The Fourth Time is Murder Read online

  Estelle let the heavy sedan settle in at 85, with the spotlight playing ahead to catch the reflection from startled eyes.

  The highway through Regál Pass was the best that modern design could manage. In fact, the current Posadas county manager, Leona Spears, had been instrumental in the redesign of the route while employed by the state highway department. Still, despite the highway’s wide, paved shoulders, bright lane markings, and rumble strips on both sides and down the center, motorists found a way to vault off into space.

  Five miles east of the Broken Spur Saloon, Estelle saw the flashing lights of the ambulance ahead, and she overtook the vehicle by the time they passed the bar’s parking lot.

  Beyond the intersection with County Road 14, the highway swept south and began to climb in earnest, widening to include a passing lane that continued all the way to the summit, where the third lane switched sides.

  Despite the broad right-of-way, the road became a tortuous serpent as it climbed, including one switchback across a jagged ravine where the highway was posted at 15 miles an hour.

  “PCS, three-oh-four is ten-six just south of mile marker zero-five,” Collins radioed. “I’ll be with two civilians. Three-ten, what’s your twenty?”

  “Three-ten is just coming up the hill. ETA about five minutes.”

  “Ten-four. PCS, ten-forty-five, one and one as far as I can see. Ten-twenty-eight New Mexico Sam Lincoln Charlie two-seven-seven. I think it’s a Chevy S-ten, color white.”

  “Ten-four,” dispatcher Ernie Wheeler responded. “Three-ten, did you copy?”

  “Affirmative.” One vehicle, one victim. A pickup truck with New Mexico plates could be a local, someone from Regál even, perhaps headed into town to see the basketball game. For more than a mile, the highway headed due west, climbing the flank of the mountain. Then another switchback sent Estelle east, and the highway snaked sharply upward. At regular intervals, the guardrail was scarred with blackened dents and scars, moments of panic when the drivers strayed or slid or swerved from the marked lanes and kissed the steel rail.

  The last time she had responded to an MVA on Regál Pass, it had been a trucker who had allowed his rig’s rear tandem duals to catch the end of a guardrail section. The rails had vaulted the trailer up and then refused to let go, the rig riding along like a wild locomotive, pinned to the wrong set of rails. By the time the thirty-ton load of scrapped automobiles jack-knifed and buried the cab under a pile of smoking junk, there wasn’t enough driver left for the EMTs to patch together.

  Mist now hung over the peaks, reaching down to the 8,000-foot level, just low enough to blanket the 8,012-foot pass. Estelle snapped on the fog lights, and seconds later the kaleidoscope of emergency lights broke through the mist. She slowed the car to a walk, easing past the bulky propane delivery truck that was parked along the guardrail off the oncoming lanes, its flashers bright. Just behind the big rig, a bright orange State Highway Department truck was marked with its yellow beacon pulsing in the mist.

  They were a quarter mile north of the pass itself, and even in clear weather, oncoming traffic would have had little warning when they came upon the scene. Fiery phosphorus flares were stabbed into the shoulder every dozen feet, so bright they hurt the eyes. A few yards uphill from the state truck, and on the other side of the road, Collins had parked his county unit tight against the steep bank. A dead deer lay in the ditch in front of his vehicle.

  A bulky figure wearing a bright orange safety vest over his down winter coat approached from behind the delivery truck. “They’re down there,” the man said, pointing over the guardrail. “It’s a bad one.”

  Estelle stepped to the rail and looked down through the rocks, brush, and fill left by the highway’s construction. She could see the beams of flashlights, and her own light reflected off the bent license plate. She played the light along the scar left by the truck’s hurtling trajectory. It appeared that this time, luck was not on the driver’s side. The likely scenario was a swerve followed by overcorrection. But when he had lost control and plunged his truck off the road, he had done so right at the beginning of the guardrail. The curved rail had acted as a vault, flipping the truck up and over.

  Tracks showed the truck had vaulted over a small hummock left by the original grading, then plunged down through the rocks, tumbling like a small toy. Unfortunately for the driver, it appeared that the truck went off the road with considerable momentum, ricocheting off boulders and trees, strewing parts along the way.

