The string of petty events continued pretty much unbroken until he was apprehended during a paint-sniffing incident under the interstate overpass…and I tapped the report.
“Maybe that’s why Vanessa likes her troll spot,” I said.
“No doubt,” Estelle replied. “He almost killed himself that time.”
A year later, in October, Rudy Davila took a bottle of pain pills to school—pills taken from his aunt’s medicine cabinet—and during an eighth-grade social studies class downed the whole mess. He popped the pills like candy, so quietly that no one noticed until he fell out of his chair with his eyes rolled back in his head. Posadas General pumped his stomach and sent him home, suggesting at the same time that the school counselor might take a whack at the kid.
Rudy’s middle-school career managed to last another six months, during which time he cut his left wrist once and drank himself into oblivion on numerous occasions. By the spring of his eighth-grade year—the last time school officials saw him—he was a scrawny, vacant-eyed little hoodlum.
At that time, the Davilas were living at 198 North Fifth Street in the back apartment of a three-unit, story-and-a-half rental. Mrs. Davila was still working, although only part-time, at a grocery store down the street. Vanessa was in fourth grade.
I wondered if Vanessa had been an elementary school version of the oversized bully she’d managed to become since. Maybe back then, before the hormones kicked in, she was still playing with clay and cutting out paper chains and hearts and doing all those other things that elementary kids did.
On a hot August evening that year, Rudy Davila was in his gable bedroom of the small upstairs apartment. He had drunk enough cheap bourbon that he thought he felt no pain. Mrs. Davila was home, watching television downstairs in the living room. Vanessa was somewhere, Mrs. Davila had told police, but she wasn’t sure just where. According to the report taken by Posadas Chief Eduardo Martinez, Vanessa was two doors down the street, playing with friends.
A few minutes after nine that night, the report said, Rudy Davila sat down on the edge of his bed, the window open so that he had an unrestricted view of the neighbor’s garage roof. He loaded a semiautomatic .22-caliber rifle with ten rounds. The police report indicated that he might have had trouble managing the process in his inebriated state, since .22-caliber shells were scattered over the bed, some even rolling onto the floor.
Rudy had almost made a hash of the final process, too. He’d managed to shoot himself three times before he could no longer control the gun, and the condition of the room indicated that he’d thrashed around a good deal—enough to attract his mother’s attention away from the television.
He’d locked his bedroom door, though, and by the time his mother and a neighbor had gained access, Rudy Davila had made peace with this world.
Vanessa Davila hadn’t told Chief Eduardo Martinez much. He accepted her account at face value. She had come home when she heard sirens and saw police cars parked in front of her house. She was not overwhelmed with grief to the point that she cared to tell Martinez what she told us four years later…Perhaps at that time, her distrust and fear of her brother were too fresh in her mind.
Chief Martinez had accepted Mrs. Davila’s bewildered account, maybe because no one in the village had ever seriously expected Rudy to make it to his eighteenth birthday anyway. The .22 rifle was his, Mrs. Davila was quoted as saying. She’d signed the affidavit to that effect. Maybe so, but four years later, Vanessa Davila put a different slant on things. The rifle had been given to her brother, Vanessa said, by a friend.
I sat down and rested an elbow on the table, rubbing my forehead. “Have you ever heard of a youngster who gives away something like a .22 rifle? I mean, those things are next to sacred to a kid.” I reached out and nudged the bagged cassette that held Mrs. Davila’s interview. “Let’s hear what her actual words were,” I said.
And after twenty minutes of start and stop, we found the right spot on the tape recording and heard Chief Teddy Martinez ask, “Did the rifle belong to Rudy, ma’am?” His voice was soft and dripping with sympathy.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Davila said. “I think so. I guess so.”
“Do you remember him buying it?” the chief asked.
“No,” Mrs. Davila said, “but you know, he goes about his own business. He don’t listen to me. So, maybe. I don’t know. Maybe he got it, or traded for it, or something.”
