“Fine. Somebody’s staying with her, I hope.”
“Of course. And one thing, Oso,” she said, switching to her pet name for her husband. “Did you treat Kyle for a fracture or a sprain? He’s wearing one of those ortho-support boots.”
“Both. He told me that he used to sprain his ankle all the time—enough that it kept him out of sports. And this time he not only sprained it, it looked as if he cracked the navicular bone somehow…and that might be attributed to previous injury, too. Anyway, he shouldn’t have been hiking and rock-climbing on it. Was he using crutches?”
“A cane, no crutches. Maybe they’re in his car. We’ll see you shortly.”
“Yep. I see a deputy standing in the middle of the road, so I’ll talk with you in a few minutes.”
Estelle closed her phone and waited while the sheriff turned away from the edge, putting some distance between himself and the drop. When he paused and looked back, she said, “We need to know if he had crutches. Maybe still in the car.”
“I’m about to find out,” Torrez said. “And I want to make sure we got some control over this mess.”
The undersheriff stood with hands on her hips and motioned to Linda, who was making her way, one digital image after another, toward the victim. “What we do know is that if he just tripped somehow—easy to do with walking made awkward by that boot—he would have tumbled down the face of the rocks.”
Estelle made her way over the rough and uneven ground, uphill to the face of the boulder. She inspected it closely, running her hand gently up its surface. She reached up as high as she could, and her fingertips were still thirty feet or more from the upper edge. Swinging her arm in an extended arc, she stopped with her hand pointing at the body—more than a body length from where she stood.
“That’s where the blood is,” she said, more to herself than to Linda. “He didn’t land up here close to the boulder, didn’t lose his balance and tumble down, clawing at the rock face, and then after he hit bottom, didn’t crawl or struggle farther downhill until he bled out. There are no gouges where he might have struggled, no blood trail where he might have crawled, no marks that suggest he was dragged.”
“Just whump,” Linda observed.
“That’s right. Just whump. The only thing that makes sense to me is that he hit the ground over there.” She pointed at the corpse. “He landed right where he’s lying now, not over here. The blood pattern says he landed, cracked his skull, and then stayed put.”
“That’s his ball cap?”
“Most likely. And that’s another thing. If he just lost his balance and tumbled, why would his cap be flung so far? There was no wind. If he simply lost his balance and fell, and if during that fall his cap tumbled off, it would tumble straight down to the base of the rocks, no?”
Not pausing a moment to consider all these questions, Linda Pasquale framed every conceivable angle or corner of the scene, shooting dozens of exposures. Estelle watched as the photographer moved in close and took as many detailed photos of the body as possible without disturbing its position. After a moment Linda straightened up and shook her head sadly.
“I know that Frank Dayan wanted to talk with this gentleman in the worst way.” It had been more than a decade since Linda had worked for Frank Dayan and the Posadas Register, but her photos of non-law-enforcement-related events still appeared on its pages on a regular basis.
“You have it pretty much covered?” Estelle could hear quiet voices approaching.
“I’m set.” Linda stepped back.
Captain Jackie Taber appeared to one side of the boulder above them, one hand firmly on Lydia Thompson’s elbow. The sheriff moved so that he was within easy reach of Lydia’s other arm. Sandwiched between Taber’s stout, almost brawny frame and Robert Torrez’s six-foot-four hulk, Lydia looked frail and diminutive. The breeze played with her light jacket, just enough to reveal that she was wearing her heavy “snake” gun.
“Nuh.” The young woman managed the single, strangled groan and sank to the rocks. Taber knelt with her, keeping a hand on each shoulder as Sheriff Torrez released his own grip. Estelle worked her way up through the rocks, following the narrow crevice between two boulders. Once on top, she knelt beside Lydia Thompson, who extended a hand to her.
“I’m so sorry,” Estelle whispered, and Lydia covered the undersheriff’s hand with both of hers, as if she were the one to offer sympathy.
