Statute of Limitations pc-13

by Steven F Havill

  “I like the sound of that,” Estelle whispered. For a long moment, they lay in each other’s arms, breath matching breath.

  “It’s Christmas morning, you know. The boys will be up in a few minutes,” her husband said.

  “Then we’d better not waste time,” she replied, snuggling deeper into the curve of his body.

  Chapter Eight

  When the telephone rang at 5:55 that Christmas morning, the two boys had indeed been up for many minutes. Estelle was in the kitchen, guiding an industrious Francisco through his second major passion in life, the manufacture of enormous pancakes whose batter he poured meticulously one cake’s worth at a time, dead center in the pan.

  Without releasing her support of the heavy bowl, she reached across the counter and picked up the receiver.

  “Guzman.”

  “Estelle, I need to talk to Francis,” Dr. Alan Perrone said. His tone was clipped and brusque, and he didn’t waste time with the usually automatic apology for the early-hour disturbance on a holiday.

  “He’s in the shower,” Estelle said. “Hang on just a second.” At the same time, Sofía Tournál rose from where she had been sitting in the living room with Carlos as the little boy narrated the photos from his latest treasure to her and his grandmother. He had received a Christmas gift book from Padrino that described the history and development of farm tractors…a book that Dr. Francis Guzman had joked would be set to music before the end of the day-Concerto in John Deere Flat.

  Sofía smoothly segued into position as bowl handler as Estelle headed down the hall.

  “You probably want to head down here, too,” Perrone said. “Someone’s going to want to hold Gayle’s hand.”

  “Sure,” she said, without actually having heard what Dr. Perrone had said. When the phone rang, she had immediately thought about Chief Eduardo Martinez, and it was only as she entered the master bedroom that it registered. She stopped short and beckoned to her husband, who appeared shaggy and wet, a towel around his middle.

  She handed him the phone. “It’s Alan.”

  “Shit,” Francis said matter-of-factly. “What’s up?” he said into the phone, then frowned as he listened to his partner. At the same time, he reached out and touched Estelle on the shoulder as if to hold her in place. “Okay,” he said after a moment. “Yes, I think we’re going to have to do that. He’s stable enough now?” Again, the room was silent as he listened. “Right. Okay, that’s good.” He nodded as if Alan Perrone could see him. “How long was he out?” He frowned and nodded, this time more slowly. “Okay. Give me ten minutes. Estelle will probably be there before that.”

  He rang off. “Bob Torrez apparently had a pulmonary embolism early this morning.” He handed her the telephone. “Gayle drove him to the hospital about an hour ago. Alan wants to transport him to University in Albuquerque.”

  “Ay,” Estelle whispered, but she was already turning toward the door. “I’ll head down,” she said. Francis nodded, and she left him to dress.

  “We’ll be fine,” Sofía said when she saw Estelle’s face. “Just go and do whatever it is that you have to do.”

  Without interrupting the process, Estelle bent over her industrious son and kissed him on the forehead, one hand cupping the side of his face while staying clear of the dripping ladle. “Perfecto,” she whispered to him, and he beamed at the huge pancake forming and bubbling. “Thanks, tía,” she said to Sofía. In the living room, she was met with a frown from her mother.

  “You have to go at this hour?” Teresa observed, knowing perfectly well that the hour of the day or night didn’t matter.

  “Mamá helps people,” Carlos said, and Estelle felt a twinge at his innocent defense. She clamped a hand on his small skull the way his father did, turning his face up so that she looked directly into his dark brown eyes, so rich and deep that she could become lost in them. Neither of them said a word, and after a moment she kissed him on the bridge of his nose, squarely between the eyes.

  “The sheriff’s sick,” she said to her mother, taking her by the hand. “I’ll be back when I can.”

  “Ay,” Teresa said, her expression softening. “I bet that stubborn one didn’t get his flu shot.”

  “I wish it were that simple,” Estelle said.

