Strangers (15 page)

“No. I'm just back in town.”

“But you are going to see her tonight?”

“Yes. She needs to know. But you might hold off telling Cody—he has enough to worry about as it is.”

“That he does. You think it was Stendreyer who shot at you?”

“It could've been. If it wasn't, he knows or has a pretty good idea who did.”

“But why? What was the point of it?”

“Good question,” I said. “Whoever it was had to be lying in wait at the abandoned mine. Which means I was seen driving out to Lost Horse.”

“Shooting at the Jeep, then, not at you. Because he recognized it as belonging to Cody. He wouldn't know who was driving.”

“He would with a high-powered rifle scope.”

“But you'd never met Stendreyer until he drove up afterward.”

“If it was Stendreyer. I've been pretty visible the past couple of days and word gets around fast here. It's not unlikely whoever fired those shots knew in advance who was behind the wheel.”

“A warning, then? Stop what you're doing or else?”

“Seems likely.”

“Are you going to heed it?”

I showed him a crooked half smile. “What do you think?”

“That you're not a man who scares easily.” Parfrey sighed, lowered the contents of the glass by another half, grimaced again. “What else have you been doing to stir the pot?”

“Talking to various people, finding out a few things.”

“Anything worthwhile?”

“Could be. Tell me, Mr. Parfrey—”

“Sam.”

“Tell me, Sam. Have there been a large number of thefts in this area recently?”

“Thefts?”

“Nighttime burglaries of one kind or another. Homes, businesses, vehicles.”

“As a matter of fact, yes. Several over the past year or so. What makes you ask?”

“Two people I've spoken to mentioned having had items of value stolen—Haiwee Allen and Pastor Raymond at the Church of the Divine Redeemer. Native American handicrafts from her workshop, a bronze crucifix from the church. What sort of other things were taken?”

“I'm not sure, exactly,” Parfrey said. “Tools and copper wire from construction sites, I think. Electronic equipment, personal belongings, small amounts of money. Nothing of great value, or there would have been much more of a public outcry.”

“All the items saleable nonetheless, somewhere other than Bedrock County, for a tidy aggregate profit.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“The auto parts store in town. Is that one of the businesses that was hit?”

“Not that I recall.”

“How about a gunsmith or sporting goods store?”

“No, I don't think so.”

Well, that didn't prove anything one way or another. If the winch and Marlin rifle in Cody's bedroom had been stolen goods, Felix would have confiscated them as evidence. Whether or not Cody had bought them with money obtained illegally was still an open question.

I asked, “Who does Sheriff Felix think is responsible?”

“Juveniles or drifters, according to the local paper.” Parfrey was frowning now. “Why? Are you thinking it's the same person who committed the criminal assaults?”

I hope not, I thought.

“Same M.O.,” I said. “Late night burglaries, late night home invasion rapes. Small amounts of money and valuable items stolen. If I can connect the dots in just two days, Felix and the county prosecutor ought to have been able to do the same.”

Parfrey was silent for a time. “I wonder if they have. If so, and they believe Cody Hatcher is responsible for all those crimes, they've been careful not to let me in on their suspicions. Saving it for the trial in that case, damn them. Withholding information from the defense.”

I didn't say anything. He was a smart man, if an ineffectual one; he'd come to the same bleak conclusion I had without any prodding from me.

It took him about ten seconds, while the turquoise and silver ring went round and round some more. Then he smacked the desk, hard, with the flat of his hand—a sudden display of temper he hadn't shown before. “But I don't dare call them on it,” he said. “If they
haven't
made the connection, I'd be handing them a second smoking gun.”

 

14

The Bedrock County courthouse was right up the street from Parfrey's offices, so I made it my next stop in the hope that Felix was there. The shooting business, after his warning against driving around the desert in Cody Hatcher's Jeep, wouldn't have made my presence in his bailiwick any more tolerable. I did not want him to have to go looking for me if it could be avoided.

