Steven Havill: Dead Weight

I refilled my cup, snapped off the coffeemaker, and ambled through the cool maze of rooms to the inside door leading to the garage. The Blazer was tucked in between towering piles of junk that I’d never gotten around to sorting, and I grunted into it, careful not to nick the door against the aluminum stepladder.

As the garage door spooled open behind me, the engine kicked into velvety life, and I felt better. By the time I had enjoyed a massive burrito dinner at the Don Juan de Onate Restaurant, the sun would be on its way toward the back side of the San Cristobal Mountains. Things would start to cool down.

I could drop the windows and idle around the county in the cool of the night, listening and watching. If I was really lucky, I wouldn’t find a damn thing.

I backed out carefully, made sure the garage door lowered solidly into place, and turned out on Escondido, past the trailer park by the interstate and then northbound on Grande. I hadn’t driven more than four blocks before I saw the white-and-blue Posadas County patrol car coming in the opposite direction.

It flashed by, already well over the posted speed limit. Undersheriff Robert Torrez was behind the wheel, and he glanced my way at the same time the radio in the Blazer barked twice. I lifted a hand in salute, wondering why I had been expecting that it would be Deputy Thomas Pasquale, heading south toward State 56.

The Don Juan was quiet, and I slid into my favorite booth, the one whose window looked out across the parking lot toward the San Cristobals to the southwest. The blinds were turned to ward off the evening sun, and I could feel the heat through the glass. Bustos Avenue stretched flat and hot east-west, bordering the restaurant’s parking lot. Traffic was light.

I picked at my food, my irritation growing by the minute. I had time to dig my way through about a third of the Burrito Grande when my privacy vanished as Sam Carter appeared around the service island.

“Damn, he was right,” he said, and advanced until he was staring down at my burrito plate.

“Hello, Sam. Who was right?”

“Your dispatcher. Ernie Wheeler. He said odds were good that you’d be here.”

“And sure enough,” I said. “Pull up a chair.”

He slid into the booth, hands clasped in front of him, just like Dr. Arnold Gray a few hours earlier. It wasn’t yet six, and Carter’s Family SuperMarket hadn’t closed for the day. I was surprised to see Sam out and about, mingling with the public. He ducked his head, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing, and glanced back the way he’d come.

“You being followed?” I said, but he didn’t take it as the joke I’d intended. His eyes widened for just a second, and he leaned forward. The waitress appeared by the service cart, hand reaching for the coffeepot. I caught her eye and shook my head. She nodded and vanished.

“What’s the problem, Sam?” I said. “Two county commissioners in one day in this same booth…that’s something of a record for me.”

Sam Carter’s narrow face crumpled up in a grimace, as if he was genuinely sorry to have to talk to me in public…or in private, either, for that matter.

“Somebody sent me an anonymous letter,” he blurted out, and his hand darted for the inside pocket of his limp blue seersucker jacket.

With anyone else, I could have made a wisecrack about the man cheating on his wife or not paying mounting gambling debts or something of the sort. But Sam Carter’s life was a mess, and both he and I knew it. His senior cashier had filed a complaint against him a couple of months before, charging him with making obscene phone calls to her home after she’d refused his amorous advances at the store.

I knew the woman and somehow found it hard to imagine the weasel-thin Sam Carter, semibalding, with a mouthful of perfect false teeth, bending the stout, frizzy-haired matron backward over the sour cream display while he attempted a quick, passionate smooch.

Taffy Hines had complained and even been brassy enough to sign her name. Estelle Reyes-Guzman, my chief of detectives at the time, and I had talked to old Sam and pointed out to him the error of his ways…and made it clear to him what a field day the Posadas Register would have if the story ever went public-which it would do if he didn’t button his mental trousers.

As far as I knew, he’d behaved himself since then, but our relationship had turned a touch chilly. When the previous sheriff had died in a plane crash, Carter had talked me into taking the post until after elections-but that was not because of any love for me on his part. Next in line was Estelle Reyes-Guzman, and the county fathers weren’t about to accept a young Mexican as the first woman sheriff of Posadas County. They needn’t have worried, since that’s not the way the cards were stacked, anyway.

Still, there was no trace of gloat in his expression when Sam Carter pulled the white piece of typing paper out of his pocket. I knew what it was before he handed it to me but took it nonetheless, looking at it as carefully as I had at the first one.

I read it through, wondering how many copies the author had printed.

“What do you think?” Carter asked.

I took a deep breath and pushed my plate off to one side. “It’s enough to give me gas, I’ll tell you that much.”

“You don’t seem surprised.”

I looked at him for a long minute, then said, “I don’t guess I am. One of your brethren got a copy and shared it with me earlier in the day.”

“You mean one of the other commissioners?” he asked, and I nodded. “Which one?”

“It probably doesn’t matter,” I said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if all five of you got the same thing. Photocopies are cheap. You have the envelope?”

“Envelope?” he said.

“I assume it came to you in an envelope?”

“No…well, yes. It did. I didn’t even think about that. I’ll look for it.”

“That would be helpful.” I scanned the message again, and if my memory served me correctly, it was identical to Gray’s.

“Well,” Carter said, and watched as I carefully refolded the letter and placed it on top of my hat. “What do you think?”

I shrugged, hoping I looked far more casual than I felt. “It’s always welcome when concerned citizens give us these nice little tips,” I said, and smiled.

“This is serious, though,” Sam Carter said.

“Of course it is.”

“If this got out, it’d be a real mess.”

“Yes, it would. Did you show this to anyone else?”

He shook his head vehemently.

“But I tell you,” I said, and then stopped to take a deep drink of my iced tea, “it’s going to be all over the front page before we’re through, no matter which way it goes. The last thing we’re going to tolerate is a crooked cop…or someone writing libel about honest cops. We’ll find out which way it falls, and then you watch the headlines.”

Sam Carter leaned forward a bit. “You can’t just sort of…” and his voice trailed off as he made little chopping motions with his right hand. I didn’t have a clue what he was trying to suggest, and I didn’t want to pursue it.

“No,” I said. “I can’t. That’s not the way I work.” I smiled again, without much humor.

Sam reared back as if he’d seen an apparition seated across from him, maybe Don Juan in person. “You think someone would…” He stopped in midthought.

“Maybe they would, and maybe they wouldn’t,” I said. I pushed myself out of the booth, dropped a ten-dollar bill beside my plate, and patted Sam Carter on the shoulder as I stepped past him. “I try not to think too much at all these days, Sam. You take care.”

Pounded into fragrance by the heat during the day, the prairie collected back its vapors when the sun set and the air lost its heat. I breathed deeply, savoring it all. The Blazer ticked gently as it cooled, parked with engine off, windows open, and police radio turned to a whisper.