Steven Havill - The Fourth Time is Murder

They reached the short, straight stretch that rose to the pass itself, and after a glance in the rearview mirror, Estelle stopped the car. “He crests the top of the pass, and almost immediately collides with the deer. He loses it, and you can see right over there,” and she pointed at the hump of dirt just uphill of the guardrail, “where his truck vaulted over.”

“How fast do you think he was going?”

“Sixty, maybe. I don’t think much faster than that. That’s enough to do it.”

Madelyn turned in her seat, looking back the way they’d come. “And the highway department found him two days later.”

“Yes. It was more a misting than a rain. The highway was wet, but there wasn’t enough rain to flush away the marks. Linda even managed to take an exposure that shows them.”

“That answers my question then. If he called and said, ‘I’m leaving now,’ she…he…whoever it was would wait a few minutes. Late evening, she’d be looking for his headlights.”

“That’s right.”

“She’d still be waiting. After a few minutes, she’d try to call him to ask where he was. No response and she’d go looking. And that’s my question. Were there enough traces of the accident left to mark the site?”

“The answer to that is ‘yes,’ Madelyn. I can imagine her driving to the top of the pass, and maybe even down into Regál. When Marsh doesn’t show up, she would retrace the route. Coming northbound, there are the tracks, the dead deer, and a short section of mangled guardrail.”

She pulled the car into gear. “Let me move out of these people’s way.” She accelerated hard and pulled off near the Forest Service sign announcing the pass. An enormous camper towing a flashy SUV rumbled by, its occupants offering a friendly wave, their vehicle leaving a wake of diesel fumes.

“I wonder if she had a pang of doubt,” Madelyn said.

“About?”

“I wonder if there was a moment when she thought that the young man-Marsh was his name? When she thought that he was running with the money.”

“That’s entirely possible.”

“Otherwise, why would she have been in the area in the first place? If she trusted him to make the delivery…He had the cashier’s check, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“So then why is she dogging his tracks? Is she afraid he’s going to split on her?”

“Interesting,” Estelle said. “We’re going to make a convert out of you yet. While you’re considering all those questions, add this one to the list, Madelyn. Why didn’t she just ride along with Marsh in the first place?”

“Couriers don’t carry passengers?”

Estelle pulled the car back out on the highway. “Good point, but who’s going to think about that?” she said. “When a delivery truck pulls up at your driveway, do you check to make sure the driver is solo?”

“Huh. She could have just ridden with him.”

“And we would have found her bashed and broken on the cliff side along with Marsh,” Estelle said.

“Could she have known the crash would happen? Some sort of vehicular sabotage?”

“Vehicular sabotage,” Estelle repeated with a grin. “What a concept.”

“Has anyone thought of that?”

“I don’t think so,” the undersheriff said. “That’s the sort of thing that works really, really well in movies, Madelyn. It’s right up there in popularity with the explosive post that makes the car inexplicably flip over on cue. In this case, the most likely scenario is that the young man collected a grillful of venison, and then lost control.”

“Which prompts the most interesting question of all, at least for me,” Madelyn said. “How do you sleep at night with all these unsolved conundrums floating around in your head? How much of this do you take home?”

“I have a houseful of wonderful distractions,” Estelle replied. “And you have to remember that this is the exception, rather than the rule. As padrino says, our job is ninety-nine percent boredom, interrupted by one percent panic and mayhem. Most of the time, we’re looking for something to do.”

“You think very highly of him, don’t you. The ‘godfather.’ That’s how padrino translates, am I right?”

“Roughly. And yes, I do think highly of him. We love him dearly.”

“You’ve known him since the ice ages?”

“About that long. I first met Bill Gastner when I was twelve. He and my great-uncle Reuben visited Tres Santos. That’s about forty miles straight ahead south from here.”

“You guys don’t have jurisdiction over the border, though.…”

“No, not in any formal sense. In this case, someone stole several pallets of bricks from a construction site near Posadas. The bricks ended up in Tres Santos. Bill and Reuben went down to negotiate their return without involving the judiciales .”

“Your uncle stole them? Is that what you’re saying?”

“‘Informal time payment’ might be more accurate,” Estelle said. “Anyway, that’s when I met Bill Gastner for the first time. Twenty-seven years ago. Sometimes it seems a lifetime away, sometimes like yesterday.”

“Memory lanes are like that,” Madelyn said. Below them, the village of Regál was still in deep shadow, the buttress of mountains hiding them from the sun until late morning. Despite the promise of a mild February day, with the sky clear of clouds, a few wisps of piñon smoke perfumed the village. “You’d think a place like this would be so far out of the way that nothing would touch them,” the writer said.

“These folks argue about immigration and abortion rights and taxes and Iraq like everyone else,” Estelle said. “And water rights, and the cost of gasoline, and who’s sleeping with whom.”

“When’s the first mass?” They could see that the iglesia ’s parking lot was still empty.

“Eleven o’clock,” Estelle replied. “First and only. Father Anselmo has mass in María at eight, then comes over here.” As they drew closer, Estelle could see a trace of smoke from the church’s single stovepipe. Emilio Contreras would be at the iglesia , chasing the chill, dabbing the last bit of dust from the furnishings. In the old days, he might have had to rouse a few illegals from their snoozing on the pews.

“Do you ever go?” The question surprised Estelle, and she looked across at Madelyn. “Or does your job make that sort of thing difficult?” When the undersheriff didn’t respond immediately, Madelyn added, “Or is that question too personal?”

“No,” Estelle said. “And no, I don’t go.” The response sounded more abrupt than she intended, but the writer accepted the explanation with a nod.

“It would be hard, I guess,” she said. “You spend a career working with the most base of human ulterior motives, and it would be a challenge to sit in a group of people, hearing all the hypocrisy.”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Estelle said. “I just don’t think about it. It’s not something that I consider.”

“Even last year, when you were hurt?”

“Especially not then.”

At the bottom of the hill, Estelle slowed and turned into the dirt lane that first passed by the Contreras home, then meandered through the village.

“What will happen to the young man you apprehended yesterday?” Madelyn asked as they passed by the driveway to Joe and Lucinda Baca’s adobe.

“Immigration will return him to Mexican authorities,” Estelle said. “From that point it’s completely unpredictable.”

“That’s what I’ve heard. He’ll try again, no doubt.”

“No doubt. And that’s part of the dilemma with Joe and Lucinda. They make a tempting target. All that money makes an easy target.”