Dunston Falls (10 page)

“Thanks,” Peck said.

The waitress freshened Reese’s cup, nodded to Peck then returned to the counter.

Reese looked at Peck. “Who’s Paco?”

“The dishwasher,” Peck said. He looked at his watch. “It’s only eight o’clock, feel like talking a ride?”

“To see this Paco?”

“Yes.”

“Know where he lives?”

“I can find out.”

“Let’s go.”

Peck drove his heavy cruiser along a back road on the North West side of town. The moon was visible for the first time in a week. It was full and bright and its light reflected off the ice and snow, illuminating the ground well enough to see without a flashlight.

Peck turned off the dirt road and onto a fire road.

“This Paco… what’s his last name?” Reese said.

“Ramirez.”

“Right. What do we know about him?”

“His name. He washes dishes.”

Reese turned his head to look at Peck. “This Paco might be the last person to see the Robertson woman alive. We should find out a little more about him than his name.”

“I thought that’s what we were doing,” Peck said.

Reese shook his head and allowed himself a tiny smile.

“Should be about another quarter mile,” Peck said.

Ten minutes later, Peck rolled the cruiser to a stop twenty feet from the small, mobile home where Paco Ramirez lived. Peck and Reese left the cruiser and walked to the front door, passing an old, Ford pickup parked out front.

“He’s home,” Reese said, looking at the truck. “Looks like a forty one Ford.”

Peck knocked on the front door of the trailer. “Paco Ramirez, this is Sheriff David Peck and Lieutenant Reese of the state police. We’d like a few words with you.”

There was no response from inside the mobile home and after thirty seconds, Peck knocked again. “Paco, I know you’re home. Your truck is here. Open up, please.”

From around back there was the sound of a window opening and footsteps stomping on the ice.

“He’s running,” Reese said.

Peck dashed around to the rear of the mobile home just in time to see Pack run into the woods.

“Shit,” Peck said and gave immediate chase.

As Paco ran, he attempted to slip into a winter jacket. After several attempts, he gave up and discarded it.

Peck slipped briefly on a patch of ice and Paco opened up a hundred foot lead on him. In the distance, Peck could hear Reese’s footsteps on the ice behind him.

Paco Ramirez was thin and built for speed like a sprinter. As he dodged trees in the woods, his lead opened to one hundred and twenty feet.

However, Peck was in excellent condition and ran like an athlete and left Reese far behind. The full moon helped keep Paco in sight and Peck poured it on.

As Paco jumped a fallen tree, he began to tire. His thin body lacked the endurance of a distance runner. He glanced behind him and Peck had closed the distance to eighty feet. Paco sucked wind and sprinted harder, gasping loudly.

Peck pumped his arms and legs, took in air through his nose, and blew out through the mouth as if he were on an Army run of so long ago. He saw the gap closing, ignored the burning in his side, and pumped his arms harder. Slowly, the distance between the two men began to close.

When the gap was less than fifty feet, Paco ran completely out of steam, became confused from lack of oxygen, lost his bearings and began to run in circles.

Peck could hardly believe it when Paco turned around one hundred and eighty degrees and ran straight at him. At the last minute, Paco saw his mistake and attempted to do another one eighty in mid step, but Peck was on him in an instant.

Peck tripped Paco with his leg and he landed hard and skidded ten feet across the ice. Peck pounced on him, twisting his arms behind his back.

Paco gasped for air. “Why you chase me?’ he said in a thick, Mexican accent.

“Why did you run?” Peck said.

“I run cause you chase me.”

Peck snapped the cuffs on Paco’s thin wrists and yanked him to his feet. “We’ll walk back if that’s okay with you, Paco?” Peck said. “And even if it isn’t.”

As Peck and Paco walked at a much slower pace back to the trailer, Reese emerged from the woods, gasping for air. Reese looked at Paco.

“You… have the… oh fuck, I can’t breath,” Reese gasped. “The

right to… remain silent.”

Reese paused, placed his hands on his knees and vomited on Paco’s shoes.

Paco turned and looked at Peck. “I juss buy those,” Paco said.

Reese sucked wind and looked up at Paco.

Paco looked at his shoes. “What you have for dinner, turkey?”

