Steven Havill - Privileged to Kill

I shook my head skeptically. “We’ve both been to a number of accidents where the driver apparently just froze at the wheel, Estelle. That’s almost as common as jerking the wheel and causing a rollover.”

“Maybe. But in this case, it’s interesting that the impact was entirely on the passenger’s side.”

“That’s not hard to imagine, if you remember how the boulder was located, Estelle.”

She shook her head doggedly. “Second, the driver had the advantage of both an airbag and a shoulder harness-seatbelt combination. The passenger had neither. Third, the truck was traveling at a reasonable rate of speed. Plenty fast to be lethal without protection, but a pretty good gamble with protection, if the driver was the gambling sort.”

I shook my head. “Be reasonable, Estelle. There are lots of ways to murder people. I don’t think driving head-on into a boulder is high on the list.”

“Why not, if you were reasonably sure of getting away with it?”

“You could never be sure.”

“Not if you were an experienced adult. But a kid? They think in absolute terms, sir. And who would ever know?”

I laughed. “Well, if you’re right about all this, you know, for one.”

“But some kid, maybe with a touch of arrogance, who thinks police are as dumb as the one he comes in contact with all the time?”

“Thomas Pasquale, you mean?”

“Sure. If he’s the law enforcement experience level held to be typical, then the kid has every reason to be confident.”

I gazed at Estelle, trying to sort pieces. “I’ll ask it again: why would Dennis Wilton want to murder his best friend?”

Estelle put the fingerprint samples back in the briefcase along with the notebook and closed the lid.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Any guesses?”

“Well, sure, I can imagine all kinds of things. Maybe the two boys picked up Maria…she was pretty enough. And in this day and age, you never know what’s going through the minds of two young men in rut. Maybe things didn’t go so well, either through intent or accident. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what they might have had planned. She chokes and they panic.”

“And dump her under the bleachers? Christ,” I said. “Why wouldn’t they take her out into the middle of the prairie somewhere?”

“Because when the body was found, if it ever was, that would make it look like murder, sir. If the body was never found, you’re still looking at foul play. This way, by dumping her under the bleachers, police would be more apt to write it off as some sort of bizarre accident…especially when they discovered Maria Ibarra’s curious lifestyle.”

I looked at Estelle as all the jumble rolled through my mind. “What about the phone call? You think they called the village P.D. so that a cop like Tom Pasquale would respond?”

“That may be part of it, sir, but I think it’s simpler than that. The office number that was called isn’t recorded. Anyone who watches television knows, or at least believes, that all 911 calls are. By calling the P.D., they didn’t have to worry about a voice match.”

“We haven’t heard from the state lab, have we.”

“No, sir. But I called Lieutenant Bucky and asked him to expedite the processing of the hair samples that Bob Torrez found under the bleachers. I sent samples of both Dennis Wilton and Ryan House’s hair to the lab by courier earlier.”

“Where did you get Wilton’s?”

Estelle came close to smiling. “From his hospital pillow case.”

I frowned and let my chin drop down to my chest. “It doesn’t figure, does it? You’re saying now that, based on the initials in the notebook, maybe Maria Ibarra was going with Ryan House. That’s an unlikely match, somehow.”

“But I’m not suggesting they were ‘going together,’ sir. Maria might have had a crush on House from afar. Girls do that, you know.”

“I know, Estelle, I have two daughters of my own. And boys have crushes, too. But think on it. If you’re suggesting that they somehow got together…that it was House who was with Maria when she choked to death…it was more than a one-way crush from afar. And that’s not too likely, either. He’s a senior, she’s barely a freshman. She doesn’t even speak much English. She lived like a goddamned troll in an old truck body under the interstate. House is from a good family.”

“Good, sir?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, sir, I don’t,” Estelle said, and I looked up quickly, hearing the snap in her voice. “If Ryan House was with Maria when she choked, apparently he didn’t do anything to help her. And then she was dumped like a sack of garbage.”

I shrugged and nodded. “You’re right. That’s subhuman behavior, if that’s what happened.”

“ Someone was with her when she died.”

“Yes,” I said. “Someone was. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been dumped. An innocent passerby would have called the police the minute she was discovered. I can’t imagine that she was eating pizza under the bleachers. For one thing, she had no money to buy it with. If it was Ryan House who was with her, that leaves us with what appears to be the single essential question…Why did Dennis Wilton want Ryan House dead?”

“I don’t know,” Estelle said. “Jealousy, maybe.”

“Jealous about a fifteen-year-old Mexican illegal alien? I think not.”

“Fear of discovery.”

“That I can imagine. If Wilton was somehow involved in Maria Ibarra’s death, and Ryan House was going to blow the whistle, then murder makes sense.”

Estelle looked up suddenly, her mouth forming a small oh . “What if it was Ryan House who called the village police to report the body?”

“And Wilton figured that was the first step toward stepping forward to admit to what they’d done.”

“Maybe.”

“But if she choked accidentally, dumping the body isn’t much of a crime. It’s a simple case of concealing an incident, compounded with failure to report an attended death.”

“We know that, sir. A couple of kids don’t.”

I slid off the desk and walked around it, to thump down into the old chair. It let out a squawk as the springs compressed. “With everything Ryan House had hanging in the balance-scholarships, awards, honors-he might have panicked. And Dennis Wilton was no slouch in his own right.”

“Glen Archer said that he’d just been accepted at a couple of premed programs out of state. Prestigious schools.”

I shrugged. “Well, maybe. And maybe we’re just inventing ghosts to chase. What about Miss Davila? Suppose she was the one with Maria when she died.”

“They were at least acquaintances, maybe even best friends, sir. Vanessa may well have been the only friend that Maria had.”

“So what? Jealousy rears its ugly head, Estelle. Maria is Vanessa’s best friend, and suddenly Maria is mooning over a senior. Vanessa isn’t blind. She can see that Maria Ibarra is a cute kid-maybe in need of a shower and a perm, but a cute kid nevertheless. And Vanessa looks in the mirror and knows damn well that she isn’t cute, in any way, shape, or form. And so there she goes, tricked and ridiculed by fate once again.”

Estelle smiled and looked up at the ceiling beams. She reached up and clapped a hand over her face in mock frustration. “I want to go to bed.”

I laughed. “That’s the first time I think I’ve ever heard you admit to fatigue, sweetheart. Join the club.” I leaned forward and indicated the briefcase. “Anything else?”

Estelle sighed. “Sheriff Holman came back into the office a few minutes ago. He asked if there was anything he could do. I had him shag Glen Archer back to the high school so he could go through the four lockers…Maria’s, Vanessa’s, Dennis Wilton’s, and Ryan House’s.”