Before She Dies (6 page)

“He’s pretty upset,” Torrez said. “I tried to talk with him, but he wasn’t much help.”

“I’ll give it a try,” Estelle said. She would pry out any information the old ranch hand knew, in one language or another. “And I want to use one of the hospital’s stereoscopes. See what the shotgun casing has to offer.”

Slim evidence, but maybe the killer had been confident that we’d never find the shell casing in the first place. I found myself hoping he’d stay confident and give us something more.

Chapter 9

Sheriff Martin Holman sat in my chair, leaning forward with his elbows on the desk and his hands clasped at his forehead as if he were deep in prayer. A newspaper was spread out under his elbows. He looked up from the
Posadas Register
as I entered and dropped one hand to the paper so he could mark his place with an index finger.

“Ron Schroeder wants to see you.”

I hung my Stetson on the hat tree behind the door, taking my time so Holman wouldn’t feel rushed about getting out of my chair. He didn’t move.

“Schroeder knows where I work,” I said.

“No, no, Bill. This is a summons into The Great One’s presence.” That wasn’t entirely fair, since District Attorney Ron Schroeder was as hardworking as they come—bright, diligent, ambitious—all those traits that somehow never quite seemed to make up for the giant streak of condescension running down his back.

Holman turned the newspaper so that I could see it and then pushed it across the desk.

I sighed and fished what was left of my glasses out of my pocket. “Somebody else worked all night, too,” I said, and before my eyes could focus I was already wondering how Dayan had managed to sneak a crime scene photograph when we hadn’t allowed so much as a centipede through the roadblocks.

But I had forgotten about Sonny Trujillo and the Friday night follies.

“Not very flattering, Bill,” Holman said. There I was, in perfect focus, spread across three columns at the top of the page. The photographer had popped the flash at the instant that Trujillo’s fat fist made contact with my cheek and glasses. In the picture, my glasses were askew, Trujillo’s mouth was open and bellowing, and there in the bottom left corner, perfectly in focus, was my service revolver. My left hand was clamped around the barrel and cylinder, obviously twisting hard.

“Nice picture,” I said. I squinted at the caption.
“Despite being physically attacked, Undersheriff William K. Gastner managed to wrestle a handgun away from Salvador Trujillo (left) during an altercation at Friday night’s basketball game.”
I grunted. “That’s nice. They had to label him ‘left’ so people could tell us apart?”

“At least the caption doesn’t mention that it’s your own gun, Bill.”

“There’s always that.” The three column headline below the photograph read
Veteran Cop’s Quick Thinking Prevents Tragedy
.

“You may need that headline,” Holman said, and I looked up sharply. “Schroeder said that he needs to see you in connection with Trujillo’s death.”

I started to fold the newspaper. “I don’t have time for that shit, Martin. You talk with him. We’ve got a murder investigation, for God’s sake. You’d think Schroeder of all people would have his priorities straight on this one. And you’d think that Linda’s own goddamned newspaper might feature something about her, rather than this nonsense.”

Sheriff Holman held up both hands to slow me down. “Whoa, whoa. The DA said he needs to talk with you when you have time. Not this instant.” He made little rotating motions with his hands, as if I were supposed to turn the newspaper over.

“That’ll be in about seven years, the way things are going.”

I turned the folded paper over and a box with a heavy black border at the bottom right corner of page one drew my eye. The shooting late Sunday night had caught the
Register
right at deadline. The article showed that Frank Dayan was as frustrated as we were. I read it quickly.

I dropped the newspaper on my desk and shook my head. “Christ, I wish I had some answers, Martin.”

“Something will turn up. I really believe that. I have confidence something will break.”

I shoved my right hand in my trouser pocket and groped with my left for a cigarette in my shirt pocket. Of course there were none there, but old habits died hard. “We’ve got nothing on this one, Martin. Nothing. No gut feelings that tell us where to go or where to look. Nothing. Some stranger could have burned ’em both and been to hell and gone over the border long before Francisco Peña ever happened by.”

“Estelle can give us full time on this one?”

I grunted a monosyllabic reply to what I thought was an abysmally stupid question.

“And you’ll make a note to see Schroeder today or tomorrow? Try to fit in a few minutes.”

“I’ll see.”

