Lies Come Easy

by Steven F Havill

  Al Fisher’s breathing was coming in jerky, spasmodic heaves. “Just stay with us, Al. You’re going to make it.” She reached up and took the small black steel clip that Danny fetched, the kind secretaries use for heavy folders. “Perfect. Well, maybe not…” She pointed with her chin. “Bobby, see if you can shift that lump of shoulder tissue up and out of the way a little.” The clip bit down on the artery, and the stream stopped, but Estelle could see profuse bleeding from a dozen other spots.

  “Get me some packing. Clean shop rags, anything.”

  When he delivered a mound of small flannel rags, she formed a smooth wad and pressed it hard into the gaping wound. “You have big first aid bandages in your kit?” Danny looked flummoxed. “Duck tape will do. Right now.”

  With Torrez and Pasquale supporting Al Fisher’s body, Estelle ripped duck tape around the man’s torso and over his left armpit, pulling the wad of flannel rags tight into the wound. Fashioning a smaller pad of shop towels, she covered the huge facial wound.

  “Okay. Relax him onto his right side. And Danny, we’re going to need that lathe to come apart so we can retrieve whatever we can.”

  “I can take off the chuck.” He didn’t sound thrilled about working in the middle of the gore.

  “Then do it. Tom, give him a hand if he needs it.” With a flurry of clanking chains, the overhead hoist was yanked into position over the lathe, and the chain basket that Danny had fashioned long ago slid into position around the two hundred-pound chuck.

  “Oh, Christ,” Danny moaned, and turned away, holding a hand across his mouth.

  “The problem is that the guy’s hand is stuffed into the back of the chuck, in pieces,” Deputy Tom Pasquale said matter-of-factly. He reached out and patted the bed of the lathe. “When you get it loose, set it here, real careful.”

  “It has to unscrew,” Danny managed. “I mean the chuck threads itself onto the lathe spindle.”

  “So unscrew it.” Pasquale’s brusque tone helped, and Danny reached for a heavy cheater bar that leaned against the lathe.

  “He ain’t got much of a pulse,” Torrez announced. “Little bit, maybe.”

  The problem for Danny Rivera was that as he manually turned the chuck to back it off the spindle’s threads, a fair amount of arm tissue and torn coat came with it. “We got to watch the harness. If that chuck slips, it’ll crush your hand.”

  “I’m clear,” Pasquale said. “Okay, take some weight now.”

  Danny pulled one of the hoist chains, and the overhead winch took weight, but not enough to bind the chuck from rotating. With a few final turns, the chuck came free from the spindle, dragging a fair amount of Al Fisher with it. Pushing the winch away on its overhead track, the chuck hung free a few inches above the lathe bed.

  “I would leave it right there until we’re done with it, rather than setting it down,” Estelle said.

  “I got to go outside,” Danny moaned, and headed for the door.

  “You have him?” Estelle asked Torrez. The sheriff shifted position and nodded. Estelle gently placed a hand on each side of Fisher’s neck, on the left side staying below the gigantic, ragged crater that had once been his jaw bone. She closed her eyes and listened with her fingertips. Ever so faintly, blood coursed through his carotids—not a full-blown pulse, but tiny flutterings.

  “I need to try and reach my husband,” she said. “Stay with him.”

  “Yup.”

  Outside, the bright, late afternoon sun was almost annoyingly cheerful. Danny Rivera leaned against the front fender of his truck, his forehead resting on his crossed arms. He looked at her, bleary-eyed. “Use our landline if you have to, Sheriff.”

  “Thanks. I do.”

  “Irene went visiting neighbors, but the phone is right on that little table inside the front door.”

  She sprinted over to the trailer, found the phone, and waited only two rings before Francis Guzman answered.

  “Oso, we have an incoming patient with massive, life-threatening injuries coming to you.”

  “Amputation,” he interrupted. “They called. We’re gearing up.”

  “Does Matty have Type O on board?”

  “I would think that she has some plasma, not whole blood. Is the patient conscious?”

  “No. Pulse is feeble and ragged.”

  “And still losing blood.”

  “Yes. I have a paper clip on the brachial artery. The torn end of it.”

