Lies Come Easy

by Steven F Havill

  “Then how come…?”

  Estelle shook Penny’s shoulder, hard. “Be quiet and listen. You’re in handcuffs because you struck one of my officers and were behaving in a thoughtless manner. If you behave in a reasonable fashion, if the deputy doesn’t show physical signs of your assault, then maybe you’ll go home tonight with your son, and have the night to think things over.” She held up a hand when Penny looked as if she was preparing another blast.

  “And then, if she’s available and can arrange a Saturday session, you will meet with Gayle in the morning. First you with a deputy accompanying you, then your husband, then, if Gayle gives the all-clear, the two of you together. It will be the job of Family Services to determine the possible risk to Derry if he remains in that home environment.” Estelle took a deep breath. “This is your chance, Penny.” She turned and regarded Darrell, who was still trying to blend in with the furnishings. “And yours, Darrell.” She looked back at Penny. “The two of you.”

  Gayle Torrez smiled at Amy Salinger as the nurse chose that moment to open the curtain around the bed. Derry sat looking like a little gnome under his cozy wrap, and when he saw his mother, he immediately began to squirm out of the blanket, his ear-splitting, high voice repeating “mama” as fast as he could.

  “I have a little man here who would really like to go home to bed,” Amy said, and as the nurse spoke, Estelle watched Penny Fisher’s face. Softness touched the hard planes, and the woman’s eyes riveted on her son.

  “Are we all going to be smart about all this?” Estelle asked.

  Penny nodded, the tears now flowing unchecked.

  “We’ll shoot for ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” Gayle said. “We’ll start the ball rolling then. That’ll give Judge Tate plenty of time for Mr. Fisher’s arraignment.”

  With a deft twist, Deputy Pasquale released the handcuffs, and Penny immediately bolted across the room to her son, scooping him up as he stretched out both arms to her. Making a point to stand between the woman and her husband, Pasquale motioned for Darrell Fisher to rise. When the man cleared the chair, Pasquale turned him to face the wall and cuffed him. Darrell started to whine something, and Pasquale said, “Behave yourself. Sit.”

  “Do you have any questions?” Estelle asked Penny.

  “I just want to take Derry home.”

  “That’s where he belongs. You’re all right driving? You have a good child seat in your vehicle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’ll see you in the morning.” She slipped one of her business cards in the pocket of Penny’s jacket.

  Bundling Derry close, Penny Fisher headed for the door, but stopped as she passed Deputy Pasquale. “I didn’t hurt you, really…”

  “Be careful out there,” Pasquale said sternly. He reached out and ruffled Derry’s hair. “You’re the man,” he said, and pushed open the door for them.

  As the door closed behind them, Darrell Fisher slumped in his chair, trying to find a way to sit comfortably with his hands cuffed behind his back.

  Estelle stood looking down at him until he began to fidget, unable to hold her gaze. “That stunt you pulled tonight is what makes police officers want to retire early,” she said quietly. She turned to Pasquale. “Read him his rights and see if Tate will take care of this first thing in the morning.”

  As Pasquale hauled the young man to his feet, Estelle slipped another one of her cards into his hip pocket. “For future reference, Mr. Fisher. As of now, start being a whole lot smarter than you have been.”

  Chapter Three

  Snow fringed the holiday decorations that brightened the otherwise somber Posadas downtown. Four inches’ accumulation was promised by dawn, and if that happened, school kids would be delighted. A Saturday snow day wasn’t much use during the regular school year, since it wouldn’t prompt a cancellation. But during the Christmas break? Perfect. Complaints from motorists would fly as thickly as the snowballs. Snowmen would double the population of Posadas.

  Farther south, the ragged San Cristóbals would be graced with a sparse white cap, extending low enough on the mountain to make the highway through Regál Pass treacherous. For a few moments come dawn, the white flocking would be glorious until the sun burned it off the mountain. With an overcast day, the snow might linger long enough to make Regál, the tiny village nestled on the Mexican border, look like something out of one of Lieutenant Jackie Taber’s pastel Christmas card creations.

