Statute of Limitations pc-13 Read online

  An hour after Estelle had given Tom Mears the rebar, Bill Gastner’s house keys, and the shovel, the sergeant’s report confirmed what she had expected. There were no prints on the rebar, none on the shovel. Her own-and Bill Gastner’s-were on the bundle of keys and the tiny penlight joined on the ring.

  Linda Real’s photographs clearly showed the eruption of dirt around the hole in the ground where the rebar had first been jerked out, then returned to its place.

  Beyond that, nothing.

  Shortly after two in the morning of December 26, when no new ground could be pawed over, Lieutenant Mark Adams ran out of patience and overtime. He offered to drive Mike Sisneros home, and Estelle watched the young officer leave Mitchell’s office, his shoulders bowed like an old man’s. She wanted to find a quiet, dark corner and talk with Sisneros by herself, but was too tired at the moment to frame coherent questions and strategy.

  “Shit,” Eddie Mitchell said succinctly. He stretched far back in his chair with a creaking of leather, arms straight over his head, fingers entwined. He held that position for a long time, then slumped with his hands in his lap. “You got any bright ideas?”

  “I wish that I did,” Estelle said. She rubbed her face wearily. “I need a great big sign in neon letters that says, ‘Go this way.’”

  “Copy that.”

  She grinned at Mitchell and his curt military style, even though the dark circles under his eyes were probably just as deep as hers. “I wonder if we’re missing something obvious just because of the way we’re looking at this.”

  “And how would that be, Undersheriff?”

  “If we go all the way back to the beginning of this miserable holiday, to what is now the day before yesterday, I responded to a telephone call from Chief Martinez on Christmas Eve.” She paused. “That seems like a year ago, now.”

  “Okay, he called you from the motel.”

  “And then he goes out in the rain, to sit in his car, to do what, we don’t really know. What we know is that he did not do what my husband told him to do-sit down and wait for medical help. We know he did not say, ‘Okay, Dr. Francis, I feel terrible. Treat me. Here I am, waiting at the motel. Take me to the ER and make this all go away.”

  “Most people aren’t so rational, but okay.”

  “And we progress from there,” and she chopped the air in a line with her hand. “First one event, then another. We have the two kids in the motel trying to make some lame point about modern generosity with their Mary and Joseph thing…or whatever it is that they were doing. A nice way to spend Christmas Eve. Then the next day, on Christmas afternoon, a kid on a motorcycle finds Janet Tripp, dumped in a trash heap in the arroyo, the victim of a bizarre robbery. And then later that night, when he and I should have been having a meaningful and productive conversation, I get tied up in work and someone else takes the opportunity to club Bill Gastner over the head…but this guy, or gal, doesn’t take anything. He doesn’t take Bill’s wallet, or his keys, or go inside and ransack the house. It seems clear to me that the target was Bill.”

  “Some old enemy, maybe,” Mitchell offered.

  “There may be some of those. I don’t know what cases he’s working on at the moment, except he’s got some guy from Montana who keeps trying to bring horses into New Mexico without any paperwork…who knows why.”

  “Or a burglar who thought he was trapped when Wild Bill drove up. He hides behind the wall, and when the old man’s back is turned, he grabs a weapon and swings.”

  “But why?” Estelle said. “What sense does that make? He could just have huddled there in the dark for a minute until Padrino went inside and then slipped away as easily as can be-or just darted off when Bill’s back was turned. There isn’t going to be a foot chase, that’s for sure.” She ran fingers through her short black hair in frustration. “For us, all these events seem related.” She chopped her hand through the air again. “But maybe only because one comes right after another. That’s what’s confusing me.”

  “If you don’t see a connection with all these things, I’m with you there,” Mitchell said.

  The room fell silent, and from out in the hall, they both heard the quiet cadence of dispatcher Brent Sutherland passing information over the radio. Mitchell had turned down the volume of the speaker on his desk, and he reached across now and turned it up just far enough that Estelle could hear Deputy Tom Pasquale’s clipped delivery.

