Before She Dies

by Steven F Havill

  Behind him, I saw more lights turned on as the tiny village gradually awoke to the ruckus in Mateo Esquibel’s front yard. The old man’s dog ran out of the house and made a beeline for Bob Torrez, stopping a dozen feet from the deputy to bark frantically.

  I heard the guttural squelch of Howard Bishop’s radio, and then the deputy slithered out of the car and crouched by the front fender. “Sir!” he shouted. “Mears just let Victor Sánchez through. He’s coming in.”

  I stopped in my tracks and looked to the east, toward the main road. A vehicle was just pulling into Regal, going much too fast and fishtailing in the dirt.

  Turning to Carlos, I said, “Is this the rescue you were hoping for?”

  But to my surprise, he jerked Mateo Esquibel closer and rested the muzzle of the shotgun on the old man’s shoulder. “Get him out of here.” The urgency in Sánchez’s voice surprised me. I waited, framed in the doorway, knowing that more confusion might work in our favor, providing a safe opening.

  If Carlos Sánchez let down his guard for an instant, I could grab the barrel of the pump shotgun, wresting it away from the old man’s head. Failing that, I knew exactly how Sergeant Robert Torrez operated. Even as he moved into position behind the Suburban, I’d caught the glint of light off the barrel of his .308 deer rifle. One opening was all he would need.

  Victor Sánchez’s fat pale-green Continental slithered into the yard, almost taking off the door of Howard Bishop’s county car.

  He jerked open the door and stalked toward us, reaching the back of the Suburban before Torrez blocked his way.

  “Let him come through,” I shouted, and I saw Carlos Sánchez duck his head. He fidgeted and backed around the old man until their two heads merged as one. He pulled Mateo Esquibel a step back into the living room. When Victor Sánchez reached the stoop, I held up a hand.

  “You’d better stop there,” I said.

  “I don’t have to talk to you!” Carlos shouted at his father, and for the first time there was a crack in the younger man’s voice.

  Victor’s face bulged with fury as he looked at me. “What do you think you’re doing here?” he whispered.

  “Your son’s holding Mr. Esquibel, Victor. That Suburban’s stolen. He was trying to slip across the border.”

  Victor’s eyes narrowed. When he spoke, he had to force the words out through clenched teeth.

  “Carlos! Get out here!”

  “Be careful,” I said. “He’s got a shotgun.”

  Victor’s head snapped around like I’d jerked it with a chain. “He’s wanted in connection with two murders, Victor. Deputy Enciños and Tammy Woodruff. He’s not just going to let you walk in there.”

  I turned slightly in the doorway so Victor could see past me.

  Carlos saw his father and shouted, “Get him out of here! I mean it.”

  “Carlos, don’t do anything stupid,” I said. Victor Sánchez started to push past me, but I blocked the doorway with one arm. Without taking his eyes off his son, Sánchez said, “Get out of my way.” He stood patiently, waiting for me to weigh the options. Finally I dropped my arm. Victor stepped forward into the living room, standing between me and his son.

  I saw no weapon in Victor’s hands, and I was banking on Carlos being incapable of swinging the shotgun without having to twist away from the old man. That would give me room for a clear shot, and I edged my hand back toward my holstered revolver.

  But Victor Sánchez had a different agenda. I don’t know what he knew, or what he had been able to piece together. But right then, his small, hard eyes were focused on the shotgun and the old man.

  He stood facing his son, hands clenched at his sides.

  “¿Cómo podrias hacer este?” he whispered. “How could you do this?”

  “Get out of my way, Papa,” Carlos snarled. His feet shifted and I could see the knuckles of his right hand turn white.

  Victor stood stock-still, his eyes unblinking. “Is it true?”

  Carlos’s feet danced another nervous little two-step, and the muzzle of the shotgun dipped.

  “Is it true?” Victor said again, and the words were no louder than a soft puff of night air.

  I edged farther into the room, two paces behind Victor’s broad back. Carlos saw me, and this time there was almost a note of pleading in his voice. “Get him out of here!”

