Less Than a Moment

by Steven F Havill

  “Supposedly by someone he knew, his skull cleaved with an axe,” Estelle offered. “Right around 1890.”

  Gastner looked sideways at her. “I’ve bored you with his story before.”

  “Not bored. But having his skull split with an axe would sure explain why he dropped the gun and didn’t pick it up, if the gun was his. My question is who or what was the target of the two fired cartridges?”

  The old man chewed thoughtfully. “So you see. The gun is from the appropriate era, found in landscape coincidental with Bennett’s last cattle drive and his death.” He sipped his coffee. “Inquiring minds need to know. I mean, if it was Bennett’s gun, and he was murdered while trying to bring it into action, then we know why it was never picked up, right? And that marks the actual site of the murder, which has never been accurately pinpointed.”

  Estelle smiled. “It’s nice to see you so occupied with this project.”

  “Yeah, well. The dead ends are a frustration, and I don’t give it the time I should. Naps, you know.”

  “What’s your next step with it?”

  “I’ll see which of any of the four kids is still alive…doubtful, but maybe. Maybe the obits can shed some light on the next generation. The good thing is that as the journal ages, it seems like a more and more valuable relic. I have to hope that the current generation thinks so.”

  He shrugged, worked a large portion of dripping, smothered burrito into his mouth, and after a moment of blissful noshing, changed the subject. “So the ‘oh wow’ lady didn’t give you any hints about what they’re planning up top?”

  Estelle shook her head. “She said that they’re rethinking.”

  “Good for them, then. They dropped a chunk of money on that land. And my trail, Bennett’s Trail, goes right through the middle of it. I found that gun on what is now their property, or close thereto.”

  “Who knows?” Estelle said.

  Gastner laughed. “You’re just not nosy enough, sweetheart.” He pointed an unloaded fork at her. “You going to stop by this afternoon in time to see how the house project is coming before we get busy over dinner? Hell, they even recruited me.”

  “To make what?”

  “Don’t say it like that. I’ve been cooking for years. I know my way around the kitchen.”

  “Or at least the most direct route over to the Don Juan. What are you making?”

  “The coffee.”

  “Excellent,” she laughed. “We’ll come over a little early, but not too. I’d like to spend all afternoon there, but as I said, I’m trying not to be a hovering grandmother.”

  “Hover away, I say.” He swabbed up the last of the chile. “The contractor tells me that he’ll likely be punching through that east wall next week. When I first saw that music room foundation being laid out for pouring, I thought Christ almighty, that addition’s going to be a monstrosity. But now that I see the way Carlos designed it all, it just flows. That kid’s got a touch.”

  He tucked the papers away. “All this activity motivates me, sweetheart. The kids are always asking my advice or my input on this and that, but what the hell can I tell ’em except ‘go for it’? Little brother’s design is super, the contractor knows his stuff, what more could we ask?”

  Estelle smiled broadly. “That their two-­month stay turns into forever. That’s all I can ask.”

  “And you’re a dreamer, sweetheart. The rest of the world is not all that eager to share their hold on the maestro and his beautiful and talented wife.”

  Chapter Six

  “Rosanna wants me to fly to New York to confab with Ernie Gneice,” Francisco Guzman said as he returned to the dining table. He pronounced the last name of the New York producer with a hard G, even though the letter was normally silent. Francisco had been secluded in the back of the house, in a phone conference that had interrupted their dinner. “I don’t think so.”

  “The great man has summoned you?” Angie grinned and shifted the slumbering William Thomas, a movement that earned a contented little gurgle from the infant. “I thought you didn’t like him.”

  Francisco grimaced and shook his head. “I don’t. Not even a little bit. The problem is that he loves me way too much.” He poured himself a third of a glass of merlot and offered the bottle first to his mother, who put her hand over her glass, and then to his father, who slid his own glass within convenient reach. “Every time I’ve talked with Gaa-­neice in person, I always feel as if I need to wash my hands really well.”

