“Round in the chamber?”
“Affirmative. One in the chamber, one in the magazine. Safety is off.”
“Linda, did you take photos that would show the position of that safety?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Howard, put the safety on. Otherwise, leave it alone. I’ll get someone to run up a large evidence bag. Don’t let anyone else near the thing.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So,” I said into the phone.
“I heard,” Torrez replied. “Walsh fired, Gutierrez didn’t.”
“Unless he had another weapon with him. He’d have a handgun, I’m sure.”
“Not a weapon of choice for up here, sir,” Torrez said.
“So why would Walsh lie?”
Torres hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe he saw Scott push Connie, and took a shot at him right then, without giving Scott time to react. That’s possible. And then he got to thinking…his actions would seem more justified if Scott had fired first.”
“Think on it,” I said. “I told Howard I’m sending up some evidence bags. Be really careful how you treat that rifle.”
“Oh, yeah,” Torrez replied. “I’ll be careful.”
A kid barely old enough to vote and wearing a Forest Service uniform shirt had picked his way down the hill and was headed toward his pickup, whether to find a smoke, or toilet paper, or just water, I didn’t know or care. I sent him back up the mountain with a supply of large black plastic evidence bags and tags, and then called Gayle Torrez.
“Gayle, call the medical center in Las Cruces for me. Tell Jackie Taber that I need to know the extent and nature of Connie French’s injuries the instant that information is available.”
“Yes, sir. I just got off the phone with them, and the Med-Evac’s ETA is about ten minutes.”
“All right. Make sure Jackie understands the urgency of this.”
“Yes, sir. You want extent and nature of injuries.”
“That’s it.”
“Any word on Scott Gutierrez yet?”
“Nothing. He’s evaporated. We’ve got fifty people on this mountainside, in broad daylight, and an aircraft circling overhead. We can’t find him. Not a damn trace.”
“Estelle stopped by for a few minutes a little bit ago. She asked if there was anything that she could do.”
“I wish,” I said. “There are certainly other places I’d rather be, I can tell you that. Have Jackie get right back to me the second she knows something.”
I tossed the phone on the hood of the Bronco and was reaching for the binoculars when I heard the shout, far over to the west. It was too far to recognize the voice or the words, but in an instant my radio brought confirmation.
“Sheriff, we’ve got him.”
Chapter Forty-eight
What kept Scott Gutierrez staggering west might have been as simple as the warmth of the sun on his back and the gentle downslope of the terrain as one fold blended into another. He might even have imagined that he was making his way downhill toward Borracho Springs.
More likely, he’d just moved. His instincts drove him to put distance between himself and the man with the rifle down below, and that’s what he had done-for 890 yards.
Deputy Thomas Pasquale found Gutierrez curled up in a tight ball, deep in a thicket of mountain mahogany. Each stem was about the diameter of a finger, tough and resilient. The young man had wedged his way into the thicket by feel, laid his head on his arm, and passed out. The brush provided a canopy, shielding him from view from the air.
I watched the rescue effort through binoculars, and quickly picked up Undersheriff Robert Torrez. He stood perfectly still just west of where the rifle had been found, and examined the route across to where Pasquale waved his arms. The EMTs had already started clambering their way toward the victim, moving as quickly as the rugged terrain would allow.
Torrez picked his way across, stopping frequently to readjust his route and peer at the ground. After a minute, I realized what he was doing. Ever the hunter, he was following what little sign Gutierrez had left behind-telltale spatters of blood that to a less trained eye simply blended with the earth or the lichen on the rock faces. Now that Gutierrez had been found, and emergency help was on the way, Torrez took his time, reconstructing the route.
The seventeen minutes that it took Al Langford and Judy Parnell to reach Scott Gutierrez after Tom Pasquale’s first triumphant shout seemed hours.
People converged on the spot from the east and from below, including another backboard raced up the mountain from the waiting ambulance. I waited patiently, watching. Eventually, my telephone chirped and I snatched it up eagerly.
