LaCrosse Construction was as large and evidently successful as Jim Sisson’s firm was small and struggling. The LaCrosse headquarters was a low, white stucco building about the same size as Sam Carter’s supermarket, a stone’s throw from the railroad track on the east edge of town.
Behind the building loomed the stone crusher tower where LaCrosse brewed its own batches of concrete. Dotted around the crusher like small mountain ranges were enormous piles of sand, gravel, crusher fines, even shiny black asphalt. Off to the west were thousands of railroad ties, neatly bundled, the old creosote fragrant in the hot sun.
Four concrete delivery trucks, their huge revolving drums sparkling clean and white, were parked fender-to-fender, with room for another half-dozen in the row.
“Some bucks here,” I observed. “LaCrosse probably does more miles of highway each year than any five of his competitors.” I cranked my neck around, surveying, the huge yard behind the office building. “Not a soul here, either.”
We parked in front of a windowless white doorway, immediately behind a late-model white Ford three-quarter-ton truck with the blue oval logo of LaCrosse Construction Company on its doors.
The sun bounced off the white building as I stepped onto the sidewalk, a solid blast of heat and light that made me gasp. I opened the door to a second blast, this one straight from the Arctic. Lacrosse hadn’t wasted time or space with foyers or receptionists sitting prettily at desks. Instead, we entered the building and found ourselves in a hallway with offices to either side, all but one of the doors closed.
The door had no sooner thudded closed behind us, locking in the frigid air, than a chunky woman appeared from the first door on the left.
“Hi, guys,” she said, and grinned as if we’d just made her whole day. “Don’tcha wish we’d get some warm weather soon, eh?”
I smiled. “Nice in here, though.” I stepped forward and extended my hand. “I’m Sheriff Bill Gastner from Posadas County. This is Undersheriff Robert Torrez.”
She pumped first my hand and then Bob’s. “And I’m EllenFae LaCrosse. What can we do for you?” She had that air of bustle and self-confidence that went with the name. A door opened farther down the hall, and two men wearing hard hats appeared and then walked away from us down the hall without a backward glance.
“Mrs. LaCrosse, we need to visit with Kenny Carter, if that’s possible. We won’t take much of his time.”
“Kenny?” She looked down at the floor for a moment, hands on her hips. She was short and stubby, maybe on the downside of fifty, with smooth, creamy, flawless skin that hadn’t been baked to leather from a lifetime of sitting outdoors on machinery.
“Kenny Carter,” I said. “He’s one of your summer kids.”
She looked up, grinning. “Oh, for sure I know who he is. God, we’ve known his family forever. No, I’m just trying to remember where he was working today. I think he’s over on Route Eleven.” She reached out a hand as if I were drifting away and she needed to reel me back in, “Let me go double-check.”
“We’d appreciate it,” I said.
She turned and bustled off, disappearing through the same doorway the men had used a moment before. She was gone not more than twenty seconds before reappearing and beckoning us into the inner sanctum.
The office was a sea of desks, computers, and drafting tables. Two men were in conference at one of the tables, and they glanced up at us with mild curiosity.
EllenFae LaCrosse led us to a large map of Luna County that was spread out on one of the tables. “The crew he’s with is right here,” she said, and with a shapely finger traced New Mexico 11 south out of Deming. “Just a couple miles the other side of Sunshine,” she said, and grinned again. “They’re putting in a road off to the east, up to that fancy horse barn that the Gunderson group is building.”
“That should be easy to find,” I said.
She rolled up the map efficiently and thrust it in a boot on the side of one of the tables. “We like to keep the high school kids a little closer to home,” she said. “That way there’s not so much travel time for ’em.”
“I’m sure they appreciate that,” I said.
“Well, it works for us,” Mrs. LaCrosse said. “He’s a nice boy, and a hard worker, if that’s the sort of information you’re looking for.”
I nodded. “We appreciate that,” I said, and Bob Torrez and I followed her out of the room. More as an attempt to forestall the blast furnace outside for a few more seconds, I stopped with my hand on the knob and turned to EllenFae LaCrosse. “How many kids do you folks hire during the summer season?”
