Statute of Limitations pc-13 Read online

  Francis Guzman arrived with the nurse in tow, and he immediately circled an arm around Estelle’s waist. “You want to see his ugly head?”

  “Sí.”

  The physician nodded at Linda. “Where’s best for you, young lady?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just so I can get close.”

  “I think,” Francis said to the nurse, “that if we just have him roll on his left side, that’ll be all we need. Linda, you can shoot from over here. Okay?”

  In a moment, the nurse had removed the dressing from Gastner’s skull, and she stepped back to give the others room. Gastner remained grimly silent through the procedure, lying on his side like an old whale.

  A patch the size of a grapefruit had been shaved on the back and crown of his broad skull. In the center was a nasty two-inch laceration, surrounded by a spectacular bruise. The black sutures had closed the wound, but Estelle could immediately see what her husband had been talking about. Small diagonal marks crossed the wound track, like railroad ties set slightly askew.

  “You think you can catch that?” she said to Linda.

  “She can do anything,” Gastner muttered. For a moment Linda worked in silence, trying different settings and different ways to bounce the flash, and then taking another set with available light, finishing off with digital.

  “Okay,” she said. “That’s got it.”

  “Pull up one on that show-and-tell screen,” Gastner said. “I want to see what you guys are gawking at.”

  Francis and the nurse rebandaged the head wound and helped Gastner back to a comfortable position flat on his back. When he was resituated, he held the digital camera for a long time, turning it this way and that as he scrutinized the small review screen.

  “Ouch,” he said finally. “Interesting.”

  “What do you think, sir?”

  “I think somebody didn’t want to discuss the weather with me, that’s for sure.” He turned and caught the nurse’s eye, and she nodded and left the room. “Kick that closed, will you?” he said, and Linda made sure the door was fully latched. Gastner beckoned Francis close. “This is what you’re talking about?” With a stubby finger he pointed at two marks that were particularly clear, even on the tiny screen.

  “Right.”

  “You know what this reminds me of?”

  “What?”

  “Sweetheart, remember when Bruce Corcoran got killed out at the bridge on Highway 56? Among other horrible things, poor old Bruce got whaled along the side of his face by a piece of rebar when a load shifted somehow. Remember that?”

  “Not the details, no,” Estelle said.

  “Well, I do. Rebar has those funny little raised whatchacallits…those little humpy bumps. Gives the concrete something to grip. Little raised ridges.”

  “You think someone hit you with a piece of rebar?”

  “That’s my best guess.” He shrugged and handed the camera to Linda. “I don’t think I was supposed to walk away from that. No argument, no confrontation. Just pow. A half-inch piece of steel rod across the pate. And I take a nose-dive into the bushes. The old fart trips on his own doorstep. The only thing not in the plan was a sharp-eyed doctor ready and waiting in the emergency room.” He reached out to Estelle again. “Good thing you happened by, sweetheart. Otherwise, come morning, I might have been a little bit stiff.”

  He took a deep breath and rolled his eyes. “And I’m talking too much.”

  “I need to talk to you about Mike Sisneros and this afternoon,” Estelle said. She glanced at her watch. “If it is still this afternoon, and not tomorrow.”

  Francis touched her shoulder. “He really should rest for a bit, querida.”

  “Nah, what the hell,” Gastner said. “We can give it a few minutes.”

  After the others had left and she was alone with the former sheriff, Estelle leaned her hip against the side of the bed and regarded Gastner intently. “I left the office, oh, maybe threeish or so. I didn’t pay attention,” he said.

  “How long was Mike there?”

  “He left a little bit before that. Not much.” He grimaced in frustration. “I wish I could remember specifics.”

  “And Janet?”

  “You know, she came and went sometime. How’s that. I just wasn’t paying attention. She came in right after we started…that would be around two. She suggested that maybe she should go get some pizza, but we were all stoked up from lunch. Mike told her not to bother.”

  “Did they talk about going to Lordsburg?”