  “A clip is better than nothing. If you have something fairly clean, pack it into the wound.”

  “Done.”

  “Good. I’ll get med-evac coming for a transfer, if he makes it this far.”

  “Stay tuned.”

  “Is anything reattachable, by the way?”

  “No. Bits and pieces.”

  “Okay. Be careful.”

  She hung up and turned to see that Danny Rivera had moved to the back of his truck as if he were walking away from his shop in stages. He leaned against the tailgate, pale and sweaty despite the December chill.

  “What was Al making, Danny?” She knew perfectly well that what Al Fisher had been fabricating no longer mattered at this point, but Danny Rivera needed to talk, to force his own blood to move before he fell flat on his face.

  “He got this plan off the internet for a suppressor for his rifle…a silencer.”

  “And you were letting him try to make it on your machine?”

  “Well,” he said helplessly, “he said he knew how. I mean, he’d come down here once in a while to do little jobs…sometimes to help me with something that I had going that required four hands.”

  “Lupe tells me that Al was a very helpful neighbor. Good to have around.”

  Danny nodded, trying for a deep breath that didn’t catch in his throat.

  Estelle regarded him for a moment. “Danny, let me suggest a large sign for the inside of your shop that says, ‘NO.’”

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  “I’m not feeling especially charitable at the moment, Danny. So, no, he’s not going to be all right. Whether he’ll enjoy dental implants, a new titanium jawbone, skin grafts, and long-term physical therapy, along with learning to use an artificial left arm and hand…that’s the best he has to look forward to. If a massive infection doesn’t kill him first, that’s the best.”

  “Jeez, I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, well.” While they waited for the ambulance, Deputy Pasquale, now wearing surgical gloves, made himself useful, carefully removing the bone and tissue stuck to, or in, the various surfaces of the lathe. At one point, Danny Rivera tried to approach and help, but his feet and his queasy stomach thought better of it.

  “I can’t do this,” Rivera said, and turned away. The victim’s hand had somehow been jammed into the hollow rear framework of the chuck, and riding there as the chuck revolved, had escaped significant injury. But from wrist to shoulder, Al Fisher’s left arm was essentially paste.

  Estelle grimaced as she used the parts washer to quickly rinse the gore off her hands. So quickly had she and the sheriff been pulled into the rescue efforts that neither one of them had taken the time to don latex gloves. She found a clean shop towel to dry the fragrant kerosene. Then she unlimbered her camera to take detailed photos, including several of Al Fisher himself, still supported by Sheriff Torrez. Every bit of Al Fisher that could be recovered from the lathe went into the transport cooler.

  “Been faster to put him in the back of the unit and drive him in ourselves,” Torrez observed at one point.

  “He’s got a ten-minute head start with you calling the EMTs before we went in,” Estelle said. “We kinda expected one thing, and got another.”

  “Three ten, EMT-One.” Estelle pulled her hand-held off her belt.

  “Go ahead.”

  “EMT-One is just clearing the pass. ETA six minutes.
”

  “Ten four. I hear you.”

  State Trooper Hector Dominguez escorted the heavy EMT vehicle down off the pass so quickly that more than once they could hear the shriek of tire rubber over sirens. Estelle knelt beside Al Fisher. He looked dead, but she was still able to detect the faintest stirring of pulse. “You hang in there, Al,” she whispered. She patted his right shoulder almost affectionately.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  With Al Fisher and his various body parts safely tucked aboard the ambulance, with plasma flowing along with various other potions and packings, the EMTs flailed the diesel for Posadas, with Trooper Dominguez providing escort, siren wailing.

  Estelle forced herself to take another comprehensive batch of photos before leaving Danny Rivera’s shop, and then sat down on the front step with the still shaky Rivera as he smoked one cigarette after another, trying to work up the willpower to thoroughly clean the big lathe before the blood ate oceans of corrosion on the polished machine castings.

