Steven Havill - Bitter Recoil

“Just fine, except that wife of yours has been putting me to work.” At his puzzled expression, I added, “The accident this morning with the girl pedestrian happened just above where I was camping. And you know the way old cops are. I couldn’t help snooping.”

“Up at Steamboat, you mean?”

“Yes. And how is the girl?”

Guzman shook his head and sat down again. He was six inches taller than my five-eight and built like an athlete, but now he looked like he’d just finished the pentathlon.

“I don’t think she’s going to make it, Sheriff. She has about eight broken bones, including her skull. She’s hemorrhaging internally as well as suffering a dozen gashes and lacerations. She was out there a while, you know, before anybody found her. I was surprised she hadn’t bled to death.”

“And with all that, she still managed to crawl almost a hundred yards,” I said and accepted a Styrofoam cup of coffee from Mary Vallo.

“You’re kidding.”

I shook my head. “The last few yards were up a steep embankment, back up to the highway shoulder. It looked like after she was hit, she ended up on a pile of boulders down by the river. At that point the highway embankment is almost vertical. Since she couldn’t crawl up there, she apparently moved in the only direction she could, along the stream in the grass until she reached a spot where she could try for the road again.”

“I don’t see how that would have been possible,” Guzman said. “I really don’t.” He stood up. “Look at this.” He had a set of small X rays and he handed the top one to me.

“We don’t have very good equipment, but even so, look at that hip.” He traced the fracture with his index finger.

Even I could see the damage. The head of the femur looked like it had been pried off the shaft, taking a chip of the hip socket with it.

“And her right arm was broken in three places. Her left ankle was snapped. There are what look like compressed fractures of two lower vertebrae. And a comminuted fracture of the right parietal.”

“What’s that?”

He tapped the side of his skull above his ear. “With all that and the bleeding, I can’t believe she crawled.”

“No one was there to help her that we know of,” I said. “Not as far as we’ve been able to determine. Of course, it’s hard to tell. But Estelle’s still there and might turn up something.”

Francis Guzman leaned forward, hands clasped and forearms resting on his knees. He remained silent, deep in thought. Finally he said, “The other thing that bothers me about her injuries-and I’m no great expert, you understand-what bothers me is that they’re not really consistent with being smacked by a car or truck. I know that’s what the ambulance attendants told me, but still…”

“Meaning?” I sat back, my chair leaning against the wall. I wanted a cigarette, but the “Thank You For Not Smoking” sign was staring me in the face.

“If a car hits you hard enough to do serious damage, to fling you right over a guardrail, there’s usually some clue that that’s what happened.”

“Well, sure.” I’d seen hundreds of accident victims in twenty years.

“But there were no paint chips, Sheriff. No chrome. Nothing.”

I shrugged. “That happens all the time.”

“Maybe. But there were no sharp lacerations, the sort of injury we’d expect from headlights and rims and bumpers or grill parts. And we’d see those in relationship with traumatic fractures and deep tissue bruising.”

He paused, then added, “And look at the fractures. Her right hip, Sheriff. The sort of fracture you get in football, when the joint is yanked and wrenched the wrong way. No compression injuries related with the fracture, except minor scrapes. Now, the major lacerations on her broken right arm were contaminated with rocks and dirt. The same thing is true of her broken left ankle.”

Guzman was warming up and I let him continue without interruption.

“And see here, on her skull. She took a hell of a rap there. You know what I found in her hair? Besides dirt? Lichen. The stuff that grows on rocks. Flakes of it right in the wound. Her head hit a rock, Sheriff, and hit it hard.”

“Well, we know that. That’s likely where the other fractures came from…or some of them. When she landed on the rocks. She was walking along the highway and got clipped. The impact threw her over the embankment. She tumbled ass over teakettle down into the rocks, breaking who knows what on the way.”

Francis Guzman shook his head. “Where did the car hit her?” He stood up and pretended to be walking along the road. “Right hip? She turns and it’s her left hip that’s facing traffic, not right.”

I grimaced. The young doctor had a hell of an imagination. “Come on, Francis. She could have just as easily turned the other way.”

“Not likely. And that leg was yanked out of its socket, not impacted.”

“So what are you saying happened?”

“I’m not sure, but I’m willing to bet she was never hit by a vehicle of any kind.”

“What, then?”

Francis Guzman hesitated. “I think she was thrown over the embankment.”

“Oh, you do.”

He nodded. “The rest fits that way, too.”

“The rest?”

“There was an attempt at rape, Sheriff. I’m sure of that. And what I’d say were deep fingernail gouges on her back, near the base of her neck. Her hands were busted up pretty badly, and I didn’t have a chance to check under her fingernails. The M.E. in Albuquerque will do that. And it looks like she was punched hard in the mouth. Right here.” He touched the left corner of his own mouth. “Not the sort of injury caused by sharp rocks. But a fist, yes.”

I toyed with my empty and crumpled coffee cup. “It’s hard to believe the other injuries were caused by sliding down an embankment like that.”

“Not if she were thrown from a moving vehicle it’s not.”

I stared at Guzman incredulously. “Tossed out of the back of a moving pickup truck, you mean? Something like that? Jesus. A hit-and-run I can imagine. But the other?”

Guzman nodded and glanced at his watch. “That’s what I think. You’ve got at least one murder on your hands. I’d bet on it.”

“She’s not dead yet, Doc.”

Guzman looked pained. “No, but her baby is. The young lady was four months pregnant.”

I stared at Francis Guzman. He misunderstood my silence and said again, “She was pregnant. Lost the fetus, of course.”

“I heard you,” I murmured. “Did you know her? Was she from around here?”

“I think that she’s been living in the village for about six months to a year.” Guzman had gotten to his feet wearily, like a man a decade older than I. With a grunt, he opened the window beside the desk. The air that washed into the room was fresh and tinted with sage.

“Her name’s Cecilia Burgess. She didn’t have any identification on her when she was brought in last night, but both my nurse and I knew her. I met her about…well, four months ago. She came in for a prenatal checkup.” Guzman stepped out of the room and then reappeared with the coffeepot. “More?”

“No, thanks. And then you saw her off and on after that?”

“That’s right.” He smiled but without much humor. “Estelle’s got you drawn right into this mess, hasn’t she?”

I realized I was grilling the doc as if he were a witness-which he probably would be sooner or later-and as if it were my own investigation, which it certainly wasn’t. “Sorry,” I said. “Occupational hazard.”

“Can’t help but be curious,” Guzman said and sat down, long legs stretched out in front of him. “There are a lot of answers I’d like, but I’m so damn tired I can’t think straight.” He grinned. “Estelle’s going to bust in here in a few minutes and give me the third degree, so I might as well warm up with you, right?”