  Estelle swung into the Public Safety Building’s parking lot, and saw Deputy Thomas Pasquale over by the fuel island topping up his patrol vehicle. He lifted a hand in salute, and then pointed toward the office. Her ride-along didn’t wait, and ignored the automatic doors at the front of the building. Instead he battered his aluminum walker out through the employees’ entrance. Estelle parked the Charger and transferred her briefcase to Jackie Taber’s big SUV, but her ride didn’t wait for her to start it and move closer to the building. He scooted his walker across the parking lot, leaving parallel tracks in the slush.

  Bill Gastner, long-retired sheriff of Posadas County and a candidate for the American Insomniac Association’s celebrity poster, yanked open the passenger-side back door, slapped his walker flat, and slid it onto the backseat. He closed the back door, and with a hand on the SUV’s roof, opened the passenger door and maneuvered carefully before pulling himself up on the tall step. He settled into the front passenger seat.

  “You had breakfast yet?” He slammed the door and she waited while he fussed with the seat belt. His bulky, multi-layered corduroy coat, its collar trimmed with lamb’s wool, made the operation a tussle.

  She palmed the mike. “PCS, three ten is ten eight, one in custody. We’ll be central.”

  “Ten four, three ten.”

  “Ernie sounds as bored as I am,” Gastner said. “And you haven’t answered my question, Sweetheart. It’s Friday. Well, no, it’s not. It’s well and truly Saturday now. The Don Juan is open until two or better. We have lots of time.” He leaned forward and peered at the sky, a starless black void beyond the glare of the parking lot lights. “More snow on the way, they say. Then again, they tell stories most of the time.”

  She reached out and touched the windshield where a single flake had settled on the other side of the glass. Imitating the urgency of a television reporter trying to manufacture hot news on a dull day, she said, “And this is just some of the snow that’s fallen tonight in the metro area.”

  “You laugh now,” Gastner countered, and glanced around the interior of the SUV. “This is Taber’s unit, no?”

  “It is. The Charger doesn’t like slippery. Jackie’s in Kansas City for a day or two, so we’ll ride in high style.”

  “Ah.” He breathed deeply. “I detect her perfume lingering.” He reached forward and touched the miniature potpourri bouquet affixed to the dash. “So what are you doing out and about at this hour? I heard all the jabber about the stranded kid, but you and Pasquale have that all cleaned up.” He glanced over at her. “Francis is away at that damn conference all weekend?”

  “He’ll be home late tomorrow. And yes, I was at the hospital talking with the parents. It’s going to be a rough Christmas for them.”

  “What fun, huh? But look, do you mind a ride-along, or were you headed home? I’m kind of barging in on you here.”

  “Absolutely not, I don’t mind. And an early morning snack sounds good if they haven’t locked the doors on us.”

  Deputy Pasquale pulled past them, sending a snappy salute their way as he did so.

  “I crossed paths with young Thomas for the first time when he was twelve years old,” Gastner mused. The Expedition fishtailed a little as Pasquale accelerated hard through a rime of slush. “And he hasn’t slowed down since.”

  “His twins are in first grade now. He can’t afford to slow down.”

  Gastner humphed an amused grunt. “And we can stop t
alking about things that remind me of how old I am.” He pointed at the Don Juan as they approached, as if somehow Estelle might have forgotten their destination. She swung the Expedition into the spot immediately beside the handicapped slot by the front door. “And speaking of fates worse than death, Camille is coming down for a visit. Did I tell you that already?”

  “No, you didn’t. Anyway, sir, I like Camille. She’s sweet.” She lifted the mike. “PCS, three-ten is ten-ten, Don Juan.”

  “Not when she’s trying to talk me into a home.” Gastner maneuvered himself down to the running board and then the ground, both hands on the door. “That’s her agenda this time, if I’m not mistaken. Doesn’t that sound repulsive?”

  “A home where? In Flint, you mean? Like a retirement home?” Gastner’s eldest daughter lived in Flint, Michigan, with her oral surgeon husband. Their four children were grown and gone, the youngest now in graduate school, the oldest practicing criminal law in Detroit.

