“Because I love you,” Chee said. “Because I want to take you home where you’ll be safe.”
“Oh,” Bernie said. She returned the hug, and then she was crying again.
Dashee’s voice interrupted this. “Hey,” he shouted. “We’ve got a dead man in here.”
Dashee was standing in the open doorway of the shed, pointing in. “He’s on his back on the floor. Looks like he fell off a chair.” He leaned through the doorway, looking inside. “Blood on the floor, too. And a rifle. Looks like I may have myself my very first homicide as a Federal Bureau of Land Management Security Officer.”
Bernie released her hold on Chee and slumped backward onto the car seat, shaking again.
“It’s all right, Bernie,” Chee said. “It’s OK. Take it easy for a while.”
Dashee was hurrying up. “Yeah, Bernie. And then tell us what happened.”
“It was awful,” Bernie said. “The man who was supposed to kill me, he didn’t want to do it, and he had gotten my pistol from the Seamless Weld man somehow, and so Mr. Winsor was going to shoot him, and—” She was crying again.
“Stay here with Bernie,” Chee said. “And call for some medical help. I’ll go in and take a look.”
What he saw was as Dashee had described it. A well-dressed, stocky, middle-aged man sprawled on his back beside an overturned chair. Chee squatted beside him. Shot in the chest, but the blood that had spread from under him obviously must have come from the exit wound. What he could see was already drying. He scanned the room quickly, noted the pipeline mechanism, noted the row of sacks filled with a white substance, noted the dirty yellow ball on one end, the screw cap beside it, and the white sacks still jammed inside.
Leaphorn had it right, Chee thought.
Chee rushed out into the sunlight. “Did you contact anyone? Are they sending an ambulance?”
“Bernie had already called the New Mexico State Police,” Dashee said. “And she called her dispatcher. They said they’d sent a helicopter.”
“Who hit you?” Chee asked. “Was it that man in there?”
“Where’s his car?” Dashee asked. “What in the world happened?”
“Did you shoot him, Bernie? What happened to your pistol?”
“Stop! Stop! Stop!” Bernie shouted. “If you two will just shut up, stop asking questions, and be quiet, I’ll try to tell you.”
And she did. Starting with climbing on the car hood to look through the window and being surprised by three men.
“Three men!” A loud exclamation, jointly emerging from Chee and Dashee, both of whom were leaning against the car, looking down at her.
“Three,” Bernie said. “The one in there. He’s the one who hit me. His name is Winson, or Winsor, or Willson, or something like that. Winsor I think it was. He was the boss of the other two. He’s the one who hit me and he’s the one who said I had to be killed. One of the others—a big tall man, looked like an athlete, sort of red hair, sort of looked like an Irishman, but he spoke Spanish, and Winsor said his name was Budge C. de Baca, like that old Spanish family in New Mexico—anyway, he worked directly for Winsor, and from what Winsor said, he had assigned Budge the job of killing me.”
“Killing you? Killing you?” Chee said.
Bernie ignored him. “The other one was wearing army fatigues and his name was Diego de Vargas and he spoke Spanish, too. And that bunch of pipes—”
“Bernie,” Dashee said, “where are those two men? Are they armed? Do they have your pistol? Did they drive away? Where did they go?”
“They went away,” Bernie said. “And I don’t know where my pistol is. And do you want to hear this or not?”
“Sorry,” Dashee said, and looked repentant.
So Bernie told them what happened in the shed, about the yellow round ball arriving, the sacks of cocaine taken out of it, and about the big man whispering to her that she should tell Winsor she was with the DEA and that she could be bribed. And all the rest of it, skipping back to report how de Vargas had taken her pistol but somehow Budge had gotten it.
“And then when Budge acted like he wasn’t going to kill me, and was telling Winsor they couldn’t get away with it, then Winsor told him to do it like, like ...” Here Bernie’s voice faltered. She paused a moment with her hands over her face. Then went on. “Like they had killed some woman named Chrissy, by throwing her out of an airplane into the ocean. Except they would throw me out over the mountains down in Mexico.” She paused again, then hurried through it. “Then Winsor cocked his rifle and swung it around at Budge, and I was sitting there on the table right beside his chair, and I kicked at his arm and he hit me with the rifle.”
Bernie stopped, looked at Chee and then at Dashee. Both seemed to be holding their breath, silent, waiting.
“Then, he shot, right beside my ear. Or maybe they both shot. And the next thing I knew I was lying on the table with one of those bags under my head, and Budge was using a handkerchief or something to stop the bleeding on my cheek and asking me how I felt, and it was then he said he didn’t kill Chrissy.” She stopped, looked at them, awaited the next question.
“Bernie,” Chee said. “I want you to stop being a policeman. I want you to do something safe. I want you to marry me. I’ll get rid of that trailer and we’ll find a nice house and—”
And Dashee said, “Damn it, Chee, hold that for later. Let Bernie tell us where those two bastards went. They’re getting away.”
And Bernie said: “Oh, Jim, I don’t want to be a policeman anymore.”
And Dashee said: “But where did they go? They’re driving off somewhere right now. Getting away.”
“I don’t know where they went,” Bernie said. “While Budge was getting the blood off of my face he was talking to Diego de Vargas. Talking about flying. They would fly down to some place in Mexico. He had left this woman down there. Chrissy. To keep her safe from Winsor. He said he was in love with this Chrissy, and would go down there and marry her, and then they would take her somewhere Budge had friends, and Vargas could sell the airplane and they would both start over. And, I don’t know, I was trying to listen but I was feeling dizzy, and I was still scared, and they were talking mostly in Spanish. It was confusing.”
“That airplane. Where is it?” Chee asked. “I guess this Budge must be the pilot for that man in the building, must be his personal pilot. There’s probably some sort of airport at the ranch. At least a landing strip.”
“Let’s go find that airplane,” Dashee said.
Chee was looking up. “I think we’re a little late again.”
The sleek white shape of the Dessault Falcon 10 appeared just over the ridge beyond the playa valley— trailing the sound little jet engines make when accelerating.
“Flying south,” Dashee said. “In ten minutes he’s over Mexico. Home free.”
“I heard him telling this Diego de Vargas guy about Chrissy. She was a law clerk for Winsor, and Winsor told her he would marry her, and she got pregnant, and he ordered Budge to kill her so she wouldn’t tell Winsor’s wife.”
“They’re getting away,” Dashee said, still staring toward the south where the Falcon had vanished.
“I hope so,” Bernie said, sounding slightly woozy. “He really was in love with this Chrissy. He was telling that other man, the Mexican, about her. About how the boss told him to kill her but instead he took her down to Mexico and just told the boss she was dead. He was going there to get her.”
“Hey!” Dashee said. “Going where?” He turned to Chee. “We can get him there. Where was he going?”
Bernie held her hand up to her forehead, touched the bandage over the bruise. “I don’t remember,” she said.
The diminishing whine of the jet’s engines was replaced by the thunking sound of the Border Patrol’s helicopter. It came in low, looking for the best landing spot. Only a moment later, that noise was joined by the siren of a State Police car bumping its way down the track toward the building site.
“They’ll take you to the hospital at Las Cruces, Bernie. It’s the nearest one. I may have to stay here with Cowboy to try to explain all this. He reached into the car and hugged her to him, gingerly. Stay there. I’ll come and get you.”
