Steven Havill - Statute of Limitations

As large as Ponytail was, he elected not to argue with Torrez. He belly-flopped onto the floor when told to do so, arms stretched out over his head.

The middle-aged man lifted both hands, but he hesitated.

“Hands on your head, fingers locked,” Estelle commanded, and snapped off her automatic’s thumb safety. The man’s startled expression had been replaced by wary assessment.

“I’m not armed,” he said, shaking his head. “Really…” He stood up slowly, and Estelle shifted position so that the end of the next pew was between her and the man.

Behind her, Estelle heard the sharp snick of handcuffs and knew that Ponytail had been neutralized. The middle-aged man heard the same sound and glanced to his right, toward Emilio Contreras. With a grunt, he moved with remarkable agility, springing first onto the pew and then vaulting the back, his heavy boots crashing on the wooden floor.

Even if Estelle, or Bob Torrez now limping up behind her, had wanted to fire if they saw the threat of a weapon, Emilio was in jeopardy. The man saw the opening and sprinted toward the door.

“Wardell!” shouted the big man on the floor, but his partner was headed south. His hand hit the door and grabbed the stout rope latch, but the weight of the door, even on hinges oiled to perfection, precluded snatching it open. Hard on his heels, Estelle hit the door just as it yawned open a foot. Her momentum knocked the man sideways against the small lectern that held the visitors’ book, and both lectern and man crashed to the floor.

Estelle grabbed the man’s right wrist and twisted, pinning his arm behind his back, at the same time driving her left knee into the base of his neck.

“Just shoot the son-of-a-bitch,” she heard Torrez shout, and beneath her, the man stopped struggling. Perhaps with the border so close, he had no idea what kind of barbed-wire justice awaited him. She remained motionless while the sheriff single-footed down the aisle, and an instant later she felt her handcuffs removed from the cuff case at the small of her back.

“Okay,” the sheriff said. The cuffs snapped into place. “You can stop grindin’ his face into the floor now.” He stepped back and watched as Estelle hauled the man to his feet. Over the car thief’s shoulder, she saw that the sheriff’s face was pasty white, the sweat standing on his forehead.

Palming her radio, she pushed the transmit. “Tom, get over here ASAP.” She pushed the man to the nearest pew. “Sit,” she ordered, then turned to Torrez. “You, too,” she said.

Early Christmas morning, Everett Wardell and Bruce Jakes would be arraigned on charges of grand larceny auto theft, interstate transportation of stolen goods, conspiracy, and resisting arrest, as well as assault during the commission of a felony. Estelle had no intention of dragging Judge Lester Hobart out of bed before then.

Sour under any circumstances, Hobart’s reaction was predictable. He would dither with rage as he dealt with the ragged pair who had dared to assault one of his oldest friends on such an otherwise peaceful holiday.

Both Wardell and Jakes swore to the deputies that they had never laid a hand on retired Posadas Police Chief Eduardo Martinez back at the motel, but that would cut no ice with Judge Hobart. Whether Chief Martinez was ever going to have a chance to recite his version of the incident remained in question.

The young Las Cruces reporter, Todd Willis, whom Bill Gastner had dubbed “Joseph,” remained the only witness to some of the events outside the Posadas Inn that Christmas Eve. None of the motel’s other patrons interviewed by deputies had glanced out a window or strolled into the parking lot during the moments in question. And Willis was unwavering in his recollection. He had not seen the two Indiana men physically touch Chief Martinez.

Until they could appear for preliminary arraignment before the judge, the two men could enjoy the sterile comfort of separate cells. There was no reason to doubt their pitiful tale.

Bruce Jakes had worked for an auto parts store in Hickory Grove, Indiana. The week before Christmas, his uninsured 1982 Datsun pickup truck, parked at the curb under a growing pile of snow, had been totaled by one of the Hickory Grove city snowplows. As that storm stretched on and on, the leaden skies over Hickory Grove remained bleak and oppressive, crushing the winter-weary Hoosiers.

Bruce Jakes’s string of bad luck and the dismal weather finally prompted Jakes to suggest, during a long drinking binge with his unemployed pal, Everett Wardell, that the sunny climes of the Baja were just the place for two Indiana slush-kickers. Neither had ever visited Baja, but Jakes had seen enough of it during coverage of an off-road race on ESPN that it looked like heaven compared to the mounds of snow. One thing led to another.

Responsible for closing the auto parts store at noon on Saturday, Jakes had done just that…after pocketing the cash portion of the week’s receipts. Secure in knowing that the store’s owner was enjoying two weeks in Georgia with a daughter’s family, Jakes then stole the well-worn Dodge sedan that belonged to the store owner’s wife. With pockets flush and the car sort of eager, Jakes and Wardell had headed west.

They had a full day’s head start. The store owner’s teenaged son reported both the stolen car and pilfered store the following Monday morning. By that time, Wardell and Jakes were long gone.

When they crossed the Mississippi River on Sunday afternoon, they had outrun the winter storm. The skies cleared and they motored on, convinced that the gods were smiling on their enterprise. The interstate seemed a safe place, and the old Dodge blended in with traffic.

The first tickle of sour luck struck Monday afternoon in eastern Oklahoma. Whether it was flu or food poisoning, a virulent bug laid them both flat on their backs, and the motel outside of Claremore became their home until they were able to stagger back onto the road.

Trading driving chores, they had made it as far as southern New Mexico before the weather turned bad again near Las Cruces, and then a bit later the right front tire gave up the ghost-almost exactly halfway between Deming and Posadas. Bolting the silly little space-saver spare on the Dodge, the two men wobbled ever westward into Posadas, stopping at the Posadas Inn on Christmas Eve. By now road-weary, they saw the inn as a safe haven for the night. They would tackle tire troubles the next morning, if they could find a service station open on Christmas Day.

Temptation smiled on them through the drizzle that Christmas Eve. In the motel’s parking lot, they chanced to pull in beside a nice, shiny new Buick LeSabre, warmed up and ready to go, with an owner who barely had the strength to haul himself toward the motel entrance. Everett Wardell had seen heart attacks before-both his father and two brothers had died of them. He could tell that the little stout man with the pale, sweaty face and bluish lips wasn’t going to need the Buick much longer.

Neither Wardell nor Jakes knew anything about border crossings, but with the impulsive theft of the Buick, life was becoming complicated enough that Mexico seemed like a good idea, sooner rather than later. Arriving in Regál innocent of the realization that now they were only minutes ahead of the law, they were astonished to find the border crossing closed for the night-whoever had heard of such a thing?

That presented a problem, since both men knew from the movies that both the big crossing behind them at El Paso and the one farther ahead somewhere in Arizona were crawling with Border Patrol and other cops at all hours of the day and night-holidays not withstanding.

The brainstorm of hiding at the little picturesque iglesia had been Wardell’s, part of his life philosophy whose cornerstone read, “When in doubt, do nothing.” Parking beside the bulk of the church, the Buick remained in the shadows, its license plate hidden. Had the headlights of Deputy Tom Pasquale’s patrol unit not glinted briefly off the Buick’s headlight chrome, the fugitives’ luck might have held.