Before She Dies

by Steven F Havill

  The western side of Posadas County was split by a four-tined fork of major highways. The county couldn’t have afforded to maintain two miles of any of them. The interstate slashed through the county from one side to the other, with one interchange for the village. Two of the state highways snaked into town to converge at that interchange—State 56 headed southwest to Regal and State 17 roughly paralleled the interstate.

  Further to the north, State 78 entered the county from the hamlet of San Pasquale to the east, edged around the bottom of the mesa, sped by the airport, and then swung northwest.

  If you imagined those highways—three state and one interstate—as the four tines of a fork, then County Road 14 was like a tangled hair connecting the tines at the midpoint.

  I drove out State Highway 17, knowing that if I turned south at County Road 14, Herb Torrance’s ranch would be only five miles of jouncing gravel road away. Shortly before seven, I pulled into a narrow lane that passed under an arched, wrought-iron gate. The H-bar-T spread was ten-thousand acres of grazing land leased from the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, tacked onto the original 160 acres Herb’s father had bought in 1920.

  If there was a moon that night, it was hidden behind the clouds that earlier had gathered over the San Cristobals and now fanned out across the entire sky. Herb had every light in the house turned on as I approached.

  The original Torrance home had burned to the ground on a summer Sunday in 1956, and Herb and his father had done the expedient thing. They’d bulldozed the ashes into a big pit, covered it with topsoil, and planted a garden. The new house, one of those things with too many tiny gables, pitches, and angles, was purchased from the Sears catalog and planted a few yards further up the slope of the mesa.

  Estelle’s car was not in the driveway. Herb’s huge pickup, crusted with mud from front grill guard to back bumper, was angled in, crowding his wife’s brown boat of a sedan against the white picket fence. If Patrick’s truck was there, it was hidden out back.

  I buzzed down the window and left 310 idling with the radio on when I got out. With all the mesas and canyons, radio reception on this side of the county was uniformly awful, but old habits were hard to break.

  Herb had solved the reception problem. Squatting in the middle of his front yard was one of those enormous satellite dishes that allowed him access to 150 channels of what passed for entertainment. By the time I’d let myself through the small swinging gate and skirted the antenna, Herb Torrance was standing in the front doorway, framed by the light.

  “Well, I’ll be,” he said by way of greeting. “You’re just in time for some dessert.”

  I grunted my way up the six steps to the high front porch and shook Herb’s hand. “How are you, Herb.”

  “Fine, fine. Come on in.” He held the door for me but I shook my head.

  “I can’t stay. Has Detective Reyes-Guzman been by today?”

  Herb frowned and then remembered. “Oh, the young gal. The one who looks like she ought to be in the movies.”

  “Right. Has she been by?”

  Herb scratched the top of his head like his monumental memory was somehow stuck. “No, not that I know of. The wife was in town most of the afternoon shopping, and I was workin’ in back, in the shop. So, you know, she might have stopped and didn’t think anyone was to home.”

  “How about the kids?”

  He shook his head. “Three youngest were in school all day. Benny went over to Deming with a load of hay. Ain’t seen Patrick since yesterday.” He didn’t sound pleased about the latter, and he carefully shut the door, as if he didn’t want our words to filter into the house for the wife and kids to hear.

  “What the hell happened down south, there, Bill. Where that young cop got shot.”

  “We don’t know yet, Herb. That’s why the detective wanted to talk with Patrick. He was at the Broken Spur Sunday night.”

  “The officers already talked to him,” Torrance said. “Every which way. He’s so tore up he don’t know what to think.”

  “And I’m sure we’ll have to talk with him again, Herb.”

  “You think it was just somebody passin’ through?”

  “We just don’t know, Herb. Sometimes folks remember things, you know. Little things that they didn’t think of right off. That’s what the detective was hoping was the case with your son. That he’d remember something more. Maybe just some little thing.”

  “Well,” Herb said, “I guess.”

  “But you say she hasn’t been by.”

  “Not that I know of, no.”

