“Hey!” Mark Arnett had used up all his patience. He managed three paces forward when Bob Torrez grabbed both his arms, but the man twisted away. Backing away from Torrez, Arnett couldn’t have missed the deputy’s next move. Handcuffs appeared in Torrez’s hand, and Arnett held up an index finger in the big deputy’s face.
“Now you just back off,” Arnett barked. A husky, strong man with a short fuse, he wasn’t used to confrontation. “I got the right to talk with my son.”
I didn’t want to take time explaining to Mark Arnett that, no, he didn’t have that particular right at that particular moment.
“There’s no cause to be leadin’ him around like some goddamn convict,” Arnett shouted, but turned his attention to the three of us. With one hand held out to fend off Torrez and the other stretched out toward me, Arnett took a couple more steps. The deputy shifted with the cuffs, but Salcido stopped him in his tracks with the slightest of nods.
Arnett advanced to within a dozen feet. The sheriff intercepted him, forcing Arnett to look around him to make eye contact with his son. A quick glance, and then Mo continued his examination of the asphalt at his feet.
“I got to know,” Arnett said to the boy. “These men said that you shot Larry Zipoli. Is that true?”
I could imagine Mo Arnett’s public defender cringing at that moment, but what the hell. Maybe Mark Arnett did deserve to hear the boy’s answer, but father and son’s days would be filled with more court proceedings than either could now imagine. “This is not the time or place,” I said, tightening my grip on Mo’s left arm.
“No, you tell me.” Arnett’s face was an interesting shade of purple. “You go draggin’ our name through the mud, son…now you’re bein’ led back home in Goddamn chains, for Christ’s sakes.”
“We’ll take my car,” I said, and started to steer Mo that way.
“No. I got a right to know. I got the right to talk with my son,” Mark shouted. What had started as wet eyes became an uncontrolled gusher. He started to push past the sheriff, but that was like trying to walk through a brick wall. “You tell me what you did!” he cried.
Mo had started to walk between Estelle and me, but he hesitated and looked one more time toward his father. “It was an accident,” he whispered.
That wasn’t the answer that Mark Arnett wanted to hear. He slashed an arm to fend off Deputy Torrez. “How the hell can something like that be a goddamn accident?” he choked.
“Give us some time,” I said, but Mark Arnett was in no mood for platitudes.
“Goddamn time?” Arnett almost laughed as he waggled a finger in my face. “You’ll get goddamn time. I’ll be talking to my goddamn lawyer, is what’s going to happen.”
“That’s the best idea you’ve had so far,” I said.
Chapter Forty
I agreed with Mark Arnett about one thing. How could a kid take a Winchester from his father’s gun safe, grab a cartridge or two, then stalk Larry Zipoli, finally shooting him where he sat in the cab of the road grader, placing a bullet squarely through the brain, and then say with a straight face that it was all an accident? Trial lawyers were going to have a field day.
A small room full of people interested in that very question gathered an hour later in the conference room of the Sheriff’s Department-not because the boy was being granted special comforts, but because that room was the only one large enough for more than a handful of participants.
District Attorney Dan Schroeder, looking and smelling as if we’d interrupted him from a family barbecue, shuffled papers for five minutes before he clasped his hands together, leaned forward, and fixed his watery blue eyes on what was left of Maurice Arnett.
“Mr. Arnett, you are being charged with the unlawful death of,” and he glanced down at his notes, “one Lawrence C. Zipoli, a resident of Posadas, New Mexico, by rifle shot. You’ve been advised of your rights?”
“Yes, sir,” Mo whispered.
“You understand them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you want an attorney present?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you understand that you may very well be charged as an adult?” At the corner of the table, Ruth Wayand sat with her various notebooks, looking uncomfortable. Ruth and her Children, Youth, and Families outfit were present to guard Mo Arnett’s possible status as a juvenile. By the set of Dan Schroeder’s face, I knew that wasn’t going to fly. And I knew and respected Ruth, too. She’d fight for what she truly believed was right.
“Yes, sir.”
“When is your birthday, Maurice?”
“Next week. September third.”
“And how old will you be?”
“Eighteen.”
Schroeder nodded and glanced across at first the sheriff and then me, indicating that it was now my turn.
I sat on the edge of the table just to Mo’s left. “So, tell us how this miserable event happened,” I said.
Mo whispered something inaudible, and Schroeder reached out and tapped the tape recorder with his pen. “You’ll have to speak up, son. This gadget can’t read your mind.”
“I took one of my father’s rifles and a few cartridges.”
“How many?” I asked.
“Five.”
Five. The kid rode out to do his work with a pocketful of ammo. Some accident. “And then?”
“I borrowed my mom’s car and I was going to go out on the mesa and pop some cans.” He hesitated. “Then I saw where Mr. Zipoli had been working.”
“You went out specifically to find Mr. Zipoli?”
“No, sir.”
“But you knew that he had been working out there?”
“I…guess that I did.”
“How did you know where that might be?”
“Because earlier I saw him driving the grader out that way. And he’d been out there the day before, but the grader broke.” Mo’s voice had taken on a drone, as if he might be reciting a script. Maybe that’s what he’d been thinking about during the flight home.
“What time was this?”
“I don’t know. Early afternoon, I think.”
“Why wouldn’t you know for sure?”
Mo shrugged.
I asked, “Closer to one or closer to two?”
“Maybe one.”
“Maybe. Where did you park the car?”
“Just off the road. By the intersection.”
“Intersection of what?”
“Highland and Hutton.”
“Where were Mr. Zipoli and the grader?”
“The grader was parked a ways down Highland. Half way down the block, at least.”
“You saw him?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you think that he was in the vicinity?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“I couldn’t see him in the cab, and his truck wasn’t there. I mean, I didn’t see his truck. He sometimes tows it behind the grader.”
“What did you do?”
“I walked toward the grader a ways, and when I was sure I could hit it, I tried to shoot out the windshield.”
“How many shots?”
“Just one.”
I straightened a little to relieve my spine. “Now why would you do that? You had how many cartridges with you?”
“Five.”
“Why not fire five times?”
Mo shut his eyes, but that didn’t stop the tears. I reached across and slid the box of tissues within his reach.
“Why not five times, Mo?”
“It was really loud, you know.” He opened his eyes and looked up at me, just a quick glance. “’Cause I didn’t have ear phones or nothing. I thought someone might hear the shots and see me if they looked over that way. So I chickened out.”