Easy Errors

by Steven F Havill

  “Not exactly a needle in a haystack, but gettin’ close,” Mr. Holmes said. “We’ll give it a try. You want me to drive on back there?”

  “No. Until we’re finished, I want you parked right here. And I want you to try and relax. When the time comes, you’ll be riding with one of the officers. In the meantime, we’ll take a statement from your wife as well.” I heard the whoop of sirens as first one and then the second ambulance departed.

  I beckoned to Torrez, who stood by the back fender of the Cadillac, expression impassive. During my conversation with Riley Holmes, he hadn’t said a word.

  “Walk back with me.” I gestured toward the east, toward the closed ramp. We had reached the crest of the ramp when one of the diesel fire trucks down below cut loose with a long blast of its air horn. A white Oldsmobile drove south, the wrong way on the northbound lanes under the bridge. The car cleared the immediate accident site, then executed a lurching, awkward U-turn.

  What we didn’t need was a frantic parent on the scene. Our dispatcher hadn’t telephoned him, but Assistant District Attorney Willis Browning had his own police scanner.

  Chapter Three

  Sheriff Eduardo Salcido intended to meet with Browning, but the distraught man didn’t give the sheriff the chance. Salcido stretched out a hand toward him and said something that I couldn’t hear, but Browning had already put the scene together. The second ambulance had just screamed away. The DA turned on his heel and dashed back to his car. He moved quickly for a heavy guy—even heavier than me. And then, with a chirp of rubber, the Oldsmobile shot up the one semi-clear lane, under the bridge through the remains of the yellow tape that he’d already ignored.

  Sheriff Salcido turned and saw me. “Oh, boy,” he said, his head shaking. That’s about all the profanity the sheriff ever allowed himself. “This is a bad one, Bill.” He pronounced my name Bee-il, his accent heavy and tired. “I guess Browning is going on over to the hospital.”

  He turned and nodded at Deputy Torrez’ approach. “How’s this one doing?”

  “Holding up,” I said, then added, “I think.” Robert Torrez didn’t exactly drape his emotions or innermost thoughts on his sleeve. “He should be with his folks now, Eduardo.”

  “Let me tell you what,” the sheriff mused. He smoothed his luxurious mustache. “I’ll take him with me, and we’ll go get Modesto and Ariana. I’ll accompany them to the hospital.”

  “That would be good. He wants to stay here and help, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Salcido shook his head vehemently. “He’s got enough bad memories now to last the rest of his life.” He exhaled a long, heartfelt sigh. “You’re going to stay here and make sure we cover every inch, okay?” During his twenty-year stint with the New Mexico State Police decades before, Salcido had earned a reputation as one of the best accident reconstruction specialists. This time, he wasn’t just avoiding work. To him, the most important job was dealing with relatives—and both Browning and the Torrezes would be at the hospital. When he was finished there, no matter how long it took, I expected he would return to the scene to make sure we didn’t miss a single paint chip.

  “Yes. And we have a witness.” I nodded up the ramp. “It looks like the Suburban sideswiped another vehicle a ways back on the interstate…before losing it on the ramp. They’re a snowbird couple from Ohio. Mears is taking a statement from the driver and passenger now, and then they’re going to go back down the highway and search for fragments. The collision ripped off their driver’s side mirror. We’ll find the pieces, and that’ll pinpoint the first impact for us.”

  “Por Dios,” the sheriff murmured. “To do this, let me tell you, they came down that ramp way, way too fast.”

  “Chris Browning lost it long before the ramp, Eduardo. My guess right now is that he just panicked. Maybe he felt or heard it when he touched the other car, maybe not. But no experience, speeding, and I’m guessing drunk…every card was stacked against him.”

  “I smelled the beer in the truck.”

  “Yep. I don’t know about you…” I reached out a hand and clamped it on Deputy Torrez’ shoulder as he reached us, holding him in place as I said to the sheriff, “…but I’m real interested in finding out where they got the booze.”

  “I want to work on that,” Torrez said.