  “Well, then I’ll leave you in peace.” I started down the steps and stopped halfway. “By the way, when Patrick goes down to the Broken Spur, does he go by himself, or with somebody, usually?”

  “Oh, it just depends,” Herb said, and he joined me as I walked back toward the patrol car. “But he sure goes there too much,” he added with chagrin. “Kind of concerns his mother and me. He’s got an older brother and an uncle both who can’t stay away from the stuff. And Patrick’s been awful moody of late.”

  “Moody?”

  Herb waved a hand in dismissal. “Ah, you know how these young ones get.” He looked at me and grinned. “I think he’s got woman trouble. Mind you, the wife and I don’t pry.” He groped a cigarette out of his pocket and turned his back to the breeze while he lit it.

  “Who’s he been squiring around?” I asked pleasantly, as if it were just a passing thought.

  “You name it,” Herb said. “Anything with tits, at his age.” He held the door of 310 while I settled into the seat. “The one he’s really moonin’ after at the moment is that little gal from town. The one who used to be hitched up real tight with Gus Prescott’s boy?”

  “Tammy Woodruff?”

  “Sure,” Herb said. “I guess Brett cut her loose, and now Patrick’s givin’ it a turn.” He smiled again and patted the door of 310. “Or tryin’ to. He tried once before, seems to me. Sure as hell glad I don’t have to go through none of that anymore.”

  “Amen,” I said, and pulled 310 into reverse. “But you haven’t seen him today?”

  Torrance ducked his head. “No. He sometimes stays with a friend, or somethin’ like that. Him and Benny used to light out to Juarez once in a while, but if that’s where he went, then he went by himself.”

  I grinned. “These kids are kind of hard to keep track of, aren’t they.”

  “You got that right. But hell, he’s on his own now. I don’t pry. Long as the work gets done when he’s livin’ at home.”

  I took my foot off the brake, and 310 started to drift backward. Torrance straightened up. “If the detective does stop by later this evening, tell her to call the office, will you?” I said.

  “You bet.”

  “’Preciate it. You take care.”

  I idled the car slowly out the Torrance driveway, and as I left the circle of light from the house, the blackness was formidable. In the distance, over the mesa to the east, was the dull glow of Posadas, just enough to be noticed out of the corner of the eye. A single light flickered in the west, over where Francisco Peña and his family lived.

  I drove south on County Road 14 for two miles until I reached the intersection with County Road 27, another rough gravel byway that cut through the heart of the lava flow. I continued south, idling along 14 as it zigzagged down through first one arroyo and then another.

  After five miles I started up the incline of San Patricio Mesa. The road was narrow and rock-strewn, steep enough that the patrol car kicked gravel noisily, lurching now and then as the back tires scrabbled for traction. If the county had ever brought a road grader out here, it hadn’t been in the past six months.

  I reached the top of the mesa, and if there had been moonlight, I could have seen the graceful C-curve sweep as the road paralleled the lip of the mesa, to descend on the other side to the flat brush country that was cut by State 56.

  I stopped for a moment, looking out into the blackness. If Patrick Torran
ce cared enough about booze that he took this road frequently to the Broken Spur, then his father had every reason to be concerned.

  “Three ten, three oh two.”

  I damn near banged the top of my head against the roof.

  “Jesus,” I said, and reached for the mike. “Three oh two, go ahead.”

  “Are you on top of the mesa?” Estelle’s voice was quiet, but I recognized the scratchy, thin quality of a handheld radio. Her broadcast wouldn’t carry two miles before it would be bounced to death in the myriad canyons that cut the mesa side.

  “Ten-four. Where the hell are you?”

  “Sir, drive around the rim until you see my car. It’s pulled way in, behind a grove of piñon. I’m down the hill from that.”

  “What are you doing?”

  There was a moment’s hesitation. “I’ve got a little problem, sir.”

  Chapter 24

  No lights flickered down in the black hole formed by the curve of the mesa rim. In several places the road skirted the very edge. When the road had been made in the 1930s, the dozer operators must have had fun watching the cottage-sized rocks plunge down the hill, smashing piñon and juniper, shedding chunks, and finally shattering into a million pieces.

