Steven Havill - Dead Weight

From my perch high on the mesa I watched the lights of Pasquale’s unit dip and bob. They vanished at a spot where I knew the two-track crossed the Salinas and then emerged on the other side, sweeping a yellow fan across the open prairie. At that point, he punched them off, and the vehicle disappeared as if it’d been levitated off the planet.

“Huh,” I said, and started the Blazer.

Picking my way in the dark wasn’t something that my bifocaled eyes were good at any longer. Between the starlight and a sliver of moon, I could creep down the rock-strewn incline off the mesa. Four or five more vehicles passed by on the highway before the Blazer thumped down the last few yards and drove across the bunchgrass south of the pavement.

Once on the highway, I turned left and idled toward the Broken Spur. I’d covered no more than a mile when a set of headlights blasted up behind me like a ballistic missile. First the night was dark except for my own lights, and then I was illuminated without warning…as if the driver had come up from behind with his lights off and then, a few yards behind my vehicle, snapped them on.

Just as quickly, the driver backed off half a dozen car lengths, and I could see the boxy silhouette of the Bronco. I reached out and squeezed the mike’s transmit button a couple of times and after a second or two got two barks of squelch in return.

Picking up the mike, I said, “Three oh three, three ten on channel three.” That put us on car-to-car, and I added, “I’d like to talk to you a minute. The parking lot of the Broken Spur will be just fine.”

The saloon was remote but a favorite watering hole for local ranchers and anyone else who wanted weathered wood and crushed black velvet ambiance. The owner, Victor Sanchez, and I had enjoyed an uneasy truce since the night Victor’s oldest son had died from a bullet through the heart, fired by Victor himself.

A few minutes later Pasquale and I pulled into the parking lot of the Broken Spur, surrounded by a swirling cloud of dust. Three pickup trucks, including one with an empty stock trailer, were parked in the lot, along with a large camper with Michigan plates.

Pasquale turned around so his vehicle was pointed at the highway, parking window-to-window with mine.

“Quiet night,” I said. He grinned a little sheepishly, a handsome kid with an easy smile and a broad, open face. The small scar over his right eye was a persistent reminder that I’d been his roadblock to joining the sheriff’s department. He’d earned the scar by flipping his village patrol car over in the middle of Bustos Avenue, flying low to beat the deputies to a routine call. At the time he’d been a part-timer with the village, and he’d been trying hard to redeem himself ever since.

He’d done a pretty good job. Only once in a while did I wish that I could wave a magic wand and age him through his long-lasting adolescence to a good, solid forty or so.

“What are you hunting?” I asked.

“Well, sir, I saw your vehicle up on the side of the mesa and wondered who it was and what they were doing.”

“Sharp eyes,” I said.

He shrugged. “I saw the moonlight glint on your vehicle, and so I pulled into Moore and sat for a little bit, like maybe I was running radar. I just kinda sat there and watched for a few minutes.”

“I see.”

“None of the ranchers are workin’ that area up there, so…” He let it trail off. If he was curious about what I had been up to, sitting out in the dark by myself, he didn’t let it show.

“How many Mexican tandems go through here in a week?” I asked. “You care to guess?”

“You mean the used cars going to Mexico?” He puffed out his cheeks. “Dozens, I’d guess. I see ’em all the time.”

“Their paperwork always in order?”

Pasquale looked nonplussed. “I guess so, sir. About the most often I talk to ’em is when they’re broke down at the side of the road. And that happens a lot. I figured they’ll be checked pretty close at the border, so I don’t mess with ’em. Should I be on ’em?”

I shook my head. “Just something that came to mind,” I said. I watched a rancher emerge from the Broken Spur Saloon, walking with the exaggerated care of someone just this side of blind, staggering drunk. He looked over, saw the two county cars, and lurched to a stop, then turned around and retreated back inside.

I figured we had about two minutes before Victor Sanchez roared out to chase us off his property with his predictable “bad for business” diatribe.

I pulled the Blazer into gear. “When you circle back through Posadas, stop by the office. I want to show you something.”

“You want me to come in now?” he asked, and a tinge of worry crept into his voice.

I waved a hand in dismissal. “No. Later. Just when it’s convenient. I’ll be there most of the night. I’ve got a bunch of paperwork I need to do.”

That was true. I had paperwork, and I needed to do it. But I had not the slightest intention of spending the night staring at budget figures.

No matter what my intentions might have been, they flew out the window when I was still five miles southwest of Posadas. My phone chirped, and I damn near drove off the road before I found the thing. The little cellular unit had been in my hand not more than ten minutes before, but when released it tended to dive to the depths of whatever pile of junk covered my car seat at the time.

A trace of urgency had crept into Dispatcher Ernie Wheeler’s voice.

“Sir, Bob’s responding to a call over at Sisson Plumbing and Heating. He said to have you meet him there.”

“Domestic dispute?” I asked.

“Uh, he’s not sure. But it looks like there’s a fatality. Emergency is over there now.”

“I’m on my way.” I tossed the phone on the seat and concentrated on the winding dark road.

There wasn’t any point in tying up the air waves with more questions. I couldn’t do any good from five miles away. But before I’d traveled two of them, I saw the red lights behind me, and in a few seconds Deputy Pasquale’s Bronco passed me, wound up tight.

His spotlight beam lanced out ahead, probing the side of the highway for sets of eyes that might wander into his vehicle’s ballistic path. I eased off and let the youngster charge on ahead. If we were responding to a fatality, the victim would patiently wait for us all.

I drove back into the village of Posadas from the south, ducking under the interstate. The lights of travelers flashed overhead, on their way to points east and west, oblivious of our emergency. A mile farther, the first significant street off Grande to the right was MacArthur.

Despite what tourists might think after viewing Pershing Park, assuming that MacArthur was yet another tribute to military might, the street was named for Peter MacArthur, the second mayor of Posadas. The first mayor, Fred Pino, had been shot before he’d managed to accomplish enough to earn a street name.

MacArthur wound in a wide loop around the southeast quadrant of the village, encompassing a residential area of aging mobile homes, a neighborhood that blended into a scattering of businesses as it approached Bustos Avenue, the major artery running east-west through Posadas.

Sprawled on the southeast corner of MacArthur’s intersection with Bustos was Sisson Plumbing and Heating. Jim Sisson had lived in the county his entire life, the son of Granger and Mary Sisson, ranchers who’d tried their best to run a successful cow-calf operation in the middle of the sage, creosote bush, and cacti. They’d managed after a fashion until 1967, when their pickup truck hadn’t rolled out of the way fast enough and a southbound Union Pacific freight train had pounded it to tangled junk at a crossing near Alamogordo.