Easy Errors

by Steven F Havill

  “You betcha. Anything I can do?”

  “Not yet. Perrone’s on his way out.”

  An eyebrow escalated a quarter of an inch. Ever discreet, Herb didn’t immediately blurt into cascade of questions. He hissed out a plume of smoke and said only, “Got one, huh?”

  “Yep. We got one.” I looked out across the prairie, the playground for his kids. “And I’ll want to talk with Dale and Patrick sometime today. They might have heard something, seen something, or someone…”

  “I’ll make sure they’re handy,” Herb said.

  On the way back, I slowed as I passed the windmill. A breeze touched the vanes, and the mill groaned. The expended cartridge casings that Torrez had collected indicated that the kids had been here…with Chris perhaps eager to touch off a few rounds through his father’s carbine. A ballistics check to compare empty shell casings to the bolt face, firing pin, and chamber marks was easy enough.

  Then the kids had gone into Bender’s Canyon. And then what?

  Chapter Nine

  Francine and Darlene Spencer fit a tight mother-daughter mold. Before this day, at least, both of them had been pretty but not breathtakingly beautiful, both with the same black hair with copper highlights. Both had had striking hazel eyes, flawless skin, and rich, full mouths that could drive men and boys crazy. Both had trim figures with curves in all the right places, although Francine’s had softened with a few pounds over the years.

  Now Francine sat, knees hugged tight, head down, outside the yellow crime scene ribbon, but facing the spot thirty yards away where her daughter had been found. Standing just behind her, leaning against one of the fractured boulders, Deputy Howard Bishop, bulky with a large, doughy face, looked as if he wanted to be somewhere else.

  I nodded at him and approached Francine. She didn’t look up. And I felt a twinge of irritation, once again, at JJ “Miracle” Murton, who evidently had blabbed enough during his various radio transmissions that Francine had been able to overhear, and put two and two together…even if JJ hadn’t.

  “Mrs. Spencer?” I hoped the formality would help her stay tuned, since I certainly knew her well enough to go with “Francine,” or even an occasional “Franny,” her nickname of choice.

  She lifted her head as if she were slowly counting to one hundred, or many a thousand, and didn’t want to lose her place. I bent down, one hand on my right knee.

  “Bill, Bill, Bill,” she murmured, her “Bills” dying away like little echoes in a box canyon. “They won’t let me see her. I need to be with her.” She looked up at me, eyes black-rimmed from lack of sleep, wet with tears. “I don’t even know for sure that it is her. I have to know.”

  “Francine, you’re going to have to trust me for a little bit.”

  “Tell me there’s a chance it might be someone else?”

  “I wish I could say that.”

  She shook her head violently as if to fling the tears away. The sigh that escaped was one of those quavery things that told me how close she was to a full blubber. “How can he even be here?”

  “How can who be here, Francine?”

  “The Torrez boy. Bobby. After…after what happened last night.” She struggled with the last two words, her voice climbing into a pathetic peep. “How awful this must be for him.”

  “Yes, it is. But he’s working to help us discover what happened, Francine. We all are.”

  She drew another long, shuddering sigh and spent a little time raking the mussed hair out of her face. “Were they all here? All four of the kids? Is that what you think?”

  “It seems probable.”

  “They did this and ran?”

  “Francine, first things first. We don’t know yet what the this is. That’s why we’re waiting on Dr. Perrone. He was in Deming when he got the call, so it’s going to be a few minutes.”

  “That’s what Bobby said.” Her voice took on a little edge. “He wouldn’t let me through that damn tape. Bill, I need to see my daughter.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “He won’t tell me what happened.”

  “That’s because Deputy Torrez doesn’t know, Francine. He’s been ordered to protect the crime scene, and that’s what he’ll do. Whatever it takes.”

  “Crime scene,” she murmured. For a long moment, Francine Spencer sat silently, staring across the little clearing, across the trail. She was ninety feet away from her daughter, and it might as well have been ninety miles.

  “Was she molested?” Francine’s voice was small and hesitant.

  “We don’t know, Francine.”

