I took a deep breath and shook my head. “Any ideas who might have done it?”
His nod was almost imperceptible.
“Who?”
“You want another?” He indicated the beer bottle in my hand. I had yet to take a drink.
“No, thanks. Who did it, Reuben?”
He shrugged that universal Mexican shrug that meant about a thousand different things, from “I don’t know” to “the world is ending tomorrow.”
I tried one more time. “You know that if we can prove who did it, we can put them in jail. We can do that.” I saw a trace of amusement in the old man’s eyes. He didn’t believe me and neither did I. We could go out to where he’d buried them, dig them up, take tissue samples, and have the lab tell us three weeks later that, sure enough, the dogs had been poisoned. But without a witness, the case would fall flat.
I changed tracks, hoping that he’d drift back to the subject of the dogs on his own.
“The ladies at the post office were a little upset this morning. Your revolver made them nervous.”
“
¿ Porque?
” His voice was the lightest of whispers.
“Maybe because you dropped it? They said you did.” He nodded and said nothing. I mentally sent out a distress call to Estelle Reyes-Guzman. English was as awkward for Reuben as Mexican was for me. Our conversation was never going to slip into that easy gait where men speak their hearts. “Would you do me a favor and not wear it into public buildings, Reuben? Maybe even leave it at home?
¿ A casa?
”
He shrugged again and set his beer bottle down near the sink. I did the same. “If you need anything, will you call me?” I realized how stupid that sounded the instant I said it, but Reuben Fuentes had the good grace not to say, “I would call you,
Señor
, if I had a telephone.”
I stepped toward the doorway. The sunlight was harsh after the cool shadows of the house. “Can I stop by every couple days to check on you?”
He shrugged. “
Si quiere
.” He held onto the doorjamb as I stepped away from the cabin. “You know,” he said, “it took me almost two hours to bury those dogs.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish you’d let me help.”
“The soil is pretty hard. Lots of rocks. They could have helped, but they didn’t.”
“Who could have helped?”
“
Hijos
.”
“What kids?”
“On the road, you know. They were on the—” he stopped and pantomimed holding onto handlebars.
“Motorcycles? Motorbikes?”
“
Si
. The two of them. They saw me digging. They could have helped.”
Reuben was living in the wrong century. If he expected two youngsters out from town on a lark to stop, hop a barbed wire fence, and offer manual labor, he was more senile than I thought… especially if they recognized him. Even saying “Good morning” to an old, smelly, gun-toting legend like Reuben Fuentes was the stuff of which Truth or Dare games were made.
“You didn’t recognize them?”
He shook his head and waved a hand again.
“Do you think it was kids who killed the dogs? Maybe on a dare? Something like that?”
He shook his head immediately, reinforcing my impression that he had a culprit already in his shaky sights.
“I really wish you’d let us help you, Reuben.”
“You tell Estelita to come visit,” he said, and I knew our conversation was over.
I thanked him for the beer and settled into the seat of the patrol car, cussing myself for being such a gutless wonder. I should have pushed him into a chair and struggled my way through his language and mine until he understood that we could help him find the son of a bitch who killed his pets. All he had to do was tell us what he knew.
And then I realized, as I turned around and headed the patrol car out the two-track, that he understood me perfectly well. I was the one who didn’t understand. Reuben Fuentes didn’t want my help.
The lane from Reuben Fuentes’s cabin to the county road was six-tenths of a mile. During the long minutes it took me to negotiate that distance without ripping out the oil pan of 310, my county car, I tried to formulate a short list of people who might have killed the old man’s dogs.
Reuben’s only neighbor, Herb Torrance, lived in the ranch headquarters four miles down the county road. His cattle roamed the countryside, maybe even grazed on property leased from Reuben. I didn’t know for sure. But all three of the little dogs banded together wouldn’t amount to much more than a fly strike on Herb’s Brangus cattle.
