Before She Dies pc-4

by Steven F Havill

  “Brand?”

  “A good match to General, Bill.”

  I sat down with a thump. “Well, that’s too bad,” I said, and was amused at Sheriff Holman’s immediately crestfallen expression.

  “No, I mean it’s great that you’ve got a positive ID. I was hoping that maybe it’d be a brand that someone here in town sells. Maybe some neat little local thread like that.” I shrugged. “No such luck.”

  Holman shook his head. “Generals are one of the tires that come as standard equipment on dozens of vehicles.”

  Estelle leaned across the table and Holman handed her the paper. “A big tire,” she said. “From a truck of some kind. Like the lug wrench, sir.”

  Holman grasped the back of one of the dining room chairs until his knuckles turned white. He rocked the chair this way and that and I looked up at him, curious. He was enjoying himself, and after a minute said, “But there was something else.”

  “Oh?”

  “The tires were brand-new. I mean brand-new.”

  Both Estelle and I regarded Holman with interest. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. The little mold dinguses that stick out weren’t even worn off.” Holman didn’t bother reminding us that he’d spent fifteen years selling cars and should have learned enough to be able to tell a new tire from an old one.

  “Wouldn’t they wear off just in a mile or two?” I asked.

  Holman shook his head. “Not the ones that stick out sideways into the tread channel. Thousand miles or so, probably. I think you’re looking for a new vehicle.”

  “Then it fits,” Estelle said.

  “What fits?” the sheriff asked.

  Estelle handed him the bag with the wrench inside. “We found this out there, sir.”

  “A lug wrench?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it’s brand-new.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then that’s it. We are dealing with someone who was driving a brand-new truck of some kind. Pretty unusual to have a flat tire right off the bat.”

  “But it happens. Maybe they hit something in the road.”

  Holman stood up, excited. “It’d have to be something big enough to really slice the sidewall. Just running over a bottle, or board, or something like that wouldn’t do much to a brand-new steel-belted tire. It’d have to be a pretty good road hazard of some kind.” He headed toward the door.

  “Martin…where are you going?”

  He stopped short. “I was going to take a drive out that way, scan along the shoulder of the road.”

  I beckoned him back. “If you’re going to do something like that, you need to call dispatch and see if Gayle can spring a deputy free to go with you, Martin.” His face went that wonderful blank that told me the proper synapses in his brain had failed to fire. “Until we nail this thing down, no one is roaming out in the boonies by themselves at night.”

  “Oh,” he said. By the tone of Holman’s voice, a bystander would have guessed that the sheriff was a freshly hired rookie, not the top dog.

  “But there’s something you need to do first. Howard Bishop was making a blanket check through NCIC for stolen vehicles or any other wants. You might shag Nick Chavez back down to his office and start him helping you on a trace of dealers in the South-west who might have had inventory stolen off the lot.”

  “That should be covered by NCIC, shouldn’t it?” Holman asked.

  “It should be, sir,” Estelle said. “But it’s possible that something was missed.”

  Holman looked pained. “You think that the vehicle involved was taken from some dealer’s lot?”

  “It’s just as likely as being stolen from an individual’s driveway,” I said. “We’ll cover all the bases.”

  Holman shook his head. “I’d think those new ones, with all the antitheft devices and all, would be tough to steal.”

  I glanced at Estelle and smiled with sympathy. “They got yours, right? Right out of the airport parking lot. No broken glass, nothing.” I shrugged and leaned back in my chair. “There’s a ready market for trucks, sheriff-especially the carryall class like Suburbans, Explorers, RamChargers…anything with lots of room and four-wheel drive.”

  “In Mexico, you mean,” Holman said.

  “That’s right. And as fast as engineers think up antitheft devices, the thieves come up with a slick solution.”

  Estelle frowned. “And we might not be dealing with auto theft at all, sir. That’s just one trail we’re following. It could have been a dozen other things.”

  “Like what?” Holman asked.

