Apache Country (16 page)

“There’s a motel, the Bavarian Lodge.”

“Got it.”

“Good. Be there at four p.m. Look for a black
Buick Lacrosse in the parking lot, tinted windows, engine running.
That’ll be the DOJ. They’ve insisted on having a recognition code.
You say ‘Apache’, they say ‘Chiricahua’, okay?”

“Obviously gave it a lot of thought,” Easton
murmured.

McKittrick ignored him. “Here’s your cover
story. Judge Rainbolt has granted a change of venue to Doña Ana
County, so Ironheel has to be taken to Las Cruces to await trial
and I nominated you for the job. Can you handle him alone?”

Good question, Easton thought. “Hopefully,”
he said.

If McKittrick appreciated the wry
understatement he gave no sign of it.

“The papers are on their way down to you
now.” he said. “Any questions?”

“Small problem. The sheriff came into the
office a little while back,” Easton told him. “He’s still
here.”

“Shit,” McKittrick hissed. “Can he hear us
talking?”

“No, he’s in his own office.”

“Give me a few minutes. I’ll pull him out of
there so you have a clear run.”

Easton hung up, then went over to the door
and opened it. After a little while he heard Joe’s phone ring. He
watched Joe pick up, listen, speak briefly, then cradle the phone.
Then Joe got up, walked across and popped his head around Easton’s
door.

“Olin McKittrick just called,” he said. “He’s
at the Country Club. Got something urgent we need to talk about.
Think maybe he’ll break the habit of a lifetime and buy me a
beer?”

“Miracles do happen,” Easton grinned.

Apodaca nodded and left without looking back.
Easton went over to the window and watched him get into his car and
drive away. Then he picked up the phone and dialed 822.

“Easton,” he said. “Who’s this, Carmody?”

“Yo, Chief.”

“I just had a call from the DA. Ironheel has
been given a change of venue. You know what that is?”

“Sure, he’s got to be tried in another
judicial district.”

“I have to take him over to Las Cruces right
away. You familiar with the procedure for releasing him to me?”

“Can’t say I am, Chief,” Carmody said. “You
want to refresh my recollection?”

Easton smiled. Carmody spent a lot of his
time acting as a court bailiff. That was where he picked up such
lawyerly phrases.

“It’s pretty straightforward. Judge
Rainbolt’s office sends someone over here with the papers. I sign
them and bring them to you. You countersign, keep one copy. Then
you release the prisoner into my custody and I take him over to
Cruces. He’ll be held there until his trial comes up.”

“Sounds simple enough,” the deputy said.
“When does all this happen?”

“Five, ten minutes max after I get the
papers,” Easton said. “Which ought to be any time now.”

“Unusual doing stuff like this on a Sunday,
isn’t it?”

“Ours not to reason why,” Easton said. “Get
him ready, okay?”

“No probs, Chief. You want him cuffed and
shackled?”

“Just cuffs,” Easton said. “Skip the
rest.”

“Jeez, you sure? This guy—”

“He’s not going to make a run for it. Just do
like I say, I’ll be fine,” Easton said.

“Okay, Chief,” Carmody said. Easton could
almost hear him frowning, but he knew the deputy would do exactly
as he was told. Carmody always did.

“Any reporters still hanging around outside?”
he asked.

“Haven’t seen any.”

“Let’s keep it that way,” Easton said.

“Ten-four, Chief,” Carmody said.

A few minutes later Easton heard the
coffee-grinder chatter of a motorbike in the street outside and saw
a kid in a leather jacket coming into the building with an envelope
in one hand and a yellow crash helmet in the other. By the time he
got to the front desk Easton was there waiting. He snatched the
envelope out of the kid’s hand, signed the slip on his clipboard
and the kid left.

Back in his office Easton strapped on his
holster, then checked the weapon, a lightweight Glock 9mm
automatic. Aesthetically they were junk, but on the street these
days even the pushers had Uzis so you needed something that put
plenty of lead in the air fast.

He went over to the parking lot, got into his
Jeep, and drove around to the entrance of the jail. CCTV cameras
would record his arrival and departure, so there would be no
keeping his involvement secret once the manure hit the fan. At
least by the time it did, Ironheel would be well out of harm’s way.
He went inside and put the papers on the counter in front of
Carmody.

“Ready to rock ‘n’ roll, Dave,” Carmody told
him proudly.