  Victor had read all the answer he needed in his son’s panic. “How could you do it?” he said again, this time in English. He shook his head slowly and spoke as if he were talking to himself. “Por nada…y con el viejo. ¿Por un poquito dinero, tú amagas tú abuelo propio? Your own grandfather?”

  Carlos lifted the shotgun, almost resting it on the ancient man’s shoulder. Its black muzzle pointed directly at Victor Sánchez’s face.

  “Dos personas,” Victor said. “¿Y cómo podrias robar de me? ¿Cómo podrias hacerlo?”

  “Papa…” Carlos started to say, and he sounded like a child.

  “No creo que…” Victor said, but it was his hand I was watching. His right hand had drifted around behind him, slipping under the bulky jacket he wore. Even as he pulled out the small revolver, he moved as quickly and gracefully as a dancer. Lashing out with his left hand, he pushed the shotgun muzzle away from the old man’s head, at the same time driving his right hand out like a prize-fighter.

  The explosion of the revolver was loud in the confines of the room, and Carlos Sánchez staggered backward with a cry. Victor pushed after him, wresting the shotgun out of his grasp. The weapon thudded to the floor as Victor drove his son toward the back wall of the living room. Mateo Esquibel, looking puzzled, rubbed his face.

  The two bodies crashed into the wall, and a small framed portrait of Christ dropped to the floor, its glass shattering.

  Jerking the handcuffs off my belt, I lunged across the room to where Victor held his son against the wall. Carlos’s eyes drifted past the purple, enraged face of his father to my own.

  “He shot me,” he said simply.

  “Victor, give me the gun!” I shouted, and even as I did so, the revolver thudded to the floor.

  “He shot me,” Carlos said again, and started to sag sideways. Victor held him by his jacket until the younger man’s weight was too much to support. Then he lowered his son to the dusty floor of the living room. I kicked the short-barreled .38 away and held up a hand to stop Torrez and Bishop as they charged up the front steps.

  “Take care of him,” I said, pointing at Mateo Esquibel.

  I knelt beside Victor Sánchez, and I could smell the onions, and the fried chicken, and the beer that he served at the Broken Spur Saloon. He said nothing, but his eyes were locked on his son’s face. The rage was gone, replaced by quiet desperation.

  “I can’t…” Carlos Sánchez said clearly, and stopped.

  “Lie still, son.” I turned to issue orders, but Deputy Bishop was ahead of me. He slipped out the door and I heard his boots thudding across the yard toward his car.

  “Papa,” Carlos Sánchez whispered. “It hurts.” Blood was beginning to leak through the jacket, and Carlos made a strangled, choking sound, at the same time that he tried to push himself up to a sitting position. And then his eyes glazed and lost focus. “Papa,” he said one more time, and died.

  I rocked back on my haunches and watched as Victor released his hold on his son. Victor never took his eyes off his son’s face, but he spoke in English. “How could he kill like that? And he stole from his own father. How could he do that? He just ran inside and took the money. How could he do that?”

  I didn’t reply as I stood up. Victor looked up at me. “Was he trying to leave the country?”

  “We think so.”

  “He didn’t even have a word to say to me.”

  I walked out of the adobe, leaving the two of them alone.

  Bishop came trotting back, his service automatic in his hand.

  “The ambulance is on the way,” he said.

  “And put that thing away,” I answered. I lean
ed against the Blazer’s rusted fender and looked out across the little village.

  “You want him cuffed?” Bishop asked.

  I shook my head and pushed my own set back through my belt. “He’s not going anywhere. Just go in and gather up all the goddamned artillery.”

  “No, I meant Victor. You want him in custody?”

  I looked at Howard. “Where’s he going to go in this world, Howard? He just shot his own son. Leave him alone until the ambulance gets here.”

  Chapter 38

  The Posadas County Sheriff’s Office filed no charges against Victor Sánchez. Over the next several days, we were able to piece together a version of what his son had done that satisfied us. We might have been wrong in a detail or two, but only time and a few lucky breaks would ever provide the answers.