  Now and then through openings in the trees I could see two lights flickering out on the prairie, far in the distance. One was the Broken Spur to the southeast. The other was so far away I could only catch the flicker out of the corner of my eye—maybe Gus Prescott’s place north of Moore.

  I slowed 310 to an idle and buzzed down both front windows. The winter air was dry and cold, the wind strong and steady from the northwest.

  “My car’s just ahead of you, in that piñon grove to your right.”

  I switched my radio to the car-to-car channel so I wouldn’t blast my side of our curious conversation all over the county.

  “And where are you?” I asked.

  “Down the hillside about a hundred yards.”

  “Shine your flashlight.”

  Silence for about six heartbeats followed, and then Estelle said, “I don’t have it with me, sir.”

  A moonlit walk would be one thing, but the night was moon-feeble at best. With my heart driven up into my throat by apprehension, I drove 310 as close to the edge as I could and swiveled the spotlight around so the beam stabbed into the darkness. The rock slope plunged down at sixty degrees or better, a long slide of granite and steel-gray tree fragments. Fifty yards down from the road cut a spine of rock outcropping jutted from the talus slope, its form softened by a stand of ponderosa pine and scrub.

  “A little to the south, sir,” Estelle said. “By the trees.” I drifted the beam across the slope and into the pines, then worked up toward where the spine first erupted from the slope. I saw motion at the same time that Estelle said, “Right here.”

  In the wash of light from the spotlight, I could make out a tiny figure. She waved a hand. I jammed the gear lever into park, stamped down the parking brake, and got out of the car for a better view. The place was enough to give me the willies in broad daylight, much less on a February night with the wind beginning to moan up through the trees.

  “What have you found down there?” I asked.

  “Nothing right here, sir,” she said.

  “Are you all right?”

  The hesitation told me she wasn’t, but after a moment she said, “I just sprained my ankle. It’s kind of slow going.”

  “So you aren’t all right,” I muttered, and then said into the radio, “How long have you been here?”

  “Since about three o’clock.”

  I groaned. With my flashlight in one hand and the handheld radio in the other I walked along the edge of the slope, searching for a route down through the rocks. When I was directly above Estelle’s position I pointed the flashlight downhill. She was so far away the narrow beam was lost in the glare of the spotlight.

  “I’m going to call rescue, Estelle. Are you going to be all right for a few more minutes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you bleeding?”

  Another pause, and then she said, “No. Really, I just sprained my ankle. I can’t put any weight on it, so I can only come up the hill one rock at a time.”

  “All right, now listen,” I said, as if she had much choice. “It’s going to take me a while to get down there. In the meantime, just sit still. Stop trying to move. I’ll radio the EMTs, so they’ll be on the way.”

  I started back toward 310. “I don’t think you should come down here, sir,” Estelle radioed. I almost chuckled. Hell, I didn’t think so, either. But it would be close to an hour before the EMTs could reach her. A lot could happen in an hour. She’d been stranded on that hillside for half a day. Hurt as she was, her reserves had to be about shot.

  “I’ll be careful,” I replied.

  “Sir, before you do anything, you need to make sure that the shoulder of the road is secured from the spot just south of where I’ve parked all the way back to where the road goes into the trees.”

  “We’ll worry about that later, Estelle. Let me get rescue on the way.”

  “Sir…” her tone was sharp enough to stop me in my tracks.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Sir, all the way at the bottom of this rock slide, a hundred yards below me, there’s a pickup truck, or what’s left of one. I don’t think your light will carry far enough, but if you drive forward and park right behind my car, you may be able to catch a glimpse of it with your spotlight. Don’t drive along the edge any farther, though. You’ll obscure the tracks.”

  “A recent wreck, you mean?”

  “Yes, sir. I got close enough to see that it was a late model white over blue Ford. I almost got close enough to see the license plate before I fell. I think it’s Tammy Woodruff’s.”

