Statute of Limitations Read online

  “Mrs. Gracie gave it to me yesterday,” Francisco said matter-of-factly. Whichever of Mozart’s early works his piano teacher had found for Francisco, Estelle saw that the sheet music was not in evidence on the piano stand. If Mrs. Gracie had been impressed with the little boy’s almost instantaneous absorption of the music, she hadn’t commented when Estelle had picked him up after his twice-a-week lesson. “We’ll just see,” was her favorite comment. Over the years, Mrs. Gracie had no doubt mentored many children whose momentary passion for music would veer away in some other direction, leaving the piano silent. But Estelle knew that in this case, the wait was unwarranted. For little Francisco to abandon his music would be akin to abandoning his most cherished, closest friend.

  “He was probably about your age when he wrote that,” Sofía said.

  “I think so,” the little boy replied soberly. He played a chord so softly it was a mere kiss of the keys, then slid off the piano bench and carefully closed the lid.

  Estelle had started to close the front door but stopped when she saw a shiny new Blazer idle to the curb in front of their house. “Here’s Padrino,” she said.

  “Well, we all timed that with perfection, didn’t we?” Sofía said. “And I see Francis had to leave. His car is gone.”

  “Not for long, I hope,” Estelle said.

  Sofía held up both hands in mock self-defense as the two boys careened past her, their grandmother, and Estelle to plaster their faces against the glass of the storm door.

  As he ambled up the front walk, former sheriff of Posadas County Bill Gastner saw the boys waiting. He stopped, a wonderful beetle-browed scowl darkening his heavy features. Shaking his head in disgust, he waved a hand in dismissal and started to turn back toward his vehicle.

  That brought howls of delight from the boys. Francisco unlatched the door and plunged outside. In a moment, Gastner was escorted into the house, a child glommed onto each hand.

  “Ho, ho,” he said. He managed to extricate himself and reached out toward Sofía. “Did you guys go to Regál?”

  “Yes, we did,” she said, and returned Gastner’s hug.

  “Brave or dumb,” he said. “One of the two.” Teresa had already covered half the distance toward her rocking chair, and she leaned against her walker. Gastner crossed to her and escorted her the remaining steps. “How’s Teresa?” he asked.

  “Teresa’s fine,” the elderly woman said. She lowered herself into the rocker with a sigh. “That’s a wonderful shirt.”

  Gastner looked down at the expanse of cozy blue flannel. “Something, huh?” he said. “Every once in a while, Camille hits the mark,” he added, referring to his eldest daughter. “Usually, she sends me health-food books, or some damn thing like that.”

  Estelle appeared from the hallway where she’d gone to hang up coats, but the telephone cut off her greeting to Gastner. She veered to the kitchen to take the call.

  “Unplug the damn thing,” Gastner called. “Christmas Eve is off-limits.”

  “That’s right,” Teresa grumbled with surprising vehemence. “I try to tell her that, but she won’t listen.”

  The Sheriff’s Department beeper on Estelle’s belt chirped simultaneously. She picked up the phone, at the same time turning on the portable hand-held radio that sat in its charger by the telephone.

  “Guzman,” she said, and she couldn’t help glancing at the clock and seeing that barely nine minutes had elapsed since she had answered Eduardo’s call.

  “Hey,” the quiet voice of Sheriff Robert Torrez said. “Do I need to send Irma over?”

  Estelle hesitated an instant, bringing herself up to speed with the sheriff’s cryptic conversational habits. Irma Sedillos, Bobby’s sister-in-law, worked as the Guzman family’s nana, bringing order to a frenetic household. With Sofía Tournál visiting and always more than willing to babysit the two boys, Irma had taken a much-deserved vacation for Christmas Eve to be with her immediate family. The sheriff’s question meant that Estelle’s few moments of familial bliss were over.

  “No. We’re covered,” she said. “What’s up, Bobby?”

  “A couple of minutes ago, your hubby called 911 dispatch for an ambulance at the motel.”

  “Yes, he did. For Chief Martinez.”

