Apache Country by Frederick H. Christian

bothers me,” Easton
said.
    “Me, too,” James replied thoughtfully. “It’s
untypical. More like a hit. What are you doing here, by the
way?”
    Easton explained the connection and Sánchez
nodded. “I know you, Dave,” he said. “Something about this you
don’t like?”
    Easton took a few moments to reply. “Look at
this guy, James. Cheap shoes, off the rack clothes, a four-year-old
Honda Civic. How much would he have had in his wallet?”
    Sánchez shrugged. “Walk-ins like this, a
credit card with a five hundred dollar limit is enough reason to
waste someone.”
    “I guess.”
    “He local, this Weddle?”
    “Albuquerque, I understand.”
    “You talk to him at all?”
    “Very briefly,” Easton said and explained the
circumstances.
    “You get any sense of what sort of guy he
was?” Sánchez asked.
    “Why don’t you ask Charlie Goodwin? He’s over
there in the patrol car with Billy Charles Cummings.”
    “Need to talk to him anyway,” James said.
“Might as well be now.”
    “Okay if I tag along?”
    Sánchez raised one shoulder and led the way
out across to the patrol car. He opened the door and got in the
back and Easton got in on the other side.
    “Want to talk to you, Charlie,” James said.
“You okay?”
    Goodwin twisted around to face them. He was
in his mid-fifties now, overweight, out of shape. He smelled of
stale tobacco and he looked like a bum. He had on one of those
Banana Republic straw sombreros, a blue cotton polo shirt and a
crumpled blue and white candy stripe seersucker suit. It wasn’t
that he couldn’t afford decent clothes – he was a partner in a
successful Riverside law firm with branch offices in Santa Fe and
Albuquerque. The trouble was, Charlie was the tightest man with a
dollar you were ever going to meet.
    He not only saved coupons, he collected his
neighbors’ discarded newspapers and snipped out theirs. He switched
off his engine going downhill to save gas, cursed at pedestrians or
motorists who came out of junctions and created wear on his brake
pads. It wasn’t anything to do with money. Charlie scrimped for the
pure joy of it. Paradoxically his wife June was a cheerful,
generous woman who sat on damn near every charity committee in
town.
    “I’m okay,” he said. “A bit shaky. What do
you want to know?”
    “Weddle,” James said. “Start with his
background. Any family?”
    Goodwin blinked, and they realized he had no
idea whether Jerry Weddle had a family or whether he’d originated
on the third rock from the sun.
    “How about a girl friend, Charlie? Or a
significant other we could contact?”
    Goodwin shook his head. “I’d have to check
his personnel file,” he said. “Best I recollect he was sharing an
apartment over in Albuquerque with some guy who works for Sandia
Labs. Jackson, Johnson, something like that. Call the office,
they’ll give you the number.”
    “That’s what I like about lawyers,” Easton
said. “The precision.”
    Sánchez gave him a hard look. He shrugged
unrepentantly.
    “How long has he been with the firm?” Sánchez
asked.
    “He joined us about a year ago.”
    “Fresh out of law school,” Easton
offered.
    Goodwin looked surprised. “How did you know
that?”
    “I’m right?”
    “He came to us straight from ENMSU. We had
him working with Dick Etulain out of our branch office in
Albuquerque. Mostly domestic stuff, you know, divorces,
conveyancing, some Navajo Council work.”
    “Never handled a criminal case, right?”
Easton said.
    Goodwin looked uncomfortable and shook his
head.
    “Ironheel is up for two counts of murder,
Charlie,” Easton said. “What the hell made you think Weddle to be
able to handle his defense?”
    Goodwin blinked, his bloodshot eyes shifty,
as if he’d been accused of something obscene.
    “Jeez, Dave, you got to understand, we were
like, running on empty. I had Walter down with summer flu, two of
our best people on vacation, two others in trial. When you called
me and said