In the cramped, but tidy kitchen of Paco’s trailer home, Paco served Peck and Reese thick, exceptionally strong, Mexican coffee. A small generator hummed in the background and provided just enough power to run the lights and heater.

Sipping coffee, Reese lit a cigarette and looked at Paco. “Why did you run?”

“In Mexico, you don run from the police you go to jail for things you don do,” Paco explained.

“This isn’t Mexico,” Reese said.

Paco set the coffee pot aside, sat at the round table opposite Peck, and slumped into his chair. “I thought you was the immigration about my green card.”

“Green card?” Reese said. “What the hell are you talking about, green card? Paco, your boss is dead. Murdered. Who gives a fuck about your green card?”

Paco sat in stunned silence. He turned to look at Peck.

“Deb Robertson was murdered last night, Paco,” Peck said. “Lieutenant Reese is a homicide investigator.”

“That no can be,” Paco finally said.

“It can be and it is,” Reese said.

“But I juss see her juss yesterday,” Paco said.

“Tell us about that,” Reese said.

“The girls, they say to check on Miss Deb because she no come to work,” Paco said. “I leave early and come to her house. “

“You saw her?” Reese said.

“Yes.”

“What time?”

“I leave at ten, maybe close to eleven by the time I get to Miss Deb’s house.”

“And she was okay?” Reese said.

“Yes, she fine.”

“Did she come outside?” Peck asked.

“Yes, on the porch.”

“What was she wearing?”

“Wearing? ‘Paco said. He shook his head. “I no remember.”

Reese said, “Pants, a sweater, a jacket and hat? Or was she dressed for bed?”

“No, wait. She wear pants and a… how you say, a sweatshirt,” Paco said. “And boots. She have on big, white boots.”

“White boots?” Reese said.

Peck looked at Reese. “She had white snowmobile boots. She wore them the day I picked her up on my snowmobile.”

“Yes, snowmobile boots,” Paco said. “That’s what they was.”

“Paco,” Peck said. “Can you remember anything of what she said? This is important.”

“Yes. She say she could no sleep, that she wanted to take a ride maybe to town and check on her girls.”

“And you started it for her?” Reese said.

Pack nodded. “She ask me to warm up her truck. She toss me down the keys.”

“Then what did you do?” Reese said.

“I start the truck, scrape off the ice and then I go home.”

Peck and Reese exchanged glances. Reese said, “Did you see anybody? “

“No.”

“Did she talk to anybody, maybe somebody inside the house?” Reese said.

“No.”

“You left her truck running?” Reese said.

“Yes, like she ask me to,” Paco said.

“Were there any other cars parked alongside hers?” Peck said.

“No, no cars. Juss Miss Deb’s truck.”

Peck lit a cigarette as he mulled things over in his mind.

“Wait,” Paco said, “There was a noise. I heard it from the woods.”

“A noise?” Reese said. “What kind of noise?”

“A snowmobile,” Paco said. “Somebody, they was riding a snowmobile.”

“Were they close or far?” Peck said.

Paco shrugged. “I can no tell.”

“But you’re sure it was a snowmobile?”

“Yes.”

Reese looked at Peck. “I didn’t see any tracks.”

“There aren’t any.”

“I know what I hear,” Paco insisted. “Maybe it no come close to Miss Deb’s house, but it was a snowmobile.”

“Sound travels, especially at night,” Peck said. “That snowmobile could have been a mile away and you would have heard it.”

Paco leaned in across the table to look at Peck. “I come here three years ago to pick fruit,” he said. “No one give me a job for the winter except Miss Deb. She teach me English, to read. Soon, I become citizen.” A tear welled up in his right eye and he wiped it away. “You find who kill her. You find the man and you hurt him.”

Reese looked at Peck.

“You make him pay,” Paco said.

Reese and Peck stood up and left Paco alone. Just before the door closed, they heard him say, “You make him pay.”

Peck closed the door from the outside and paused for a moment to listen to the sound of Paco crying. Peck looked at Reese, who shook his head. Together, they walked to the waiting cruiser.

Riding back to town in Peck’s cruiser, Reese said, “Our man could have been scouting the house by snowmobile. Paco arrives in his truck and our man heads for the woods, returning after the coast is clear.”

