Steven Havill - Red, Green, or Murder

“You bet. Who did you say owns the knee?”

“Dale Torrance. His horse stepped on him. It’s a mess.”

“Ouch. Well, stop in when you get a minute. Don’t be such a stranger.”

“You bet.” I switched off and glanced in the mirror at Annie. Her expression was worried, but she caught my eye and looked heavenward, the crows-feet deepening at the corners of her eyes. “He’s going to end up hobbling just like his old man,” Annie said.

“Maybe not that bad,” I said, not believing a word of it. Knees that pointed sideways never turned out as good as new.

Behind us, Deputy Collins had slowed and U-turned to return to his speed trap. The kid had been my last hire in the final months before Robert Torrez, dispatcher Gayle’s husband, took over the sheriff’s office. Like most young cops, if Collins could put three or four years’ experience under his belt without making any bone-headed mistakes, he’d probably make a good deputy. But by then, he’d want to move on to some other department that paid more than a street person makes working an intersection in Albuquerque.

Far ahead, as the buttress of Salinas Mesa rose to the south, I saw the first flash of ambulance lights. Just before the bridge across Salinas arroyo, I took the turn-out and pulled to a gentle halt, turning on the flashers. By the time the EMTs pulled the heavy diesel rig to a stop, I had the SUV’s doors and tailgate opened for them.

In minutes, Dale Torrance was strapped to a proper gurney, an IV started, and the mercy of morphine-or whatever magic potion they use nowadays-flowing into his arm. I stayed out of the way. In a bit, the ambulance, loaded with mother and son, took off with a wail and flash, followed by Herb Torrance in the Chrysler.

That left me standing by my SUV, in no hurry to join the parade to the hospital. There was nothing I could do now except my job. Life at the ranch would go on. Pat Gabaldon and Socks, left by themselves with a day’s work still ahead, would need the transportation permit to move the cattle. The paperwork rode on my clipboard on the passenger seat.

I looked at my watch and saw that it was already coming up on noon. It would take at least another hour to finish with Patrick and then head back to town. George Payton was right. When the day starts to go to hell, it’s a hard snowball to stop. I climbed back into the SUV and pulled it into gear, then planted my foot hard on the brake, jolted to a stop by another siren.

This time, Deputy Dennis Collins wasn’t sparing the horses. The county car came in from the west, traveling so fast that when it shot by me I felt its bow wave rock my truck. The siren note wafted away as Collins sped north on State 56, winding through the parade of mesas.

I had no sheriff’s department radio in my personal rig. Retirement was retirement, I had decided. I didn’t need to be listening to all that jibber-jabber of 10-this and 10-that. Still, curiosity takes longer to retire. Hopefully EMT Matty Finnegan hadn’t swerved the loaded ambulance off the highway in an effort to miss an errant steer or antelope. I reached for the phone but immediately thought better of it. With an emergency serious enough to shag a deputy in from the other end of the county, Sheriff’s dispatcher Gayle Torrez would have enough to do without fielding curiosity calls.

Instead, I U-turned the SUV and headed southbound toward the ranch. After issuing the Torrance permit, the rest of my day was clear, and I relished that notion. After thirty years in the same tiny county, you might imagine that there wasn’t a corner or niche that I hadn’t explored. But I knew of a couple such places, and I planned to spend my afternoon in the bright sun, poking here and there like an old badger scouting out a good spot to dig another hole.

A pickup truck and two cars had stopped at the Broken Spur Saloon as I drove past. Two women, one of them carrying an infant, were just climbing out of a Volvo station wagon. I almost swung into the parking lot myself at the thought of one of Victor Sanchez’s enormous, dripping Spur burgers, but disciplined myself. I had a permit to deliver. Maybe on the way back, although I had second thoughts about that, too. Ice tea was one of my passions, and as edible as the rest of his food was, Victor didn’t have a clue how to brew tea leaves.

That was the magnitude of my daydreaming as I turned off State 56, once more running the kidney jolting surface of CR 14. The wheels of the SUV rattled over the cattleguard and as if vibrated to life, my cell phone interrupted my peace and quiet.

“Gastner.”

“Sir,” Gayle Torrez said, “are you ten-eight?”

I laughed at the ten-code expression, an affliction I was still trying to cure. “Almost. I’m running a permit out to the Torrance ranch so that Pat can move some cattle. What’s up?”

“Sir,” she said, “we’ve just been called to an unattended death over at 1228 Ridgemont.” She said it as if I knew the address, but she had forgotten my selective memory-remember meal and bed time, forget everything else. In this case, however, there was no doubt that I would remember.

I slowed for a particularly jarring section of CR14, a well of apprehension already growing in my gut. “Phil Borman called us, sir. He found Mr. Payton in the kitchen.”

“Well, shit.” I damn near drove off into the bar ditch.

“Estelle said you’d want to know.” Gayle’s voice was soft with sympathy.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” I muttered, and that’s about all I could think to say. The dirt road stretched out in front of me, and it seemed a little emptier.

“She said she’d like to meet with you if you’re clear,” Gayle added. “She’s over at that address right now.”

I heaved a grand sigh and pulled my senses together. Moping wasn’t going to accomplish diddly. Estelle Reyes-Guzman, the county undersheriff but to me more like an adopted daughter, wouldn’t request my presence at the death scene out of sympathy. I was still fifteen minutes south of the Torrance ranch, and the time to drive there and back, with the state livestock paperwork in addition, would add another hour. Estelle hadn’t asked for me to come to George Payton’s home ‘sometime,’ or mañana.

“I’m on the way,” I said, and found a wide spot to execute another U-turn.

George Payton’s dilapidated International pickup dominated the driveway at 1228 Ridgemont. I recalled one of George’s pronouncements when I had suggested that he might consider something a bit smaller, agile, even lower to the ground than the mammoth green beast. Climbing into the truck was on a par with climbing the front of Cat Mesa. The suggestion was too sensible.

“Might want to carry something someday besides my walker,” he’d growled, and that was that. It was likely that the truck had not moved from that spot in the last month.

Cars marked and unmarked from both the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department and the dwindling Posadas Village P.D. were curbed in front, along with Linda Real’s little red Honda. That the Sheriff’s Department’s photographer would be at the scene wasn’t surprising. Any unattended death was just that-unattended. Until investigators decided otherwise, the case would stay open, and documentation was required.

On the other side of the street, where pavement blended into weeds and pasture, another jazzy SUV and a sleek Cadillac sedan added to the clot. An EMT first-responder unit dominated the street, lights pulsing.

The young deputy who’d blown by me a few moments before on State 56 stood by the curb with one of the village part-time officers, and when he saw me the deputy stepped out into the street and waved me forward. I rolled down my window.