  A few minutes later, Estelle saw Sheriff Bob Torrez’s heavy-lidded eyes flicker with a touch of irritation as she rapped lightly on the freestanding partition. The sheriff lay in the hospital bed, the skimpy gown looking ridiculous on his large frame. He had kicked the sheet off, and his left leg was flexed with his foot propped up on the bed rail…a pathetic imitation of his habit of thumping a boot across the corner of his office desk.

  The crowd around his bed-now grown to three people-surely was stretching Torrez’s patience. Dr. Alan Perrone stood near the sheriff’s left shoulder, regarding the screen that monitored the patient’s vital signs. Gayle Torrez flanked her husband on the other side of the bed.

  “What are you doin’ here already?” Torrez asked ungraciously. His voice was husky, and he reached up and fiddled with the oxygen tube in his nostrils. An IV was taped to the back of each hand. “We were just about to wrap all this up.”

  “Oh, sure,” the unflappable Dr. Perrone said. He smiled tightly at Estelle. “How are you doing, young lady?”

  “I’m okay,” Estelle replied.

  “Happy Holidays,” Perrone added. “Or maybe I said that last night…I’m losing track.”

  “And Merry Christmas to all,” Estelle said. She rapped a knuckle on the bedframe as she stepped around to stand beside Gayle. “Hey,” she said, and rested a hand on Gayle’s shoulder.

  “Some people will do anything to get out of a family gathering,” Gayle said, but she didn’t even try to smile. Christmas with the hugely extended Torrez family meant that Bob Torrez’s mother would host half a hundred people in her modest adobe home on McArthur…and the overflow would reach Bob and Gayle’s mobile home less than half a block away.

  “Actually, it’s pretty simple, Estelle,” Perrone said, “We’re in the process of explaining to this guy that there are two easy ways to find what happened…to find where that embolism is and just how nasty it might be. We can do a postmortem, or Robert can let us do our jobs without all the macho fuss.”

  His glance shifted to Gayle, who accepted the barb, made only partially in jest, with a nod of agreement. “We took X-rays,” the physician continued, “and they don’t show as much as I’d like. We’re going to get a CAT here in a few minutes, but I’m willing to bet that’ll be inconclusive, too. The best way to see what we’re dealing with is pulmonary angiography…put in a little tracer and watch where it goes.”

  “I don’t need to be stuck full of dye,” Torrez grumbled.

  “Better a little bit of dye than a gallon or two of embalming fluid,” Perrone said, and Estelle saw Gayle wince. “Anyway, I want all the cards in my hand when we do that, and that means that we cart you up to University Hospital in Albuquerque.” He glanced at his watch. “We’re lucky. The Med-Evac flight crew thought they might get to enjoy Christmas at home, and we were able to round them up in Las Cruces. The plane will be here in a few minutes.”

  “I’m not flyin’ to no Albuquerque,” Torrez said, but the protest was without much conviction.

  “Oh, yes you are,” Gayle said. “Don’t be so stupid.”

  “We’ve already established that you haven’t been taking the meds that were prescribed,” Perrone said. “That didn’t take much detective work. And you haven’t shown your face at physical therapy for the past couple of weeks. Mr. Model Patient, here.” He snorted with impatience, reached out a hand, and patted Torrez on the arm. “We’ll find a blunt needle and fill him full of happy syrup. He won’t even know where he is when we’re done with him.”

  “Like hell,” the sheriff said.

  “Yep,” Perrone agreed. He beckoned Estelle out of the room, nodding in sympathy at Gayle as he did so. “We’ll be back in a minute. Talk some sense int
o your husband, okay? And you should plan to go with us, by the way.”

  Out in the hall, Perrone walked away from the ICU. He dug in his pocket for a mint and offered one to Estelle. “Francis is on the way down?”

  “He’ll be here in just a minute or two,” Estelle said. “What happened?”

  “Well, like I told Gayle, I’m sure it’s a clot that broke loose and ended up in his lung. Pulmonary embolism,” Perrone said. “I’m sure of that. Gayle says that early this morning, Bobby woke up and couldn’t get his breath. His heartbeat went wild, and he fell on his face when he tried to climb out of bed. Scared the bejeepers out of her. He wouldn’t let her call an ambulance, and he’s goddamn lucky that stupid little decision didn’t kill him. She drove him down here herself.”

