The Fourth Time is Murder pc-15

by Steven F Havill

  Estelle turned the tag this way and that. “Chris Marsh, what were you up to?” she said aloud.

  “If what he was up to was down in Regál, it isn’t going to be hard to find out,” Jackie said. “I spent some more time with the truck, Estelle. I’d be willing to bet that it had magnetic signs on the doors. You can see the marks where they used to be. Want to make bets on what they said?”

  Estelle held out the name tag to the deputy. “We’ll want to check Marsh’s shirt pocket. If he was wearing this, there’ll be some tearing of the threads where this was ripped away. We want to make sure of that.”

  “That’s easy enough.”

  “And you said three things…the marks on the doors?”

  “In part,” Jackie said. “I went over that truck with everything but a microscope. There’s nothing in it.”

  “Just the beer cans.”

  “That’s true. But nothing else, Estelle. And I mean nothing that would do us any good.” She nestled the evidence bags back in her briefcase and laid it on top of her sketch pad. “If Global was a real company, I’m thinking that I’d find a cab full of paperwork, right? I mean, those electronic delivery log thingies that they carry where you sign for a package? Nothing like that. No other packages. No paperwork. I mean, nothing. And nothing in the back. The camper shell was locked, but torn to pieces by the crash. If there’d been packages in the rear, they’d be spread all over the hillside. Nothing. Just a wrecked truck, some beer cans, and a dead driver.”

  Estelle stood quietly, looking down the slope. “One of two things, Jackie, and I don’t like either one. If the truck was empty when it went over, what was Marsh up to? Perrone is willing to bet someone else was involved, and it looks as if that somebody wanted him really, really dead,” she said finally. “And somebody wanted to erase any evidence of what he’d been up to. That opens the door for us.”

  “Stupid, stupid,” Jackie said. “The killer scrambles down the hill after the wreck, and finds this Marsh guy lyin’ in the rocks, gasping like a dying fish. It should be obvious that he isn’t going to get up and walk out for help. He’s too busted up to even use a cell phone, assuming he had one. Why didn’t the second guy just leave? I can see clearing out the truck of anything incriminating. But why murder a man who’s obviously toast anyway?”

  “If Marsh was moaning and whimpering for help, the killer would want to shut him up. Drowning’s pretty quiet, especially when the victim’s too broken up to move in protest.”

  The deputy made a face. “I want to meet this guy,” she said.

  “Another thing is really interesting,” Estelle said. “The killer wasn’t riding with Marsh. That means he was in another vehicle, or waiting for him somewhere-but close enough that he would know about the wreck.” She looked at Jackie. “That’s bizarre.”

  “It is that.” She looked down the hill thoughtfully. “One thing is easy,” she said finally. “Somebody in Regál knows what Chris Marsh was doing the night he was killed…unless he was just plain lost. Maybe he took a wrong turn somewhere.”

  “If he did that, he wasn’t much good at reading road signs,” Jackie said. “Anything else you want me to do this morning?”

  “Take a break,” Estelle said. “And keep thinking. We’ll have someone work on finding Marsh’s family. That might turn something.”

  “You want me to work on that?”

  “No,” Estelle laughed. “I want you off-duty for a while. It’d be nice to have at least one fresh face around the joint if things go from bad to worse.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Another two hours on the hillside produced nothing beyond various bits of debris that had once been a Chevrolet pickup truck and its lone occupant. The truck itself was notable for what it did not contain-any clue as to what cargo it had carried, or what business had prompted Christopher Marsh to dress and drive like a package delivery agent.

  Shortly before ten that Saturday morning, Estelle’s phone demanded attention. She sat down on a large rock just above the truck wreckage and saw that the call was from Deputy Tony Abeyta.

  “What did you find out, Tony?”

  “Number one, Chris Marsh was a student at the state university in Las Cruces for three years. He dropped out last year with enough credits to be a sophomore. Anyway, I found out that his parents live in Brookhaven, New York. They’re not real interested in coming out, either.”

  “Really. How touching.”