“There has to be a hearing on Trujillo no matter what.”

“I know it, sheriff.” I took a deep breath. “It’s hard to put some useless drunk choking to death on his own vomit in the same ball-park as one of our deputies being murdered, and the kid who was riding with him shot to pieces as well.”

Holman shrugged and raised both hands, palms up. “Schroeder tells me that apparently Juanita Smith has decided this is her chance to get back at all of us.”

“Who the hell is Juanita Smith?”

“Sonny’s mother.”

“I didn’t know he had a mother.” Holman grinned and I added, “I mean alive and living in town.”

“She married Woody Smith a year or so before he drank himself to death. Before that she was living with Sal Trujillo Sr. Remember? Sal and his cousin were the ones…” I held up a hand.

“Please, Marty. I’m not ready for this. What you’re saying is that this woman, whoever she is, has crawled out of the woodwork and is yelping that her one and only, her brilliant and talented son, was murdered by the gestapo. Is that about it?”

Holman leaned back in my chair and hooked his hands behind his head. “Basically, yes.” As a sudden dawning spread through his brain, Holman’s eyes grew large and bright and he lunged out of my chair. “Do you suppose…”

“No, Martin.”

He waved a hand wildly. “No, no. Hear me out. Do you think that somehow…”

“One of Sonny Trujillo’s friends decided to avenge his death and saw the opportunity out on State Fifty-six somehow? No.”

“You don’t think there’s a chance of that?”

“No.”

Holman deflated slowly as he scanned my face for signs that I might give in.

“Why not? It’s as good as anything else you’ve got.”

“I’ll grant you that, Martin.” I shook my head. “First of all, Sonny didn’t run around with the kind of friends who’d have enough brains to pull something like this. Whoever did it was a cold son of a bitch, Martin. The killer took the time to pick up his damn shell casings, for God’s sake. He shot Paul once from across the highway, then walked up and pumped another into him while Paul was lying on the ground. And then he shot Linda Real, shot her right through the driver’s window. If the glass hadn’t deflected some of the pellets, he’d have blown her head off.”

“Christ, Bill.”

I picked up the newspaper, idly folding it. “And then he picked up his casings, Martin. All except one that he couldn’t find.”

“And you did?”

“Estelle found it, yes.”

“Then that’s something, isn’t it?”

I shrugged. “Damn little.”

Holman made his way around my desk and headed toward the door. “You’ve been over to the hospital?”

“No. Estelle said her husband would let us know if there was any change.”

“Is someone assigned to the hospital?”

“Peggy Mears is over there. And I asked for some assistance from the state police. Ray Galiston will be there until four.” I glanced at my watch. “And they’ll send someone else then if they can spring somebody.”

“If Linda regains consciousness, she might be able to tell us what we need to know.”

“Maybe.”

“She’s the only witness, Bill.”

“So far, yes.”

Holman stopped at the door with his hand on the knob. “Will there be someone there to question her at any time? I mean, if she should surface for even a minute, whatever she knows might be really valuable.”

“Right now, that’s not our highest priority, sheriff.”

Holman looked confused. “I don’t follow.”

“Paul Enciños is dead. Nothing we do is going to bring him back. Much as I’d like to catch the son of a bitch who killed him, I don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize Linda Real’s life. I don’t want two dead. So we’re going to let the doctors alone to do their best. Later, if she can…”

“She’s got to know, Bill. She’s the key witness.”

“Only if she’s alive, sheriff.”

Holman nodded and turned to go. I had a stack of patrol logs and radio logs I wanted to sift through in peace and quiet, but Holman wasn’t finished.

“Will you give the eulogy?” I stopped short, and Holman added, “At the service. It’s Thursday morning at ten.”

“I’m not very good at that sort of thing, sheriff.”

“You don’t have to be good at it, Bill. And I hope that you never get enough practice that you become good at it. But it will mean more coming from you than from me. I mean, I’ll say a little something, but the official department sentiments should come from you. You’ve been in this business for a long time.”

I nodded.

“Thanks. Let me know if there’s anything else you want me to do.”

“There is,” I said, and Holman looked expectant. “Sergeant Torrez has a plaster cast of some tire prints. He’s got about eighty-five million other things to do. It’d be a hell of a deal if you’d take them and find out what kind of tire we’re dealing with.”