And at that point, Chief Martinez dropped the subject. The “or something” covered all the bases.
I reached over and punched off the tape player. “So we go from a resounding ‘I don’t know’ on the tape to a written, sworn statement that has her saying the gun was Rudy’s. Outstanding.”
“It won’t be hard to trace, sir,” Estelle said. “If Dennis Wilton purchased that rifle, or if it was purchased by someone else and given to him as a gift, then it won’t be hard to trace.”
“What remains is to find out who actually pulled the trigger of the rifle,” I said. “Vanessa claims that she saw the Wilton kid slip out of her brother’s upstairs window shortly after the three shots.” I held up two fingers. “She says that number one, the rifle was Wilton’s. Number two, she says that he was there when the shooting occurred.”
“That’s interesting,” Estelle mused.
“What is?”
She leaned over the table and tapped one of the folders. “There was no reason for Dennis Wilton to be friends with Rudy Davila. In fact, I’m willing to bet a week’s pay that he wasn’t, until his eighth-grade year. And if Dennis Wilton wasn’t in that same history class when Davila tried the pill trick, he would have been near by. He would have heard all the gory details from any number of kids before the morning was out. He latches onto a kid who’s teetering on the very edge. A self-destructive, violent kid who has nothing going for himself. Giving him that little extra push was easy. Wilton might even have pulled the trigger himself, figuring he’d get away with it.”
“You’re talking about a manipulative, scheming monster, Estelle,” I said.
“History is full of them,” she said. “Only I’d call him a psychotic opportunist.”
I grimaced. “I’m no shrink, but I don’t know if I buy it. None of it explains the business with Ryan House.”
“Maybe, maybe not. It might have been easy to strike up a friendship with Ryan House during their senior year. In a small school, there are endless opportunities. Also, remember that House had just broken up with his girlfriend of three years.”
I frowned. “You’re saying that Wilton might have been planning something all along?”
“No, sir. I don’t think so. At first, they might even have liked each other. Who knows? But it’s dirt common for one kid to talk another into doing things that he normally wouldn’t have considered. Maybe the date with Maria Ibarra was a bet, I don’t know. Maybe it was genuine curiosity on their parts. We’re tending to paint Ryan House lily white in all this, but maybe that’s not the way it went down. But when things went wrong, Dennis Wilton reacted in a predictable fashion, from what this evidence tells us.”
“He was afraid Ryan House would start talking, so he killed him.”
“Yes, sir. That’s what I think happened. And I think it was impulsive, when he saw that Ryan wasn’t going to go along.”
I picked up a pencil and toyed with it for a minute. “It would have been thoughtful of Vanessa Davila if she had spoken up earlier about seeing Wilton coming out of her brother’s bedroom window.”
“I suspect she was grateful to him,” Estelle said, and I looked up sharply.
“Grateful?”
“Yes, sir. I suspect that her relationship with her brother was a carbon copy of what she went through with her father before he left home.”
“We don’t know that.”
“No,” Estelle said and took a deep breath. “But I can guess. The signs are there.”
“And the rage this time? She steals a
gun and sets out to ravenge a friend? Maria?”
Estelle nodded. “It’ll take a while to put a profile together, but I’ll bet the election that you’ll find the two were inseparable, Maria and Vanessa. For once, Vanessa had a pal whose life was more miserable than her own.”
“Kindred spirits,” I said. “Misery loves company.” I smiled. “And I won’t bet.”
“I’d like to have three pieces of evidence before we make a move, sir.”
“The gun?”
She nodded. “If we can substantiate Vanessa’s story by finding the origin of the rifle that killed her brother, that’s one step. After four years, the rest of that story is just her word against Dennis Wilton’s.”
“And?”
“I want the grille guard from Wilton’s truck. That would tie him to the attempt on Crocker’s life. I think he feels that Crocker might have seen something, anything.”
“And you think Wilton saw Crocker walking along an empty street and took his chance.”