  Estelle took a deep breath. “The deputy might have run into a felon who got nervous. Maybe on the run from somewhere else…anywhere else.” She held up her hands in frustration. “We’ve got the entire continent to choose from. Or maybe Paul stepped into the middle of something else, like a drug deal going down.”

  “Out there?”

  “Why not? Sir, remember that guy last year who landed his twin-engined plane on the only straight stretch of County Road Fourteen? That was two hundred kilos right there.”

  “But you caught him,” Holman said, as if that settled that.

  “We didn’t catch him, sir, the Forest Service did. And only then because the pilot snagged a wingtip fuel tank in a juniper thicket when he was trying to turn around. If he hadn’t been delayed with that mess, all the Forest Service would have found was a cloud of dust.”

  I heard another vehicle in the driveway and recognized the wheezy exhaust note of Estelle’s little sedan. “Have you had dinner yet?” I asked Holman. He shook his head. “Then sit a minute and have a piece of chicken. It’ll help you think. It’s going to be a long night, Martin.”

  Holman didn’t look happy. He had been raring to go, to gallop out into the night. He didn’t like hearing that we were operating like a frustrated posse, hunting for pony tracks after a buffalo herd had already thundered by.

  Chapter 13

  Not so many hours before, Linda Real had smiled at me from across the Sheriff’s Department parking lot as she walked toward the patrol car, lugging her camera bag, notebook, and God knows what else reporters carry. And then the last time I’d seen her, on that Sunday night when she should have been on her way home from a date with a nice, friendly kid who knew how to behave himself, she was a torn, bloody rag doll.

  Now, lying at the mercy of all the hissing, clicking intensive care gadgetry, she seemed tiny, frail, childlike. Her head was bandaged with the exception of her right eye and cheek. Drip tubes stabbed into the back of her right hand. Her left hand was curled at the wrist, as if she were trying to hold on to something.

  Holman, Estelle, and I had arrived at the hospital shortly before nine that Monday evening. We entered through the back service entrance, and outside the double doors of the intensive care unit I was relieved to find only the village cop who was working security.

  Standing beside the hospital bed, I watched what I could see of Linda’s face and wondered where she was.

  I could remember distinctly a long, complex dream that I’d had sometime during the swim to the surface after open heart surgery three years before. After hiking for hours along an abandoned narrow-gauge railroad bed, I’d found a red glass crystal bell from a Shay locomotive. Then I’d spent days trying to find an antique dealer who would give me an honest appraisal for the imaginary artifact.

  Maybe Linda’s mind was off somewhere, engaging itself in adventures of its own while her assaulted body recuperated.

  Estelle reached over and took Linda’s left hand in hers. There was no response.

  I glanced over at Dr. Francis Guzman. Estelle’s husband looked as weary as the rest of us. A full head taller than I was, he leaned against the wall, hands thrust in the pockets of his white coat.

  “Any changes?” Martin Holman asked. He stood at the foot of the bed looking like a priest in his dark suit. If Linda awoke suddenly and saw him, she’d know she was in trouble.

  Francis pushed himself upri
ght and nodded toward the door. We went out in the hall; Patrolman Tom Pasquale looked up hopefully.

  “Why don’t you go get yourself a cup of coffee,” I said, and Pasquale was off like a shot. He wanted to be out chasing bad guys, and there weren’t going to be many in the hospital hallway. Dr. Guzman crossed his arms.

  “She’s stable. That’s about all the good news there is.”

  “Stable?” Holman asked.

  He nodded. “We’ve got the bleeding under control. That was our biggest worry.” He put his hand on the left side of his neck. “Two pellets did significant damage to the vessels in her neck. That was worrisome. One of them caused…” he hesitated, searching for the right word. “Well, a traumatic aneurysm is the best description. Fortunately for her the pellets were low velocity, comparatively. One of them nicked the wall of her left carotid. We had a balloon forming there.”

  “She was lucky,” I said.

  The physician nodded. “Another millimeter and the artery would have ruptured. That would have been that.”

  “When do you think she’ll be able to talk?” Holman asked.