You entered the sheriff's department by way of a half-circle of driveway and sidewalk cut into one side of the building, like the ones at hotel entrances; I parked in a visitor's section outside and walked in, past a couple of parked green-and-white, all-terrain cruisers. Inside, there was a waiting area with chairs and slat-backed benches that took up one-third of a big room; the other two-thirds, behind a bulletproof glass partition with a heavy metal security door at one end, contained a dispatcher's station, some desks, and a rack of rifles and shotguns along one wall. The law wasn't taking any chances in the Old West gun culture that flourished here.

There was a sound-magnified communicator in the glass partition; through it, a jowly uniformed deputy asked my business, none too politely, and when I gave my name and asked for Sheriff Felix his eyes narrowed all the way down to unfriendly slits. If this one was calling the shots, I thought, I'd have already been invited to leave Bedrock County.

“I'll see if he's in his office,” he said, snapping the words. “Sit down over there.”

I went and sat on one of the benches. The jowly deputy left his station, disappeared through a doorway at the rear, reappeared a couple of minutes later, and reparked himself without looking at me or saying anything. I waited some more. Felix was here, all right, and either busy or in no hurry to see me.

He took his time about it, in any case. I'd been there twenty minutes, and was thinking about telling the deputy I couldn't wait any longer, when he finally got word from Felix. He said to me through the communicator, “Okay. The sheriff'll see you now. You carrying any kind of weapon?”

“Just a pocketknife.”

“Put it in the tray.”

The tray was built into the glass, a long curved slit just above the countertop. I put my knife in it, he reached in and removed it, then gestured toward the steel door and buzzed me through into the inner sanctum, but not before I had to pass through a metal detector. The way this place was fortified, you'd think the sheriff's department had been under siege at one time or another. Well, maybe it had.

The deputy walked me back past a barred door that would lead to holding cells and the rest of the county jail. Somewhere back there in the bowels of the building, Cody Hatcher had been locked up for nearly a week now. As hard-nosed as these peacekeepers were, it occurred to me that they might not be averse to sub rosa violations of a prisoner's civil rights in a volatile case like this. Probably not physical abuse; Cody hadn't signed a confession, voluntary or coerced, and if he'd been knocked around he'd have told Parfrey about it. There were other kinds of abuse, though—verbal badgering, the withholding of food and other necessities.

We went down a hallway to a closed door with a pebbled-glass panel that bore the words S
HERIFF
J
OSEPH
L. F
ELIX
in black letters. The deputy knocked, told me to go on in, then brushed against me—deliberately—as he turned back. He looked me in the eye as he did it, challenging me to say something; I gave him a blank-faced salute instead and put my back to him, just as deliberately, before I opened the door and went in.

The office was fairly large and filled with a broad desk, a couple of hardwood chairs, a computer on a stand, radio equipment, walls decorated with framed citations and photographs, the Nevada state seal, a county seal, and a mounted set of eight-point deer horns. A single barred window, like a blackened mirror now, would probably provide a view of the rear courthouse grounds in daylight hours. Felix was behind the desk, his gold-braided cap on one side of it, his fair hair whitish in the glare of overhead fluorescents. His posture was the erect kind they teach you in the military. He looked cool, calm, hard, and officious. But then he always would, I thought, even when he was alone in the privacy of his own home.

He said, “Have a seat,” and I parked my cheeks on one of the hardwood chairs. That was all he had to say for a while. As if I weren't there, he shuffled and studied some papers on the desktop, letting the silence build in the somewhat overheated room. I sat as still and ramrod straight as he was. I could play this kind of man-on-the-griddle waiting game as well as he could.

It was three or four minutes before he lifted his head and faced me straight on. Still didn't say anything, just studied me with unblinking eyes. I kept my face just as expressionless, my gaze just as steady. And there we sat for another minute or so, like a couple of stoics in a temple.