  Francisco lowered his voice in imitation of the producer’s Brooklyn growl. “We would be honored to have you record blah, blah, blah, so come to our office and we’ll hash out the details.” He grinned. “Ordinarily, I might go, because there are always a lot of dollar signs attached. But right now, I have this teeny little window of time to enjoy my world here. So they can either wait, or they can jump a convenient jet and fly out to talk to me while I hammer nails.”

  “I thought it was Rosanna’s job to hash out details for you,” Estelle asked. “That’s why she’s your agent.”

  “And that’s because you’re logical, Ma,” her son said. “Rosanna Wilcox Stein sees the dollar signs, and that’s about all. She’s aghast that Angie and I are planning a residence in New Mexico. ‘New where?’ she’s fond of complaining. ‘Can you buy fresh milk for the baby out there?’ And then she always ends up saying something like, ‘I’ve never heard of Posado.’” He draped an affectionate arm over his wife’s shoulder. “No matter what we do, it’s expected that we’ll bow and scrape to the captains of the industry, so to speak. Bleah.”

  Francisco took a long sip of the merlot and shrugged. “Ms. Stein is trying her best to convince me that part of the deal is that I have to pay my dues, you see. Both Angie and me. We do homage to the powers-­that-­be at the top of the music industry. Or so producers like Gneice think. And maybe I will. Just not today. Not tomorrow. Maybe not next week. Maybe not next month.

  “Anyway, Angie and I have this other project that takes precedence.” He set his wineglass down and reached over to settle his hand on top of William Thomas’s head, stroking the infant’s silky black hair. “And we want to be here when my brother and Tasha visit.” He looked across at Bill Gastner, who sat like an aging Buddha, hands folded comfortably on his belly. “You’re still sure about all this company descending on you, Padrino? Disturbing all your peace and quiet?”

  “Very sure.” Gastner added nothing to mitigate his blunt response.

  “The deal is, if both of us travel in different directions, it makes it awkward,” Francisco said. “Angie has that concert and recording session this next week in Oahu that has been headlined into a festival since last year. So I get to go along and play in the surf with William Thomas.”

  “Ay, next week?” Estelle tried to keep the bleat out of her voice. “How’d I miss that on the calendar?”

  “Calm, calm, Ma. We leave Thursday, record on Friday, concert Saturday evening, home on Sunday.”

  “Jetting from here? From Posadas?”

  “Sure. Nothing else makes sense.” Francisco looked puzzled. “You’re thinking what?”

  “I’m thinking that I can’t keep track of you two.”

  “The trick is to remember that you don’t have to,” her son said kindly. “If we forget, Rosanna, aka Ms. Stein, will remind us.”

  For a long moment, Estelle argued with herself, then settled for, “I worry about everything, hijo. I worry about this little guy on a plane for umpty-­ump hours, even a comfortable private jet. I worry about the noise. The airport congestion. The crowds. The traffic. Especially the surf. The undertow. Worry, worry.” She managed a smile. “I mean, in New Mexico, we don’t have undertows. Or sharks.” She reached across and tucked Angie’s right hand in her own. “That’s what grandmothers do, I guess.”

  “You want to come along?” Angie looked over at Gastner and q
uickly amended. “The three of you?”

  “I don’t know,” the old man said abruptly. “What’re you playing?” Then he grinned before Angie had a chance to answer. “It won’t matter. Every time you touch a string, it’s heaven. But no…thanks, but no thanks. I don’t do Hawaii. Too many different time zones to confuse me. Besides, when you guys practice and rehearse, it’s either Angie on the cello right here in the living room, or over on Twelfth Street, where the piano is. That’s my kind of convenient. If you’re gone for too long, I can pop in a DVD and watch you.”

  “But you’re taking the baby?” Estelle persisted. “To Hawaii.”

  “Worry, worry, Ma. It’s either that or find a child seat that fits in your county car.” Francisco grinned at his father. “Or one that attaches to the counter of the nurses’ station at the hospital.”