  “Is there any reason to think so?” Agonizing experience tells the same tale as the criminology textbooks: find a dead young woman in a lonely spot out in the boonies with her pants and underwear pulled down, and there’s every reason to think ugly things. At this early stage, I already had a couple of reasons to question the textbooks, but that wasn’t something to discuss with the distraught mother of the victim.

  “We’ll know more after Dr. Perrone finishes.”

  She snuffled. “In other words, yes.”

  “I’ll say it again, Francine, we don’t know. I wish we did. We don’t. Give us some time and I’ll have some answers for you. For now, no one disturbs the site. Because there are so many questions, the next step is the state medical examiner. All right? And when Dr. Perrone gets here, you’re going to stay outside the tape with everyone else while he works.”

  She closed her eyes, resting her forehead in her hand as if she had a monumental migraine building…as indeed she might. “Was she out here all night?”

  “I don’t know, Francine.” Her tortured face said that I might as well have just said “yes” and got it over with.

  I stood up straight, smoothing out the kinks. Deputy Bishop watched impassively, ready to chaperone Francine, should I decide our conversation was over.

  “You have two daughters,” Francine said.

  “Yes, I do.” And I didn’t add that during their adolescent years, they had both given me plenty of cause to worry. As had my two sons. Grown and gone now, three of the four had families of their own to fret about…the fretting was one of the costs of parenthood, I suppose. I wasn’t much of a grandparent, since I didn’t spend my time commuting around the country visiting the urchins. I didn’t remember all their birthdays, but I had the names and dates written down somewhere. Sometimes I remembered Christmas. Sometimes.

  “I don’t know how I’m going to tell Casey.” I knew Casey Spencer, a delightful gal four years older than Darlene. I knew Casey had earned an associate’s degree in criminal justice from one of the community colleges up in Albuquerque, and had landed herself a job with one of the counties up in the northeastern part of the state.

  “I’m no help there,” I said, “but sooner rather than later is better. Same with Sam. When Dr. Perrone is finished, I’m going to ask you to make a positive ID for us. You can notify the rest of the family any time after that.”

  That earned a grimace. “You make it sound so easy.” She and Sam Spencer had been divorced for a decade. Sam had found true happiness driving a transcontinental Greyhound bus, and I hadn’t seen him in years.

  I heard vehicular traffic, then the powerful, deep bleat of an air horn. Someone didn’t like the way traffic was stacking up in the canyon. It would get worse. In a moment, I saw Alan Perrone’s trim figure making his way up the hill out of the canyon, escorted by a trio of cops—rookie Game and Fish Officer Doug Posey, Deputy Tom Mears, and Sergeant Lars Payson.

  “Excuse me for a few minutes, Francine,” I said, and beckoned to Deputy Bishop, who had already read the situation and was moving toward her. I whistled sharply, and when Torrez looked my way, I held up a single finger and pointed at Perrone.

  Cops don’t like being told by other cops that they can’t enter a crime scene, but I wasn’t concerned about h
urt feelings or turf stomping. Until we had some fundamental answers from the medical examiner, I didn’t want a single superfluous bootprint in that little glade, and my deputies all knew that.

  I met Dr. Alan Perrone at the tape. He shook hands, his grip gentle but firm, and did the same with Robert Torrez. “I’m sorry about last night,” he said to the young deputy. “That’s got to be horrible.” He glanced across at Francine Spencer and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. “Dr. Wilkes gave me a heads-up. Is that the mother?”

  “Yes. Francine Spencer. She overheard our dispatcher and took it upon herself to come out.”

  “Can’t say as I blame her.”

  I reached out and held Sergeant Payson by the elbow as he started to duck under the tape. “I need you here to make sure no one steps into the crime scene, Sergeant. If you want to organize an area sweep, go ahead. Give all these clowns something to do. But nobody else comes inside the tape.”

  “What do you want the kid to do?” Payson nodded toward Torrez, who had stationed himself about a dozen feet away from the corpse, hands clasped behind his back in a pretty good version of “parade rest.” The usual rookie task would be to sign everyone in, making a complete record of who had visited the crime scene, and when. But I was curious. I had wanted an early opportunity to watch Robert Torrez at work, and this was clearly it.

