The Fourth Time is Murder

by Steven F Havill

  “Ten-four,” Torrez said, his voice as casual as a rancher leaning on a fence, straw sucked between his teeth. “I know where she’s goin’. Tony, pull a one-eighty and get back to northbound Twenty-eight.”

  Up ahead, Estelle saw an SUV pulling a rental trailer flick on its turn signal, ready to swing into the left lane. She braked hard, but eventually the piercing wail of the siren broke through the driver’s fog of inattention. He swerved back into the right lane so hard he almost dumped the trailer on the shoulder, the tires kicking up a cloud of dust.

  “She’s headed for the interstate,” Estelle said. “She did read the fine print.”

  “Why would she do that?” Madelyn asked, shouting over the roar of the car. “The state highway would take her straight south to El Paso. She could cross over to the interstate at any time, and go straight to the border crossing.”

  “She could still do that,” Estelle replied. “If she heads north to I-Ten, then she could turn eastbound to I-Twenty-five. South from there. Or north. Or anywhere she wants.”

  “But she’s got to know you’re after her.”

  “Actually, all she knows is that big, clumsy Posadas County Sheriff’s Department Expedition is trying to catch her. She’s got all the confidence in the world she can outrun him. She doesn’t necessarily know we’re out here.”

  “How could she not?” the writer asked, rearing back in her seat with an instinctive braking effort as Estelle had to slow for a car carrier determined to pass a bumbling RV.

  “You’d be amazed at what some people pass off as logic,” Estelle said. “Nobody outruns a radio.”

  “They think you’ll give up the chase?”

  “Some might actually think that.”

  “All units, three-oh-two is comin’ up on Twenty-eight. We’ll be northbound. Negative contact.”

  “All units, three-oh-eight.” Estelle could hear the squeal of tires in the background. “Subject just turned north on Twenty-eight. Northbound. Don’t think she saw me.”

  “Three-ten copies.”

  Madelyn leaned forward, straining against her seat belt, as if she could see beyond the miles that remained. “Do you know what she’s going to do?”

  “We’re going to find out here in about two minutes.” Consuela Juanita Vallejos would have breathed a sigh of relief that she had shaken her initial pursuer…that he was now wandering vainly about the network of county roads that crisscrossed the farmlands south of the city. If she was smart—and in some ways, she certainly was clever, Estelle thought—CJ would slow her pace to avoid attracting attention when she pulled back onto State 28 to join the flow of traffic.

  “Three-oh-eight, three-ten.”

  “Eight. She’s headin’ for the westbound entrance ramp to the interstate.”

  Westbound? Estelle frowned. “Let her do it,” she said.

  “Ten-four. I’m a block back. She’s stickin’ to the speed limit.”

  “Three-ten is eight miles out. We’ll find a spot to join the parade.”

  “Be interesting to see where she thinks she’s goin’,” Torrez mused, and Estelle clicked the transmit twice in response.

  “Where in heaven’s name is she going?” Madelyn asked.

  “Perfect,” Estelle said to herself without answering the question. She braked hard. Across the way, a highway department dump truck was on the shoulder, rumbling along with its flashers on, the crew looking for trash hazards. The center median was a rough pasture, and she kept the car’s speed up as they crossed. Back on the pavement and westbound, it took them only a few seconds to overtake the truck, and she pulled far enough in front of it that the highway crew would have time to stop. She pulled the county car to a halt well off the pavement, and got out, trotting back toward the idling orange truck.

  Puzzled, the driver looked down at her as he cranked down his window.

  “I wasn’t speedin’,” he said, offering a denture-filled smile at his own joke.

  “I need some help,” Estelle said. “Can you take a break for a few minutes?”

  “That ain’t hard. What do we got to do?”

  “Just stay parked. We’ve got a vehicle westbound on the interstate that we’re interested in. I need a place to wait.”

  “Puttin’ out spike strips?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  He shrugged. “Lemme know,” he said.

