Steven Havill: Dead Weight

“He’s home right now if you need him,” Gayle said.

“No,” I answered quickly and shook my head. “Just whenever he comes in this afternoon is fine.” Gayle didn’t ask what I wanted with the dispatch logs, my privacy, or her husband, and I felt better. Gayle Torrez worked hard at being the best dispatcher I’d ever met, making her a perfect match for her husband. Undersheriff Torrez worked the four-to-midnight shift, as well as twenty or thirty other odd hours during an average week. He avoided the boredom of working the day shift whenever he could.

Back in my office, I slumped back in the cool of my old leather chair, swung my feet up on the corner of my desk, and browsed through the logs. The volume included April, May, and June, and I concentrated on the last month, assuming that if there was any validity to the charge against Pasquale, the incident that had precipitated the note would be a recent one, not something from the distant past.

The logs were simple, black-on-white abbreviations of any activity that included radio conversations with the patrol officers. But their nebulous character could be frustrating. On June 3, for example, an entry read: 18:36, 303, 10–10. That was followed by 18:59, 303, 10-8.

Deputy Thomas Pasquale’s vehicle was 303, and at 6:36 p.m. civilian time, he had announced that he was out of service, at home, no doubt engaged in something as exciting as eating a sandwich. Twenty-three minutes later, he was back in service-and there was no way to determine from the log where he was or what he was doing.

After studying the log for half an hour, I looked at my legal pad jottings. During the twenty-two days that he had worked in June, Deputy Pasquale had called in 137 requests for vehicle registration checks…the sort of routine action a deputy took when he stopped an unfamiliar vehicle for a traffic infraction or because something in the driver’s manner had piqued his attention.

A rate of six or seven registration checks a night was average. On one extreme was Undersheriff Torrez, who might request one check a week; on the other, rookie Deputy Brent Sutherland, with us for three months, whose idea of a good time was running routine checks at three in the morning on cars parked in the Posadas Inn parking lot, down by the interstate.

Of Pasquale’s one hundred and thirty-seven registration checks, one hundred and two were on vehicles stopped on one of the four state highways that cut up Posadas County like a little withered pizza. That was logical, too, since the state highways carried the most traffic.

I frowned. If my numbers were right and my bifocals didn’t lie, eighty-four of the traffic stops were logged on New Mexico 56. That particular ribbon of asphalt, at the moment damn near liquid under the fierce sun, wound southwest from Posadas across the two dry washes that New Mexicans loved to call rivers, up through the San Cristobal Mountains, to plunge south through the tiny village of Regal and then into Mexico.

My frown deepened, even though State 56 was the logical route for traffic stops. The snowbirds flocked up and down that route, either headed for who knows what in rural Mexico or turning westward at Regal, headed to Arizona. The only highway to carry heavier traffic was the interstate, but for the most part, deputies stayed off that artery, leaving it to the state police.

The anonymous note claimed that Pasquale was shaking down Mexican nationals, and at first blush State 56 would be the logical highway for that activity, were it not for the border crossing a mile south of the hamlet of Regal. That crossing was open from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., with the stout gate securely locked the rest of the night. Foot traffic was no problem, if travelers didn’t mind a little barbed wire. Vehicular traffic was out of the question.

If the Mexicans were crossing in Arizona, then ducking east through the mountains, 56 might be a logical route. I ran the numbers for April and May and found comparisons that differed by insignificant percentage points. Deputy Pasquale was consistent, if nothing else.

“And so what?” I said aloud.

I tossed the yellow pad on my desk, dropped the log on top of it, and leaned back, eyes closed. After a moment I picked up the log again. Deputy Tony Abeyta shared the swing shift with Pasquale and Torrez. Ten minutes later, I knew that Abeyta made forty-six traffic stops in June, barely two a night. Only eight of them had been on State 56.

There were explanations for that, too, but trying to crunch numbers only made me impatient. I was no statistician-and on top of that, I didn’t believe that statistics would give me the kind of answer I wanted.

The conundrum was simple. If Tom Pasquale was innocent of the charges spelled out in the note, he deserved kid-glove handling. He would need all the help I could give him. He didn’t deserve to lose sleep over the charges; he didn’t deserve the beginnings of an ulcer…In short, he didn’t deserve what some slimeball was trying to do to him.

If, however, Tom Pasquale was guilty of using his badge, uniform, and gun as magic wands to create pocket money, then he deserved every ounce of the world that would come crashing down around his ears. And I’d be the one to kick the globe off its pedestal.

I left the office before Undersheriff Torrez came in, assuring Gayle that what I wanted wasn’t important and that I’d catch him sometime later in the evening. I took the unmarked car and drove home, drenched with sweat by the time I pulled into the driveway.

Inside, I sighed as the silent coolness of the old adobe seeped into my bones. No thundering swamp cooler, no whining refrigerated air-just musty coolness seeping out of the old twenty-four-inch-thick walls that rested in the shade of enormous spread-limbed cottonwoods.

While a fresh pot of coffee dripped, I leafed through the mail that I’d picked up earlier in the day and then ignored. All of it could remain ignored for a while longer. For several minutes I sat with elbows on the counter, chin propped in my hands, staring out across the dark sunken living room while the coffee trickled into the urn.

Whoever had written the goddamned note had already accomplished part of his goal. Without any hints of ownership, the note just sort of floated there in the ether, generic typing on generic paper. All I knew for sure was that the author wasn’t the world’s hottest speller or grammarian.

But the young deputy’s name had been mentioned, and I found myself trying to imagine whom Deputy Pasquale would stop and when he’d make the decision that the driver was an easy target, how he might twist the screws, and what he might do with the money.

If I drove over to his house, the one about which Carla Champlin was building a head of steam, would I find a flashy new boat in the yard, a fancy new truck parked in the driveway, and Deputy Pasquale sitting there on the porch sipping imported beer and wearing a new pair of snake-hide boots? Maybe he’d make enough scam money to pay for some water, at least making his landlady happy.

With disgust I bit off a curse and poured myself a cup of powerful coffee. With that in one hand, I juggled the telephone off the cradle and punched the auto dialer for the office. Gayle Torrez answered.

“I’m going to be occupied for most of the evening, Gayle, but I’ll have my phone with me, if you need anything.”

“Yes, sir. Did you need to talk to Robert? He’s right here.”

“No, that’s all right. Ernie’s on Dispatch tonight, right?”

“Yes, sir. He’s here, too, if you need to talk with him.”

I almost said, “I don’t need to talk to anybody,” but instead bit it off and settled for, “No, that’s fine. Just pass the message along. Have a good evening.”