  “Okay.” If the sheriff was surprised, he didn’t react. “About thirty seconds after that call from Dr. Francis, someone at the motel called dispatch to report some kind of incident, maybe an assault. One victim down. I don’t know who called. Maybe the desk clerk, I don’t know. I’m headin’ that way now. Mike Sisneros took the call, so he’ll be about there by now. He was a couple miles south.”

  “I’ll be right down,” Estelle said. “Essie and the family are all at church, by the way.”

  “Okay,” Torrez said. “I’ll take care of that when we know what the hell is goin’ on. You sure you’re covered there?”

  “Yes. I’m on my way.”

  She placed the telephone gently back in the cradle, then looked up to see Bill Gastner regarding her.

  “It’s Eduardo Martinez,” she repeated. “But...” She covered the rest of it with a helpless shrug.

  “Uh-oh,” he said quietly, and his heavy features sagged. “Dead?”

  “Maybe.”

  Gastner didn’t ask for elaboration, but shrugged back into his jacket. “Mind if I ride along?”

  “I could use the company,” she replied, already heading toward the hall closet.

  “We’ll be fine,” Sofía called from the living room.

  “Poor Essie,” Teresa Reyes said, proving once again that her octogenarian hearing was as keen as ever. “Not such a merry Christmas for her.”

  “We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Estelle said, crossing quickly to her mother for a quick peck on the cheek.

  “We know how that goes,” her mother said.

  The drive from one end of Posadas to the other took no more than a few minutes, especially with Bustos and Grande avenues nearly deserted. Just before they reached the interstate, Estelle slowed and swung into the parking lot of the Posadas Inn, once part of a well-advertised national chain but now a weatherbeaten relic of its former self. High on its pedestal, the neon sign announced free t.v., restaurant, american owned.

  This time the mist played kaleidoscopic halos of red, blue, and white, slanting across the parking lot of the Posadas Inn and muting the harsh, flashing lights of the emergency vehicles. Estelle pulled her unmarked county car to a stop beside the bulk of the ambulance. Twenty yards away, a group hunched around a figure partially covered with a bright yellow rain slicker. The body lay close to the curb, a pace or two from an older-model sedan with out-of-state license plates.

  Estelle had never thought of Eduardo Martinez as a small man, but the lump under the slicker could have been mistaken at a distance for a child.

  “Shit,” Bill Gastner muttered, more to himself than anyone. She glanced at him as she pulled on her black baseball cap. His big, rough face was set in a scowl, teeth clenched to make his already square, prominent jaw all the more pugnacious. His comment wasn’t directed against the weather. He was looking at the same thing that had made her blood run cold—a yellow plastic crime scene tape that delineated the area around Eduardo Martinez’s body.

  Chapter Two

  The rain beaded on the plastic cover of Deputy Mike Sisneros’s Stetson and drizzled off the brim. He kept the aluminum lid of his clipboard nearly closed, protecting the pages inside. As Estelle approached, he took a couple of steps away from the group to meet her. “I don’t think they can do much for him,” he said. “They’re giving it the old college try, though. Somebody at the motel initially called in a fatality, but he’s hangin’ in there.”

  Turning in place, Estelle looked out across the wet, shiny asphalt of the parking lot. A cold, wet place, not the least bit frie
ndly, she thought. After a moment Estelle saw her husband rise to his feet and steady one of the IV bag supports as the gurney was hoisted up onto its wheels. In a few seconds, the EMT team whisked Eduardo Martinez to the ambulance. His face, partially concealed by the oxygen mask, looked like wet alabaster. Dr. Guzman climbed into the ambulance, one hand locked on the chief’s.

  Estelle felt as if she’d swallowed a pound of lead. The last time she had seen Eduardo Martinez, a chance encounter during a county commission meeting, he had smiled like a cherub, full of good cheer and excitement about the holidays.

  Sisneros interrupted her thoughts. “This vehicle is stolen out of Hickory Grove, Indiana,” he said. He nodded at the Dodge sedan. “Registered to a Harlan Wilson Waid, 229 Sunset Terrace. Reported stolen from an auto parts store parking lot sometime during the evening of 12/21.”

  “That’s three days ago,” Sheriff Bob Torrez said.