  “Grim, eh? It ain’t gonna happen.” He opened the back door and started to reach for the walker, but changed his mind and pushed the door shut. “To hell with it.” Estelle knew better than to assist, but at one point when they had to maneuver around one of the parking lot bumpers, he reached out and snagged the tail of her jacket. She took the easiest route to the door, and he released his hold on her coattails only when he could transfer his hand to the door jamb.

  “I saw an ad in one of those sporting magazines not long ago for a back country wheelchair…rifle scabbard, four-wheel drive, knobby tires. Designed by some guy up in Montana for handicapped vets, by the look of it. That looked like fun. I’m going to see about ordering one.”

  “Just the thing,” Estelle said dryly, and held the restaurant’s front door for him. “Give it to Pasquale for a couple days so he can re-engineer it for some real speed.”

  “Exactly.” Gastner covered the six feet to the front counter and planted both hands on the polished glass. A recent second operation to tune up a hip damaged six years before had been successful, as had the old man’s efforts to follow the surgeon’s orders to shed weight. Not yet exactly svelte, he had managed to lose nearly forty pounds. In the process, he’d lost some of his old man’s stoop, and looked ten years younger.

  In a few moments they were seated in Gastner’s favored booth, now overhung with a pungent juniper wreath flocked with something meant to resemble snow. The window provided them with a view out across the parking lot toward the southwest. At the moment, that view was fast disappearing as snow scudded down Bustos Avenue. Every now and then, wind rattled the glass.

  “I’ll need a menu,” Gastner said, and Eileen Goodman, a pudgy girl who’d been a waitress at the Don Juan long enough to learn her regular customers’ habits, looked momentarily blank. Bill Gastner, whose customer status at the restaurant had become legendary, hadn’t actually read a Don Juan menu in thirty years. “It’s all part of the new me,” he explained to the girl.

  “Well, Merry Christmas, new you,” Eileen bubbled.

  “The new you is looking good, sir,” Estelle added.

  “Well, diligence is the name of the game.” He accepted the menu from Eileen. “Although at eighty-four, I’m not sure I see the point of diligence.”

  “I’d like the taco salad with chicken,” Estelle said. “With hot tea, please.”

  “Nope, nope, nope,” Gastner mumbled as his finger drifted down the menu list. Finally he looked up at Eileen. “As long as you folks aren’t too busy, can I make a special request?” He flopped the menu closed. “For about the hundredth time?”

  “Anything.” Eileen offered a fetching smile. “And I bet I can guess.”

  “I’d like,” and he spread his hands six inches apart, “a junior-sized shredded beef burrito. Fernando will know what I mean. Not a grande, much as I’d like that. And no beans, no rice.”

  “Red or green, sir?”

  He hesitated. “Oh, how about Christmas? A touch of both. And just a touch of guacamole and sour cream on the side would make my day.”

  “No problem. Coffee, black?”

  “Absolutely.” He watched the girl head toward the kitchen, his brows furrowed in thought. “I was out at the airport today,” he said, and looked at Estelle. “Jim’s thinking of retiring. Did you know that already?”

  “I’ve heard that, but he’s talked about it for ten years.”

  Jim Bergin’s tenure as airport manager had spanned more than a quarter of a century. He’d seen the facility grow from a single, rarely used dusty strip to what Posadas Municipal Airport was today—both a paved eight-thousand-foot runway and a seven-thousand-two-hundred-foot cross-wind strip. The facility supported a modest conference center and airport hotel, both of which had been financed by Miles Waddell, owner of the rapidly expanding astronomy theme park NightZone, itself isolated on a mesa-top development twenty-five miles southwest of Posadas.

  “At the last county commission meeting they were talking about putting out bids for the F.B.O. if Jim really did retire.”

  Gastner shook his head in wonder. “Remember when we had a single dirt strip? With that old government surplus storage unit as an office?”

