Steven Havill: Red, Green, or Murder

“Sir,” Estelle said, slamming down the trunk of her car, “I’ll give you a call as soon as Dr. Perrone has something for me.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ll get this off to the lab, and then we’ll see.”

“Are you ready for lunch yet?”

“Better still, why don’t you plan to come over for dinner tonight? That’ll give me time to ship this batch off to Albuquerque, and catch up on paperwork.”

I had been thinking of a midafternoon memorial burrito, but this was too good an opportunity to pass up. I’d manage the hours before dinner somehow. “It’s a deal,” I said. “What can I bring?”

“Yourself, padrino. Los dos will be excited.” That was the charm of little kids, of course. They could see me five times in a week, and still be thrilled with yet another opportunity to drag me into their world.

“I was going to wander over to the hospital for a few minutes to see how Dale Torrance is doing, and then I need to run the permit paperwork out to the ranch. Pat is standing around out there waiting on all this. Dinner will work out just right.”

“Wish the Torrances well for me.” Estelle opened the car door. “See you at the house, then. Anytime is fine.”

I raised a hand in salute, still unmotivated to resume whatever it was that I was doing before this. Estelle was headed back to her office. Deputy Dennis Collins and Officer Beuler had left the neighborhood, no doubt already prowling the highways and school crossings. That’s what the young do when someone older dies, I suppose-pause a minute or two and then get on with life. Us older duffers reacted a little differently. Losing one of my oldest, closest friends had punched out some of my stuffing, and I wasn’t ready just yet to draw a line through George Payton’s name. George would have laughed at me.

I ambled back to the SUV and called the hospital, saving myself a trip of four blocks. Dale Torrance had been transferred to Las Cruces so that an orthopedic surgeon there could whack away at the lad’s wrecked knee. I switched off the phone, relieved that I didn’t need to visit Posadas General. Its antiseptic atmosphere wasn’t good therapy for me just then, anyway. I’d be apt to glance through some door left ajar and see someone I knew, withered and old, intubated and helpless.

The sun felt good as it streamed through the Chevy’s window. I sat for a few minutes, finishing Herb Torrance’s livestock transportation permit. Herb and Annie had gone on to Cruces, but Pat Gabaldon could sign off just as easily. It wasn’t as if a giant, bellowing herd was tramping across four states. The single, modest trailer load wouldn’t even leave the county. It was the sort of mindless attention to bureaucratic detail that allowed my mind to roam free, picking at this and that, remembering this and that.

By the time I returned to the Torrance ranch, Pat had the twenty-four critters all buttoned up in the trailer, the rig turned around and ready to head out the driveway. He was leaning against the front fender of Herb’s huge diesel dually one-ton pickup, cell phone pasted to his ear, and raised a hand in salute at the sound of my approach. Pat continued his conversation as he sauntered out to meet me. A short, compact kid in faded, sweat-stained denim, he ruined his cowpoke image with an Oakland A’s baseball cap worn askew, brim to the rear. He shared the old trailer behind Herb and Annie’s place, the modern equivalent of a bunk house, with Dale Torrance.

“Dale’s still in surgery,” Pat said as I rolled the Blazer to a stop. He snapped the phone closed. “Herb says they don’t know how long it’ll be.”

“God damn nasty break,” I said. I didn’t explain why I had been delayed so long in town, but Pat had made good use of the time. Horses and tack were tended to and he’d trailered the cattle with just the help of Socks, the blue heeler, who now sat in the truck, tongue lolling, excited to be going someplace where he could chase things.

“I was going to head on up to the mesa,” Pat said. “Didn’t see any point in sitting around here.” He turned and maneuvered his wad of snuff a bit so he could spit.

“There’s that,” I agreed. “If I can get you to sign on the dotted line, we’re all set.”

Pat cocked his head and looked at the paperwork. One hand strayed to his hip pocket. “I ain’t got thirty-eight bucks,” he said.

“Herb’s good for it,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.” Pat signed in cramped, angular printing, and I gave him Herb’s copy marked “paid”, which would make the state bookkeepers cringe if they knew. But they didn’t need to know. I included one of my business cards as well. “I can’t imagine anybody giving you grief, but if you have any problems, give me a call.”

“You bet. Thanks.”

With the great work of the state finished, I left the H-Bar-T ranch and drove north on County Road 14, a rough, jouncing ride that I usually avoided. But this particular day, it felt good to be out and away. The sky was touched here and there with jet trails that wafted out and turned into wispy clouds, the wind just enough to occasionally kick up a little dust and whip it around in tiny devils. I ambled along with the SUV’s windows open.

A mile north, beyond Herb’s last section fence, dust blew off the tops of fresh tracks that had turned off the main road. The derrick of a well-driller’s rig rose above the runty piñon and juniper a few hundred yards to the east. It surprised me that someone imagined that there was still water left under that dry patch of desert. Nosy as ever, I turned and followed the tracks. The trail wound along the flank of San Patricio Mesa, dodging stands of cacti, water-stressed juniper, creosote bush, and the occasional snarl of stunted oak. Amid a growing litter of beer cans, plastic oil jugs, plastic bags and similar touches of human grace, the two-track headed up a particularly picturesque canyon. It couldn’t continue in that direction for long, since the jumbled rock of the mesa edge reared up in the way.

A tawny swale of dry bunch grass had been flattened to dust by traffic, and the drill rig sat on its hydraulic feet, a flood of dried, cracked slurry paving the area around the drill hole. I parked and gazed at the rig, thinking this a damn odd place for a water well. The bulk of San Patricio Mesa protected the area from the breezes unless the wind was from the northeast, and the last time we’d had a ‘downeaster’ in southern New Mexico, the ice age was in control. A windmill in this spot would sit idle most of the time.

Turning in my seat, I surveyed the rimrock above me. No electric lines passed closer than those behind Herb Torrance’s house, a full mile away, with the buttress of a mesa between here and there. From the drill site, the land sloped down the swale, losing another hundred feet of elevation to the prairie to the north. In the distance, I could see the brown line of CR14 snaking off toward the state highway. Bringing in electric lines would be no problem, as long as the wallet was fat.

Switching off the SUV, I unbuckled and climbed out. Except for its being picturesque, I could see little reason to be drilling for water here, unless Herb had managed to pick up this piece of land from a neighbor and planned to extend his pasturage. That made sense. For him, it was convenient.

Off to the west of CR 14, I could see the rise of the hills behind Reuben Fuentes’ old place, long abandoned now. Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s great uncle had been as colorful as they come, and he and I had shared an escapade or two on both sides of the border-but that was long before Homeland Security took all the fun out of adventures like that.

Whoever owned the drill rig hadn’t painted his company name on the weathered doors, but the driver’s side wasn’t locked, and I helped myself. The cab reeked of oil, chewing tobacco, and diesel fuel. A broken clipboard lay on the seat with a receipt from Posadas Electrix under the clip showing that Scott Paulson had bought a new super-duty battery the day before. I didn’t know Scott Paulson, and that in itself was surprising.