Michael McGarrity: Death Song

Clayton apologized to the dead buck before Sheriff Hewitt and Tim Riley drew near. He was truly sorry the animal had died for no good reason.

It was a hell of a way to start the weekend.

After making sure with his own eyes that Clayton was unhurt, Paul Hewitt stayed at the scene with his sergeant until the state police officer’s investigation had been wrapped up, the dead buck had been removed from the roadway, all other emergency personnel had departed, and the tow truck operator had winched the disabled unit onto the flatbed and driven away.

In the back of Hewitt’s vehicle, a 4×4 Explorer, Clayton had stowed all of his personal gear and the department-issued equipment he’d cleaned out of his unit. The two men sat in the Explorer and watched the blue flashing emergency lights of the tow truck fade down the highway into the night.

“Have you had enough excitement for one day?” Paul Hewitt asked as he cranked the engine to his unit. “If that buck had come through your windshield, chances are good that I would be on my way to tell your wife that she had just become a widow.”

“That scared the bejesus out of me,” Clayton replied.

Hewitt laughed and put his unit in gear. “Me too, and I wasn’t even here. Let’s get you home.”

“Yeah,” Clayton said. “Good idea.”

On the drive, the two men fell silent. Weary from all the explaining he’d done at the crash scene, Clayton appreciated the quiet. Hewitt came to a stop in front of Clayton’s house—a house that the sheriff had helped to rebuild some years back after a killer with a vendetta had blown it up in an attempt to murder Clayton and his family. It sat on a wooded lot a good ways in from the highway that ran through the reservation, but not too far from the village of Mescalero.

“The place is looking good,” Hewitt said, eyeing the single-story house with a pitched roof that now sported a covered porch he hadn’t seen before.

“It’s coming along,” Clayton said as the porch lights came on.

“I like the new porch,” Hewitt said.

“It took a bunch of my days off to finish it,” Clayton replied.

“Do you need a hand with your gear?” Hewitt asked.

Clayton opened the passenger door. “No, I’ve got it.”

Hewitt nodded.

“Thanks for the ride, Sheriff,” Clayton said.

Hewitt nodded again. “Not a problem.”

Clayton gathered up his gear and carried it to the house. The front door opened and Grace stepped outside with Clayton’s mother, Isabel. Clayton put his gear down and embraced the two women. The children, Wendell and Hannah, both in their pajamas, scooted out the front door and joined the family hug.

Paul Hewitt honked the horn once and drove away, happy—considering the alternative—to have been able to deliver Sergeant Clayton Istee home safe to his family.

Covering 4,859 square miles, Lincoln County was almost three thousand square miles larger than Santa Fe County, where Tim Riley had served as a deputy sheriff for six years. He was glad the population difference between the two counties was even more staggering. Home to about fifteen thousand permanent residents, Lincoln County had roughly one tenth the population of Santa Fe County and a much lower crime rate. Riley liked the idea of living and working in a place where folks were mostly law-abiding and the pace of life was a good deal slower.

When Tim had broached the subject of applying for the Lincoln County S.O. job to his wife, Denise, he’d expected her to dig in her heels and say no. Born and bred in Santa Fe, she loved living close to her siblings and her nieces and nephews. But surprisingly, Denise had backed Tim’s decision all the way, asking only that they return to live in Santa Fe sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Encouraged by Denise’s support, Tim immediately turned in his application and paperwork to the Lincoln County S.O. and interviewed with Sheriff Paul Hewitt and his chief deputy, Anthony Baca, as soon as he could. When the position was offered to him, Tim accepted on the spot and gave his two weeks’ notice. Now he was working the new job, pulling his first solo patrol, and staying in a one-room cabin in Capitan, while Denise remained at home in their double-wide trailer until Tim found a place for them to live that would accept the two horses they owned.

The Santa Fe double-wide sat on twenty acres in Cañoncito, about ten miles outside of the city limits. Tim had paid cash for the land after a messy divorce from his first wife, who had walked away with half his air force retirement pension and almost everything else.

What was left over from the settlement, Tim had used as a sizable down payment on the double-wide, which was now paid off. But he wasn’t about to sell the property. Land values had skyrocketed in Santa Fe County and would probably continue to rise, and Tim’s dream was to someday build an honest-to-goodness real house on the acreage, throw up a good barn, and start a wilderness outfitting business.

Since coming to Lincoln County, Tim had used his free time trying to find a decent place to rent where he and Denise could keep their horses. Several of the locals warned him that finding such a place wouldn’t be easy. After looking at a couple of run-down trailers on barren, fenced acreage and a ramshackle cottage that came with a collapsed two-stall horse barn, Tim had begun to agree with them.

He’d called Denise every night after work to give her an update on the job, which he liked, and his house hunting, which wasn’t going well, although he tried to stay positive about it. Prospects had remained dim until Sheriff Hewitt hooked him up with a rancher who was willing to exchange free rent for a part-time caretaker.

Last night on the telephone with Denise, Tim had avoided saying anything about the offer until he met with the rancher and looked the place over. Early in the morning, he’d visited the ranch before starting work, met with the owner, and toured a really nice adobe cottage that was within shouting distance of a rambling, hacienda-style ranch house surrounded by a thicket of trees.

The rancher, George Staley, a friend of Sheriff Hewitt’s, liked the prospect of having a sworn law enforcement officer living on the spread. Tim’s sole duties would consist of keeping an eye on the ranch headquarters when Staley was away at his Texas ranch or looking after his other properties. All the cowboying and wrangling chores were the responsibility of a ranch manager and some hired hands.

It was a perfect arrangement, and Tim couldn’t wait to tell Denise, but it wasn’t until long after Clayton Istee’s collision with the mule deer that he had a chance to call her. The first few times he tried, he got a busy signal and didn’t think anything of it. But as more time passed, he continued to get a busy signal and it began to bother him. Denise didn’t know he’d agreed to work a double and was expecting him to drive home to Santa Fe tonight. In fact, his arrival was overdue.

Even if she was having one of her marathon chats with one of her sisters, she could at least interrupt the phone conversation and answer the call waiting. He wondered if there was some family emergency happening with one of her siblings.

Although Tim’s first night on solo patrol as a Lincoln County deputy had been quiet so far, he stayed focused on the job. It wasn’t unheard of for supervisors to shadow and observe new officers on patrol. The sheriff, his chief deputy, or even Clayton Istee, for that matter, could be out there under the cover of darkness watching him, and Tim didn’t want to get caught making any dumb mistakes.

While cruising through some of the small settlements along the Hondo Valley, patrolling two rural neighborhoods where recent burglaries had occurred, Tim continued to try calling home, each time getting a busy signal. Back on the main highway north of Carrizozo, he stopped on the shoulder of the road and clocked vehicles on his radar just to get a feel for the traffic flow. None of the big-rig truckers on the two-lane highway that ran from El Paso up to the Interstate paid any attention to the speed limit. But as soon as they spotted Tim’s unit, brake lights flashed and the trucks slowed. A voice crackled over the police radio.