Steven Havill - Privileged to Kill

As I got out, one of the well-wishers shouted, “I think you got another accident down there!” He gestured toward the west. “We heard a hellacious crash, and the siren stopped.”

“Christ,” I said, and Estelle ducked back into the car to call dispatch. She’d take care of the radio, and Bob Torrez would be inbound in minutes. I turned my attention to the figure on the sidewalk.

Wesley Crocker grinned sheepishly as I knelt down. I had to brace one hand on the utility pole to steady myself.

He wasn’t bleeding from every orifice, no bones jutted grotesquely through torn clothing, and his limbs hadn’t been twisted or smashed into obscene angles. Still, even I could see that he was pale and shaky, despite his attempt at good cheer.

“What the hell happened to you?” I asked.

I moved to one side so that the ambulance attendant could work his magic. Crocker tried to push himself upright and grimaced, and Miller Martinez, the EMT, placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Stay put, sir. Let us do all the work.”

Crocker turned his head so he could see me. “I fell off my bike, good sir.”

“I can see that,” I said. “You must have been doing ninety miles an hour.” He grinned and then sighed as the two EMTs lifted him onto the gurney and strapped him in. “Did you see who hit you?”

He shook his head. “I surely didn’t. I never heard a thing.” He grinned. “I wasn’t paying all that much attention, either, I confess.”

I glanced over my shoulder, and then back at the bicycle. “Whoever it was came up behind you?”

“Yes, sir.”

I stood at the back door of the ambulance, and the EMT gave me a few more seconds.

“Did you see the vehicle?”

“No, sir.”

“Not even after it hit you?”

“Especially not then,” Wesley Crocker said, and managed a chuckle. “I was headed ass over teakettle.”

“Were you on your bike?”

“No. I was pushing it. I guess that’s what saved me. The bike was on the street side of me. I don’t think I would have been hurt much at all if I’d managed to miss that utility pole. That thing’s on the hard side, sir.”

“We need to go, Sheriff,” Miller said, and I nodded.

“Once more, though. Wesley, the vehicle came from the west, is that right? It came down Bustos from the west?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And it continued on down Bustos, or did it turn on Pershing here?”

“I couldn’t swear either way, sir, but if I was to guess, I’d say it went on down the main drag, there.”

I nodded. “We’ll catch up with you at the hospital. Don’t worry about any of your stuff.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about any of that, sir. I just don’t think I need to bother the folks at the hospital for a few bruises.”

“Sir…” I turned as Estelle touched my arm.

“What’s going on?”

“It looks like Tom Pasquale flipped his vehicle down the street. Right at the intersection of Twelfth and Bustos.”

“Oh, for God’s sakes.”

“Ernie Wheeler said the manager of the Don Juan just called. The patrol car is on its top right in the middle of the intersection. Chief Martinez just arrived, and Torrez will be there in a minute.”

“Is Pasquale hurt?”

“Apparently not, sir.”

“Then let’s get busy here. Let the chief call his own tow truck.”

I suppose I should have felt more solicitous, but I wasn’t in the mood. We cleared away oglers, and Eddie Mitchell arrived to help secure the area so we could see what the hell we had. Then I sent him out to look for a vehicle with a freshly crumpled fender.

We didn’t have much. The first clear tire scuff mark showed on the curb about thirty feet west of the corner of Bustos and Pershing. Whoever had been driving the vehicle let it climb the curb on the south side of Bustos, then ran along it for just a few feet, gathering up the bicycle and flinging Wesley Crocker against the utility pole.

The bike had gotten snarled up with the vehicle, which finally spat it out across the intersection.

I played my flashlight over the remains of the bicycle. “After all those miles, some jerk does this,” I muttered.

Estelle Reyes-Guzman unlimbered her camera. She knelt down and pointed with the tip of her pencil. “Lots of flat black paint on the bicycle, sir.”

“Yep,” I said. “Whoever did this is going to show some battle scars. Any other paint souvenirs that you can see?”

She played the light this way and that. “Lots of black. Some bright metal scrapes. We can go over it better down at the shop, with some decent light.” She handed me a small plastic object. “And we have this.”

It was the plastic trumpet portion of a deer whistler, those little gadgets that folks stick on their cars and trucks to warn deer out of their path. The thing was broken off at the base.

“Maybe,” I said. “Or from some other vehicle. Bag it.”

Fifteen minutes later, the street was clear and we were as finished as we would ever be.

I leaned against 310, my arms folded over my belly. “We still don’t know if it was intentional or not,” I said.

Estelle shrugged. “It could have been someone who just wasn’t paying attention. They panicked and ran.”

“Could have been,” I said.

“Do you want to drive down the street?” She indicated westward, and I remembered Tom Pasquale.

“I’m not sure I want to see it,” I said, then added, “and sure as hell, Pasquale doesn’t want to see me.” I looked at Estelle and grinned. “Let’s go see.”

Estelle and I had missed Officer Thomas Pasquale’s attempt at high-powered, wingless flight.

The Don Juan de Oñate restaurant, home of the best green chili burritos in the Southwest, occupied the northwest corner of the Bustos Avenue-Twelfth Street intersection. Just north of the restaurant is an arroyo and drainage ditch, and Twelfth Street crosses that deep, weed-choked arroyo by way of an old-fashioned metal bridge.

The bridge is nearly a foot higher than Twelfth Street before Twelfth ramps up on its southbound approach. When patrons of Don Juan’s were dining in the restaurant, they could hear the regular clatter as cars bounced from the asphalt of the street onto the old steel plates of the bridge. From the bridge, it was about a hundred feet to the intersection immediately beside the restaurant.

Fortunately no one else had been on the highway or in the crosswalk when Officer Thomas Pasquale experienced his magic moment. When it was over, we heard no call for an ambulance or the coroner, so we were reasonably sure Pasquale hadn’t suffered any more injury than a slam-dunked ego.

Estelle slowed the patrol car to a stop on the south side of the intersection and we surveyed the carnage. By that time, Deputy Tom Mears had set up a detour for both east- and westbound traffic. A few patrons of the Don Juan drifted toward the street corner to gawk, but there wasn’t much to see…just a trashed police car, on its roof in the middle of the street.

The skid marks and vehicular junk told me all I needed to know about how the car had come to turn turtle. My imagination had no trouble filling in the details.

Always competitive even in the dullest moments, Pasquale had been caught off guard by the dispatcher’s call. Maybe he’d been trying to grab a quick sandwich; maybe he’d been in the can reading a magazine. Whatever the scenario, he’d missed the call by a hairsbreadth. Back in the car, he heard the radio traffic and flew into action, trying to beat Sergeant Bob Torrez to the scene…which he could easily have done at a walk, since the sergeant was a dozen miles out of town.

Thomas Pasquale had blasted his patrol car onto the bridge with lights and siren ablaze and awail and his right foot pasted to the floor. No doubt he hoped for a scene right out of Hollywood’s best. What he got was something else.