The Big Gamble (15 page)

A favorite local hangout, it also drew travelers passing through town. Bison, moose, and elk heads hung on the dark paneled walls, along with framed posters crusted yellow from nicotine smoke. Mismatched tables and chairs filled the dining area, and two pool tables were crammed into a small adjacent space next to some windows.

A see-through partition separated the dining area from the bar, which was festooned with old six-shooters and rifles. Fortunately, none worked, although the butt of one pistol recently had been used to quiet a rowdy customer.

With the town fathers and local real estate agents now touting Carrizozo as an arts and crafts community— which it really wasn’t—a small group of newcomers had moved in. Most were retired baby boomers or senior citizens, pursuing their hobbies or artistic dreams and making a few bucks from the sale of their work.

Down the street a new restaurant had recently opened where you could get a gourmet sandwich with sprouts, a veggie burrito, a fancy pastry, lemon-flavored bottled water, an all-natural juice drink, or a decaffeinated latte, all while surfing the Internet.

In the year the place had been open, Hewitt had never seen one cowboy, rancher, or blue-collar worker cross the threshold.

Hat arrived, spotted Hewitt in the back of the room, and sat himself down at the table.

“What in the hell were you thinking?” he said as he unbuttoned his western-cut sport coat.

“I think you’re getting a little thick around the middle, Hat. It’s time for you to join the gym I go to in Ruidoso. We can work out together. It opens at six in the morning.”

“I’m not even alive at six in the morning,” Hat replied, leaning across the table to look Hewitt dead in the eye. “For chrissake, you can’t let a felony suspect walk. That’s not your prerogative. Do you know how many reporters have called me asking why I wasn’t filing charges against Staggs?”

“How many?”

“Too many.”

“Got any suggestions?”

“Arrest Staggs, discipline your deputy, and let me deal with Tredwell.
Maybe
I’ll agree to a plea bargain.”

“Can’t do that. It was a false arrest to begin with. No exigent circumstances, no probable cause. Tredwell threatened a civil rights suit if we refused to cut Staggs loose, so we agreed that Deputy Istee had simply held Staggs in protective custody during a potentially dangerous felony arrest.”

“Jesus, you’re kidding me. That’s not what the news reports said.”

“Consider the source.”

“You’ve got to stop squabbling with the Ruidoso police chief.”

“I will, as soon as he goes back to Houston, or wherever the hell he came from.” Hewitt waited for the waitress to pour Hat a cup of coffee and move off. “Are you gonna help me out here?”

“I’m not going to lie for you, Paul.”

“I’m not asking you to. Just say that you agree there was insufficient probable cause to warrant an arrest of Staggs by Deputy Istee.”

“Why are you protecting this kid?” Hat asked.

“That’s not what this is about.”

Hat looked at his watch, slugged down his coffee, and stood up. “Get me copies of everything you have on Istee’s investigations, plus I want a written statement from you detailing your conversation with Tredwell.”

“You’ll have it in two hours. Thanks, Hat.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Hat said as he adjusted his bolo tie. “I’ll get back to you.”

Relieved by the outcome of the meeting, Hewitt stayed behind and ordered breakfast.

 

Kerney went to work in his blues and spent the morning trying to concentrate. Pleased by the possibility of what a new artificial knee could mean, Kerney clock-watched as he ran through the paperwork on his desk, calling at the earliest possible moment to schedule the MRI test and then to speak to the architect about the swimming pool.

The architect said he’d get right on it and have a plan done by the end of the day. Kerney gave the architect the go-ahead to have a survey crew spot the corners for the house and hung up.

He visualized the setting. The house would be nestled below the ridge overlooking a red sandstone canyon capped with a thin line of gypsum rock. Large windows would face south down the canyon to a stand of old cottonwood trees and a meadow cut by a sandy arroyo. To the north, behind the ridge, an expanse of pastureland dotted with piñon and juniper trees undulated toward the foothills and mountains behind Santa Fe.