  “Dr. Perrone, Torrez, and myself will be the only ones inside the perimeter—at least until Dr. Perrone is finished.” Payton nodded as if he understood.

  I turned back to Perrone, who stood idly fingering the yellow plastic tape as if waiting for someone to say, “On your mark, get set, go!”

  “Alan, we’re going to have to be very careful with this one.”

  Perrone didn’t ask what was bothering me, but just nodded assent. Torrez had approached, silent and watchful.

  “Robert, lead the way. Take the same route you took when you found her.”

  I followed them, taking care to place my feet exactly where Perrone’s spiffy Wellingtons touched down.

  The deputy started to lift the space-blanket, but I held up a hand. “Give me a moment,” I said, and retraced my steps back to Sergeant Payson, who sure enough had found himself a clipboard to start the check-in process. I reached across, borrowed his pencil, and added my name.

  “Lars, have Bishop escort Mrs. Spencer back down the hill to her car. This is going to get ugly, and she just doesn’t need to see any of it. She’ll do a formal ID after a bit, but not now…not while Perrone is working.”

  “Wondered about that,” Payson replied.

  It took Francine Spencer a few moments to decide whether she was going to accept Deputy Bishop’s escort, but finally she yielded, allowing his big hand to guide her.

  When they were out of sight, Torrez lifted the space-blanket and gently folded it down below the victim’s feet.

  Perrone gazed down at the victim for a long moment, eyes roaming over the body. “Sergeant Garcia took plenty of photos, I imagine,” he said at last.

  “And Deputy Torrez, as well.” I realized that Garcia wasn’t in the area. “Where is Garcia, by the way?”

  Payson heard me and shook his head in disgust. “I think he’s down in the canyon. Mears and a couple of the others are tossing that area.”

  “Ask him to come up,” I said to Torrez.

  Perrone frowned as he took his time snapping on the blue gloves. “Okay, then. Bill, is there any other reason to believe that she might have been assaulted?”

  I kept my voice so low that the physician had to look directly at me. “Nothing beyond the obvious. What we see at first glance.”

  “Huh,” Perrone grunted. He hitched up his slacks at the knee and knelt close to Darlene’s head. With a single finger he lifted the thatch of hair out of her face. Bending so low that his forehead was nearly on the ground, he first examined the injury that had produced so much blood. Darlene’s body was half-sitting, half-supine, as if she’d been sitting but then collapsed back against the rocks. The blood flow had cascaded down the girl’s left cheek, down her neck, and then split, some dripping off onto the ground, some soaking the white t-shirt down as far as her left breast before running off under her left armpit.

  “Massive hemorrhage,” Perrone mused. “Did you fellows check the back?”

  “She hasn’t been touched.”

  “Let’s do that and get a core temp at the same time.”

  There are no secrets kept from a medical examiner, but nothing about dealing with a corpse is pretty. Francine might have been angry with us for escorting her from the scene, but she didn’t need to watch any of Perrone’s matter-of-fact machinations. Robert Torrez stoically provided support of the corpse while the young physician worked, and the deputy never looked away. I saw him chew on the inside of his lip once in a while, especially when Perrone did his swab work before putting the long-stemmed rectal thermometer in place.

  “Right at thirty-four degrees Centigrade.” He didn’t look up, didn’t make the calculation for us, but my middle school memories of rule-of-thumb conversion said that ninety degrees Fahrenheit was close enough—and far warmer than it had been, even in June, when the sun sank low.

  Perrone shook his head. “All kinds of things tell us that she didn’t die right away. Give us just a few more degrees on that body temp, and some resuscitation attempts might have been called for.” He made a face. “But probably not. Not with the sort of brain hemorrhage we have going on here.”

