Steven Havill - The Fourth Time is Murder

“Solid as a rock,” he said. “See, there’s just an infinitesimal chance that this gun is going to discharge when dropped.” Gastner turned the gun, holding it by the barrel. “It’s not like the old Colt single actions, where the only thing holding that hammer back was a thin little sliver of trigger steel. Drop that sucker on its hammer, and boom. But not this one. You have to be holding it so that the grip safety is depressed.” He pushed that broad, contoured safety on the back of the handle that a shooter’s grip on the gun would activate. “Unless he’s holding it properly, this prevents a discharge. Supposed to, anyway.”

He thumbed on the hammer safety on the side of the broad, flat slide. “You probably know all this better than I do,” he added, then charged ahead. “And if he’s carrying it with the hammer back, ready to go, he has to depress the thumb safety-if he remembered to click it on in the first place the last time the gun was holstered.”

Gastner snapped the safety up and down, and Estelle sat silently, watching him. “Ehhhh,” he said, and snapped the safety some more. “That’s a little softer than it should be,” he said finally. “Let me see his rig. You got it here?”

“Sure,” Estelle replied. She retrieved the deputy’s belt and holster from the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet and handed it to Gastner.

For several minutes, he manipulated the gun and holster, then sat back with a shrug. “It’s conceivable that the thumb safety worked its way out of position against the leather of the holster,” he said. “Especially sitting in a vehicle, with the added nuisance of a shoulder belt.”

He held up the gun. “I think…you might want to have Robert look at it…but I think this thumb safety is a little softer than it should be. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised that over time it worked its way down, into the ‘off’ position. When Collins grabbed the gun, he made one mistake.” Gastner held the gun up and his trigger finger lay along the frame, outside of the trigger guard, well away from the trigger. “Instead of having his finger like so, he curled it into the trigger guard…on the trigger. If the thumb safety had rotated down, guess what.”

Estelle didn’t see his finger move, but the hammer fell with a sharp snap. “Just like that.”

“Exactly, just like that.” He reached out and laid the gun on Estelle’s desk. “That doesn’t excuse the a.d.,” he said. “No matter what the gun did or didn’t do, his finger had to be on the trigger. Period. End of story. We could argue physics working against us if the gun had hit nose first, and firing pin inertia was involved. Blah, blah, blah,” and he waved his hand in dismissal. “But that didn’t happen.”

“Mitigating circumstances,” Estelle said, and Gastner laughed.

“Mitigate, schmitigate,” he said. “If his finger hadn’t been on the trigger, the gun wouldn’t have discharged, sweetheart. I’m not saying it’s impossible. Just very, very unlikely.”

“And that means that his training wasn’t adequate.”

Gastner regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, and she waited. “It could probably be argued,” he said after a moment, “that our training is never adequate, considering the job we do. Consider for instance last spring, when you scared the holy shit out of all of us. There are just those unfortunate moments when events conspire, no matter how adept, no matter how good , we are.”

“Desperate” was the word Estelle would have chosen to describe the incident to which Gastner referred, and not just the moment itself when the two shots from a 9mm in the hands of a highly competent gunman had bludgeoned her to the ground. The surgery and weeks of convalescence afterward had been the worst moments in her thirty-eight years of life. But that was not the issue here, and she pushed the memory from her mind.

“Bobby wants to fire him, sir.”

“His nibs will get over that. That would be a stupid overreaction. Tell him I said so. Hell, can that thought. I’ll tell him I said so.”

“That’s the catch,” Estelle said, and was about to add that telling Sheriff Robert Torrez anything was usually a waste of breath. “But it can be argued that the fault is not entirely the deputy’s. More intensive training might have resulted in safer gun handling.”

“Sure. He was rusty, like most of us. And it could be argued that his immediate supervisor should have inspected the firearms more frequently. Who’s his shift sergeant?”

“We don’t have a day sergeant,” Estelle said, and by the trace of a smile on Gastner’s face she knew that he knew that perfectly well. Both she and Captain Eddie Mitchell served as supervisors during the daytime shift, with Mears assigned as patrol sergeant for swing. Tom Pasquale worked graveyard with Mike Sisneros-with the sheriff and undersheriff on call if they were needed.

“What I want to-,” and she was interrupted by the phone. Her husband’s voice was like a welcome warm blanket, and she glanced at the clock.

“Querida,” Francis Guzman said, “I just got back. How are you doing?”

“I’m sitting here in my office ruminating with padrino . How’s Kerri?”

“Ah, you heard about that. Well, she’ll be all right, I think. She’s up in Albuquerque at University. Or will be shortly. The flight left almost an hour ago.”

“What happened?”

“It looks like a mitral valve prolapse,” he said. “Just like that. If she hadn’t been surrounded by all kinds of people who just happened to do all the right things, she’d be gone. The athletic director was walking right behind her when she went down, and he’s the hero of the moment. She’s a lucky kid.”

“She’ll be all right, though?”

“I think so. Look, the reason I called, querida , other than needing to hear your voice, is to mention that Alan wants to talk to you about your car accident victim. He was going to keep him on ice until a more civil hour, but he and I ended up doing a prelim on him. Some interesting things you need to know about.”

“Does Alan want me to call him right now?”

“If you can.”

“Then I need to do that, and then I’ll be home, querida .”

“I’m on my way there now,” the physician said. “Are you staying warm?”

“Oh, sure. I’m fine.” She was amused and touched by her husband’s gentle hovering, exponentially increased after her lengthy bout of recuperation.

“She needs to eat more,” Gastner said loudly, and Francis laughed.

“He’s right, you know,” the physician said.

“I am eating more, mi corazón,” Estelle said. “Just not in the middle of the night.” She looked at the clock again. “How long ago did you talk with Alan?”

“About six minutes.”

“Then I’ll call now. Thanks, querida . We have a houseful of juveniles that we need to send back to Lordsburg with their parents, and then I’ll be home.”

“Take care. Te amo.”

“Always.” She rang off and, as she dialed medical examiner Alan Perrone’s number, said to Gastner, “Kerri Gardner is going to be all right. Bad heart valve.” He grimaced in sympathy.

On the third ring, Dr. Perrone found his cell phone. His voice sounded distant and tired.

“Alan, it’s Estelle.”

“Hi. Go home and go to bed,” Perrone said without hesitation. “It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

“Francis said you might have something for me?”

“Well, it’s preliminary, but interesting. For one thing, I think that you guys are right. That looks like a boot or shoe print on the palm of his left hand. It’s not very clear, but that’s sure what it looks like to me. Your miracle girl spent a lot of time burning film…or digits, or whatever it is photographers do these days. The shoe tread looks like one of those waffle stompers, or even a running shoe with aggressive tread. There was enough mud that it left a pretty good impression. And that’s consistent with the other.”