Steven Havill - Bag Limit

Shortly after eleven-forty, I closed the door of my office for a few moments of peace and quiet, ignoring the lengthy list of return calls that Gayle Torrez had kindly organized for me. I had looked at all the notes, and then at her. “But Taber hasn’t checked in yet?”

“No word,” Gayle said. “I talked to her a few minutes ago, and Connie was still in surgery.”

“You have the number handy?”

“Sure.”

With that in hand, I retreated to my office. The young man who answered the phone in Las Cruces sounded polite and efficient, and it took him less than a minute to find Jackie Taber.

“Sir, Connie is still in surgery,” the deputy said. “The head injury is not real good news, I guess.”

“Nothing else so far?”

“No, sir. She’s been in surgery for almost three hours, and they haven’t looked up once.”

“If you get a chance, try to pry one of ’em loose long enough for a progress report. They found Scott, by the way. He’ll probably be okay. One bullet hit him a grazing shot across the face. He’d wandered about a half mile west of where we found Connie.”

“Was he able to tell you anything?”

“Not yet. So you stick close at that end, and we’ll see what we can find out up here.”

“Yes, sir.”

I hung up and leaned back in the chair, letting the old, soft leather upholstery cushion my sore joints. I was allowed no more than five seconds before the phone buzzed. I groped for it without opening my eyes. “Yes?”

“Sir,” Gayle said, “your grandson is on the phone. He wanted me to make sure I wasn’t interrupting anything before I put him through.”

I looked at my watch. I’d made some vague promise about lunch, but I couldn’t remember what it was. In any case, I had eight minutes to make up my mind.

“Put him on,” I said.

The phone clicked. “This is Tadd, Grandpa.”

“How was your morning?” I asked.

“Neato,” the kid said. “We messed around all morning, and I kinda lost track of time. I wanted to check with you about lunch, but I asked Mrs. Torrez not to bother you if you were awful busy.”

“I’m not.” I spread out the callback notes, scanning the names. They could all wait. “Are you guys ready to eat, then? Are the Guzmans there?”

“Sure thing. Well, Dr. Guzman isn’t. He’s over at the hospital, I think. I called to ask you if you wanted me to put something on the grill?”

I gathered the notes and tossed them to one side. “Save it for supper, Tadd. I’d hate to see you rush a masterpiece. Let’s grab a burrito at the Don Juan.”

Tadd laughed. He muffled the phone, but I heard his bellow anyway. “You owe me five bucks!” A voice in the background mumbled something that I couldn’t hear.

“Who was that?”

“My dad,” Tadd said. “I made a bet with him that you’d suggest that.”

“It’s terrible to be so predictable,” I said. “I tell you what. There are a number of odds and ends hanging right now. How about if you guys just meet me there rather than me driving over to the house? I’m heading out the door right now.”

“You got it, Grandpa.”

As I left the office, Gayle’s phone was ringing, and I paused as she answered it. “If it’s Jackie Taber, I’ll take it,” I said.

She nodded, listened for a few seconds, and shook her head, then she put her hand over the receiver. “It’s Leona Spears,” she mouthed, and her eyes twinkled as I raised the corner of my lip.

“Tell her highness that it’s all a right-wing conspiracy, and the election has been called off,” I said over my shoulder.

I hadn’t been completely accurate, of course, when I told my grandson that there were just some “odds and ends” to wrap up. What we had was one man dead of a coronary, a young girl still under the surgeon’s knife after being pushed from a cliff, and her brother with his head nearly split open by a high-caliber rifle bullet. That was an impressive list, but one crucial element was missing: the why.

Until either Connie French or Scott Gutierrez could put together a coherent sentence, we were stymied. I had discarded James Walsh’s version. The ballistic evidence said that he was a liar, dying words or no.

As a first step, Robert Torrez was concentrating on Walsh’s background. The man had lied-even when he knew that he was having a heart attack. Of course, he didn’t know just that moment that he was about to die, but it takes some cold calculation to bring off tall tales when the old ticker is bouncing in your chest.

Walsh had said that Scott Gutierrez fired first, after pushing Connie off the rocks. The young man hadn’t fired first. In fact, he hadn’t fired a shot all morning.

The hunting rifles didn’t lie: Walsh’s.270 Winchester had been fired at least three times: Sergeant Bishop had found two empty casings on the ground about twenty feet east of where we’d found Walsh, along with the casing still in the chamber. Connie French’s little.243 had gone airborne over the rocks with her. The cheap scope was smashed to a million pieces, the stock was busted, and the chamber was empty.

That left Scott’s Remington.308-clean as a whistle, with a full magazine.

Torrez turned his attention to Del Rio, Texas-an interesting little resort city of thirty thousand people at the south end of Amistad National Recreation Area. Across the International Amistad Reservoir lay the Mexican town of Ciudad Acuna-and another thirty-eight thousand people. An interesting place, with lots of opportunity.

By the time I had walked out of the Public Safety Building heading for lunch, the undersheriff had already been on the phone with Lieutenant Leo Nunez of the Del Rio P.D.

I pulled to a stop for the red light at Grande and Bustos just in time to see the Guzmans’ rental van gliding northbound on Bustos. They caught the light, and I tailed them west on Bustos to the Don Juan.

Francisco and Carlos were wound up like two little springs. “They should have been running up and down the mountain this morning,” I said to Estelle. As I opened the restaurant door for them, I tapped the sign taped to the glass.

“They’re closed tomorrow?” Estelle asked. “How’s that possible?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “The one day that we need a place to celebrate, they close. Tadd’s going to have to dream up something.”

“No problem, Grandpa,” Tadd said. He had a firm grip on two little hands as he herded the kids inside.

We’d hit the place at high noon, a busy time for the Don Juan on any day, but especially on a Monday with the Lions Club meeting in the Conquistador Room. We found a quiet spot on the other side of the restaurant where we could pull two tables together.

“Is Francis going to make it?” I asked.

Estelle shook her head. “He’s playing golf with Alan Perrone…at least he was supposed to.”

“Then he’s going to be a while. I imagine Perrone’s got his hands full.” In between mock skirmishes with Francisco to keep him out of my chips, I recapped the morning for Estelle. “And I didn’t know that your husband played golf,” I added.

“All doctors play golf,” Buddy said. “It’s a rule. If you look at their license to practice, it’s got a little space down at the bottom to record their current handicap.”

“The Posadas Country Club might change all that. And if Francis eats out there, you may never see him again.”

“They actually built that course? The one over by the high school?”

“They actually built it, rattlesnakes, antelope, wind and all. Nine holes. The only real difficulty has been training the prairie dogs to dig the pin holes straight down. They’re a little sloppy.”