Steven Havill - The Fourth Time is Murder

“The other?”

“Look, this guy would have died in minutes or maybe hours at best. He was busted up so badly that any significant movement was out of the question. Multiple fractures and lacerations-just beaten to pieces. His right chest was so badly flailed that if he was breathing at all, it was just out of his left lung. Even if the EMTs had gotten to him seconds after the crash, he wouldn’t have made it to the hospital. Four of his ribs lacerated the hell out of his liver.”

“I don’t understand why someone would step on his hand ,” Estelle said.

“Two explanations that I can think of,” Perrone said, and yawned loudly. “Excuse me. First, it might have been an accident. The step, I mean. The Good Samaritan witnesses the crash and scrambles down the bank…and steps on him by accident. Or, as I think now, the Good Samaritan used his foot to keep the victim’s left hand out of the way. That arm was busted in a couple of places, but the victim might have been able to move it some. He would have been convulsing, maybe. Flailing a little bit. Or, the killer might have thought that he might .”

“You’re kidding.”

“You know I don’t,” Perrone said.

“That’s grotesque. And you said ‘killer’?”

“Well, think on this one, if you want grotesque, my dear. If you were lying on your back in a million pieces, and someone pours beer into your gaping mouth, drowning you in the stuff, you’re going to thrash around a little bit…no matter how it hurts.”

The line fell silent.

“That’s what happened?” Estelle asked finally. She pictured a crushed and battered Christopher Marsh lying gurgling and moaning among the rocks, and then the shadowy figure looming overhead. If Marsh had been capable of cogent thought at all, he might have gasped a plea for help. Help was not what he got.

“I’m thinking so.” Perrone let it go at that without further explanation.

Estelle sat motionless, staring off into space.

“You still there?” Perrone asked. “Let me take another gander tomorrow morning. You’ll want to be here.”

Estelle shook her head to clear the image. “Yes, I will. I have to hope that you’re wrong.”

“Hey, we’ll see. I’ll have more for you then,” he said. “But I know I’m right with the preliminaries. There was beer in his esophagus, and in his windpipe, and aspirated into his lungs. A lot of beer. It isn’t a question of having just taken a gulp an instant before his truck clobbered that deer. He choked on the stuff, and when he stopped breathing, whoever it was just kept pouring. Not a pretty picture. I’m not sure I’d want to meet up with this guy.”

“And you’re sure that Chris Marsh was alive at first?”

“I’m one hundred percent sure. A dead man does not aspirate beer into his lungs. Or lung, I should say. Only one of ’em was working enough to matter.”

“Ay,” Estelle whispered, and when she saw that Bill Gastner was watching her like an old basset hound, “I’ll be in touch, Alan.” She hung up the phone and sat back. “Our accident victim drowned.”

There was no point in scrambling up and down the rock-strewn precipices of Regál Pass in the dark, regardless of how Chris Marsh had died. In addition to being drowned in his own beer, the victim had been dead for at least twenty-four hours, maybe longer. Dr. Alan Perrone was sure of that. The killer wasn’t still lurking at the scene. He was long gone, leaving nothing but puzzles behind.

Some of the answers, Estelle felt sure, would be found at the accident site, and that required a careful, methodical approach-not a fleet of big feet slipping and sliding, ruining evidence.

After a brief phone consultation with Deputy Jackie Taber, who reported that Regál Pass was so quiet she could hear the piñons grow, Estelle walked Bill Gastner to his truck, then settled behind her desk to read Dennis Collins’ deposition. The brief document was a masterpiece of garbled syntax. Estelle read it quickly, saw no gaping inconsistencies, and chalked up the lack of grammatical precision to exhaustion tinged with apprehension. Despite the young man’s bravado that might come to his defense, Dennis Collins would suffer the awful bouts of self-doubt that churned the gastric juices into rebellion and drove sleep away.

Estelle saw that she had two arguments to use when she discussed the young deputy’s future with Sheriff Robert Torrez. That conference would wait, however. Torrez had gone home, as had Collins. Rest would do them both a world of good.

“Estelle?” The voice jerked the undersheriff out of her musings, and she turned to see Brent Sutherland standing in the doorway of her office. “Elliot Parker is on the phone from Lordsburg. He would like to speak with you.”

“Do we know Mr. Parker?”

“He’s the kid’s father. The kid who threw the bottle?”

“Ah. That’s good,” Estelle said. “Even at two thirty in the morning, that’s good.” The boy’s phone call had been straight to Dad. Deputy Tom Pasquale and Rick Black had taken care of booking Tyler Parker into the detention center’s minimalist facilities. The four others, all minors, were waiting glumly in the conference room. State law prohibited incarcerating or even cuffing children unless they were an obvious physical threat to themselves or others, and Deputy Pasquale had confirmed that the county Juvenile Probation Office wanted the kids sent home with parents, the sooner the better. If there were to be charges against any of them, it would wait until the next day, or the next-on whichever mañana the JPO authorities chose to decide.

Mr. Parker was the first irate parent to contact the department-perhaps because his son, of age, had the most to lose. His case didn’t fall under the providence of the JPO, but rather that of the district attorney and Judge Lester Hobart.

She picked up the phone. “Undersheriff Guzman.”

There was a long pause, then, “May I speak with the sheriff, please. This is Elliot Parker.” The man’s voice was carefully modulated, as if he was putting great effort into self-control.

“Sheriff Torrez is not in the office, sir. May I help you?”

“Well, I guess so. Look, my son Tyler is with you folks? Do I understand that correctly?”

With us . Estelle smiled at the quaint phrasing. Welcome to your local county B and B . “Yes, sir, he is. The deputies are working on an arraignment schedule with Judge Hobart.”

“He’s all right, though?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The four others are still with you as well?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So they’re all being detained. Do I have that right?”

“Yes, sir. They’re all minors, all under the influence to one degree or another. They will be detained here until parents or guardians arrive to take them into custody.”

“There’s bond, I assume? For my son, I mean?”

“At the moment, no. He is being held pending arraignment.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” Parker said. “The judge isn’t going to like that much.” Judge Lester Hobart didn’t like much of anything that jarred his strict routine, Estelle knew…least of all being hauled out of bed to tongue-lash drunken youngsters. She offered no comment about what the judge might or might not do.

“Okay, look,” Parker said. “After my son called, I spoke with some of the other parents. Is it acceptable if I pick the kids up?”

“No, sir. We will release them to parents or legal guardians. That’s all the law allows us to do.”

“How about if I have a signed note.”

Anything for convenience, she thought. “No, sir.”

“So each of these boys is going to have to be picked up by his own parents?” A note of exasperation crept into the man’s tone.