  “You don’t want him in a hospital,” Dr. Francis Guzman said. “Way, way too many sick people hovering around. Or some doting nurse would steal him and not want to give him back.”

  “I could retire tomorrow.” Estelle kept her expression sober. She wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. “Then I’d be free to babysit any time.”

  “That’s going to happen,” Francisco laughed, and walked around the table to hug his mother from behind. “I think most of us wish it would happen. You have more than your twenty-­five in. But Big Bad Bobby wouldn’t know what to do with himself if you retired. Of course, he’s got more years in than you do. He could retire as well and be free to hunt twenty-­four/seven.”

  “You know, Posadas County is lucky in that respect,” Gastner observed. “We have a whole handful of cops who’d be happy to be top dog, and who’d probably do a good job. Jackie Taber, Tom Mears, Tom Pasquale…”

  “This is a conspiracy.” Estelle held out both hands in appeal and her daughter-­in-­law passed the bundle that was the snoozing infant to her. She stroked the blanket to one side and regarded the tiny, dark face looking up from the cradle of her arms. William Thomas’s eyes opened drowsily, the irises almost a deep indigo. He smiled at the face hovering over his. “Tell me what you think,” she cooed.

  “Right now, eat, piss, shit, and sleep is what he thinks, Ma,” Francisco said. “I’ve been trying to get him to practice basic chord patterns on the keyboard, but all he does is spit up.”

  Estelle bent so that her face was just inches from the infant’s. “William Thomas, tell me your father isn’t Leopold Mozart reincarnated,” she whispered.

  Francisco clutched his chest in mock agony. “Owwww. That hurt, Ma.” William Thomas responded with a mighty yawn and then smacked his gums in contentment.

  Estelle looked up at her daughter-­in-­law. “If I retire and go with you guys to Hawaii, may I hold William Thomas the whole way?”

  Angie started to say something, but Francisco was quicker on the draw.

  “Remember, eats, pisses, shits, spits up…”

  Estelle looked over at her eldest son. “Ay, you think you didn’t, hijo?”

  “Don’t pass this on, Mamá, but he still does,” Angie laughed.

  Chapter Seven

  Estelle didn’t hear the phone ring. Instead, her husband’s warm hand on her shoulder gently shook her awake. Through blurry eyes she read 11:02 p.m. on the bedside clock. She’d been dead to the world for a scant fifteen minutes, slugged by too much good food and company.

  “Dispatch,” Dr. Guzman said, and handed her the phone.

  She fumbled the receiver, finally oriented it upright, and managed her name.

  “You awake?” Swing shift dispatcher Ernie Wheeler’s tone was sharp.

  “Yes.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up, feet flat on the floor. Her husband was already out in the kitchen. “What’s going on, Ernie?”

  “We have a multiple shooting at the Register. At the newspaper? Captain Taber is responding and wants you there. Obregón is inbound, but ETA thirty minutes.”

  “The shooting is at the Register? The newspaper?”

  “Yep. Right across the street. Everyone else is rolling, including the sheriff.” He paused for a fraction of a second. “You awake?”

  “Yes. I’m on it.” Even as she hung up, she heard the nasal wail of her husband’s beeper, followed by his voice confirmation. She couldn’t hear what he said, but the tone of his voice was urgent.

  “Nobody gets sleep tonight,” her husband said as he hustled back into the bedroom. Socks, soft-­soled loafers, a set of clean scrubs, and he was headed for the door, all in a matter of seconds. “Hey?” He paused just long enough for her to plant a kiss.

  “They think two.” He held two fingers in front of her face as if checking her for a concussion. “They’re not sure yet,” he said. Then he was gone.

  In simple chinos and a black sweatshirt, she took a moment to make sure her badge was in place on her belt along with cuffs and radio, and that the Glock’s slip-­on holster was secure.