I ruled out a casual passerby as the culprit, and that conclusion didn’t require much brilliance.
Few people cruised this end of the county except during hunting seasons, and no seasons were open now. More probable, local kids might have been responsible for the killing of the dogs. To hear Glenn Archer talk, such behavior wasn’t beyond his tribe.
More than once during the past year our department had gotten wind of teenagers doing stupid things under the guise of whatever dare game was the latest fad. Rumor had it that old Reuben would shoot trespassers. I had no doubt that some teenager would dare a friend to sneak as close to the old cabin as he could…and maybe even poison one of the dogs as a lark. Or all of them.
Nothing was easier than soaking a frankfurter in sweet antifreeze as a lethal tidbit. And really enterprising delinquents could cook up far worse in a chemistry class. If that had been the case, I hoped the little bastards were really clever, using a chemical that would nail their hides to the barn when the medical examiner finished his analysis.
I reached the main county road, stopping the patrol car short of the cattle guard when I saw the plume of rich, red dust being kicked up by an approaching vehicle. I waited with my windows rolled up for the car to go by, but it slowed to a crawl, the rooster-tail of dust subsiding. It was a new model Chevy Suburban, chrome running boards and all, its shiny waxed finish now layered with red dust.
As Stuart Torkelson drove the Suburban beyond the intersection with Reuben Fuentes’s driveway, he grinned at me and pulled to a stop along the shoulder. Three other people were with him and they all craned their necks toward me as if I were a circus curiosity. I buzzed my window down as he got out of the Suburban and approached.
Torkelson was a huge man, beefy and florid. He played Santa Claus every year for the Lions’ Club and I think he believed in his role more than the kids did.
“Now, Bill, this is one hell of a spot to run radar,” he said. He leaned one huge forearm on the windowsill of the patrol car, bending down to squint inside. “What’s going on?”
“Just roaming.” I took his proffered hand and shook, instantly regretting it. His grip could have crushed rocks. “You touring some customers through the snakeweed?”
He turned and glanced back at the Suburban. “Yeah. A family from Austin. They’re lookin’ for something out of the way. A retirement spot.”
“They found it.”
He shot a look at me to see if I was joking, then his brow furrowed and he turned serious. “What’s this I hear about Annie Hocking, not that it’s any of my business?”
“She died last night.”
“Well, that’s what I heard, but they was saying that there was every cop car in Posadas around her place last night and this morning, early.”
“Yeah, well…you know how it is. Whenever there’s an unattended death, we got to follow all the procedures.”
“She just keeled over, eh?”
“Looks that way.”
“She sure hadn’t been out and around much in past months. She called me once, back along about Labor Day, wondering what she could get for her little place. She said she was thinking of moving out with her son, somewhere out in California, I think it was.” He straightened up, stretching his back. “She never did pursue it, though. Hell of a note.”
“I’m sure the son will be getting in touch with you now,” I said, and Torkelson shrugged as if another listing that no one would ever buy was just what he needed.
Torkelson frowned and looked off in the direction of Fuentes’s property. “You been up to see the Mad Mexican this morning?” I nodded. “You know—” the realtor began, then he looked at me askance, jutting out his lower lip. “You got just a minute?”
“Sure.” I knew that bending his six feet four inches down to look into my car window was hard work on a hot, sunny winter day. He stepped back when I opened the door and climbed out. We leaned against the front fender like two old friends who had the day to waste. Torkelson folded his arms across his wide chest and pointed down the county road with his chin, like a Navajo.
“I run across him last weekend, down the way just a bit.”
“Oh?”
“You see where there’s that outcrop of rock that comes out right to the road? And then there’s that big grove of oak and piñon trees?” He pointed off to the west. I squinted and pretended I did. “Well, I own that land, worthless as it is. One day a few weeks ago I got to figuring that if I could pry the old man loose of that big pasture just on this side of that…why, that’d be a pretty good piece to develop. It’d make mine worth something, don’t you see.”
