A Discount for Death

by Steven F Havill

  “When he steps back, I want you to look right there. Right under the backseat.” She looked back at the sheriff, pencil eraser still touching the screen.

  “Okay,” he said.

  She stepped to one side and pressed Play. The kid hefted the two bags, George Enriquez said something that the camera microphone couldn’t pick up over the growling of the wind, and then the youngster turned away, disappearing out of view. Enriquez beamed at the camera, tossed a salute for the fans, and turned to slam the two doors.

  Estelle stopped the tape, with Enriquez frozen in mid-stride, one arm trailing back toward the van.

  “What did I see?” Torrez said.

  “That’s right.”

  “An empty van.”

  “Let me play it once more, and this time look at the space directly under the backseat.” She played the tape backward, and they saw Enriquez waddle back, pull the salute out of the air, and smile. The youngster arrived with the bags and gave them back.

  “Ready?”

  “Sure.”

  The scene played once more. “All right,” Torrez said when she halted the tape, Enriquez frozen again in mid-stride. “There’s nothing under the seat.”

  “Exactly right.”

  “Shit,” Torrez muttered.

  “Sir?”

  He waved a hand in disgust. “It’s just that I know exactly where this is going,” he said. “This is going to be the biggest damn nightmare we’ve had around here in a long time.” He flicked a go-ahead gesture.

  Estelle ran the tape on Fast Forward for what seemed like a long time. They watched kids scuttling at high speed this way and that, long lines of kids in some kind of exotic dance, uncollected crowds of kids doing who knows what, some in-tight and personal shots of enormous smiles, flashing teeth, and the Mexican school principal making a speech that lasted altogether too long.

  Finally, the youngsters all flowed to one end of the gym, the grown-ups gesticulating wildly.

  “What are they doing?” Torrez murmured.

  “You want me to slow it down?”

  “No, please,” he said instantly. “Just tell me.”

  “They’re sweeping for trash,” Estelle said. And sure enough, the line moved across the gymnasium, backs bending and heads bobbing.

  “They don’t have floor mops?” Torrez asked.

  “That’s not the point of the exercise,” Estelle said. “Now they’re going outside, and they’ll do the same sweep all around the school grounds.”

  “Absolutely fascinating.”

  “Just be patient, Roberto.”

  “The kid who shot all this must have a permanent black ring around her camera eye,” Linda laughed. “She’s really good.” She glanced at Torrez. “We should hire her, sir.”

  “Oh sure. We can’t even afford to pay you.”

  “Now,” Estelle said, switching the VCR to the Play mode. Instantly, the humans on-screen slowed to a sane pace. At least a dozen black trash bags, bulging fat, were lugged across the camera, the kids taking the opportunity to wave at the lens.

  A smiling George Enriquez, this time with Owen Frieberg standing on the other side of the van’s side door, accepted one bag at a time, stuffing the van full of trash. When the seats were apparently full, they moved to the back doors.

  “Watch closely,” Estelle said. The remaining four kids, waddling with their loads, lined up. Enriquez stood on the driver’s side of the door, Frieberg on the other. Enriquez took the first bag from the youngster. As the boy turned away, Enriquez turned and swung the bag up and into the van.

  “There,” Estelle said. The scene froze. She moved close and tapped the screen with the pencil. “Right there.”

  “Yup,” Torrez grunted.

  “It’s there for just an instant, and then the rest of the bags cover them up. I can see two distinct white cardboard boxes under the seat. Maybe a third.” She held her hands up, eight inches apart. “About like so.”

  “Christmas gifts for his wife,” Linda said.

  “Bullshit,” Torrez said instantly. “If those were gifts, or something legit, he’d have them up on the front seat, not piled under an avalanche of trash.”

  “The other problem is, we can’t see under the other seats. The one right by the door,” and she rewound, the figures dancing backward and unloading the van, “right here? The seat’s got a skirt of some kind on the side, so we can’t see.”

  Estelle stopped the tape, the blank blue screen staring out at them.