Without hesitation, she said, “Right now, we have eight kiddos working for us. And that’s a full contingent. They’re good workers, but you know the labor laws. We’re so restricted by insurance and what all about what we can use them for that we have to be kind of careful.” She smiled again. “I know that a lot of the guys like Kenny. He’s a quick study. I know that Pete’s made him an offer to go full-time just as soon as he graduates.”
“Great opportunity,” I said.
She nodded. “We’re always on the lookout for the good ones,” she said. “And we’ve known Kenny for years, of course.” Her brow furrowed slightly. “It’s none of my business, I know. But I hope he’s not in trouble of some sort.”
“We just need to chat with him, ma’am. He might be a possible witness to an incident that needs to be cleared up, is all.”
“Well, that’s good.” She nodded vigorously.
I started to turn the knob. The polished stainless steel was warm to the touch, passing the heat through from the outside. “How did Kenny happen to come to work for you folks? It’s a good commute from Posadas over here every day.”
“Oh, we’ve known the Carters for light-years,” she said. “Sam and Pete go way back.”
“I didn’t know that.”
She nodded. “Back in the stone ages, Sam and Pete were partners, up in Albuquerque. And then things got so expensive, with so much competition, that they moved out of that rat race and came south.” She grinned and leaned closer. “Sam got smart and took up another line of work. Pete stayed out in the sun, sniffing those diesel fumes.”
I laughed, trying to keep the surprise off my face. “He hasn’t done so badly,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”
***
The vinyl car seats were damn near molten, and Bob switched the air conditioner to high with all four windows down to purge the heat.
“New and interesting,” I said.
“Sir?”
“I’ve lived in Posadas for damn near thirty years, and I never knew that Sam Carter had been in the construction business before he started to sell milk, butter, and eggs.”
“I can’t imagine him wanting to get his hands dirty,” Torrez said. “He doesn’t seem like the contractor type.”
“At least not anymore.”
We reached the intersection with New Mexico 11 and turned south, the country flat, hot, and bleak ahead of us. “Maybe he just ran the books,” I added, and took a deep breath. “I get the feeling we’re on a giant lizard chase, Robert.” I held up my hands in frustration. “If Sam Carter knew that his kid had knocked up Jennifer Sisson, I just can’t picture him taking the initiative to visit Jim and have a parent-to-parent discussion. I can see Jim driving over to Carter’s and busting him in the chops, but not vice versa. And I don’t see the son stepping forward. So what’s left?”
Torrez shrugged.
“We’re missing something, somewhere.” I watched the heat-tortured shrubs glide by outside the window of the car.
“Something simple,” Torrez said after a moment. “That’s what it seems to always be. Something simple.”
After a moment, I could look beyond a slight bend in the highway—perhaps put there by the builder for artistic reasons—and see in the distance a collection of machinery and trucks parked near a dirt road that took off to the east. From what I could make out, the entire desert was crisscrossed with dirt roads, a grid that looked like some optimistic soul expected a sea of houses to sprout out of the sand someday.
As we drew closer, I could see a large yellow backhoe working, a section of shiny metal culvert suspended from its bucket with a length of chain. A worker walked with the machine and its load, one hand on the end of the culvert so that it wouldn’t pendulum.
“I don’t see the kid,” I said as we slowed to a crawl.
“Nope,” Torrez said. He swung the car onto the shoulder of the road and stopped. One of the workers waved instructions at the other men, then headed toward us. Torrez ignored him and instead twisted around with an old pair of military binoculars in his hand, looking off to the west. I saw a faint smile twitch the corners of his mouth.
“Help you fellas?” the man said, and leaned down, putting both hands on the driver’s side door.
Torrez turned, dropped the binoculars on the seat, and lounged one wrist over the steering wheel as if he had all the time in the world. “The home office tells us that Kenny Carter is working out here,” he said.
The man nodded. “Was.” His eyes flicked over to me and then back to the undersheriff.
Torrez looked on down the road toward Columbus and then Palomas, across the Mexican border. “But he’s done for the day or what?”
The man straightened up and hitched his trousers a little closer to his impressive belly. “He told me he had a family emergency,” the man said.
