Less Than a Moment Read online

  Also by Steven F. Havill

  Heartshot

  Bitter Recoil

  Twice Buried

  Before She Dies

  Privileged to Kill

  Prolonged Exposure

  Out of Season

  Dead Weight

  Bag Limit

  Red, Green, or Murder

  Scavengers

  A Discount for Death

  Convenient Disposal

  Statute of Limitations

  Final Payment

  The Fourth Time is Murder

  Double Prey

  One Perfect Shot

  NightZone

  Blood Sweep

  Come Dark

  Easy Errors

  Lies Come Easy

  Copyright © 2020 by Steven F. Havill

  Cover and internal design © 2020 by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by The BookDesigners

  Cover images © Dana Ward/Shutterstock, rwkc/Shutterstock

  Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—­except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—­without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-­3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data

  Names: Havill, Steven, author.

  Title: Less than a moment / Steven F. Havill

  Description: Naperville : Poisoned Pen Press, 2020.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019043383 | (hardcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: Sheriffs—­Fiction. | Policewomen—­Fiction.

  Murder—­Investigation—­Fiction. | New Mexico—­Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3558.A785 L47 2020 | DDC 813/.54—­dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043383

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-­One

  Chapter Twenty-­Two

  Chapter Twenty-­Three

  Chapter Twenty-­Four

  Chapter Twenty-­Five

  Chapter Twenty-­Six

  Chapter Twenty-­Seven

  Chapter Twenty-­Eight

  Chapter Twenty-­Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-­One

  Chapter Thirty-­Two

  Chapter Thirty-­Three

  Chapter Thirty-­Four

  Chapter Thirty-­Five

  Chapter Thirty-­Six

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For Kathleen

  Chapter One

  “You’re on my shit list, bud,” Deputy Edwin Hennesey grumbled as he looked up from his console. The target of the dispatcher’s complaint, rookie news reporter Rik Chang, skirted the dispatcher’s island and headed for the antiquated “out” basket of police reports perched atop the first of four equally antiquated filing cabinets. Chang, twenty-­six years old and with a freshly minted bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of New Mexico, glanced over at Hennesey.

  “Yeah, you,” the deputy added.

  Chang frowned, managing to look equal parts contrite and confused.

  “Sir?” The young reporter was likely the only person in Posadas County who referred to Hennesey by that courtesy title. Hennesey took his time closing the Field and Stream magazine, pushed it away from himself as if it were an empty dinner plate, and swiveled his chair. For a moment he watched the young man leaf through the report copies.

  It had been a quiet Thursday night and predawn Friday. The latest edition of the Posadas Register had been on the streets since earlier Thursday afternoon, and any tidbit of news that the rookie reporter might glean from the slender pile of reports would be old news by the next week’s edition.

  By an edict from the sheriff, routine paperwork generated by deputies was not posted on any department website where it would be available to talented hackers, curious gossips, or criminals seeking to improve their education. Sheriff Robert Torrez personally eschewed computers, preferring to read hard copy reports. He didn’t tweet, chat, blog, post, or link in to any of those other supposed necessities of modern life. The number of emails that he might send in any given month could be counted on one hand. He liked hard copy, and although he knew as well as anyone that the workings of the Sheriff’s Department were for the most part public record, his attitude was simple: if a “public” wanted to see the paperwork, let them come into the office and ask for it, face-­to-­face.

  What was routinely posted on the department’s little-­used website were nameless statistics reflecting the department’s work…the number of violent crimes compared with previous years, the number of clumsy souls arrested for shoplifting, and responses to fires, family disputes, and all the other aggravations of modern life that required a call to law enforcement. A curious web reader could find the number of people ticketed for running stop signs, for speeding, for failure to wear seat belts, for texting while rear-­ending another vehicle.

  But as far as Sheriff Torrez was concerned, the job of “naming names,” if that’s what the gossips wanted, was the turf of the local newspaper.

  Every morning, regular as clockwork, someone from the weekly Posadas Register, either publisher Frank Dayan or more often rookie reporter Rik Chang, stopped by the sheriff’s office in hopes of a scoop worthy of a stand-­alone story. Staff of the Register could have paid a visit to the out-­basket once a week, but one never knew. A simple arrest could lead to an interesting story that demanded further investigation.

  Most of the paperwork in the wire basket, if not ignored as un-­newsworthy, would deserve only a line or two in the standing newspaper column, “Sheriff’s Report.” As a newly hired cub reporter, Rik Chang had inherited the task of assembling the “Report” each week.

  Deputy Hennesey pushed himself to his feet, making an effort to suck in his gut. He always felt a little intimidated by someone as elegantly put together as Rik Chang. Just over six feet tall, with black hair, inscrutable eyes behind frameless glasses, square shoulders, and not the slightest hint of belly flab, Chang moved with assured grace.