“Yes?”
“Sir,” Robert Torrez said, “we’re bringing him down now. Al says he’s stable. He’s sedated pretty good.”
“He’ll have to be, for that trip,” I said. “Whoever is carrying that gurney better be surefooted.”
“They’re doin’ all right,” Torrez said.
“How is he?”
“I can’t tell, sir. It looks to me like the bullet came at him from the left, but it’s hard to tell. Took a chunk out of the bridge of his nose, and then did a tap dance over his right eye. Kind of a grazing shot. A quarter inch more and it would have blown his face off.”
I winced. “Just the one injury?”
“As near as I can tell, sir. That one’s sure enough, though. He wouldn’t have had a clue about where he was going.”
“He wasn’t conscious at all when Pasquale found him?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, be careful. Bring him down easy, Roberto.”
“You betcha.”
***
The last vehicle drove out of Borracho Springs at 11:05 that morning. Shortly before that, two of Scott Gutierrez’s supervising officers from the U.S. Border Patrol had arrived. They didn’t stay long.
They would have left a lot happier if I could have told them exactly what had happened, and been able to explain Gutierrez’s role in the whole affair. As it was, they lingered just long enough to satisfy themselves that it had been a family quarrel of some kind, and to receive a guarantee from me that as soon as we had details, they’d be among the first to know. Driving into Posadas and waiting at the hospital didn’t appear to be on their agenda, but that was their business.
Of more interest to me were events in Las Cruces. I had heard no word from Deputy Taber, and the deafening silence made me nervous.
Shortly after eleven-forty, I closed the door of my office for a few moments of peace and quiet, ignoring the lengthy list of return calls that Gayle Torrez had kindly organized for me. I had looked at all the notes, and then at her. “But Taber hasn’t checked in yet?”
“No word,” Gayle said. “I talked to her a few minutes ago, and Connie was still in surgery.”
“You have the number handy?”
“Sure.”
With that in hand, I retreated to my office. The young man who answered the phone in Las Cruces sounded polite and efficient, and it took him less than a minute to find Jackie Taber.
“Sir, Connie is still in surgery,” the deputy said. “The head injury is not real good news, I guess.”
“Nothing else so far?”
“No, sir. She’s been in surgery for almost three hours, and they haven’t looked up once.”
“If you get a chance, try to pry one of ’em loose long enough for a progress report. They found Scott, by the way. He’ll probably be okay. One bullet hit him a grazing shot across the face. He’d wandered about a half mile west of where we found Connie.”
“Was he able to tell you anything?”
“Not yet. So you stick close at that end, and we’ll see what we can find out up here.”
“Yes, sir.”
I hung up and leaned back in the chair, letting the old, soft leather upholstery cushion my sore joints. I was allowed no more than five seconds before the phone buzzed. I groped for it without opening my eyes. “Yes?”
I looked at my watch. I’d made some vague promise about lunch, but I couldn’t remember what it was. In any case, I had eight minutes to make up my mind.
“Put him on,” I said.
The phone clicked. “This is Tadd, Grandpa.”
“How was your morning?” I asked.
“Neato,” the kid said. “We messed around all morning, and I kinda lost track of time. I wanted to check with you about lunch, but I asked Mrs. Torrez not to bother you if you were awful busy.”
“I’m not.” I spread out the callback notes, scanning the names. They could all wait. “Are you guys ready to eat, then? Are the Guzmans there?”
“Sure thing. Well, Dr. Guzman isn’t. He’s over at the hospital, I think. I called to ask you if you wanted me to put something on the grill?”
I gathered the notes and tossed them to one side. “Save it for supper, Tadd. I’d hate to see you rush a masterpiece. Let’s grab a burrito at the Don Juan.”
Tadd laughed. He muffled the phone, but I heard his bellow anyway. “You owe me five bucks!” A voice in the background mumbled something that I couldn’t hear.
