Steven Havill - Statute of Limitations

Alan Perrone had called the office earlier with the news that Janet Tripp’s body bore no other wounds or marks that weren’t consistent with being roughly transported and then dumped into a tangle of rusting cars and arroyo gravel. She hadn’t struggled with anyone…her short fingernails were clean with the exception of a small amount of grit from her death spasms in the arroyo. She hadn’t flailed about, grabbing her assailant’s hair, or gouging flesh from his face or arms. Instead, all signs pointed to her sitting in her car in the bank parking lot, head bowed forward as she tucked money and the ATM receipt into her purse. And then… pop. Unconsciousness, if not death, would have been instantaneous.

An hour after Estelle had given Tom Mears the rebar, Bill Gastner’s house keys, and the shovel, the sergeant’s report confirmed what she had expected. There were no prints on the rebar, none on the shovel. Her own-and Bill Gastner’s-were on the bundle of keys and the tiny penlight joined on the ring.

Linda Real’s photographs clearly showed the eruption of dirt around the hole in the ground where the rebar had first been jerked out, then returned to its place.

Beyond that, nothing.

Shortly after two in the morning of December 26, when no new ground could be pawed over, Lieutenant Mark Adams ran out of patience and overtime. He offered to drive Mike Sisneros home, and Estelle watched the young officer leave Mitchell’s office, his shoulders bowed like an old man’s. She wanted to find a quiet, dark corner and talk with Sisneros by herself, but was too tired at the moment to frame coherent questions and strategy.

“Shit,” Eddie Mitchell said succinctly. He stretched far back in his chair with a creaking of leather, arms straight over his head, fingers entwined. He held that position for a long time, then slumped with his hands in his lap. “You got any bright ideas?”

“I wish that I did,” Estelle said. She rubbed her face wearily. “I need a great big sign in neon letters that says, ‘Go this way.’”

“Copy that.”

She grinned at Mitchell and his curt military style, even though the dark circles under his eyes were probably just as deep as hers. “I wonder if we’re missing something obvious just because of the way we’re looking at this.”

“And how would that be, Undersheriff?”

“If we go all the way back to the beginning of this miserable holiday, to what is now the day before yesterday, I responded to a telephone call from Chief Martinez on Christmas Eve.” She paused. “That seems like a year ago, now.”

“Okay, he called you from the motel.”

“And then he goes out in the rain, to sit in his car, to do what, we don’t really know. What we know is that he did not do what my husband told him to do-sit down and wait for medical help. We know he did not say, ‘Okay, Dr. Francis, I feel terrible. Treat me. Here I am, waiting at the motel. Take me to the ER and make this all go away.”

“Most people aren’t so rational, but okay.”

“And we progress from there,” and she chopped the air in a line with her hand. “First one event, then another. We have the two kids in the motel trying to make some lame point about modern generosity with their Mary and Joseph thing…or whatever it is that they were doing. A nice way to spend Christmas Eve. Then the next day, on Christmas afternoon, a kid on a motorcycle finds Janet Tripp, dumped in a trash heap in the arroyo, the victim of a bizarre robbery. And then later that night, when he and I should have been having a meaningful and productive conversation, I get tied up in work and someone else takes the opportunity to club Bill Gastner over the head…but this guy, or gal, doesn’t take anything. He doesn’t take Bill’s wallet, or his keys, or go inside and ransack the house. It seems clear to me that the target was Bill.”

“Some old enemy, maybe,” Mitchell offered.

“There may be some of those. I don’t know what cases he’s working on at the moment, except he’s got some guy from Montana who keeps trying to bring horses into New Mexico without any paperwork…who knows why.”

“Or a burglar who thought he was trapped when Wild Bill drove up. He hides behind the wall, and when the old man’s back is turned, he grabs a weapon and swings.”

“But why?” Estelle said. “What sense does that make? He could just have huddled there in the dark for a minute until Padrino went inside and then slipped away as easily as can be-or just darted off when Bill’s back was turned. There isn’t going to be a foot chase, that’s for sure.” She ran fingers through her short black hair in frustration. “For us, all these events seem related.” She chopped her hand through the air again. “But maybe only because one comes right after another. That’s what’s confusing me.”

“If you don’t see a connection with all these things, I’m with you there,” Mitchell said.

The room fell silent, and from out in the hall, they both heard the quiet cadence of dispatcher Brent Sutherland passing information over the radio. Mitchell had turned down the volume of the speaker on his desk, and he reached across now and turned it up just far enough that Estelle could hear Deputy Tom Pasquale’s clipped delivery.

“We have three officers on the road for the quietest night of the year,” Mitchell said. “Taber’s out there, Pasquale’s running every plate he sees, and Mears is poking around who knows where. Adams has two state police officers in the county. The Border Patrol has a heads-up, along with every sheriff’s department in southern New Mexico. We have lots of eyes out there. And you and me are sitting here wishing we’d get smart.” He leaned forward and let his head fall, forehead resting on his hands. “Sleep would feel good. That might be the smart thing.”

He jerked upright. “The trouble is, we have some woodchuck out there with a gun who thinks killing a girl for a few bucks is a fair trade, and we got another creep who tracks down an old man and whacks him on the head with an iron pipe. They’re good company for our two creeps from Indiana who figure it’s fair to steal a car from an old man dying from a heart attack.”

“I keep circling around to that,” Estelle said.

“To what, Wardell and Jakes?”

She nodded.

“You want to tell me why?”

“I don’t know why, Eddie. Maybe just because that’s where all this started.”

“Huh.” He toyed with a pencil. “Eduardo deserved better than he got, that’s for sure,” he said after a minute. “It’s going to be interesting to see what charges Schroeder will agree to file against those guys.” He dropped the pencil. “I’m going home,” he said, and pushed his chair back, standing abruptly. “Roberto is coming home later today.” He looked at the clock as if to ascertain that it was after midnight, and officially Saturday. “Did I tell you that earlier?”

She shook her head. “You talked with Gayle?”

“Yup. His sister is going up to Albuquerque to pick the two of them up after Bob’s released. Gayle said he isn’t a happy camper. He’s got this whole regimen of therapy that he’s supposed to do several times a day, and a locker full of drugs. You can imagine how all that sits with him. He’d rather just go off by himself, hunting somewhere.”

“We have lots of hunting he can do,” Estelle said.

Mitchell snorted what might have been a laugh had he not been so tired. “He’ll like that.” He watched Estelle push herself out of the chair. “You need to go home,” he said. “Switch all this off for a while.” Estelle grinned. Eddie Mitchell still managed to sound very much like the chief of police he had been before the village and county had consolidated departments.