A small man, Jack fitted neatly on the seat. Had I left him there, he no doubt would snooze the day away, or perhaps give it all up when some tired portion of his system collapsed. Or a semi might drift over a bit and smack the Caddy into the cacti. In the worst case scenario, Jack might awaken late in the afternoon, disoriented. He’d fumble behind the wheel again to weave his way home—and smack head-on into a station-wagon carrying the eight member Johnson family from Terre Haute, Indiana.
I sighed and glanced back. Ms. Reyes had stayed in the car, but her door was open.
“Oh,” Jack groaned, and a hand flopped unerringly toward the bottle.
“We’re going to get you out of here, Jack,” I said.
“I don’t feel so good,” he mumbled.
“I’m sure you don’t, Jack my friend. But you can’t sleep it off here.”
“Nicky…”
“Nick will come and pick you up,” I said. “Just hang in there, Jack.” His long-suffering son managed Posadas Auto Parts, and would be just delighted to break away to tend to his old man. Just delighted. The open bottle of bourbon on the floor, the Caddy skewed on the shoulder, the keys handy in the ignition…all those things sealed old Jack’s unhappy fate with this particular stunt. Nick would be doing a lot of waiting on this old man.
I hustled back to the car and settled behind the wheel.
“National Drunk Week. It’s not my favorite time,” I said to Estelle Reyes. “But I guess no time is a good time for Mr. Newton. He’s passed out on the back seat, and he’s got a pulse that would make a doctor go pale.” I keyed the mike.
“PCS, ten fifty-five this location. One adult male. Intoxication poisoning.”
“Ten four, three ten.”
“And expedite that,” I added. “Then call Nick Newton at Posadas Auto Supply and have him make arrangements to fetch the vehicle this location.” I saw the hand appear as Jack Newton tried to swim up from his alcoholic bog.
“Ten four, three ten.” We were three miles south of town, and it would be a couple of minutes before we had company. I watched a truck approach from behind us, and the driver swung all the way into the far lane to give us lots of room. Even so, his bow-wave rocked us. “We need to get Mr. Newton’s car off the highway,” I said. “The keys are in it, so as soon as the ambulance picks him up, we’ll move it. If we’re lucky…if Jack is lucky… we won’t have long to wait for transport.”
Back at the Caddy, I saw the restless, waving hand that said the old man was still trying to keep in touch. Mr. Newton probably weighed maybe a hundred and twenty pounds dripping drunk, and was as fragile as a sack of dishes. Leaning both hands on the Caddy’s roof, I chatted with him as if he was perfectly cogent. There would have been a time, I suppose, when I would have hauled his old butt out of the car, slapped the cuffs on him while spreading him over the trunk lid, and then marched him back to the patrol car for the ride back to town. But Jack Newton didn’t have that kind of reserve. We’d wait, and let the tax payers fork out a few extra bucks.
I reached out and checked his neck pulse again, grimacing at the aroma from inside the Caddy. As I straightened up, I heard approaching traffic slow abruptly.
The black and white Chevrolet Impala pulled off the highway and parked directly behind my unit, red lights winking. J.J. Murton got out of his patrol car without so much as a glance toward traffic that might be approaching from behind him. As he walked the length of my county vehicle, his eyes were locked on the passenger in 310. He nodded at Estelle Reyes as he passed.
The old man groaned again, and I eased him upright on the seat so that his head was cradled back. He couldn’t hold his mouth shut, and a string of drizzle escaped and ran down his chin.
“Oh, what have I been doing,” Jack moaned.
“Just take it easy now,” I said. Murton approached hesitantly, not sure if he should grab hold of something or someone.
“Dispatch said you might need an assist?”
I hadn’t asked for assistance, and dispatch hadn’t put out the call…I would have heard the radio call. Murton had no reason to wander outside the village, either. But his intentions were good, so I didn’t bite his head off. “We’re just waiting on the ambulance,” I said, and about that time I could hear the siren in the distance.
“You want me to transport?”