  “That sounds like Bobby,” Estelle said.

  Perrone leaned against the polished tile wall and regarded the grout between the tiles as if all the answers lay there. “None of this surprises me, I guess. All that surgery he had on his leg and hips, and then he doesn’t take care of himself and pay attention to physical therapy. If he’s not careful, he’s going to end up being forty-five years old and walking like an old man of eighty-five.”

  “I thought he looked pretty bad last night,” Estelle said. “We had a little confrontation down in Regál, and even Bill Gastner said that Bobby looked terrible.”

  “That sorry affair didn’t do the sheriff any good, I’m sure. He’s in no condition for scuffles.”

  “Well, sort of a scuffle, Alan. But that was more me than him.”

  “Ah.” Perrone took off his glasses, and Estelle felt his ice-blue eyes assessing her. “And you’re none the worse for wear?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “Well, his nibs here isn’t. At the moment, we have him on rat poison and a handful of other things to thin his blood. We need to do a full rundown and see what the hell is going on.” Perrone patted his own right hip. “He’s got a hell of a bruise on his thigh, just above where the break was. Gayle says that somehow he managed to smack himself with the door of his truck yesterday or the day before.”

  “He never said anything about that,” Estelle said. “But what else is new.” She glanced at her watch. In another few minutes, the shift at the Sheriff’s Department would cycle from graveyard to days, and Gayle Torrez, office manager and head dispatcher, had been scheduled for duty…the first Christmas tour she’d drawn in several years, thanks to the conspiring of root canals, flu, and various other complications among the small staff.

  “So if he goes to Albuquerque, what are we talking about? How long?” Estelle asked.

  “He is going to Albuquerque,” Perrone said. “He doesn’t have a choice there. And it all depends what we find. Unfortunately, clots tend not to be isolated events. We’ll just have to see. He’s going to be out of commission for a while…and I’m afraid it’s an indeterminate while just now. That’s the best I can tell you. He might be back on his feet in a day or two, or not.”

  Estelle started to say something when her husband appeared around the corner by the Hospital Auxiliary’s coffee bar.

  “Ah,” Perrone said. “Now we’re all set.”

  Reaching out to take Perrone by the elbow, Estelle nodded toward the ward behind them. “How’s Eduardo?” Somehow, it seemed weeks ago that she had last seen Eduardo Martinez, pale and frail, in his ICU bed-not just hours. If his family was still maintaining a vigil, they were cloistered away somewhere, perhaps in the ICU waiting room down the hall.

  “That’s the problem,” Perrone said. “I’m starting to think that it might be a good idea if one of us rides on the plane with Bobby, but maybe not. That’s what I wanted to discuss with Dr. Guzman,” and Perrone held up his hand like a traffic cop as Francis strode up to them. “One of us certainly needs to stay here and ride herd on the chief. And to answer your question, Estelle, he’s not good. He’s unresponsive, and the family is trying to decide what to do. He’s reached a point where the machines are breathing for him. Not good.” He nodded in resignation. “Like I said, Merry Christmas, eh?”

  He stepped away, yielding his spot in the conversation to Estelle’s husband. “We’ll talk in a bit,” he said to Estelle, and then with a final pat to his associate’s shoulder, he hustled back to the ICU.

  “Sofía said not to bother calling Irma,” Francis said, referring to Irma Sedillos, the Guzman boys’ nana and Gayle’s sister. “Everything is under control on the home front, querida.”

  “That’s the least of my worries right now, oso,” Estelle said. “But Sofía is a sweetheart.” She glanced at her watch again. “I need to swing by the office for a little bit to make sure we’re covered, and then I’ll stick pretty close to here, I guess. If Essie Martinez needs anything…” Her cell phone chirped and she looked heavenward. “If you end up marooned in Albuquerque, let me know, okay? If you go up there on the plane? When things quiet down, maybe we can all take a drive up there to pick you up. Sofía mentioned that she’d like to do that one day while she’s here. A little vacation.”