“Who was that?”
“My dad,” Tadd said. “I made a bet with him that you’d suggest that.”
“It’s terrible to be so predictable,” I said. “I tell you what. There are a number of odds and ends hanging right now. How about if you guys just meet me there rather than me driving over to the house? I’m heading out the door right now.”
“You got it, Grandpa.”
As I left the office, Gayle’s phone was ringing, and I paused as she answered it. “If it’s Jackie Taber, I’ll take it,” I said.
She nodded, listened for a few seconds, and shook her head, then she put her hand over the receiver. “It’s Leona Spears,” she mouthed, and her eyes twinkled as I raised the corner of my lip.
“Tell her highness that it’s all a right-wing conspiracy, and the election has been called off,” I said over my shoulder.
Chapter Forty-nine
I hadn’t been completely accurate, of course, when I told my grandson that there were just some “odds and ends” to wrap up. What we had was one man dead of a coronary, a young girl still under the surgeon’s knife after being pushed from a cliff, and her brother with his head nearly split open by a high-caliber rifle bullet. That was an impressive list, but one crucial element was missing: the why.
Until either Connie French or Scott Gutierrez could put together a coherent sentence, we were stymied. I had discarded James Walsh’s version. The ballistic evidence said that he was a liar, dying words or no.
As a first step, Robert Torrez was concentrating on Walsh’s background. The man had lied-even when he knew that he was having a heart attack. Of course, he didn’t know just that moment that he was about to die, but it takes some cold calculation to bring off tall tales when the old ticker is bouncing in your chest.
Walsh had said that Scott Gutierrez fired first, after pushing Connie off the rocks. The young man hadn’t fired first. In fact, he hadn’t fired a shot all morning.
The hunting rifles didn’t lie: Walsh’s.270 Winchester had been fired at least three times: Sergeant Bishop had found two empty casings on the ground about twenty feet east of where we’d found Walsh, along with the casing still in the chamber. Connie French’s little.243 had gone airborne over the rocks with her. The cheap scope was smashed to a million pieces, the stock was busted, and the chamber was empty.
That left Scott’s Remington.308-clean as a whistle, with a full magazine.
Torrez turned his attention to Del Rio, Texas-an interesting little resort city of thirty thousand people at the south end of Amistad National Recreation Area. Across the International Amistad Reservoir lay the Mexican town of Ciudad Acuna-and another thirty-eight thousand people. An interesting place, with lots of opportunity.
By the time I had walked out of the Public Safety Building heading for lunch, the undersheriff had already been on the phone with Lieutenant Leo Nunez of the Del Rio P.D.
I pulled to a stop for the red light at Grande and Bustos just in time to see the Guzmans’ rental van gliding northbound on Bustos. They caught the light, and I tailed them west on Bustos to the Don Juan.
Francisco and Carlos were wound up like two little springs. “They should have been running up and down the mountain this morning,” I said to Estelle. As I opened the restaurant door for them, I tapped the sign taped to the glass.
“They’re closed tomorrow?” Estelle asked. “How’s that possible?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “The one day that we need a place to celebrate, they close. Tadd’s going to have to dream up something.”
“No problem, Grandpa,” Tadd said. He had a firm grip on two little hands as he herded the kids inside.
We’d hit the place at high noon, a busy time for the Don Juan on any day, but especially on a Monday with the Lions Club meeting in the Conquistador Room. We found a quiet spot on the other side of the restaurant where we could pull two tables together.
“Is Francis going to make it?” I asked.
Estelle shook her head. “He’s playing golf with Alan Perrone…at least he was supposed to.”
“Then he’s going to be a while. I imagine Perrone’s got his hands full.” In between mock skirmishes with Francisco to keep him out of my chips, I recapped the morning for Estelle. “And I didn’t know that your husband played golf,” I added.
