Steven Havill - Final Payment

“We hope so.”

“And he’s but seven?”

“Yes.”

“That means that in eleven short years, he can enter this foolish race,” Leona said, and chuckled. “I could probably have gone all day without reminding you of that.”

“Exactly,” Estelle said. She paused to look at the mangled bike one more time, then slammed the back door of the Expedition.

“Seriously now,” Leona continued, suddenly sounding less fluffy and more official, “this race is a big deal for the county, Estelle. Is there anything the race organizers need that we haven’t provided? And in particular,” and she waggled a finger like a first-grade teacher, “is there anything that we haven’t thought about that just might prevent something like this from happening again?”

“I don’t think so,” Estelle replied. “And I know they’re planning to start the riders at one-minute intervals-it’s no big pack thing, where they’re all bunched together. No teaming, no girlfrien-boyfriend stuff. That will help, with them running against the clock, rather than pedal to pedal. One a minute, so it’ll take a couple hours at the start to get everyone launched. We’ve agreed to close County Road Forty-three for the start, from Pershing Park in the middle of town all the way to the turnoff by the quarry.”

She turned and looked back down the trail through the trees, now thoroughly marked with fresh footprints and tire tracks. “That and a little stretch on the state highway at the end are the only paved roads in the race.”

“Joy,” Leona said without conviction. “Well, I hope the boy without wings is going to be all right.”

“He’ll be a spectator, that’s for sure,” Estelle said.

Leona climbed back into the passenger seat of the Expedition with a sigh of relief. She watched as Estelle went through the ritual of jotting notes in her log. With the EMTs gone, they were the last to leave the scene, and Estelle glanced in the back to make sure the two bikes were secure. As she did so, her cellular phone chirped. She glanced at the caller ID and saw that the call was from Posadas County Sheriff Robert Torrez. Knowing what was coming, she held the phone tight against her ear.

“Guzman.”

“Hey,” Torrez said, his voice soft almost to the point of inaudibility. “What’s your twenty?”

“I’m on the Cat Mesa Forest Service road, about a mile in from Forty-three.”

“You finished up there?”

“Yes. Two injured, both transported. One critical with head injuries, maybe more. The other just banged up.”

“Okay. Look, I’m going to need you down this way. I’m at the gas company’s airstrip on Fourteen. We got us a problem.”

Estelle had started the Expedition and she pulled it into gear, backing off the road so she could swing around. The brief hesitation as she did so prompted Torrez to add, “You on the way?”

“Just heading out. It’ll be thirty minutes.” If he had given it long thought, Robert Torrez would have been hard-pressed to find a spot more removed from his undersheriff’s present location and still be within the county.

“Got it. They’ll wait. But expedite on down here, all right?”

“What have you got?”

“A triple,” Torrez said. “So far, anyway.” He clicked off without further explanation.

Estelle’s pulse kicked up a notch, and she accelerated harder than she intended, narrowly missing a sturdy piñon with the Expedition’s right front fender. She didn’t need to ask, A triple what? Bicycle riders were still on her mind, though, and she wondered how three riders had managed to kill themselves on a flat dirt road.

The last hundred yards of the forest road cut through a dusty meadow before reaching the intersection with County Road 43, and Estelle saw a group of three bicyclists heading toward them. Another dozen or more had gathered just off the pavement of the county road for a rest stop, no doubt to let the large ambulance pass.

She turned on the emergency lights and touched the yelp to guarantee their attention. The three cyclists darted off the two-track and stopped. Under other circumstances, the undersheriff would have stopped to chat with the riders, taking the opportunity to emphasize again the need for some small grain of caution on the trail ahead. Instead, as she passed, the cyclists were treated to a voluminous cloud of reddish dust that billowed up behind the Expedition.

One member of the larger group broke away as she approached. He walked out to intercept her, expecting a conversation. She touched the siren again and shot past, tires chirping as she turned onto the asphalt of the county road.

For the past several minutes, the county manager had been the ideal passenger, inquiring about neither the phone call nor the urgency of their departure from the mesa top-choosing instead to let Estelle concentrate on missing trees, boulders, and cyclists. Squared away on the pavement, Estelle glanced at Leona, who sat rigid, one hand holding the panic handle on the door post and the other gripping the top edge of the computer on the center console.

“I can drop you off in town,” she said, and braked hard for a tight turn.

“I’m fine,” Leona replied. “Don’t take the time.” She didn’t release her grip. “But where are we going?”

“The sheriff has a multiple fatality out by the gas company’s airstrip,” Estelle explained. “I don’t know more than that.”

“Oh, my God,” Leona said, and readjusted her grip. “That’s on the other side of the moon.”

“Almost.”

They accelerated hard down the hill, passing the last straight stretch along the old quarry before the switchbacks down into town. “Of course, the dead can wait patiently,” Leona whispered. She reared back in her seat as Estelle braked hard.

“I don’t know what we have,” Estelle said, knowing that other bikers would be on the hill, letting the siren serve as conversation. Down past the abandoned mine, past the landfill entrance, they approached the intersection with the state highway that curved out of town, heading west toward the municipal airport. Estelle slowed just enough to have time to check for traffic and then shot through the stop sign, flying down the two-mile straight stretch toward Posadas.

“I thought you said airport,” Leona managed.

“No…out past the Broken Spur. The gas company’s airstrip? Just south of the Torrance Ranch.”

“Oh, my God.” Estelle wasn’t sure if Leona’s reaction was to the distance-nearly thirty miles-or to the remoteness of the spot. By looking southwest with binoculars on a clear day, they could have seen the dash of the airstrip from the mesa top they had just left. “The state planes have used that on more than one occasion,” Leona added. “I wonder if…” She left the rest of the sentence unfinished, bracing herself for the dash through town.

The state highway turned into Bustos Avenue, and after a few blocks the undersheriff turned south on Grande. Leaning forward, she turned up the radio. Because of the endless problem with what Sheriff Torrez liked to call “scanner ghouls,” they had stopped using the radio when a phone call would do. But the written radio log kept by dispatch still served as an official documentation of times and responses.

With an open street ahead of her, she keyed the mike.

“Three-oh-eight, three-ten is in the village, westbound.”

The speaker barked squelch a couple of times for reply.

“Three-oh-eight, ten-fifty-five?”

“That’s negative,” Torrez said, and he sounded impatient. Had he used the radio earlier, Estelle would have heard it-either in the unit or from the handheld on her belt. “I got a multiple ten-sixty-three. And ten-twenty-one from now on.”