  “Vacation?” Francis said, puzzled. Then he grinned and kissed Estelle lightly, first on the lips, then the tip of her nose, and then squarely between the eyes, just as she’d done to Carlos. “Love you, querida. Be careful. No more heroics.”

  Palming the tiny phone that insisted with a variety of chirps, she waved at her husband as he disappeared through the glass doors. “Guzman.”

  “Estelle, this is Brent,” the graveyard-shift dispatcher said cheerfully. “Sorry to bother you.”

  “No bother. What’s up?”

  “Did you happen to hear from Gayle? I was kinda lookin’ for her.”

  “I was just about to call,” Estelle said. “We’re all over here at the hospital. Gayle’s not going to be in today, Brent. Can you stay put until I have a chance to rearrange some things?”

  Sutherland hesitated just long enough that Estelle knew he’d probably made plans that he was loath to break. “Sure. You mean like the whole shift?”

  “It might come to that. We don’t know yet.”

  “Well…okay, sure. Is everything all right?”

  “The sheriff’s going to be going to Albuquerque for some treatment. Gayle will go with him.”

  “Geez, that’s no good. What, for his leg, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. How’s the chief doing, by the way?”

  “Not well.”

  “Frank’s here, asking.”

  “I can just imagine,” Estelle said. Frank Dayan, publisher and quasi-editor of the Posadas Register, matched anyone in town for long, irregular hours.

  “You want to talk with him?”

  “Sure.”

  “Just a sec.”

  When he came on the line, Frank’s voice was quiet and concerned. “Merry Christmas, Undersheriff,” he said. “You have your hands full over there?”

  “Yes, we do, Frank. We’re imploding.”

  “Look, I got your note about the arrests and about Eduardo. How’s he doing?”

  “Critical,” Estelle said.

  “But not directly because of assault, or anything like that?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Boy,” Dayan said. “If the chief didn’t have bad luck, he wouldn’t have any luck at all.” Estelle didn’t respond, and Dayan shifted gears. “Look, Estelle…did you get a copy of the short list for county manager? I was going to try and talk to you yesterday-or Pam was going to. We didn’t have the chance.”

  “I got one a while ago, Frank. I haven’t looked at it. We got kinda busy around here.” She knew that the county commission had called a short special meeting to sort through and qualify the handful of applications for the county manager’s vacancy, but it was nothing that she had needed to attend…and Bob Torrez could be counted on to flee to the opposite side of the county from anything remotely construed as politics.

  “Well, I have a copy with me,” Dayan said. “I think you and the sheriff
are going to be very interested.”

  “How many applications did they finally end up with?” As she talked, Estelle had made her way toward the front door of the hospital, and now she stood just inside the foyer where framed photos of the staff, including her husband, graced the east wall.

  “Five that they’re going to consider,” Dayan said. “Were you planning to come in to the office this morning?”

  “I’m on my way there right now.” She stepped outside and saw that the skies had cleared, leaving only a small smudge of clouds to the southwest.

  “Maybe we could chat for a minute, then. I know it’s a bad time, with it being Christmas morning and all, but I’m trying to keep ahead of things. It’ll take me all week just to wheedle a comment out of the sheriff.”

  “I sympathize, Frank,” Estelle said. Frank Dayan’s newspaper hit the streets on Thursdays, dictated more by the schedule of grocery store advertising inserts than by when breaking news was most likely…something that Estelle was sure twanged the newspaper publisher’s heart in opposing directions. And the search for a new county manager was a significant story for the county in general and the Sheriff’s Department in particular, regardless of Sheriff Robert Torrez’s disinterest in either politics or the press. Torrez had pretty much ignored the previous county manager, leaving the attendance of county meetings and reports to his undersheriff.

  “Did anybody local make the short list?” Estelle asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Dayan chuckled. “You and Robert are going to like this.” His tone said otherwise.

  Chapter Nine

  Frank Dayan handed the undersheriff a photocopy that included five names. Each name was followed by a one-or two-sentence résumé. Estelle settled in her chair and smoothed the single sheet of paper on the center of her desk calendar. She folded her hands and glanced up at Frank, seeing the twinkle in his eyes as he waited expectantly for her to read the list.