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CHAPTER 15

      IT WAS a little after 9 p.m. when Rand got back to Las Cruces.

      He drove down Main Street and saw that Petrie had retrieved Brennan's car. Then Rand turned up Griggs Street and drove out to Hood's place.

      There were three cars including Pritchard's Packard in front of the house. One of the cars had a star on the side with the words "Dona Ana County Sheriff's Department" painted in a circle around it.

      Rand pressed the doorbell and heard it ring inside. Almost at once a middle-aged, stout woman with a pleasant country-looking face opened the door and ushered him in. Pritchard, holding a drink, came over and introduced her to Rand as his wife, Emma. She shook hands like a man. "I've heard about you," she said warmly.

      Noreen Hood, looking forlorn in the dim living room light, sat on the settee, still wearing the black dress she had on earlier in Pritchard's office. She was talking to a couple, the man professorial and correct, his wife, obviously drunk, holding on to his sleeve to steady herself. The people who had dropped by after Hood's funeral had knocked back a few while they consoled the widow. Noreen raised her glass toward Rand when she saw him.

      Pritchard steered Rand into the kitchen. "I want you to meet somebody," he said. A man wearing a sheriff's star on his khaki shirt was standing by the sink dumping ice in a glass a third full of whiskey. Pritchard said, "Joe Navarette, meet John Rand."

      Navarette was in his forties and he looked like an Indian, with gray-threaded black hair cut too short for a comb to make much difference. When he grinned his teeth were startlingly white. He had a politician's handshake. "I've heard about you," he said. "A man I know told me you were okay."

      Even though Rand knew he was being worked, he was pleased. "Who said that?"

      "Toad Moressy."

      Toad was the Sheriff of El Paso County. Rand had worked as his deputy for five years. When he quit to go into business for himself, Toad had made him an honorary deputy, and given him the small badge he carried in his wallet. It looked just like the real thing unless you read the small word "Honorary" on the shield. Rand liked Toad a lot. "When did he tell you that?" Rand asked.

      Navarette looked happy with himself. "When I called him up today and asked him about you. Want me to make you a drink?"

      Rand saw the size of the drink Navarette had made himself and decided he wasn't up to it. "That's okay, I'll make it. How come you were checking on me?"

      Pritchard said, "Probably my fault - I told Joe you were working for Noreen."

      "What else did you tell Joe about me?"

      The lawyer shook his head. "Nothing. You want him to know anything, you tell him." He winked at Rand and went back into the living room, where the drunk woman was loudly saying goodbye.

      "You missed a good funeral today," Navarette said. "Lots of folks were there. Nick was a real loss to the community." He took a slug of his drink. "I guess you were doing whatever it is you do."

      Rand went to the cabinet and got a fresh glass and poured a little bourbon into it, and put in a splash of water and the last piece of ice.

      "There's more ice in the fridge," Navarette said. "It bothers me to have out-of-town folks trying to do my job."

      "I'm offering Mrs. Hood a service that you're too well known here to provide."

      "I know all about it. She told me about Nick's finding the gold, and you signing on with Brennan."

      "Well, then you know." Rand wondered if she had also told him about his being a witness to two murders. He figured he'd learn soon enough if she had.

      "I know Bill Brennan," Navarette said. "He's tough, a hothead, and maybe a little mean, but he's fair. I can't see him killing anybody, though. You think he got the gold?"

      "Yeah, but I don't know if he killed Hood for it. I had a talk with his man, Petrie, and he said they came upon Hood's car on the highway after somebody else - a masked man - shot him. The killer took off, leaving behind a heavy box. When Brennan and Petrie opened it, they saw it was full of gold bars. They decided to let somebody else report the killing, and they took the gold."

      "Understandable," Navarette said. "You must be very persuasive to get Petrie to tell you that."

      "It did take a little coaxing."

      Navarette smiled. "I'll bet. I've had Tom Petrie as an overnight guest in the county jail for fighting. He's one mean sonofabitch so I'd watch my ass if I were you."