  “What do you think?” Torrez said. “What’s the simple explanation?”

  “I don’t know. Like you said, if it was something small and simple, why bury it under the seat?”

  “Did this camera girl film the group crossing back into the States?”

  “No. According to Barry Vasquez, they were waved right on through.”

  “So Georgie didn’t have anything to declare.”

  “Right. What bothers me the most is that they had an opportunity to make a pickup, if that’s what they did. They forgot ice for the party, and Enriquez told them they’d get it at little mercantile right there in Acámbaro. He and Frieberg went and got it. Both trips. Certainly in December, anyway. In May, they didn’t have the van, so maybe it came to them while everyone was busy inside.”

  “That doesn’t give us much,” Torrez said.

  “No. Except it points to opportunity.”

  “It’s not booze,” Torrez said. “The boxes are too small. I don’t think he’s going to try to carry something like grass or coke that way. Hell, the first drug dog that sniffed the van would hit. I don’t care how many tons of garbage were dropped on top of it.”

  “The simple fact is that when they loaded the van at the middle school, there was nothing under those seats,” Estelle said. “When they left Acámbaro with a load of rubbish, there was.” She turned off the monitor. “That’s all. First there wasn’t anything, and then there was.” She shrugged and watched Torrez’s cheek muscles flex. “There may be a simple, innocent explanation, Bobby. Maybe it was nothing. I just need to know.”

  Torrez leaned forward, his chin cupped in his hand. “Our problem is that we think —#8212;well, that’s wrong—we know Enriquez was murdered. But before somebody whacked him, he mentioned your name, or your husband’s, to the D.A. And then he turns up dead.” The sheriff fell silent, as if the three sentences had exceeded his allowed maximum for one outburst.

  “Frieberg is eager for us to know that he handled the revolver,” Estelle said. “I can understand that. But we have two connections between Enriquez and Frieberg: this trip to Mexico and the elk hunt thing.”

  Torrez shrugged and pointed an accusatory finger at the dark screen. “That’s a little problem right there, and it involves George and Frieberg…again.” He shrugged. “You’re right, Estelle. I want to know what was in the boxes, too. I’m willing to bet that you’ve got some ideas.”

  “I wish I didn’t,” she said, and let it go at that.

  Chapter Thirty

  The drive from the sheriff’s office to the clinic on Escondido was scarcely more than a mile, but it took Estelle Reyes-Guzman fifteen minutes. She walked out to her car and then sat in the silent interior for a few minutes, the radio and telephone off, windows tightly rolled up. Her mind refused to focus on a specific direction, instead circling from all points of the compass.

  There could be such simple explanations. The boxes under the seat of the van could be innocent gifts, perhaps fragile wood carvings or spicy Mexican candies. George had packed them securely so they wouldn’t be jounced on the rough ride north from Acámbaro to Regál. That could be.

  George might have been fascinated by the world of medications and read the drug reference guide as a hobby, idly marking various drugs that caught his fancy or that he’d taken over the years. That could be.

  He had loaned Owen Frieberg an expensive handgun to take along on a hunting trip or maybe just to blow holes through cans. Frieberg had returned it after a shor
t time, and when he’d heard that the revolver had been involved in Enriquez’s death, had felt compelled to tell police that he’d used the gun earlier…a logical thing to do if he feared his prints would be found on the weapon. That could be.

  It could be that beyond those possibilities, the affairs of George Enriquez and Owen Frieberg were not related in any way.

  “I can give you Guzman,” Estelle whispered. She glanced in the rearview mirror, as if Enriquez might be walking across the small parking lot toward her at that very moment. “George, what were you doing?” she said.

  Estelle started the car and backed out, turning first west on Bustos and then south on Grande. Less than a block down that street, she pulled into Tommy Portillo’s Handi-Way convenience store. With her mind still wandering through the field of “coulds, ” she ambled into the store, purchased a bottle of flavored tea and a package of fudge chocolate-chip cookies. The young man behind the counter could have fleeced her out of most of the change for the twenty-dollar bill that she handed him. She pocketed what he gave her without a glance and left the store.