Ironheel was sitting on a chair inside the
security door, hands folded in his lap, long black hair falling
forward over his eyes. He was still wearing the prison jump suit
and slippers but the shackles had been taken off. As Carmody opened
the security gate to let him out Ironheel looked Easton straight in
the eye.

“What is all this?” he said.

“You’ve been given a change of venue. Your
lawyers convinced a judge it wouldn’t be possible to put together
an impartial jury in Riverside,” Easton explained. “So I’m taking
you to Las Cruces, where you’ll be held to await trial.”

“Nobody else going? Just you and me?”
Ironheel said.

“Wrong,” Easton said, lifting his arm to show
him the Glock. “You and me and my friend.”

As they went out into the sunlight Ironheel
paused on the threshold, looked up at the sky and drew in a long,
deep breath, as if he’d been waiting to get clean air into his
lungs.

In the jeep Easton checked his watch. Seventy
miles to Rio Alto. Say an hour. Maybe another hour or so getting
Ironheel installed in the safe house, then an hour back. As he
pulled out of the compound Ironheel spoke, his voice tight with
unease.

“Something going down, Easton,” he said. “I
can smell it.”

“Trust me,” Easton said.

“I got a choice?”

“No,” Easton said. “You don’t.”

Turning west, Easton checked off the familiar
sights as they slid past: Chamber of Commerce on the right, RPD
headquarters on the left, Valley Bank, First Presbyterian Church.
Stopping for the lights at Union, he checked the mirror. Nothing
back of him. He eased his grip on the wheel. He hadn’t realized how
tense he was. Just to be on the safe side, he hitched his belt
around SO the holster was on his left, out of Ironheel’s reach. If
he noticed the action, Ironheel gave no sign of it, his face as
unreadable as rock.

The road ran ahead of them like a ruled line,
climbing up into the foothills, the grade so gentle it was easy to
forget that like a lot of New Mexico, it was already a mile above
sea level. An endless procession of cloned cumulus marching
northward filled the sky; off to the right, a turkey vulture soared
over Blackwater Hill. Dirt roads criss-crossed the broken land,
leading to ranches hidden behind sand colored bluffs.

Ironheel remained silent. Maybe Apache did
that to keep the pinda’ lick’ oye at arm’s length, Easton thought,
remembering his conversation with Ironheel’s sister. Twenty miles
slid beneath the wheels before Ironheel spoke again.

“Well?” he said, as if there had been no
break in the conversation.

“Well, what?” Easton growled.

“You not taking me to Las Cruces. Right?”

“Right. Here’s the scenario: we couldn’t
guarantee your safety in the Riverside jail,” Easton told him. “So
the D.A. cooked up the change of venue cover story. We’re actually
going to meet up with a Department of Justice team in Rio Alto.
They’re going to put you into a witness protection program.”

“Is that like where they change your name,
take you to another city?”

“If necessary.”

“Supposing that doesn’t appeal to me?”

“What are you saying – you don’t want to do
it?”

Ironheel did not reply.

“Think carefully, Ironheel. If you don’t
testify, Apodaca remains on the street. The only way he can stay
there is with you dead.”

“Apache hard to kill.”

“You’re forgetting something,” Easton snapped
back. “My life is on the line here, too.”

“Your life is your problem.”

Ironheel turned his head away and Easton
recognized the gesture from their earlier exchanges. No more words.
He signaled a right turn, slowed down the Jeep, and pulled over to
the side of the road.

“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight,” he
said tightly. “You want Apodaca and the other man to go to jail for
killing Casey and his grandson, right? You want to walk free. But
only on your terms. That it?”

Ironheel shrugged, as if the matter had
nothing to do with him.

“You want Apodaca to get away with what he
did? And the other man, the one who cut the boy’s throat?”

No reply.

Try another tack, he thought. Something Grita
had said came back to him.

“Okay, Ironheel,” he said. “Here’s your
choice. You either do this or we go back to Riverside and you take
your chances on the system. If you live that long.”

Ironheel looked at him levelly. “They get me,
you got no case.”

“Shit happens,” Easton said flatly.

Ironheel nodded and for a moment Easton
thought he saw a glint of respect in the dark eyes.

“Why you doing this, Easton?”

“It’s my job.”

Ironheel shook his head “Agándíígo. You say
that. But there’s something else.”

