A Discount for Death pc-11

by Steven F Havill

  Another spasm shook Kiki’s shoulders, and Estelle waited silently, arm around the girl, until one of the EMTs appeared at the door. “We need a blanket,” she said. In another moment, Kiki Tafoya was wrapped snuggly, and Estelle backed off, giving the EMT room to work.

  “Let’s take a look,” she said. Bob Torrez had turned sideways in the office door, hands still in his pockets. Dr. Alan Perrone was writing quickly on a small aluminum clipboard, talking just as rapidly. Behind them, seated at his desk, was George Enriquez.

  “Single, large caliber gunshot wound to the head,” Perrone said without looking up from his writing. “My best ballpark guess is sometime yesterday. I’ll be able to narrow that down some for you, Estelle. For the moment, I’m finished here.” He tapped a period with his gold ballpoint and sighed. “I don’t think the young lady who found him is going to be in any shape to tell you much. At least not for a few hours.”

  “We’ll talk to her when we can,” Estelle said. Without stepping closer to the ornate wooden desk, she regarded Enriquez. The man was slumped back in his chair as if napping, head lolled to the right. The top of the chair back cushioned his head at the junction of spine and skull. His jaw hung slack.

  The single bullet had crashed into his skull through the thick, silver hair of his left sideburn, leaving a large corona of powder dappling that extended to the corner of his left eye.

  “The bullet is in the wall over there,” Torrez said. He extended an arm past Estelle’s shoulder, pointing. “It hit the edge of the bookcase, punched through the side support, and then smacked into the wall. It didn’t go through.”

  Estelle nodded and moved around the desk.

  “A thorough job,” the sheriff observed. The single bullet had passed obliquely through the victim’s skull, exiting along with a large chunk of skull from behind the right ear. “The weapon is under his chair.”

  Enriquez’s body rested like a sandbag in the modern fabric-and-fiberglass swivel chair. His left arm hung straight down, index finger extended as if he’d been pointing at the large revolver that lay between two of the swivel chair’s five black legs. His left shoe rested flat on the clear plastic carpet protector under the chair, and his right leg was extended under the desk.

  “It’s supposed to be a pretty standard picture,” Torrez said, and Estelle looked up at him quickly. He didn’t elaborate but let the remark pass with a shrug.

  Kneeling carefully on the carpet an arm’s length from the corpse, Estelle looked at the revolver. Its satin stainless-steel finish was flecked here and there with gore, but she could easily read the legend on the right side of the barrel.

  “What do we know about this?” Estelle asked, not because anyone had had the time to run the weapon through NCIC or put it under the microscope but because Bob Torrez’s consuming personal interest in firearms made it likely that the sheriff had already reached some conclusions.

  “Smith and Wesson Model 657,” he said. “Stainless, forty-one mag, and the grips probably didn’t come with the gun.” Estelle looked at the grips and frowned. “The stainless usually comes with soft, black rubber grips,” Torrez said. “Those wood ones are the standard issue on older models of blued guns. Some folks like the looks better, with the fancy grain and all. The wood is goncalvo alves, I think.”

  Using her pen, Estelle reached out and moved Enriquez’s hand slightly, looking at the palm for a long moment.

  “I didn’t see any, either,” Torrez said. “Neither did doc.”

  George Enriquez’s hands were soft and well manicured, not the work-hardened, calloused hands of a laborer. The undersheriff looked back and forth, from hand to revolver. Estelle could imagine that the big magnum was a challenge to fire one-handed in any case, requiring a firm grip. Someone about to unleash that tremendous, shattering power against his own skull would have held the gun so hard his knuckles would have been white and trembling. The resultant recoil would have pounded the sharp checkering of the hardwood grips into the palm of the victim’s hand, leaving characteristic marks.

  “That’s a puzzle,” Estelle murmured. She stood up and stepped back from Enriquez’s chair. “I’m surprised that the revolver would land there.”