  Outside, the air was clear and calm, the sky of late May black with the first quarter moon partly obscured by fleecy clouds. The Charger started with its low, guttural grumble, its console and computer lighting the cab. Her stomach grumbled in concert as it tried to recover from the assault earlier in the evening of käsespätzle and maultaschen, heavy on the cheese and pork—­souvenir recipes of her son and daughter-­in-­law’s Christmas tour in Germany the previous year.

  “PCS, three oh two, three ten is rolling.”

  “Three ten, PCS. Ten four.” But no response from Captain Taber. Estelle sat quietly for just a moment, playing catch-­up. Then she pulled the car into gear. Turning from Twelfth Street to Bustos, she accelerated hard past the Don Juan. Despite the hour, the restaurant’s parking lot was still moderately full of patrons taking advantage of the soft spring night. Any day now, the blast furnace of early summer would light.

  From the Don Juan, she could look east ahead twelve blocks and see the wink of emergency lights in front of the Posadas Register building on the corner of Bustos and Grande, kitty-­corner across Bustos from the county building.

  Taber had parked her county Expedition crosswise, blocking Bustos traffic from the west. Even as she slowed, Estelle saw Sheriff Bob Torrez’s unmarked unit pull out of McArthur two blocks east. A small group of people had gathered on the sidewalk across the street from the Register, including county commission Chairman Dr. Arnie Gray, who lived an easy stroll south on Rincon Avenue.

  The lights blazed in the front room of the Register, and even as she palmed the mike to alert dispatch of her arrival on scene, Estelle saw Captain Taber inside the building. Taber straightened up into view, then crouched again. Estelle parked across Bustos. She exited the Charger and heard the first ambulance screaming south on Grande toward them.

  The Posadas Register was housed in a single-­story concrete block building plastered tan to look like adobe, the front of the building including huge tinted windows that stretched from thirty-­six inches above the sidewalk to just below the eaves. The bottom two feet of the windows were doubly tinted in dark metallic. In a graceful arc, Posadas Register was spelled out in frontier-­style twelve-­inch gold lettering on the windows to the left of the glass door.

  Pockmarks, their small fracture lines radiating out in spiderwebs, scarred the windows. The small holes walked across the name of the newspaper and then the door, the last three chipping the plaster on the west end of the building.

  Estelle palmed her radio. “PCS, three ten. Is Linda rolling?”

  “Affirmative, three ten.”

  Taber appeared in the doorway as Estelle approached.

  “Two to transport,” she said, keeping her voice down. She immediately turned back inside.

  The room was divided with the ad staff and composing room taking the east end in a clutter dominated by two large surplus drafting tables, lower shelves weighted with massive clip-­art collections. The c
ramped home of the news staff at the west end included filing cabinets, morgue racks, and a welter of photographic equipment plugged into chargers.

  Register editor Pam Gardiner sat at her ancient wooden desk, her eyes wide. A towel had been wrapped around her left arm above the elbow, and she held another under her chin. She waved her right hand at Estelle.

  “Take care of him,” she croaked and pointed. “Him” was Rik Chang, who sat on the floor near the doorway to the restroom, his back against the wall. Taber knelt beside him.

  “It just aches a little,” Chang said. He looked up, saw Estelle, and grinned nervously. “I didn’t even need to do a ride-­along to get into trouble.”

  The pad that he held against his upper left chest was his own wadded up polo shirt, and Jackie Taber stripped the sterile packaging from a large gauze pad to replace the shirt. Estelle drew Chang’s hand away, and she could feel him shaking. The ragged dark dimple of the wound three inches above his left nipple was small, barely oozing blood.

  “No exit,” Taber said quietly. “No clue where it tracked.”

  The young man started to shift, leaning weight on his right arm as if wanting to push himself up. “Just sit quiet, Rik. Captain Taber will stay with you. You’re going to be fine. The ambulance is here now.” She placed the gauze pad tightly against his chest and guided his hand in place. “Hold this for me.” She turned to Taber. “Make sure that shirt gets bagged, Jackie.”