Steven Havill - Before She Dies

I saw no weapon in Victor’s hands, and I was banking on Carlos being incapable of swinging the shotgun without having to twist away from the old man. That would give me room for a clear shot, and I edged my hand back toward my holstered revolver.

But Victor Sanchez had a different agenda. I don’t know what he knew, or what he had been able to piece together. But right then, his small, hard eyes were focused on the shotgun and the old man.

He stood facing his son, hands clenched at his sides.

“?Como podrias hacer este?” he whispered. “How could you do this?”

“Get out of my way, Papa,” Carlos snarled. His feet shifted and I could see the knuckles of his right hand turn white.

Victor stood stock-still, his eyes unblinking. “Is it true?”

Carlos’s feet danced another nervous little two-step, and the muzzle of the shotgun dipped.

“Is it true?” Victor said again, and the words were no louder than a soft puff of night air.

I edged farther into the room, two paces behind Victor’s broad back. Carlos saw me, and this time there was almost a note of pleading in his voice. “Get him out of here!”

Victor had read all the answer he needed in his son’s panic. “How could you do it?” he said again, this time in English. He shook his head slowly and spoke as if he were talking to himself. “ Por nada…y con el viejo.?Por un poquito dinero, tu amagas tu abuelo propio? Your own grandfather?”

Carlos lifted the shotgun, almost resting it on the ancient man’s shoulder. Its black muzzle pointed directly at Victor Sanchez’s face.

“Dos personas,” Victor said. “?Y como podrias robar de me??Como podrias hacerlo?”

“Papa…” Carlos started to say, and he sounded like a child.

“No creo que…” Victor said, but it was his hand I was watching. His right hand had drifted around behind him, slipping under the bulky jacket he wore. Even as he pulled out the small revolver, he moved as quickly and gracefully as a dancer. Lashing out with his left hand, he pushed the shotgun muzzle away from the old man’s head, at the same time driving his right hand out like a prize-fighter.

The explosion of the revolver was loud in the confines of the room, and Carlos Sanchez staggered backward with a cry. Victor pushed after him, wresting the shotgun out of his grasp. The weapon thudded to the floor as Victor drove his son toward the back wall of the living room. Mateo Esquibel, looking puzzled, rubbed his face.

The two bodies crashed into the wall, and a small framed portrait of Christ dropped to the floor, its glass shattering.

Jerking the handcuffs off my belt, I lunged across the room to where Victor held his son against the wall. Carlos’s eyes drifted past the purple, enraged face of his father to my own.

“He shot me,” he said simply.

“Victor, give me the gun!” I shouted, and even as I did so, the revolver thudded to the floor.

“He shot me,” Carlos said again, and started to sag sideways. Victor held him by his jacket until the younger man’s weight was too much to support. Then he lowered his son to the dusty floor of the living room. I kicked the short-barreled.38 away and held up a hand to stop Torrez and Bishop as they charged up the front steps.

“Take care of him,” I said, pointing at Mateo Esquibel.

I knelt beside Victor Sanchez, and I could smell the onions, and the fried chicken, and the beer that he served at the Broken Spur Saloon. He said nothing, but his eyes were locked on his son’s face. The rage was gone, replaced by quiet desperation.

“I can’t…” Carlos Sanchez said clearly, and stopped.

“Lie still, son.” I turned to issue orders, but Deputy Bishop was ahead of me. He slipped out the door and I heard his boots thudding across the yard toward his car.

“Papa,” Carlos Sanchez whispered. “It hurts.” Blood was beginning to leak through the jacket, and Carlos made a strangled, choking sound, at the same time that he tried to push himself up to a sitting position. And then his eyes glazed and lost focus. “Papa,” he said one more time, and died.

I rocked back on my haunches and watched as Victor released his hold on his son. Victor never took his eyes off his son’s face, but he spoke in English. “How could he kill like that? And he stole from his own father. How could he do that? He just ran inside and took the money. How could he do that?”

I didn’t reply as I stood up. Victor looked up at me. “Was he trying to leave the country?”

“We think so.”

“He didn’t even have a word to say to me.”

I walked out of the adobe, leaving the two of them alone.

Bishop came trotting back, his service automatic in his hand.

“The ambulance is on the way,” he said.

“And put that thing away,” I answered. I leaned against the Blazer’s rusted fender and looked out across the little village.

“You want him cuffed?” Bishop asked.

I shook my head and pushed my own set back through my belt. “He’s not going anywhere. Just go in and gather up all the goddamned artillery.”

“No, I meant Victor. You want him in custody?”

I looked at Howard. “Where’s he going to go in this world, Howard? He just shot his own son. Leave him alone until the ambulance gets here.”

The Posadas County Sheriff’s Office filed no charges against Victor Sanchez. Over the next several days, we were able to piece together a version of what his son had done that satisfied us. We might have been wrong in a detail or two, but only time and a few lucky breaks would ever provide the answers.

We found the police scanner stowed under the seat of Mateo Esquibel’s old truck; it was the type of radio unit with a power jack that plugged into the cigarette lighter. If Carlos Sanchez had overheard Deputy Encinos respond to the radio call about a possible disturbance on East Bustos Avenue that Sunday night, he may well have gotten nervous.

We didn’t know yet where in the state the stolen truck had come from, but odds were good that it had ended up being parked for a short while among the many vehicles behind Nick’s dealership. If Tammy Woodruff had had the key to the stolen pickup, and all she had had to do was start the truck and drive off to Mexico, it should have been a slick deal. But Tammy was Tammy.

Waiting in Regal, Carlos had made the decision to drive back toward Posadas, using the old man’s truck. The trailer hitched on behind was a typical Carlos Sanchez touch. The rig would look as innocent as the old man. He would have seen the stolen truck parked along the highway, and he would have seen the patrol car behind it, emergency lights flashing. And that had to have been when Carlos took the step to bail Tammy out of trouble, knowing full well that she probably wouldn’t have been able to keep her mouth shut. She’d sealed her own fate, of course, when Carlos realized what a liability she really was.

The state crime lab provided a match between the firing pin impression of Carlos Sanchez’s pump shotgun and the impression struck in the primer of the single fired shell casing that he’d pumped into the grass along State 56 that Sunday night.

And Sergeant Torrez demonstrated to us how Carlos could have driven Tammy Woodruff’s truck over the edge of San Patricio Mesa. It didn’t take a gymnast to stand on the chrome running board with the driver’s door open, since the vehicle could go over the edge at an idle and gravity would still get the job done. From there, it was a simple hitchhike back to town.

Nick Chavez closed the auto dealership for two days while we went through the building one shelf, one drawer, one file, even one toolbox at a time…including Nick’s own office. Two days of patient searching gave us one answer that didn’t surprise me. Carlos Sanchez had kept no records. Not at the dealership, not in his apartment, not in the bank safe-deposit box that we opened on court order.