  “You ain’t the only one,” Torrez said. “Recoil’s going to bust it back. If he had a death grip on it, maybe it stayed in his hand and then just kind of fell on the floor under the chair, there.” He grimaced. “Not likely.” He knelt, balancing on the balls of his feet. “If he had a death grip on it, then relaxed…” he glanced back up at Estelle, “I’d expect to see the weapon directly under his fingers, wouldn’t you?”

  “Probably.”

  “But it’s not under his fingers. It’s a good foot away from his hand, in a direction that would have taken some effort to accomplish.” He stood back up with a creak of leather.

  “No signs of forced entry, though?”

  “None.”

  “And no struggle.”

  “Nothing that’s turned up yet.”

  “And he had plenty of reason,” Estelle said.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. If he was the suicidal type, I’d say yes. But we don’t know that he was. Folks face a grand jury probe all the time without offing themselves.”

  “Did you already send someone over to notify Connie?”

  Torrez nodded. “Taber picked up Father Anselmo and swung by. Nobody’s interviewed the woman yet.” He looked expectantly at Estelle.

  “I’ll break away from here in a few minutes and see what she has to say.”

  “Best of luck,” the sheriff said, then followed her gaze to the far wall where the small bullet hole pocked the textured plaster. “You’re thinking that you’d like to make sure the bullet we dig out of that wall comes close to matching this revolver?”

  Estelle shrugged and smiled at the sheriff. “It’s just a small detail.”

  Torrez grinned. “Oh, si.”

  Chapter Twelve

  In another hour, Estelle was convinced that George Enriquez’s office was not going to offer any easy answers. Photographed, scrutinized, measured, and probed, the insurance agent’s body was finally released to the EMTs. Dr. Alan Perrone nodded curtly as the gurney was wheeled out the door.

  “I’ll let you know,” the medical examiner said. “There are some interesting questions here.” He glanced back at the gore-draped chair, empty behind the spattered desk, as if he’d forgotten something. For a moment he watched as Linda Real maneuvered for a close-up series of the blood and gore spatters across the top of the chair, then turned to watch preparations for the excavation of the bullet lodged in the wall. “Let me know about that, too,” he said. He nodded once again at Estelle and left, black bag in hand.

  Working meticulously under the watchful eye of Linda Real’s videotape camera, Sheriff Robert Torrez and Chief Eddie Mitchell spent twenty minutes extracting the mushroomed revolver slug, first carving an impressive hole in the plaster and Sheetrock to give them room to work.

  “If we’re lucky, we won’t end up out in the alley,” Mitchell muttered as he nudged the chards of Sheetrock into a neat pile near the baseboard.

  “Nah,” Torrez said. “It’s right here.” The victim’s skull had slowed the bullet sufficiently that the wall stud and a section of electrical wiring had finished the job. With the tip of his heavy pocket knife’s blade, Torrez worked around the wiring, removing splinters of the wall stud until the deformed bullet could be nudged gently from its resting place without further damaging the soft lead. As Torrez dropped the slug into an evidence bag, he mouthed something that Estelle couldn’t hear.

  The undersheriff raised an eyebrow. “No surprises?”

  “I don’t think so,” Torrez replied. “Half-jacketed lead bullet…same general kind that’s loaded in factory ammo.” He held the bag up to the light. “And it’s forty-one.”

  “Old micrometer eyes,” Mitchell said dryly, but he didn’t challenge Torrez’s assessment.

  “That’s not the most common cartridge in
the world,” Estelle said.

  “Far from it,” the sheriff said. “This one’s clean enough that we can do a comparison inmediamente.” He slipped the evidence bag into his briefcase and paused for a moment, regarding the bagged and labeled weapon. “We want to know whose forty-one that is,” he said. “Connie might know something about it. At least that’s a place to start. I’ll get Mears on the weapon right away. We’ll see what he comes up with.”

  Estelle caught motion in the corner of her eye and turned to see Daniel Schroeder standing in the office doorway. He regarded the chair and desk, his nose wrinkling from the mingled smells. “Wonderful,” the district attorney muttered. “What a goddamn stupid thing to do.” He looked at Estelle. “Frank Dayan is waiting outside when you get a chance, by the way.”