“He said he was coming out here to take some photos. This was his favorite site on the property, and he wanted photos taken right at high noon.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “I should have been with him, but he insisted he could manage. We were going to meet up on top for dinner.” She bit her lip, moaning out a little squeak of distress. “I saw all the traffic over here, and knew something was wrong.” She bit her lip, stifling back a cry. “He’s been out here all that time? Just lying here, all by himself?”
“We think so, Lydia. There’s no sign of a struggle, no sign that even immediate first aid would have helped him.”
“The blood…”
“From a massive skull fracture. The ME will confirm that when he gets here in a few minutes.”
“How…”
“We don’t know yet, Lydia. I’m sorry. The ME will be here in just a few minutes.”
“Who found him? Did he manage to call for help?”
“No. Deputy Miller discovered him.”
“But how? Somebody must have told him Kyle was here.”
“We haven’t had the chance to talk with the deputy yet.” Their hands still locked, Estelle’s gaze searched Lydia Thompson’s face. A tear had broken loose from her welling right eye and now tracked down flawless skin to the corner of her mouth, followed in seconds by a tear from her left. The woman was perhaps a little older than she had first appeared when Estelle had met her at NightZone, but was toned and fit.
“I want to go down.” She rose abruptly, and both Taber and Estelle stood with her. “Please. I need to do that. I won’t touch anything.” She wiped her eyes and closed them, turning to let the late afternoon sun beat on her face. When she opened her eyes, she looked at Estelle. “I won’t touch anything. I know the procedure.”
“When the medical examiner arrives, he needs to work without members of the immediate family present,” the undersheriff said. “If you know the procedure, then you know some of it is unpleasant. You don’t need to be there.”
“But I do.” She frowned hard, looking at her husband’s corpse down below. “I need to be.”
“I’ll take you down now, but when the ME arrives, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the scene.” Lydia Thompson almost nodded, and Estelle accepted that as assent. She took her time returning downhill to the body, blocking Lydia’s path and forcing the younger woman to keep to a slow, careful pace, staying well out of the immediate site.
“Do you recognize the cap?”
Lydia glanced at it, and nodded.
“And over by the rocks…the cane?”
“He was using that just temporarily. He bought it at the drug store. He has crutches, too, but they’re back at the hotel. He couldn’t stand to use them.” Without warning, she fell to her knees beside the victim, hands clamped into tight fists in her lap. Estelle stayed close, one arm around the young woman’s shoulders.
A little whimper, and then Lydia breathed out a heartfelt, “Oh, my.” She pressed both hands to the top of her skull, as if a pounding headache had brewed. After a moment, she relaxed, let one more whimper escape, and extended one shaky hand. Without touching it, she pointed at the spine of rock directly under her husband’s head, a sharp little blade of sandstone.
“He…he landed on that, didn’t he?” She twisted and looked back up the rock face from which her husband had fallen. “If he’d landed in, like that sand over there,” and she pointed with a wrinkle of her nose at a flat ar
ea between boulders where blow sand had collected. “If he’d landed there, it might have been all right.”
She stared at the spot of sand, her expression more incredulous than anything else. “Why out here?” She reached out a hand as if to touch the corpse, then checked herself. “So far out. I mean, how could he?”
With a hand on her elbow, Estelle helped Lydia to her feet.
“I want to hear what the medical examiner has to say,” Lydia said.
“We can give you a full report when he’s finished and has time to document his findings.”
Lydia turned on Estelle, red blushing her cheeks. “Oh, don’t give me that bullshit, Sheriff Guzman.” She thumped her fist against her chest. “Here I am, right now. I want you all to talk to me. As you investigate…this,” and she waved her hand to include the scene, “I want to know. My husband would want me to know.”
When Estelle didn’t respond, Lydia said, “Look, let me tell you something.” She yanked the tail of her shirt out of her pants and pulled it up, exposing her belly up to the bottom margin of her bra. The surgical scars across her tawny midriff looked all too fresh, not something done when she was a child. “Kyle held me that night, held my guts together, kept talking to me, rode with me in the ambulance, stayed with me through the worst five weeks in the hospital that I’ve ever experienced, the worst five weeks of my life. And now this. Here he is, lying out here all by himself, and I didn’t even get to hold his hand?”