  We found the police scanner stowed under the seat of Mateo Esquibel’s old truck; it was the type of radio unit with a power jack that plugged into the cigarette lighter. If Carlos Sánchez had overheard Deputy Enciños respond to the radio call about a possible disturbance on East Bustos Avenue that Sunday night, he may well have gotten nervous.

  We didn’t know yet where in the state the stolen truck had come from, but odds were good that it had ended up being parked for a short while among the many vehicles behind Nick’s dealership. If Tammy Woodruff had had the key to the stolen pickup, and all she had had to do was start the truck and drive off to Mexico, it should have been a slick deal. But Tammy was Tammy.

  Waiting in Regal, Carlos had made the decision to drive back toward Posadas, using the old man’s truck. The trailer hitched on behind was a typical Carlos Sánchez touch. The rig would look as innocent as the old man. He would have seen the stolen truck parked along the highway, and he would have seen the patrol car behind it, emergency lights flashing. And that had to have been when Carlos took the step to bail Tammy out of trouble, knowing full well that she probably wouldn’t have been able to keep her mouth shut. She’d sealed her own fate, of course, when Carlos realized what a liability she really was.

  The state crime lab provided a match between the firing pin impression of Carlos Sánchez’s pump shotgun and the impression struck in the primer of the single fired shell casing that he’d pumped into the grass along State 56 that Sunday night.

  And Sergeant Torrez demonstrated to us how Carlos could have driven Tammy Woodruff’s truck over the edge of San Patricio Mesa. It didn’t take a gymnast to stand on the chrome running board with the driver’s door open, since the vehicle could go over the edge at an idle and gravity would still get the job done. From there, it was a simple hitchhike back to town.

  Nick Chavez closed the auto dealership for two days while we went through the building one shelf, one drawer, one file, even one toolbox at a time…including Nick’s own office. Two days of patient searching gave us one answer that didn’t surprise me. Carlos Sánchez had kept no records. Not at the dealership, not in his apartment, not in the bank safe-deposit box that we opened on court order.

  There was no magic little book that listed who his drivers were, who his contacts were in other dealerships around the state or in adjoining states, or who his Mexican contacts had been. When his father put a bullet through his son’s heart, he effectively erased all of that information.

  There was no doubt that Carlos Sánchez had known where his father kept cash receipts at the saloon, and that his father had the bad habit of letting receipts accumulate. In one swift grab, Carlos Sánchez had been able to take nearly three-thousand dollars from his father—additional insurance for his trip south that night.

  I wondered what had stung Victor Sánchez more—knowing that his son had committed the murder of Paul Enciños and Tammy Woodruff, or knowing that Carlos had stolen from him.

  I stood in Linda Real’s hospital room Friday morning, feeling emotionally drained after the Thursday morning service for Paul Enciños and the two days of fruitless searching at the dealership and Carlos Sánchez’s apartment. Linda had accepted the news of Carlos Sánchez’s death with a tiny, resigned nod.

  “I was going to stop by Estelle’s place for a few minutes to pick up some paperwork. Any messages?”

  Linda’s good eye winked at me, and she said, “Nhhhh.”

  The legal pad was on the bedside table, and I slid it under her hand, and handed her a pen.

  Ask her if she’ll stop by once in a while, she wrote. I twisted my head and looked at the message. Linda’s handwriting was getting stronger and faster.

  “I’ll do that,” I said.

  You have all the answers now?

  “I wish we did, Linda. Some things we may never know.”

  She quickly penned, ??

  I smiled. “Am I off the record?”

  What record?

  I patted her hand. “Lots and lots of things we don’t know, Linda.”

  The biggest and juiciest?

  I laughed. “Now you sound like a reporter, young lady.”

  It’ll give me something to think about.

  “All right. We don’t know how Tammy Woodruff got linked up with Carlos in the first place. I suppose there’s no magic in that—they could have met in a bar, almost anywhere. But we don’t know why Tammy agreed to drive one of the trucks for Sánchez. We don’t know why she allowed herself to get involved.”

  Linda’s pen hovered over the page, and I could see the portion of her forehead that wasn’t covered in bandages furrow.

  Excitement, she finally wrote.

  “Maybe. And why would he talk to her about what he’d done?”