  Interruptions had been a constant stream after the attraction of the ambulance. Estelle saw the neighbors coming, and had Danny lock the shop door. Solomon Apodaca walked over, his bow legs making his footing on the gravel road unsteady. Both Lupe and Flora Gabaldon stopped by. In only a matter of minutes, Estelle supposed, the Regál grapevine would reassure the village residents that it was not Danny Rivera, a favorite son, who had been hurt—nor Irene, his live-in girlfriend. “Oh…Al Fisher got tangled up? Huh. Too bad, that one,” seemed to be the general consensus. Not surprising, no one wanted a tour of the inside of the shop.

  By the time she returned to Posadas, she learned that Al Fisher had survived the road trip from Regál to Posadas General Hospital, where Drs. Alan Perrone and Francis Guzman waited. By the time the Med-Evac moaned in over Cat Mesa, Fisher had been the recipient of a good share of the blood bank’s A-positive blood, as well as plasma. None of the contents in the cooler so carefully packed by Tom Pasquale were of use in the stabilizing process.

  The air ambulance cut only the door-side engine during its brief stop in Posadas, and in minutes the unconscious Al Fisher and the cooler of useless parts was Albuquerque-bound…along with the distraught Maria Apodaca, who had learned of her boyfriend’s lathe accident just as she was signing the deposition that admitted that she knew Al had never gone hog hunting in Texas.

  No surprise there, as Sheriff Torrez pointed out. She did not know what the two brothers had been up to that snowy Friday evening until the obviously upset Darrell Fisher, along with his sleepy, cranky young son, left to drive home.

  As she watched the steep climbout by the twin turboprop, Estelle felt a surge of pride in their performance. Al Fisher would receive the best care modern medicine could offer. Hours of surgery awaited him, if he survived long enough. Repeat surgeries, no doubt. Agonizing physical therapy. All provided by the State of New Mexico, along with, eventually, a bed in the state prison.

  Estelle turned to Sheriff Robert Torrez, who had joined her at the airport as part of Al Fisher’s escort.

  “APD says they’re going to provide some security at the hospital,” he said. “Ain’t no use in either one of us makin’ that trip.”

  “Not right away, anyway. I want to go up tomorrow afternoon. Should he survive the trip and the initial surgery, there’s a faint possibility of getting some simple yes/no answers from him.”

  “You’re dreamin’.”

  “Maybe so. But there are so many questions. Myron Fitzwater is still out there somewhere, Bobby. Maria had no reason to lie about that. She admits slugging Myron in the back of the head, and that gave Al time to grab the man’s own gun and end the fight right then and there. If she were going to lie about that incident, I can’t see her admitting to Al’s turning the gun on Myron. And then, if Al talked his brother into helping dispose of the body—”

  “Maybe so.”

  “He left Connie Suarez lying in a puddle of blood, pretty sure we’d think it was a suicide, or maybe that Myron had shot her and then took off.”

  “Clever guy.”

  “Too clever. But we have one little bit to work with. Pasquale stopped Darrell Fisher on his way home from Al’s just after midnight on Saturday. Let’s assume that in reality, Darrel did spend the evening at Al’s, and now we can guess doing what. They weren’t working on greenhouse plumbing, or deer butchering, or anything like that. Their problem was getting rid of Myron Fitzwater’s body. No point in trying to bury it on the property. Too many rocks, too many dogs busily digging. Al is anxious to get rid of the Forest Service truck, and figures to shift attention away from Regál.” She held up two fingers. “The truck, the body. Al would want them both gone, drawing attention away from the scene.”

  Estelle could see the little crow’s-feet deepen around Bob Torrez’ eyes.

  “A six-hour window, about,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “So if we was to draw a circle centered in Regál whose radius included where Fitzwater’s truck was found up outside of Newton, then somewhere inside that circle is where Fisher hid the body.”

  She looked at him in mock surprise. “You didn’t sleep during geometry class,” she laughed.

  “Nope. But that’s a hell of a big circle. You could hide a whole lot of bodies in that much country.”

  “But the weather was awful. He’s not going to go driving off deep into the boonies, looking for a place to dig. But wherever he chose, the weather would cover his tracks, for a little while, at least. And that’s why we need to talk to Al.” She glanced at the time. “And now I’m due home, or I’ll have a revolt on my hands.”