  Francis managed a tired smile. “I can’t read a crystal ball, sheriff. She’s had nine hours of surgery so far. You assault the body that much, and it retreats. With the pain she’s going to be in when she regains consciousness, she’ll be under heavy sedation anyway.”

  “Nine hours for a neck injury?” Holman said, puzzled.

  “Not just the neck. She’s lost her left eye and the outer orbit is fractured. One of the pellets broke off two front teeth and did all kinds of damage before rattling around in her left sphenoidal sinus.” Holman winced, but Guzman didn’t stop. “And another pellet hit her jaw just under her cheekbone, an inch or so under the eye. Nasty, splintery fracture. There’s going to be lots of cosmetic surgery required down the road.”

  “A long struggle ahead,” I said.

  “You bet.” Francis took a deep breath. “A long, painful road. There’s a pretty long list of minor injuries that we haven’t even begun to think about yet. If she pulls out of this, there’ll be more surgery, more physical therapy. And with the loss of vision and the disfigurement, you can count on some psychological trauma as well. And by the way, Frank Dayan was here just a few minutes ago. He told me that his company is going to offer a ten-thousand-dollar reward. Did he talk to you about that?”

  “I haven’t seen him since last night,” I said. “But anything will help.”

  “Any leads?”

  “None to speak of,” I said. “All we can guess is that the deputy stopped along the shoulder of the road for some reason, maybe to assist what he thought was a stranded motorist.” I held up my hands. “Shots were fired from across the highway, and then from right beside the patrol car. Three shots. That’s it.”

  “No radio calls?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then Miss Real may be the only witness, is that right?”

  “That’s it.”

  “So there may be some risk for her.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “My gut feeling is that the killer is long gone. Some scumball just passing through.”

  “But you’ve arranged for an officer to be posted here for the time being…”

  I nodded. “Just a precaution. And to be here in case Linda regains consciousness and can answer a few simple questions. Someone needs to be here.”

  Guzman looked absently down the hall in the direction the patrolman had gone. “My guess is that tonight is going to be the critical time. You might want an officer here who’s a little more…ah…concerned? Pasquale has the bedside manners of a pickup truck.”

  I smiled. “Gayle Sedillos is coming in at ten, doctor. And the rest of us will be in and out.”

  The young physician reached out and took Estelle by the elbow, shaking it affectionately. “How’s Sofia?”

  Estelle grimaced. “Eating fried chicken and feeling left out of things.”

  “I bet. I’m going to run home for a few minutes while Dr. Perrone is on the floor. I’ll ask Lucy Padilla to come over to the house and give a hand. I didn’t mean for Sofia to get stuck as nana.” He looked over at me. “My aunt likes children at a distance.”

  “I noticed that,” I said.

  “Maybe Sofia can come up with some interesting ideas,” Francis added, and I shrugged. I was open to anything.

  Estelle Reyes-Guzman retreated to her tiny cubicle at the sheriff’s office to dust the lug wrench for prints. Holman and I were within fifty yards of Nick Chavez’s house on Fourth Street, behind the high school, when the radio crackled.

  “PCS, this is three ten,” I replied, and shot Holman a glance. “Now what,” I muttered.

  “Three ten, ten-nineteen.” I recognized Estelle’s voice then, and immediately pulled into a handy driveway to turn around.

  “Why doesn’t she just say what she wants on the radio instead of asking us to drive all the way back to the office?” Holman asked.

  “Because she doesn’t want half the county to hear the conversation,” I said. “And it’s only a few blocks.”

  It wasn’t Estelle who wanted us. The sheriff and I walked into the dispatch room to be greeted by Howard Bishop, who looked almost awake.

  “I thought you’d want to know,” Estelle said, and nodded at Bishop.

  “Sir,” the deputy said, “NCIC has a hit on a stolen 1996 Chevrolet Suburban, white over blue.” He stopped and I impatiently beckoned him to continue. “Taken from Todd Svenson Motors in Albuquerque sometime between eight P.M. Saturday and nine A.M. Sunday morning. The only reported auto theft of a new vehicle since the previous Monday.”

