Easy Errors

by Steven F Havill

“Back to my point. In that instance last night, would there have been a delay while someone drove down to the Sheriff’s Department to pick up a car?”

  Number one in the stupid question department. “That didn’t happen.” And a delay wouldn’t have mattered, I almost said. “We had two deputies on the road when that call came in, both riding in the same car. And I responded from home. In my unit. Had we had another emergency call at the same time, we would have had some logistical problems.”

  “It just seems to me that most of the time…”

  I cut him off with an impatient wave of the hand. “There is no most of the time in this business, Randy. If we could schedule or calendar emergency calls for convenience, we would, believe me.”

  Murray grimaced with irritation, thumping his forefinger on the commission desk. “Did you not purchase a new patrol car last year?”

  “Yes.” I smiled at his tone, a holdover from his former career as a metro attorney litigating settlements against drunk drivers…until he himself made the same mistake that his targets did. Then he decided to start a new life in Posadas. He elected to hide his face, some folks would say. He specialized in settling estates, writing wills, and handling divorces. Only recently had he come back into the daylight to take a seat on the County Commission.

  “And the year before that?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many units are currently operational?”

  I looked at the ceiling and did a quick count. “We have six that are not rolling junk, and two that spend their declining years doing things like county fair or parade duty. As undersheriff, I’m on call twenty-four/seven, so one of those six lives full-time with me. Ditto for Sheriff Salcido. We try to reserve a vehicle for each shift sergeant. That makes a total of five, leaving one to be shared around the clock.”

  Murray frowned. “I don’t see how that works.”

  I smiled indulgently. “Neither do I. Sometimes it’s a scramble. Often, a road deputy takes his sergeant’s vehicle, or the sheriff’s, or mine.”

  “Six cars, and that’s not enough?” Murray said in wonder. “For a county this size?”

  “That’s the nature of the business. Like I said, we’re a twenty-four/seven outfit, Randy. And when one of the units is in the shop, which happens too often, well…” I spread my hands in surrender. “But see, the thing is, regardless of the condition of our fleet, when Auntie Minnie is having a coronary because someone is trying to break into her house, she expects someone from our office to respond. And not next week.”

  “So…”and he shuffled papers. “If this expenditure is approved by the sheriff, that puts you at seven units?”

  “No. One of the units is scheduled to be retired. It’s showing a hundred and ninety-six thousand miles, and has all kinds of issues.”

  “Who currently uses that one?”

  “I do.”

  “And so you get the new one.” He could be so righteously smug, even when dead wrong.

  “Nope. We’ll do some shifting around. Our road deputies always drive the newest and best units.”

  Dr. Arnie Gray, a chiropractor in his first year with the commission, leaned forward. “If you could—I mean if the department budget would allow it—how many units would you bid out?” Gray had done his research when he won the election, and he’d talked to both me and Salcido. He knew what we wanted, and what we needed.

  “Three this year, three next year.”

  “Jeez,” Murray yelped, and leaned far back in his chair as if struck. He swiveled from one side to another, surveying the small audience to make sure they appreciated his performance.

  At the same time, a strong aroma of perfume cascaded around me, and I turned just as Hilda Gallegos knelt down in the aisle beside my seat. She held out a small note.

  “Okay, thanks,” I whispered. I rose and nodded at the commission. “Just a bank robbery in progress,” I said. “I’m going to see if my car will start.” I held up a hand. “Just kidding. But if you’ll excuse me for a bit?”

  “Bill, thanks,” Roland Esquivel, the commission chair, said, obviously relieved. “Any more questions, and we’ll save ’em for the next meeting.” He scanned the agenda while I made a quick exit, following Hilda’s broad beam.

  “JJ said it was important, or I wouldn’t have interrupted,” she stage-whispered over her shoulder.

  “That’s fine. You saved me.”

  I started to draw my handheld radio off my belt, thought better of it, and ducked into Hilda’s office to use her phone. Murton answered on the fourth ring. I guess he liked to make absolutely sure that the damn thing was ringing before committing himself.

  “This is the Posadas…”

  “JJ, it’s Gastner. What’s up?” I interrupted.

  “Oh, good. Sheriff, you got a minute or two?”

  So much information, so concisely worded. I took a deep breath. Hilda had returned to her desk and was trying not to listen.

  “Who, what, where, when,” I prompted, and for a moment the flood of questions challenged our dispatcher.

  Then he gushed, “No, I mean up the hill on 43? Just this side of Consolidated, at the boneyard there. Derwood Taylor? He’s one of the foremen up there, and he wants to talk to somebody. I guess a burglary or something. I got Bishop way the hell and gone down to Regál on a domestic. Sergeant Payson is still in his office, and Mears is thinkin’ of doing some checking out west, but they’re both on O.T. Sarge said you might need rescuing.” Miracle chuckled uneasily. “He said to give you a shout. I mean, Sarge did.”

  “I’m on my way.” I hung up and nodded my thanks to Hilda.

  “You have a better day, Bill,” she said. The deeply sympathetic look she offered told me she’d heard all about the crash the night before.

  The aging 310 started with an ominous clanking noise from somewhere down under, and I waited a moment for things to settle down. In the rearview mirror, I watched the light cloud of blue exhaust smoke drift away. My first inclination was to head for Lordsburg and some answers, but Deputy Tom Mears was already on the road in that direction, and he didn’t need me breathing over his shoulder.

