“So, how’s the painting going?” Francis said. He grinned at me and when he saw the expression on my face he added, “Estelle was telling me that’s how you were working out your frustrations.”
“Maybe that’s what it was, I don’t know,” I said. I looked at my plate and realized that, despite my best intentions, I wasn’t the least bit hungry. I toyed with the food and then spent four times as long as necessary preparing my iced tea with sugar and lemon juice. While Estelle and Francis chatted about this and that and periodically played referee between the kid and his food, I found my mind wandering.
I had enjoyed probably half a thousand meals at this table over the years, and the Guzman home was an adult version of a safe haven for me when I got too disgruntled at the world and the people in it. But that night, it was as if my mind were somewhere else, trying to pick its way through a fog.
“We won’t have the full blood run-up back for another forty-eight hours or so, but I think it’s interesting,” Francis said, and with a start I realized that I had drifted back into hearing range.
“Sir?” Estelle prompted.
“What’s interesting?” I asked. “Sorry. I was wandering.”
“Francis was saying that the preliminary autopsy showed Maria Ibarra had virtually nothing in her stomach other than the equivalent of about a quarter slice of pizza.”
“Really?”
She nodded, and I was aware that Francis was gazing at me, his dark eyes doing their quiet doctor-patient number.
“She was famished then,” I said. “She went after the food too fast.” I grinned. “Great dinner table conversation.”
But with some relief, I focused on Maria’s last meal as I laid my fork across my plate, most of the food untouched. With my elbows on either side of the plate and my chin resting on laced fingers, I squinted at Estelle.
“Maria Ibarra couldn’t have afforded half a slice of pizza, let alone anything else. So she was with someone who picked up the tab,” I said. “We know that much.” I pushed myself away from the table and leaned back in the chair. “If she was with kids, what are the odds that it was packaged pizza? The kind you buy in the grocery store?”
“Zero,” Estelle said. “That time of night? Kids cruising the village? They’re not going to go home and eat microwave pizza.”
“Maybe not.”
“And not pizza with fresh jalapeños,” Francis said.
I turned and grinned at him. “This is getting even better, this conversation. But it gives us a place to start. How many places in Posadas sell fresh pizza? Two?”
“Three, if you count Portillo’s Handy-Way.”
“And that’s just miked packaged stuff,” I said. “It shouldn’t be hard to track down who sold the pizza…and if we have any luck at all, the counter help will remember who came in and who didn’t. It’s not that big a town.”
“If you can get people to talk,” Francis said.
“At the moment, that doesn’t matter,” I replied. “Remember what it’s like to be a teenager? If we find a single kid who remembers seeing Maria last night, even just one, that kid will remember who Maria was with. And a teenager with an adult? That, they’ll really remember.”
I reached out and stabbed the piece of chicken that I’d been pushing around my plate while my mind was off in the blue. The chicken was tender and spicy, and when that piece was gone I went searching for another. It looked like the others had finished their dinner, so I had some catching up to do. Both Francis and Estelle seemed perfectly willing to keep me company.
15
While the others waited, I finished a dinner fit for a condemned man, and then spent time over coffee, hashing out a battle plan with Estelle. Francis Guzman even spent the better part of ten minutes with us before adjourning to the living room to play with his son. That ten minutes was something of a record for him.
The battle plan should have been simple enough. My brain was clear, the paths of action seemed limited to a handful. The first order of business was to find out who had kept Maria Ibarra company the evening of her death.
What I hoped, of course, was that we’d visit Jan’s Pizza Parlor on Bustos and Second, or maybe the Pizza World over on North Fifth, and find out that Maria had been seen with person X, and then we’d go arrest the son of a bitch for failure to report a death. That’s not what happened.
The Guzmans’ nanny, Irma Sedillos, she of the chililess baked chicken recipe, showed up at the house around eight that evening for the night shift. The kid seemed perfectly attuned to his parents’ bizarre life, accepting their sudden comings and goings with complete aplomb. He obviously loved Irma and accepted her as a third parent-probably because she was noisier than he was.