Estelle frowned. “He’s an opportunist, sir. I have no trouble imagining that Ryan House was beginning to panic after the girl’s death Thursday night. Some time Friday afternoon, the Wilton kid sees Crocker walking, but it’s daylight. He can’t do anything. Later, when the two boys are together and maybe trying to decide what to do, maybe talking about Crocker and trying to guess what he saw and what he told police, they see him again, walking along Bustos Avenue.”
“And this time it’s dark,” I said.
“I can imagine what Ryan House’s reaction to the hit-and-run was,” Estelle said. “Maybe it was the last straw as far as he was concerned. Wilton might have thought first about calming him down, so he raided his parents’ medicine cabinet when they went home to take the bent grille guard off. That was logical. And then the next step was to get out of town, and the football game was a perfect cover. Maybe it was on the drive out of Posadas that he put the rest together.”
“And third?”
“I want at least a couple of points match on that thumbprint that I took from the seatbelt buckle. Ron Bucky is going to call the minute he has something.”
I shook my head. “Don’t wait, Estelle.” I stood up. “If you’re right, we don’t want to run any risk. When you talked to Wilton in the hospital last night, was there anything that led you to believe that he might suspect what we know?”
“No, sir. I got the impression that he felt entirely comfortable with his performance.”
“His performance,” I said and grimaced. “And neither he nor his parents think there’s anything unusual about the truck being impounded?”
“I’m sure that they imagine it’s because of the blood tests and litigation, sir.”
“They’re scared stiff, and young Wilton could care less, I’m sure,” I said. “Did Martin Holman talk with them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then we’re covered. Talking with Martin Holman is enough to give any felon confidence.”
“Sir,” Estelle chided gently, “that’s not true.”
“You don’t sound much like a politician,” I chuckled, but the humor didn’t last. “We want to move fast with this son of a bitch. Based on a deposition from Vanessa, and with the gun’s record, that should be enough for a warrant. And if we get lucky and find the grille guard, that’s another piece.”
“I’m willing to make another bet,” Estelle murmured.
“What’s that?”
“The grille guard is in the Wilton’s garage somewhere.”
“You don’t think he’d be smart enough to get rid of it?”
“Oh, he’s smart enough, sir. But he’s also confident.”
I grunted in disgust. “This kid is eighteen?”
“Yes, sir. His birthday was in September.”
I nodded with satisfaction. “Good. Then the bastard won’t just pull two years in reform school. We can put him away for life.”
“He’ll probably earn his law degree in prison,” Estelle said, and I muttered a curse.
“You didn’t used to be so cynical,” I said. “You’ve been around me too long.”
37
The serial number of the .22 rifle was thoroughly documented on Chief Eduardo Martinez’s reports. The rifle itself was no doubt still rusting somewhere in the back room of the village department. I was sure that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had the same information somewhere in the bowels of their enormous database, together with information about the gun’s original purchase. But they weren’t going to talk to us on a Saturday night. And if Wilton had purchased the gun from an individual, the paper trail would be even more remote.
“Let’s just ask the son of a bitch,” I said, and Estelle’s left eyebrow went up a notch. I glanced at my watch. “It’s as good a time as any. We’ll see what we can find out, and then I’ll buy you and Francis a late dinner. How about that?”
She agreed, although not with the enthusiasm that a dinner at the Don Juan de Oñate should have prompted.
As we pulled out onto Bustos Avenue, she keyed the mike. “Posadas, this is 310.”
Dispatcher Gayle Sedillos responded, and Estelle said, “Posadas, we’ll be at 390 Grant for a few minutes. Three-oh-eight needs to stay central.”
“Ten-four, 310. Three-oh-eight, did you copy?”
Sergeant Bob Torrez sounded like he was eating a sandwich when he acknowledged. In his typical fashion, he didn’t ask what we were doing, or why.
“Three-ten, P.D. copies. I’m ten-eight.”