  I sagged against the door of 310 for a minute and cursed a long, eloquent string. Then I used the car’s boosted radio to call dispatch. Gayle Sedillos was working, so I only had to say things once. Posadas County Search and Rescue would arrive in forty minutes, close on the heels of a Posadas County EMT unit. I had asked for a silent approach, no lights, no siren. I didn’t want a million extra feet trampling the evidence.

  I told Gayle to dispatch Sergeant Torrez. I glanced at my watch. Even if Bob had been waiting with the nose of his patrol car pointed in the right direction, it would still take him nearly thirty minutes to reach us.

  I picked up the handheld radio. “Estelle, help’s on the way. How are you doing?”

  “All right, sir.”

  She didn’t sound all right. My imagination heard her voice fading and distant. I pulled the large first-aid kit from the trunk of the car and slung the strap over my shoulder. With that and a blanket tucked under my arm, I stood on the road, looking down the hill. There was no easy way.

  “One rock at a time,” I said aloud, and stepped off the road’s crumbling shoulder.

  It would have been a hell of a lot easier without so much belly preceding me. The spotlight from the patrol car created hard, razoredged shadows. Part of the rock was illuminated as brightly as noon, while the backside, the side waiting to receive a foot or hand, was pitch black. The bottom half of my bifocals swam the shadows together until finally, with a curse of irritation, I stopped, snatched off my glasses, and stuffed them in my shirt pocket.

  After fifty feet, I was breathing hard. I stopped and peered ahead. Somehow, Estelle’s tiny figure, a little lump against the gray of the rocks, didn’t look any closer.

  I slid the radio out of my belt holster. “Be patient,” I said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  I took a deep breath and leaned against a rock, shifting with a grunt when one of its razors dug into my elbow. “How did you know it was me driving by?” I asked.

  Even the lousy metallic filter of the radio couldn’t completely wash away the soft warmth of her voice. “No one drives the way you do, sir.” She didn’t elaborate.

  It took another twenty minutes for me to descend, on
e rock at a time, to within conversational distance of Estelle. I took another short breather. This time, Estelle’s voice drifted over the rocks without radio delivery.

  “I’m sorry for all this,” she said.

  “Me, too,” I replied, and promptly stumbled as a small, angular rock turned under my foot. My arms flailed as I windmilled for balance and the handheld radio went flying off into the darkness. I cursed and dropped into a crouch to shift my center of balance downward. “No worry,” I said, breathing in gasps. “What’s an eight-hundred dollar Motorola more or less.” I flipped the beam of my flashlight back and forth, but didn’t see the radio.

  With one hand uphill as a prop and the other clutching the first-aid kit and blanket, I stumbled the final yards to Estelle’s position. She was sitting with one leg drawn up, arms clasped around her knee, and the other leg stretched out downhill.

  “Jesus,” I said when the beam of the light touched her face. Her left cheek, eye, and forehead were a mass of sticky, dried blood. She held up her right hand defensively as I reached out to push her hair to one side, then held still while I examined her head. “No blood, huh,” I said. “That’s quite a gash you’ve got there above your eyebrow.”

  “I did an Olympic-quality cartwheel,” she said, and managed a lopsided grin.

  “Did it knock you out?”

  She shook her head once from side to side. “I wish it had. It would have hurt less. I did a pretty good job on my right ankle. That’s why I fell. A rock turned, and I pitched off-balance downhill.”

  I swung the flashlight down. She was wearing blue jeans and a black version of the sturdy waffle-soled oxfords that nurses wear.

  “Great hiking shoes, doll,” I muttered.

  “I didn’t plan any of this, sir.”

  “Let me look,” I said, and even a gentle touch that was only enough to move her jean cuff upward brought a flinch. I was no orthopedist, but I knew in what general direction a foot hanging off the end of an uninjured leg should point. Hers didn’t.

  “Nah, it’s not sprained,” I said, then added, “busted into a million tiny pieces, maybe. But definitely not sprained.”