  Hennesey jerked up his Sam Brown belt so the utility rig’s weight rode more easily above his hips. A short, narrow-­shouldered man with a pear-­shaped body and only a few wisps of graying
hair mopped across his shiny skull, Hennesey had spent a long hitch as a security guard at one of the Albuquerque malls before seeking out small-­town peace and quiet. The shopping mall’s hard, polished tile floors had tortured his knees and inflamed his plantar fasciitis. As a dispatcher for the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department, he didn’t need to walk miles every night.

  Sheriff Robert Torrez was aware of Hennesey’s intellectual limitations, but appreciated his work ethic. The man hadn’t missed a shift in two years, had never been late, had never scooted for home a few minutes early at the end of the day, Friday or not. A longtime widower, Hennesey embraced the solitude of the graveyard hours. Not a lightning wit, the slow pace suited him perfectly.

  At 7:35 this particular Friday morning in late May when Rik Chang dropped by the Sheriff’s Department, Deputy Hennesey didn’t favor the young man with a smile of greeting. He didn’t particularly like the ambitious, athletic, computer-­savvy young man, even though Chang was not an immigrant like most of the other people Hennesey disliked.

  Instead, the deputy rose, leaned over the counter, and pulled the slender bundle of reports—­five days’ worth—­out of the tray. With stubby thumbs, he sorted through until he found the one he wanted, an arrest report now four days old with a large Post-­it note attached. He tossed the rest of the paperwork back in the wire basket.

  “When I mark something not for news,” he said, brandishing the two-­page report in question, “that means just that. You just leave it in the basket. It don’t go in the newspaper.”

  Chang pushed his rimless glasses up and regarded the report. “Oh, that one?”

  “Ah, that one,” Hennesey said, trying his best to mimic Jackie Chan. “Yes, that one.”

  The young man didn’t rise to the mild ethnic slur. “Well, I saw that, sir, but I didn’t understand what was so special about it,” Chang said. He smiled hopefully at Hennesey.

  “Ain’t nothing special about it,” the deputy said. “But now we got this.” Hennesey reached across the desk and picked up the latest copy of the local newspaper, barely hours off the press, and folded the pages back to reveal the standing column, “Sheriff’s Report,” on page six. He jabbed a finger at a paragraph near the end of the column. “This ain’t supposed to be here.”

  Chang looked blank. He didn’t need to read the column, since he had written it. “It’s just a DUI,” the young man said. “It goes into the pot, along with everything else. I thought that’s what you wanted. I mean, I don’t know why you wanted to make sure that story got in, ’cause we’d run it anyway, but sure enough, there it is.”

  “Hey, wise guy,” Hennesey barked. “When I mark something not for news, then it’s not for news. Ain’t nothing complicated about that.”

  Chang lifted the Post-­it’s corner. “This?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  A slow smile grew across Chang’s smooth face. “Ah. My mistake. See, I read it as note for news. With the e, just the way it’s written.” He pulled the note free and held it out to Hennesey. “See, I saw this note, and I thought that maybe because the DUI was Quentin Torrez, that you wanted to make sure that he made the police blotter.” The young man smiled. “Maybe to make sure we weren’t playing favorites or something like that? So you marked it Note for news. Note, not not.”

  Unsure whether or not he was being gently mocked, Hennesey’s eyes narrowed to slits, then opened wide enough to reflect some misgivings.

  “I mean, I know—­everybody knows—­that Quentin Torrez is the sheriff’s what, nephew or something?” Chang asked.

  “Something.” But it wasn’t Deputy Hennesey who spoke. A heavy arm reached past Rik Chang and gently relieved him of the note for news Post-­it and the report to which it was attached. Sheriff Robert Torrez could ghost his six-­foot four-­inch, two-­hundred-­forty-­pound frame into a room, more frightening than if he’d stomped in, arms flailing. He loomed over Chang, one hand resting lightly on the reporter’s shoulder.

  After a moment, he handed the report back without comment, but kept the Post-­it. He glanced first at the clock, then at Deputy Hennesey. “Pasquale’s twenty?” His voice was scarcely more than a whisper.

  Taking a quick moment to mentally switch gears with the sudden non sequitur, Hennesey glanced at the desk log. “He was headed out to 14, checkin’ up on that complaint from one of the surveyors up at the Thompsons’ place that somebody was jerkin’ up surveyor stakes.”

  For a long moment, the sheriff stood silently, perhaps waiting for some amplification. When none was forthcoming, he repeated, “What’s his twenty?”

  Hennesey turned and keyed the old-­fashioned desk mike, eschewing the modern microphone headset that lay on the shelf in front of him. “Three oh four, PCS, ten twenty?” His delivery was crisply enunciated.