  “This one was taken right off the lot?”

  Bishop nodded. “The manager’s name is Kenny Wilcox. I called him a few minutes ago. APD took the report shortly after nine Sunday morning, when Wilcox drove by the car lot on his way to church and noticed the Suburban was missing.”

  “Keen eye.”

  “Well, he said he had it parked on one of those inclined ramps for show.”

  “How was it taken?” Holman asked.

  Bishop frowned. “No broken glass. If they jimmied the door or window, they didn’t leave any traces behind. Wilcox said he had one of those steering wheel bar-locks on it, and that the axle was chained to the ramp.”

  “The chain was cut somehow?”

  “Yes,” Bishop said, puzzled by the obvious question.

  “How was it cut, Howard?” Estelle prompted quietly.

  “Wilcox didn’t know. They didn’t leave the chain behind.”

  I looked at Holman. “Now there’s neat and tidy, Martin.”

  Holman’s eyes narrowed. He was happy to be on familiar turf. “Did they have a lockbox on the truck?”

  Bishop shook his head. “Wilcox said they don’t use window lockboxes anymore. Too easy just to crush. Even kids were swiping the keys. Wilcox said they take all the keys in at night.”

  I sat down on the edge of the nearest desk. “Did you happen to ask the man what kind of tires the truck had on it?”

  “Yes. He wouldn’t swear to the brand. That wasn’t on the invoice. Two other vehicles that came in the same shipment from the factory had Generals. But the size was listed on the invoice, and we got a match with the cast the sheriff worked on. Sixteen-inch LT235/85Rs. Standard size for that type of vehicle.”

  “Bingo,” Estelle said softly, then added, “it’s something, sir. The first real lead we’ve had to follow. It may be just coincidence that the wrench we found is the same kind that comes as standard equipment on those vehicles, but it’s worth pursuing.”

  Holman let out a high-pitched chirp of delight when the full import sank in. I smiled at Bishop. “Good job, Howard. Get on the horn to the Federales in Chihuahua and tell ’em what we’re looking for. If the killer was headed over the border, he’s had all the time in the world. He could be halfway to Mexico City by now. But they may turn something up.”

  “I’ll have prints off
the wrench in another few minutes,” Estelle said. “You might call Wilcox back and have APD dust down that ramp, if they haven’t already. We might get a match.”

  Bishop nodded and I slapped Holman on the arm. “Let’s go talk with Nick Chavez.”

  Holman glanced at his watch, ever the politician. I chuckled. “It doesn’t matter about the hour, Martin. This is the best time of day to work. You don’t have to worry about crowds.”

  Chapter 14

  At ten o’clock that Monday night, the streets of Posadas were deserted. Sheriff Holman and I drove west on Bustos Avenue past the park, and then turned south on Fourth Street.

  Nick Chavez’s home was one of those cinder block things that were built in droves during the fifties when the mines showed signs of life. Contractors had bulldozed the field behind the high school and dumped enough concrete to make fifty or sixty slabs, then slapped the houses together. The three bedroom “homes,” as realtors were fond of calling them even when they were empty, came with all the options-metal windows that let in fine dust during every windstorm, flat roofs that only leaked when it rained, and stucco that began peeling even before the second summer of blistering New Mexico sun was over.

  Nick could have afforded something more fancy, but his Fourth Street home had served him well, with additions sprouting and spreading as the years and the kids went by. A hundred yards from the front door was Pershing Street and Posadas High School’s football field. Eleven Chavez kids had graduated from PHS, the last just two years after my own youngest son.

  For sixteen years I had been driving a Blazer that I’d purchased new from Nick Chavez…and for the past fifteen years he had never let slip an opportunity to try to sell me a replacement.

  Somewhere deep in the house a television blared, but eventually the doorbell broke through the din. In a few minutes Nick Chavez opened the door, blinking against the harshness of the porch light. Any father with eleven children-even if they are all grown and flown-is going to jump to the worst conclusions at ten o’clock at night with two cops at the door. Nick put on a hospitable face.