Steven Havill - One Perfect Shot

“Yes, sir.” No hesitation there.

The Posadas County maintenance barns were on north Third Street. If Third had crossed the big arroyo that scarred the north side of the village, it would have intersected Highland in a quarter mile or so. The county barns and bone yard were close enough to Highland that anyone working outside should have been able to hear a rifle shot clearly.

But this was the rural southwest. Shooters abounded, whether slaying beer cans on the mesa, rattlesnakes invading the yard, or ravens ravaging a song bird’s nest. No one took particular notice of gun shots. Shots.

This had been, as far as we could tell, a single shot, in my book one of the most lethal sounds. One bullet was all it took if the shooter knew what he was about and conditions were right. During hunting season, if I heard blam, blam, blam, blam, I could guess that the deer or elk or antelope had probably escaped unscathed, the flurry of bullets kicking dust. But one, solitary, definitive blam… that was a different scenario. A critter dropped in his tracks. Or Larry Zipoli dead before he could move a hand to the gearshift, or duck to safety.

I swung 310 through the boneyard’s generous gate in the chain link and razor wire boundary fence, and drove cautiously through all the junk before reaching the maintenance office, housed at the north end of a long, steel building with four gigantic bay doors. Two were up, two down. In one, a twin-screw dump truck was resting on jacks, its hind-most differential in a thousand pieces. One of the county pick-up trucks was backed into the other open bay.

Parking directly in front of a single door marked Office , I lowered the front windows on both sides, then nodded at the mike without reaching for it. “PCS, three ten is ten six, county barn.”

Without hesitating, Estelle slipped the mike off its hook and repeated the message, her tone measured and pronunciation distinct without being exaggerated.

“Three ten, ten four,” dispatcher T.C. Barnes responded immediately.

“Most of the time, we want dispatch to know where we are,” I said. “There are times when we don’t, too. Half the goddamn county is listening to what we say, so we want to think before yapping. It’s a balance between staying safe and staying discreet. I keep badgering the sheriff to put mobile phones in each car, so we can stay off the radio waves entirely. No dinero. And radios are a tradition, stupid as that sounds.”

I hadn’t made a move to get out of the car yet, and took a moment to make a notation in my log…a document I cheerfully ignored most of the time. Now that my every move was under scrutiny by my ride-along, perhaps it behooved me to do things properly to start her off right.

“We want to talk first with Tony Pino. He’s bossman. He was out at the crime scene yesterday, and he’s shaken by all this.” I paused. “By way of historical interest, Tony’s grandfather was the first mayor of Posadas. Between Eduardo Salcido and myself, we could devise a hell of a trivia game about this little corner of the world-and what I find interesting is that sometimes, that makes folks nervous, thinking we know something about ’em that we shouldn’t. That can be to our advantage.”

I glanced at the steel office door, ajar just enough that anyone inside would have heard the crunch of our tires. “There will be lots of questions. Yesterday when we were buttoning up Highland, we had something of a crowd watching, although watching what I don’t know. Tony’s foreman was there too-Buddy Clayton. They’re going to have questions, and the trick is to make them feel included without giving anything away.” Looking sideways at my passenger I saw the look of noncommittal interest on her pretty face. My lectures hadn’t driven her over the brink yet.

“At this point, they don’t need to know what we know-which I’m sorry to say is diddly squat. But they don’t need to know that.” I slid the aluminum clipboard that included my log sheets under the pile of junk that threatened the center arm rest. “The base line is this: somewhere out there is someone with a high powered rifle who picked an easy target. We need to remember- always remember-that that son-of-a-bitch is still out there, still watching. We don’t get complacent, we stay sharp, we look and listen and watch. Okay?”

“Yes, sir.” Flat, noncommittal. Her fingers didn’t even stray toward the door handle. Maybe she expected more lectures.

“And that’s whether you’re riding with me or anyone else. And while you’re at it, ponder this cheerful thought. It might be quiet as a tomb in Posadas County for days on end. But we’re just off the interstate, and that connects us to the world. Some creep might have killed a dozen people in Terre Haute, Indiana, and be fleeing west…right through here. Or some hijacker slips custody in San Diego and heads east. Or some dealer is heading north with five hundred pounds of cocaine from downtown Mexico. Here we sit, hopefully not half asleep. It might be quiet here, but elsewhere, maybe not. And we’re all connected.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s see what they have to say.” I popped the door, at the same time noticing the lithe, effortless, almost anti-gravitational way that Estelle Reyes moved. Oh, to be twenty-two again. What interested me even more was watching her close the car door. Not a slam, just a gentle nudge against the latch. And all the while her eyes were roaming the boneyard, inventorying who knew what.

I rapped a knuckle on the office door and pushed it open. Two steps and I was greeted by a belly-high counter. A heavy-set woman sat at the first desk, the surface more cluttered than my own, a vast sea of requisitions, time sheets, phone messages, blueprints, job or parts-all the things that keep a busy department busy.

“Well, good morning.” Bea Summers spoke without any of her usual bounce or sunshine. “Tony was trying to call you earlier. I think he talked to Sheriff Salcido.”

“I’ve been out and about,” I said, without adding that I hadn’t checked my answering machine in the past couple of hours. I took a deep breath and let it out in a long, heart-felt sigh. “I’m sorry about all this,” I said. “Rough time.”

“Is there any news?”

“I wish there were. There are a number of things we need to find out from you, if we might.” If we might. I couldn’t imagine that Bea Summers would hesitate to cooperate in any way we asked, but sometimes folks hesitate when it’s the privacy of their turf that’s being violated. We’d find out what we needed to know whether Bea, or even Tony Pino, was agreeable or not, court orders being what they are.

“And by the way, Bea, this is Estelle Reyes. She’s a new hire who’s spending some ride-along time with me this morning.”

Bea didn’t rise from her swivel chair, but favored Estelle with a polite smile. “I know her great uncle, Reuben Fuentes.”

“Ah,” I said. Interesting that Bea hadn’t directed the comment to Estelle, instead speaking as if the girl were a piece of furniture. Maybe the grudge against Reuben extended to the next generation as well. Bea no doubt knew that over the years, Reuben had swiped more base course gravel from county and state piles than anyone else, and had been caught a time or two. I guess that when the crusher fines were stockpiled right beside the highway, the temptation was too strong to ignore. That might be what Bea was remembering.

“So…first I need to talk with Tony. He’s buried under paperwork?”

“Actually, he went over to Marilyn’s for a little bit this morning. Bill, this is all so terrible, so senseless. Tell me it didn’t really happen.”