      "Have you talked to them yet?"

      "Brennan and Petrie? No, they ain't going anyplace, and this is the first time I've had anything corroborating Noreen's hunch. I'll get around to them." Navarette drained his glass and started to load up again. "Noreen said somebody stole the gold from Brennan?"

      Pritchard came into the kitchen to see what was going on, stared at them a moment to gauge their conversational temperature, then left without saying anything.

      Navarette said, "I'm asking you, was the gold stolen from Brennan?"

      Rand nodded. "Yes. We were all asleep when we were rousted out and told he was robbed by three men. He wouldn't say what they took, but he described a box that fit Noreen's description of the one Hood had. He sent us out looking for the men."

      "Find them?"

      "I didn't. Maybe the others did," Rand lied.

      He waited for a reaction from Navarette, but the Sheriff gulped his drink as though it was water. When he came up for air, he grinned and looked sly. "You say three men? One of them have a gimpy leg?"

      Surprised, Rand said, "Yeah, how'd you know?"

      "Pieces fall into position. You just gave me an important piece. Want to know who stole the gold from him?"

      "You've got my complete attention," Rand said.

      "Man named Carlos Uribe stole it. A two-bit hood up out of El Paso. Want to know how I know that?"

      Rand was astonished. "Yeah!"

      "A couple of kids hunting jackrabbits found a body with his head bashed in out on the desert. I went out there and recognized him from when I picked him a couple of years ago for Toad. Uribe was killed the night the robbery took place, according to the doc who examined the corpse. Of course, at that point I didn't know about the robbery."

      "Then how do you tie him to the gunmen who held up Brennan?"

      "You just told me. You said there were three of them. here were three sets of tracks where we found Uribe, and somebody with a gimpy leg was running away from him ninety miles an hour. His right foot turned in and hit the sand stiff. Some of the mesquite where the man was running was clipped by bullets, so I guess Uribe was shooting at him."

      Rand was impressed.

      "Then along comes something else," Navarette continued. "A woman up Dona Ana called us up and said her husband somehow hung himself in a barn. Man drove a hay truck, was out all night, slept in the barn sometimes when he was drunk because his woman wouldn't let him in the house. But my deputy who went out there said he didn't smell any whiskey on him. And - oh yes - the man's hands were tied behind him, which kind of rules out suicide. But the deputy also mentions that the hanged man had a gimpy right leg. Got it now? That was the guy running away from Uribe."

      "That's kind of tenuous, don't you think?"

      "At first, sure. But his boots matched the footprints of the man running. Did he steal the gold from Brennan? And what about the third man?"

      "What about him?"

      Navarette looked disapproving. "The third man killed Uribe. The hanged man, named Jackson, was a little shrimp, and Uribe was pretty big. Jackson wouldn't risk going back to face a man with a gun who was bigger than him. What do you think?"

      "I don't know anything about it," Rand said.

      Navarette stared at Rand with gray eyes that were neither friendly nor hostile, only intensely interested. "Tell me what the third man looked like. Brennan sent you boys out lookin' for them, and he must have given you a description."

      "He said he thought the other man was Mexican farm worker," Rand said. "All of them wore sack masks on their heads."

      "Masks just like the guy who was supposed to have killed Hood?"

      "I don't know about that."

      Navarette looked thoughtful, then said, "It must have been the Mexican that hung the guy in the barn. The way I see it, it was a simple falling out between thieves. Uribe was the ringleader and he picked up these two guys to help, figuring he'd finish them off and keep all the gold. While he was shootin' at Jackson, the Mexican conked him. Then the Mexican and Jackson took the car and went over to the barn to split the loot. They had a falling out, or the Mexican decided he'd like to have it all, and the Mexican killed him." Navarette suddenly changed the subject. "Where were you during the funeral?"

      "In El Paso,"

      "Doing what?"