  “That’s right,” Sisneros said, as if the correct arithmetic was a surprise. “That’s all we got on it right now. No who, no why.” He snapped the clipboard closed.

  “I don’t care about this car,” Estelle said. “Where’s Eduardo’s vehicle? He didn’t drive down here tonight in a stolen car. What’s going on?”

  “That’s just the point. I don’t know,” Sisneros said. “I don’t know what happened. I’m thinking the best guess is that whoever stole this piece of shit in Indiana drove it this far and then took the opportunity to grab himself a new set of wheels while Eduardo was inside or something. That’s what makes the most sense. I don’t know why he came down to the motel in the first place.”

  “No one actually saw what happened?” Estelle asked. She glanced back at the ambulance. Her husband, satisfied that the EMTs had everything under control, was stepping down, ready to follow the ambulance to the hospital in his own vehicle. Had Francis seen the chief’s car leaving the parking lot? If not, they had missed crossing paths by only seconds.

  “This is as far as we’ve gotten, Estelle,” Sisneros said. “But we wanted to jump on the possibility of the chief’s car being stolen as quickly as we could. He wouldn’t have walked down here from his house. Not in this weather. Anyway, Tom Pasquale headed south on 56 as far as the border crossing. Regál is closest if someone wants to hightail it into Mexico.”

  “We got the roads covered,” Torrez said, cutting Sisneros off impatiently. “East, west, north, south...between us, the State Police, and the Border Patrol, it’s covered. This had to happen just a few minutes ago, so whoever took the chief’s car...if someone took his car...they ain’t gonna go far.”

  “Or they might be lounging in a motel room, watching television,” Estelle said.

  “Well, the chief’s car isn’t here, and he is,” Sisneros said.

  “Eduardo called us at home,” Estelle said and glanced at her watch. “About fourteen minutes ago now. He was feeling ill, but he didn’t want to go to the hospital or have Francis call an ambulance for him. Francis did anyway, and then headed over here to check on him, to see what was going on. Apparently the chief had been home by himself. Family at church.” She looked across toward the sidewalk, and then the short distance to the main entrance. “Who called dispatch, do we know?”

  “The motel desk clerk, most likely,” Sheriff Torrez said. “But we don’t know that, either. All we got is that dispatch had a man call it in. Didn’t leave his name.” He leaned with both hands on the head of a stout aluminum cane, ignoring the rivulets of water that matted his curly black hair and then ran down his swarthy face. He looked miserable. “He told dispatch that there was a man down out in the parking lot. Then he hung up. That’s what we got at the moment.”

  “I rolled in first, then your husband, then Pasquale,” Deputy Sisneros said. “I saw right away that it was the chief lying by the sidewalk and rendered what assistance I could. I saw that this wasn’t his car, and the first minute I had the chance, I called it in.”

  Estelle nodded in approval at Sisneros’s quick thinking. A junker car with out-of-state plates, the spare tire, keys in the ignition, no one around other than the chief...

  “Tom got here, and then the ambulance,” Sisneros said. “The only thing that makes sense to me is that somebody was after a new set of wheels. Especially now that we know this one’s stolen.” He nodded at the dilapidated Dodge. “They’re sitting here with a flat tire on a stolen car. Eduardo rolls in, and bingo. They find a new Buick as a Christmas present, with a victim who isn’t going to resist much, or at all. There’s no sign of a struggle...no wounds or anything like that.”

  There were a dozen routes that someone could use to slip out of Posadas County, but anyone unfamiliar with the bleak, rugged country would most likely stick to the main highways, taking their chances with the thin police coverage on a Christmas Eve.

  Estelle slipped under the yellow tape, approaching the spot where Eduardo Martinez had lain. The chief had fallen to the tarmac on the driver’s side of the decrepit sedan from Indiana. Whether Eduardo had struggled with his assailants, or simply been so preoccupied that he had left his keys in his own car while he went inside the motel, was a puzzle. But in the chief’s delicate condition, a struggle wouldn’t have lasted long.

  “Did the desk clerk see where the chief parked?” she asked. “Did he see any of this happen?”