  “That’s for sure. They said to cremate the body and if we wanted to, we could send the ashes back to them.”

  “If we wanted to?” Estelle asked. “What do they want?”

  “It didn’t sound like they gave a shit one way or another. They claim that they haven’t heard from their son since May of last year, after he got himself arrested by the campus police for disorderly conduct. I would guess that they weren’t on the best of terms before that, either. I haven’t found out yet what that incident was, but he left school shortly after that.”

  “And that’s when the folks wrote him off?”

  “Apparently that was the last straw, yes. His dad said that the kid could talk himself out of anything. That’s when he said, ‘He’s made his bed, now he can lie in it.’ I told him that it wasn’t a question of that-that his son had been killed. I almost said the bed he was lyin’ in was a pile of rocks, but I didn’t.”

  “All kinds,” Estelle said. A meeting between the Marshes and Elliot Parker would be interesting, she thought.

  “I told them that you might be calling later today. But I didn’t hear any weeping in the background, so I don’t hold out much hope that they’re going to be of any help. I got the impression that they’d had about all the expense and heartache with this kid that they could stomach.”

  “That happens, Tony. What else?”

  “Not much. I talked to one of the folks in the Dean’s Office at the college. She happened to be in catching up on some things on a Saturday morning. I didn’t get too far. Marsh didn’t make much of an impression on anyone. She gave me the dean’s home phone, but no answer. Then I got ahold of Grunt, and he’s going to check out Marsh’s trailer for us.” Las Cruces detective Guenther “Grunt” Nilson wouldn’t miss much, Estelle knew.

  “The address came back as a trailer over on the southeast side. Grunt says it’s a little mobile home park with maybe twenty trailer spaces. They’re going to find out who Marsh was living with.”

  “Did you mention to Nilson that we have other things going on beyond just an MVA?” Estelle asked.

  “I told him everything I knew. I didn’t want the cops down there walking into something unawares. They’re being careful.”

  “Good man. If you think it would pay off, you might go ahead and drive over there. I’d like to know what you think. I’m certain that there was someone else here with Marsh. Someone wanted to make sure that he never made it out alive after the crash, and then cleaned up afterward. Somebody, sometime, had to have seen Chris Marsh hanging out with a buddy, girlfriend, live-in, or whatever.”

  “I already told Grunt that I’d probably be down.”

  “You might give Perrone a call and take along any updates he has.”

  “Ten-four.”

  “Keep us posted.” She folded the phone and sat quietly for a moment, gazing down past the truck. The sun bounced off the rocks, warm and peaceful, the gray, soggy mist of the night before just faint wisps now through the trees across the canyon. Bob Torrez and Tom Pasquale were working around the truck, and the sheriff stopped, looking up the slope toward her. He raised his voice just enough that it carried upward across the hundred feet of rocks that separated them.

  “You seen all you need to see on this thing?” the sheriff asked.

  “I think so,” Estelle said, funneling her mouth with both hands so she wouldn’t have to shout.

  “We want to see what’s underneath,” Torrez said, and made a balling motion with both hands. “Stubby’s on his way out.” The cable from Stub Moore�
��s huge wrecker would ball up the battered truck worse than it already was during the drag up the hill. But between herself and Linda Real, the scene had been photographed and rephotographed from every conceivable angle.

  “I’m going to take a few minutes and head down to Regál,” Estelle said.

  “You looked at that envelope of stuff from Catron?”

  “Yes, I did. The phone number is Betty’s.”

  “Thought so. You might stop and talk with her. Busybody like that sees everything. And what the hell…she might have seen Marsh around town. Or his truck. That’s what I’m thinkin’.”

  Maybe. Maybe not, Estelle thought as she made her way back up the slope. Sometimes the small town legend about everyone knowing everyone else’s business was just that: legend. If it was more convenient not to know, then the ignorance could be legendary in itself.

  Her cell phone rang just as she was reaching out to grab the guardrail, and she ignored the phone until she had stepped back onto level ground, the stretch over the railing making the muscles in her right side twang.

  “Guzman.”

