Steven Havill - Before She Dies

“I haven’t talked about it with him yet, tia . Just with you and Francis.”

I sat back and folded my hands on my belly.

“Well,” Sofia said. “This is a man who is used to being in the very center of things.” She beckoned to Estelle to sit back down. “You should discuss your decision with him, certainly.”

“Certainly,” I said, amused.

Estelle concentrated on the tablecloth for a full minute, tracing the lace design with the handle of a spoon. Neither Francis nor Sofia said a word. We waited. Finally Estelle chuckled. “This is harder than I thought, sir.”

“Oh? What’s harder? Fill me in. What’s the big mystery?”

She looked up at me, her clear, olive skin framed by raven black hair. But it was the eyes that as always drew my attention to Estelle-black, bottomless, calm, and assessing.

“I’ve decided to run for sheriff, sir.”

The room became so still I could hear the kid’s muttery little breaths in the next room.

It was Sofia who broke the silence. “This must be quite an adventure, don’t you think?

Adventure wasn’t the first word I would have chosen, but I desperately wanted to say the right thing when I opened my mouth.

“Instead of law school, or in addition to?” I asked.

“Before, maybe,” Estelle said. She frowned. “If I do, that is.”

I sat forward. “What do you mean, if you do? You just said you’d decided.”

She grinned sheepishly. “That still changes from minute to minute, I guess. There are still some very important things I haven’t worked out in my mind.”

“For instance?”

The telephone in the living room jangled and Francis got up swiftly to answer it. I wasn’t sure that Estelle had heard it.

“I don’t want to put you in an uncomfortable position,” she said.

I laughed. “You mean during the election or afterward, when I have to work for you?”

She started to say something and then stopped, looking up at Francis. I twisted around. “It’s Gayle Sedillos, sir. She needs to talk with you,” he said.

I felt like ten tons when I pushed myself upright and away from the table. “Hold that thought,” I said to Estelle. “This will only take a minute. They can live without me for one evening.”

The kid stirred fitfully as I walked past him, so I kept my voice down when I picked up the receiver. “Gastner.”

Gayle’s voice was artificially starched. “Sir, a civilian just called in to report a shooting involving one of our deputies. Tom Mears and Howard Bishop are on their way out now.”

“Who was involved?”

“Deputy Encinos, sir.”

“You don’t know what happened?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Where?”

“State 56, one mile east of County Road 14.”

“We’re on our way.” I started to hang up the telephone, but Gayle’s urgent voice stopped me.

“Sir…”

“What is it?”

“I think Linda Real was with him as well, sir.”

An ambulance’s red lights winked in my rearview mirror as we passed under the interstate exchange on South Grande Boulevard and started to slow for the sweeping right-hand turn onto State 56. As I accelerated 310 out onto the highway, Estelle turned up the radio slightly, hunching forward as if to prompt the electronic signals.

“Three oh seven, PCS. Ten-twenty.”

Gayle Sedillos’s voice on the radio was crisp, almost mechanical. Estelle reached for the microphone and held it in her lap, waiting.

I could envision Howard Bishop reaching over to grope for the microphone without taking his eyes from the highway as it hurtled past.

“Uh, PCS, three oh seven is about a minute out. I just passed the Broken Spur.” Deputy Bishop’s voice was soft, almost hushed. He was eight miles ahead of us with Deputy Mears close on his bumper.

“No traffic,” Estelle said. Our headlights drilled a tunnel into the black prairie.

I didn’t respond. I concentrated on the highway. The drowsiness following a heavy meal had vanished with Gayle’s voice on the telephone. The black macadam of the state highway stretched out in front of the county car, a ribbon that grew narrower as we accelerated into the night.

For several seconds, the only sound was the bellow of our car’s engine. And then the dam broke.

“PCS, three oh seven is ten-ninety-seven.” I tensed and gripped the wheel until my knuckles were white. Maybe whoever had called had sucked up one too many drinks at the Broken Spur Saloon and had gotten the story all wrong. Maybe it was a false alarm, a practice run where we all got to drive like crazy people with red lights and sirens and then got to laugh about it afterward.

We wound up through the esses that curled around the base of Arturo Mesa and then flung down the other side, to cross the Rio Salinas and flash past the tiny ghost town of Moore. I caught a wink of red far off in the distance to the southwest.

“Three ten, three oh seven.”

Estelle responded in less than a heartbeat. “Three ten is just coming up on the Broken Spur.”

“Three ten, is the ambulance right behind you?”

“Affirmative.”

In another minute, as we shot past the saloon, I saw a group of half a dozen people standing in the parking lot, clustered around a cattle trailer and a fleet of pickup trucks. They were on their way to provide an audience, no doubt.

Two minutes later we crested a slight rise, turned a corner to the right, and came face to face with a parking lot in the middle of the state highway. I swore and braked hard. A civilian was standing in the oncoming lane waving a flashlight frantically, thinking perhaps that I was blind.

I stopped 310 diagonally across the double yellows so it blocked both lanes. Up ahead I could see Mears’s and Bishop’s patrol cars, one slightly ahead and one behind a third county car that was parked almost off the pavement. Half a dozen other vehicles were parked on both sides of the highway, and a circle of people nearly hid Deputy Encinos’s patrol car from view.

I recognized rancher Howard Packard as I stepped out of the car. “Stay back here and make sure no one else comes through except emergency vehicles, Howard,” I said, and pointed back toward town. “Stay back behind my car.”

Estelle was two paces ahead of me, walking down the center of the road, her hands thrust in her coat pockets. Ahead in the glare of a spotlight I saw that both doors of Encinos’s patrol car were open.

I pushed my way past several curious, taut faces and knelt beside Howard Bishop. His huge frame was folded awkwardly as he tried to pump and breathe some life back into Paul Encinos.

“Any pulse?”

“No,” Bishop said between grunts.

“The ambulance will be here in less than a minute.” I didn’t need to tell Bishop that his efforts weren’t going to do Paul Encinos any good. Whoever had assaulted the deputy had used a shotgun and used it more than once.

“Sir…” Mears called across the car. I rose and made my way around to the other side. “I don’t know what to do, sir,” Mears said when he looked up and saw me.

The deputy had cause to panic. Linda Real’s face, neck, and left shoulder were punctured by so many holes that Mears needed six hands to stop the gush of blood. Estelle Reyes-Guzman slipped into the backseat of the patrol car and leaned over the front seat back, cradling Linda’s head while Mears and I tried to compress the multiple wounds on her left shoulder, neck, and face. After what seemed an eternity the first ambulance did arrive and I heard Bishop shout, “Over here.”

A moment later a head peered into the car. “That one alive?” the EMT barked.

“Yes, just.”

“Ah, here we come,” he said as the second ambulance slid in behind the first. Mears, Estelle, and I stepped back as the EMTs took over.