I wasn’t sure that it was possible to educate J.J. Murton, but I made a stab at it. “No. He’s old and frail and seems to be suffering a little cardiac distress. The last thing you want is for him to crap out in the back seat of your patrol car.”
“Well, you got that right, Sheriff,” Murton replied.
“If you’d manage traffic for the ambulance, I’d appreciate it. They’re going to want to park right here.” I nodded at the southbound lane immediately beside the Cadillac. “You take north, I’ll take south.”
Murton nodded vigorously, perhaps a little relieved that I wasn’t going to go Marine Corps Sergeant on him. “You do the breathalyzer already?”
“No. He’s so high he’d probably break the scale. We’ll wait for the hospital to stabilize things before the law lands on him with both feet.”
“Damn good thing he pulled off the road when he did,” Murton observed. “Mighta killed someone.”
“True enough. His lucky day.” Lucky day or not, Jack’s tortured gut gave up just then. He managed to twist sideways just enough that when he tossed his cookies it didn’t spray all over the inside of the Cadillac—which meant that most of it was aimed at Murton and me. I danced sideways, damn near knocking Murton ass over teakettle. Then I just had time to dive forward and prevent Jack from collapsing headfirst out of the car.
“Oh, Jeez,” Murton bleated, making ineffectual little swipes at his trousers. His face had gone pale. Apparently he was one of those guys whose own stomach starts to gyrate with the permeating aroma of vomit.
The ambulance eased to a stop on the highway, a veritable eruption of colored lights.
I waved Murton away. “Take the highway,” I said, and he did so with alacrity.
I’m sure that handling drunks isn’t high on an EMT’s list of favorite things to do, but these two were too experienced to complain.
“Erratic pulse,” I explained to Jesse Tarrantino, and that was all the explanation the EMT needed. He and his partner, MaryAnne Buckley, packed up old Jack Newton with tender concern, taking half a second to clean his face first with an alcohol wipe before putting on the oxygen, talking to him all the time.
They lifted him out of the back seat as if he were a bundle of feathers, and had an IV going faster than I thought possible.
“I would guess that he consumed most of a 750 of bourbon,” I said, and Jesse grimaced. “I don’t know what his health issues are, but I think he needs the ride.”
“We’ll get him all straightened out,” Jesse said. He reached down to pat Jack’s thin shoulder even as they started to lift the gurney.
MaryAnne Buckley, a heavy-set girl with pleasant features, offered a smile as she passed. “Thank you, sir.” She sounded as if she really meant it.
“Lots of fun, huh,” I said. In a moment, Jack was all packaged, and the big diesel rescue vehicle eased away, found a wide spot in the road, and U-turned back toward town. I watched J.J. Murton officiously wave the ambulance by, and then he sauntered over toward me.
“He sure as hell stinks.” He shook his head in wonder.
“Drunks do that.”
He leaned a little closer, and the wash of his powerful aftershave smelled as if he’d walked into a bed of Pacific kelp. He jerked his head toward my car, and he couldn’t quite keep the leer off his face. “She ridin’ with you all day?”
“I’ll know that at the end of the day.”
Murton nodded sagely. “New hire?”
“Probably so.” I knew tha
t in all likelihood J.J. Murton would have given his left nut to work for us—and just as likely that Sheriff Eduardo Salcido—or I—would shoot him before allowing that to ever happen. ‘Thanks for your help, J.J.” He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but evidently thought better of it
“Catch you later, sir,” he said, and walked back to his patrol cark, rubber-necking the attractive young lady in my county car as he did so.
As I slid into the driver’s seat, I grinned at Estelle. “This is a glamorous job, sweetheart.” The words were no sooner out than I realized that I had to be a little more circumspect in this new age of correctness, even if she was the grandniece of an old friend. What the hell. Let her sue me for discrimination. The smile of sympathy that I earned was entirely sweet, and she was young enough to be one of my daughters.
“Now, fates willing, we see what trouble Bobby Torrez has managed to get himself into. Notice how we’re able to stick with one thing from start to finish without interruption in this job. You’ll get used to being peripatetic.”