  “What you want to do is take a few days off to be with your family,” the sheriff said.

  “What good will that do?” The question wasn’t insolent or insubordinate—just a flat, quiet question that begged an answer. The sheriff regarded Torrez for a long moment. The ghost of a smile touched his broad face. Eduardo was a true gentle man. In all the years I’d know him, in all the years I’d served under him as deputy, chief deputy, and now undersheriff, I’d never heard him unnecessarily pull rank with one of his officers.

  “Someday you will know,” he said softly. “When parents lose a child, they will take some comfort in drawing the other members of the family in close.” He made an inclusive gesture, like a mother hen gathering the chicks. “So you be there with them now, Roberto. The rest of this,” and he turned to nod at the carnage, “anybody can take care of. Your folks? You take care of them.” He studied Torrez long enough that the young man shifted uncomfortably.

  “That little thing in the paperwork…notification of next of kin…you’ll find out that’s the hardest part, Roberto.” He held out a hand, and when Torrez took it, Sheriff Salcido clamped his other hand on top. “Let’s go now and tend to business.” He didn’t release his grip, but turned to me and said, “Don’t miss a thing.”

  Chapter Four

  I suppose that under normal circumstances when a vehicle shoots by on the interstate, there is little trace left of its passing. Maybe some microscopic, unidentifiable rubber particles, a trace of exhaust gas mixing instantly with the atmosphere. It’s here, and then gone.

  On the other hand, Chris Browning’s Suburban had left graphic evidence of its violent journey, and Deputy Tom Mears, assisted by Trooper K.C. Woodward, created an impressive diagram without too many assumptions. Nine point one miles west on the interstate and one tenth of a mile west of the rest stop, the truck had kissed the Caddy. The officers collected twelve fragments of glass and metal, including a mirror rim piece carrying a swipe of the Suburban’s blue paint. The truck would have towered over the low-slung sedan. The impact would have been between the Suburban’s slab side riding high on the Cadillac’s door.

  Between the initial collision and the exit ramp, we guessed that Chris Browning had controlled the heavy Suburban with difficulty, allowing it to wander from lane to lane. As drunk as he likely was, maybe he thought he had it made…all he needed was a little more speed to make it a really wild, memorable ride, and more important, to leave those witnesses from Ohio in the dust.

  Sergeant Avelino Garcia, a longtime patrol deputy, now semi-retired yet working as the sheriff’s department’s skilled photographer, documented each fragment, scuff, and gouge. He would assemble the photos into a beginning-to-end montage that told the graphic story. And because this was a multiple fatal, the odds were good that the whole sorry mess somehow would end up in litigation. Families would look to lay blame, no matter what had happened.

  The photos hinted at the one action that might have saved three lives. There was no evidence that Browning had ever lifted his foot off the accelerator, had ever backed off. The adrenaline rush had pushed that big truck well over the kid’s ability to control it. At more than a hundred miles an hour, those seven minutes from Cadillac kiss to abutment finale must have been exhilarating and then, in a blink, terrifying.

  “Tox is going to be interesting,” Mears observed as I pondered his artwork. A dapper young fellow, Tom Mears was meticulous. His twin brother, Tim, was a rising star at Posadas State Bank, and Tom’s uniform was about the only way I could tell them apart.

  “It looks to me like he didn�
��t recognize the exit ramp until the last second,” Mears said. “He had to swerve real hard to make it into the exit lane, and careened on down the ramp, each swerve getting worse. There’s a real classic gouge in the pavement where the right front tire rolled off the rim.” He made a tumbling motion with his hands. “Even before the tire rolled under, it had gotten to a point really quickly where there was nothing he could do to catch it…even if he’d been cold sober.”

  Each “event” on the map was marked with a small circled p, followed by an index number, indicating that Sergeant Garcia had captured a photo of the evidence.

  Garcia continued to shoot photos as Les Attawene tried to arrange bits of the smashed Suburban for transport. This was no job for a tow truck. Instead, Attawene used the flatbed car carrier, pulling the wreckage on board in bundles and clumps of tangled steel and plastic.