“I can’t watch,” Estelle muttered as she closed the door on the kitchen. Neither could Francis. The good doctor had locked himself in his study, nose deep in a stack of medical journals. Irma and the kid were about to do the dishes. I didn’t bother to ask what kind of team the two of them would make. Irma had to be capable of some magic, though, since the two of them had done dishes many times before and the Guzmans didn’t yet eat off paper plates.
After a third cup of coffee, I worked up enough gumption to move out of my chair. We decided to hit Jan’s Pizza Parlor first, for no good reason other than that it was the more popular of the two nightspots. With an out-of-town game, business would be slow. There was no reason for this game to be any different from other contests. The cavalcade of cars and trucks that traditionally followed the Posadas Jaguars’ game bus out of town would have been long and vocal. The ruckus in the local eateries would start about midnight, when everyone returned.
I drove the Blazer home to its garage with Estelle following in the patrol car. Even as I swung the heavy door down, I could hear a siren far in the distance. Estelle swung 310 into my driveway and I hustled over to the patrol car.
She started to step out. “Do you want to drive, sir?”
“Go ahead,” I said, and slid my bulk into the passenger side, simultaneously reaching for the radio’s volume knob. The damn thing was turned so low it was an unintelligible mumble and I frowned at Estelle. “Wonderful gadgets, these radios,” I said.
“It’s a pedestrian accident at the corner of Pershing and Bustos,” Estelle said. “Bob Torrez is coming in, but he’s about twelve miles west. The ambulance is already en route.”
“Where’s the P.D.?” I asked, but the radio answered my question.
“Posadas, P.D. will be ten-ninety-seven.” I could hear the excitement in Officer Thomas Pasquale’s voice, and his radio was picking up enough background noise that I could hear the wail of his patrol car’s engine as he flogged it down one of the village’s quiet streets.
“Ten-four, P.D.,” our dispatcher said, calm as ice. He didn’t ask Tom Pasquale where he was, or why he was predicting that he would arrive at the scene before he actually did. Ernie Wheeler took life as it came. Instead he added, “P.D., did you copy three-oh-eight?”
“Ten-four. I’m on North Twelfth. E.T.A. about a minute,” Pasquale said, and I wished that he would leave the damn radio alone and put both hands on the steering wheel.
I keyed the mike and told Posadas dispatch that we were responding as well. The ambulance had a block and a half to travel from the hospital to the reported accident site. If Officer Tom Pasquale was on North Twelfth, he had approximately half a mile to cover. We were three quarters of a mile south.
We flew through the same intersection where I’d run the red light earlier in the evening and immediately saw, one block west, the ambulance parked at the south curb of Bustos, near the sidewalk at the intersection of Bustos and Pershing. Two other vehicles were parked nearby, and a small crowd had gathered. Tom Pasquale’s village patrol car was nowhere in sight.
“Swing around and block eastbound,” I said needlessly. Estelle was already in the process, neatly shielding the accident scene from incoming traffic-including Officer Pasquale, if he ever showed up.
We pulled to a halt and beyond the crowd, fifty feet farther east and well across the intersection of Pershing, close to the curb, was what had once been a bicycle, crushed to junk. The street was strewn with debris. The light was not good, and I wouldn’t have immediately recognized the bicycle even if it hadn’t been reduced to scrap.
As I got out, one of the well-wishers shouted, “I think you got another accident down there!” He gestured toward the west. “We heard a hellacious crash, and the siren stopped.”
“Christ,” I said, and Estelle ducked back into the car to call dispatch. She’d take care of the radio, and Bob Torrez would be inbound in minutes. I turned my attention to the figure on the sidewalk.
Wesley Crocker grinned sheepishly as I knelt down. I had to brace one hand on the utility pole to steady myself.
