Steven Havill - Privileged to Kill

“I made fresh coffee,” I said, and pointed toward the kitchen with the brush.

“No thanks.” She pushed the door open and stepped out. Her deep brown eyes traveled first to the paintbrush, then to the can of paint, and then to the window. She was taking long enough to critique the work.

“What do you think?” I asked.

She looked back at me, and one eyebrow lifted a bit. “Why are you doing that, sir?”

I chuckled. “Because it needed doing. I got tired of not being able to see out the window.” I gestured with the brush at the vine. “It wasn’t hard. Kind of relaxing, actually.” I bent over and laid the brush across the top of the paint can. “What’s up?”

Estelle took a deep breath and reached out with one hand toward my sleeve. “You got some blue paint on your revolver.” I lifted my arm up and peered down at the gun, not an easy task considering my girth. I frowned. It was the first time all day that I was conscious of being in uniform.

I pulled the flannel paint rag I’d been using out of my back pocket and wiped the drip off the walnut grips and then daubed at another fleck near the buckle of the Sam Browne belt. “I can’t believe I did this without changing my clothes,” I muttered.

“I tried to call you earlier,” Estelle said.

“Yeah, I know. I heard it.”

“Five times.”

“You need to let it ring more than five times, sweetheart.”

“No…I mean I tried calling five times. Once not long after I dropped you off, and then around noon, and then afterward. I figured you were asleep.”

I stared at her blankly. “What do you mean ‘once around noon’? What time is it?” I said, and looked at my watch. The hands made no sense, stuck at five after four. The sweep second hand swept methodically around the face.

“It’s after four.”

“What time did you drop me off?”

“About ten…maybe ten-thirty, sir.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No, sir.”

I backed up and sat down slowly in the lawn chair, my heart hammering in my ears. Estelle looked back at the window. She stepped up close and examined the glass. “Nice job.” She turned and looked at me. “Are you going to do all the trim?”

My hand groped at my shirt pocket, a tick left over from half a century of smoking. “Estelle…” I started and then stopped.

“Do you want me to come back later, sir?”

I shook my head with irritation. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” I got to my feet and waved a hand at the window. “It just seemed important at the time. I don’t know why.”

“Sometimes you need a break.”

I snorted and toed the paint can with my black boot. “I must be quite a sight.”

Diplomatic as always, Estelle didn’t respond to that.

“So…what did you find out?” I asked. I pulled a second folding chair out of the pantry and snapped it open for Estelle. She settled into it with a grateful sigh.

“Wesley Crocker left.”

“What do you mean, he left?”

“Sheriff Holman suggested to him that maybe he didn’t need to stick around the office after all. That maybe he could find himself somewhere else to stay. That’s what Bob Torrez told me earlier today.” Her mouth twitched slightly. “That’s one of the times I tried to call you, sir. The sheriff told Bob that we didn’t need to turn the place into a roach motel.”

“For God’s sakes, what an idiot,” I snapped. “Where’s Crocker, then?”

“He told Bob that he wanted to ride north of town a ways and investigate an old trail. He said you’d know.”

I closed my eyes, trying to imagine the pleasure that strangling the sheriff would give me. “So he’s on the loose. What else? What’s the rest of the bad news? I hope Manny Orosco is still in custody, or did the sheriff send him somewhere, too?”

Estelle took a deep breath and held it as she regarded me. “Orosco’s dead.”

“Of what?” Somehow I wasn’t surprised, but the news irritated me even more. Drunks seemed perfectly capable of hanging around for years, until everyone was thoroughly tired of them. The day that they might have been of some concrete use, they crapped out.

“Well, sir, that’s the interesting thing.” She leaned forward in her chair and clasped her hands together. “When we went through the truck, we bagged as evidence the liquor bottle that was lying near the head of his cot.”

“The rotgut sherry,” I said.

Estelle nodded. “There was no other evidence of liquor bottles near the bed. Up in one of the cabinets, I found a half bottle of that cheap fruit brandy, and a new bottle of peppermint schnapps. Unopened.”

“Even Manny might have thought twice about drinking that stuff,” I said.

“I don’t think so, sir. Anyway, Francis told me this afternoon that preliminary blood tests showed a blood-alcohol level that was right off the charts. Over point three-five. That’s enough to be toxic in anyone, sir.”

I frowned. “How do you get that kind of blood reading from part of a bottle of cheap sherry, Estelle?” I could see by the look on her face that she hadn’t told me everything. The light of the chase was in her eyes, and I took a deep breath, determined to keep up with her this time.

“You don’t, sir. The chem lab at the hospital helped me out. The sherry tested out at a hundred and sixty proof.”

“That’s eighty percent alcohol. That’s not possible, unless someone spiked the sherry.”

“That’s exactly what happened. There was enough sherry for a little flavor. The rest was pure grain alcohol. The stuff that kids like to buy to spike punch when they want a real nuclear buzz.”

“Half a bottle of that would kill a person,” I said.

“That’s exactly what it did, sir.”

Estelle watched me rinse out the coffeemaker and waited patiently while I dumped the filter, added a new one, and spooned in the grounds. I felt as if I hadn’t had a decent cup all day, even though my blood had to be half caffeine. My stomach was growling that it was close to dinnertime. Still, dinner would have to wait.

“Now, let’s see what you’ve got,” I said, and joined Estelle at the kitchen table. “And the first thing I want to know is what killed the girl. What’s Francis say?”

“She choked to death, sir.”

“Choked?” I turned and looked at Estelle. Then I raised my hands as if I were strangling someone. “You mean choked , as in strangled?”

“No, sir. It appears that she choked to death on a piece of pepperoni pizza.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No, sir.” Her face was sober. “And if that’s the case, then it looks like she choked to death somewhere, and then was just dumped.”

I stared at the detective and slowly shook my head. “No. There’s got to be something else. If she were alone when it happened, she wouldn’t have ended up under the bleachers. And who the hell would just dump someone who choked? Jesus.”

“That’s a good question. We don’t know the circumstances yet.”

“Yet. All right. What else have you found?”

“We have a list of every student who was in a class with Maria Ibarra,” she said, and slid a piece of paper with neatly typed columns across to me. I sat down and scanned the names.

“This won’t tell us much,” I said. “But it’s something. Do we know yet who she was friendly with?”

“The short list,” Estelle said, and pulled another piece of paper out of her briefcase. “I talked with the counselor again this afternoon, and each one of Maria’s teachers. These names are students who have been seen with her outside of class.”

“Not a particularly long list.”

“No, sir. Six names.”