Steven Havill - Heartshot

“I remember. My youngest son came home one day after his and told me that you dipped your hands in buckets of ice water between each kid.”

Sprague laughed loudly. “They always think that, don’t they. God, that was years ago when he went through it.”

“Something like nine.”

“You know”-and he squirmed down a little in his seat, a touch more at ease-“I know I’m from a generation light-years removed, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how a run-of-the-mill high school kid gets ahold of a kilo of hard drugs. That puzzles me. No kid has that much money. Do they?”

“Evidently one of them did. Either that or they were set up.”

Sprague grimaced. “Set up? A teenager?”

“Or being used. It’s possible none of the five knew the coke was there. It’s conceivable that someone else was just using the car as a stash. That’s possible.”

“There aren’t many other choices. Either they were dealing, or someone was using their car innocent of their knowledge, or someone was framing them. I don’t see any other choice.”

“I don’t either.”

“And so what do you plan to do?”

I shrugged. “Detective Reyes has been digging during my absence. I’ll see what she’s come up with. We’ve got a couple leads, and we’ll thrash those out.” Sprague didn’t ask what those leads were, and that was a good thing. I didn’t know, myself.

“Will you be returning for the funeral? Officer Hewitt’s?”

“Yes.”

“His parents are from Tucson, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Is that where the funeral is? Tucson?”

“The family affair is. I won’t make that one. Just the one in Gallup.”

“And when is that?”

“Thursday at two.”

“Another flight upstate, eh?”

“No. Holman and I will drive. The car will be in the procession. For some reason, cops seem to believe that it’s a comfort for the grieving family to see the brotherhood assembled.”

“Is it?”

I held up my hands. “Who knows. I can’t imagine that anything is a comfort, except passage of time. Maybe the fanfare makes for a less painful memory, I suppose. Beats standing in the rain by yourself. We all need things like that sometimes.”

Dr. Sprague toyed with a couple of things on the dash. “It makes you wonder, doesn’t it.”

“About?”

“At what point folks will stop accepting that it’s a part of life to see their young buried.”

“I’m not sure any of us accept that as a necessity, Doctor. We’d all pay a fancy price to avoid it.”

Sprague looked at me for a long minute. Even without his attention, the Cessna drove a straight rail through the sky. “I don’t think so, Sheriff. I don’t see much evidence of willingness to do that.”

“Wouldn’t you do about anything if it were possible to have your daughter back?”

“That’s what I mean,” Sprague said so softly I almost couldn’t hear him over the engine beat. “In retrospect, it’s so simple. But before it happens? Did I do enough? Did any of us? We all know fast cars can kill, and we know they especially kill the young. And yet we allowed five youngsters to pack themselves in that vehicle…with alcohol included. We don’t require much training for a driver’s license. We allow parties. And all the time, what do we do? We gamble, Sheriff. We gamble that the ones who are killed-and we know they will be, every year-we gamble that they aren’t our own.” When I didn’t respond immediately, Sprague added, “You see? It costs, doesn’t it? Let me give you one simple example. You’re a law officer, and should appreciate the simplicity of this. Suppose that if you were caught driving while intoxicated, no matter what your age, you lost your driving privileges for life.” I raised a skeptical eyebrow. Sprague smiled. “You see? We are not willing to pay the price yet, are we? The convenience of driving is more important to us…more important…than a stiff penalty to clear the roads of drunks.”

“People would drive anyway.”

“Even if they knew that if they were caught without a license they would have to perform five years of full-time public-service work?”

“And let their families starve?”

“So whose fault is that? Did they have to drink and drive? I don’t mean to be argumentative, Sheriff. I’m just making the point that we aren’t willing to pay the price. Yet. It just isn’t important enough to enough people. We all think we can dodge fate. I stand down from my soapbox now.” He grinned. “You asked for it.” He gestured at the airplane. “There’s nothing like having a captive audience.”

“If you ever figure out the answers,” I said, “be sure to let me in on the secret.”

“Be assured,” Sprague replied, nodding vigorously. Then he added, “But don’t hold your breath. Humans are strange creatures. It takes a catastrophe of royal proportions to drill through the average person’s complacency. I lost a daughter and a wife, and saw little stirring in the community. A car crash kills five teenagers.” He shrugged offhandedly. “Still, not much. A few feeble efforts to form a parents’ awareness group. A prominent merchant is killed after he mortally wounds an undercover police officer.” He looked at me and raised an eyebrow in question. “What’s it take, Sheriff?”

“I don’t know.”

Sprague looked off ahead, then pointed. “That hump on the horizon there is the mesa north of Posadas. We’ll be home in about fifteen minutes.”

Home. I thought about Posadas, and felt uneasy. For a hundred years or more, a sleepy, tiny border hamlet. For thirty years after that, a booming mining town, jerked so fast into the twentieth century that it lost almost all of its former color, culture, and dignity. A two-bit, booming mining town. Now the mine was gone, the mill closed. And what was left was struggling under something ugly and threatening. I looked up at the bright blue of the sky. Harlan Sprague was absorbed in his own thoughts, and we flew the final miles in silence.

“What do we know about David and Theresa Barrie?” I asked Estelle Reyes when I walked into the office early that afternoon.

Even if the detective noticed my lack of greeting, she didn’t miss a beat. “I talked to them.”

“I know you did. What did you find out that’s new?”

Reyes shrugged and rummaged for her notebook. She flipped pages and said, “Personally, I think David Barrie is a first-class creep. His wife is a mouse. She lets him walk all over her.” Her venom surprised me, but I wasn’t in the mood to discuss other people’s marital problems.

“Dr. Sprague blames Jenny Barrie for his daughter’s death last year.”

“That’s the impression I got, too.”

“I spent three hours with him in his airplane. It wasn’t just an impression. He blames himself for letting it happen. What did David Barrie have to say?”

“Indignation is his game, sir. No matter what question I asked, he bristled. I think he figured he could scare me off. He also likes to threaten law suits. If we try to pin anything on the memory of his daughter, he promises to sue. I had a hard time keeping my mouth shut. I get the impression he would have liked the chance to sue Benny Fernandez, too. He said he still might sue the estate.”

“Because the son was driving the car?”

“Right. He’s a great guy.”

“That’s all he said?”

“Just about. Except that he told me we should check the trucks that bring in food-service supplies for Fernandez’s restaurant.”

I sat down heavily. “Hell, why not? It’s a waste of time, but why not.”

“You don’t think Fernandez was involved?”

“No, you’re right. I don’t. I don’t know why he came unglued in the park, but I sure as hell intend to find out. But no, I don’t think he was running drugs.”