  “We have three officers on the road for the quietest night of the year,” Mitchell said. “Taber’s out there, Pasquale’s running every plate he sees, and Mears is poking around who knows where. Adams has two state police officers in the county. The Border Patrol has a heads-up, along with every sheriff’s department in southern New Mexico. We have lots of eyes out there. And you and me are sitting here wishing we’d get smart.” He leaned forward and let his head fall, forehead resting on his hands. “Sleep would feel good. That might be the smart thing.”

  He jerked upright. “The trouble is, we have some woodchuck out there with a gun who thinks killing a girl for a few bucks is a fair trade, and we got another creep who tracks down an old man and whacks him on the head with an iron pipe. They’re good company for our two creeps from Indiana who figure it’s fair to steal a car from an old man dying from a heart attack.”

  “I keep circling around to that,” Estelle said.

  “To what, Wardell and Jakes?”

  She nodded.

  “You want to tell me why?”

  “I don’t know why, Eddie. Maybe just because that’s where all this started.”

  “Huh.” He toyed with a pencil. “Eduardo deserved better than he got, that’s for sure,” he said after a minute. “It’s going to be interesting to see what charges Schroeder will agree to file against those guys.” He dropped the pencil. “I’m going home,” he said, and pushed his chair back, standing abruptly. “Roberto is coming home later today.” He looked at the clock as if to ascertain that it was after midnight, and officially Saturday. “Did I tell you that earlier?”

  She shook her head. “You talked with Gayle?”

  “Yup. His sister is going up to Albuquerque to pick the two of them up after Bob’s released. Gayle said he isn’t a happy camper. He’s got this whole regimen of therapy that he’s supposed to do several times a day, and a locker full of drugs. You can imagine how all that sits with him. He’d rather just go off by himself, hunting somewhere.”

  “We have lots of hunting he can do,” Estelle said.

  Mitchell snorted what might have been a laugh had he not been so tired. “He’ll like that.” He watched Estelle push herself out of the chair. “You need to go home,” he said. “Switch all this off for a while.” Estelle grinned. Eddie Mitchell still managed to sound very much like the chief of police he had been before the village and county had consolidated departments.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, and managed a limp salute.

  Moments later, as she walked out of the building to her car, she realized that she was bone tired, but wide awake. At home, Francisco and Carlos would be snoozing soundly, their world incomprehensibly simple from an adult point of view. If Dr. Francis wasn’t home yet, he would be soon. He would tumble into bed and be asleep before his head settled into the pillow.

  Estelle paused with her hand on the door handle of the Crown Victoria. If she went home now, she would lie in bed staring at the ceiling, kept awake by the cacophony of images swirling in her mind, trying to discover answers in the mess. There certainly should be something more productive than doing that, she thought.

  She knew who else would be awake, his insomnia honed by long years of practice. The Don Juan de O-ate Restaurant was long closed, so she couldn’t bring former sheriff Bill Gastner one of his beloved burrito grandes as a middle-of-the-night snack, but at least she could bring him a puzzle or two.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The yellow plastic cone that announced caution on one side and cuidado on the other was placed dead center in the hospita
l’s main hallway, and behind it, Stacy Cunningham guided the floor polisher in gentle, sweeping arcs. He allowed the pad to nuzzle right up to the rubber wall trim on one side, then with a little shift of weight and pressure on the handlebars, encouraged the machine to float back the other way.

  Cunningham saw Estelle enter and out of reflex looked over his shoulder at the large clock.

  Taking two seconds to wait for the machine to complete its arc to the left, he then shut it off, letting his weight settle on the handles as if he had been expecting exactly this old friend to walk through the doors. “Hey, Merry Christmas,” he said cheerfully. “But I guess officially it’s over.”

  “A whole new day,” Estelle said, and paused near the cone.

  “Oh, you can walk on it. It’s dry. I’m just giving the final buff.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I was sorry to hear about Chief Martinez. He was a cool old guy.”