  “He’ll be happy that this is a Tuesday,” Chief Mitchell said.

  “Hold the presses,” Linda quipped.

  “He needs to talk with the sheriff,” Estelle said, knowing full well what Bob Torrez’s reaction would be.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Torrez said promptly. “He asked for you ’cause he knows better.”

  As Estelle made her way around the desk and toward the door, the district attorney reached out a hand to touch her on the elbow. “I need to talk with you for a few minutes before you take off.” He smiled. “Go ahead and talk to Frank while these guys bring me up to speed on what happened here. I’ll catch up outside.”

  The newspaper publisher was leaning against the fender of Dennis Collins’ patrol unit, his hip pushing against the yellow tape. A black Posadas State Bank baseball cap was pulled low to keep the sun out of his eyes. An impressive digital camera hung from his left shoulder, a constant companion whether he was roaming about town selling advertising, attending a Rotary Club meeting, or as now, doing the leg work that his plump, lethargic editor should have been doing.

  Estelle knew that the camera amused Linda Real. Now if only Frank would learn how to use it, she was apt to say. Since Linda had left the newspaper four years before, the photos in the Posadas Register tended toward fuzzy on the best of days, and the switch to digital cameras hadn’t helped. But, as Dayan himself had once happily observed, “Our photos may be bad, but at least there are a lot of them.”

  “Hello, Frank,” Estelle said. Deputy Collins pushed himself away from his comfortable spot against the wall and touched his Stetson just a shade lower toward the bridge of his nose. Across the street, several “lookie-louies” had gathered, hoping for a glimpse of the corpse.

  “Estelle, what in heck is going on?” Dayan stepped away from the deputy’s car and extended his hand. He pumped Estelle’s with a quick, excited shake, then jerked his head toward Deputy Collins. “This one here is just as tight-lipped as the big guy.” Being compared with Sheriff Torrez put another steel support in the young deputy’s spine.

  “We have an unattended death, Frank. That’s all I can tell you.”

  The newspaper publisher glanced up at the hanging sign over his head as if the name on it might have somehow changed since he last looked. “George?”

  Estelle nodded.

  “My God. What, this morning sometime?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Grand jury was supposed to convene this morning, wasn’t it?”

  Estelle let a nod suffice.

  “He had a heart attack, or what? Is this related to the jury thing, do you think?”

  Estelle hesitated just long enough for the newspaper publisher to notice. “This is one of those times when ‘investigation is continuing’ works pretty well, Frank.”

  “Oh, please,” Dayan protested with a roll of his eyes. “Now you sound like Bill Gastner.”

  “Cheer up. It’s only Tuesday.” He looked pained, but the expression on Estelle’s dark, sober face held no hint of sarcasm. The undersheriff knew that the Register ’s inexorable decline from a prospering daily during the heyday of the copper mines to a biweekly and then finally to a single edition on Thursday was a sore point with Dayan. He answered to out-of-state owners who had been trying to sell the newspaper since the previous spring.

  “You gotta give me a little more than that. Give me something to work with.”

  “How about everything I know at the moment,” Estelle said.

  “I’ll settle for that.”

  “It appears that George, spelled the usual way, Enriquez, spelled with a ‘z,’ sustained a single gunshot wound to the head.” She stopped and regarded Dayan patiently.

  “That’s it? You mean he shot himself?”

  “He sustained a single gunshot wound to the head.”

  “Come on. Was it suicide, or what?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “And you said ‘sustained,’ ” Dayan added. “Is the gunshot what killed him?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “Did he pull the trigger?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “They’re going to put that on your tombstone,” Dayan said, and Deputy Collins laughed. “Was the weapon his?” Dayan persisted, then saw the hint of a smile cross Estelle’s face. He held up a hand to fend off the inevitable. “All right. You don’t need to say it.”

  Daniel Schroeder appeared at Estelle’s elbow. “Got a few minutes?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said and smiled sympathetically at Frank Dayan. “Excuse me,” she said. “I’ll have more for you later in the day.”