For a second or two, Holman looked as if he wanted to say,
“How do I do that?”
But he thought better of it. “Where are they?”

“The deputy has them with him. He’s over at the county maintenance yard, in the old shop building.”

He nodded. “I’ll pick them up. I’ll be in my office until five, and then I’ll be at the hospital.”

After Sheriff Martin Holman left, I retrieved a stack of patrol logs along with the radio and telephone logs for the previous week. I spread the paperwork out on my desk, closed my office door, and got to work. I had no illusions that I would find anything of importance in that mass of documentation.

The logs would show, in terse, repetitive jargon, exactly what I told every new deputy who ever joined our tiny department—and what I told the others on a regular basis. The threat of rural law enforcement lay not in the constant dangers of hoodlum patrol. Leave that to the big cities. We might go weeks, months, even years with nothing but yawns, and then be smashed in the face with fifteen seconds of panic.

After living in the doldrums, it was easy to be caught off guard.

Paul Enciños had been caught off guard and it had killed him. His handgun had been found still snapped in its holster. The electric lock on the dashboard of his patrol car that held the shotgun had not been tripped. The deputy never had time to recognize his moment of panic.

Chapter 10

Sergeant Robert Torrez was bent over the fender of 308, his brows knit tightly together in concentration as he peeled the backing off a one-inch bright-blue circular sticker.

“Estelle’s better at this than I am,” he muttered.

I surveyed his handiwork, impressed. Centered over each mark of pellet damage was a colored sticker. He had used yellow dots for the first shot pattern, blue for the second, and red for the third. In place of the atomized driver’s side window, he had stretched a piece of clear plastic and then, by carefully extrapolating where the pellets had struck other surfaces of the car’s interior, he had dotted the probable locations of the pellets’ entry through the window.

I turned and looked at the dozen yard-square pieces of brown butcher paper that were laid on the garage floor. Each one had been blasted once with a shotgun. Each was carefully labeled.

The top six targets had been shot using one of the department’s 12 gauge riot guns, a pump action weapon with a twenty-inch barrel. The shots had been fired at distances beginning at five feet and then extending out in five-foot increments to thirty feet. The diameter of the pattern was clearly labeled.

The second set of targets had been riddled using the same type three-inch magnum number four buck ammunition, but this time fired from a shotgun with a standard length barrel.

“You can see a pretty significant difference in spread between the two guns,” I mused, kneeling down with a grunt and a loud cracking of the knees. “What was the choke on the field gun?”

“Modified,” Torrez said. “There’s a bunch of other combinations I could have tried, but this gives us a pretty clear picture.”

He picked up the last target in the riot gun series, the one fired at thirty feet, and walked to the car. “If you compare the size of the yellow pattern, the one we think was fired from the opposite shoulder of the highway, you’ll see that it’d be pretty easy to imagine a close match.”

“You sound overwhelmed with confidence,” I said. “None of the other series are that large.”

“Right,” Torrez nodded. “In order to get a spread like this with a regular field gun, you’d have to be backed off fifty or sixty feet.”

“You don’t really have very many definite pellet marks on the car to establish that pattern size, though.”

“Eight, sir. That’s why I said you could imagine a match. I’d hate to have to defend this in court.”

“Eight pellets out of a possible…”

“Forty-one. I know that isn’t a very good percentage, but it gives us a starting point. For the round fired through the window, I had only six definites to work with and another half a dozen probables.” He laid down the target and picked up another. “The round fired through the window was really tight when it hit the glass. Just under a foot in diameter.”

“And with a field gun, you’d still have to be backed away twenty or thirty feet for a pattern that big.”

“Right.”

I took a deep breath. “So we’re looking for a sawed-off twelve-gauge three-inch magnum shotgun that ejects its empties to the side.”

“Or a bottom dumper that the killer held on its side, like the Hollywood hotshots do.” Torrez mimed the stance, right elbow cocked high. I grimaced.

“In short, we don’t really know very much, do we?”

“No, sir.”