Bob turned and looked at him. He could read the name over the man’s pocket better than I could. “Well, Paul…”
“Paul Turner.”
“Paul, what time was this family emergency? They must have called him from the Deming office, unless he walks around with his own cell phone in his jeans.”
Paul looked a touch uncomfortable, having been trapped into implicating his boss. He settled for vague. “Well, I guess they did. He left some time ago.”
“Going home to Posadas?”
“He didn’t say.”
The man stepped back and looked down at the decal on the door of the patrol car, realizing for the first time that we weren’t locals. He was about to say something when I leaned over and asked, “Mrs. LaCrosse told us that the kid was out here. You have the office number handy?”
I had the cell phone in my hand, and Paul Turner obviously didn’t like being caught in the middle. He pulled a business card out of his pocket and handed it across to me. “Number’s on there.”
“Dandy,” I said, and punched it in. After four or five rings, a pleasant voice announced that I’d reached LaCrosse Construction. “EllenFae LaCrosse, please,” I said. “Sheriff Bill Gastner calling. We were there just a few minutes ago.”
In a moment, Mrs. LaCrosse came on the line. “Yes, Sheriff?”
“Mrs. LaCrosse, is Kenny Carter in the office?”
There was a pause, and then she said, “Well, no, he’s not. Are you calling from the job site?”
“Yes. And he’s not here. Apparently after you called out here, he took off. I just thought he might have headed back to the office.”
“No, he didn’t do that.”
“Mrs. LaCrosse, let me ask you something.” I glanced over at Paul Turner. He was leaning on the car, head down, looking studiously at the gravel at his feet. “Why did you bother to call out here before we had a chance to talk with the kid?”
“Well, I…well, I thought that if the boys knew you were going to drive all the way out there, they wouldn’t send Kenny off on some errand so you’d run the risk of missing him. After driving all that way, I mean.”
I chuckled. “Slick, ma’am. Thanks for your help.”
She’d started to say something else when I hung up. “Let’s go.”
Bob smiled pleasantly at Paul Turner. “Where’s that road go?”
The man glanced up briefly. “Oh, just on over to the other side of the block. This whole area’s gridded.”
“So if I went that way, I’d hit a road that would take me back to Deming?”
The man nodded, noncommittal. “Faster, easier just to go back the way you come. On the pavement.”
Torrez nodded. “Sure enough.” He pulled the car into gear. “Thanks.”
The man waved a couple of fingers and trudged back to the ditch and the new culvert.
Torrez turned the car around and accelerated hard, heading back north on the paved highway. After a minute, he said, “Nobody passed us coming out.”
“What’s the kid driving, do you know?”
“He’s got a red ’97 Jeep Wrangler,” Torrez said, and pointed off to the west. “I can’t tell if that one’s red or not, but I’m willing to bet.”
I squinted, trying hard, and saw a lot of blue sky, rolling white clouds building heavenward, and tan prairie. If I let my imagination play, I could pretend that I saw a thin, wispy vapor trail of dust kicked up by a speeding vehicle. “You think he cut back on one of the side roads?”
“Yes, I do. I don’t think he wants to talk to us much, and I don’t think he’s going to show up this afternoon at the office.” He turned and grinned at me. “Mama LaCrosse back in Deming must have called the instant we stepped out the door.”
“If that’s the case, turning tail isn’t the smartest stunt that kid’s ever pulled. She should know that.”
“We’ll see,” Torrez murmured. I glanced over at him and saw the intent hunter’s expression that meant Bob Torrez was having his own version of fun. “It won’t be hard to catch up with him once he’s on the interstate.”
We entered the southern outskirts of Deming and in a couple minutes saw that fun wasn’t in the cards for Kenny Carter. We turned onto the main drag and immediately saw the winking lights of a Deming patrol car up ahead a couple of blocks, snugged into the curb behind a red Jeep. Bob had plenty of time and eased over to the curb well back, out of view.
“You sure that’s him?” I asked. “There are a lot of red Jeeps in this world.”
