Steven Havill - Bag Limit

“What do you mean, it hadn’t been fired?” I asked, too frustrated to keep the really stupid questions from slipping out.

“Just that, sir. This rifle hasn’t been fired since the last time it was cleaned. There was even a trace of lint just ahead of the front sight, near the crown of the barrel. Probably from the rifle case.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Sir?”

“I’m here. I’m listening.”

“The rifle wasn’t fired.”

“Was there a round in the chamber?”

“No, sir. Five in the magazine.”

“Hold on a minute.” I pulled my radio off my belt. “Howard, do you copy?”

“Yes, sir.” Bishop sounded bored.

“Did Linda take all the photos of Walsh’s rifle that she needed?”

“I believe so.”

Linda Real’s voice broke in. “Sir, I think I covered it from every angle.”

“Good. Howard, have you bagged it up yet?”

I heard him chuckling as he pressed the transmit button. “That’s negative, sir. I didn’t bring any evidence bags up here with me.”

“I need to know if it’s been fired.”

“Walsh said that he did, sir.”

“I know he said that he did. Check for me.”

“Just a minute.”

I could picture the slow, methodical Bishop trying to figure out how to handle the rifle without ruining whatever prints might be on it. In a moment, the radio crackled to life. “Sir, that’s affirmative.”

“Round in the chamber?”

“Affirmative. One in the chamber, one in the magazine. Safety is off.”

“Linda, did you take photos that would show the position of that safety?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Howard, put the safety on. Otherwise, leave it alone. I’ll get someone to run up a large evidence bag. Don’t let anyone else near the thing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So,” I said into the phone.

“I heard,” Torrez replied. “Walsh fired, Gutierrez didn’t.”

“Unless he had another weapon with him. He’d have a handgun, I’m sure.”

“Not a weapon of choice for up here, sir,” Torrez said.

“So why would Walsh lie?”

Torres hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe he saw Scott push Connie, and took a shot at him right then, without giving Scott time to react. That’s possible. And then he got to thinking…his actions would seem more justified if Scott had fired first.”

“Think on it,” I said. “I told Howard I’m sending up some evidence bags. Be really careful how you treat that rifle.”

“Oh, yeah,” Torrez replied. “I’ll be careful.”

A kid barely old enough to vote and wearing a Forest Service uniform shirt had picked his way down the hill and was headed toward his pickup, whether to find a smoke, or toilet paper, or just water, I didn’t know or care. I sent him back up the mountain with a supply of large black plastic evidence bags and tags, and then called Gayle Torrez.

“Gayle, call the medical center in Las Cruces for me. Tell Jackie Taber that I need to know the extent and nature of Connie French’s injuries the instant that information is available.”

“Yes, sir. I just got off the phone with them, and the Med-Evac’s ETA is about ten minutes.”

“All right. Make sure Jackie understands the urgency of this.”

“Yes, sir. You want extent and nature of injuries.”

“That’s it.”

“Any word on Scott Gutierrez yet?”

“Nothing. He’s evaporated. We’ve got fifty people on this mountainside, in broad daylight, and an aircraft circling overhead. We can’t find him. Not a damn trace.”

“Estelle stopped by for a few minutes a little bit ago. She asked if there was anything that she could do.”

“I wish,” I said. “There are certainly other places I’d rather be, I can tell you that. Have Jackie get right back to me the second she knows something.”

I tossed the phone on the hood of the Bronco and was reaching for the binoculars when I heard the shout, far over to the west. It was too far to recognize the voice or the words, but in an instant my radio brought confirmation.

“Sheriff, we’ve got him.”

What kept Scott Gutierrez staggering west might have been as simple as the warmth of the sun on his back and the gentle downslope of the terrain as one fold blended into another. He might even have imagined that he was making his way downhill toward Borracho Springs.

More likely, he’d just moved . His instincts drove him to put distance between himself and the man with the rifle down below, and that’s what he had done-for 890 yards.

Deputy Thomas Pasquale found Gutierrez curled up in a tight ball, deep in a thicket of mountain mahogany. Each stem was about the diameter of a finger, tough and resilient. The young man had wedged his way into the thicket by feel, laid his head on his arm, and passed out. The brush provided a canopy, shielding him from view from the air.

I watched the rescue effort through binoculars, and quickly picked up Undersheriff Robert Torrez. He stood perfectly still just west of where the rifle had been found, and examined the route across to where Pasquale waved his arms. The EMTs had already started clambering their way toward the victim, moving as quickly as the rugged terrain would allow.

Torrez picked his way across, stopping frequently to readjust his route and peer at the ground. After a minute, I realized what he was doing. Ever the hunter, he was following what little sign Gutierrez had left behind-telltale spatters of blood that to a less trained eye simply blended with the earth or the lichen on the rock faces. Now that Gutierrez had been found, and emergency help was on the way, Torrez took his time, reconstructing the route.

The seventeen minutes that it took Al Langford and Judy Parnell to reach Scott Gutierrez after Tom Pasquale’s first triumphant shout seemed hours.

People converged on the spot from the east and from below, including another backboard raced up the mountain from the waiting ambulance. I waited patiently, watching. Eventually, my telephone chirped and I snatched it up eagerly.

“Yes?”

“Sir,” Robert Torrez said, “we’re bringing him down now. Al says he’s stable. He’s sedated pretty good.”

“He’ll have to be, for that trip,” I said. “Whoever is carrying that gurney better be surefooted.”

“They’re doin’ all right,” Torrez said.

“How is he?”

“I can’t tell, sir. It looks to me like the bullet came at him from the left, but it’s hard to tell. Took a chunk out of the bridge of his nose, and then did a tap dance over his right eye. Kind of a grazing shot. A quarter inch more and it would have blown his face off.”

I winced. “Just the one injury?”

“As near as I can tell, sir. That one’s sure enough, though. He wouldn’t have had a clue about where he was going.”

“He wasn’t conscious at all when Pasquale found him?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, be careful. Bring him down easy, Roberto.”

“You betcha.”

***

The last vehicle drove out of Borracho Springs at 11:05 that morning. Shortly before that, two of Scott Gutierrez’s supervising officers from the U.S. Border Patrol had arrived. They didn’t stay long.

They would have left a lot happier if I could have told them exactly what had happened, and been able to explain Gutierrez’s role in the whole affair. As it was, they lingered just long enough to satisfy themselves that it had been a family quarrel of some kind, and to receive a guarantee from me that as soon as we had details, they’d be among the first to know. Driving into Posadas and waiting at the hospital didn’t appear to be on their agenda, but that was their business.

Of more interest to me were events in Las Cruces. I had heard no word from Deputy Taber, and the deafening silence made me nervous.