Steven Havill - Privileged to Kill

“I saw that,” I said. “But Wilton is all right?”

Estelle nodded. “Physically, I guess. They were close friends. And Wilton is blaming himself.”

“That would be expected,” I said. “So what’s puzzling?”

“Stub Moore, the driver of the lead bus, says that the pickup truck that Wilton was driving passed his bus on a long downgrade. Although the truck was going faster than the speed limit, Boyd said that the speed wasn’t excessive for passing.”

“And then he lost it somehow, and went off the side of the highway,” I said.

“It sounded pretty cut and dried to me,” the sheriff added, but Estelle shook her head.

“Moore said the pickup was half a mile or more ahead of him when he saw the lights just drift off the road to the right.” She swept her hand out in front of her, and then held it suspended in space. “He said it looked like the driver maybe fell asleep.”

“That could happen,” Holman said. “That late at night? Why not.”

“It could, but put yourself in that pickup truck. Sure, it’s late. They’re heading home from an exciting football game. It’s about an hour-and-a-half drive. The boys might have stayed in Sierra Linda for a few minutes after the game to get something to eat. They caught up with the buses somewhere near Baca’s ranch. And a few minutes later, when the bus started into that section of highway that looks like a roller coaster, Wilton decided to pass.”

“What’s your point, Estelle?” Holman asked abruptly. He glanced at his watch.

“Dennis Wilton might not have known the road very well,” I said. “He might not have had occasion to drive it often.”

“That never stopped most teenage drivers from passing,” Holman said.

I hooked my hands behind my head and regarded Estelle. Her thought processes had always amused me, running in nice, true lineal lines from A to B to C. In the eight years I’d known her, I couldn’t recall a single incident of her engaging in idle chatter.

“True.” Estelle nodded. “And think about them passing. Maybe some of the kids in the bus were asleep, but probably most of them weren’t. They’re too wired after a conference win. And the driver said that they were noisy. He had trouble getting them to stay in their seats. So, as the pickup drives by, we’ve got kids looking out the window, probably responding to waves or honks or what have you from the two boys in the pickup truck.”

“Remember last year,” I said, “when one of the Posadas wrestlers hung his butt out the bus window and mooned half a mile of downtown Belen?”

Estelle nodded. “With all that kind of behavior that we expect, it seems odd to me that a minute or so after the pickup pulls back into its lane ahead of the bus, the kid who’s driving just simply falls asleep.”

The room fell silent as both Martin Holman and I regarded Estelle Reyes-Guzman.

“But…” Holman said when the silence stretched too long.

Estelle raised an eyebrow and waited.

“How else?” he added and held up his hands.

“I don’t know how else,” Estelle said quietly.

“What are you going to do?” Holman asked, and he sounded a bit nervous.

“I want to talk with Dennis Wilton some more,” she said. “I want to hear what he has to say. And the bus driver gave me names of some of the kids who were riding on that side of the bus, kids who would have seen the pickup go by. I suppose it’s entirely possible that the two boys were half asleep when they cruised by the bus. I just find it strange that the very act of passing a game bus wouldn’t stir the adrenaline just a little bit and keep them alert for a while longer.” Estelle pushed herself out of the chair. “I asked the parents for a blood test and they agreed. We didn’t need to go through the hassle of a court order. We’ll see what those results say.”

“You think they might have been on something?” I asked.

“It’s possible. We didn’t find anything like that in the truck, but it’s possible.”

“Do you think they were drinking?” Holman asked.

“Maybe. I couldn’t smell anything, but you never know. I don’t think the doctors would have given Dennis Wilton a sedative if he’d been drunk.”

“That would make it vehicular homicide, if he was intoxicated,” Holman said.

“Yes, it would, sir.”

He sighed loudly. “Jesus Christ,” he said and looked heavenward. “That’s all we need. First the girl, now this.”

I had been gazing at Estelle during the exchange, watching her expression. She turned and when our eyes met, I knew that she’d told us most of what she knew. Most.

The anticipation did more for me than ten cups of coffee. I pushed myself out of the chair and said, “One case at a time. Dennis Wilton isn’t going anywhere. We caught up with Vanessa Davila and she and Mama are waiting for us upstairs. Let’s go chat with them for a few minutes. Then we’ll take a look at that truck.” I turned and smiled at Martin Holman. “Then maybe we can have a domestic knife fight or two. Maybe even a rabid dog. Spice this evening up.”

Holman looked long suffering. “It’s three ten in the morning,” he said. “The evening was shot to hell a long time ago.”

“You’ll get used to that, Sheriff,” I said.

Vanessa Davila cried. It didn’t matter what the question was, or who asked it. She cried. Sometimes the tears leaked out from tightly squinched eyelids while she bit her lip. Sometimes her body heaved and the tears flowed openly. At one point she got the hiccups so badly that I could feel the floor jolt every time one of the spasms shook her.

Sheriff Holman fetched her a glass of water, but she ignored it.

At first I handled the tears by simply pushing the box of facial tissue close to Vanessa’s elbow and waiting. She ignored those, too. For the first ten minutes, Estelle did most of the talking, and most of it was in Spanish, between Estelle and the girl’s mother. Vanessa Davila didn’t utter a word.

She didn’t answer questions about her relationship with Maria Ibarra, nor about her activities that night. She would have known about the girl’s death, given the efficient way that word travels around a school. It was impossible to believe that she could not have known. Still, she had elected to go to the football game anyway. Perhaps that was her way of grieving for a lost friend.

She wouldn’t tell us how she got to the game, or how she got home. The list of students riding the spectator bus included fifty-five names, and none of them was Vanessa’s. I was impressed. No witness called to testify in front of a senate subcommittee ever stonewalled any better.

I watched the girl’s face closely, and what I saw was pure misery. I’d watched my own four kids grow up, and a time or two there had been an emergency when something was really wrong, not just a minor ouch where the tears came and went. Vanessa Davila was being wrenched this way and that by her own private hell, and she had elected to keep it to herself. Most kids weren’t that tough.

She didn’t nod answers, she didn’t use her hands. She didn’t focus on the picture of Maria Ibarra that Estelle slid in front of her. She just sat and waited us out while the tears flowed.

During a silence while Vanessa ignored a question from her mother, I glanced at the wall clock. In another two hours it would be dawn. Posadas would wake up and folks would have a lot to talk about. A little girl whom few of us knew had died a lonely and dirty death; the man she’d been living with had poisoned himself with a lethal alcohol mix; a harmless itinerant had been the victim of a hit-and-run; and one of the community’s top students had tried to fly through solid rock. The past twenty-four hours were something of a record for the tiny community.