  “Thanks.” Returning to the car, she pulled toward the pavement just enough that she could watch the westbound lanes in her side mirror.

  “Three-oh-eight, three-ten.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’m on the westbound shoulder about seven miles out,” she said. “There’s a highway department truck working here, and he’s good cover.”

  “Ten-four. She’s westbound, sittin’ right at an even eighty,” Torrez said.

  “To where,” Estelle mused, dropping the mike in her lap. “CJ, where are you going.”

  “You can’t just pull her over now?” Madelyn asked.

  “I think she’ll run,” Estelle replied. “It worked once before.”

  “Can she outrun this?” the writer asked, patting the door sill.

  “Oh, yes. Besides, we have everything to gain by waiting,” Estelle said. “Wait and see what she’s going to do. If she thinks that she’s away clean, that’s a good thing.”

  “What’s your guess? What do you think she knows?”

  “That’s still part of the puzzle, Madelyn.” Estelle watched the traffic approaching from the east. “Before this, we could imagine that maybe she didn’t know what happened up on the pass Wednesday night…that she didn’t have a clue what Chris Marsh was up to.” She hunched her shoulders and held them up in a frozen shrug. “If she’s not involved in any way, why would she make the decision to run the instant she saw a Posadas County unit parked at the end of her street?” She relaxed and looked across at Madelyn. “If she saw Tony’s vehicle, the odds are good that she also saw the detective’s unit parked at the other end of the block. So she ran, leaving the new boyfriend to take the heat. That’s my guess.”

  “How far are you going to let her go?”

  “We might as well find out all we can,” the undersheriff replied.

  “Three-ten, three-oh-eight. She’s kickin’ up to about eighty-seven, leapfroggin’ through traffic. You got about a minute before she passes your location.”

  “Ten-four.” Estelle tugged her belt tighter. “Now we find out.”

  As the blue sports car shot past, Estelle looked down at her center console, hoping that, to the Mustang’s driver, the occupants of the unmarked white state car were just a couple of highway supervisors comparing notes with the workers in the truck parked behind them.

  A car hauler, its trailer jangling empty, shot by, also well over the speed limit. “Comin’ up,” Bob Torrez’s disembodied voice said over the radio. A black luxury car shot by and, ten car lengths behind that, Torrez’s new silver county Expedition. With a quarter mile clear, Estelle pulled out, tires chirping on the pavement. In three miles, she had passed the sheriff’s Expedition, caught the BMW, and pulled in behind the car hauler. A quarter mile ahead, she could see the squat shape of the sports car. Glancing at the speedometer, she saw that the car hauler was holding at 87 on the level, fast enough to earn a ticket.

  For the next twenty miles, the car hauler continued, its speed pacing the Mustang’s, and then the truck took the first Deming exit. Estelle sucked in a sharp breath, and at the same time her hand darted to the channel selector on the radio console. Running in the left-hand eastbound lane, the sedan that had attracted her attention was identifiable even from a great distance. Squat, black, a white pimple of a computer antenna growing from the aft panel of the roof, the state police cruiser would be running just below the speed limit. Sure enough, its fron
t end dipped, and as Estelle shot by, the state officer pulled over to cross the center median. She didn’t have time to read the car number, but the cruiser accelerated hard in pursuit.

  “I’ll tell ’em to hold back,” Torrez radioed, but they weren’t the only ones who had spotted the state car, and that it had swung around in pursuit. The Mustang pulled abruptly into the passing lane, flying past two trundling bus-sized RVs.

  With the fugitive car now cutting through traffic at more than 100 miles an hour, the driver had forced their hand.

  “PCS, three-ten. We have a high-speed pursuit westbound on the interstate. We’re coming up on mile marker seventy, ETA Posadas exit about eight minutes. Is anyone close enough to drop a spike strip immediately west of the Posadas exit?”

  “Three-ten, we’ll work on it.”

  Estelle’s radio scanner picked up Torrez’s radio on the state police frequency. “Triple five,” he said, “we’re going to spike the highway just west of the Posadas exit. We’re going to have to clear this traffic.”

