Steven Havill - Before She Dies

“You’re thinking that maybe someone out there had it in for you and shot at Paul by mistake?”

“It’s possible, sir.”

I shook my head. “Not likely. For one thing, you don’t look a damn thing like Paul Encinos, even from a distance. You’re a head taller and fifty pounds heavier. However, I suppose that maybe at night, with the adrenaline pumping, a cop looks like a cop.”

Torrez turned and surveyed the riddled patrol car. “And what about it being my car?”

I snorted. “First of all, it isn’t your car, Roberto. True enough, you drove it most of the time during your shift. But on days, Tony Abeyta was using it. And half the time Howard Bishop drives it midnight to eight. So…” I strode quickly over to the car. “And finally,” I said, holding thumb and index finger to gauge the height of the black number decals behind the rear window post, “these little numbers are only three inches high. We notice ’em because it’s part of what we do. But to the average civilian, one patrol car looks like any other. Who’s going to notice a number and assume that the deputy inside is Robert Torrez?”

I stepped away from the car. “Victor Sanchez is a hothead, Robert, and that’s what makes a case of mistaken identity even more unlikely. If he’s got a complaint, he’ll climb right into your face. An ambush from across a dark highway isn’t his style.”

“Should I go out and talk with him?”

“No. Let me do that.”

“You want me to come along?”

I smiled and shook my head. “I want you to keep doing what you’re doing. Finish with the car and make sure you have a set of perfect photos. Then, when the sheriff tracks down the make and model of tires from those casts, hunt the right species down and get some photographs of those, too. Estelle is putting the shell casing under the microscope and we should have fingerprints a little later, if our boy got careless. By then, we can start pushing the Office of the Medical Examiner for whatever the autopsy showed.”

I shrugged with resignation. “None of the roadblocks turned up a thing. I canceled them just before I came over here. If the killer was someone just passing through, he’s long gone anyway. If it was someone local, then maybe pulling down the barriers will encourage him to stick his head out. I don’t know. In the meantime, it’s important to pay attention to all the little details.” I nodded at his targets and stickers. “Good work.”

“You sure you don’t want company going out to see Sanchez?”

“I’m sure.”

The late afternoon sun was dipping toward the San Cristobal Mountain peaks to the southwest as I drove out State Highway 56. The air was brilliantly clear with no breeze. For the first four miles, I didn’t pass a single car, coming or going. A handful of cattle didn’t bother to lift their heads as I motored past. Goddamned pastoral, is what it was.

I wondered what Linda Real and Paul Encinos had been talking about as they drove this very macadam twenty hours before. Just kids, I thought. Both of them less than half my age. Kids idling down the highway during a pleasant evening, assuming that come Easter they’d be part of a family gathering, or that they’d be ready for a week’s vacation in June, or that they’d get to see the fireworks put on in the Posadas Village Park on the Fourth of July. I thumped the steering wheel with my fist in frustration.

I looked out across the sweep of prairie, my eyes following the gradual curve of the highway around the base of Arturo Mesa. Two sodium-vapor lights burned brightly and marked the yard and pens of Wayne Feed and Supply, a business that sprawled over a dozen acres.

If you needed a cutter bar for a 1924 Eustice hay-flailer, you could probably find one there. You’d have to tramp out through the creosote bush, cactus, and rattlesnakes to find it yourself on one of the legion of rusting hulks. Toby Sanchez hadn’t bought the business so that he’d have to work.

In another two minutes, I would drive past the empty buildings of Moore, just as Deputy Encinos and Linda Real would have done. I glanced down at the papers beside me.

Deputy Encinos’s patrol log for the evening hadn’t offered much. A photocopy of the last page of that log lay on top of my briefcase.16:06308 starting 98390.816:3810-816:54W/W KGY-399 neg.16:5610-87 Cal Hewlett 10–15 Efren Padilla PCDC17:2510-817:32MVA I-10/NM 5618:18PGH, confer Dr. Perrone, op. Weatherford ng/ba, inf. t/o/t Mears18:3010-7 NSI18:4810-818:5010-19 L. Real19:0010-820:1110-62 Rosalita Ibarra, 579 Serna Place. Animal nuisance t/o/t PPD20:3510-821:0510-62 R. Ibarra, animal nuisance, neighbor threats. Talked with neighbor Saucilito Ortiz, agreed to corral dog. PPD nr21:4010-822:53E. Bustos Ave. ref. afterhours activity. Neg. contact, t/o/t PPD22:5910-8

In his last hours of duty, Deputy Encinos had entered the starting mileage of his patrol car-completely routine. A few minutes later, he’d asked for a wants/warrant check on a license number. There was no hint in his log about whether he had actually stopped the vehicle. The dispatcher’s log had confirmed that he had not.

Cal Hewlett, one of the U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers, had requested assistance in transporting a prisoner, one Efren Padilla, to the county lockup. I knew Padilla. The old man had probably been cutting green pinon again, on the feds’ turf.

At five-thirty-two, Encinos had responded to the Weatherfords’ traffic accident. That had kept him occupied until six-thirty, when he’d eaten dinner at the North Star Inn, the big chain motel near the interstate ramp where the Weatherfords had trashed their van and trailer.

At six-fifty, the deputy had returned to the Posadas County Sheriff’s Office and picked up Posadas Register reporter Linda Real. If she was expecting an exciting night, the first calls didn’t offer a preview. Rosalita Ibarra had been complaining about Sauci Ortiz’s dog for years. She would have complained even if the old man didn’t have a dog. Rosalita and Sauci had been neighbors for sixty years. They’d argued and shouted at each other for sixty years. They loved it. The only thing that made it better was a good audience.

Deputy Paul Encinos had provided the audience. Twice. He’d tried to turn the complaint over to the village cops, but they weren’t buying it…if one or the other of them had been on duty. It must have been the deputy’s first time trying to handle the Ibarra/Ortiz show. Otherwise he would have known better.

The last entry was equally routine. At fifty-three minutes after ten, Deputy Encinos had been directed to East Bustos Avenue. The dispatch log, and Gayle Sedillos’s memory, said the call had come from the manager of Mark’s Burger Heaven, one of the teen hangouts.

The manager had said that kids were driving around behind the fence of the business across the street. She didn’t know what they were up to. She didn’t have much imagination if she couldn’t figure out what two kids in a car wanted with darkness, away from streetlights and prying eyes.

Deputy Encinos had checked and then, at one minute before eleven o’clock, he had called in 10-8, meaning that he was in service and free for assignment. That was his last call.

He and his passenger had then driven to the other side of the county and gotten themselves shot.

I drove through Moore, looking hard at the huge dark blob that once had been Beason’s Mercantile and Dry Goods. Until the vein ran out, folks in Moore had assumed their town was going to grow and prosper, maybe even make mention in the 1920 census. Beason thought so, enough to build the two-story edifice that now stood empty and crumbling.

State 56 was so straight between the back side of Arturo Mesa and the banks of the Rio Guijarro that for two and a half miles a laser beam wouldn’t have strayed from the dotted center line.