  Estelle palmed her handheld radio. “Three-oh-four?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “What do you have down there?”

  “One vehicle. Looks like just the driver. I think he was ejected and then the truck got him. Maybe more than once.”

  The ambulance approached, adding another Christmas tree of lights.

  “Is there anything I can do?” the trucker asked, and Estelle shook her head.

  “I’d like you to move your rig in just a minute,” Estelle said.

  “You betcha.”

  “Three-ten, PCS.”

  “Go ahead,” Estelle said, and then dispatcher Ernie Wheeler paused.

  “Three-ten, be advised that vehicle is registered to Christopher Marsh, DOB six nine eighty-six. An address in Las Cruces.”

  “Ten-four. Ten-forty-six.” It would be a challenge for the wrecker to winch this wreck up through the rocks, hoisting it over the guardrail. “And we’re going to have a traffic problem. If you can find me another officer or two, I’d appreciate it.”

  Almost immediately, the radio responded, but this time with Sheriff Robert Torrez’s soft voice.

  “Three-ten, I’ll be down in a few minutes. You got it until then?”

  “Ten-four.”

  “You need Perrone?”

  Estelle hesitated. The EMTs were as capable as anyone of determining whether the driver was dead—if the driver had been crushed by the flipping truck, odds were good that he was. But the emergency medical staff wouldn’t give up easily. If there was a breath, a whisper, of life remaining, they’d find it and nurture it along until they could transport the broken victim to Posadas General.

  “Hold on that call for a minute until we see what we have.”

  “Ten-four.”

  It appeared that the trucker was going to climb back in his rig, and Estelle took him by the elbow. “Walk with me for just a minute?”

  The man bundled along beside the undersheriff as Estelle walked uphill beyond the big rig and the state pickup to the point where the crashed truck’s skid marks were obvious on the damp asphalt. She aimed her flashlight at the deep gouges in the dirt mound where the pickup had catapulted off the pavement, ripping the rail from its supports.

  “I bet he swerved to avoid that deer over there,” the man said, nodding across at Collins’ Expedition. “I counted fourteen on my way up the hill just a bit ago.” He pointed into the mist. “Including a mama and twins back by the pass sign.”

  “Did the truck pass you coming up from Regál, sir?”

  “No. I seen the highway department truck stopped, and the deer, so I pulled over. I figure that’s what he did…clobbered the deer.”

  “Hard to tell. But that’s most likely,” Estelle said. She looked at the man, trying to remember his name. “You’re working late tonight,” she said.

  “I’m runnin’ so far behind I’m about to meet myself,” he laughed. “This cold weather reminds folks that their tanks need toppin’ off.”

  “So you didn’t see any of this.”

  “Nope. I stopped ’cause the state truck was here and she was puttin’ out flares. She wasn’t about to climb down in them rocks without some company, but it ain’t gonna be me. I don’t need no broke leg just now.”

  “I don’t blame you a bit, sir. If you’d move the truck on out, that’ll help.”<
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  “You got it.”

  A car approached from the south, and Estelle watched it go by, tires hissing on the pavement as wide eyes peered at them.

  The tanker started with a belch of fragrant propane fumes, and the undersheriff walked to the edge of the highway out of his way. She looked down at the lights far below. Switching the radio channel to local, she keyed the handheld.

  “Dennis, what do you have down there?”

  For a moment, she was answered only by silence, then Deputy Collins flashed his light up the hill at her. “Estelle, I think before we move the victim, Perrone should take a look. Matty agrees.”

  Matty Finnegan, the lead EMT, had voiced opinions many times before that Estelle valued.

  “And you, too,” Collins added. Estelle’s curiosity was piqued, but the last thing she wanted was a discussion of the accident scene, and the accident victim, over the public airwaves, even if the local handheld signal was limited in its range.

  “I’ll be down in a minute. We need some coverage up here on the highway first.”

  “Connie is on her way up,” he said, referring to the highway department worker. “Matty and Cliff will stay here until you say otherwise.”