  Back in the car, she opened the tea, took a drink, and grimaced. “Yuck,” she said aloud. She started to open the cookies, and stopped, looking at the package as if surprised that they’d materialized in her hand.

  The trouble was, all the innocent “coulds ” might as easily be replaced by sinister ones, and a troop of worst-case scenarios trooped through her mind, with those scenarios focused on the only connection that she could imagine that might involve her husband.

  She dropped the unopened package of cookies into the center console, screwed the top onto the tea, and started the car. The dashboard clock reported ten minutes before six. Irma Sedillos would already have started dinner for the boys and Mamá. With any luck at all, Francis would be finished at the clinic, with no calls waiting at the hospital. She should have been walking through the front door of her home, before her family forgot what she looked like.

  But the itch remained, and she pulled out onto Grande again and turned south. A few minutes later, she saw Louis Herrera’s Mustang convertible nosed into its reserved slot in front of the clinic’s pharmacy, shaded by a grove of small oaks that the bulldozers and various contractors had avoided. She parked beside his car and sat quietly, looking at the oak grove. She remembered them clearly before the construction, when Padrino ’s five acres had been a tangled, scruffy woodlot buffering his old adobe home from the drone of the interstate.

  She closed her eyes, almost a flinch as if someone had jabbed her, as the dark possibilities crept into her mind. “Ay,” she said softly and then shook it off. She reached across for the massive prescription-drug text and let its weight fall against her chest as she got out of the car.

  Estelle trusted Robert Torrez implicitly, yet she hadn’t shown him the book of drugs. When he knew about it, his agile mind would make the same connections she had, and she knew that she wasn’t ready for that. Why would George Enriquez bother to study a drug book, using a Hi-Liter to mark the best-seller list as if he were studying for an exam?

  An elderly man carrying a plastic bag of purchases held the door for her as she entered the pharmacy. The store was bright with wide aisles and low shelves, designed so that no products were either lower than twenty-four inches from the floor nor higher than five feet. The woman behind the register smiled at Estelle.

  “I didn’t have the chance to say hello when you were in yesterday,” she said.

  “Ella, we were so busy yesterday, I didn’t have a chance to say hello to me,” Estelle replied, and the woman laughed. “I need to see Louis for a minute, if he’s still here.”

  Ella raised her short, matronly frame on her tiptoes, looking over the sea of racks and displays toward the pharmacy. “I see his pointy little head,” she said. “Go back there and catch him before he slips out the back door.”

  “Thanks.”

  Herrera was bent over, both hands grasping the edge of the work counter, a thick ring binder open in front of him. Estelle stood quietly at the end of the counter, watching him as his lips worked. After a moment he shook his head impatiently, looked up and saw Estelle, and immediately brightened.

  “Hey, guy,” Estelle said. “You look seriously busy.”

  “That’s okay, that’s okay,” Herrera said. He frowned at the big drug reference book that she thudded onto the counter. “You’ve grown a new appendage,” he said. “That thing was stuck to you yesterday, too.”

  “Oh sí,” she said. “This baby and I are becoming old pals.”

  He sighed and straightened up. “Is there something I can help you with, or are you just thinking of changing professions?” he asked, nodding at the book. “We could use the help.”

  “I had a couple of questions I needed to run by you,” Estelle said. She opened the reference to the illustrated pages, turning first to page 311. “Francis tells me that Petrosin is a popular drug.”

  Herrera frowned and nodded. “Sure. Depression is a popular condition, whether the customer actually has it or not.” He grinned. “He’s thinking of putting you on it, or what?”

  “I think I’m getting closer all the time,” Estelle said. She turned to page 315. “And Bicotin Six?”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s popular?”

  “Well, I don’t know that I’d use the word popular, Estelle. It’s prescribed a lot, yes. Both Bicotin and Petrosin are.”

  She idly turned several pages, stopping as if at random. “I’ve never heard of this,” she said, and turned the book toward Herrera, pointing at the capsule. “Watrusil?”

