“I don’t doubt it, sir.”
“Rats. I wanted lunch.”
“We will, eventually.”
“You could fly over this country from the air, and it’d be a lattice-work of tracks, vehicle, cattle, and otherwise.”
“Rough going, all of it.”
“Not for a kid on a hot machine, it’s not,” Gastner said. “Bouncing and jouncing is half the fun, anyway.”
They returned to the truck and meandered along the two-track, eventually running into another barbed-wire fence. Ahead they could see a power pole, concrete well house, and just ahead down a slight slope, a large galvanized stock tank-this one full with fresh water not yet scummed over with algae.
“This is the back way into Miles Waddell’s property,” Gastner said, “and that’s his well house. And I can see tracks from here, every which way. You want me to open the gate?”
“No. There’s no point.”
“Waddell built this a few years ago, thinking that there would be money to be made when the BLM develops the cave property across the county road. Maybe a good guess, maybe a waste of money. He runs livestock here, and I know he leases some of it to Herb.”
Estelle pointed to the right, away from the gate, across the prairie where the main Bender’s Canyon Trail headed off to the north.
“Two more choices,” Gastner said. “If you stay on this road, it’s the easy way out to old State 17. Before you get there, there’s another really rough son-of-a-bitch that runs east through all those foothills, and eventually runs right down to Gus Prescott’s ranch. Right through his back yard.”
“I’ve never driven that.”
“Rough, washed out in spots, a kidney crusher.”
“How many miles to Prescott’s? About fifteen or so?”
“I would guess about that.”
“Freddy could have gone that way. He could have ridden over to see Casey.”
“He could have.” Gastner flashed an amused grin. “Or he could have taken the paved highway to Moore, and a mile and a half would have taken him in to the fair Casey’s front door.”
Estelle regarded the route ahead thoughtfully.
“Please tell me you’re not going to crash and bang along that trail in this crate,” Gastner pleaded.
“You don’t want to do that?”
“No, I don’t want to do that. I want to eat lunch, sweetheart. Anyway, that route isn’t going to offer up any easy answers. If I thought it would, I’d say go for it. Jounce and bounce until we both piss blood.”
“The Romeros are going to want to know, sir. They’re going to want to know what Freddy was doing when he was killed.”
“I understand that. And the answer is simple. He was careening down Bender’s Canyon Trail far faster than he should have been. He got careless. He got killed.” Gastner made a face that mirrored Estelle’s frustration. “You’ll find a more tactful way to explain it to them, I’m sure. But that’s the nut of it all.”
“The handgun in his kit says that’s not all of it,” Estelle said quietly.
“Ah…the gun.” He ducked his head in acquiescence. “Now you’re right about that.” He glanced at his watch. “And if I’m not mistaken, you may have some answers about that when Mears is finished processing the damn thing. That I’d like to hear.”
Chapter Eleven
“Some clear prints.” Sheriff Robert Torrez passed to the undersheriff first a card bearing Freddy Romero’s finger prints lifted by Perrone at the morgue, and then a latent print collection. “Freddy didn’t make any effort to keep his prints off the gun.”
“I can’t imagine why he would,” Estelle replied. She studied the card, blinking to clear tired eyes. The clock on the office wall read nearly nine thirty, and she had already fielded a second call from George Romero a couple hours earlier. She’d managed to convince Romero that a visit to the crash site would serve them both far better in the fresh light of morning. He and Tata had settled instead for a visit to the morgue, a brief moment that would keep them sleepless for the rest of the night. Perrone had been there, had been gentle and thoughtful, allowing them only to see their son’s face.
Tata Romero had been unable to ask questions other than why, a word she repeated a dozen times. Estelle had no answer. George Romero’s face was set in grim lines, and at one point, as they left the hospital, had asked, “What do you know?”
Estelle had been almost honest in her answer, erring only in being deliberately incomplete. She hadn’t mentioned the handgun found on the ATV.
“Kind of interesting,” Torrez continued. “The gun had a round chambered, but wasn’t decocked.” He slid the heavy automatic across to Estelle. Sgt. Tom Mears had spent considerable time with the gun, retrieving whatever evidence he could. The sum total was several smudgy prints, all belonging to Freddy Romero.
“Freddy wrapped the gun in that cloth, with one round in the chamber, hammer cocked, ready to go,” Estelle said. “He didn’t try to unload it, and I doubt that he fired it.”
“Looks like.” The sheriff hefted a sealed plastic envelope and displayed a handful of stubby.40 S amp;W cartridges. “The gun has a ten round magazine. You could add one in the chamber, and that would make eleven. We recovered nine. One was in the chamber, eight in the magazine. All Speer Gold Dot. Mears is processing a couple of prints that might work for us.”
“So it could have been fired once, or maybe twice, depending on how it was loaded.” Estelle took a moment to mull the sheriff’s shorthand explanation.
“Could have been fired a thousand times, far as that goes,” Torrez said. “But that’s what was in the gun when we found it in Freddy’s carry-all…cocked, with one in the pipe, eight more in the magazine.”
Estelle gazed at the stubby, heavy automatic, then picked it up and thumbed the decocker lever. The cocked hammer snapped down, but the large, rotating bar of the decocker mechanism prevented the hammer from striking the firing pin. The gun then could be carried safely with a chambered round, hammer down. Then snap the decocker up, leaving the gun in double-action mode, and all the shooter had to do was pull the trigger. When the gun fired, the hammer was cocked by the slide slamming backward, and would remain that way, cocked and ready to fire, unless the decocker was activated.
“I can think of a hundred ways Freddy could have come to grief with this,” she said. “Not the least of which is having it bounce around in the carrier of that ATV, charged and ready to go.”
“Odds are slim that it would go off by itself,” Torrez said. “Slim and none. But then he gets home with it…”
“That thought gives me the willies. I didn’t mention it to George Romero yet. I wanted to know more before I did that.”
The sheriff nodded. “So instead the kid does something really dangerous. He drives into an arroyo,” Torrez said, almost philosophically. “Anyway, Mears said the gun looked like it had been locked away in somebody’s attic for a few years. We can comb through any unresolved break-ins or thefts, but I don’t remember anything.”
“No. Plus I never got the impression that was Freddy’s style. I don’t think he would have taken the gun in a burglary. It almost looks as if it’s been outside. It’s stainless, so it didn’t rust, but look at the rest of the condition. If that gun was in somebody’s closet, they sure were the world’s worst housekeepers.”
The sheriff turned as another figure appeared in the doorway. “What do you want,” he said in mock truculence, and Doug Posey flashed him a smile. The New Mexico Game and Fish officer was in his late thirties, but still managed to look sixteen.