Steven Havill - The Fourth Time is Murder

“What’s with this?” Estelle whispered. “Move a little bit,” she said to Collins, and he pushed himself away enough that, shifting her knees, she could scrunch down until the slope of one of the rocks cradled the side of her head.

“More light?” Matty asked helpfully.

“Please,” the undersheriff said. “Don’t step anywhere around his head. Come in from behind me.” In a moment, the second beam from Matty’s light flooded the grim picture. It hadn’t been their imagination. Someone had planted a good-sized boot on the victim’s left hand, pinning it in place.

“You want me to lift his hand up so you can see the back side?” Collins asked.

“No, no,” Estelle said quickly, straightening up. “Whatever is there will wait.” She nodded at the EMT and then turned to Collins. “But you’re right, Dennis…that’s going to be interesting. If this happened right here, then there’ll be grit and debris pressed into the back of his hand. We need pictures before any of this is moved.”

She straightened up and looked up toward the highway. In the glare of emergency lights, she saw the towering figure of Sheriff Robert Torrez, who only two years ago would have bounded down this rugged slope without a second thought. A hip injury that had demanded six months of convalescence and another half year of therapy had changed his outlook on indestructibility.

Estelle pulled her handheld from its belt holster. “Bobby, we need to call Linda on this,” she said, then thought, She’ll love it, and that prompted the recollection of the e-mail she’d been reexamining for the umpteenth time just an hour before. The reporter from the women’s magazine didn’t know what she was missing-the big, tough, macho sheriff up on the highway, who understandably hesitated to launch himself down the cliff, calling the cheerful young girl, the department’s photographer, who would tackle the assignment without a second thought, even though she was blind in one eye, her depth perception far less than perfect.

“Got it,” Torrez said. “What do you have?”

“One dead from multiple trauma. But someone else has been here.”

“How’s that?”

“We’ve got a boot print where it shouldn’t be.” She had tried to imagine how Chris Marsh-if this was in fact him-might have accomplished the boot track by himself…reaching down to his broken foot, hearing the sharp snap and pop of broken bones as he did so. Not likely. She flicked the yellow tarp clear of the victim’s lower body. The victim was wearing what had been a tan jacket, a neatly pressed tan work shirt with matching tan trousers, and highly polished ankle-high black work boots.

“Ay,” the undersheriff said. “What have we got here…?”

“That’s what I thought,” Matty said. “He a deliveryman of some sort?”

Estelle turned and played her flashlight over the truck. Although not new, the pickup would have been a neat little unit, with its matching white camper shell. She got up and made her way farther downhill until she could see the driver’s door. During one of the crushing landings, it had opened and then been smashed double, folding forward against itself. Estelle could see there was no logo or sign on the door.

“Odd,” she said, hefting her radio again. She rested the stubby antenna against her lower lip for a few seconds, deep in thought before she pressed the transmit bar. “Bobby, I’d really like Alan to take a look at what we have here, but getting him down here is going to be a stunt.”

“He’ll manage,” Torrez said. “We’ll come in from the bottom.”

“How’s that going to happen?” Matty asked. She played her light downhill, and Estelle could see the bottom of the canyon-perhaps only fifty yards farther down the hill.

“One of the old minin’ roads cuts up the bottom of this canyon,” Torrez radioed, as if he could hear Matty’s question. “I can get Alan in there.”

“Linda, too,” Estelle replied. “Is there room for the ambulance on that trail?”

“That’s negative. But we can put the gurney in the back of my truck. Save a long climb.”

“You got that right,” Cliff Herrera said with relief.

“Be back to you,” Torrez said, and his figure disappeared. “Tell Cliff to come up and move his unit before someone punts it over the side on your heads. I’ll show him where to park.”

“ My unit,” Herrera said, and grinned at Matty. “Suddenly it’s my unit.” They held their lights for him, amplifying his own, until he had climbed far enough up the slope that they could hear his breath coming in ragged whistles of effort.

“Bobby,” Estelle radioed, “see if you can find the exact spot where the driver lost it. When Linda gets here, have her take a complete series of photos of any skid marks that might be left. If the weather closes in any more, we’re going to lose those.”

“Yep,” Torrez replied. “I was lookin’ at the dead doe in the ditch up here. Connie says she retrieved a transmitter. We don’t know for sure if it’s the same accident.”

“No, we don’t. But the condition of the deer fits. It’s been there a day or two.”

“More’n likely, that’s where it started,” Torrez said. “Look at the left front of the truck for hide and blood.”

Over the years, Estelle had come close to clobbering critters on the highway half a dozen times, and connected twice-once with a mule deer and once with a Brangus calf. She knew how little it took for even seasoned reflexes to do the wrong thing. It was easy to picture the white pickup truck driving on the damp pavement, perhaps a shade too fast, cresting the pass and starting down the slight curve just as the doe stepped off the shoulder, intent on crossing the highway for no other reason than that it was there. The rush of headlights would make no sense to the animal. It would either freeze in place or bolt-and a driver could bet money on the critter bolting the wrong way.

Estelle took her time, sweeping the ground around the body for anything out of place. The muddy residue on the victim’s left palm carried enough of the characteristic mold marks that there was no mistaking its origin. Why would someone do that? Did a passerby witness the accident, then clamber down the dangerous hill and, unable to stop the momentum of his descent, plant a foot on the victim’s limp hand? Stranger things had happened.

She peered again at the mark. With a proper photo, they might be able to ascertain direction, but here in this variable light, it would only be a guess. Collins thought a deep imprint in the gravelly soil was a heel. He might be right, and that meant the boot that stomped the hand was pointing uphill . The owner of the boot would have been standing close to where she now stood.

Keeping to the hard surface of the surrounding rocks, Estelle made her way to a point uphill of the body, near the right side of his head. A large amount of blood had foamed up and out of the victim’s gaping mouth, and she could imagine the young man struggling for his last breath as his flailed ribs moved in all the wrong ways. “Huh,” she said, and tried to find a way to support herself on elbows and knees, ignoring the dull, naggy ache in her own bones, exacerbated by the climbing and bending. Past injuries had a way of reminding their owners, she thought.

The victim’s head was turned slightly to the right, and she bent down close enough to smell the path of his last breath. The distinctive odor of beer clung to the body, and she imagined that she could see dried residue on his right cheek, as if the beverage had trickled out of his mouth during his final moments. Maybe it had.

Was Chris Marsh tipping a can of brew just as the doe bolted into the truck’s path? Smashed and battered down through the rocks, crushed by his own somersaulting truck, he had come to rest here flat on his shattered back, staring at the foggy heavens, choking on a last mouthful of beer.