  “Nope. Mike said that he had to ‘go get ready’ at one point.” Gastner fell silent, deep in thought. “I just don’t know. They might have been going together, or not…. I just don’t know. It wasn’t something that they talked about while I was in the room. Did they mention Lordsburg to Linda?”

  “She said that Mike mentioned it. That Janet wasn’t going.”

  “That she wasn’t going?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, there you are, then.”

  “Can you think of a logical reason why she wouldn’t want to go with Mike to his parents’ home?”

  “It’s his mother and stepfather,” Gastner corrected. “I don’t know if you ever met them? She’s Irene Cruz now. Give me a minute and the stepdad’s name might come to me, other than the Cruz part. Worked for the cable company for a while. Anyway, I don’t know if Janet was close to Irene or not. Or to what’s-his-name, the stepfather.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Estelle said. “I thought I had met Mike’s dad once.”

  “You may well have. Hank Sisneros is alive and well, as far as I know. He used to work for the mine before it closed. Then he ran that little business in back of Chavez Chrysler that used to make camper shells for pickups. Then I don’t know what the hell happened. He moved, like half the rest of the population. To Deming, I think.”

  “Ah,” Estelle said, once more amazed by Gastner’s gazetteer-like memory.

  “Janet might have wanted to have part of the holiday with her own folks,” Estelle said.

  “That’s not likely. They’re long gone, although I don’t remember the exact circumstances.” He closed his eyes again, trying to remember. “Nope…can’t recall.”

  “So as far as we know, she was free to go with Mike, if she wanted to.”

  “T’would appear so,” Gastner said.

  “But she didn’t.”

  “Nope. She stayed home and got herself murdered. Not a good choice. By the way, do you have someone over at my place?”

  “Jackie.”

  “Good enough. What time is it?”

  “Working on eleven.”

  He gazed down at the various hoses and pipes that held him prisoner.

  “I was thinking some chile would taste good right about now.”

  “Francis wants you here overnight, sir. It’s a good idea, too. Just behave yourself.”

  “There’s always delivery.” He grinned at Estelle’s withering look. “You been home to get some sleep yet? Stupid question.” He held up a hand to stop her from leaving. “What’s Mike say, by the way? You told me that Eddie went to Lordsburg to fetch him.”

  Estelle took a deep breath. “That’s next on the list,” she said.

  “Leave him to Eddie, sweetheart. Talk to them in the morning. Tell Jackie what you’re looking for, and let her go at it. You go home and get some sleep. And when you see her next time, tell your Aunt Sofía that I’m sorry I didn’t get over there this evening. I was supposed to help finish off the menudo.”

  “I’ll have her bring you a bowl,” Estelle said, and saw the look of panic as Gastner jerked the sheet even farther up over the mound of his stomach.

  “God, not here,” he said quickly. “I’m not my usual suave and debonair self just now.”

  She bent down and kissed him lightly on the forehead. “I’ll keep you posted, sir. Don’t do anything foolish. If you remember something that you think I should know, give me a call.”

  Chapter Nineteen


  When Estelle left the hospital parking lot and drove south on Grande to the “four corners” intersection with Bustos, she found herself pausing at the light, even though it was green. A driver westbound on Bustos arrived at the light and looked across at her, puzzled. When his light turned green, he hesitated, and then accelerated away toward the west. Estelle watched him go. She recognized him, the sort of acquaintance seen at the grocery store a dozen times, perhaps earning a nod and smile when passing in the aisle.

  The dash clock said it was just passing 11:00 p.m., an hour away from the end of that Christmas Day. What was this particular driver doing cruising the streets? Had he just visited Tommy Portillo’s Handi-Way convenience store down the street, grabbing a late-night donut just before Tommy closed at eleven o’clock? Maybe he’d run out of dental floss, just when his back molars had reached their limit of packed cracks. Or was he the one who had bashed Bill Gastner on the back of the head, and now, pleased at how well that episode had played out, drove around the village looking for another easy holiday score?