  And you would know, Estelle thought. Stacy Cunningham had been one of those high-school students whom most teachers had fervently hoped would drop out and go away…the sooner the better. He had done neither. Estelle had had a number of conversations with Principal Glenn Archer and Police Chief Eduardo Martinez over the years about various students who had somehow run afoul of the law, or gotten themselves killed when their cars slammed to a stop before they did. Stacy had been the subject of conversation more than once, but somehow he had managed to survive the pitfalls.

  “We’ll miss him,” Estelle said. “He was a good man.”

  Stacy shifted his weight on the handlebars of the floor polisher. “Yep, he was a cool old guy,” he said. “I wish I’d taken more time to talk with him.” Estelle looked at him with some surprise. With the wash of freckles across his angular, homely face, the unkempt red hair, and too-thin body…and his history…it was easy to dismiss the young man as an empty vessel stuck with a job that no one else had the patience or inclination to do.

  “Yes, he was,” Estelle agreed.

  “He never threw his weight around, you know what I mean?”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Estelle said.

  “He could’ve,” Stacy reflected, and Estelle wondered what incident he was remembering. His face brightened. “Big chief in a small town. But he didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “Do you know when the funeral is going to be?”

  She shook her head. “No, Stacy, I don’t. That’s something that the family will have to decide.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” he said philosophically. “I’d like to go, you know? No special reason. But I’d like to. He cut me some slack a few times when he didn’t need to.”

  Estelle nodded, and felt a pang of regret. On several occasions, she had lost her patience with Eduardo Martinez, and more than once had thought-even if she had never voiced it-that Eduardo was content as long as his school zones were enforced. With a kid like Stacy Cunningham, Eduardo had managed a delicate balance that most cops wouldn’t take the time for, keeping the leash just long enough that the kid had survived his howling teens without serious damage to himself or anyone else.

  “Your husband’s already left,” Stacy said as Estelle stepped around the coil of yellow extension cord.

  “I hope so. That’s what I should be doing, is leaving.”

  Cunningham grinned, showing faultless pearly whites that lit up his face. “We got ’em all, don’t we?” He saw the puzzled look on Estelle’s face. “I mean, I was here last night when they brought in Sheriff Torrez, but I guess he went to Albuquerque. And Mr. G is down there in 112.”

  “Ah,” Estelle said. “Mr. G?”

  “Sheriff Gastner. He’s another cool old guy. I was talkin’ to him a little while ago. I don’t think he was supposed to be up, but he decided to cruise the hall for a little bit. We talked for a while. Can’t believe somebody socked him in the head like that.”

  “There’s all kinds, Stacy,” Estelle said, wondering how much information Stacy gleaned from his informal conversations.

  “He’s cool, though.”

  Apparently the two categories were “cool” and “uncool,” Estelle thought. She noticed that current Sheriff Robert Torrez hadn’t yet been categorized.

  “I’ll get out of your way,” she said. “Good talking to you, Stacy.”

  “You take care,” he said. As she continued down the hall, the soft swooshing of the polisher resumed.

  The nurse’s station at first looked abandoned, but a head appeared as Estelle reached the Plexiglas window. The young nurse, homely and overweight with heavy features and too much makeup, was in the process of picking up the contents of a folder that had spilled on the floor.

  “I’m just stopping in to see Mr. Gastner for a bit,” Estelle said, reading the girl’s nametag. “I know it’s a bad time, but it’s important.”

  “We’re going to need to tie him down,” Tabitha Escudero said gruffly, tapping the folder back into compliance. She evidently knew who Estelle was, not surprised in the least that, at two in the morning, Bill Gastner would have visitors. Tabitha’s expression hardened just a bit into that look of control that the medical staff assumed when a civilian was tampering with the hospital’s due process. “But if he’s finally asleep, I hope you won’t wake him.”

  “Absolutely not, Tabitha. Thanks. I’ll just peek in.”

  The nurse fluttered her fingers in dismissal, turning toward a box stuffed with more folders.

