“First impact after the jump was right here, downslope just shy of eighteen feet. That hump of rocks and dirt launched him up a bit, but the truck kind of rolled. Like a barrel roll to the left? When we go down the hill you’ll see this set of rocks. The marks are really clear. A nosedive, an impact right there left fender first, and then the truck somersaulted. The driver rode that one out okay, but the hill’s so steep that once the truck started to end-o, there was nothing to stop it. I’m counting five end-for-end flips. Maybe six. He came partially out of the cab on about number three, and all the way on four or maybe five.”
Jackie shifted the drawing once more and touched her pencil to an artistically rendered set of rocks. “This is where the driver hit the first time after being thrown out through the passenger window. The truck crushed him up against the rocks right there. His right foot didn’t come loose right away, which is why we found his shoe down by the truck. His body came to rest where we found him.…That’s forty-one feet from the first bits of blood and cloth to where he ended up on his back.”
“There’s no evidence that he moved at all after that?”
The deputy shook her head and held both hands up as if in surrender. “Where he landed is where he stayed. There’s a scuff mark that would have been under his left heel. He drew his leg up maybe once or twice, and that’s it. Just a reflex.” She turned and surveyed the steep, rock-strewn slope behind them. “I didn’t find anything until I started combing the hillside right after dawn, Estelle. The flags mark points of interest. Bobby and Tom are moving outward and down from where the victim ended up, seeing if they can find anything else.”
“And these?” Estelle indicated the three small numbers drawn on the sketch.
“That’s what I wanted to show you. I didn’t want to leave ’em lying out in the weather, just in case.” She opened the passenger door of the Bronco and in a moment appeared with a small cardboard box. Pulling out the first plastic evidence bag, she laid it on the hood. Estelle took it by the corner of the label. The beer can was crumpled, the sort of crush that a good grip on an empty aluminum can could easily produce.
“A good toss,” Jackie said. “Eighty-one feet northeast from the truck, and fifty-six feet from the victim. All the other cans from the six-pack are accounted for. Four cans that would have been full had they not broken open in and around the truck itself, one with its zip-top popped upslope a couple dozen feet right in line with the wreckage path, and this one, way off to the side. Makes for an interesting scenario, don’t you think?”
“The force of the truck crashing down the hill isn’t going to throw an empty can more than eighty feet off to one side, perpendicular to the line of travel,” Estelle said.
“I don’t think so. But only fifty feet from the victim?”
The undersheriff scrutinized the drawing, then turned and stepped to the guardrail.
“Look right off to the left, there,” Jackie said. “See the little group of scrub oaks with the juniper in the middle? That’s where the can was, just beyond that, down in the rocks. If you step over this way, you can see the flagging.”
“The other possibility is that it didn’t come from the victim or his truck.”
The deputy looked skeptical. “Same brand, a new can? If we check the beer residue inside, it probably still has its fizz.”
“And it fits what Perrone says.”
“You said last night that the victim had somehow aspirated beer into his lungs. How could he do that?”
“That’s a good question. Perrone says a considerable quantity, in fact. At least into his left lung…the one that still worked.”
“That’s cold, if it happened the way I’m thinking,” Jackie said. “One thing’s for sure.…Chris Marsh didn’t toss a can fifty feet, not with his bones all mush.” She cocked an arm and imitated a pitch. “Not a whole lot of arm to manage that throw, but not just a weenie toss, either. Not what you’d do with the ends of your broken bones grating together.”
Estelle nodded. “What else?” She saw that Jackie was holding another plastic bag and she reached out for it. Inside, the plastic name tag’s metal clip was bent as if ripped from the pocket flap. “‘Barry Roberts,’” she read, and turned the tag this way and that. “Chris Marsh’s face, by any other name. Global Productivity Systems?”
“Sounds nice, but GPS is fictitious, at least in this version,” Jackie said. “I checked on my laptop, and can’t find any reference to it.”
“Where did you find the name tag?”
“Stuck between a couple of rocks right in line with the wreck. It could have torn off when he was taking a somersault, but if somebody had wanted to recover it, it would have been hard to see in the dark. But I’m thinking that they would have wanted it.”
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 mu
ch 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.
The Fourth Time is Murder Page 10