It would be fun to cut a new driveway from the nearby ranch road to the building site with a grader. Kerney had learned to operate one under the watchful eye of his father. He could probably borrow or rent a neighbor’s machine and rebuild the entire ranch road from the highway to the house site by himself. He would crown it, slope it, cut bar ditches for runoff, and pack it down with base course gravel to make it all-weather. It would be a welcome change of pace from his normal routine and give him a feeling that the dream of actually owning a ranch was underway. He could get the job done over a couple of weekends if he planned it right.

In between administrative staff meetings he called the remaining names on Osterman’s list and learned none of them had known Anna Marie in college—or so they said. After the last meeting, he walked to Lieutenant Sal Molina’s office and asked for a few minutes. It was time to put his ego aside and let the department work the Montoya case instead of trying to do it all by himself.

Molina, the major felony unit supervisor, nodded and gestured at an empty chair. Kerney filled him in on his stunning lack of progress in the Montoya case.

“I’m kicking it back to your unit,” he said, “but I want to stay in the loop.”

“We’ll start with background checks on Osterman and the people on the list he gave you,” Molina replied, “just to see if anything unusual or kinky shows up.”

“Do the same with Cassie Bedlow,” Kerney said. “And see if you can find out who Montoya roomed with during her college years in Albuquerque.”

Molina nodded. “Anything else?”

“Can you free up Detective Piño?”

Ramona Piño was Molina’s only female detective. She was petite, cute, perky, and weighed all of a hundred and five pounds. Molina had watched Piño put a straight-arm takedown move on a perp almost twice her size. The perp had been too busy screaming in pain to be embarrassed.

“That’s possible,” Molina said.

“Send her undercover as a prospective student to Bedlow’s modeling and talent agency,” Kerney said. “I’d like her to get a feel for Bedlow’s operation, and learn what she can about the freelance photographer Bedlow uses.”

“You said the APD vice supervisor thought Bedlow was legit,” Molina replied.

“Everybody’s legit until they get caught,” Kerney said, rising to his feet, his knee protesting as he did so. “I may be getting the leg fixed and losing the limp for good.”

“Really?” Molina replied. “When?”

“Don’t know. Soon, I hope.”

Molina laughed. “That’s good news for you and bad news for us, Chief.”

“Now why would you say something like that?”

Molina thought about all the good things Kerney had accomplished in a very short time: pay raises starting in July, improved officer training, streamlined operating procedures, promotions based on merit, not politics. Department morale was soaring.

“Because nobody can keep up with you as it is.”

“Are you turning into a brownnose, Lieutenant?”

Molina snorted. He’d worked with Kerney back in the old days and knew the chief’s sense of humor well. “Yeah, that’s me all right.”

 

Action picked up at the slots and tables as the late-morning customers rolled out of bed and into the casino. From the video surveillance room, Moses Kaywaykla watched as Clayton approached the cashiers one by one, asking questions, and passing out something to each employee. He went out on the floor to investigate.

“Nephew,” Moses said, steering Clayton away from a roaming security guard, “what are you doing?”

“Looking for this guy,” Clayton said, holding up a sketch.

“You should have brought that to me,” Moses said sternly.

“Are you pissed?”

“You’re starting to act like a gringo. Let’s talk upstairs in the café.”

Clayton handed Moses the sketch after they were seated at a table. “Do you know him?”

Moses shook his head as he waved off the approaching waitress. “He doesn’t look familiar.”

“His name is Johnny Jackson. Five six or seven, about a hundred and forty pounds.”

Moses studied the sketch more closely to satisfy Clayton’s persistence. “He still doesn’t look familiar.”

Clayton pushed a driver’s license photo across the table. “Him?”

“Harry Staggs,” Moses said. “He comes in and plays poker occasionally when he’s not busy entertaining his friends.”

“You knew about his gambling parlor?”

“It was a well-kept secret until the morning paper appeared,” Moses replied. “How come you didn’t arrest Staggs?”

“For lots of reasons,” Clayton replied brusquely.

“I’m sorry you put him out of business.”

“Why is that?” Clayton asked in surprise.

