Lies Come Easy

by Steven F Havill

  “That’s tender?”

  “A little.”

  “This,” and his fingers traced the eighth rib with a butterfly’s touch, “is where the bullet shattered the rib upon exit. So about an inch of rib and associated cartilage was just blown away. And that’s not taking into account all the damage surgeons inflicted tackling the repair job. Does it make you uneasy to talk about this?”

  “I like hearing you talk, Oso.”

  “Ease over onto your tummy now.”

  He examined her back, where the major scar curved around to the margin of her shoulder blade. “The first goal in surgery like this is to stop the bleeding, querida. That one little slug did a lot of damage on the way through, and the repair job is going to be just about as bad, with all those hands rummaging around inside your chest, snipping and stitching and sponging.”

  “Rummaging.”

  “Yes, rummaging. So after all of that, healing takes time when there’s so much damage. It’s been what…going on eight years or more since you were hurt? I know that seems like long enough, but obviously it’s not. Patience is the answer. Painkillers are most definitely not the answer. Maybe a little arnica gel. Lots of long, slow hot showers. Lots of sleep. Lots of very careful exercises. The ideal therapy for all this might be a nice heated swimming pool. Maybe one of those long, narrow pools for lap swimmers.”

  Estelle murmured something that might have been a “yes,” but the urge to slip deep into slumber as those warm hands worked was overpowering.

  “All that lattice-work of muscles had to mend. Bone and cartilage had to grow. The nerves have to settle down. As long ago as they were, I’m sure you remember all the physical therapy sessions.”

  “Ugg.”

  “Yep, but you did good, querida. The ribs have to mend, grow new bone. And just about the slowest to repair are the intercostal connections—muscles, ligaments, cartilage. All of that can ache and hurt and twang for centuries, it sometimes seems. It’s entirely possible that when you celebrate your eightieth birthday, you’ll still have some occasional discomfort. You can’t be hurt as badly as you were and not pay the piper on down the road.” He stroked her sides, then worked down the muscles of her back.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard of folks who blow out a knee, and forever afterward, that knee acts as a weather forecaster. Or they cut off a finger, and forever after, they claim they can still feel the amputated digit?”

  “Ummph.”

  “Exactly. Rest works wonders, querida, along with careful therapy to build strength and flexibility. Sitting for hours scrunched up in a patrol car is just about the worst thing you can do. Or sedentary at your desk. Not the worst, of course. Breaking up bar fights, like you and Jackie Taber had to do last month? That’s probably the worst.”

  Estelle lifted her head out of the pillow. “The two guys going at it laughed and gave up when we walked in, Oso. There was nothing we had to do other than put on the cuffs.” She turned slightly to look at him. “And they both held out their wrists for us. ‘Please, take me!’ the one guy says.”

  He patted her bottom. “Roll over on your back, tough guy.”

  She did so.

  “When you take a deep breath, where does it ache?”

  “Right where your hand is.”

  He stroked upward along the scar. “Nowhere else?”

  “No.”

  “Does the pain make you cough?”

  “No.”

  “Still got an appetite?”

  “Too much of one.”

  He stroked her flat, muscular belly. “I can see that. Look at all that blubber. Hurts to twist, though?”

  “Sometimes. Not always. It’s always unexpected.”

  “Intercostal neuralgia is a persistent little demon.” He bent over and kissed the hollow of her neck. With the toes of her right foot, she caught the hem of his robe and tugged.

  “You keep this up, and you know where we’re headed, Oso.”

  “I sincerely hope so, if we can figure out a way not to strain all those battered and bruised muscles any more than they already are.” He sat up, perched on the edge of the bed. “The kids are really coming in tomorrow?”

  “That’s what Francisco promises.”

  He looked at her with frank admiration, tinged with a physician’s interest in her collection of scars. Then he leaned across and pulled her robe closer so she could reach it if she wanted to. “One little pink track doesn’t make you any less of a gorgeous woman, querida.”

  “We won’t have much privacy once the hordes descend.”

  “Nope.”

  “So we’d better get a head start.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Unsure whether it was the phone or the tire hiss of a passing car, she awakened only once during the early pre-dawn hours. For a long time she lay quietly, enjoying the closeness of her husband’s warm body, trying to focus only on that, her thoughts enriched by the impending arrival of her two children on this Christmas Eve. But the bloody images of the mobile home down in Regál intruded.

  The three-inch numerals on the bedside clock announced 4:45. The first hints of dawn were still an hour away from tracing the edges of the horizon. Regál, shielded by the craggy rise of the San Cristóbals and the crown of scrub and remnant timber, wouldn’t see the sun for another four hours or more. She could picture, in her mind’s eye, the tiny community that hugged the border, the way the sun would touch each house in turn when it finally broke over the mountain crest in mid-morning.

  Connie Suarez’ trailer would be among the last to feel the morning sunshine, huddled in the shade of the boulder slide until nearly eleven o’clock. It would be after that before the sun ever touched the black water tank up at the spring behind the village.