  She watched the flashlight beam wobble its way up through the rocks, marveling again at the wild ride that the truck must have taken as it vaulted into space. In a few minutes, Connie Ulibarri reached the guardrail, grabbed it with both hands, and stopped, winded and red faced. She was a tiny girl, maybe twenty-five years old, her hard hat skewed back from her forehead.

  “Dr. Perrone’s not going to like that climb,” she managed. She walked uphill along the narrow lane behind the rail to join Estelle. “The driver’s been dead awhile,” she said.

  “Just the one occupant?”

  “Yes. He wasn’t wearing the seat belt. The passenger side is retracted as well. He stayed with it for quite a ride,” Connie said. “Steering wheel is bent all to hell where he hung on. But then Dennis thinks that he went out the passenger side window.”

  “This evening sometime, you think?”

  “Maybe. But he’s stone cold, Estelle. That’s why Dennis was thinking that you and Perrone should take a look.”

  “Okay. How’d you happen to stumble on this, Connie?”

  Ulibarri took a deep breath and pulled her hard hat straight. “I saw the deer over in the ditch. She was out of the traffic lane, and I wasn’t going to stop, ’cause I could see she was too big for me to pick up alone, but then I saw that she had a Game and Fish radio collar on. I thought I should retrieve that.” She nodded toward her truck. “I got it in the unit. Then I started looking and saw the skid marks and the scuffed dirt by the rail.” She shrugged. “What a mess.”

  “The propane deliveryman said he didn’t see the wreck happen, either.”

  “No. He stopped after I did. I was settin’ out the flares, after I called you guys.”

  Her handheld crackled again. “Estelle, when you come down, you might as well come down loaded,” Collins said. She could sense the excitement in his voice. “I think we got something going on here.”

  “God, be careful,” Connie said fervently. “We don’t need you to take a header.”

  “No, we don’t,” Estelle said. She left Connie to flag traffic, crossed to her car, and hefted the black field case out of her trunk.

  Chapter Three

  The pickup lay on its top, nose downhill. The twisted frame and torn bed had been mangled in every direction. A single stubborn bolt had refused to sheer, and the lightweight aluminum camper shell had been flailed into what looked like a white, rumpled sheet, still attached to the truck bed by that single bolt. The cab was crushed flat to the dashboard, having taken the brunt of the first somersaults over the guardrail.

  The EMTs had covered the driver’s body with a sheet of yellow plastic. Matty Finnegan and Cliff Herrera waited off to one side while Estelle surveyed the entirety of the catastrophe. The EMTs were well aware that adding their tracks to the scene only complicated matters.

  “He stayed with it for a while,” Matty said. She pointed up the hill. A hundred yards above, the guardrail was a faint glint in the lights of the parked vehicles. The scars where the truck had hit the ground were clear. Had the steep slope been covered with the characteristic runty brush of this rugged country, the little Chevy might have been snagged earlier, its crashing descent slowed. But the rocks hadn’t provided anything other than a hard springboard for each amazing tumble.

  Estelle nodded. The driver had stayed with the truck for most of the journey—unfortunately for him. What the crushing cab hadn’t done to him, the rocks had finished off. He lay smashed between two large slabs of limestone, and Estelle approached the body from the side away from the truck.

  She bent down and pulled the yellow plastic back. The young man—if it was his truck, he was just twenty-one—lay on his back. One leg had caught and twisted sideways in the dead stump wood of a gnarled juniper. His right arm, hidden under his body, appeared to have been broken so many times that the original line formed by the elbow’s joint to upper and lower portions was lost.

  “We haven’t touched anything,” Matty Finnegan said. “Just covered him up. I wouldn’t be surprised if in a little bit this mist turns to rain…or worse.”

  Another vehicle stopped on the road up above, and Estelle recognized the sound of the sheriff’s elderly pickup. “Weather isn’t going to bother this young man much anymore,” Estelle said. She knelt and stretched out a hand, feeling the side of the victim’s neck. The skin was as cold as the February weather. The young man’s features were surprisingly composed, the only injury to his face a single massive laceration through his right cheek.