I straightened up and surveyed the perforated patrol car and paper targets. “We’re going to be able to figure out pretty much what happened from the time the trigger was pulled for the first time,” I said. “And that just about shoots our wad. We don’t know who, we don’t know why, we don’t know how many people were involved.” I looked at Torrez, hoping that he had some other answers that he’d been saving for last. He didn’t.

“Howard Bishop and Bing Burkett are coordinating highway searches, airport checks, that sort of thing,” I shrugged. “Good cooperation all around. I imagine that there’s something like a hundred deputies, troopers—even some of the critter cops working every corner of the state. No one’s turned up anything.” I thrust my hands in my pockets. “Did Sheriff Holman swing by and pick up the tire casts from you?”

“Yes, sir.” Torrez sounded a little skeptical. I grinned at the big deputy.

“The sheriff is not as stupid as we all sometimes think he is, Roberto.” Torrez had the tact to remain silent. “Did you tell the county yard foreman that we’d need this garage bay for several days?”

Torrez nodded. “He said whatever we needed. He said he’s got the only other key, so people won’t be wandering in and out until we give the word.”

The deputy carefully walked around his targets and frowned at me. “Sir, I’ve been wondering about the car, too. You know, we have a couple of coincidences here that are kinda interesting. One, Paul takes three oh eight here, instead of the car he usually drives. Two, he was out in the vicinity of the Broken Spur Saloon, which is where I had my last go-around with Victor Sánchez. And three, this all happened during the swing shift, which is when I work.”

“You’re thinking that maybe someone out there had it in for you and shot at Paul by mistake?”

“It’s possible, sir.”

I shook my head. “Not likely. For one thing, you don’t look a damn thing like Paul Enciños, even from a distance. You’re a head taller and fifty pounds heavier. However, I suppose that maybe at night, with the adrenaline pumping, a cop looks like a cop.”

Torrez turned and surveyed the riddled patrol car. “And what about it being my car?”

I snorted. “First of all, it isn’t your car, Roberto. True enough, you drove it most of the time during your shift. But on days, Tony Abeyta was using it. And half the time Howard Bishop drives it midnight to eight. So…” I strode quickly over to the car. “And finally,” I said, holding thumb and index finger to gauge the height of the black number decals behind the rear window post, “these little numbers are only three inches high. We notice ’em because it’s part of what we do. But to the average civilian, one patrol car looks like any other. Who’s going to notice a number and assume that the deputy inside is Robert Torrez?”

I stepped away from the car. “Victor Sánchez is a hothead, Robert, and that’s what makes a case of mistaken identity even
more
unlikely. If he’s got a complaint, he’ll climb right into your face. An ambush from across a dark highway isn’t his style.”

“Should I go out and talk with him?”

“No. Let me do that.”

“You want me to come along?”

I smiled and shook my head. “I want you to keep doing what you’re doing. Finish with the car and make sure you have a set of perfect photos. Then, when the sheriff tracks down the make and model of tires from those casts, hunt the right species down and get some photographs of those, too. Estelle is putting the shell casing under the microscope and we should have fingerprints a little later, if our boy got careless. By then, we can start pushing the Office of the Medical Examiner for whatever the autopsy showed.”

I shrugged with resignation. “None of the roadblocks turned up a thing. I canceled them just before I came over here. If the killer was someone just passing through, he’s long gone anyway. If it was someone local, then maybe pulling down the barriers will encourage him to stick his head out. I don’t know. In the meantime, it’s important to pay attention to all the little details.” I nodded at his targets and stickers. “Good work.”

“You sure you don’t want company going out to see Sánchez?”

“I’m sure.”

The late afternoon sun was dipping toward the San Cristobal Mountain peaks to the southwest as I drove out State Highway 56. The air was brilliantly clear with no breeze. For the first four miles, I didn’t pass a single car, coming or going. A handful of cattle didn’t bother to lift their heads as I motored past. Goddamned pastoral, is what it was.

I wondered what Linda Real and Paul Enciños had been talking about as they drove this very macadam twenty hours before. Just kids, I thought. Both of them less than half my age. Kids idling down the highway during a pleasant evening, assuming that come Easter they’d be part of a family gathering, or that they’d be ready for a week’s vacation in June, or that they’d get to see the fireworks put on in the Posadas Village Park on the Fourth of July. I thumped the steering wheel with my fist in frustration.