  “You got it.” The black state car shot past. The problem was simple enough. In the dozen or so miles between their current position and the Posadas exit, there might be half a hundred vehicles, all traveling in their own private worlds, going who knew where that Sunday afternoon. The Mustang would blow by first, easily outpacing its pursuers.

  “Three-ten.” Gayle Torrez’s voice was tight. “Mitchell and Collins ETA about three minutes. John Allen is coming in from the south. ETA about six.”

  “Ten-four. Have Allen clear the intersection at the bottom of the Posadas exit ramp.”

  “Ten-four. Eddie has the spike belt.” Somehow, Captain Mitchell would have to deploy the belt in front of the speeding Mustang, avoiding confused civilian traffic that would hopefully be slowing or pulling off as they saw the winking lights of parked police vehicles.

  “Sheriff, I clocked her at one forty-one and climbing,” the state officer said.

  “Ten-four.” Estelle’s cryptic reply belied the hard knot of apprehension in her gut. A nervous tick of the steering wheel could hurtle a car traveling at that speed into catastrophe. The state car couldn’t keep up, and neither could she.

  Far ahead, she could see a clutch of traffic, the big rigs nothing but tiny dashes on the line of highway. The interstate entered a series of lazy curves, the roadbed banked ever so slightly so that vehicles tended to follow the highway without any conscious input from the drivers. What the curves did accomplish was blocking an easy view to the rear for the truckers for more than a mile or so.

  “She’s off,” the state officer’s voice broke through urgently. At the same time, Estelle saw the enormous dust cloud rising up from the prairie as if a bomb had detonated.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Dust still hung thick in the air as Estelle slid her car to a halt. The westbound lanes of the interstate became a kaleidoscope of lights and milling people. Five semis sat motionless, blocking both lanes, their diesel engines muttering quietly. More would line up behind them by the minute, with all the rest of the arterial flow adding to the clot until it stretched for a mile or more.

  The ball of junk that had once been the sleek, fashionable sports car rested in the center median. One of the truckers had climbed down from the cab of his rig and trotted over to the car, and he stood helpless, hands pumping up and down as if he were reciting an incantation. Three others were walking cautiously around the wreck, two of them with fire extinguishers in hand.

  In the distance, Estelle heard the wail of sirens eastbound.…It would be Eddie Mitchell and Dennis Collins. An EMT rescue squad and ambulance would be en route close behind them.

  “He just ticked the left rear of my trailer,” the first driver said when he saw Estelle. “Jesus H. Christ, he come out of nowhere.” He was an older man, pleasant enough looking, his face white as a sheet. “Musta rolled five or six times. I guess he’s still inside.”

  The car lay on its top facing eastbound, three wheels askew but still attached to the car, the fourth ripped off to join the trail of parts marking the car’s path along the median. Estelle took a few seconds to walk a circle around it, making sure the area was clear of hazards. She approached the driver’s side. As she cut across through the stumpy desert scrub, Robert Torrez’s Expedition pulled off the interstate, crossing the median well behind where the first marks of the car’s trajectory marked the shoulder. He parked on the median side of the eastbound lane’s shoulder fifty yards beyond the crash site, facing traffic.

  Estelle knelt beside the wreck, which now from front to back appeared to be about six feet long, its extremities crushed and torn by the impact forces. What remained of the windshield structure and the roof was slammed into the ground, crushing inward.

  She swept away a small bush, mindful that the desert, even between lanes of an interstate, hosted all kinds of interesting critters who didn’t care for intrusion. Then, with her face touching the ground, she tried to see through a small triangle of side window, shattered inward by the crushed roof post. She could not see past the fabric of the deployed air bag, and she held her breath, listening. The ticking of hot metal sounded like an old, out-of-sync clock.

  “CJ?” Estelle called. “Can you hear me?” There was no response. Hearing Sheriff Torrez’s heavy breathing behind her, she pushed herself away. “I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t see her. I can’t tell what position she’s in.” She crawled toward the rear of the car, and tried to see through the little rear wing window.