“I’d be willing to bet,” Torrez said, and he slid the cellular phone out of its boot on the dash. “I’d be just as happy if he didn’t know we were here just yet.” It took a moment for Information to find the Deming PD’s nonemergency number, and Torrez dialed. I listened with amusement as he then said, “Jerry?…Hey, glad you’re workin’ today. This is Bob Torrez…Yeah. Hey, one of your units just stopped a red Jeep Wrangler west of the intersection with Route Eleven. Who do you show that vehicle registered to?”
He paused and listened and turned toward me, grinning. “That’s what I thought.” He shook his head. “No, just curious, is all. We’re following him on in to Posadas on another deal. We don’t want to talk to him, and he doesn’t need to know that we’re here.”
He listened again and laughed. “Hell no, don’t let him off. Give the little son of a bitch a ticket.” I could hear chatter on the other end, and Torrez looked heavenward. “Thanks, guy. You and Sadie come over one of these days. Bring Lolo with you.”
He switched off and racked the phone. “It’s him.”
“So I gathered. It’s handy, being related to half of the Southwest,” I said. “Who’s Jerry?”
“Jerry Pellitier. I knew he worked days on Dispatch, but it was just luck he was on today.”
“A cousin?”
“No relation.”
“That’s amazing in itself.”
Torrez shrugged, eyes locked on the blinking lights ahead. “His wife is Sadie, formerly Sadie Quintana.”
“Ah,” I said. “The wife’s a relative. Let me guess—a cousin.”
“Nope. Sadie is actually some distant relation to my wife, but I don’t know what. They lived in Posadas for a few months, and Gayle’s sister—Irma?—she did some day care for them when she wasn’t busy with the Guzmans. Their kid, Lolo, is about three or so.”
After a few minutes, we saw the Deming officer climb back out of the patrol car, ticket book in hand. He handed the ticket to Kenny Carter and pointed on down the road, no doubt telling the kid to keep a lid on it. Even as the cop was walking back toward the patrol car, the Jeep pulled away from the curb without signaling and accelerated away.
Torrez let him have a thousand-yard head start, then pulled out into traffic. With his head buried in paperwork, the Deming cop didn’t notice us as we slid by.
For the rest of the trip to Posadas, Kenny Carter kept the Jeep just a shade over eighty—close enough to the interstate speed limit that a trooper wasn’t apt to bother him but fast enough to say,
“So there, a ticket don’t matter to me.”
We stayed far enough back that he wouldn’t recognize the vehicle in his jiggling rearview mirror, and more than once I had the uneasy feeling that we should stop playing cat and mouse and just stop Carter so that we could talk. About ten miles east of Posadas, I said as much to Torrez.
“The trouble is,” I said, “we haven’t talked to this kid yet—not since Jim Sisson’s death. In fact, not at all, before or after. We don’t know what’s on his mind. He might be innocent as the driven snow.”
Torrez shot a glance at me as if to say,
“You know better than that,”
but instead settled for, “That’s a fact, sir.”
“We don’t know for sure if he’s the father of Jennifer Sisson’s child.”
“No, we don’t. But he’s a place to start. He’s been seen with her, and Mike Rhodes says they’ve spent some time together.”
“He’s a place to start, sure enough. I’m just not sure deliberately spooking him like this is going to be productive.”
“I don’t think he knows we’re here, sir.”
“How could he not?”
“No, I mean he doesn’t know that we’re sitting here, a quarter of a mile behind him, watching. He thinks he’s given us the slip. As long as that’s the case, I think we’ve got something to gain by just being patient, seeing where he’s headed in such a hurry.”
“Straight home to Daddy is my guess,” I said.
“You think Sam would cover for him?”
“Of course he’d cover for him, Robert. Get a grip.”
“That’s going to make it interesting,” Torrez muttered.
“Doubly so if Taffy Hines’s intuition is correct.”
“Taffy Hines? About what?”
“Carter couldn’t keep the Pasquale letter to himself. He showed it to Taffy, at the store. She said her first thought was that Sam wrote it himself. She told him so. Needless to say, he said he hadn’t. He blames Leona Spears.”
“Leona never wrote an unsigned letter in her sorry life,” Torrez said. He let the car coast as we approached the Posadas exit. “Old Sam keeps it up, he’s going to have a full menu.”