  “Any idea how long he’s been here?” Cliff asked. “He’s not rigored anymore.”

  “No telling,” Estelle replied. “Connie called Dispatch to report the accident just a minute before Ernie called you guys out. As far as I know, he could have been here for a week.”

  “Well…,” Matty said.

  Estelle glanced at her and shrugged. “In a manner of speaking,” she amended. She looked back at the victim’s face. He stared straight up into the night sky, face surprisingly clean of dirt or blood. The ravens and coyotes hadn’t found him yet. A puddle of blood had formed and dried beside his head, and Estelle bent down with her flashlight. The man’s left ear had been terribly lacerated, gouged out of the side of his head by a raking blow—probably a sharp corner of boulder, the same instant that his cheek had been ripped open.

  “He’s local?” Matty asked.

  “Don’t know yet,” Estelle said. “The truck is registered to Chris Marsh of Las Cruces, who should be twenty-one. That part fits.” She looked at the victim’s left arm, and saw that the unpredictable forces of the crash had broken it in several places above the elbow, including a catastrophic fracture of the joint of clavicle and shoulder socket.

  She shifted position and realized that Deputy Dennis Collins was crouching at her right elbow, so close that she could hear his breathing and smell his aftershave. He reached out and laid his hand on her forearm. “This is what I meant,” he said. “Look at this.” He held his flashlight for her. The man’s left hand lay palm up in a small clear spot between the two rocks, fingers gently curled. Estelle bent close, puzzled at what she saw.

  “What have we got here?” she said, more to herself than Collins. But the deputy assumed the question was meant for him, and he used a ballpoint pen as a pointer. “I think these are boot marks,” he said. “We got the heel right here, in this patch of dirt between the rocks. The ball of the foot rested right on his hand.” The marks were clear, outlined in muddy dirt on the pale skin of the man’s palm.

  “What’s with this?” Estelle whispered. “Move a little bit,” she said to Collins, and he pushed himself away enough that, shifting her knee
s, she could scrunch down until the slope of one of the rocks cradled the side of her head.

  “More light?” Matty asked helpfully.

  “Please,” the undersheriff said. “Don’t step anywhere around his head. Come in from behind me.” In a moment, the second beam from Matty’s light flooded the grim picture. It hadn’t been their imagination. Someone had planted a good-sized boot on the victim’s left hand, pinning it in place.

  “You want me to lift his hand up so you can see the back side?” Collins asked.

  “No, no,” Estelle said quickly, straightening up. “Whatever is there will wait.” She nodded at the EMT and then turned to Collins. “But you’re right, Dennis…that’s going to be interesting. If this happened right here, then there’ll be grit and debris pressed into the back of his hand. We need pictures before any of this is moved.”

  She straightened up and looked up toward the highway. In the glare of emergency lights, she saw the towering figure of Sheriff Robert Torrez, who only two years ago would have bounded down this rugged slope without a second thought. A hip injury that had demanded six months of convalescence and another half year of therapy had changed his outlook on indestructibility.

  Estelle pulled her handheld from its belt holster. “Bobby, we need to call Linda on this,” she said, then thought, She’ll love it, and that prompted the recollection of the e-mail she’d been reexamining for the umpteenth time just an hour before. The reporter from the women’s magazine didn’t know what she was missing—the big, tough, macho sheriff up on the highway, who understandably hesitated to launch himself down the cliff, calling the cheerful young girl, the department’s photographer, who would tackle the assignment without a second thought, even though she was blind in one eye, her depth perception far less than perfect.

  “Got it,” Torrez said. “What do you have?”

  “One dead from multiple trauma. But someone else has been here.”

  “How’s that?”

  “We’ve got a boot print where it shouldn’t be.” She had tried to imagine how Chris Marsh—if this was in fact him—might have accomplished the boot track by himself…reaching down to his broken foot, hearing the sharp snap and pop of broken bones as he did so. Not likely. She flicked the yellow tarp clear of the victim’s lower body. The victim was wearing what had been a tan jacket, a neatly pressed tan work shirt with matching tan trousers, and highly polished ankle-high black work boots.