  He regarded her tan pants suit, now grotesquely splotched with blood and dried gore. “You show up in that outfit…”

  “I’ll slip in the back door.” She made a face. “And don’t look at your own self in the mirror, Robert.”

  “We’d work for Halloween.” He pointed with his chin at the hangar looming at the edge of the airport tarmac. “If you get a chance, talk to your son.”

  “Oh, sure. Your phone works just fine, Bobby. He’d be delighted to have a call from you.”

  They rode in silence back to the Sheriff’s Office, where Estelle picked up the Charger. On Twelfth Street, her husband’s SUV was parked in the driveway. She glided the county car to a stop farther down the walk, and when she opened the car door, she could hear the piano.

  “Grand entrance,” she said, and before sliding out of the car, keyed the mike.

  “PCS, three ten is ten seven.”

  “Three ten, ten four,” Ernie Wheeler’s familiar voice responded. “Be advised that you have about a dozen messages waiting for you.”

  “I’m sure there are the same or more on my cell,” she said. “Right now, I don’t want to talk with anybody.”

  “Ten four.”

  She fished out her cell phone, turned it on, and scrolled down the display of all the people who apparently needed something to do on Christmas Day. Even as she scanned the list, a new one popped to lead the board as the phone played its incoming message chord. She pushed talk.

  “You coming inside, Ma?” To cover the fifty feet from the house to her car, the signal probably had to circle the globe.

  “I am, hijo.” She could see Francisco’s figure standing in the light of the window.

  He met her at the door, and his eyebrows shot up. “Ay, caramba! I hope that’s not yours.”

  She looked down at her bloody, gore-smeared clothing. “No. You should see the other guy.” The old joke sounded flat, but she managed to smile at her son. “Who’s playing?” She looked around the doorjamb and saw Angie at the keyboard. The young woman stopped abruptly and beamed at Estelle, but her smile of greeting crumpled as she took in the full measure of Estelle’s ruined pants suit.

  “Dad’s in the back getting cleaned up, and everybody else is over at Padrino’s. That’s
where we’re supposed to go as soon as you’re ready.”

  “A week or so in the shower should do it.”

  “Dad said that they had to fly some guy to Albuquerque.”

  “Yes.”

  Francisco grinned sympathetically at the cryptic answer. “Angie and I will do some four-hands while you get yourself cleaned up. I kinda like that new kerosene perfume you’re wearing.”

  Back in the bedroom, as she slipped out of her clothes, Dr. Guzman gathered them up and took them to the laundry room, adding only a single “Yuck” as his editorial comment. Half an hour later, after letting the water beat hard on her head and shoulders until the water heater showed signs of protest, she felt almost clean. The surface cleaning was easy; the mental images that remained weren’t.

  Uproarious laughter floated in from the living room, and she dressed hastily, loath to spend another moment out of the company of people she treasured.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  “So what do you think?” Bill Gastner rested his elbows on the table, pushing his dessert plate to safety. The Christmas enchiladas—both red and green chile—had disappeared without leftovers. The dessert—two more sour cherry pies not long out of the oven with designer ice cream melting with the heat—now was just a few crumbs. Gastner made a dismissive gesture. “See, this is the way I look at it.” He nodded at Francisco and Angela.

  “You two don’t need money—you’ve got a lock on that. What you do need is a place to live beyond hotel rooms. Someplace to call home. For those rare moments when you’re not traveling. Am I right?” Without waiting for an answer, he added, “That was the whole point of your original notion to buy, renovate, and expand Teresa Reyes’ place in Tres Santos. I’m kinda relieved the visit down south today gave the kibosh to that plan. Now, take a long, hard look at this place. It’s not St. Moritz, but it’s big, it’s historical, and it’s expandable.” He reached out and touched the wall behind him. “With eighteen-inch adobe walls, it’s quiet as a mausoleum. And you could put a big music wing off the east side, and no one would ever notice. Make it soundproof, as this guy here suggests.” He draped a hand on Carlos’ shoulder. “And you can play twenty-four hours a day without bothering anybody.” He grinned. “And health care is about a hundred steps out the back door. This Francis Guzman guy? He’s even got a dentist on his clinic staff now.”