  “Are we having fun yet?” Bill Gastner asked.

  “You bet,” she replied. “What’s up, padrino?”

  “Well, I just dropped Madelyn Bolles off at Rachel’s,” he said, referring to Rachel Melvin’s B and B on 10th Street in Posadas. “Interesting morning.”

  For a moment Estelle frowned, trying to remember who Madelyn Bolles might be. Catching the hesitation of Estelle’s puzzlement, Gastner added, “She of the magazine article, sweetheart. The lady who wants to interview everyone in Posadas County, but in particular, you.”

  “Ah.” Estelle started the walk back toward her car, glancing at her watch as she did so. “She’s early. She cornered you, did she?” The undersheriff scrutinized the day-date window of her watch. “I was about to say that we didn’t expect her until Saturday, but this is Saturday, isn’t it.”

  “Indeed it is,” Gastner said. “Anyway, it was interesting. We took a little tour of the county while we talked. She had planned to talk with Leona this morning, but then she heard about what’s going on down there, and decided that this would be a stellar time to see you in action. She stopped in and talked with Dispatch.”

  “I see.”

  “Yeah, well. She wanted to freshen up a little and rummage through all the notes I gave her. She said she’d make contact with you some time today. I just thought I’d give you a heads-up. Be on the lookout sort of thing. She’s driving a bright red rental car. A Buick LaCrosse, I think.”

  “Did she seem like an okay kind of person?”

  Gastner laughed. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but ’tweren’t her,” he said. “She’s right behind me on that slippery slope of impending geezerhood. That kinda surprised me. But listen, I don’t want to say too much. You’ll make up your own mind. I just wanted to pass along a heads-up.”

  “I appreciate that. I’m headed to Regál at the moment. I need to talk with Betty.”

  Gastner didn’t ask, About what? “Give her my regards, please. Anything you want or need me to do?”

  “You could come over for dinner tonight. Irma was planning to make enchiladas the last I heard.”

  “Oh, gosh, no thanks,” Gastner said. “I had my heart set on a baloney sandwich and some stale potato chips. What time?”

  “You know how that always goes, sir. Irma said that she was going to serve whoever shows up at six exactamente, ni un momento más o menos.”

  “I’ll hold her to it,” the old man chuckled. “There would be some benefits to being the only one to show up, you know.”

  “You’re the rock around which we all orbit,” Estelle said soberly, and that prompted a loud guffaw.

  “I love it,” he said. “Be careful.”

  She folded up the phone and slipped it in her pocket as she reached her sedan. For a few minutes she sat in the car, thumbing through her notes. She looked at the slip of paper that included the Contrerases’ home phone number. How odd, all these little connections, she thought.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A telephone call to Betty Contreras-to the number on the slip of paper-would have been simple enough, but Estelle held off. What Betty’s connection might be with a couple of illegal alien woodcutters was just a curiosity at the moment, a problem more for the Catron County authorities than Estelle.

  More important was tracking the movements of Christopher Marsh before the violent crash on Regál Pass. If anyone had seen the white Chevy pickup truck cruising the dirt lanes of Regál, it would be Betty. Maybe she had even spoken to Chris Marsh, fresh and neatly pressed in his deliveryman’s garb.

  Estelle drove south from Regál Pass, struck as always by the view of the dry, bleak country of northern Mexico. Forty miles in the distance, she could see the blue hump of the mesa that loomed on the outskirts of Tres Santos, the tiny village where she had spent the first sixteen years of her life. What a difference forty miles made, she thought.

  Or even one mile. Sun winked off the razor-wire-topped border fence where it cut the desert just south of the graveled parking lot of Iglesia de Nuestra Señora, the little mission that overlooked the village. Pavement on the U.S. side of the fence turned abruptly into dirt in Mexico.

  Estelle could remember her first adventure across that line in the dust. She had been but six years old, the fence was no more than a strand or two of barbed wire, and the Border Patrol had business elsewhere. For those who felt threatened, the new fence was a grand thing, she reflected-and it had made a lot of money for some well-connected contractor.