He wasn’t bleeding from every orifice, no bones jutted grotesquely through torn clothing, and his limbs hadn’t been twisted or smashed into obscene angles. Still, even I could see that he was pale and shaky, despite his attempt at good cheer.
“What the hell happened to you?” I asked.
I moved to one side so that the ambulance attendant could work his magic. Crocker tried to push himself upright and grimaced, and Miller Martinez, the EMT, placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Stay put, sir. Let us do all the work.”
Crocker turned his head so he could see me. “I fell off my bike, good sir.”
“I can see that,” I said. “You must have been doing ninety miles an hour.” He grinned and then sighed as the two EMTs lifted him onto the gurney and strapped him in. “Did you see who hit you?”
He shook his head. “I surely didn’t. I never heard a thing.” He grinned. “I wasn’t paying all that much attention, either, I confess.”
I glanced over my shoulder, and then back at the bicycle. “Whoever it was came up behind you?”
“Yes, sir.”
I stood at the back door of the ambulance, and the EMT gave me a few more seconds.
“Did you see the vehicle?”
“No, sir.”
“Not even after it hit you?”
“Especially not then,” Wesley Crocker said, and managed a chuckle. “I was headed ass over teakettle.”
“Were you on your bike?”
“No. I was pushing it. I guess that’s what saved me. The bike was on the street side of me. I don’t think I would have been hurt much at all if I’d managed to miss that utility pole. That thing’s on the hard side, sir.”
“We need to go, Sheriff,” Miller said, and I nodded.
“Once more, though. Wesley, the vehicle came from the west, is that right? It came down Bustos from the west?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And it continued on down Bustos, or did it turn on Pershing here?”
“I couldn’t swear either way, sir, but if I was to guess, I’d say it went on down the main drag, there.”
I nodded. “We’ll catch up with you at the hospital. Don’t worry about any of your stuff.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about any of that, sir. I just don’t think I need to bother the folks at the hospital for a few bruises.”
“Sir…” I turned as Estelle touched my arm.
“What’s going on?”
“It looks like Tom Pasquale flipped his vehicle down the street. Right at the intersection of Twelfth and Bustos.”
“Oh, for God’s sakes.”
“Ernie Wheeler said the manager of the Don Juan just called. The patrol car is on its top right in the middle of the intersection. Chief Martinez just arrived, and Torrez will be there in a minute.”
“Is Pasquale hurt?”
“Apparently not, sir.”
“Then let’s get busy here. Let the chief call his own tow truck.”
I suppose I should have felt more solicitous, but I wasn’t in the mood. We cleared away oglers, and Eddie Mitchell arrived to help secure the area so we could see what the hell we had. Then I sent him out to look for a vehicle with a freshly crumpled fender.
We didn’t have much. The first clear tire scuff mark showed on the curb about thirty feet west of the corner of Bustos and Pershing. Whoever had been driving the vehicle let it climb the curb on the south side of Bustos, then ran along it for just a few feet, gathering up the bicycle and flinging Wesley Crocker against the utility pole.
The bike had gotten snarled up with the vehicle, which finally spat it out across the intersection.
I played my flashlight over the remains of the bicycle. “After all those miles, some jerk does this,” I muttered.
Estelle Reyes-Guzman unlimbered her camera. She knelt down and pointed with the tip of her pencil. “Lots of flat black paint on the bicycle, sir.”
“Yep,” I said. “Whoever did this is going to show some battle scars. Any other paint souvenirs that you can see?”
She played the light this way and that. “Lots of black. Some bright metal scrapes. We can go over it better down at the shop, with some decent light.” She handed me a small plastic object. “And we have this.”
It was the plastic trumpet portion of a deer whistler, those little gadgets that folks stick on their cars and trucks to warn deer out of their path. The thing was broken off at the base.
“Maybe,” I said. “Or from some other vehicle. Bag it.”
Fifteen minutes later, the street was clear and we were as finished as we would ever be.
