Instead, we talked circles around all those troubles, hitting the weather past, present, and future, the condition of the range, the possibilities of the Washington folks raising the grazing fees on allotment land, even the record of the Posadas Jaguars. Eventually, I wrapped my hands around a third cup of coffee, leaned my forearms on the table, and looked at Gloria Prescott.
“This was wonderful, ma’am,” I said. “I haven’t been able to relax like this in days. I need to get stuck more often, I can see that.” I watched the smoke curl up from the tip of Gus’s cigarette. His fingers were yellow from the nicotine, and between him and Brett, the ashtray was filling rapidly. “If I could talk Brett into giving me a hand for a few minutes, I’ll be out of your hair.”
Gus glanced at his watch. “I guess you got yourself plenty to do, sheriff.” He pushed himself away from the table and got to his feet. “Brett, the chain’s in the toolbox of the Bronco. I was usin’ it yesterday to help Stubs move that pump.”
Both husband and wife escorted me to the door of the trailer. “I banged up my hip some earlier, or I’d go on down with you,” Gus said.
“No need,” I replied quickly. “The car’s not really stuck. I just don’t have room to back up, and she’ll spin herself in deeper if I go forward. A little pull is all it’ll take.”
“Well, have at ’er.” He shook hands with me. “Old Brett there’s a good hand. He’ll get you squared away. And come on back when you can sit a spell.” His faint smile told me that he had a good enough notion why I’d headed his way in the middle of the night, but it was plain that he trusted his boy.
“I appreciate it,” I said, and the sheepdog escorted me to where Brett waited by the big pickup. We rumbled out of the yard and I started to get out when Brett stopped at the gate.
“Let me get it, sir,” he said, and in a heartbeat he was out of the truck. He sprinted to the gate, snatched it open, and dove back into the truck with an alacrity that startled me. Just as quickly, he drove the truck through, stopped again, and repeated the procedure. I looked out the back window and saw the reason for his haste.
Thirty head of cattle had left the area near the stock tank and were herding toward the truck, eyes locked intently on the vehicle that they knew, deep down in their slow bovine brains, held the morning feed.
“They’ll sure crowd the truck if you ain’t careful,” Brett said, and grinned. “’Specially this time of day. They’re smart. They don’t ever bother Mom’s car or even the Bronco.”
We jounced across the prairie with the truck lugging along in fourth gear, valves rattling and screaming for a downshift that never came. The youngster apparently felt that once in top gear, the truck should stay there until the day’s work was done. We reached the arroyo and Brett braked to a stop. He frowned.
“Well, that don’t look too bad.”
“It isn’t,” I said. “Just a little pull.”
The chain was long enough to loop through the steel nerf bars on 310 that were welded to the frame under the front bumper, and Brett flipped the other end around the ball hitch of the truck. I started the patrol car, put it in drive, and breathed on the gas while the kid idled the pickup truck forward. And that’s all it took.
“You going to go back the way you came, or head on up to Seventeen?”
I gestured ahead.
“Just bear left at the gate then. There ain’t no bad spots to give you trouble.”
I leaned against the fender of the idling patrol car. “Brett, I need to ask you a couple questions.”
He reached out and put a hand on the black iron of the truck’s stock rack. It was a casual thing, a “let’s pass the time of day” gesture, but his face was watchful. He groped a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and lit it with an old fashioned Zippo lighter. “What about?” he said, exhaling.
“When was the last time you saw Tammy Woodruff, Brett?”
He drew hard. “Tammy?” His dark eyebrows gathered. “Friday night, I guess. When she got herself arrested.”
“At the saloon?”
“Yes, sir.”
I didn’t ask what Brett had been doing there. “And that’s the last time you saw her?”
“Yes, sir.”
I folded my arms and settled my weight on the fender of 310. “You see much of Pat Torrance?”
Brett took a long, deep breath as he ground his unfinished cigarette out under a boot heel. I waited while he thought out what he wanted to say. Close as he was to his parents, his reticence told me he knew some things he hadn’t discussed with them.
He traced a geometric doodle on the fat, fiberglass fender of the pickup. I pulled my jacket tighter and waited. He pulled out another cigarette and let it hang from his lips, unlit, as he flipped the Zippo over and over in his hand.
Finally he looked up at me, maybe checking to see if I’d left. What he saw was an old, fat, crew-cut Buddha, arms folded, sagging the car’s springs, patient as all hell.
“Patrick came by Sunday night late. Mom and Dad was already in bed, but they know his truck, so they didn’t say nothing.”
“What time?”
“Close to midnight. He told me about the shooting and all.”
“Had he been drinking?”
“Yes, sir. He was near to drunk. And scared.”
“Scared? You know why?”
Brett chewed his upper lip. He was set to begin another thinking binge, and I told myself to be patient.
“He thought that maybe Tammy was involved somehow.”
“In the shooting?” I tried to sound surprised, even though I knew damn well the young lady had been involved-somehow.
Brett Prescott nodded. “He said he’d seen her earlier in the evening. He said she’d stopped by the bar to show him something. They had some kind of fight and Patrick…he said Tammy left in a huff. Said she was in some new truck and spun gravel all the way across the parkin’ lot, and damn near went into that empty field there just west of the bar.”
It was like gluing little shards back together to reconstruct a shattered Indian pot.
“Why should all that scare Patrick?” I knew perfectly well that woman trouble could scare the most seasoned bull rider, but maybe there was something else.
“Him and Tammy had been together, and he said they’d…I mean that you, the police…he thought that you’d think he had something to do with it. Whatever trouble she was in.”
“And you don’t know what that trouble was?”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“What did Patrick do then?”
“He just said he was goin’ home, to think some.”
“And you haven’t seen him since?”
Brett Prescott shook his head. “Tammy neither.”
I looked at the kid with sympathy. He’d find out sooner or later about his ex-girlfriend. I didn’t want him thinking I’d been playing games. “Tammy’s in the hospital, Brett. It doesn’t look good.”
He blinked rapidly. “In the hospital? For what?”
“She was in a wreck. Up on San Patricio Mesa. One of the deputies found her. They got her out sometime early this morning.”
He looked at me cautiously. “Up on the mesa? She was with Patrick?”
“We don’t know who she was with. Her truck went over the side. It was a long ride down, Brett. It looks like it happened sometime in the past twenty-four hours.”
“She been drinkin?”
“Yes.”
He took a deep breath and shook his head. “Ain’t never met nobody like her, sheriff.” He looked up at me. “Had to happen sometime.” He retraced the figure in the dust on the truck’s fender. “Does Patrick know?”
“We haven’t been able to find him, Brett.”
His finger stopped abruptly. “You’re sayin’ it was an accident, aren’t you?”
“I didn’t say, son. If you see Patrick before I do, tell him I’d like to talk with him. You’ll do that?”
Brett Prescott nodded slowly.
I pushed myself off the fender of 310 and held out a hand. His work-rough grasp was strong. “Maybe you’ll let me go on ahead. That way if I run into trouble, you’ll be behind me.”
“Sure thing.” He didn’t sound happy.