  If someone had actually attacked Gastner-if Dr. Guzman was right-then that person, if not simply lucky, had calculated perfectly. Bill Gastner hadn’t surprised a burglary in process. He’d simply been walking toward the front-door stoop, keys in hand, ready to go inside. If the attacker had been surprised when Gastner drove in the driveway, if he’d been scouting the home for a possible burglary, he could have melted into the darkness without attacking and Gastner would never have been the wiser. Instead-if her husband was correct-he had struck with vicious accuracy, the sort of blow calculated to kill. Had he then stepped over the body, picked up the keys, entered Gastner’s home, and taken his time rummaging through the house?

  The cold calculation of the crime was disturbingly familiar. Estelle gazed up Bustos toward the west. The taillights of the other vehicle turned south on Tenth.

  Glancing to the left, Estelle let her foot slide off the brake and allowed the Crown Victoria to idle across the intersection. Janet Tripp had been approached after tapping an ATM machine for $350. It hadn’t been a confrontation. There were no signs of argument or confrontation, just one shot to the head, like a hit man. Take the money and run. Except the killer hadn’t run. He’d removed the body and dumped it in an arroyo north of the village. The body was bound to be found, but he’d achieved a head start, even if it hadn’t been as comfortably long as he might have liked.

  South Grande was deserted, four lanes of black asphalt marked with moons of illumination from the sparse street lights. Window open, cool air whispering by, Estelle drove at not much more than a fast walk down South Grande, looking and listening with one part of her mind, the other off in the darkness somewhere.

  Deputy Jackie Taber had parked her unit across Guadalupe Terrace from Gastner’s adobe, affording her a full view of the front of the property. Estelle let the car drift to a stop, blocking Gastner’s driveway. Behind her, she heard the click of a door, and in a moment Jackie stood beside the door of Estelle’s car.

  “Collins is parked around behind in the pharmacy parking lot,” she said. “Nobody’s going to sneak around back there.” Gastner’s property had originally included five acres, but he had given most of it to Estelle and Francis three years before. The property now included the elegant, single-story Posadas Clinic and Pharmacy. Gastner had been left with a large, comfortable back lot overgrown with enormous cottonwoods, thick oak scrub, and a dozen other varieties of plants, most falling into the “weeds” classification.

  “He’s stayed away from the house?”

  “I told him to stay in his unit unless he actually had to confront somebody.” Jackie smiled. “That’s the extent of my guarantee. What’s the deal? Is Mr. Gastner okay?”

  “He’s fine. And he’s lucky. Francis thinks that someone hit Bill on the head. If this guy then went inside the house, he had to use the house keys. I found those on the step. If he used them, then he just dropped ’em on his way out.”

  Jackie remained silent.

  “I haven’t checked inside yet,” Estelle added. “I borrowed Padrino’s keys at the hospital. There’s one for the back door, too. It’s under one of those little fake rock things right under the kitchen window. We need to check and make sure it’s still there.”

  “Where do you want to start?”

  Estelle stood quietly in the darkness, gazing at the old house. “Right at the gate, Jackie.”

  The small courtyard, sheltered even from what little moonlight or starlight there might be, was a twenty-by-twenty-foot expanse of gravel and dirt with a flagstone walkway leading to the front door and the concrete step. The courtyard and walk were recent additions, built two summers before in a moment of boredom when Gastner had run out of other things to do.

  An old shovel leaned against the blocks in the corner to Estelle’s left, marking the spot where Gastner had thought about planting a climbing rose bush. The shovel had yet to earn its keep, but he had gone so far as to mark the spot for the rose.

  Estelle stopped and let the flashlight beam linger in the corner, illuminating the bent piece of rusted steel rebar projecting out of the ground at a haphazard angle. Now that she saw it, she remembered Gastner driving the length of steel in a couple of inches with the flat of the shovel, remarking that the hard-packed clay soil might grow the rebar just fine, but probably not the roses.

  Keeping her feet as close as she could to the plastered wall, she crossed to the corner as Jackie added more light from the walkway.

  “You think?” the deputy asked.