  “I’ll give you a call this evening,” Dayan countered quickly. “Or maybe first thing in the morning.” He switched his attention to the district attorney. “Today was the first day of grand jury, was it not?” he asked.

  “Sure enough, Frank,” Schroeder replied.

  “Those proceedings will be interrupted now?”

  “Uh, yes,” Schroeder said, frowning as if to add and that’s a really stupid question.

  Dayan nodded and turned back to Estelle. “I understand that no charges have been filed yet against Perry Kenderman, by the way. Is that correct?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Are they going to be?” He looked at Schroeder, but the district attorney was content to let Estelle field the question.

  “I’ll let you know, Frank. Give us a chance to sort things out.”

  “Does that mean they might be? Dan, is your office considering filing charges? I talked with Maggie Archer this morning, and she said that Kenderman’s patrol car was right on top of the bike, practically. No lights, no siren, no nothing.”

  Dan Schroeder smiled pleasantly. “Before you run with that, Frank, remember what screwy versions of events we sometimes have to work with when we talk to witnesses.”

  “Mrs. Archer is wrong?” Dayan asked, and Estelle saw a flash of irritation on the district attorney’s face.

  “We’d appreciate it if you’d wait a bit until we get things straightened out,” he said.

  “You go to press tomorrow afternoon, right?” Estelle asked, and Dayan nodded. “I’ll keep you posted,” she added.

  “That’s a deal. Can I go inside, or…”

  “No, sir, you can’t. But if you wait here, you’ll catch the sheriff when he comes out.”

  “Oh, that’s a help,” Dayan said.

  Dan Schroeder fell in step with Estelle as she walked back toward her car. When they were well beyond Frank Dayan’s earshot, the district attorney said quietly, “I’m going to file against Kenderman, by the way.”

  “I guess I’m not surprised,” Estelle said. She reached the car and paused with her hand on the door. Schroeder’s late-model SUV was parked directly in front of hers.

  “I talked with both Bobby and the chief last night, and they haven’t changed their minds this morning. I’d be interested in your thoughts,” he said.

  Estelle regarded the juncture of car door and roof, running her finger along the seam. “We have no way of ever knowing if Colette Parker would have crashed at that corner if Kenderman hadn’t been in pursuit,” she said finally.

  “T
hat’s not the issue,” Schroeder said. “He was in pursuit. That’s an established fact. And with no lights, no siren-hell, it was just a drag race. You heard the whole sorry episode.”

  “Yes, sir, I did.”

  “I can’t think of a better definition of reckless endangerment,” Schroeder said.

  Estelle’s gaze drifted off to the car dealer’s parking lot next door. The bright sea of metal and plastic and the gaggle of curious faces didn’t register. Instead, she saw Colette Parker’s small, delicate face framed by the scarred motorcycle helmet. “Charges of reckless endangerment and vehicular homicide would be appropriate,” she said finally.

  Schroeder nodded with satisfaction. “In a way, I feel sorry for the guy,” he said. “I don’t know what he thought he’d accomplish, but whatever it was, it sure went to shit.”

  “I feel a little uneasy about his state of mind right now,” Estelle said.

  “That’s interesting.” Schroeder’s eyes narrowed. “Because he’s not in custody yet, is he.”

  “No, sir.”

  “You have plenty to hold him on, you know,” Schroeder said. “You don’t have to wait for me.”

  “I understand that, sir. We’re a little bit tied up just now. He’s not going anywhere.” She glanced again toward the car dealer’s lot. Each of those faces represented a pending interview in the search to find someone who had heard or seen something related to Enriquez’s death.

  “I can understand you giving him the benefit of the doubt, I suppose. But there’s not much doubt anymore, is there.”

  “No, sir.”

  “You said you felt ‘uneasy’ about him. You saw him this morning?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He’s got to know that charges are pending. He’s no rocket scientist, but the formula here is pretty simple. Don’t let it go too long before you guys move on it.”

  “I’m sure he knows. He’s a cop, after all.”

  Schroeder coughed. “Was a cop.”