      "Picked up a change of clothes. Spent some time with my wife."

      "Maybe that, too, but you went down there to visit a man named Victor Soames, didn't you?"

      Now Rand was really impressed. "How'd you know that? Soames check on me?"

      Navarette grinned again. "Naw, Durkin, the phone company manager, called my office and told me you checked Hood's long distance calls. I did the same thing right after he was killed. I was getting ready to go down to El Paso and ask Soames some questions, but before I left he called me and said he read about it in The El Paso Times. Said he wanted to be a good citizen. He told me all about it, and he sounded clean."

      "He seemed okay to me, too," Rand said. "I checked him out with a friend on the El Paso cops."

      "Broke a guy's rib sitting on him," Navarette said, smiling.

      "You know everything? What are you doing in Las Cruces? You ought to be working for J. Edgar in Washington."

      Navarette chuckled and held up his glass. "I got an alcohol problem. Besides, I grew up here and they don't expect much from me, being a dumb Mexican, and all. And I have a knack for being re-elected."

      They were grinning at each other when Noreen came into the kitchen.

      Seeing her close, Rand attributed about ninety percent of her sickly pallor to booze, and the rest to grief. She was almost out on her feet. She moved in on Rand and rested her index finger on his chest, looked up at him drunkenly. "Remember, you've got to come over here tomorrow morning around nine."

      "What for?" Navarette asked.

      "We're going to take our only gold bars down there to make sure they're really gold."

      "So you still have some?"

      "Only two. We had a whole bunch of them, forty bars, shining gold. Now they're aaaaall gone."

      Navarette said, "Who're you taking them to?"

      "Ross Van . . . Vandander . . ." she stumbled over the name.

      "Vandergaard." Navarette supplied. "Going to be there when he opens?"

      "I guess."

      "I'll drop by," Navarette said.

      Rand lingered a few minutes with Noreen and Pritchard and his wife after Navarette left. He told them what Navarette had figured out, and filled them in on Soames. Noreen had so much to drink she went into a crying jag about Nick.

      Emma made some coffee and Rand had a cup with them. Pritchard told him to come over about eight-thirty, and they'd go down to Vandergaard's shop. He left, feeling the five or so drinks he'd downed.

      Rand eased the car out on the desert and turned it around, found the road again, and started driving down Griggs Street. He had gone about fifty yards when the first shot came. It tore through the right front window narrowly missing his head. The second shot would have hit him if he hadn't already thrown himself to the floor. The car veered off the road into the sand and stalled out as the third shot drilled through the car door over his head.

      Rand rolled over so he was looking up, his gun in his hand. He expected the person firing at him would come check his work, and when he looked in the car, Rand intended to get him. But nobody approached the car.

      After waiting a couple of minutes, Rand sat up. The desert was a pale white under the moon, and nobody was visible in the direction the shots had come from. It was so still Rand could hear dogs barking in the city. Whoever it was had been on foot. There wasn't the sound of a car after the shooting stopped. Whoever ambushed him had seen him leaving Hood's place as he passed under the light by the front door. It was somebody who knew he was connected to Noreen Hood.

      Even half drunk, Rand could guess what happened. Petrie had gone back whimpering to Brennan and the old man had put two and two together and figured that he was working for Noreen. Then Petrie had come back to get his revenge.

      Shaken, Rand got back on the road and drove a couple of blocks down Griggs Street and circled around to see if he could find anyone walking toward a car, or a car pulling away. But it was well after midnight, the streets were dead, and no light showed in any window. He stopped the car and took off his shirt and beat it against his pants to get rid of the tiny shards of glass that had lodged on him. He put his pinky gingerly into the bullet hole in the door, but he couldn't tell from that what caliber bullet the rifle had fired. He thought it was probably a thirty-ought-six. Petrie had a rifle that fired bullets like that.

      By the time he reached Main Street, the shakiness had turned to indignation, and then to anger. One of these days he and Petrie would have to have another little talk.

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