  As they tumbled loose during this lengthy process, personal effects were bagged and labeled—a pathetic little collection: a sock whose mate was still on Elli’s right foot, a partial bag of Cheetos that had sprayed all around the interior of the truck, a tire jack that had somehow slipped its moorings and flown about before ending up bloodied in Chris Browning’s lap, a ball cap with a grease-stained logo for Giardelli Trucking, a second cap carrying the Posadas High School Jaguars’ logo and the name “Chris” markered on the inside sweat band.

  Two items in particular drew my attention. A lightweight robin’s egg blue windbreaker carried both the Jaguar logo embroidered in script across the back and the name “Darlene” over the left breast. The only place I’d ever seen those fashion statements was on the back of Jaguar cheerleaders. I knew most of the cheerleaders, and Darlene Spencer came to mind. She might have ridden in the Suburban at some point, but not this final trip.

  Despite allegedly headed to or from a 4-H gig, none of the three victims had been wearing a 4-H jacket, or had thought to toss one in the truck, anticipating a chilly evening.

  The second item of puzzlement was a short, hardshell rifle case that contained no rifle, but did include an unbroken box of Winchester-Western .30 carbine ammunition.

  That jarred my memory cells as well. I knew that Willis Browning owned an aging military M-1 carbine, one that always piqued my interest from a collector’s standpoint with its Winchester legend stamped behind the back sight on the receiver when it left the factory in 1943. Willis had been in love with the optional thirty-round banana magazine that hung from the gun’s belly. I’d even seen him trying to qualify with the little gun during one of our department shoots, frustrated by its habit of jamming every dozen rounds or so.

  I knew that Willis routinely carried the stubby carbine in his Suburban, protected in the hardshell case. At one time he’d even leafed through some of our police gear catalogs, looking for a vertical dashboard mount like the ones that held our shotguns in the Crown Vics.

  An empty gun case with no gun posed some questions.

  Two beer cans, unopened by teen fingers but one of them burst with the violence of the crash, joined a few other odds and ends.

  By four a.m. Thursday, the last of the glass and slivered steel was swept clear, a bag of oil-absorbent sand dumped on the oil slick, and the yellow tapes spooled up to reopen the highways. Sergeant Garcia headed for the office to process his black-and-white film so we’d have fresh prints for the day shift. Lieutenant Beason, with enough work in his own jurisdiction without lingering any longer in our patch of desert, headed home to El Paso. Mr. and Mrs. Holmes accompanied one of the officers to our office to finish a detailed statement, then decided the night had been long enough. They holed up in the Posadas Inn, trying to get some sleep before pounding the pavement again toward their home in Sandusky, Ohio, the remains of their mirror snipped free and stowed in the Caddy’s trunk. One of the deputies took the Holmeses’ roll of film and headed for Deming and the nearest one-hour print processor. I held little hope of any great revelation in the Holmeses’ photos—lots of nice pictures of darkness, maybe.

  The eastern sky was beginning to lighten, and with everyone else gone, I stood at the intersection, ruminating for a long moment. I hadn’t been to the hospital—a nice word to avoid referring to the morgue—but Sheriff Salcido had lots of practice, and a deft touch with the bereaved. He might even find a tactful way to work in an uncomfortable question or two before Mr. and Mrs. Torrez headed home.

  A heavy sedan whispered south on Grande. I recognized the white Olds as it crept through the highway underpass, staying well to the right, away from the point of collision.

  The assistant district attorney had no one at home to commiserate with. Chris Browning had been an only child, and Willis’ wife, Carolyn, had been savaged by malignant lymphoma five years before. I knew that the years since had been hard on the widower. His weight had ballooned until he waddled, the compression driving his knees inward until they knocked.

  Browning swung the Olds in a wide turn, then parked with exaggerated care behind my cruiser. He sat for a moment as I approached, and then pushed himself up and out. One hand lingered unsteadily on the top of the door. Sweat glistened on his round face, on the heavy jowls.