  Reality turned effortlessly into a dream world as she drifted off. From an impossible vantage point on the highway over the pass, she watched as four youngsters pushed the black water tank off its base and sent it tumbling down the hill like an enormous beach ball, bouncing wildly from boulder to boulder, spewing water in great geysers. That dream morphed into a kaleidoscope of silly images, until a final episode featured her elder son, Francisco, explaining how his U.S. Army vintage WC-52 was such a good buy for “only thirty-two thousand dollars.”

  Estelle awoke with a start. This time, it was for sure the telephone that intruded. The clock read 8:05, and then she heard her husband’s quiet voice out in the kitchen.

  “Let me see,” he said.

  She heard his feet padding on the hardwood floor and he appeared in the bedroom doorway.

  “I’m up,” she said.

  “It’s the high sheriff, and he sounds impatient.”

  “Bobby is always impatient, Oso.” She reached out for the bedside extension.

  “I’m making a therapeutic breakfast, so don’t be heading off anywhere until you’ve eaten, querida.”

  She smiled at him, and picked up the phone.

  “Good morning, Roberto.”

  “Hey,” Torrez said. “You need wheels?”

  Estelle pulled the east curtains to one side and flinched against the blast of sunshine. “I don’t think so, Bobby. Unless we’re headed off into the boonies somewhere.”

  “We got to get rid of that unit,” the sheriff grumbled, referring to the Charger that preferred pavement to two-tracks. “Anyway, Sutherland and Taber need us ASAP down south. You free?”

  I can’t. The kids are coming today, she wanted to say, but instead settled for, “Yes. What’s the deal?”

  “Taber said she’d meet us at Betty’s place. Her and Brent were scouting around behind Suarez’ trailer and found some interesting stuff.”

  “Stuff? Like what?”

  “Well, blood, for one thing. They taped the area off. Taber called Linda back.”

  “All right. You’re headed down that way n
ow?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She hung up and two minutes later was out of the shower. A quick shake or two of the head put her hair in place, and she dressed in jeans, sweatshirt, and running shoes. The aroma from the kitchen was overpowering, and Francis slid a plate loaded with an omelet and slathered English muffins in front of her as she sat down.

  “Scarf that down,” he instructed. “Coffee this morning?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  “What’s Bobby got for us this fine Christmas Eve?” Francis plated his own omelet and joined her at the table. He reached across and gripped her shoulder gently, rocking her from side to side. “And where’s your vest?”

  “In the car. I’ll put it on when I go out, Oso.”

  “Out to where this morning?”

  “Jackie and Brent found a site somewhere near Contreras’ place in Regál this morning. Probably blood. Animal or human, we don’t know yet.”

  “Seems as if there’s been enough human blood spread around to last us quite a while,” Francis said. “Alan asked if I’d stop in today to consult on a couple of autopsies he’s got going.”

  “Maybe suicides, maybe not,” Estelle said. “We’d like your opinion on them.”

  “This bit this morning…related somehow?”

  “I’m not much of a believer in coincidence, Oso.” She touched her napkin to her nose. The green chile was piquant and the bacon crisp and finely diced. “This is perfect,” she said.

  His large, furry face took on his best serious physician’s expression. “Carlos instructed me a couple of years ago on how an omelet should be done properly.”

  “He’ll probably start baking something wonderful two minutes after he walks through the door.”

  “If he waits that long.”

  She tackled the rest of the omelet and stood up, the second half of the muffin in hand. He reached out and locked one large hand around her wrist.

  “Aches and pains this morning?”

  She moved sideways so that she could lean against him. “Much better, Oso. With you away, with the kids away, the house was a little quieter than I would have liked. I was glad to be rescued by Padrino, even if it was in the middle of the night.” She looked down at him. “And now all is well. You’re here, and they’re on their way.”

  He released her wrist and stroked her under the chin. “Vest, querida.”

  “Yes, yes, yes.” She kissed him hard, and the urge was powerful to simply sink into his lap and let things progress as they might.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  A large flatbed trailer towed behind a pickup truck had pulled into the church parking lot, and Estelle counted six people gathered around it, all working methodically to scoop sand into brown paper bags and then nestle short votive candles inside. The luminarias would line the highway approaching the Iglesia, mark the parking lot itself and the front steps of the church. Lit just at sundown, they would light the way during Christmas Eve services.

  The faces of the six workers were grim. As she approached, Estelle lowered the driver’s side window and slowed to a walk. Betty Contreras looked up, said something to a coworker, and brushed off her hands as she approached Estelle’s car.

  “Nobody has much heart in it,” she said. A tidy lady, maybe an inch or two over five feet, she had taught elementary school for years in Posadas, making the daily drive over the pass. Regál hadn’t censused sufficient children for an elementary school in years, and no children had joined the adults to prepare the Christmas luminarias.

  With both hands, Betty adjusted the large bun of steel-gray hair on her head.

  “Sad, sad day. You know,” and she looked hard at Estelle, “that Connie was a teacher’s aide in three of our classrooms.”

  “She will be sorely missed, Betty.”

  “And one on top of the other. I feel so sorry for Penny Fisher and the little boy.” She leaned closer. “I don’t tell many people what I really think, of course.”

  “What do you really think?”

