he
went back to his office and sat down, staring without enthusiasm at
the jumble of paperwork on the desk.

Was it too late to call Joanna Ironheel? He
decided to take a chance on it. To his surprise she answered after
two rings. He told her who he was and apologized for calling so
late.

“Is this about my brother?” she said,
brusquely ignoring
both
Easton’s identity and apology.

“We have him in jail here in Riverside,
ma’am,” Easton said. “He—”

“Someone from the Police Department already
called me,” she said. Although her voice was soft and
well-modulated, he detected impatience, as if even discussing the
matter was an annoyance.

“Will you be coming down here?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“He’s in a lot of trouble, ma’am.”

“He got there by himself. He can get out of
it the same way.”

Easton frowned. Family ties were usually a
very important part of Apache life. Hostility, not.

“I take it you know your brother is being
held for murder.”

She was silent for a moment. “They told me
that. Now you tell me something. Is there anything I could do about
it, one way or the other?” she said.

“He’s your brother,” Easton reminded her.

“And aren’t I the lucky one?” she said, the
weight of her irony palpable. “Drunk driving, car theft,
burglaries, brawls in bars, knife fights. You name it, my brother
has done it. I don’t know how many times I’ve put up bail for him,
how much it’s all cost. Your people said he killed an old man and a
boy.”

“Do you believe he could have done something
like that?”

She did not reply for what seemed like a long
time. He listened to the electronic hum that linked them, wondering
what she was thinking.

“I don’t know what to believe, Mr. Easton,”
he heard her say. “But right now I don’t see what I could usefully
contribute to the situation.”

“And you don’t want to, anyway.”

He thought he heard an if-only-you-knew sigh
and decided not to like Joanna Ironheel much.

“Will he get bail?” she asked.

“I doubt it.”

“When is he to be arraigned?”

“Monday morning, about ten.”

“He’s got a lawyer?”

A chill touched Easton’s spine. “One was
appointed,” he said. “A man named Jerry Weddle. Didn’t he call
you?”

“Nobody called me except the Riverside
police.”

“You’re quite sure about that?”

“Of course I’m sure,” she said, frosting
it.

Then Weddle’s second call was not to Joanna
Ironheel. So who did he call? I must get those phone records, he
reminded himself again.

“Ms. Ironheel, it really would be helpful if
you could get down here.”

“I can’t imagine what purpose that would
serve,” The impatient tone was back in her voice.

“I’d like to talk to you about James. Get
some idea of his mind-set.”

He thought he heard a derisive little laugh
and liked her still less.

“Sorry, I can’t help you,” she said. “I don’t
have the remotest idea what his mind-set might be. I’m not sure he
does, either.”

Easton shrugged, as if she could see him.
“Any message you want me to give him?”

“Yes,” she said fiercely. “Tell him I said
ahaga’he.”

“What does that mean?”

“It doesn’t translate.”

Well over an hour after he talked to her, the
implications of what Joanna Ironheel had told him were still
fluttering around in Easton’s brain like moths round a floodlight.
The fact that Weddle had not called her – he could think of no
reason why she would lie about it – blew wide open again the matter
of whom the attorney had called prior to his murder, not to mention
whether it was a walk-in killing or something else. Well, no point
trying to contact the phone company at this time of night; it would
have to wait until morning.

For some reason a picture of James Ironheel –
sitting on the cot in his jail cell with that strange entreaty in
his eyes, like he was trying to say help me, yet unable to speak
the words – kept floating into Easton’s mind’s eye. He knew he
hadn’t imagined it. Gut instinct told him that something – not
being able to put a finger on it only made it worse – was very
wrong. Finally, with a grunt of exasperation, he gave up. The only
way to settle this was to talk to Ironheel again.

But this time alone.

The air was much cooler as he went back
across the street. It was well after midnight now. The sky was
blue-black and the stars seemed more brilliant than ever, millions
of them up there. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are
looking at the stars. Who said that?

He went up the ramp and into the building.
The RO watch had changed, and Easton found senior deputy Jack Basso
on duty. He had his nose in a copy of Guns & Ammo, and Easton
suddenly had this picture of thousands of night-shift deputies all
over the country reading male-interest magazines and getting paid
by the hour to do it.

“Jack,” he said.

“Jee-zuss, Dave,” Basso growled, without
getting up. “You got insomnia, or what?”

He was above medium height, with massive
shoulders and a bull neck, heavy jowls bulging over a size sixteen
collar. Even in the air-conditioned office, his forehead glistened
with sweat. They said Basso had Navajo blood and Easton was more
than ready to believe it. Foul mouthed, ugly-tempered and sadistic,
Basso took perverse pride in being SO’s badass. Well, there were
times when you needed one, Easton thought. You didn’t have to love
him.

“Ironheel,” he said, making it peremptory.
“In the interview room.”

“Now?” Basso said incredulously.

“Now,” Easton snapped.

Basso frowned and got up clumsily, the way a
big man will who has been sitting too long. “What is this about,
Dave?” he said.

Easton knew what was bothering him. Basso
knew all interviews with prisoners must be recorded, but he also
knew chief deputies didn’t always comply with the rules. Easton
helped him decide by setting off down the corridor. Out the corner
of an eye he saw Basso shrug and get the keycard from its case.
Done and dusted.

He went into the interview room and waited. A
few minutes later Basso brought Ironheel in. When he saw who was
waiting for him the Apache’s eyes widened fractionally in quickly
concealed surprise.

“You want me to stay?” Basso asked. That was
part of the rules, too.

“Thanks, but this will only take a few
minutes, Jack.”

Basso frowned, reluctant to let it go. “You
sure? Suppose this asshole decides to get physical?”