Steven Havill - Heartshot

The hospital seemed a lot quieter when I walked in for the second time that day.

It was shortly before midnight when I returned to my motel room. The desk clerk looked up, saw me and reached into the cubbyhole for room 207.

“The gentleman who telephoned said to be sure you got this,” the clerk said helpfully, and I took the small message. It was from Sprague.

Sheriff: I’ll be flying back to Posadas first thing in the morning. Leave a message for me if you want a ride. Flight time anytime after 9 A. M. Plane is at Sultan Flying Service at the Inter-national. Sorry about Hewitt.

“He made me read it back to him word for word, so I know it’s right,” the desk clerk said. For the first time I noticed how young he was…probably a high school kid earning a few extra bucks.

“Thanks,” I said. I handed him five dollars. “And thanks for getting it right. It was important. And will you set up a wake-up call for seven-thirty?”

“Sure thing.” He tucked the money away and wrote out a time note to stick in the slotted board behind him.

I called the Hilton and left a message for Sprague that nine o’clock would be fine. After more than an hour of tossing and turning, I fell asleep. I awoke only once, apprehensive as hell about nothing. I lay still, listening. Normal street traffic rumbled up and down Central Avenue. In the distance, a jet thundered off to the west. By turning my head slightly, I could see the faint glow of my watch. Four-sixteen. The air-conditioner kicked on. About time, I thought. The room was stuffy, the air filled with the cloying aroma of that gunk that room maids spray in an effort to make things smell better than Calcutta streets. My mind drifted from one thing to another, and the outside world began to fade a little. The wake-up call interrupted a dream in which Harlan Sprague was vehemently telling Posadas Airport manager Jim Bergin that cracked aircraft engine pistons could be detected with a stethoscope, if only Bergin would take time to listen carefully enough.

***

I watched the mountain just west of Socorro slide by smoothly. “There are towers on top of every mountain in the southwest,” I said, and Sprague laughed shortly.

“Seems like it, sometimes, doesn’t it.”

“As long as we clear them all.” There was little cause for concern. The Cessna obviously had power to spare, and Sprague was evidently not the sort to buzz treetops. I turned from the window and winced a little. I pulled at the knot of my tie and took a deep breath. The discomfort, nothing more than an annoying fullness that seemed to settle behind my sternum, subsided after a few seconds.

“You all right?” Sprague asked.

I nodded. “So the conference was a bust, huh?”

“Total,” Sprague said. “A new low in boredom.” He heard something through his headset and said, “Mike Bravo one seventy-eight.” Immediately he reached forward and changed radio frequencies, then took off the headset and put it on the floor just in front of his seat. “Some peace and quiet,” he said. “If I can’t find Posadas in this kind of weather, something’s wrong. I get tired of all the yammering.”

The sky was magnificently clear, cloudless and the sort of deep blue that always made me think that some of the black of outer space was leaking through. We made a slight turn and then the Cessna settled into a straight course for Posadas. We sat without conversation for another ten minutes, each caught up in our own thoughts, content to watch the rumpled geologic oddities of New Mexico slide by.

“He never regained consciousness, did he,” Sprague said. I just shook my head. Sprague puffed out his cheeks and let out the air in a loud sigh like a leaky tire. “At least he didn’t suffer.” I didn’t respond to that. I could have said that lying in the wet grass of a village park with his insides torn to pieces was pretty close to my definition of suffering. And who the hell knows what the unconscious, or semi-conscious, mind thinks as first one set of synapses and then another shuts down. It sure as hell ain’t party-time, Doc. But I didn’t say any of that, because Sprague didn’t deserve it.

Instead, I shifted a little so that I could talk without twisting my neck. I leaned a shoulder against the gentle vibration of the door and window. “Do you mind if I ask you a couple questions?” Sprague glanced quickly at me and shrugged. I smiled faintly. “No interruptions up here.”

“Feel free,” Sprague said.

“When your daughter died last year…” I saw the flicker of pain on the doctor’s face, just a brief tightening of the muscles and an extra blink or two. “Do you mind?”

“Go ahead.” He didn’t look at me, but continued his regular scanning of the sky ahead of us.

“It was after a party with some of her friends, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know her friends very well?”

Sprague turned and looked at me steadily. “Obviously not. Had that been the case, she wouldn’t have been…” He hesitated, then said, “The incident wouldn’t have happened.”

“Was Jenny Barrie one of her close friends?”

Sprague was once more scanning the sky, this time looking out to the east, and for a moment it appeared that he hadn’t heard the question. I was sure he had, though, and let the silence hang.

“She and the Barrie girl became friends during their freshman year.” He said it to the window, then reached forward and wiped a speck of dust from the rim of one of the gauges. He seemed to settle a little. “That was a hard year.”

“In what way?”

“I didn’t like the direction I saw Darlene going.”

“And how was that?”

He waved a hand at the familiarity of it. “The usual. Minimal effort at things I thought important. The sort of daily dress that…I’m sure you’re familiar with the whole process. You watched four of your own grow up. First thing you know, there seems to be a gulf growing, and be damned if there’s anything to do about it. Pretty soon the gulf’s too big to cross.” He glanced at his watch. “Too damn big.”

“And the Barrie girl?”

“I tried to ignore her. That was a mistake, in retrospect.”

“There was never any decision about where the cocaine came from that killed Darlene.”

“No, there wasn’t. But you would know that better than I.”

“What do you think?”

Sprague eyed me skeptically. “You’re serious?”

“Of course.”

“For months, I agonized over that question, Sheriff. Agonized. Over that question, over my daughter’s death. You’re a parent. I’m sure you can empathize. In fact, if I read you right, you’re finding it hard to write off Art Hewitt as just another cop killed in line of duty. He’s not so far removed in age from your youngest, right? And he was even living under your roof.”

“Go on.”

Sprague shrugged. “My first thought was to blame Barrie and her circle of creepy friends. Hell, not my first thought. My only thought.” His lips compressed grimly. “It would seem that your department has found evidence supporting that notion.”

“The accident that killed Barrie and her friends, you mean.”

“Certainly.”

“So you think the cocaine found in that vehicle was hers?”

“Maybe, maybe not. But it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s how it turns out. The common denominator is Barrie. Or her friends.”

“Do you have any notions about which one? Or ones?”

“Detective Reyes asked me the same thing a day or two ago. Whenever it was. No, I don’t. In fact, of the five youngsters who died in that car crash, I knew only two fairly well. Jenny Barrie, obviously. Tommy Hardy was a patient of mine when he was very young.” Sprague blinked rapidly a couple times. “He was in leg braces for almost a year. A two-year-old in leg braces. He walked like a goddamned duck. It worked out all right, though. And now this. What a goddamned waste.” He looked over at me and shrugged. “I knew the Fernandez boy only tangentially. I knew Hank Montano only as a name and a kid in a long line of fall sport physicals. I did that for a few years, as you no doubt remember.”