Steven Havill - Statute of Limitations

The small courtyard, sheltered even from what little moonlight or starlight there might be, was a twenty-by-twenty-foot expanse of gravel and dirt with a flagstone walkway leading to the front door and the concrete step. The courtyard and walk were recent additions, built two summers before in a moment of boredom when Gastner had run out of other things to do.

An old shovel leaned against the blocks in the corner to Estelle’s left, marking the spot where Gastner had thought about planting a climbing rose bush. The shovel had yet to earn its keep, but he had gone so far as to mark the spot for the rose.

Estelle stopped and let the flashlight beam linger in the corner, illuminating the bent piece of rusted steel rebar projecting out of the ground at a haphazard angle. Now that she saw it, she remembered Gastner driving the length of steel in a couple of inches with the flat of the shovel, remarking that the hard-packed clay soil might grow the rebar just fine, but probably not the roses.

Keeping her feet as close as she could to the plastered wall, she crossed to the corner as Jackie added more light from the walkway.

“You think?” the deputy asked.

“I don’t know.” She slipped on a pair of cotton gloves, bent down, and with the tip of her index finger touched the top of the bent stake. It rocked easily in its hole, barely deep enough to sink through the crushed stone cover to the clay underneath.

“Let me get a large bag,” Jackie said, and Estelle knelt beside the stake, examining the ground. The crushed stone formed a uniform, featureless expanse. A busload of people could have stood in this corner and not left a single track. Whoever had assaulted Gastner could have crouched here, just as she crouched, and the twenty-four-inch-long piece of rebar would have presented itself as an easy weapon. But why not the shovel, itself heavy and lethal?

Estelle swung the light methodically, gridding the crushed stone surface in the corner. No cigarette butts, no gum wrappers, no blob of half-dried tobacco juice. Nothing indicated that a human being had stood here, waiting in the darkness.

“Here,” Jackie said, touching Estelle on the shoulder. The rebar came out of the ground with little effort. Even the rain of earlier in the day hadn’t been enough to soak through the blanket of crushed stone to the dense clay underneath. Holding the steel by the last half inch of one end, she gently lowered it into the plastic bag and zipped the top closed.

“Anything on it?”

“I can’t tell in this light,” Estelle said. “But I’m willing to bet.”

“If he wanted a weapon, why not use the shovel?” Jackie asked. “You want that, too?”

“Yes. But I don’t think that’s what he used. The marks on the wound seemed pretty characteristic.” She examined the corner once more. “Why, though?”

“Because it’s handy?”

“Sure enough it is. But if he came here planning to assault Padrino , why wouldn’t he have had a weapon ready? Why take up the rebar as a last-minute substitute?”

They heard a vehicle turn onto Guadalupe, and in a moment Tom Pasquale’s Expedition pulled in behind Estelle’s unit.

“Where do you want me?” he said as he approached the courtyard gate. “Sarge said he’s about wrapped up over at the bank and that I should get over here.” He saw the evidence bag and shovel in Jackie’s hands. “Gardening?”

“That’s it,” Jackie said.

“We’re about to go inside,” Estelle said. “I think the chunk of rebar that Jackie has in the bag is the weapon. We haven’t covered the area around the doorway yet, so go lightly.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Anything at all, Tomás.” She pointed with her light toward the front door. “He was lying half on the step, head in the bushes there on the right when I found him. So we have some compromise already. I went right to him without much regard for anything else, thinking that he had tripped, or had another stroke, or something like that. And then the two EMTs did what they do. So I’m not sure what we’ll find.”

“I don’t figure,” Pasquale said.

“Someone came up behind the sheriff and hit him on the head,” Jackie said. “And down he went. That’s what we have.”

“No, I mean where did you find the weapon?”

“If it is a weapon,” Estelle said. “It was stuck in the ground over there in the corner. That’s where it’s been for a couple of months now.”

“So why would he put it back? ” Pasquale asked.

“Neat and tidy,” Jackie offered. “If he just hits the sheriff with it and drops it, that’s pretty obvious. Stick it back where it was, and we might go for quite a while thinking the sheriff hit his head after an accidental fall.”

“Simpler just to take it along and chuck it in the bushes somewhere,” Pasquale said.

“Nos vemos,” Estelle said. “For now, we have what we have.” She stepped toward the front door. The gravel bordering the flagstones was scuffed here and there where the EMTs had worked with the gurney and backboard. “He had the keys in his hand,” she said, and paused, picturing Bill Gastner’s lumbering figure as he approached the stoop. “I’ve seen him open this door a thousand times,” she said. “He waits until he’s right here before he finds the right key.”

“The porch light works?” Pasquale asked.

“He doesn’t use it,” Estelle said. “He does have one of those little plastic boots that he keeps on the door key, so he can separate it out from all the rest. Then he fumbles around trying to find the keyhole.” She played the light around the heavy, carved door with its brass hardware.

“You said that you have the keys?” Pasquale asked.

“Yes, I do,” Estelle replied. “But I’m not there yet.”

“This is fresh,” Jackie said. She brought her light close to the door jamb. The wood was scarred, with a chip gouged out and hanging by a strand.

“Ay,” Estelle breathed. “Look at that.” She bent close and saw that the rip was indeed recent, the wood gouged right through the surface stain into the soft pine underneath. “Tomás, was Linda still over at the bank?”

“I think so. You want her here?”

“Yes indeed. Use the phone, though. Not the radio.”

“You got it.”

With a hand on Jackie Taber’s shoulder, Estelle said, “You’re about Padrino ’s height. Let’s try this.” She maneuvered the deputy into position, imitating Gastner’s position as he reached for the lock. “If you’re bent over trying to find the keyhole, that puts you just about like this,” she said. Raising the plastic evidence bag, she held the rebar out, as if clubbing the deputy on the back of the head. “And there you are. It would have been easy for the bar to strike the door jamb, maybe at the same time as he hit Padrino. ” She held the position for a moment. “Lean a little against the jamb,” she instructed, trying to imitate the position she’d seen Gastner assume innumerable times as he slumped against the short wall while sorting keys.

“It’s a good thing, then,” Jackie said. “If the end of the rebar hit the jamb at the same time as the rest of it struck him in the skull, it might have saved his life.”

“That close,” Estelle whispered.

“You might get a matching impression in the wood.”

“Maybe. Not in this light, though.” With the sides of both thumbs, she gingerly tried the door latch, keeping her touch on the outside edge of the flat brass surface. “Still locked.”

“Unless he went inside, did his thing, and made sure it was locked on the way out.”

“Maybe. And then he just drops the keys. Maybe.”

“Any prints, you think?” Tom Pasquale asked, returned from his brief conversation with Linda Real.