“Which brings us back to the killer wasn’t a stranger theory,” Peck said. “If Deb let him in of her own accord. He waits for Paco to leave and knocks on the door. Deb answers and sees a friendly, familiar face and lets the guy in. Maybe he told her he ran out of gas, whatever. The point is he got in without using force. That means we’re not looking for a stranger.”

“Right,” Reese fell silent for a moment, and then said, “In a town this small, that is at least something.”

Peck looked at Reese. “Yeah, what?”

Peck parked the cruiser in front of the municipal building. He and Reese exited and stood on the curb. Reese checked his watch.

“You wouldn’t have anything in the way of a nightcap, would you, sheriff?” Reese asked.

Peck added a log to the woodstove in his office, and then sat behind his desk.

Reese warmed his hands over the fire, rubbing them together, and then took the chair opposite Peck’s desk. Peck opened a drawer and removed the bottle of scotch. “One finger or two?”

“Two,” Reese said.

Peck poured scotch into plastic cups and set one on the desktop for Reese. “Sorry, no ice.”

“These things take time,” Reese said, picking up his cup. “A murder investigation can grow cold, be forgotten and then resurface and be solved six months later.”

“After he kills again, is what you’re saying,” Peck said.

Reese took a gulp of scotch and nodded his agreement. “Let me ask you something, sheriff? If you don’t mind.”

Peck lit a cigarette, took a sip of scotch. “Ask.”

“What’s the worst case you ever worked?” Reese said. “The absolute worst horror show, nightmare of your career.”

Peck searched his memory for the one standout. “A two year old baby girl was found in a garbage dumpster. She was raped and sodomized before the sick bastard suffocated her with a plastic bag and stuffed her body in a cat carrier.”

Reese was speechless as he sipped from his plastic cup. Finally, he said, “Was she colored, the little girl?”

“She was.”

“Did you ever catch the man responsible?”

“The boyfriend of the mother,” Peck said. “He didn’t want the responsibility of paying for the child. Sadly, neither did she. They planned the murder together, even taking the time to find a dumpster, which wasn’t emptied very often. They reported the baby kidnapped, but I suspected them right away because twenty years ago, who kidnaps a black baby in a poor neighborhood? It didn’t add up so I took a closer look at the parents. The rest just fell into place.”

“My worst, or at least the one which stands out in my mind,” Reese said, “was in fifty five. A farm worker employed by the owner of a potato farm in Aroustic County didn’t get the raise he wanted after a poor crop season. He took an ax to the farmer, his wife and two kids, the dog and cat and buried them all in the barn.”

“You caught him?”

“No. He made it to New Hampshire where he hung himself in a five dollar a night motel room. He left a suicide note explaining what he did and why. We excavated the barn for the remains. What a mess.”

Peck finished his drink and poured another ounce into his cup. He held the bottle to Reese and topped off his as well.

“Our man,” Peck said. “Is it the sex or violence which gets it done for him?”

“Hard to say,” Reese admitted. “The FBI, the shrinks all say rape is a crime of violence. I would guess they would say the murder is to mask the rape.”

“But you don’t agree?”

“I’m a cop, not a psychiatrist,” Reese said.

“What kind of crime is murder?” Peck said.

“If you’re talking about our man, I would say it’s both.”

“He likes the sex and he enjoys the violence,” Peck said. “A double whammy.”

“How I see it.”

“That means he won’t stop.”

“No,” Reese said. “He won’t.”

Peck took a final sip of his drink. Reese did the same and stood up. “Is there room at the inn across the street?”

“If you mean the hospital, half the people have returned home.”

“I’ll see you for breakfast,” Reese said.

“I hope you like oatmeal,” Peck said.

Reese paused at the door to turn around. “Sheriff, that vomiting episode back there, that’s between us.”

Peck nodded his head. “Goodnight, lieutenant.”

FIVE

An hour after Reese left his office; Peck was still wide-awake. He knew he was running on adrenalin. He knew that he was physically and mentally exhausted, but he also knew sleep would be next to impossible in his present state of mind. He added several logs to the woodstove, lit a cigarette and looked out the window.

The full moon cast an eerie, yellowish glow on Main Street. A lone candle burned in a window of the hospital. The church and diner were dark and gloomy.

A cloud passed in front of the moon and it glowed brightly in a band of silver and gray streaks. Peck lit another cigarette, knowing he needed to sleep, but he was unable to tear himself away from the moon’s attraction.