  He brushed up the t-shirt carefully. “No significant scrapes on the back, no other injuries, so if she fell, or collapsed, she didn’t go down hard. No cacti stuck through the t-shirt, no juniper needles, no piñon pitch. And the t-shirt was not all scrunched up…” His eyes roamed down the body. “There’s no sign that she was defending herself from some kind of assault. Quite a bit of foot activity—push, pull, kick out…” Leaving Torrez the job of supporting the body on its right side, Perrone examined the back of the skull methodically, running his gloved fingers through the hair.

  “No exit. So.” He nodded at Torrez. “Let her back.” Once more, he leaned close. “This wound is really interesting.” He touched a probe just below the ridge of bone forming the left orbit, but without touching the eyeball itself. “A bullet would just punch through—maybe through, and then through the skull, maybe not. But here we have something that looks as if it were inflicted with a sharp object of some kind. It’s almost a slit, really. Some bruising around the wound, and the amount of blood leads me to believe that a deep artery was lacerated. Again, I’m just guessing right now, but I’d go with general incapacitation from the head wound, then exsanguination. But it took a while.” He touched the victim’s neck, looking carefully down to the t-shirt collar. “No compression bruising, no bite marks.”

  “She struggled through the night?” I asked.

  The young physician took his time answering. “Struggled? I’m not sure. Unconscious, maybe. And the marks around her feet would indicate some small amount of struggle, maybe.” He sat back on his haunches. “I would guess so, but you know, there’s nothing that really tells us when she was injured. Just the time line of coincidence.” He looked sharply at me. “If the kids were out here, we have some reason to believe that this girl was in their company, but she wasn’t in the truck when it crashed in Posadas shortly after nine…” He shrugged deeply. “I’ve read all the paperwork on that, and your officers did a thorough job. See, there’s lots of coincidence to think about, lots of possibilities.” He pushed himself to his feet and stripped off the gloves. “If the kids in the Suburban were running scared…not just racing for the adolescent hell of it…this,” and he nodded at Darlene Spencer’s corpse, “…this is plenty of reason for them to be frightened out of their wits. But right now, the operative word is guess. Guess. Just like I’m guessing that the dried fluid on her right thigh is urine.”

  “Rape?”


  “We’ll see. If I were a betting man, I’d say not, and be thankful for that. There are just no signs of force, Bill. A young, healthy, athletic girl like Darlene could have put up a hell of a fight. We’d expect to see signs of that. Unless the assault occurred after an incapacitating injury.”

  Perrone looked pointedly over at Torrez. “Who’s the hunter here?” The only reaction that prompted from the deputy was a raised eyebrow. “You’d do well to really scour this immediate area, Deputy. The old fine-toothed comb bit.” He frowned. “Luminol first, with really thorough photo documentation of what you find.”

  “That’s why I want Garcia to hear this,” I said. I liked Avelino Garcia, and knew that he was a master photographer—a real problem-solver with a camera. One unfortunate character trait at times lit my fuse, though. There were moments when Garcia seemed to believe that our job was to be satisfied with whatever photos he chose to take. He’d wander around a crime scene, following his own agenda.

  “I don’t see any sign that this girl moved far after being injured. On the contrary, it appears to me that maybe she dropped like a sack of rocks. So this immediate area?” Perrone turned at the waist without shifting his feet, drawing an encompassing circle in the air. “Anything at all that might tell us what she was doing, which way was she facing, anything that might indicate where the second person was at the time of injury. I mean, she didn’t stab herself, although stranger things have happened. A scuff on the ground from a boot heel. Out-of-place rocks or pebbles. Broken sticks.” He held up both hands in frustration. “I’m no tracker, but I do know that we leave signs of our passing, even when we think that we don’t.” He looked hard at Torrez, and then at me. “Clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Torrez whispered.

  “Good.” Perrone heaved a sigh. “Let’s get her covered up and transported. Let Mrs. Spencer do the formal ID at the ambulance. And I’ll let you know what I find out the minute I can.”

  The two heavy Nikons hanging from his neck, Avelino Garcia made his way up from the canyon, and we met him at the tape. It wasn’t much of a climb, but he was breathing hard, sweat bagging the armpits of his Army surplus shirt.