A distant clearing of a throat broke the tension, and Estelle turned in place to see Linda Pasquale trying to blend in with the scenery. “The ME is here, Estelle.”
“Lydia, I know all of this is hard for you. But when the ME is working, I want you out of the immediate scene. If something comes up that you need to know, I’ll make sure you’re included. That’s the way it’s going to be. We’re all concerned with certain unanswered questions.” She nodded toward the boulder. “The best place for you to wait is back by your vehicle.”
Lydia tucked in her shirt, her glare fixed on Estelle. The undersheriff could see the young woman’s cheek muscles clenching.
“I’ll want to talk with you in a few minutes,” Estelle added. “We need to know about your husband’s day. How he came to be out here. Who he might have been with. I need to know about your day. How it was that you weren’t with your husband when he decided to hike out here.”
“I can help you.” Lydia’s glare had softened, and her voice was a whisper.
“I’m sure you can. Just not this moment. Stay by your vehicle. That way, if the sheriff or I need to speak with you, we’ll know where to find you.”
Dr. Francis Guzman appeared up above, flanked by Bob Torrez and Captain Jackie Taber. He changed his hospital slippers for sturdy hiking shoes, but otherwise was dressed more for the operating room in hospital scrubs with the Posadas Emergency Services badge on the left breast.
“Over there?” he asked, pointing at the marked route down through the jumble of boulders.
“Yes. Let Lydia come up first.” Estelle touched Lydia’s elbow. “She’s provided a positive ID for us. Captain, she’ll be staying out where her vehicle is parked until we’re finished here. She’ll need some company.”
“Understood,” Jackie said, and moved to intercept Lydia Thompson as she made her way up through the rocks.
Chapter Eighteen
For a methodical fifteen minutes, Francis Guzman sorted through the scene of Kyle Thompson’s death without saying a word, and Estelle didn’t interrupt him. “Most likely four or five hours,” he said finally. “What time did you arrive?”
“Five thirty seven. Miller called it in right at four thirty.”
He glanced at his own watch, pushing in the little control button to light the dial. “And it’s going on seven thirty now. So.” He knelt once more while balancing carefully, then reached out to turn the victim’s head a little. “Linda?”
“Sir?”
“You have all the original position photos you need? We want to turn him over.”
“I have a plethora.”
“That’s always good.” Dr. Guzman moved the corpse’s left arm, now awkwardly stiff, so that it lay close to the torso. “Okay. Querida, you want to work his feet?” Together, they gently rolled Kyle Thompson onto his back. For a long moment, the physician stood silently, regarding the corpse, the evening shade of the rocks illuminated now in the twin arc lights whose cords ran down the boulders from the small generator on top. Then he knelt again, methodically examining the facial damage. He finally snapped the flashlight closed and stood up.
“He hit hard enough to cave in just about the most difficult part of the skull to damage,” he said. “Really, really hard.” His right hand went up to his own skull as if in sympathy. “No other wounds obvious. The lack of gravel or whatever crunched into the palms of his hands tells me that he led with his head, which is kinda strange. And no torn clothing, scuffed elbows or knees or broken skeletal bones that are obvious, so he didn’t just tumble down the rocks.” He turned and looked at Estelle. “Autopsy’s going to be interesting.”
An hour later, with the canyon’s light sinking into darkness and the arc lights dazzling harshly among the rocks and boulders, Estelle followed the gurney bearing Kyle Thompson’s body up the narrow trail to the ambulance parked immediately behind the Subaru. She spoke briefly to Deputy Luke Miller, then walked the hundred yards or so back to the county road.
Lydia Thompson sat on the tailgate sill of her Explorer, kept company by Captain Jackie Taber. The dome light of the vehicle haloed Lydia’s tousled blond hair, now out of its ponytail and hanging down on either side of her face.