“Maybe. I don’t know the right words, or even
if there are any. But it’s about truth. Justice. I guess I still
believe that right is good and wrong is bad. It’s … hell, I’m
talking too much.”

“Maybe not,” Ironheel said.

Easton waited. He’d already learned that with
Ironheel things happened at their own speed. It was hot in the car
and he wound down a window. The sound of the ever present breeze
filled his ears. Minutes ticked by.

“N’zhoo,” Ironheel said. “Let’s go.”

“You’ll do it?”

Ironheel shrugged. “There is a debt,” he
said. “This will pay it. Tell me what will happen at Rio Alto.”

“The DOJ team will take you to a safe
location. You’ll be kept there until you testify before a grand
jury. Later you’ll appear as a prosecution witness at Apodaca’s
trial.”

“How long will all that take?”

Easton stuck out a lip and did some mental
arithmetic. “Maybe six weeks, two months at the outside. This is a
high profile case. They’ll want to get it into court as fast as
possible.”

“Dahitaa,” Ironheel said gloomily.
“Months.”

“Think of it as a vacation,” Easton said.

Ironheel didn’t reply, so Easton started the
car and hit the road. Around mile marker 308 the road twice made a
long left followed by as long a right, an elongated ‘W’ that cut
through the side of a bluff and down into
the Alto valley
before straightening up
again for the climb toward Pacheco.

Down on the river, unseen behind the trees on
the left, was the Casey ranch. Hacienda would be a better word.
Built before the Civil War, it was a beautiful two-story balconied
adobe with double-hung windows and walls two feet thick. Tourists
on the highway got only glimpses of such places, and never realized
just how beautiful some parts of the Alto valley were.

He thought about Kit, grieving for her son
and her murdered father. They had known each other all through high
school, although they never dated then. She was just the bright
blonde daughter of some tycoon, always a leading player in the
musicals the dramatic society staged each fall at the Riverside
Community Little Theatre. Laurey in Oklahoma!, Julie in Carousel,
Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof.

Her real name was Caitlin. She had a lot of
nicknames. Cat, Katie, Kit. Then around the time they graduated,
things altered imperceptibly but inevitably, like a key change in a
symphony. Their romance was as sweet and gentle as a lullaby until
Bob Casey put an end to it, striking in the one place Easton had
never expected to be attacked. Some time later, someone told him
Kit had gone to Europe.

She was away eighteen months. There were no
letters, not even a postcard. When she came back, it was to be
married to Ralph Twitchell. For them it would be beautiful bride,
handsome groom, lovely home, perfect baby, fine career, big future,
the American Dream all the way.

It took a long time for Easton to realize he
probably never would have fitted into the Casey lifestyle. A long
time … and Susan. Susan, who came into his life so softly and so
unexpectedly, who healed all the wounds and made him proud to be
who he was. Susan, whose death had left a hole in his existence
nothing had ever filled.

Ironheel’s voice interrupted his reverie.

“Why did Apodaca kill Robert Casey?”

“Good question,” he said, as much to himself
as to Ironheel. “I just wish I could answer it. But no matter how
many times I run it through my head, I can’t come up with any kind
of motive. Hell, they hardly knew each other.”

Pacheco Peak came up on their right, the
flanks of the hills speckled with piñon. Every time he drove up
here, Easton tried to imagine the way it must have been when this
highway was one of the main cattle trails from Texas to California:
the river wide and strong, the valley floor lush with grama grass,
a couple of thousand cattle being herded along by yipping cowboys,
the chuckwagon clattering behind. He’d never managed to do it
yet.

“And the big man?” Ironheel asked. “You find
out anything about him?”

“We tried. But your description doesn’t fit
any of Joe’s known associates. Or anyone else we know, come to
that.”

“He can’t have just … disappeared.”

“He has, though.”

They were passing the long mock-Victorian
frontage of the Big Bucks restaurant, set back from the south side
of the road at Estancia. It was lunchtime; the parking bays outside
were full. He thought of Suze. The two of them sitting on the rear
verandah of the restaurant, looking out across the river at the
cottonwoods decked in a million gradations of autumn green and red
and gold, Michael playing the piano inside, You are too beautiful
for one man alone. Sometimes even now he awakened in the night and
remembered the sweet perfume of her body, the soft caress of her
dark hair hanging down as she leaned over to kiss him. Music I
heard with you was more than music …