Steven Havill: Twice Buried

“And you’ve found no other evidence?”

“No. Just the mop, the lack of footprints, the disturbed cobwebs, and the open back window.”

Holman took three steps to his right and looked at the offending window. “That’s probably been open for years, Bill.”

“Probably.”

He was about to say something else when Robert Torrez walked quickly along the side of the house to the back porch.

“Sir,” he said, “Gayle wants you to call her.”

“Right now?”

“She said it was important.”

“Excuse me, Martin.”

“And speaking of calls, Glenn Archer called me early this morning,” Sheriff Holman said.

“I’ll bet he did.”

“He wasn’t too happy.”

“I’ll bet he wasn’t,” I said and went inside the house to use the old black telephone in the living room.

The dispatcher answered on the second ring. I said, “What’s up, Gayle?”

“Sir, Carla Champlin called.” I groaned. I didn’t want to see Carla Champlin that morning, any more than I wanted to see Glenn Archer. “She wants to talk to you, sir.”

“What about, did she say?”

“She wouldn’t tell me much, sir. She just said that I should tell you that she wants to file a complaint against an old friend of yours.”

“An old friend of mine?”

“That’s what she said, sir.”

“When did she call?”

“About four minutes ago.”

“And she didn’t want anyone else?”

“No, sir. She said you’d know just what she meant.”

“I don’t know what she means. But call her back and tell her I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I hung up and turned to see Martin Holman inspecting one of the living room windows. He was running his finger along the middle framework as if he were a butler checking for dust instead of ruining prints, which is what he was doing.

“Problems?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Carla Champlin wants me for something.”

“Lucky you.”

I grunted and glanced at my watch. My first inclination was to put Ms. Champlin on hold. But I knew that Bob Torrez was competent. He and the other officers would finish up. I could trust them to be careful and thorough. I glanced at my watch again. The night before, I’d let two hours slide by after Anna Hocking’s call when five minutes might have made a vital difference to the old woman.

“If anyone needs me, I’ll be at the post office,” I said.

The post office was a low, dark adobe building tucked between two other drab businesses on the west side of the village square.

On that Saturday morning, the square was quiet and dusty. Dusty in December. That was Posadas’s claim to fame. It was warm enough even with the low winter sun that someone could have been relaxing in the old gazebo centered in the square. No one was.

Come evening, the village crews would light the Christmas luminarias around the park. The candles closed in brown paper bags would cheer the place up a little, their flickering light dancing up through the bare, sere branches of the elms. Cheerful, unless some of the antsy high school kids kicked the bags over and set the park on fire.

Posadas, New Mexico, wasn’t high on the list as a setting for a holiday TV special. It would take a hell of a set of camera filters to put color in the place. The even, monotonous tan of sand stretched off to the horizon in all directions. Even the mesas were tan except during those few moments each day when the setting sun swept them with rose hues.

Other towns had Indian pueblos nearby for color and commerce… not Posadas. It was cheaper to go souvenir shopping in old Mexico, just twenty miles south. There were no lakes to lend sparkle to the place, unless you counted the abandoned and groundwater-filled quarry behind Consolidated Mining up on the mesa.

But we weren’t entirely without attractions. The year before, a group of spelunkers had convinced the Bureau of Land Management that a series of caves in the small lava flow west of town was worthy of federal interest. In twenty years, Martinez’s Tube, as we called it, might be elevated to tourist-trap status. No one was holding his breath.

The post office was as quiet as the rest of the town. I entered the cool building and smelled the antiseptic detergent with which Carla Champlin scoured every surface several times a week. I looked around the tiny foyer.

Four strands of tinsel crisscrossed the lobby with little foil stars swinging below. A pile of unwanted mail-order catalogs weighted down one end of the courtesy counter. I leaned on the window shelf.

“Just one moment,” a high, thin voice warbled from the back room.

“No hurry, Carla,” I called. “It’s Bill Gastner.”

She appeared carrying her right arm outstretched toward me as if she wanted to shake hands from twenty feet away. “Catalogs,” she said, and cast eyes heavenward.

“Catalogs?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe it. I think every boxholder in Posadas County receives five thousand catalogs. Big ones. As if the usual holiday package rush wasn’t enough.”

She pushed a strand of steely gray hair back under a hairpin. Her head was narrow and her face angular. The Postal Service blouse hung over a bony body. I always thought that hugging Carla Champlin would be like fondling a bundle of construction rebar. She was three years older than me, but a hands-down winner if the two of us were ever paired in a physical contest.

“Uh-huh,” I said, for want of anything more sympathetic. I pushed my Stetson back and rubbed my forehead and the stubble of gray hair above. “Gayle Sedillos said you needed to see me about something?”

Carla Champlin leaned out the window and eyed the vacant little lobby with all its polished brass-doored boxes. “Is it true what I heard about Anna Hocking?”

“That she died last night? Yes, that’s true.” The efficiency of the Posadas grapevine was astounding.

Carla looked at me hard for a minute, then said, “Such a dear, dear lady.”

“Yes, ma’am. She was a wonderful person.”

“Last night, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

She tsk-tsked and then leaned a little farther out the window. I almost backpedaled a step, thinking she was going to grab me. But I stood my ground, both hands on the window sill.

“Sheriff, now listen.” She began as if my attention might stray. Her perfume was stout. And I wasn’t the sheriff of Posadas County. I was undersheriff, one of those awkward titles that the public can’t manage.

“Gayle said you had a complaint.”

Her eyebrows knitted together. If I cut short her story, she would be really pissed.

“Sheriff, now, you know,” and she accented know as if the word were biblical in its authority, “that it is a violation of federal law to carry a weapon on post office property.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“A violation of federal law,” she repeated. To her, federal law and Moses’ commandments were carved from the same clay.

“Sure.”

“Unless you’re a law officer.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, you certainly know Mr. Reuben Fuentes.” She wrinkled her slim nose. Her lips pursed. Maybe she was planning to whistle “White Christmas.”

“Indeed I do. He was carrying a firearm?” I hated to cut short the pleasure of her storytelling, but I had work to do. And then maybe a serious nap to take.

“Well, now, he came in here shortly after nine…I was just finishing sorting. He is so crippled that it took him nearly five minutes just to cross to this counter. And that’s when I saw it. He had this enormous holster on his belt. And of course I could see the gun in it.”

Reuben Fuentes had been carrying a weapon of one kind or another since he was six years old. “Yes, ma’am,” I said patiently.