I started to pull the car into gear and just as quickly reversed the process, grumbling with impatience as I opened the car door. “Give 308 an update. ETA about eight minutes.” It took only a moment to start old Jack’s Caddy and ease it far off onto the flat of the shoulder, well away from the pavement. I locked it and pocketed the keys.
Back in the car, I took time for a long sigh. “Go ahead and tell dispatch that we’re ten-eight and that I have the keys to the disabled vehicle. I’ll drop them off at Nick’s place on the way back in. Probably an hour or two.”
She nodded and did so while I made a quick log entry.
“How will the legal process go with all this?” she asked.
“You mean will Mr. Newton be charged with DWI? That’s absolutely what will happen. But first, we take care of him. That’s the interesting thing about all this. You can chase the worst goddamned felon half way across the state, but when you have him in custody, you then become his guardian. You take his goddamn welfare in your hands, regardless of what he might have done, what pain and suffering he might have inflicted on others.” I shrugged and put the log book away. “In Mr. Newton’s case, we make sure that nothing we do contributes to his physical distress. That’s why he ended up in the ambulance and not in the back of my car. When he’s sober, when the docs are sure that he’s not going to drop dead in front of us…well, then we take up the legal issues.”
“They’ll revoke his license?”
I snorted with derision. “What the courts do, my friend, is another matter. My cynical guess is that Jack Newton will be behind the wheel of his car and making a stop at the liquor store so fast it makes our heads spin. That’s the way the system works.”
The car tires chirped as I pulled back out on the pavement. “What kind of doc is your fiancé studying for?”
Ms. Reyes didn’t correct my word choice. “Vascular surgery, sir.”
“Ah. Well, that’s good. Lots of plugged pipes around, my own included. He—what’s his name?”
Her natural reticence prompted a slight hesitation. “Francis Guzman.” Her delightful accent put the emphasis on the final syllable.
“Does young Doctor Guzman want to stay in the southwest?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You said he has relatives in Mexico?”
“Yes. His entire family. Down in Veracruz.”
“No intentions of going back, though?”
“I don’t think so. He wants a small town practice, somewhere near the border.”
“Well, that’s us. You’ve met Alan Perrone yet?”
“I have.”
“Maybe he can link up with Alan. Who knows what lies ahead.” I turned the county car off the pavement, following a dirt road pounded to brick by heavy trucks. The sign for McInerny Sand and Gravel Products had been painted sometime in the past decade, and served as well as a sporting target for shooters too lazy to get out of their cars.
Another mile, and the chain-link fence with razor wire on top hove into view. The gate was closed but unlocked, and before I had a chance to unbuckle, Ms. Reyes had bounded out of the car and done the honors. Just as she slid back into the car, the gate closed behind us, a loud gunshot peeled out.
“Genius at work,” I said. “There’s a set of ear plugs in the center console under all my shit. Dig ’em out.” Around a massive pile of gravel and a fleet of decrepit ore trailers, I saw Bob Torrez’s Bronco in one of the alcoves, the quarry banks towering twenty feet over his head. No bullets were going to escape from this place.
Deputy Torrez hefted a single-bit axe and aligned the blade with the top of a large chunk of pine about a foot long and as much in diameter. He then picked up a three pound hammer. He didn’t glance up at us, but concentrated on the task at hand—a most methodical, craftsman-like way of splitting firewood.
The yule log resisted a few blows, but then crackled and yawned, and the deputy pried it open.
“Ah,” he said with satisfaction.
“We have a regular bullet trap back at the office,” I said.
“Didn’t want to wait,” Torrez said, and stood up. He held half of the twelve inch diameter log in one hand, and offered it to me. “This is just an experiment, anyways.” The splitting process had been dead-on accurate, and I reached out and took the rifle bullet that had been jarred loose from the wood fibers. The nose was mushroomed nicely, the jacket and lead core deforming all the way back to the cannalure. That wasn’t what I found interesting.