“All doctors play golf,” Buddy said. “It’s a rule. If you look at their license to practice, it’s got a little space down at the bottom to record their current handicap.”
“The Posadas Country Club might change all that. And if Francis eats out there, you may never see him again.”
“They actually built that course? The one over by the high school?”
“They actually built it, rattlesnakes, antelope, wind and all. Nine holes. The only real difficulty has been training the prairie dogs to dig the pin holes straight down. They’re a little sloppy.”
I looked across at Estelle. “Did you guys get a chance to look at the back property this morning?”
“We built a fort in the leaves,” Francisco announced around taco chip crumbs before his mother had a chance to answer.
“A leaf fort? How does that work?” I asked.
“It’s a long story, Grandpa,” Tadd said with a sad shake of his head.
“Well, you cheated,” Francisco said, and butted my grandson’s arm with his head. His younger brother nodded in sober agreement.
“Francis, Bill, and I walked the whole thing,” Estelle said. “It looks like they’re planning to build something down on Escondido a ways where they extended the water line.”
I nodded. “I’ve heard fifteen different stories about that, everything from another trailer court to a new truck stop. Whatever it is, I don’t think it would affect my property much, except by increasing the traffic around the back side. So what did you guys think?”
I reached out with a chip, loaded it with salsa, and was navigating it to my mouth when I saw one of the county cars pull into the parking lot. Deputy Tom Pasquale got out and strode purposefully toward the Don Juan’s front door.
“They found me,” I said. “Pasquale isn’t coming here for lunch.” I poked Francisco in the ribs. “Excuse me, nino. I need to slide past you.” I managed to navigate myself away from the crowded tables without disaster, and met the deputy out in the foyer.
“Sir, Jackie Taber just called from Cruces. They think that Connie French is going to make it.”
“That’s good news.” I looked at him expectantly, since the eager expression on his face told me that he hadn’t driven to the restaurant just to tell me that.
“And there was something else, too,” he said. “She’s got a bad skull fracture, a smashed lower right arm, a broken le
ft shoulder, a fractured pelvis, and a broken knee. The left knee.” He ticked the list off on his fingers as he made his way down the injured girl’s anatomy.
I grimaced. “That’s quite a ‘something else,’ Thomas. There must be a bone or two that she didn’t break. No spinal damage?”
“They think not. But she had a bullet wound in her right calf.”
“A bullet wound?”
“That’s what they said. Not too serious, like maybe from a ricochet. They removed a pretty good chunk of brass jacket that was wedged up against the bone.”
“Enough there for a rifling match?”
“Bob says that it’s worth a try. In the meantime, me and Linda and a couple of the others are going back down to look for the bullet strike.”
“Walsh is the only one who fired,” I said. “So who was he shooting at? You can’t intentionally hit someone with a ricochet. He was either aiming at Connie and missed, or he was aiming at Scott-and missed.” I shook my head, perplexed. “Keep me posted, all right?”
He nodded and turned toward the door, eager to be on the road. I turned to go back inside. I’d asked Estelle a question. I was eager to hear an answer.
Chapter Fifty
Hell, I knew that Posadas was a meager, dusty little place, a dinky watering hole in perhaps the most bleak part of New Mexico. I knew that where Dr. Francis Guzman and his family ultimately decided to settle was none of my affair. And depending on the current definition of “opportunities,” there were probably more of them in a myriad of other places.
In all fairness, Estelle Guzman’s answer was the best that I could hope for. “We’ve got so much to think about,” she said.
“Yes, you do,” I said, and let the conversation drift to other topics. The six of us ate enough for twelve, a leisurely, sloppy grub fest that ended with sopaipillas squirting honey in all the wrong places.
As I was starting my third cup of coffee, Fernando Aragon sauntered around the small island where the coffee machines lurked. He picked up one of the decanters and brought it to our table. I covered my cup with my hand but quickly moved it when he showed every intention of pouring anyway.
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