Steven Havill - Statute of Limitations

“I can’t imagine that,” Estelle said. “He’d have to have her PIN number, for one thing.”

“That, and other reasons. Number one, why take just $350? The single transaction limit is $500 a day, Mears tells me. And second, once the shot is fired, I would think that the killer would be motivated to split. I can’t see him casually walking over to the ATM, with her lying there, shot and bleeding.”

“He took the time to pull her out of her car and dump her into his…trunk, back of an SUV, whatever it was.”

“Sure, he did. But if we use a couple of minutes after 3:05 as the time of the shooting, that gives us a window of opportunity there. It might be easier if we had a stopwatch timing everything, but nobody pays too much attention to the fine details. The only time we’re sure of is what’s printed on the ATM slip.” He raised his head to look at Estelle. “3:05. She does her business, walks back to the Jeep, and pop.”

“And at that time, Mike isn’t even on his way to Lordsburg yet. He’s still in town,” Estelle said.

“Correct. But…,” and Mitchell leaned forward, shifting his weight on the small chair and pulling at the bottom of his vest where it chafed his belly. “I would be willing to bet every penny that’s in my enormous pension fund that Mike Sisneros didn’t kill Janet Tripp. I talked to him in Lordsburg, and tried to lay things out as gently as I could. I might as well have hit him between the eyes with a baseball bat. And if it was an acting job, I’ll hang up my spurs.”

“What’s he have to say, then?” Estelle asked. “Did Janet have enemies, or does Mike think it was just a random thing…a crime of opportunity?”

“I’m not sure he’s thinking straight at all. Desperate might be a good word. He’d like to wrap his finger around the trigger and put the killer in his sights. If anything, we’re going to have trouble keeping him from mucking around and getting in our way with this thing. He and Janet were closer than I thought, I guess. He said that they were planning to get married this spring sometime.”

“ Ay . That’s rough. I’d heard that rumor, but they were keeping their plans close to themselves.”

“He said that he almost decided not to go over to his mom’s, but Janet talked him into it. Mrs. Cruz is ailing, and Janet said that Mike should spend some holiday time with her.”

“Generous girl.”

“I’ve only met her half a dozen times, but I liked her,” Mitchell said.

“And what was she going to do?”

“Do?”

“For the rest of her holiday? She evidently wasn’t in the apartment to see Mike off. Was she going to see relatives of her own? Does Janet have folks nearby? I know about the sister out east somewhere.”

“Mike says not. Her mother died a while ago. Dad walked out on the family when Janet was just a kid, and who the hell knows where he is. Maybe the sister knows. Mike says that Janet told him that she had some errands, and then was going to spend a quiet evening in their apartment. Mike planned to be home by ten or so.” He shrugged. “Finish out their holiday together.”

“Not to be,” Estelle said, more to herself than Mitchell. She glanced at the wall clock, then at the captain. “That’s all?” With it pushing midnight, it wouldn’t have taken Eddie five hours to round out. Mike Sisneros’s simple story…even to the point of double and triple checking times with whoever might have an accurate guess about what might have happened when.

“No,” Eddie said. “We have a few bullet fragments from Tripp’s brain, but I kinda doubt that we’re going to match much of anything. I’m sure it’s a.22, and so is Mears.” He paused, looking down at his hands again. “I asked Mike if he had a.22 of some kind. In point of fact, he has two. Actually, I should say, had two.”

“Had?”

“One’s missing.”

Silence hung heavy for a moment.

“You mean stolen?”

“I don’t know what I mean,” Mitchell said. “And neither does Mike. The last time he saw it, the gun was in a dresser drawer in their bedroom. It’s not there now. The plastic box is there. The gun isn’t.”

“What about the other one?”

“He showed it to me. It’s a.22 conversion kit that he bought to fit his duty gun. Kind of a slick little deal. Take the barrel and slide off the.45, and just slip on the replacement.22 kit. Go plink on the cheap. The kit’s clean as a whistle. It hasn’t been fired in a while, unless Mike did the job and then came home and diligently cleaned up.”

“But you said a second gun is missing.”

“Yup. A.22 Ruger.22/45, one of those heavy barreled things that’s supposed to sort of match a 1911 in heft. He says that he’s had it for quite a number of years.”

“He didn’t loan it to anyone?”

“Says not.”

“Janet didn’t use it?”

Mitchell shook his head. “She wasn’t much of a gun fancier. What bothers me is that Mike can’t account for how it might have gone missing. He says that he knew it was in its case, in the drawer. No doubt Janet did too, although he says that she would never use it for anything. He says that he once tried to talk her into carrying a little something for protection, but that she wouldn’t do it. So he doesn’t think she took it. And it doesn’t make sense to me that she would.”

“Somebody did.”

“Sure enough, somebody did,” Mitchell said. “The apartment was locked, with no sign of forced entry. It’s on the second floor, so no one busted in through a window.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Nothing else is missing, as far as Mike can tell. And we really looked.”

“Just the gun.”

“Yup. And Mike claims he doesn’t know how, why, or when. I have trouble with that, Estelle. A gun is not the kind of thing most folks misplace.”

Chapter Twenty-one

Another hour spent with Deputy Mike Sisneros produced nothing that the investigators didn’t already know. Estelle let Captain Eddie Mitchell’s steady, methodical pressure on the young deputy continue uninterrupted. No one in the department knew Sisneros any better than did Mitchell. As the time dragged into the early hours of the morning, small bits and pieces of information dribbled in, but Estelle knew, as that awful Christmas Day finally slipped into yesterday, that they’d reached an impasse.

A State Police officer in Lordsburg reported that a careful search of Mike Sisneros’s personal vehicle, still parked at his mother and stepfather’s house, had produced nothing out of the ordinary. It would have been physically impossible to cram a body the size of Janet Tripp’s into what passed for a trunk in the Mustang without leaving traces behind. Samples of human hair on the upholstery were taken, and Estelle had no doubt that they would belong to Mike and Janet. Further search had revealed the usual junk lodged under the seats-popcorn, two wrapped mints, pennies, one dime, an empty.45 ACP casing without even a hint of burned powder aroma, and a broken windshield scraper.

Other than the ATM records and a single.22 long-rifle cartridge casing found in the parking lot, Janet Tripp’s vehicle produced nothing but questions.

The arroyo where the young woman’s body had been found was telling no stories.

Estelle had chafed at the delay, but she knew there was nothing she could do about it. Her one contact at the lab who might have considered coming into the state office to work on a holiday was out of town visiting relatives. The wheels of forensic laboratory work ground to a halt on Christmas Day, further hampered by the holiday’s falling on a Saturday. But there was little that the lab could tell them anyway, short of an unexpected curve ball when the toxicology reports came back.