  The door of 112 was ajar a finger’s width, and Estelle nudged it open far enough to see the bed. Gastner lay with the unpunctured arm up on his pillow, hand resting on the top of his head. As the door moved, she saw him turn just enough to be able to see her.

  “Hey,” he said, and jerked his arm down in that reflex motion to pull the sheet higher up. “What the hell are you doing nosing around at this time of the goddamn night?”

  “Trying to think, sir,” she said.

  “Well, that’s not a bad thing. Any success?”

  “Trying is the operative word.”

  “So who the hell did you arrest for giving me this headache?”

  “Nobody yet.”

  “Ideas?”

  “I was hoping you’d have a list of grudges,” she said. She rested her hand on his, tapping the back of it with her fingertips.

  “We need to get out of here and go to work,” he said.

  “I was party to one of those escapades a few years ago, as you’ll remember. I don’t think I want to do it again.”

  “Escapades, hell,” Gastner said. “There’s no profit in any of this if the hospital can’t keep me here until my insurance pays all it can pay, you know. It’s all just a scam.”

  “Yes, sir. The scam the last time, as I remember, was whether to do a heart bypass on you, or let you stumble out of here so you could go chase bad guys until you fell on your face.”

  “And as I remember, it worked out pretty well,” Gastner said cheerfully. “Not so good for the bad guys, but good enough for me.” His fingers drifted down to where his pajamas covered the thick scar from the bypass. “They had the chance to carve on me eventually. But…,” and he pushed himself up in bed a little, dragging the tubes and wires with him, “I don’t want to talk about me at whatever it is in the morning. And you don’t either.”

  “Some interesting things, sir.” She turned and pulled one of the white chairs closer, then hesitated. “Mind if I use your bathroom?”

  “Why would I mind that?” Gastner said, and waved toward the small cubicle. In a moment, Estelle returned, tucking in her blouse.

  She draped the heavy Kevlar vest over the back of the chair and sat down. “That feels better.”

  “Put it back on when you leave,” Gastner said.

  “You sound like Eddie,” Estelle replied, and held up a hand to stop his rejoinder. “I know, I know.”

  “They never made one of those things that works with someone my shape,” Gastner said.

  “Me neither.”

  H
e laughed hard, and then grimaced, holding the top of his skull. “Don’t do that.” He rubbed his head, fingers straying down toward the bandage. “Son of a bitch sure hit me hard enough.”

  “He used that piece of rebar that you had in the corner of the yard, sir. The one for the roses? He used it, and then put it back.”

  “No shit? That was goddamn thoughtful of the son-of-a-bitch.”

  “We think he swung, and when he hit you with it, the tip of the rebar also hit the door jamb. It took a deep gouge out of the wood.” Estelle used her right index finger to represent the length of rebar, and the palm of her left as the jamb. “If that hadn’t absorbed some of the energy, you’d really have a headache.”

  “Or not,” Gastner muttered. “Did somebody tell you that Eduardo died?”

  “Yes, sir. Francis called me.”

  “Makes me feel positively mortal,” Gastner said. “How’s Bobby, as long as we’re checking the list of the lame and useless.”

  “He’s okay. He’ll be home later today. His sister’s driving up to Albuquerque to pick up him and Gayle.”

  “He’s chafing, I imagine.”

  “That’s putting it mildly, sir.” She leaned an elbow on the side of his bed, and it felt comfortable enough that she could have closed her eyes and dozed off. “There’s a window of opportunity during which Mike could have shot Janet before driving over to Lordsburg.”

  “He didn’t do it.”

  “No, I don’t think he did. But the timing is right. And there’s one other thing. He owns a couple of.22 pistols. One of them is missing. He can’t account for it.”

  “Stolen, then?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why maybe?”

  “For one thing, it was in the dresser drawer of his apartment, which is usually locked. He told Eddie that Janet knew it was there, too. What’s interesting to me is that the gun was gone, but the plastic case that it comes in? That was still there.”