I looked out across the sweep of prairie, my eyes following the gradual curve of the highway around the base of Arturo Mesa. Two sodium-vapor lights burned brightly and marked the yard and pens of Wayne Feed and Supply, a business that sprawled over a dozen acres.

If you needed a cutter bar for a 1924 Eustice hay-flailer, you could probably find one there. You’d have to tramp out through the creosote bush, cactus, and rattlesnakes to find it yourself on one of the legion of rusting hulks. Toby Sánchez hadn’t bought the business so that he’d have to work.

In another two minutes, I would drive past the empty buildings of Moore, just as Deputy Enciños and Linda Real would have done. I glanced down at the papers beside me.

Deputy Enciños’s patrol log for the evening hadn’t offered much. A photocopy of the last page of that log lay on top of my briefcase.

In his last hours of duty, Deputy Enciños had entered the starting mileage of his patrol car—completely routine. A few minutes later, he’d asked for a wants/warrant check on a license number. There was no hint in his log about whether he had actually stopped the vehicle. The dispatcher’s log had confirmed that he had not.

Cal Hewlett, one of the U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers, had requested assistance in transporting a prisoner, one Efren Padilla, to the county lockup. I knew Padilla. The old man had probably been cutting green piñon again, on the feds’ turf.

At five-thirty-two, Enciños had responded to the Weatherfords’ traffic accident. That had kept him occupied until six-thirty, when he’d eaten dinner at the North Star Inn, the big chain motel near the interstate ramp where the Weatherfords had trashed their van and trailer.

At six-fifty, the deputy had returned to the Posadas County Sheriff’s Office and picked up
Posadas Register
reporter Linda Real. If she was expecting an exciting night, the first calls didn’t offer a preview. Rosalita Ibarra had been complaining about Sauci Ortíz’s dog for years. She would have complained even if the old man didn’t have a dog. Rosalita and Sauci had been neighbors for sixty years. They’d argued and shouted at each other for sixty years. They loved it. The only thing that made it better was a good audience.

Deputy Paul Enciños had provided the audience. Twice. He’d tried to turn the complaint over to the village cops, but they weren’t buying it…if one or the other of them had been on duty. It must have been the deputy’s first time trying to handle the Ibarra/Ortíz show. Otherwise he would have known better.

The last entry was equally routine. At fifty-three minutes after ten, Deputy Enciños had been directed to East Bustos Avenue. The dispatch log, and Gayle Sedillos’s memory, said the call had come from the manager of Mark’s Burger Heaven, one of the teen hangouts.

The manager had said that kids were driving around behind the fence of the business across the street. She didn’t know what they were up to. She didn’t have much imagination if she couldn’t figure out what two kids in a car wanted with darkness, away from streetlights and prying eyes.

Deputy Enciños had checked and then, at one minute before eleven o’clock, he had called in 10-8, meaning that he was in service and free for assignment. That was his last call.

He and his passenger had then driven to the other side of the county and gotten themselves shot.

I drove through Moore, looking hard at the huge dark blob that once had been Beason’s Mercantile and Dry Goods. Until the vein ran out, folks in Moore had assumed their town was going to grow and prosper, maybe even make mention in the 1920 census. Beason thought so, enough to build the two-story edifice that now stood empty and crumbling.

State 56 was so straight between the back side of Arturo Mesa and the banks of the Rio Guijarro that for two and a half miles a laser beam wouldn’t have strayed from the dotted center line.

After crossing the bridge, the highway fishtailed a little, dipping through the grove of cottonwoods that surrounded the Broken Spur Saloon.

Monday at suppertime would be slow, and a good time to capture Victor Sánchez’s full attention, but I didn’t pull off the highway. I scanned the parking lot as I drove by. There were two pickup trucks, one with a long livestock trailer attached. The trailer was empty. Half of the ranchers drove around with the humongous things permanently attached to their trucks, clanging and banging over every bump in the road. I figured it was a kind of status symbol.

Three miles down the highway was the turnoff to the north—County Road 14, a dusty ribbon that wound up through the prairie and the old lava beds, past windmills and stock tanks, and up over the top of San Patricio Mesa. It had been down that jouncing two-track that Francisco Peña’s old GMC pickup had trundled the night before.