  “I don’t know.” She slipped on a pair of cotton gloves, bent down, and with the tip of her index finger touched the top of the bent stake. It rocked easily in its hole, barely deep enough to sink through the crushed stone cover to the clay underneath.

  “Let me get a large bag,” Jackie said, and Estelle knelt beside the stake, examining the ground. The crushed stone formed a uniform, featureless expanse. A busload of people could have stood in this corner and not left a single track. Whoever had assaulted Gastner could have crouched here, just as she crouched, and the twenty-four-inch-long piece of rebar would have presented itself as an easy weapon. But why not the shovel, itself heavy and lethal?

  Estelle swung the light methodically, gridding the crushed stone surface in the corner. No cigarette butts, no gum wrappers, no blob of half-dried tobacco juice. Nothing indicated that a human being had stood here, waiting in the darkness.

  “Here,” Jackie said, touching Estelle on the shoulder. The rebar came out of the ground with little effort. Even the rain of earlier in the day hadn’t been enough to soak through the blanket of crushed stone to the dense clay underneath. Holding the steel by the last half inch of one end, she gently lowered it into the plastic bag and zipped the top closed.

  “Anything on it?”

  “I can’t tell in this light,” Estelle said. “But I’m willing to bet.”

  “If he wanted a weapon, why not use the shovel?” Jackie asked. “You want that, too?”

  “Yes. But I don’t think that’s what he used. The marks on the wound seemed pretty characteristic.” She examined the corner once more. “Why, though?”

  “Because it’s handy?”

  “Sure enough it is. But if he came here planning to assault Padrino, why wouldn’t he have had a weapon ready? Why take up the rebar as a last-minute substitute?”

  They heard a vehicle turn onto Guadalupe, and in a moment Tom Pasquale’s Expedition pulled in behind Estelle’s unit.

  “Where do you want me?” he said as he approached the courtyard gate. “Sarge said he’s about wrapped up over at the bank and that I should get over here.” He saw the evidence bag and shovel in Jackie’s hands. “Gardening?”

  “That’s it,” Jackie said.

  “We’re about to go inside,” Estelle said. “I think the chunk of rebar that Jackie has in the bag is the weapon. We haven’t covered the area around the doorway yet, so go lightly.”

  “W
hat are we looking for?”

  “Anything at all, Tomás.” She pointed with her light toward the front door. “He was lying half on the step, head in the bushes there on the right when I found him. So we have some compromise already. I went right to him without much regard for anything else, thinking that he had tripped, or had another stroke, or something like that. And then the two EMTs did what they do. So I’m not sure what we’ll find.”

  “I don’t figure,” Pasquale said.

  “Someone came up behind the sheriff and hit him on the head,” Jackie said. “And down he went. That’s what we have.”

  “No, I mean where did you find the weapon?”

  “If it is a weapon,” Estelle said. “It was stuck in the ground over there in the corner. That’s where it’s been for a couple of months now.”

  “So why would he put it back?” Pasquale asked.

  “Neat and tidy,” Jackie offered. “If he just hits the sheriff with it and drops it, that’s pretty obvious. Stick it back where it was, and we might go for quite a while thinking the sheriff hit his head after an accidental fall.”

  “Simpler just to take it along and chuck it in the bushes somewhere,” Pasquale said.

  “Nos vemos,” Estelle said. “For now, we have what we have.” She stepped toward the front door. The gravel bordering the flagstones was scuffed here and there where the EMTs had worked with the gurney and backboard. “He had the keys in his hand,” she said, and paused, picturing Bill Gastner’s lumbering figure as he approached the stoop. “I’ve seen him open this door a thousand times,” she said. “He waits until he’s right here before he finds the right key.”

  “The porch light works?” Pasquale asked.

  “He doesn’t use it,” Estelle said. “He does have one of those little plastic boots that he keeps on the door key, so he can separate it out from all the rest. Then he fumbles around trying to find the keyhole.” She played the light around the heavy, carved door with its brass hardware.