Steven Havill - Final Payment

“A little ,” April said. “Like, try a lot, Superman.”

“You two go to Tech?” Estelle asked, referring to the university in Socorro.

April nodded. “I’m a senior. He’s a junior. ” She wrinkled her nose at him.

“You’ll take care of notifying his folks?”

“We’ve done that already,” she said, as if parents were mere pesky details. “Are you and Dr. Guzman related? I wondered about that.”

“He’s my husband.”

“ Oh. Well, that’s neat. He’s a nice guy.”

“Yes, he is.” Estelle extended a business card to the girl. “The bikes will be at the office. If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to call.”

“We’re fine,” April said. “We really are. Thanks again sooo much.”

Estelle left the hospital room, making sure that the door closed tightly behind her.

Estelle watched her son’s dark face as the music soared, and she found herself wishing that she could share the images that formed in his vivid imagination. She knew that the seven-year-old was excited about the bicycle race on the mountain, and wondered if some of the dashing up and down the piano keys played videos of cyclists in his mind.

Francisco had settled on Mozart’s Sonata in F for his recital piece, a lengthy challenge for the little boy. On more than one occasion, Estelle had sat beside her son on the piano bench, reading through the piece with him as he played-even though Francisco himself rarely looked at the music. No musician herself, Estelle knew enough to be able to follow his progress, and she could see that the problem wasn’t the sonata’s fourteen-page length. The little boy’s capacity at the keyboard was far greater than perhaps even the seventeen-year-old Mozart could have imagined when he wrote the challenge of his sonata.

No, the problem was Francisco’s agile little mind itself. Something in the sonata’s images cracked him up every time he played the piece-not an unusual reaction when he played the piano. He mimicked the motif in variations of his own, he giggled and composed little answers to Mozart’s questions and comments, and he sometimes went off hiking on his own, deep into his own musical world.

Estelle understood that, no matter how astonishing her son’s talent, he was still bridled by a seven-year-old’s healthy lack of discipline. If there was another trail to skip down, another tonal butterfly to chase, another dark canyon to explore, Francisco did so.

Edith Gracie, Francisco’s piano instructor, remained unconcerned. “We need not worry,” she was fond of saying. Easily said, Estelle thought. And on Saturday, she worried, and not necessarily about her son’s pending performance.

She knew that Sheriff Robert Torrez, Captain Eddie Mitchell, the two Toms, and photographer Linda Real had spent most of the day out at the airstrip, combing the area where the three bodies had been found.

Working with them were Lieutenant Mark Adams of the New Mexico State Police and two of his officers, along with Agent Barker Rutledge of the Border Patrol. An area roughly the size of a football field had been meticulously gridded and would be searched and combed foot by foot. Estelle was skeptical that the search would uncover anything-she was convinced that the three victims had arrived by plane, taken a few dozen steps, and been murdered. The killer had then left as unobtrusively as he had arrived-long gone from the country, certainly from the county.

At the same time, the bike race organizers were putting the finishing touches on their first-year project, and no doubt County Manager Leona Spears was in the thick of it. EMTs would follow the cyclists in chase vehicles, and in those sections where a truck or car couldn’t go, organizers had arranged for motorcycle or four-wheeler coverage. There was no way to make a bicycle race entirely safe-that was both the nature of the beast and its attraction for riders. There was a price for carelessness or inattention. But the organizers had a myriad of volunteers to watch the route during the race. If there was a section not covered foot by foot, it would be out on the flat sections of Country Road 14, out on the prairie where the biggest safety threat was an occasional wandering prairie dog or slithering rattlesnake.

And so, with phone near at hand and nana Irma Sedillos, the younger sister of Gayle Sedillos Torrez, the sheriff’s wife, on hand in case Estelle had to be called away, the undersheriff spent a rare Saturday at home.

Well aware that he would be performing in front of a small crowd of family and friends, Francisco worked his practice sessions as diligently as his effervescent personality would allow.

The afternoon was broken by a single phone call. Dr. Alan Perrone announced that preliminary toxicology tests showed that the older male victim had a residual blood alcohol level high enough to measure-in Perrone’s words, the victim would have been “comfortably sauced” when he stepped off the plane.

“Odd to travel that way,” Estelle remarked.

“Maybe he hated flying,” Perrone said. “Or a case of the nerves. Or maybe he’s an alcoholic. Or, or, or…We’ll know more after the full autopsy.”

Knowing that one victim was a drinker got them nowhere, and Estelle shoved the whole affair toward the back of her mind, letting it stew. She had left word with dispatch that she would be unavailable for any calls that evening, unless the world itself came crashing down. The phone stayed mercifully silent, and at 6:30 p.m., they drove to the school as a family, a rare treat.

The acoustics of the Little Theater were as elegant as the gymnasium that the “theater” had once been. A decade before, when the original Posadas High School gym had been declared insufficiently grand for athletic events, the district had built a new facility, leaving the old, open-girdered hulk to be divvied up between the special education and the home economics departments. Somewhere in the planning, the modest theater had been included in the old gymnasium’s renovation.

The metal folding chairs were arranged in a dozen crescent rows, each row including fifteen seats, far more than the modest recital required. A section had been reserved for the sixteen student musicians at front and center.

Estelle snuggled up as close to her husband as she could, her shoulder nestled into his. Sitting on Dr. Guzman’s right, Bill Gastner, former Posadas County sheriff and padrino to the two Guzman boys, was engrossed in quiet conversation with Leona Spears. The large woman had worn one of her most flamboyant muumuus for the occasion.

Estelle tried to relax, but a collection of butterflies danced in her stomach. From where she sat, a few seats to the left of center and five rows back, Estelle could see Francisco’s dark little head bowed in deep conversation with a fifteen-year-old girl whose piano lessons at Mrs. Gracie’s were scheduled immediately after his. Both children ignored the small audience around them. Estelle also recognized Melody Mears, Sergeant Tom Mears’ daughter. Melody was half-kneeling on her chair toward the end of the row, surveying the audience. She caught Estelle’s eye and waved, her smile brilliant. Melody’s parents, Tom and Pat Mears, sat to Estelle’s right and two rows closer to the front.

She could imagine Sheriff Bob Torrez’s growl of impatience at having two of his officers wasting time watching children play music while a multiple homicide remained unsolved.

Although she understood the purpose of having the children sit separated from their families-encouraging dependence on their own hard work, their own music to comfort their preperformance fidgets-Estelle found herself wishing that her son was sitting beside her now. On the short drive to school, Francisco had been his usual loud, excited self. But nervous? It was hard to tell. He had talked about his music, and about Melody’s-and she found it odd now that her son had chosen to sit several seats away from Miss Mears.