I leaned against 310, my arms folded over my belly. “We still don’t know if it was intentional or not,” I said.
Estelle shrugged. “It could have been someone who just wasn’t paying attention. They panicked and ran.”
“Could have been,” I said.
“Do you want to drive down the street?” She indicated westward, and I remembered Tom Pasquale.
“I’m not sure I want to see it,” I said, then added, “and sure as hell, Pasquale doesn’t want to see me.” I looked at Estelle and grinned. “Let’s go see.”
16
Estelle and I had missed Officer Thomas Pasquale’s attempt at high-powered, wingless flight.
The Don Juan de Oñate restaurant, home of the best green chili burritos in the Southwest, occupied the northwest corner of the Bustos Avenue-Twelfth Street intersection. Just north of the restaurant is an arroyo and drainage ditch, and Twelfth Street crosses that deep, weed-choked arroyo by way of an old-fashioned metal bridge.
The bridge is nearly a foot higher than Twelfth Street before Twelfth ramps up on its southbound approach. When patrons of Don Juan’s were dining in the restaurant, they could hear the regular clatter as cars bounced from the asphalt of the street onto the old steel plates of the bridge. From the bridge, it was about a hundred feet to the intersection immediately beside the restaurant.
Fortunately no one else had been on the highway or in the crosswalk when Officer Thomas Pasquale experienced his magic moment. When it was over, we heard no call for an ambulance or the coroner, so we were reasonably sure Pasquale hadn’t suffered any more injury than a slam-dunked ego.
Estelle slowed the patrol car to a stop on the south side of the intersection and we surveyed the carnage. By that time, Deputy Tom Mears had set up a detour for both east- and westbound traffic. A few patrons of the Don Juan drifted toward the street corner to gawk, but there wasn’t much to see…just a trashed police car, on its roof in the middle of the street.
The skid marks and vehicular junk told me all I needed to know about how the car had come to turn turtle. My imagination had no trouble filling in the details.
Always competitive even in the dullest moments, Pasquale had been caught off guard by the dispatcher’s call. Maybe he’d been trying to grab a quick sandwich; maybe he’d been in the can reading a magazine. Whatever the scenario, he’d m
issed the call by a hairsbreadth. Back in the car, he heard the radio traffic and flew into action, trying to beat Sergeant Bob Torrez to the scene…which he could easily have done at a walk, since the sergeant was a dozen miles out of town.
Thomas Pasquale had blasted his patrol car onto the bridge with lights and siren ablaze and awail and his right foot pasted to the floor. No doubt he hoped for a scene right out of Hollywood’s best. What he got was something else.
I could picture the village’s patrol car, a somewhat long-of-tooth Chevy, launching just fine as it roared up onto the bridge, traveling who knows how fast. Unfortunately, Officer Pasquale had forgotten that automobiles aren’t motorcycles. There are no handlebars to haul back on so that the front wheels vault higher than the back for a graceful landing.
The old patrol car had taken the leap, nosed down, and crashed its worn chassis front-end-first on the hard pavement. Various parts gave up the ghost, the front wheels lost interest in working in unison, and after a couple of dramatic swerves that left black rubber cuts in the asphalt, the car tripped over itself and flipped.
I took a deep breath and shook my head. “Just remember,” I said to Estelle. “When you’re elected sheriff in a couple of weeks, reviewing Pasquale’s employment application is going to be one of your first jobs.”
“Sobering thought,” Estelle replied. “But it shouldn’t take long.”
Sergeant Bob Torrez was still working the intersection, tape measure in hand. He’d had nearly half an hour to take a few measurements, and he was making it last. It was probably the most fun he’d had in a long time.
Holding the dumb end of the tape was Posadas Chief of Police Eduardo Martinez. With him was a young state trooper whose patrol car was slotted into the patrons’ parking area of the Don Juan. If the trooper’s dinner was cooling, he didn’t seem to mind. He kept laughing about something. Chief Martinez wasn’t smiling.
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