  “For Darrell Fisher—and I knew him really well, you know, from the time he was in my second grade classroom—suicide is such a cowardly, thoughtless thing to do. Such a weak thing to do, Estelle.” She patted the windowsill of the Charger. “Sure, sure, I know that things hadn’t been going his way recently, but to choose to leave his wife and little boy like that? Cowardly, is what I call it.”

  “Have you had the chance to talk with Al or Maria?”

  She grimaced. “Just to say ‘I’m sorry.’ I had Al in class, too, you know.” She grimaced again. “I’ve taught just forever, haven’t I? I’m planning to retire in two more years…and there I go with fifty-one years in the classroom. And I’ll tell you, I’d rather have a dozen Al Fishers in my classroom than another Darrell, let me tell you. Al was all full of piss and vinegar, and I could never be sure what tall tale he was going to tell me next.” She nodded with satisfaction. “That’s the way a kid should be, as far as I’m concerned. Now, Darrell—he was like trying to teach one of those bags of sand over there. Mopey most of the time. Down in the dumps. Just unpleasant to be around.

  “I thought that maybe, when he married that fireball Penny Dooley, that she’d wake him up.” She leaned close again. “I had her in second grade, too, you know.”

  She pensively dusted her hands off again. “So sad, huh?”

  “Very,” Estelle said.

  “I saw the sheriff and some other traffic just a bit ago. They’re up on the hill, I think. And let me tell you what I think. There is no way, no way on God’s green Earth, that Connie Suarez would shoot herself. No way.”

  Estelle regarded Betty Contreras with curiosity. “Where are you on the grapevine, Betty?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who told you that Connie shot herself?”

  “Oh, well,” and she didn’t look the least bit uncomfortable at the question. “From where we were standing last night, over near where that group of troopers was waiting for something to do, we could hear their comments. And Lupe Gabaldon heard them, too. So, no mystery. I mean, everyone in town knows. That’s what I told your lieutenant. That Jackie Taber, what a delightful young lady she is.”

  “Yes, she is. And by the way, have you seen Myron Fitzwater around lately?”

  “Oh, now don’t go blaming him for anything. Such a nice young man. I don’t think there is a square inch of these mountains that he and Connie haven’t hiked. I mean, I’d see them coming down off the rocks, laughing and carrying on.” She lowered her voice again. “Sound carries, you know. Well, of course you would know.” She reached in and patted Estelle’s left shoulder.

  “You never heard him…or them…arguing with anyone? Talking with anyone? Hiking with company?”

  “Well, everybody knows everybody, and you know…neighborhood chitchat is a way of life in a little town like this. So, sure…Myron would stop and talk with Lupe Gabaldon. Now what about, I don’t know. And they both, I mean Myron and Connie, liked to visit with the Apodacas. Maybe they liked his wine.”

  “So Myron was something of a regular around here?”

  “That’s fair to say. In fact, you know the last time I saw him, I mean other than when his truck was at Connie’s, was when he was up on the pass, stopped and talking with one of the state troopers. I think one of the hunting seasons was going on. I remember that Myron had a big pair of binoculars slung around his neck. I guess that’s not so strange, but I don’t know for sure what he did for the Forest Service.”

  “Do you recall which trooper?”

  Betty shook her head. “I don’t know him. Great big fellow. He was leaning against his SUV and made it look like a sports car, he’s so big.”

  “That would be Charlie Austin. When was this, do you remember?”

  Betty frowned. “This is an official question, isn’
t it?” When Estelle nodded, she added, “So I can’t just make something up that sounds good.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t, Betty.”

  The woman took a deep breath and stared up into the heavens. “It was after Thanksgiving, I remember that. I couldn’t tell you why I remember that, but it seems reasonable. Sometime in early December, is my best shot.”

  “All right. So not just in the past day or two.”

  “Oh…no. Not that recently.”

  “At any time in recent history...” Estelle began, and then stopped when her cell phone concertized. “Guzman.”

  “You comin’ up?”

  She glanced toward the flank of the mountain, even though it would be impossible to actually see Bob Torrez as more than a dot, even if he were perched on a boulder.

  “Directly,” she said. Torrez switched off without additional comment.

  “So, all the times you’ve seen Myron Fitzwater around the village, was he wearing a gun? A handgun?” She ducked her head to look at the workers at the luminarias trailer. “And this is just between you and me.”

  “You don’t think that he…do you think that there’s a possibility of that?”

  “Of what, Betty?”

  “That he might have…”

  Estelle smiled at the woman. “I bet you didn’t allow sentence fragments from your students.”

  “From second-graders, I’d take anything. But listen. Most of the time, when I saw Myron out of his truck…which wasn’t all that often, I have to say…he was wearing a handgun.” She pulled both hands across her waist. “On one of those wide belts that all you folks wear. Handgun, and once I saw a pair of handcuffs.” She looked hard at Estelle again. “But he would, after all, wouldn’t he?”

  “When you saw him with Trooper Austin up on the pass—was he wearing a handgun then?”

  “I honestly didn’t notice, Estelle.” She reached out a hand and touched the undersheriff on the shoulder. “Have you been able to talk with Myron?”