Suspended Sentences

“Dumb but honest,” the Sheriff said. “But we’re still in a bind here. If they produce a gang of witnesses to impeach his testimony, we won’t get a conviction. Reasonable doubt.”

I said, “I’m disinclined to let them get away with murder, Pete.”

“Sure, but I don’t know what we can do about it.”

I got up to leave. “Two can play at dirty pool, you know.”

“Larry, if you took that wallet off the body after they killed him, you’d better tell me now.”

“No, sir. I’d admit it if I’d done it. I didn’t do that.”

“All right.”

Bill Farquhart, the oily lawyer, agreed happily to a private meeting with me. Of course he expected me to offer a deal and I didn’t disabuse him of that misapprehension until we met over a lunch table in a poorly lit booth in Corddry’s Steak House.

Farquhart’s dark hair fluffed around his ears Hollywood style; in the sharkskin suit he was all points and sharp angles. But he was reputed to be a splendidly effective courtroom lawyer.

He ordered a dry martini and talked about the hot drought but I cut him off because I hadn’t the patience for small talk. I said, “Ron Owens thinks he’s got this thing framed up perfectly, doesn’t he? Let’s not waste each other’s time — we both understand the situation.”

“I guess we do, Mr. Valdez. Defense wins, prosecution loses. That’s the score.” He laughed gently at me, very sure of himself.

I said, “As far as I’m concerned you’re an errand boy for Ron Owens. I’ve got a message for you to carry back to him. You just listen to it and carry it to him. Understood?”

He gave me a pitying look. “Valdez, I don’t take that kind of talk from two-bit Mexican civil servants.”

That elicited my hard smile. “I’m the elected prosecuting attorney of Ocotillo County, Mr. Farquhart. As for the other, I’m not Mexican, I’m American. It’s my country here, not yours. My ancestors were right here in this county while yours were still burning witches in Scotland. But the key point on the table right now is this. I’m the County Attorney in a county where Ron Owens has eighty-three percent of his assets tied up. Does that suggest anything to you?”

He smiled slowly; he thought he understood. “Okay,” he said, “what’s the deal?”

“This time I’ll settle for Baker and Calhoun. I want their heads in a basket. And I want Ron Owens out of this county, lock, stock, and barrel. Right out.”

“I guess you know better, really.”

“No. I’ll tell you something, this isn’t Phoenix where everybody’s got his hand out for graft and things are big enough to provide anonymity for men like Ron Owens. You’re in a small town now and we tend to be unimpressed by Sy Devore suits and Hollywood sunglasses and Corvettes and big-city methods of extortion and intimidation. You don’t realize it but these are tough people out here. They have to be, to survive in this desert. They chew up clowns like Ron Owens and spit them out.”

His eyes were hooded; he feigned boredom. “What’s the message, Mr. Valdez? I’m getting tired of this small-town boosterism.”

“You’ve listed six defense witnesses who may be called during the trial to impeach Larry Stowe’s testimony and to alibi the defendants. Of course you won’t bother to call those six witnesses if Larry fails to identify Baker and Calhoun, correct?”

“You’re doing the talking.”

“Here’s the message, counselor. Commit it and pass it on. One. Larry Stowe is under police protection. You won’t find him until he appears in court, so you may as well forget any further attempts to threaten him or assault him. Two —”

“Are you accusing me of —?”

“Shut up. Larry will testify to what he saw — the deliberate and unprovoked murder of Philip Keam.”

“Three: you will fail to call the six perjuring witnesses. The trial will take its course on the basis of the truth, and we’ll take our chances on getting an honest conviction.”

“Four: should you or Ron Owens disregard my warning, and should you bring forward your six witnesses to give false testimony, then certain things will begin to happen in this county. Ron Owens will find himself up to here in property-tax auditors and land reappraisals. He will find every application for a building permit held up for months, perhaps years. He will find his heavy construction equipment impounded by the County for violations of safety and pollution regulations. He will find his car ticketed incessantly for violations of vehicular codes, and he’ll find his home, his office and other real property cited for every conceivable violation of the building codes. He will find himself and his executives subjected to an endless barrage of bureaucratic foul-ups, lost applications, misplaced documents — a nightmare of red tape, a systematic campaign of official harassment that will bring all his businesses to a total standstill and result in the across-the-board bankruptcy of every enterprise controlled by Ron Baylor Owens.”

“And one more thing,” I added in the same quiet voice. “It’s conceivable that some fatal accident just might happen to befall me if I began to put such a campaign into action. You and Owens should be aware that this is a rural county and that my family is one of the oldest here. We’ve known one another for generations around here. Some of these old boys — friends of mine, I play poker and hunt deer with them — some of these gents can shoot a flea off a coon-dog’s ear at six hundred yards. They’re not above settling their grievances in the old-fashioned frontier ma

I got up and left him then; I’d said all I had to say.

Part of it was a bluff. I don’t number any killers among my friends. But Farquhart and Owens were city boys and they didn’t know that for sure; we had a redneck reputation up our way.

The rest of it had been quite true. I was fully prepared to drown Owens’ companies in bureaucratic obstructionism and it would have been perfectly legal to do so: if you actually enforce every ludicrous regulation in the law you can cripple anyone. The reason it hadn’t already been done in Owens’ case was that he’d been pouring a great deal of money into the economy of the county. Folks are willing to put up with all sorts of shenanigans if prosperity comes with them. But people up in Ocotillo County are still a bit old-fashioned: they don’t condone willful murder as an acceptable way of doing business. I’d have had no trouble getting the cooperation of the other county officials.

Coercion is a two-way street. Owens and Farquhart were dealers in fear; I’d given them their own medicine.

Farquhart and his supporting battery of big-town attorneys put up a good defense but they didn’t produce the six lying witnesses; Baker and Calhoun were convicted on the steadfast testimony of Larry Stowe and the evidence of bootprints and a few other tangibles left at the scene. The killers were sentenced to twenty-year-to-life terms in the State Penitentiary at Florence. Rumor has it that Ron Owens had to pay both of them enormous sums to ensure that they wouldn’t implicate him in the murder. The presence of his Cadillac at the crime meant nothing; Owens simply gave out the story that he’d lent the car to the two cowboys but had no idea what they meant to do with it.

But Owens pulled out of the county with satisfying alacrity. It took him a while to liquidate his properties but by Christmas he was gone, his offices closed, his residence sold.

He wasn’t really very tough. I’d been looking forward to squaring off against him but evidently he didn’t enjoy playing a game against people who played harder than he did.

The law doesn’t protect people unless people protect the law.