  “We haven’t had a chance to talk with anyone inside yet,” Sisneros said. “But I don’t think so.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well,” and he stopped, looking back toward the small portico that spanned the front entrance, a structure just large enough for a single vehicle to pull under. He shook his head dubiously. “Unless the clerk stepped outside, he wouldn’t be able to see this spot. That little wall of the foyer would block his view. There aren’t more than a handful of guests, and they’re all parked down at the other end, around the corner. No way to look out and see anything.”

  “Something wasn’t blocked,” Estelle said. “Somebody saw something...some reason to call dispatch to report a man down.” She continued around the abandoned car, a four-door K-model Dodge sedan many miles and years past its prime. She paused at the front fender. The right front tire was the tiny space-saver unit intended for limited, short-distance use as a spare. She circled the Dodge slowly and saw that the keys hung from the ignition.

  “Call the county barns and have someone come out and pick up this vehicle,” she said to Sisneros. “There’s not much we’re going to get from the outside, but the interior might tell us something.”

  She paused and looked hard at Sheriff Torrez. He hadn’t budged, as if his cane had become rooted in the asphalt of the parking lot. In late October, during a confrontation when everything that could go wrong had, Torrez had taken a .223 bullet through the rump, at the same time suffering nasty fractures of his right forearm and right leg. A souvenir of that same incident, a white, half-inch scar marked the right side of Estelle’s upper lip.

  In early December, Torrez had returned to work on a part-time basis, shuffling about with an awkward walking cast, out of balance with both arm and leg encased. The casts had been removed in time for the holidays, but Estelle knew that the sheriff had pretty much ignored the ordered physical therapy—regardless of threats, cajoling, and bribes from his wife, Gayle.

  “Someone needs to go over to the hospital,” Estelle said. “If there’s a chance that Eduardo can tell us something...and maybe Dr. Guzman saw something when he arrived. We need to follow up on that.” She knew deep in her heart that the odds of that weren’t good. If Francis had seen two desperate men charging out of the lot, he would have said something already. But Sheriff Robert Torrez didn’t need to become an added complication for them by puddling in the cold rain. Something as simple as wearing a cap would have helped, but Bobby Torrez had taken being miserable to a new art form. Sending him to the hospital would at least keep him out of the
weather.

  “Yep,” Torrez said, and his quick agreement surprised Estelle. “And I’ll take care of lettin’ Essie know,” he added. “She’s gonna want to be with him.” He turned to Bill Gastner, who had been standing silently near the passenger door of Estelle’s sedan. “You want to ride over with me, Bill?”

  “Go ahead. I’ll drop by the hospital after a bit,” the former sheriff replied.

  Torrez nodded dubiously. “Merry Christmas.”

  “You be careful,” Gastner said.

  Bob Torrez managed something that could have been mistaken for a smile. “That’s all I’ve been doin’,” he said as he turned and peg-legged back toward his pickup truck.

  Another Sheriff’s Department unit jounced into the parking lot. “Mike, now that Jackie’s here, I’d like another sweep of this area,” Estelle said. “Any little thing. You know the drill. I’m going inside to talk with the desk clerk. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Estelle beckoned to Gastner to accompany her. “Let’s go have a chat,” she said.

  Three other vehicles were parked in the side lot beyond the lobby and office, a scattering of travelers too tired to press on, so travel-weary they were willing to spend Christmas Eve in the efficient, sterile motel rooms of the Posadas Inn. An older model van was first in line, and Estelle detoured far enough out into the lot to see that the other two vehicles were a small sports car with a ski rack on the trunk, and a white pickup truck with contractor’s side boxes and headache rack.

  As she and Gastner entered the lobby, Estelle saw the night clerk in animated conversation, cell phone affixed to the side of her head, her back turned to the door. Miranda Lopez, the daughter of one of the medical-records clerks at Dr. Guzman’s clinic, was a strikingly pretty girl with angular features accentuated by too much makeup. Estelle knew that Miranda was a high-school student, and no doubt was taking the opportunity to earn extra bucks during the holidays by working the long, odd hours that no one else wanted.