  “We got rescue comin’,” Torrez said. “Cut away that door and we’ll be able to tell.”

  With the metal twisted and mangled into a puzzle of interlocked, sharp parts, simply hauling the car upright with a cable from a wrecker was out of the question. The driver was already apt to be impaled on sharp objects. A careless movement of the car’s carcass could finish the job. Estelle circled to the passenger side, but that had taken a number of smashing hits. The car lay more on its right side than left, and the rising ground made it impossible to see inside. From the rear, the trunk lid and its supporting structure had bashed upward, and then driven into the dirt.

  “Don’t let it burn!” The four words came from the core of the crushed wreckage, thin and desperate.

  Estelle darted back to the driver’s side and dropped to her hands and knees. “CJ, can you hear me?”

  “Don’t let it burn!” the voice repeated, and trailed off into a whimper.

  “We’re going to get you out of there. Just hold on. How badly are you hurt?”

  “I…I don’t know. I can’t move.”

  “They’re on their way,” Estelle said.

  The wait was agonizing, even though it was probably no more than a few minutes. By the time the rescue squad arrived, set up a perimeter, made a hasty game plan, and finally fired up the gasoline-powered extraction jaws, Estelle saw what had to be at least sixty-five people standing in the median or beside their vehicles.

  Dennis Collins, dressed in blue jeans and a light windbreaker with sheriff’s department in huge yellow letters across the back, appeared at her side. “We can open the right westbound lane and get most of these guys out of here,” he said. “You want Allen and me to start workin’ on that?”

  “No, I don’t,” she said. “Until we talk to everyone who saw this, I don’t want anything moved.” She turned and looked to the east. “That freight liner there with the double trailers?”

  “Got it.”

  “I want everyone who isn’t working this, or who doesn’t belong to one of the trucks of this front convoy here, back behind that spot. All the rubberneckers. We’re going to need the breathing space. Run a yellow tape across to my car, if you have to.”

  “Got it.”

  “After she’s out of the car, and after we take some measurements, we can open the right-hand lane.” She tu
rned her attention back to the emergency workers. Jerry Buckman, a big, burly hulk of a man who appeared even larger in his bunker gear, worked the nose of the jaws into the door frame by the lower hinge, and it spread and popped the metal as if it were aluminum foil. He worked this way and that, worrying the metal of the door away from the frame, all the way down to what, in the upright vehicle, would be the top hinge, now forced into the dirt.

  Shifting his stance deftly, he attacked the rear of the door, working down through the door lock itself. Finally, with the jaws between the lower edge of the door and the rocker panel, he eased the door gently away from the frame, always alert that his actions didn’t move the car. Throughout the process, the occupant, crushed into this impossibly small space, kept up a stream of whimpers, cries, and wails, most of them drowned out by the power equipment.

  Finally Buckman stopped and shut down the noisy saw. “We can get us a chain right through here,” he said to Cliff Herrera. Buckman touched the lower edge of the rocker panel, now drawn four or five inches out. “Run it right down and out through the window.” That opening, where the driver’s elbow might rest with the window open, was crushed to within a couple inches of the ground.

  Within seconds, the rescue workers threaded the chain down through the narrow opening and dragged it back out, securing it to a hefty come-along attached to the big rescue truck’s rear bumper.

  With both sides and the bottom can-openered away, the door shifted easily, its crushed top and window frame digging a trough in the dirt. Cliff Herrera, about half Buckman’s size, bellied down on the ground and squirmed up close to peer inside. Even with the door peeled aside, the opening was desperately small. Knowing that Buckman would never allow her to approach in the first place, Estelle forced herself to stand well back as the rescue team worked. “You ain’t dressed for the dance, young lady,” he once had told her years before.

  “Can you hear me?” Herrera asked, his voice loud and carefully enunciated. His head and one shoulder were inside the car, and Estelle could see him trying to shift position.