  Estelle smiled. “My memory goes back to a paved runway, a used mobile home as an office, and the pair of hangars that Consolidated Mining put in.”

  “Hell, that was just yesterday. Now look at us. Two runways, fancy taxiways, a helipad, and the hotel at the west end. And on top of that, we even have the station for Waddell’s little narrow-gauge choo-choo out to his park. Absolutely amazing. Earlier this evening when I stopped by, Jim was shuffling stuff around in the west hangar to make room for another corporate jet.”

  “Yet another. Who has the deep pockets this time, did he say?”

  “ViaJet, I think he said. A jet charter outfit.” Gastner frowned, looked as if he might add something else, and instead said, “Jim says he’s going to hit up Waddell for another hangar. There’s plenty of room farther on down the taxiway to build whatever he wants.”

  “This whole development will rival Carlsbad Caverns if the Park Service follows through on all their plans,” Estelle said. “But I think it’s interesting that we’ve become such a Mecca for bird watchers. The word is that Miles has tied down an Audubon conference for late spring. They’re after a migratory bird-count, coordinating with Mexico, among other things.”

  “He has three birding sites that he’s developed along the narrow gauge,” Gastner added. “Tourists can hop off the train at any one of them, and be picked up an hour or so later for the return trip. Who woulda thunk?” He shrugged. “Obviously, Miles Waddell thunk so. He’s a go-getter, that guy. And speaking of go-getting, what’s the latest with the boys? A little bit ago, you were worried that they might not be able to visit over Christmas?”

  Estelle sat back to give the waitress room to land the servings. And sure enough, Gastner’s burrito was far from grande. In past years, he would have fumed at such a diminutive serving. Still, it was a creative beauty, the colors of the cheese and two-tone chile blended just so across the top, the scattering of fresh greens fringing the sides.

  Her own taco salad was enough for two meals, and she caught Eileen’s eye and formed her fingers into a square. “A small take-home, please?”

  When the girl had left, Estelle dabbed touches of sour cream on the half of the salad that she was planning to eat. “I don’t think a visit is in the cards,” she said. “Not at this late date, anyway. Carlos has a major project due at school, and then he accepted a work offer from one of his professors that’s going to eat up his holiday break.” She saw Gastner’s eyebrow lift with curiosity. “And I don’t know what it is. He was a little evasive.”

  Gastner chewed thoughtfully. “That’s the trouble with these kids. They all of a sudden grow up and have lives of their own.” He waved his fork in her direction. “They grow from ‘Hey, Mom! Look at this!�
� to cutting you off, reduced to a need-to-know basis.” He orchestrated another generous bite and watched the flow of melted cheese. “That’s quite the truck Francisco found, by the way.”

  “Truck?”

  The old man paused. “Ah.” He looked contrite.

  “What truck are we talking about?”

  He ducked his head. “Out at the airport. But I probably wasn’t supposed to say anything. A slip of the tongue. Pretend I didn’t mention it.”

  “Francisco has a truck at the airport?” She put down her fork. “My son has a truck stored out there?”

  “That’s what Jim tells me. I didn’t want to go walking through all of the junk that Jim is trying to reorganize, but from what I could see…” He nodded approval. “It brought back memories.”

  “How so?”

  Gastner savored a dripping morsel. “There were still a lot of those trucks in service when I enlisted in ’46. Little by little, they were phased out.”

  “They being…”

  “The old military WC, a big old four-by-four pickup, most of ’em made by Dodge, I think. Others, too. Hell, the WC went way back, way before the war, in all shapes, sizes, and designations. This one’s a WC Fifty-two, I think. Come later, the civilian version was based on the old war lineage, just dressed up a little. First civilian four-by-four marketed after the war. The old Power Wagon.” Gastner squirmed a little in his seat, getting comfortable with his reminiscence.

  “And you’re saying that’s what Francisco has?” He’s twenty-five. He can do what he wants, she chided herself.

  “I’m just guessing, but a quick glance leads me to believe that his is an older military workhorse.” He watched the puzzled expression cloud Estelle’s face. “Sorry. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to say anything.”