“Some of the big winners would come here and keep playing after his game ended. We could usually count on a number of them to lose money at our tables.”

“You had knowledge of his activities and did nothing?”

“If it doesn’t affect Mescalero Apaches, I don’t really care what happens off tribal land. Neither did you, until a short time ago.”

There was nothing subtle about the criticism. In the Apache world, family came first and foremost, and that included the entire tribe. “Are you going to lecture me, Uncle?”

Moses smiled gently. “Not today. Do you have more questions?”

“This Jackson supposedly runs a stable of hookers at a nearby location, where important, well-known men are discreetly entertained.”

Moses shook his head. “That’s a new one on me.”

“Never heard of it?”

“Never. About the only skin-trade action we get here is an occasional freelance hooker up from El Paso. I run them off as soon as they show up.”

“It’s that easy?”

“Bimbos are hard to miss.”

“Anything like that happen recently?”

“My night shift supervisor thought he’d spotted one a couple of days ago. But she left the casino alone before he could approach her.”

“What day, exactly?”

“I think it was the same night your murder victim was here,” Moses said.

“Let’s find out,” Clayton said as he pushed his chair back.

In the video surveillance room, Moses checked the log and confirmed that the woman had been at the casino the same day as Ulibarri. He pulled a tape from the video rack and ran it fast-forward until a blonde with long curly hair and a lot of cleavage moved jerkily across the screen.

“She’s new,” Moses said as he reversed the tape and hit the remote play button.

They watched as she circled the poker tables, trying to draw interest. Ulibarri, who was at one of the tables, didn’t seem to notice until she whispered something in his ear after he’d won another pot. He smiled, nodded, and watched her walk out the door.

“I don’t remember seeing this when we first looked at the tapes,” Clayton said.

“I think we skipped over it,” Moses said.

“Can I borrow the tape?”

“No, but I can have a couple of stills made for you in less than a hour. I’ll get you an enlarged profile and full-face head shot. Will that do?”

“Thanks, Uncle.”

While Moses delivered the tape to a computer technician and went back to work, Clayton went to see if the lodge employees remembered anybody who looked like Jackson. No one did.

With the grainy but serviceable photos of the blonde in hand, he canvassed the lodge employees again, without success. He hurried to Casey’s Cozy Cabins, hoping Harry Staggs could ID the woman as Jackson’s companion.

Staggs wasn’t home. From the front porch, he called Tredwell on his cell phone and asked the attorney where he could find Staggs.

“I don’t baby-sit my clients,” Tredwell said.

“He hasn’t left town, has he?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“You’re a big help, Tredwell.”

“Please, no thanks are necessary,” Tredwell said.

Clayton punched the off button. A light snow was falling. Maybe it would be a wet year. The wildlife needed it. If he’d stayed with the tribal police, he’d be out checking boundary lines, reporting cattle that had strayed either on or off the reservation, posting new signs to replace the ones stolen by tourists, chasing off the occasional trespasser who had wandered onto Indian land by way of the national forest, and maybe breaking up a fight or a domestic squabble.

But he didn’t have time to ruminate about the past or feel sorry for himself. If he wasn’t going to catch a break, he’d have to make one for himself. How to do that was the question.

 

In college Detective Ramona Piño had taken a few drama classes and appeared in several student plays. The experience had served her well in police work. During her time on the force, she’d worked an undercover narcotics assignment and posed as a fence for stolen goods, both with success, so she knew the value of convincing performances.

She’d called ahead to schedule an appointment with Cassie Bedlow and now knocked tentatively on the woman’s open office door.

Cassie Bedlow smiled at the young woman standing nervously in the doorway. Somewhere in her mid to late twenties, she was no more than five three and was wearing a short skirt that displayed well-toned, nicely formed legs and a knit sweater that indicated shapely breasts in proportion to her body. Her face was classic northern New Mexico Hispanic, with arched eyebrows, large pupils, dark round eyes, small, thin lips, high cheekbones and even features.

“You must be Ramona,” Bedlow said, moving from her desk to a tan leather couch. “Come in and sit with me.”