I didn’t see, but then again I was no realtor. I didn’t understand the magic of a few acres of scrub pasture. None of it was worth fifty cents to me.
“And so—” I prompted, feeling a bead of sweat accumulate on my forehead and head toward the bridge of my nose.
“Well, I got to wondering just how big that pasture was, and so last Sunday I was out here doing a little scouting, knowing that I’d be bringing these folks out sooner or later.” He nodded at the Suburban. “I took me my long tape and was running some measurements on his field there.” He held up a hand as if I were about to interrupt him.
“Now I know what you’re going to say. No, I didn’t ask him first, and I should have. I know that. But I just figured, well, hell. He won’t even know, so what’s the difference.” He took off his sunglasses and wiped his forehead. His eyes were brilliant blue, with deep laugh lines crow-footing the corners.
“And he did mind, is that it?”
Torkelson nodded. “I hadn’t finished runnin’ the tape two hundred yards away from the road when there’s his old Jeep, pullin’ up to a stop behind my truck. Now I figured I’d just trot on down and have a chat with the old man. He got out and walked as far as the fence and when he saw that I was headed his way, he just stopped and waited. I got closer and saw that he was wearin’ a gun, big as life.”
“He does that,” I said.
“You’re damn tootin’ he does. So here I was, and I decided to just be real friendly, know what I mean? I mean this land he’s sittin’ on is going to be a gold mine someday if the federales ever grant national monument status to Martinez Tubes down the way. So I’m walkin’ kind of soft, you know what I mean? I said good mornin’ to him real civil. Now he knows who the hell I am. He can see the realty sign on the door of my Suburban and all. But he just looks at me out of those little beady eyes of his and tells me to get off his land.”
“Did you tell him what you were up to?”
“Hell, I tried, but that’s all he would say. ‘Get off my land.’ And I’ll be honest with you, Bill. I know I was trespassing. Hell, I know I should have asked him first. But he would have said no then, too. It was just one of those spur-of-the-moment deals, you know?
“Well, no harm done.”
Torkelson laughed ruefully. “As long as I don’t end up another notch on his
pistole
,” he said, mangling the Mexican word as only a Texan could.
“He’s harmless,” I said.
“I wasn’t about to argue with him, that’s for sure,” Torkelson said. “He had a bee in his britches about something. No hello, or
buenos dias
, or nothin’. I was surprised that he didn’t have all them dogs of his with him…sic ’em on me.”
“This was last Sunday, you said?”
“In the morning. About ten, eleven o’clock.”
“What did you do then?” I said it like I wanted to hear the punch line of a good joke.
“Hell, Bill, I climbed over the fence, got in my truck, and left. I turned around down the road a bit, making a show of drivin’ off onto
my
land to turn around, so he wouldn’t have no cause to be upset.” He shrugged. “And that was that.”
“Huh,” I said. “You didn’t happen to come out here the day before that sometime, did you?”
“No. Why?”
I looked down and busied myself with a rough thumbnail for a minute. “Because,” I said after the silence between us had grown uncomfortable, “someone poisoned all three of Reuben’s dogs. He thinks probably last Friday night. Maybe Saturday.”
“What do you mean?”
“Poisoned ’em. Fed them something. Two of ’em died right down here by the fence line somewhere. The other managed to crawl back to the cabin. Reuben says he found the dog lying dead under his Bronco last Saturday morning.”
“Well, son of a bitch. Who would do a god-awful thing like that?”
“I don’t know. I’d sure like to know, though.”
“Does the old man have any ideas?”
“He says he does.”
“Who?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
Torkelson looked first perplexed and then, when he noticed I was gazing at him, apprehensive. “Now I hope he don’t think that I had anything to do with it,” he said quickly. He pushed himself away from the fender of the county car. “He’s a crazy old fart, and I could see him thinkin’ that.”
“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.