  The reply was prompt. “PCS, three oh four is northbound on 56, just passing mile marker twenty-­one.”

  Hennesey acknowledged and turned back to the sheriff, one eyebrow raised in question.

  “Have him stop in my office when he comes in,” the sheriff said. “When he’s finished fueling and workin’ his log.”

  “You got it, Sheriff.”

  Torrez lifted his hand off Chang’s shoulder. “Anything in that basket is public record. Anything, any time. If something is an ongoing investigation that we don’t want made public, we don’t put it in the basket.” He gave Hennesey one of his slow, expressionless looks.

  “Yes, sir, I understand,” Chang said. “And I was wondering…”

  The sheriff looked hard at the young man, as if actually seeing him for the first time.

  “Frank has a series planned on county budget matters, and he suggested that I ask about the possibility of doing a ride-­along with some of the deputies.”

  “Any time, any deputy,” Torrez said. “Talk with the undersheriff. She’s the one who takes care of the waivers. Then talk to the deputies. It’s up to them.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll do that. May I ask about the surveyor stake deal?”

  “Keep an eye on the basket.”

  “Maybe I could do a ride-­along with Sergeant Pasquale?”

  “Check with the undersheriff for the paperwork. Then check with Pasquale. He’s free to say yes or no.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Torrez almost smiled, his heavy-­lidded eyes relaxing just a bit. “You spent some time in the military.”

  “Yes, sir. Four years in the Navy.”

  “Not a career?”

  “I never learned how to swim, sir.”

  Torrez did smile at that. “Not a whole lot of water in Posadas County.” He pointed a finger-­pistol at Hennesey. “Don’t let Pasquale slip away without seein’ me, Eddie.”

  “You got it, Sheriff.”

  Sheriff Torrez turned away abruptly and strode down the hallway toward his office. “Note for news,” he muttered, and he said it just loud enough that both Hennesey and Chang heard him.

  Chapter Two

  Sheriff Torrez passed by his own office and leaned against the jamb of the undersheriff’s open door.

  “Did you sit through the whole meeting yesterday?”

  Estelle Reyes-­Guzman looked up from her computer keyboard, then leaned back in her chair. A light-­framed woman just turned fifty-­one but looking closer to thirty-­five, she favored tan, tailored pants suits with a pastel blouse—­the “uniform” that she’d adopted during twenty-­eight years with the Sheriff’s Department.

  “The entire agonizing thing.” She smiled and shook her head. “They’re very good at making mountains out of even less than molehills. And by the way, Bobby, I overheard Rik’s conversation just now with Hennesey, but I didn’t want to interfere.” She smiled again. “It’s all part of the young man’s education. He was also at the county meeting, and it looked as if he’s mastered sleeping with his eyes open.”


  “Huh,” Torrez grunted. Estelle knew that Robert Torrez would require a certified, notarized announcement of the earth’s imminent destruction before he would attend a county commission meeting.

  “I need to work on that talent myself. Nothing came up that would affect us, though, and that’s always good news.”

  “The kids are still here?”

  Estelle took the characteristically abrupt change of subject in stride. She knew that the sheriff was referring to her son and daughter-­in-­law, who, along with Estelle’s grandson, William Thomas, were enjoying a vacation from their hectic performance schedule. “They are, working hard on Padrino’s house. That’s the whole problem, for me, anyway. I’d be over there every minute, given half a chance, but they don’t need me breathing down their necks. But as you well know, make-­work is deadly boring as well.” She swept a hand inches above the paperwork that was spread across her desk.

  Torrez’s dark face brightened a touch, just enough that a glimpse of his movie-­star dentition showed. “I thought hanging out with family was what grandmothers were for, Grandma.”

  She pointed a pistol finger at the sheriff. “I want my daughter-­in-­law to smile with some heartfelt greeting when she sees me, not recoil in resignation. ‘Oh, God, here she is again. What’s it been since the last visit, twelve minutes?’”

  “Can’t see you doin’ that.”

  “Exactly. But waiting on the sidelines is also torture. And speaking of torture, are you getting family flack after your nephew’s arrest?”

  “Nope.” Clearly that topic was not one that the sheriff wished to pursue. “At the county meeting, did this guy Thompson make some presentation?”

  “As a matter of fact, he did not. It was on the agenda, but he didn’t show. He did pass along a message that he wanted to meet with Miles sometime today. Miles invited me to attend—­and Frank Dayan as well, I think. I’m driving out there about 9:00. In just a few minutes.” She looked down at the budget papers again. “Get some fresh air and soak up some sun.” Miles Waddell’s astronomical mesa-­top development had made an international name for itself, despite all the naysayers.