“Let me give you some time alone,” Jackie said, and Estelle nodded her thanks.
“Lydia, your husband’s body will be taken to the hospital now. There will be an autopsy tomorrow. I don’t know exactly what time.” The young woman nodded dully without looking up, her hands working to compress a wad of facial tissue into a tiny ball. “Dr. Guzman believes that your husband died sometime early this afternoon, perhaps as early as noon.”
Lydia almost managed a weak laugh as she looked up at Estelle. “Is that what you call him at home? Dr. Guzman?”
“Only when I’m trying to get his attention.”
“And then he responds by calling you sheriff?”
“Never. It’s undersheriff, anyway. And yes, sometimes he calls me that.” She sat down on the door sill beside Lydia. For a long moment, long enough to earn the woman’s attention, Estelle regarded her silently.
“What?” Lydia Thompson asked.
“I’m curious about you, Mrs. Thompson.”
“There’s not a whole lot to know.”
“How did you meet your husband?”
“I met Kyle when we were both working for the New York State Police.”
“I see.” Estelle nodded at Lydia’s midriff. “And that?”
“That happened eight years ago near the little town of Avoca, New York.” She paused as if trying to decide whether or not to continue. She closed her eyes and puffed out her cheeks, then said, “A stupid quarrel between two neighbors over the location of a flower bed. Another trooper had responded twice to the incident before I joined him for the third visit. I’m sure you’ve had experience with family disputes.”
“Indeed.”
“In this case, a reality-challenged sixteen-year-old decided to engage. With a twenty-gauge shotgun loaded with double-ought. He got off three shots before the other officer put his lights out.” She put an index finger to her forehead between her eyes.
“And you with no vest?”
“Stupid, huh? A beautiful day in May…very much like this one. An argument over a bunch of begonias or whatever they were…” She shrugged deeply. “Anyway.”
“And your partner—the other officer—was…”
“Kyle.” She smiled painfully. “I had a crush on him already, and I guess it was mutual. And that day, he never let me go. Never left me for a minute. Not that afternoon, and not during the months of hell that he went through after the shooting.”
“I’d think he’d be treated as a hero.”
“Yeah, right. See, the thing was…” She blinked hard against tears. “The shotgun the kid was using was plugged for three rounds. So when Kyle fired, the kid was holding an empty gun.” She looked at Estelle and shrugged. “Even if he’d known, which he didn’t, what was he supposed to do, wait for the kid to reload? And he was a little shit, the kid was. About half Kyle’s size. He could have just grabbed the kid, tore the gun out of his hands, and punched his lights out.”
“But as you said, he wouldn’t have known the gun held only three.”
“Of course not. Anyway. Months of hell. By the time we left New York…” She held up both hands to form a bracket. “When we saw the ‘Welcome to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’ sign, with the Empire State sign in our rearview, we both cheered.”
“Why New Mexico?”
“An army buddy of Kyle’s lives in Albuquerque and got Kyle started. Turns out Kyle had a flare for real estate, for development. Utterly fearless.” She gestured at the dark prairie with both hands. “Loved all this.”
“Why did he come out here today?”
“Just to look. He wanted to prowl around some, play with ideas.”
“But you didn’t come with him.”
“I wish to God that I had.”
“Why didn’t you?”
For a moment, Lydia didn’t answer. Finally, she pushed herself off the tailgate sill and stood up. “You mean, where was I at 12:05 p.m., or whatever the time was when Kyle took his header?” Tears formed again, but she did nothing to wipe them away. “We took Mr. Waddell up on his offer, and I was taking a nap in that obscenely comfortable, dark room up at the NightZone hotel. My gut ached, but I think it was too much green chile for breakfast. I didn’t feel so much like hiking. Even as slowly as peg-legged Kyle would go.” She shook her head in misery. “So I wasn’t with him.”
Less Than a Moment Page 14