Steven Havill - The Fourth Time is Murder

As Friday evenings went, this one was an interesting mix. At 6:30, the February sky was already dark, with heavy clouds to the southwest, obscuring the peaks of the San Cristóbals. No precipitation was predicted for the prairie, but in the mountains anything was possible.

Even though the temperature held at fifty degrees in the village, the evening appealed to Estelle as a perfect time to curl up with her husband under a down comforter and watch the fire. They would have an hour or so while Francisco finished up his homework, but then his piano would beckon. Little brother Carlos, still spared the affliction of homework, would be deep in his constant passion, great heaps of modeling clay that he shaped into the wonders of the moment.

The evening wouldn’t be as serene for other members of the Sheriff’s Department. She glanced at the clock. An hour before, the school bus from Lordsburg had arrived in Posadas via the interstate, carrying the junior varsity and varsity basketball teams for a late season game. Tip-off for the JV game was now minutes away, and two deputies, Tom Pasquale and Tony Abeyta, would work the raucous crowd at the school. As a routine precaution, the officers would escort the bus out of Posadas after the game, seeing it safely onto the interstate for the trip home.

For whatever reason, a game between the evenly matched teams always lowered the common sense quotient of the crowd by several dozen points. Bearing that in mind, Deputy Dennis Collins would patrol the central portion of the county, including the village itself, staying only seconds away from the school if his backup should be needed. Captain Eddie Mitchell had planned to work late in his office catching up on paperwork and would swing by the school about the time that the final game buzzer sounded.

Briefcase in one hand, laptop in the other, Estelle walked out of her office and paused at the magnetic whiteboard behind dispatcher Ernie Wheeler’s console. The list of working deputies was short, and would be shorter still when the graveyard shift began. Jackie Taber and Mike Sisneros would cover the whole of Posadas County, and the village of Posadas as well-7,500 souls, plus or minus.

On Sunday, coverage would drop again, leaving one deputy for each shift.

Ernie was talking either to himself-boredom could do that to a person-or into his headset, and he turned to catch Estelle’s eye, holding up a single finger in the “wait a minute” gesture.

“And where are you now?” he asked, and paused again, finger still poised in the air. “All right, we’d appreciate that. Someone will be out there. Stay on the line for a moment, please.” He swiveled to punch a button on his console, and then turned back to Estelle. “One of the highway department patrols is on her cell phone from just this side of the pass. She’s reporting a motor vehicle is off the road, way down in the rocks. Just short of mile marker four.”

“Anyone around it?”

“She can’t tell, and doesn’t want to climb down to look. She’s all by herself.”

“I can understand that ,” Estelle said. The climb down and back would be ghastly enough without the added possibility of bashed and mangled victims. “Is there a state officer handy?”

“Nope. One’s got a vehicle down, and the other is thirty miles east on the interstate with an accident.”

“If he’s clear, Dennis can head that way, then,” she said.

“He is. I told him to stay central, but he can break away.”

Estelle nodded. “I’ll be home if you need me.” Ernie nodded and turned back to his radio.

The undersheriff left the building, greeted by cold, moist air. A heck of a time to walk Regál Pass, she thought-dark, cold, wet, probably a biting wind thrown into the bargain. As she juggled the remote and pushed the button to unlock the door of her county car, she heard the deputy’s vehicle before she saw it. Collins’ unit turned south on Grande, grill lights pulsing. She watched until he was out of sight, under the interstate and headed southwest on State 56.

His adrenaline would be pumping, she knew-any young kid with a hot car and twenty-nine miles of open road would be just as eager, provided that collecting a deer or peccary or armadillo in his patrol car’s grill at 90 miles an hour didn’t blunt his enthusiasm.

As she turned onto Bustos from Grande, she saw the wink of lights from a southbound ambulance.

A left-hand turn to South 12th Street put her in view of her home, and she could see a curl of smoke from the chimney. Her husband’s SUV was parked in the driveway, and Irma’s Toyota sedan was at the curb. With a wonderful predictability, a world of aromas would waft out the door as Estelle entered. Irma Sedillos, nana for the two boys, talented chef of the best Mexican food on the planet, a source of good cheer during the black moments, had become a family fixture, bringing some order to the chaotic nonschedule of a family that included both the undersheriff of Posadas County and her husband, a busy physician and surgeon.

She parked beside her husband’s vehicle, and winked the red lights in the grill briefly at the face peering out through the living room window. With everything in order, she keyed the mike. “PCS, three-ten is ten-ten.”

“Three-ten, stand by.” Ernie Wheeler’s tone was crisp. He didn’t sound the least bit understanding that the undersheriff was now home, parked in her driveway, anticipating hugs, hot food, and a long, quiet evening. Estelle waited, engine idling. Deputy Collins had had time to cover perhaps ten miles. Over at the high school, the basketball game was seconds from tip-off.

Her cell phone rang, and Ernie’s familiar, low-key voice was urgent. “Estelle, the gal from the highway department says that a trucker stopped and they both climbed down to the wreck. There’s at least one dead. You want me to call the sheriff?”

“No. I’m already set to go.” As she backed the county car out of her driveway, she could see her younger son, Carlos, standing in the front door, hands on his hips. She blew him a kiss, and then dialed the phone as she accelerated back up 12th toward Bustos. Irma answered on the second ring.

“We’ve got a fatal down on Regál Pass, Irma,” she said.

“Well, you almost made it,” Irma’s voice replied. “We’ll save some posole for you.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you want to talk with your hubby? He’s on the computer in the back room with Francisco.”

“No. Just tell them I’ll be back late.”

“You got it.”

And so it goes, Estelle thought. She forced herself to concentrate on one challenge at a time, switching back to the radio. “PCS, three-ten is en route. ETA about thirty minutes.”

“Ten-four, three-ten.”

“Three-oh-four copies,” Collins said, his voice oddly detached over the electronic airwaves. “ETA ten.” Ten minutes was a long time to wait if you were lying bleeding and broken down in a mountainside gorge…but that was only if the Good Samaritans were mistaken.

The San Cristóbal Mountains created an effective border fence between old Mexico and Posadas County, New Mexico. The ragged, rotten granite peaks were inhospitable enough that even the most determined illegal immigrants sought other routes to wealth. Presumably, they thought it more pleasant to die of thirst or snakebite farther west in the Arizona desert than to plunge into a jagged, skin-tearing, bone-breaking crevasse high up in the San Cristóbals, to be soaked, baked, or frozen until the hungry spring ravens arrived to clean up the mess.

State Highway 56 dove south through a dramatic saddle in the mountains at Regál Pass. The highway ended at the village of Regál and the days-only border crossing a hundred yards south of the Regál church. A dozen feet into Mexico, the highway faded into the gravel road that passed as the highway southbound to Janos, Buenaventura, and Chihuahua.