“And still some trouble.” I nodded toward the hydraulic leak up front. I ushered them to the spot, and for a long moment, Tony and Buddy squatted under the rig, examining the new hose.
“He blew that this afternoon,” Tony said, and stood up with a grunt. “He radioed in. I know that. Who brought him the new one, Bud?”
Clayton wiped his mouth. He looked as if he’d been considering throwing up ever since he’d watched Larry Zipoli sag down out of the cab, dead face covered in blood.
“Jeez,” Buddy allowed. “Who was that? I don’t know. One of the boys in the shop. I know that Zip called in on the radio and told ’em what he needed.”
“No big deal to change that?” I asked.
“Nah. Easy. That little one is easy.” He turned and patted the big yellow frame beside his head. “Break one up inside, and it’s a pain in the ass.”
“Does he have to shut down the machine to do that work?” Salcido asked.
“Don’t have to, but I guess he would.”
Blow a hose, call for help, wait for the replacement, take the old one off and put the new one on, I thought. Then fire up the machine and back to work. But before he can put the machine into gear, blam. He’s dead.
Tony kicked a boot in the dirt in frustration. “Shit, I don’t know. I was out most of the morning.”
“After the shot, he sure as hell didn’t radio anybody. What we know for sure is that when he was found, he was sitting in the seat, stone dead. The engine was idling, the gears in neutral, blade down. Beyond that, we don’t know diddly,” I said.
The sheriff shook his head sadly and thrust out his lower jaw as if loosening a necktie. “You let me know what you need.” He nodded toward the state policeman. “If we need to ask for more help, we will.” He paused. “I didn’t know this Larry too well. I see him around, you know. But beyond that…” He shrugged and then brightened with another thought. He stepped away from the group and took me by the elbow, walking me toward the rear of the machine.
“I interviewed a friend of yours this afternoon. A young lady that I think we should hire.”
“There aren’t a whole lot of young lady friends in my life at the moment,” I laughed.
“Reuben’s grandniece?” The sheriff’s eyes twinkled.
My mind went blank. Reuben Fuentes was a basically good-natured old codger who enjoyed a wonderfully casual relationship with the law, often fueled by excessive bouts with the bottle. A stone mason gifted with remarkable skill and artistry, he had relatives a few miles south in Mexico, and pretty much ignored the line in the dust drawn by the Border folks when he needed to haul rocks or cement or bricks from job to job. I found him immensely likeable, had bought him lunch on several occasions, and had made a trip or two with him south of the border-more than once to make sure that he didn’t end up a permanent resident of a Mexican prison.
“I don’t know the grandniece.”
“Oh, sure you do. I want you to talk with her, too. I set it up for tomorrow. She’ll come in first thing.”
“Does this grandniece have a name?”
“Estelle Reyes? Teresa’s adopted kid down in Tres Santos? Fresh out of school. She’ll be a good one.”
The memory flooded back, but it was of an eleven year-old urchin playing under the cottonwoods in Tres Santos, Mexico. Reuben had introduced me first to his aging niece, Teresa Filipina Reyes, a woman who eked out a living teaching school in the tiny village, and then to the skinny little twerp whom Teresa had adopted from the church orphanage a decade before. Reuben and I had had other issues to attend to that day, but I knew that a few years later, when the child turned sixteen, she had come across the border to live with Reuben and attend Posadas High School. Maybe she’d come across legally, but knowing Reuben, ceremony perhaps had not been stood upon.
I knew about her during her two years at the high school, but not much else. She’d been in classes once in a while when Salcido or I had given guest talks during career day, but managed to get through her two years of public school without showing up on law enforcement radar. As far as I knew, no raucous parties, no lead foot, no experiments with alcohol or weed, despite her guardian’s propensity for sauce. And then she’d gone off to college. Since Reuben Fuentes wasn’t the sort to blab about his relatives, the girl had dropped off my planet.
“I didn’t even know she’d sent in an application to work for us,” I said. Most of the time, such things would have crossed my desk, but Eduardo Salcido was Eduardo, after all, operating under the patron system more often than not. “There hasn’t been a background check, has there?” I’d had my share of challenges trying to convince Eduardo Salcido to join the twentieth century in a lot of ways. Now, in the late summer of 1987 with technology in full bloom, using formal background investigations remained an issue between us.
Eduardo tended to hire either people he knew, or people about whom he felt comfortable. He asked enough questions on the first face-to-face meeting to satisfy himself, bedamned what some “fancy computer” might reveal. To my knowledge, he’d never ordered up a background check when he’d hired me. We’d interviewed, and while I answered his questions, I recall that those dark eyes of his had never wavered from mine, as if he were x-raying my brain. He’d read through the paperwork I’d offered him, and nothing beyond.
“Is she even a citizen?” What an interesting can of worms that could turn out to be. I knew that plenty of people served in the armed forces on a visa, but as a cop?
“Last year,” Eduardo said. “She told me that she started the process when she turned eighteen, and took the oath the week that she graduated from university. You’ll like talking to her. A most articulate young lady.” He said the four syllable word with relish.
“Well, all right, then. And by the way, Evie Truman will be working on her deposition. I’ll be caught up with that, too, unless you want to work with her on it.”
He frowned and rubbed his belly. “When you have a chance, see what you think. Have the young lady sit in with you, then. See how she responds. I told her she’d have to catch you on the run.”
Having a civilian in the room during an official activity like a deposition wasn’t the usual policy-probably not even a good policy-but I didn’t argue. Eduardo Salcido had his way of doing things, and I respected his judgment. Right then, a new hire was the last thing on my mind, even though our small sheriff’s department stretched desperately thin. But hell, that was normal.
Chapter Three
The holes in the county road grader’s windshield and Larry Zipoli’s skull didn’t offer much of a datum line. Deputy Mears conjured up a duct-tape and pencil solution to secure the contractor’s foundation twine to the inside of the windshield. From there, the line was strung forward over the seventeen feet of the grader’s big yellow prow, off into the hard, sinking sun. I stood on the blade, one hand on the cab, with Tom Mears gingerly sitting in the driver’s seat. Tom was slight of build, perhaps five-eight, with a short torso.
Larry Zipoli had been at least six feet tall, long of torso. To hit him in the eyebrow would have meant that the bullet was angled slightly upward-exactly what made sense to me. The bottom of the cab door was about sixty inches from the ground, another three or four feet up to a spot even with the victim’s eyebrow. Fired from in front, the bullet would naturally angle upward, unless the shooter had either scrambled aboard the grader’s nose, or had set up a stepladder in the middle of the road.
“How curious,” I muttered. Torrez was obviously excited by the whole thing, though, like figuring out the perfect five hundred yard shot on a trophy antelope. If there was something about firearms, shooting, and hunting that he didn’t know, I hadn’t stumbled across it yet.