  “Willis, I’m sorry,” I said. He slumped against the side of the Olds then, one hand still stretched out for support, a man on the edge of collapse. “You need to go home.”

  “To what?” He pushed himself upright and gazed up the exit ramp, his breath coming in choppy little gasps. “We had one of these last year, didn’t we?”

  “Yes.” He’d seen the crushed descanso commemorating the crash the year before that had killed Freddy Sandoval. “Seems like every year, one place or another.”

  He waved a hand in helpless apology as he staggered around the front of the car. Spasms of violent retches shook him. When there was nothing left but dry heaves, he dropped awkwardly to one knee, one hand on the ground, the other on the front bumper. I popped the trunk on 310, found a clean roll of paper towels and stripped off a handful. He took them gratefully and managed to stand up, using the car for support. He panted heavily.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I feel like shit.”

  “No need to apologize. This sort of thing turns a man’s world upside down.”

  “I’m sorry that Chris…” he stopped and tried again. “I don’t know.” He looked up at me pathetically. “I need to know what happened here tonight. I talked to the sheriff, but I knew you’d give me the straight story.”

  “We all need to know, Willis, and we’ll sort it out,” I said. “The deputies will sift through it bit by bit until we know every detail.”

  He shook his head slowly. “Christ, this must have been hard on that new deputy. The Torrez kid? Walking right into the middle of something like this? His brother and sister, both…”

  “Yes.” I was impressed that, at that moment, Willis Browning managed to find a little compassion for the plight of others.

  He shot a glance at me after my cryptic response, and reached for the door of his car, leaning hard against it. His gaze kept drifting back to the scarred highway support pillar. “Have you talked with the Spencer girl yet?”

  “The Spencer girl…”

  “Darlene? She’s good friends with Elli Torrez, for one thing. And she and my son…well, they were pretty steady.”

  “I haven’t talked with her. We found what looks to be her jacket in the truck, though. She was with them earlier? Do you know about that?”

  “She was supposed to go with the kids. That’s what…” His face crumpled and he turned to the car, forehead resting against the vinyl roof. “Christ, I don’t believe this.” He pushed himself upright and wiped his face. “Chris said that Darlene was going with them to Lordsburg. She and Chris, Orlando and Elli. All four of them.”

  I looked back up the exit ramp. Other officers and I had tramped along the ramp enough times to leave paths through the mowed weeds on each side of the road. Come light, w
e’d check again, but I was reasonably sure that we hadn’t missed something so obvious as a fourth battered corpse. Until the Suburban swerved hard enough to trip over its own feet near the bottom of the ramp, none of the passengers would have been thrown out.

  “If she did go, she didn’t come back with them.”

  Browning heaved a gigantic, shuddering sigh. He patted his eyes with the remains of one of the paper towels. “So what now?”

  “You know the procedure, Willis,” I said. “There’s a whole world of things we need to know. If they’d careened across the center median into oncoming traffic instead of down here…”

  Browning grimaced and wiped his mouth. “Well, they didn’t, for whatever consolation that’s worth.”

  “I understand that. But you’ve been in this business long enough that you can invent scenarios as well as I can. I think what we have right now is a youngster who made a serious mistake. We have a credible witness telling us that excess speed was involved. The marks on the pavement corroborate that.”

  He sagged against the front fender of the Olds, his weight sinking the springs. “A credible witness?” The light wasn’t good, but the misery on his huge face was clear.

  “It appears that the Suburban sideswiped a car back down the interstate a ways. About ten miles back west. The witness says his own cruise control was set at eighty. Husband and wife both claim the truck swiped them while passing at high speed, without ever slowing down or stopping. The elderly couple stopped and took their own photos of the damage. Paint residue on both vehicles leaves little doubt that’s what happened.”

  Browning stared at the ground for a long minute. “Tell me what else you think, Bill.”

  “I’m guessing right now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the blood-alcohol stats will offer some answers. That’s where we’ll head. We need to know where they were, and talk to folks there as well.”