  HEY—boys show off for girls!!!

  “You think it’s that simple?” She winked at me. “Maybe so. Is there anything I can get for you while I’m here?”

  No. By the way, I told Mom that if she made trouble for you people, I’d never speak to her again.

  “That’s nice to hear.”

  Her pen made little circling motions before she wrote, Sonny Trujillo? What will happen?

  “I don’t know, Linda.” I took a deep breath. “It’ll depend on how good the lawyers are. They’ll get rich, that’s for sure.”

  A nurse wheeling a heavily laden cart pushed through the door, and Linda hastily wrote, You’ll ask Estelle to visit when she can?

  “Yes, I will. And I’ll drop by now and again.” I patted her hand again, put the pad back on the table, and shoved the pen in my pocket. I put the palm of my hand on her forehead. “Thanks for everything,” I said, and she winked.

  ***

  Pellets of snow drove down from the north, bouncing off the hood and windshield of 310 as I pulled into the Guzman’s driveway on South Twelfth Street. I gathered up half a dozen folders of paperwork that needed the signature of our chief of detectives—our only detective—and shoved them under my coat so the three-carbons wouldn’t water spot.

  Dr. Guzman opened the door for me. “I was just on my way to the hospital,” he said. “Did you stop and see Linda?”

  “Yes, I did. She’s doing fine, all things considered. Is Swan Diver here?”

  Francis grinned. “She’s in the study with my aunt.”

  I followed him through the living room debris produced by the cyclone of a small child and into what had been the master bedroom. The year before, Francis had hired contractors to gut the place, turning it into a book-lined office.

  Estelle was parked in a recliner, her crutches lying on the floor beside her. Sofia Tournál, looking for all the world like the attorney that she was with her dark tailored suit and severe white blouse, sat in the leather chair behind the desk. She nodded pleasantly at me. I wondered what she really thought about the first bizarre week of her visit.

  I greeted them both with a tired smile and then said, “Work,” holding out the folders. “Do something constructive.” Estelle accepted the folders and hefted them. “All the unanswered questions,” I added.

  “Fewer and fewer,” Estelle replied. She lay the folders carefully on the edge of the desk. “Did Gayle Sedillos get a
hold of you?”

  “No. I was at the hospital. What did she want?”

  “The Albuquerque PD called. A certain young lady”—she opened the leatherette folder that was resting in her lap—“a Carlita Nolan, one of the office staff of Todd Svenson Motors in Albuquerque? She turned herself in to the PD this morning. She says she worked with Carlos Sánchez. And she says she knows several others who did, too.”

  “She managed to hold out for two days, huh?”

  Estelle grimaced. “She was, or thought she was, making progress toward being Carlos’s girlfriend. A little posthumous revenge, perhaps, for his dalliance with Tammy.” She smiled grimly.

  “One more question down,” I said.

  I looked at Sofia Tournál. She had a pad in front of her, and all I could see was that it was two columns of hen-scratching.

  “And are you still finding life in Posadas to be the pastoral, peaceful vacation time that you expected?”

  Sofia smiled and leaned back in her chair. “All we need do,” she said slowly, choosing her English words with care, “is break a leg.” She gestured toward Estelle. “Then we have time to visit.”

  “You know,” Estelle said, “you never did answer my question.”

  “Question?” I asked.

  “Remember last Sunday night? At dinner?”

  “Last Sunday is a lifetime ago, Estelle. What did you ask me?” I knew damn well what she had asked me.

  I saw Sofia smile and push the pad she’d been writing on toward Estelle. “You see?” she said to Estelle, and turned her smile on me.

  “What question?”

  “I asked what you thought about me running for sheriff.”

  I shook my head. “No, you didn’t. You told me you were thinking of running. You didn’t ask me what I thought.”

  “Hmmm,” Estelle said, and frowned. “Well?”

  “What do I think?”

  “Yes.”

  I ran my fingers around the rim of my Stetson, forehead furrowed in the deepest of concentration. Estelle waited patiently. Finally, I looked up at Sofia and gestured at the pad. “Are those all the pros and cons? Is that what you two were talking about?”