Estelle glanced across at me at the sound of Tom Pasquale’s voice. I reached out and took the mike from Estelle. “P.D., meet with 308.”
“Ten-four,” Pasquale said, and I could hear the eagerness in his voice drop a couple of notches. Bob Torrez had probably choked on his sandwich.
“That’s just what we need—Tom Pasquale crashing the only other car the P.D. owns into the Wilton’s living room,” I said.
We turned south on Fifth Street, drove two blocks, and jogged west on Grant, into one of the oldest neighborhoods in Posadas. The homes were adobe, all on large, irregular lots with an irrigation ditch running along the property lines. If all the junk that had sprung up during the 1950s mining boom were to vanish, this was one of the neighborhoods that would be left.
The Wiltons’ home was attractive, a big rambling place not unlike my own, with ancient elms surrounding the buildings. Behind the attached garage was a small barn, its shed roof recently repaired with bright corrugated metal.
Estelle eased 310 into the driveway.
“Are you doing all right?” she asked.
“I’m doing fine,” I said, and pointed at the porch light that had just flicked on. “They’re home.”
Dustin Wilton greeted us at the door with a guarded smile, but his face was pale, the worry lines etching his broad forehead. He held out a hand and shook with a firm grip.
“Sheriff, how are you?”
“Fine, thanks. You know Detective Reyes-Guzman?”
He nodded. “We talked at the hospital earlier.”
Wilton was a big man, well over six feet and burly. Long hours of wrestling heavy equipment for the state highway department in the hot New Mexico sun had built muscles like rope and aged the skin of his face and hands to leather.
“We just wanted to stop by and bring some good news,” I said. “It’s not much, but it’s something. How’s Dennis doing?”
“Sleeping,” Wilton said. “It’s been pretty rough for him.”
I nodded. “May we come in for just a minute?”
He nodded and held the door for us. The saltillo tile of the entryway was polished to a high sheen, and I stopped just inside the door.
“Let me get my wife,” he said.
“Well, no need,” I started to say, but he shook his head.
“She’ll want to hear anything you have to say.”
“Fine.” We waited for a moment, and I stepp
ed forward so I could see into the living room. A mounted elk head hung above the fireplace. Before I had a chance to inventory anything else, Dustin appeared with his wife in tow. DeeDee was thirty pounds overweight and wore lavender stretch pants two sizes too small. Her top half was inside a sweatshirt with NOTRE DAME blazoned across the chest. Fortunately the material had plenty of stretch.
Dustin, DeeDee, and Dennis, I thought. Eighteen years before, the proud parents had probably entertained all kinds of cute thoughts.
“Ma’am,” I said by way of greeting. I thrust my hands into my pockets, trying to look as casual as possible. “The results of the blood test on your son are in, and I just wanted to tell you folks in person that it was clean in every respect.”
I saw relief on their faces and DeeDee Wilton said, “He told us that he hadn’t been drinking.”
“Then he told you the truth, ma’am. The boys were just plain tired after the excitement of the game. It looks like he just dosed off. Just for a second, but that’s all it takes.”
Dustin Wilton shook his head. “I’ll tell you what I think happened,” he said, and his voice rose a notch or two. “I think some son-of-a-bitch drunk probably swerved into their lane and run ’em right off the road.”
“That’s something we’re pursuing,” I said easily, knowing that it was pointless to argue. If that pipe dream made them feel better, they could cling to it all they liked.
“We needed to ask Dennis a couple of things, just to clear up the last of the paperwork, but if he’s asleep, it’s not important enough to bother him.”
“What do you need to know?”
“Well, one of the deputies mentioned that the truck didn’t have a grille guard, but that the bolts and brackets for one were there. He hadn’t found the guard at the scene, and wondered if it had been removed from the vehicle before the time of the crash.”
Dustin Wilton’s brow knit together and he looked at me as if I were senile. “Now that’s a hell of a thing to be concerned about,” he snapped.
Privileged to Kill Page 24