  “You don’t need it,” he said, with mock severity.

  “What’s it for?”

  “An appetite suppressant.”

  “Ah.”

  Herrera watched her with amusement. “And yes. We sell a lot of it.”

  She stopped at page 332. “Deyldiol?”

  “Sure. Oral contraceptives. Do I get to ask what it is that you’re after?” He glanced at her sideways, half smiling.

  “Four more first,” she said, and stopped at each of the remaining highlighted drugs. In each case the answer was the same. Francis had been right. The eight prescription medications topped the list of brisk sellers.

  “Now,” Estelle said, and abruptly stopped. “You have some time?”

  He held up his hands in surrender. “I’m yours. You’ve only marked the eight?”

  “I didn’t mark any of these,” Estelle said easily.

  “Well, highlighted, then.” He tapped the last page, indicating the large capsule of Diamitrol. “This is white, not yellow. That’s true of all the ones you’ve showed me.”

  “Ah,” Estelle said. “Okay. But that’s not what I wanted to ask. Let’s say I had a prescription for…” and she leafed backward. “Petrosin.” She looked up at Herrera. “How much would that cost me?”

  “How much would it cost you?”

  “A customer. A regular customer, no prescription insurance. No co-pay thing.”

  Herrera pooched out his lips in thought. “Normally? Probably about thirty-six bucks for thirty caps.”

  “That’s what the insurance company is charged?”

  He nodded. “We don’t have separate pricing, Estelle.” He straightened up. “I won’t mention any names, but you can check with the competition, and I’ll bet my month’s salary that we’re lower. We decided—Francis, Alan, and me—that we were going to keep prices as low as we can. And a lot of the time, as I’m sure you’re aware, we don’t get paid at all. A lot of our Mexican friends, for example.”

  “So thirty-six dollars for thirty.”

  “Yup.”

  “Of the eight, what’s the most expensive one?”

  “No contest,” he said without looking at the book. “Daprodin. That stuff is almost four bucks a pop. It’s one of those new powerhouse antibiotics that hit the best-seller’s list after the anthrax scare.”

  “So thirty pills would cost me more th
an $120.”

  “Just about.”

  “What if I went to Mexico and bought them there?”

  He grinned broadly. “I’d be unhappy with you.”

  “No, really.”

  “You don’t even need to go to Mexico, Estelle. You can buy almost anything on-line from a Mexican pharmacy that’s dipping into that business and have it shipped right to your door. The loophole will be plugged some day, but right now, it’s wide open.”

  “How do the Mexican pharmacists handle validating the doctor’s prescription?”

  “Many of them don’t. That’s part of the trouble.” He turned and tapped the keyboard of the computer beside him. “Mira,” he said. In a moment, he’d accessed the search engine and typed in the name. “I know about these guys,” he said. “Let’s see what they have. I’d be surprised if you could get Daprodin from them. But maybe.”

  Estelle waited while the computer thought. In a moment a flashy web page advertising pharmaceuticals appeared on the screen. Once past the promises of instant delivery and lowest prices, the site became a simple typed list of drugs and prices in dollars.

  “Well, I was wrong,” Herrera said. “There it is right there. Daprodin: eighteen bucks for thirty, thirty-two bucks for sixty.” He turned and looked at Estelle. “Eighteen bucks, compared with $120.”

  “The $120 is your price? The price you charge?”

  He nodded. “And that’s below market,” he said. “At least in this country.”

  “Wow.”

  “Un huh.” He ran the cursor down the list. “Here’s Petrosin MN, which is the same thing as you’ve got there. “Seven-fifty for thirty. That’s instead of the thirty-six bucks that we charge.”

  Estelle studied the screen.

  “Where do you get your pharmaceuticals?”

  “Our wholesale supplier, you mean?” He glanced at Estelle sideways, and she felt as if she’d just stepped into deeper water. “We have regular distributors, like anything else,” Herrera said easily. “The companies lobby us pretty hard all the time. Lots of samples.” He patted his pocket and grinned. “Tons of nifty pens.”