I adjusted my bifocals and peered more closely. The brass jacket toward the rear of the slug was bright and shiny. Not a trace of rifling marked the slug.
Chapter Fifteen
“So how did you do this?” I asked, and passed the bullet to Estelle Reyes. It seemed a natural enough thing to do. The deputy beckoned toward the back of his Bronco. The tail gate was open, and the mess inside was typical Bob Torrez. No doubt—well, maybe—he knew where everything was, but his organization was a private affair.
Two rifle cases rested close at hand, and he opened the nearest one and retrieved what anyone who had watched television westerns or had even a faint interest in firearms would instantly recognize as a Winchester lever action carbine. He jacked the lever open and handed the weapon to me. It appeared to be pristine, without a scratch on the wood or the bluing.
“All right,” I said, and peered at the legend on the barrel. “A .32 Winchester Special.” I nodded at the bullet that Estelle still held. “And that?”
Torrez opened a tool box full of gun stuff—patches, oil, screw drivers, rods and hammers, even a stopwatch. He opened an ammo box and held the cartridge out to me.
“Thirty-thirty,” I read off the headstamp, and then made the connection. “You’re telling me that you fired this in…that?” I looked with suspicion at the .32 Winchester, warm in my hands. “You’re telling me that the .30-30 will chamber just fine in the .32?”
“Sure enough.”
“And that’s what you shot into the log.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Huh.” I rolled the cartridge between my fingers. “From how far away?”
“A yard, maybe.”
“Okay.”
“You want to follow with me on this?” His tone said that I didn’t have much choice. Excited in his own quiet way, Torrez was sniffing hard on a trail.
“Sure.”
He retrieved a roll of qualifying targets and peeled one off. I’d probably shot half a thousand of the B-27 human silhouette qualifying targets in my career. Featuring a full-sized human head and torso on a 24 x 45 inch sheet of paper, it was an absurdly easy target to hit, mainly because it didn’t shoot back.
“I have a stand,” Torrez said.
“I hope so, ‘cause I ain’t going to hold the target for you,” I q
uipped. We watched him staple the target on the light frame, supported by a pair of steel feet. Satisfied, he walked the target stand out perhaps fifty feet, in front of the sloping back wall of the gravel pit.
“Ears?” he asked.
I nodded at Estelle, and she dug out the set of ear plugs. The deputy handed me a set of the department’s fancy schmancy ear muffs.
“I just get one?” I said as Torrez rummaged and then handed me a single cartridge. I glanced at the head stamp and saw that it was a .32 Winchester Special, the right ammo for the right gun.
“Go ahead, sir,” he said.
“Range is hot,” I mumbled and stepped forward, glancing at my two companions to make sure ears were covered. A quick glance along the rim of the quarry assured me that no youngsters had sneaked up to watch. The cartridge slipped into the chamber effortlessly and I closed the lever. Fifty feet isn’t much of a challenge with a rifle, so I aimed for the head. What the hell. Why not grandstand when given the chance. The light rifle’s sights were clear, the stock comfortable.
The report was a muted bark, the recoil a good stout punch. With the sun as it was, even my sorry eyes could see the light streaming through the hole right in the center of the felon’s forehead.
“Nice rifle,” I said. “I should own this.”
“George Payton can make that happen, sir.” Torrez referred to one of my oldest friends, owner of the Posadas Gunnery.
“He let you walk out with this?”
“Sure.” He handed me another cartridge. “Try it again.”
Not the dullest tool in the box, I saw that the cartridge had come from another box, a .30-30. From neck down, it looked exactly like a .32 Winchester Special. The only difference was from the neck up—a slightly smaller bullet at .308 rather than .323.
“Well, this is going to be fun,” I said, and suddenly the rifle felt awkward. A lifetime of gun handling, without a single incident of jamming the wrong cartridge into a weapon, made the whole process just feel wrong.
I glanced back at Torrez and Estelle Reyes, both of whom waited expectantly.
One Perfect Shot Page 12
