Steven Havill: Bag Limit

“Three oh eight, three ten is at the top of the hill. You want me to cut him off?”

“Negative, sir. I’m backing off. I know where the kid lives.”

Even as Undersheriff Robert Torrez said that, I saw the interval between the two vehicles stretch. In theory, what Torrez was trying to do should have worked. With a dangerous, winding mountain road coming up, there was no point in pressing a senseless chase until someone ended up crashed into a canyon or pulped against a scraggly juniper, grinding up himself and his passengers.

Torrez knew the driver, knew where he lived, knew that if he dropped back, the kid would slow down, stay alive, and pull into the home driveway thinking he’d beaten the deputies again. That’s the way it should have worked. But that’s not what the kid did. Taking his cue from all the highly paid, sober Hollywood stuntmen he’d watched in the movies, the kid tried for magic.

For a brief minute or two, as it snarled up the sweeping, smooth highway toward Regal Pass, the charging car was out of view, skirting around a couple of dry, brush-covered foothills. I could hear that he was still pushing pretty hard, a little engine flailing away. I saw a flash of lights through the trees and then, with a squawl of tires, the kid stood on the brakes and swerved into the narrow fire road…the same dirt two-track in the middle of which was parked the aging sheriff of Posadas County.

What the driver couldn’t know was that after his car left the pavement, he had no more than fifty feet to haul his vehicle to a stop. That wasn’t enough, even for a union-scale stunt driver with two or three rehearsals.

I had time to recognize the oncoming missile as some sort of little compact car, and I grabbed the steering wheel to brace myself. Just before his car T-boned mine, his headlights flicked off. It must have been a hell of a surprise. One instant, he was cleverly reaching for that switch to kill the headlights, and in the next found himself collecting an aging Ford Crown Victoria as a hood ornament.

The little car crashed into the left rear passenger door and quarter panel of 310, sending a shower of busted glass that sprayed the back of my head. The impact jolted the patrol car sideways, uncomfortably close to the yawning open spaces.

For about three seconds after that, things were pretty quiet. I could hear my heart pounding, and then a quiet tinkle as a few fragments of glass tilted out of the remains of the window behind me.

Without taking my eyes off the car, I reached out slowly and picked up the microphone. “Three oh eight, I’ve got company.”

The radio squelch barked twice, but I was more interested in the voices coming from the little car. I didn’t know if they had actually seen me sitting in the patrol car or not-it was possible that the driver had hit the lights before my presence registered on their hyperactive little pea brains.

The driver bailed out in a drunken dance that left him on his hands and knees, one hand clutching the open door, the other on the ground.

At the same time, with my flashlight a comfortable weight in my hand, I opened my own door, taking my time. I snapped on the beam and framed the wild-eyed face. The kid was sloshed. He let go of the door frame, reared to his feet, and took a staggering step toward the back of his car. I could smell the alcohol, the concentrated aroma from a six-pack that’s had a wild ride around the inside of a car.

“Just hold it right there,” I barked. He flattened against the car as if without its support his spine might turn to Jell-O and he’d fall on his face. He wasn’t bleeding, and all four of his limbs bent in the right places. He just didn’t know what to do with them.

With my free hand I fished the handcuffs from the back of my belt. “Turn around and put your hands on the car,” I ordered. The other two occupants hadn’t budged, and as long as they stayed put, things would be fine.

I twitched the light just enough to take a quick glance at the kid riding shotgun. He was rocking back and forth holding his face, blood pouring over his fingers. No doubt the dashboard had tap-danced across his mouth, lacing a few teeth through his lip. In the back a third party animal braced both hands against the seat in front of her, staring bug-eyed at me. Fourteen years old and the daughter of an acquaintance of mine, she had reason to be scared.

The kid standing by the car hadn’t moved, and I gestured with the flashlight. “Turn around,” I repeated. About that time, more lights poured through the trees, and Bob Torrez’s patrol unit almost slid past the fire road. He turned in, the stiffly sprung vehicle jouncing on the ruts.

The kid took one look at the flashing red lights on the roof of the Expedition and spun away from me, darting around the back of the little car. He tripped over something and fell hard, then got up and lurched off down the lane toward the darkness. At one point he was headed straight for a thick grove of scrub oak, but he changed course at the last minute, picking up speed as he went.

Torrez appeared, framed in the headlights. He and I stood and watched as the kid zigged out of the beam of my flashlight.

Torrez showed no inclination to spring into action, and instead said, “Well, that’s neat.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to run after the kid. At seventy years old and three days from retirement, I wasn’t about to run after anything.

Torrez turned the beam of his own light into the car. “Pretty good idea you had, to let Matt drive your car, Toby,” he said. He bent down and rested his forearms on the windowsill. The kid was in no mood for sarcasm, and responded with a pathetic whimper. “Let me see your face,” Torrez said and reached into the car. With one hand on top of the kid’s head, he held him quiet. The youngster still managed to cringe downward, his hands trying to ward off the undersheriff’s monstrous paw.

“Move your hands,” Torrez commanded, and the kid let them sink halfway to his lap, poised and ready should some part of his injured anatomy decide to fall off. With my light from the other side, Torrez could see the damage, and after a moment he said, “Sit tight. You’ll be all right.”

He turned the light on the girl in the back. “Nice night, eh?” he said. “You all right?”

She managed a nod.

“No cuts, no hurts?”

She shook her head.

“You sit tight too,” he said, and turned back to me. “If you’d request an ambulance, I’ll get something for Toby’s face.”

“I don’t need no ambulance,” the kid said thickly, the first coherent words I’d heard him utter. He leaned forward toward the dash. He looked as if he was about to throw up.

“I’m sure you don’t, tough guy,” Torrez said. “Stay in the car.” He grinned at me, and then hustled back to the Expedition. I waited until he returned before turning to the radio to hail dispatch.

Now that Torrez had put a name to him, I recognized the injured youngster as Toby Gordan. His mother, Emilita, was going to be really pleased. She worked as a custodian at Posadas County Hospital and lived just a handful of blocks from her work. That was convenient too, since her only car was now a couple of feet shorter than it had been.

With an ambulance on the way, a clean compress holding Toby’s remaining teeth and lip in place, and the girl snuffling but otherwise behaving herself in the backseat, I said to Torrez, “What do you want to do about the driver?” I indicated the darkness into which he’d fled.

“Like I said, I know where he lives,” Torrez said. He straightened up and rested a beefy arm on the roof of the car. “That’s Matt Baca, my uncle Sosimo’s oldest kid.” He ducked his head and looked in the car. “That’s who was driving, right?”