  On a map, the border between the two countries was a straight line, but the San Cristóbal Mountains ignored that. They formed a loose, open arc, the west and east ends dipping into Mexico while the center cradled Regál.

  Contractors hadn’t extended the border fence any farther than necessary into the rugged mountains to the east and west. The fence made a good show across the port of entry and a few hundred yards of open prairie after that, then disappeared into the hills and rocks.

  The system worked all right, since Regál lay on no major north-south route for travelers. Illegal aliens would find no difficulty in avoiding the section of border fence. They could skirt the ends of the fence all right, but then they’d spend days scrambling up the towering, crumbling granite face of the San Cristóbals. And then what? If the travelers didn’t die of exposure or snakebite, a view from the peak’s summit would reveal another long, dangerous trek down the back side of the mountains-to the open, equally desolate prairie.

  As the county car eased down the highway into the village, Estelle saw a familiar figure leave Iglesia de Nuestra Señora, bustling across the parking lot. Betty Contreras carried a small wicker basket, and Estelle guessed that it had contained lunch for Emilio. The undersheriff slowed, lowering the driver’s side window. Oncoming traffic forced her to wait before swinging into the church parking lot. It was a Border Patrol vehicle, and as he passed, Estelle raised a hand in salute. Nothing but a hard stare greeted her in return, the young officer looking first at her and then across at Betty, who fluttered her fingers at him.

  “Good afternoon, young lady.” Betty reached out and rested a free hand against the roof of the patrol car, bending down to look at Estelle.

  “How are you and Emilio doing, Betty?” Estelle asked.

  “Oh, we’re fine. I just fed and watered mi esposo, and now it’s time for us.” She bent down a little farther, looking hard at Estelle. “You look as if you’ve been up most of the night.”

  “Actually, not most,” Estelle replied. “It’s just that we have about eighteen different things going on right now, and I’m not sure I feel like doing any of them.”

  “Oh, sí. I know how that goes.” She watched as Estelle stretched a bit, pushing against the constraints of the shoulder harness. “How about a cup of tea? That’s always a good place to start.”

  “I’d like that.” She reached across the car and slid
her small briefcase off the seat, balancing it on what remained of the center console. “Jump in.”

  The ride was a scant two hundred yards, but Betty dutifully fumbled with the seat belt harness. “Don’t want to get a ticket,” she quipped.

  “Speaking of which, do you know that officer who just went by?” The undersheriff pointed after the government SUV, now taking the long ascent up the pass.

  “No, I don’t. Too many now to keep track of. We just ignore ’em, which isn’t the polite thing to do, of course. But they don’t smile much. Not what I’d call exactly neighborly.”

  “Well, it’s a tough time for them.”

  “I suppose. But it’s all a problem of their own making. That’s my take on it, anyway. I’d like to see them just peel that grand fence down and do away with the border.”

  “Ay, caramba,” Estelle said with amusement. “Wouldn’t that be interesting.” She slowed the car as they bumped off the pavement and swung onto Sanchez Lane, the only thoroughfare in Regál actually wide enough to pass by another vehicle without swinging into the ditch.

  “You can park right behind mine,” Betty said. Estelle pulled in behind the blue Toyota, snugging up close so that the rear end of the patrol car didn’t project out into the narrow lane. Betty watched as the undersheriff pulled the mike off the clip.

  “PCS, three-ten is ten-six, Contreras residence in Regál.”

  “Three-ten, ten-four.” Dispatcher Gayle Torrez sounded preoccupied.

  “This is an interesting office you have here,” Betty said, taking in the computer terminal, the stack of radios, the shotgun, the briefcase…even a Stetson with rain cover and a black baseball cap hooked on the security grill behind the seats.

  “So homey, isn’t it,” Estelle laughed. “How’s Emilio getting along these days? I haven’t seen him since before Christmas.”

  “Each day is a source of joy for him,” Betty said. She struggled out of the low-slung car. “It’s really that simple. Aches and pains don’t mean a thing. Not to him. Remind me to show you a photograph when we get inside.”