Steven Havill: Heartshot

The sheriff leaned against the doorjamb of my office without saying a word, lounging there until I finally decided to notice him. I grunted what could have been a greeting, and that broke my chain of concentration. I punched the wrong goddamn key, swore, wound the platen up, and began to smear the mess on the paper some more with that miserable white correction fluid that flakes all over everything when it dries.

“Thirty-five thousand dollars’ worth of computers, and you still pound that thing,” Sheriff Martin Holman said. I glanced at him without much interest. He blew across a full cup of coffee as if the stuff was hot. If it came out of the vending machine down the hall, it wasn’t.

“Us antiques got to stick together,” I said. I wound the paper back down to retype over the blotch, groping in my shirt pocket for a cigarette with my other hand.

“Did anyone show you that on a computer you can make corrections on the screen, and when it prints out, it’s a perfect copy?”

“No shit.”

“I mean, you don’t have to go through all that.” He waved a hand at my typewriter, and I took a minute to light the cigarette. I leaned back in my chair until its springs squawled, and looked at Holman. He’d just been elected, and we were stuck with him for at least four years. A goddamned used-car salesman. He spent a lot of time trying to figure out who was on his side.

“Did you need something in particular?” I asked.

“Uh, no. You want some coffee?”

“No, thanks.” He did want something…I could see it wiggling around inside that skull of his every time he shifted his baby-blue eyes.

“You know,” Holman said, and pushed himself away from the jamb, “I’m working up sort of a department profile for the newspaper…nothing formal, but you know, all the publicity we can get helps. And I was looking in your folder, and wanted to check all those years.”

“Those years?”

“Right.” He cleared his throat. “How long were you in the service, anyway? Twenty years?” I nodded and waited. “Twenty years. Damn. You went in right after the war?”

“In 1946.”

He shook his head in wonder. “That’s what I thought…I figured twenty in the service, and twenty for this department.” He grinned at the wonder of his mathematics, and I began to get the uneasy feeling that the son of a bitch was trying for more than historical accuracy in a press release. “And you must have been about twenty when you went into the service…eighteen, twenty, about that.”

He was about to say something else when the radio just behind him came to life. “PCS, three-oh-six.” Holman turned and looked at the radio. The dispatcher wasn’t in his room, which adjoined my office, but Holman made no move. “PCS, three-oh-six,” cracked again, and this time Holman took two steps, reached out and pushed the transmit bar of the microphone stand.

“Go ahead, three-oh-six,” And while he waited, he asked me, “That’s Baker, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” I returned my attention to the paperwork in my typewriter, only half-hearing Deputy Baker say that he would be at home for a while. Holman acknowledged and keyed off. He reappeared in my doorway. “When’s his baby due?”

“Anytime.” These days, Baker checked in at home at least twenty times during each shift as his wife podded out with their first kid.

Holman sipped the coffee again. “And so,” he continued, “you served from ’46 to ’66. And you got to see Korea?”

“Twice. Not much to see either time.”

“Just them oriental beauties, eh?” Holman leered with a fake Oakie accent, and I just offered a little sniff of amusement as I penned corrections on my paper. “What rank did you retire with?”

I turned my head and gazed at him for a minute, wondering what the hell he was after, then decided I wasn’t going to play games. “Gunnery sergeant.”

Holman nodded, as if weighing rank against years and concluding something profound. “Damn, that means you joined this department in 1966.”

“That’s right. Eduardo Salcido was sheriff then.” Salcido was probably the most popular sheriff ever elected in Posadas County, and I got a twinge of pleasure out of reminding Holman about Salcido’s good sense in hiring me. And yes, it had been a long twenty years. Now, I was just finishing up twelve years as undersheriff. I didn’t need to be reminded that, since I didn’t have civil service protection, this newly minted politico could tell me to take a walk, anytime.

The dispatcher, just returning from a trip to the can, plopped down in front of the radio, and Holman turned to greet him. I was glad for the interruption, even though I thought less of J. J. Murton than I did of Holman. Murton, a runty, tangle-tongued illiterate whom I had nicknamed “Miracle,” fawned enough over the sheriff to earn himself membership in a goddamned kennel club.

“Well, I need to go,” Holman announced. “Bill, see you this afternoon.”

“Yeah,” I said. I folded the report into a manila envelope, walked into the dispatch room, and chucked the envelope into Detective Estelle Reyes’s mailbox. Miracle Murton watched a little nervously. Sweat beaded on his bald spot.

“Are you workin’ the parade, Mr. Gastner?” he asked.

“Why?”

Murton looked flustered. “I was just tryin’ to get straight in my mind who was workin’ when.”

I pointed at the laminate board that was screwed to the wall just above the radio. The various deputies’ names, printed neatly on magnetic blocks, were arranged in the usual weekly schedule. “You might ask yourself why we bother to put that there,” I said, and Miracle cringed…who knows why, except he was scared to death of me. That was all right. It kept him from being a total screw-up as a part-time, days-only dispatcher. In days gone by, Sheriff Salcido wouldn’t have tolerated Murton’s incompetence for fifteen seconds. I had a suspicion that the son of a bitch was distantly related to one of the county legislators. That would appeal to Holman, too. I reached up and took a set of keys off the board.

“I’m taking three-ten,” I said. “The trustees did wash it, didn’t they?”

“They sure did. Waxed it, too.”

“Wonderful. I love parades, don’t you?” I didn’t wait for Murton to figure out an answer.

And the parade was all right as parades go. The weather on that July Fourth was hot and clear, with a hint of the afternoon thunderheads that would bloom along the horizon above the jagged San Cristobal mountains separating us from Mexico. I had no intention of being in the parade that plodded up the wide, dusty street of Posadas, but I enjoyed watching the color. Posadas needed all the color it could get, since it wasn’t much more than a scruffy wide spot, a watering hole for tourists hurrying to get somewhere else. July Fourth was a big shindig, with the parade officially opening the holiday arts and crafts fair in the small town square. For two days, the law turned its back on alcoholic beverages in public places, and the aroma of Indian fry bread became so thick it blanked out even the red dust. I parked at a cross street, blocking traffic with 310 while I stood out in the sun with the crowd. By the time the thirtieth unit of the parade passed, I had cleared the office politics out of my head and started to enjoy the scenery.

The high school pom-pom team rode by, sitting pretty on hay bales piled on a flatbed. I waved at one of them whom I’d known since she was born, and then my good mood was ruined. The cheerleaders were throwing penny candy out to the crowds along the street, and just to my right was a fat little kid, maybe four years old, busy scrambling for the goodies. He came up with a piece of pink bubble gum and saw me. His eyes took in all the bright, shining hardware on my belt, the colorful patches on the uniform shirt, and the tan Stetson. He kept looking at me as he backed uncertainly toward his mother’s legs. When he was firmly nestled there, he looked up at her and said, “How come he’s so fat, Mommy?”