I was not about to be the first to break the silence and he knew it. When it had lasted long enough to suit him, he said, “I've read Deputy Evans's report on the incident this afternoon. Now I want your version, with nothing left out.”

“I told the deputy everything that happened. Nothing left out.”

“Sure about that?”

“Positive.”

Felix made a little throat sound that might have been an expression of skepticism. “Three shots. You're lucky none of the slugs hit you.”

“The shooter wasn't aiming to hit me. Just the Jeep.”

“That may be, but you're still lucky. Could've been hurt.”

“No argument there.”

“But a man doesn't always stay lucky, if he keeps ignoring good advice and putting himself in harm's way. Sometimes his luck runs out.”

“Another warning, Sheriff?”

“You might call it that. Usually I only give one. But never more than two. Not to anybody, for any reason.”

“Point taken.”

“I hope so. A smart former police officer and citizen detective with a mostly spotless record shouldn't need more than one.”

I had nothing to say to that.

A few more seconds ticked away in silence. Then the micro radio transmitter clipped to his shirt crackled with the voice of a patrolling deputy checking in; he listened, decided the report was none of his concern, and reached up to switch off.

“You have any idea who fired those shots?” he said then.

“I didn't see whoever it was. Just the rifle flash up by the mine.”

“Not what I asked you.”

I said carefully, “The only person I saw out there, before Deputy Evans responded to my call, was Max Stendreyer.”

“And that was after the shooting.”

“Yes, but not long after. Less than ten minutes.”

“You suggesting Stendreyer was the shooter?”

“He could have been. He had a high-powered rifle on a rack in his pickup.”

“Accuse him of it?”

“I know better than that without proof.”

“Give him any cause to fire at you?”

“Like trespassing on his property when I was in Lost Horse? No. He asked me if I'd trespassed, I gave him the same answer.”

“Then why would he do it?”

“Doesn't like the idea of me trying to clear Cody Hatcher.”

“No reason for him to care.”

“There might be if his testimony was false.”

“No reason for that, either,” Felix said. “Unless you've got cause to think otherwise.”

“Not really. Just throwing out possibilities.”

“You can throw that one into the toilet. Stendreyer's too old to be the rapist, if that's your idea.”

“It's not,” I said. “But I think he told me at least one lie this afternoon.”

“Uh-huh. What would that be?”

“I asked him if he'd seen anyone in the vicinity. He said no, nobody since he left town a few minutes before. But the shooter would've had to leave by the second mine road, and you can see dust clouds a long way off out there in the desert.”

“Could be the shooter didn't leave as soon as you think.”

“Could be,” I admitted. “Or it could be Stendreyer was being evasive. You might ask him.”

“I might.”

Carefully again: “Deputy Evans find anything up at the mine?”

“Wheel tracks, unidentifiable. Couple of spent cartridge shells, Remington thirty-ought-sixes. You wouldn't have plans for another trip out to Lost Horse, would you?”

The rifle in Stendreyer's pickup might have been a Remington 30.06; I hadn't had a good enough look at it to be sure. I said, “No. My car wouldn't make it over those dirt roads.”

“Uh-huh. And you wouldn't want to make another target of yourself in a rented vehicle.”

“Or anywhere else if I can help it.”

That earned me an approving nod. So far he was being less hard-nosed and more tolerant than I'd expected. Maybe it was because he was not as opposed to an independent investigation as he seemed to be, or as convinced of Cody Hatcher's guilt. Maybe. Or it might be just a way of providing a little more rope in the hope that I'd screw up again and justify him running me out of Bedrock County.

Pretty soon he said, “There anything more you have to tell me?”

“Results from my unofficial investigation? Nothing worth sharing at this time, no.”

“No facts, no ideas?”

“A few, but they don't amount to much yet.”

“Yet,” he said. “Meaning you think they will.”

“I don't know. I'd like to believe they might.”

“Because of your friendship with Mrs. Hatcher.”

“Anything wrong with a friend helping a friend, Sheriff?”

“Not if there's a good reason.”