Steven Havill - Before She Dies

“Sheriff? This is Donni. Can you believe this? I mean, can you believe it?” She spoke as if our acquaintance had been seasoned by years instead of hours. “I mean, I can’t believe it.”

“I’m certainly sorry, Mrs. Weatherford,” I said lamely. I wasn’t about to drive up to downtown Oklahoma to pick up the family and chauffeur them to Davenport, Iowa…and that’s about the only offer that would have done them any good.

“Well, I just thought I should call you, sheriff. I thought maybe you might like to know. You folks were all so kind to us, and then your deputy, the one who was so helpful, was killed later that very night. Have you caught them yet?”

“No.”

“This world is full of wretched people, I’ll tell you that.”

“Yes, ma’am. Are you absolutely certain that the alarm on the Suburban was set properly?”

“Absolutely.”

After assuring Mrs. Weatherford that Sergeant Judge would take care of the family’s immediate needs, and countering another round of thank-you’s, I hung up. In less than a heartbeat, the line two light blossomed and the phone buzzed. With my fingers resting on the receiver, I contemplated not bothering to answer. After another two buzzes, I picked it up.

Herb Torrance’s gravelly voice was loud. “Sheriff? That you?”

“Herb, how you doing?”

“Not so damn good. The wife and me are about worried sick. Listen, I just got a call from Patrick.” My heart skipped a beat. “He went and got himself arrested.”

“Where’s he at?”

“Well, let me read it. He’s…hold it still, Adeline…he’s being held by the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office. Now, that’s in Gillette, Wyoming.”

“What the hell’s he doing up there?”

“Damned if I know, sheriff. He didn’t want to talk over the phone too damn bad. He just wanted me and his ma to know he was all right, and we was to call you.”

“Patrick said to call me?”

“That’s what he said.”

“All right. I’ll get right back to you, Herb. Sit tight.”

I punched in the number for long distance information, listened to the robot recite the number, and then dialed the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office. The circuits between Posadas and Gillette popped and clicked, and another throaty-voiced robot came on the line to patiently tell me that she was sorry, the number I had dialed was no longer in service.

I doubt that she, or it, really was sorry in the least. Annoyed, I peered more carefully through my bifocals at the number information had given me, and tried again. This time, I was rewarded with a real human, a man who sounded like he was talking between tightly clenched steel dentures.

“Campbell S.O., Whittier.”

I introduced myself and then said, “I understand you may have one of our best and brightest in custody.”

“Who’s that?”

“A young fella named Torrance. Patrick Torrance.”

“Lemme check.” The line went dead and I spent several long minutes pencil shading in the square for February first on my desk calendar. A voice startled me.

“This is Lieutenant Brennen.” The voice was husky and soft. I wouldn’t have placed bets on gender.

“Lieutenant, this is Undersheriff William Gastner of Posadas County, New Mexico. I need to speak with someone about one of your detainees. A Patrick Torrance.”

“What do you need to know, sir?”

“First of all, is he in your custody?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When was he arrested?”

I heard a faint rustle of paper. “Five-thirty-six A.M.”

“That’s today?”

“Yes, sir.”

The lad had wasted no time leaving Posadas County in his dust, and he’d flogged the horses all the way north. “What was the charge?”

“Driving while intoxicated.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, sir.” The voice was about as flappable as the telephone company’s robot.

“Apparently he telephoned his parents?”

“He did make a telephone call. Yes, sir.”

“Let me tell you what we’ve got, lieutenant. We’ve had a homicide down here. One of our deputies. Did you receive the information?”

“Yes, sir. We got the teletype on the homicide earlier. The deputy who arrested Torrance remembered the name of the county and brought it to my attention. I was going to telephone your office this morning. But we had a family dispute an hour or so ago that was settled with a shotgun, so we got kinda busy ourselves.”

“I think it’s the moon, lieutenant. Who the hell knows? What are the chances of talking with the Torrance kid?”

“No problem, sir. Give me your number, and I’ll call you back in about five minutes.” I heard voices in the background, one of them loud and angry. “Make that ten minutes,” the lieutenant said.

“It’s urgent, if that helps.”

“Isn’t it always,” the lieutenant said, and for the first time I could hear some humor in the voice.

While I waited, I dug out the road atlas from the overloaded bookshelf behind my chair. The tiny numbers blurred, and I ended up holding the damn thing about six inches from my nose. The red numbers said Gillette was sixty-nine miles east of Buffalo, Wyoming, on Interstate 90. Buffalo sat squarely on Interstate 25, that north-south express ribbon that connects the major cities on the east flank of the Rockies. I-25 dove all the way south through Las Cruces, east of Posadas.

I flipped pages until I found the mileage chart, its type designed to be read either through a microscope or by a ten-year-old with 20/10 vision. Las Cruces wasn’t listed, but El Paso was, and I followed the column over until I was under the one for Cheyenne, Wyoming. Seven hundred and ninety-two miles. Cruces was 50 miles north of El Paso, so that made it 742. Add 60 coming in from Posadas to the west. That was 802. Cheyenne was still a far stretch from Gillette.

I flipped to the page for Wyoming. “Jesus,” I said, and jotted down the 326 miles the map said it was from Cheyenne to Sheridan. Give or take 50 miles, that figure would apply to Gillette, too, if my eyes could stay focused long enough to add the tiny red numbers. The grand total was 1,128, give or take. At a steady 60 miles an hour, that was almost nineteen hours. Nobody averaged 60 over that kind of distance, no matter what they might tell you. One stop for fuel killed the average, and there were too many radar traps to allow sustained speeds to make up time.

But Patrick Torrance hadn’t let the moss grow. Sometime between twenty and thirty hours before, he’d left Posadas. I glanced at my watch. He’d been arrested at five-thirty. Some eight and a half hours before, his father had mentioned to me that he hadn’t seen his son since the previous day. And fourteen and a half hours before the Campbell County deputy pulled Torrance over, Estelle Reyes-Guzman had spotted Tammy Woodruff’s mangled pickup truck.

Tammy had been wadded up in the crushed cab for God knows how long-perhaps as many as twenty-four hours. I frowned and dropped my pencil on the desk. The time window was plenty wide to accommodate the young man’s panic.

“Shit,” I said aloud. I tossed the atlas back on the bookcase.

Seven minutes later the telephone buzzed.

“Sir, this is Lieutenant Marjory Brennen from Gillette.” Marjory. I tried to form a mental picture, but her personality was perfectly guarded by that soft, neutral voice. “We’re on conference.”

“Patrick?” I asked. I picked up the telephone recorder and pushed in the record buttons.

“Yes, sir. I’m here.” He sounded relieved.

“Patrick, this conversation is being recorded, just for the record. All right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your dad called me a few minutes ago. Are you all right?”