  Consolidated Mining’s Derwood Taylor had claimed to have an emergency, and had asked specifically for me. Visiting the mine site would give me a few minutes to clear out the cobwebs.

  County Road 43 wound out of the village to the northeast, past the drive-in theater and various scruffy little trailer parks. I’d heard that before long, the Consolidated copper mine would close. If that rumor was true, most of the trailer park residents would move on, leaving the neighborhood desolate and weed-strewn. The outer boundaries of Posadas would shrink inward, the blight extending into the inner village, where marginal businesses would close their doors.

  I drove with the windows down, watching for the herds of youngsters who lived and played along this section of the macadam highway.

  The wrinkly prairie started its slope up the skirt of Cat Mesa and then, beyond the intersection with old State 78, started to climb in earnest. On the flank of the mesa, Consolidated Mining spread out to the eastern plain like a vast, ugly sore. The copper that the company had first pursued had run thin, but apparently scrounging for rarer trace minerals had kept them in business long enough for the operation to be a valuable write-off. Although the bigwigs denied it, I gave the mine until the end of the year, with just a modest reclamation crew left behind.

  Just downhill, and outside the chain-link and razor-wire fence of the boneyard, Consolidated had stored a huge inventory of used railroad ties, a stinky mountain of creosote-soaked oak too vast to clutter the boneyard itself. Who knows what they were thinking? Why they needed the timbers was a good question, since as an open pit, they had no tunnels to shore up. Maybe it was just one of those “good deals” that someone couldn’t pass up. The railroad ties were the only items worth stealing, but usually thiev
es don’t have that sort of ambition.

  I let 310 drift to a stop on the shoulder of the county road, and could smell the rich odor of the sunbaked ties fifty feet away. Derwood Taylor’s white Chevy pickup, sporting the fancy company logos on the doors, was parked at the far end of the pile. He dismounted, carrying a clipboard as I guess all good supervisors are required to do.

  “PCS, three ten is ten six Consolidated.” I waited until Miracle acknowledged. I could picture his chicken neck craning as he looked at the ten-code chart to confirm that I’d used the “don’t bother me” code. I hung up the mike and got out.

  “Mornin’, Sheriff!” Taylor called. He skirted along the bottom edge of the ties, waiting for me to climb the shallow bank from the roadway. Off to my right, several sets of tire tracks marked the shoulder of the road and scuffed dirt on the bank. With a little running start, someone had backed right up to the pile.

  “Derwood, how’s your day going?”

  “Well, not so bad. You’ve had a bad one, though. Last night?”

  I nodded. “Yes, we did.”

  He waited a moment for me to add graphic details, but when I didn’t, turned back to his railroad ties. He ran a hand along the side of his head just under his cap, making sure his well-oiled hair was still neatly tied back in the short ponytail. “We got somebody helping themselves,” he explained. “See these?” He walked to the nearest set of tire tracks through the crushed grass, then stopped and stomped a boot up on the first railroad tie. No dust covered its surface. “Looks to me like he backs right up to the pile here and helps himself.”

  “Well, that’s easy to do, with no right-of-way fence,” I said. “Why does Consolidated store these outside the yard?”

  He shrugged. “You’d have to ask the boss man. That’s what he wanted.”

  “They make an attractive nuisance like this.”

  “You know, sometime they’re planning to haul them all to a wholesaler somewhere, and maybe they thought it’d be easier to load flatbed semis here on the road. I don’t know why they bought them in the first place, to tell the truth. Anyways, they’re not free for the taking.”

  “How’d you come to notice a few were missing?”

  “I didn’t. One of the drivers saw two Mexicans loadin’. He said they had five ties in the bed of their truck already. Some little beat-up foreign job.”

  “When was this?”

  “He saw ’em last week sometime.”

  “Last week?”

  He shrugged helplessly. “Yeah, I know. Kinda slow on the uptake.”

  “Your man didn’t talk to them at that time?”

  “Nope.”

  “And they just come back to help themselves, a few at a time.”

  “I guess they do. They’re takin’ the eight-footers, leaving the tens.” He shrugged. “Small truck.”

  “Your guys didn’t happen to catch the license, I suppose?”

  “Nope.”

  “Make and color?”

  “Dull yellow, one of the guys said. Off-color right-front fender. He thinks an older YoteTote. All banged up.”

  I pulled the small notebook out of my pocket, and flipped to an open page. “So an older yellow Toyota.” I smiled and didn’t bother to write anything other than the date and Derwood Taylor’s name. I knew who owned the truck. I’d seen it on the two-tracks of Posadas County or in the village regularly, even deep in Mexico where its owner worked more often than not…and no doubt where the railroad ties were starting a new life.

  “We got some No Trespassing signs that are goin’ up today, too.”

  “Well, that’ll help, maybe. What’s your guestimate at the total number of ties taken?”

  Taylor frowned at the pile, lips moving as he counted to himself. “Right at twenty, twenty-four. I mean, you can see the fresh marks.” He shook his head. “Look, I know this is penny ante stuff, especially after last night, but the boss wanted something done.”

  “Glad you called,” I said. From awful to the ridiculous. That’s the way life went. “Your call saved me from the rest of a boring County Commission meeting.” I smiled and extended my hand. “Ten bucks a piece? Is that about what eight-foot ties are bringing now?”

  He nodded. “Don’t be wastin’ a lot of time on this,” he said. “You find ’em, just tell the builder or whoever it is not to take any more. Or stop in the office first for an invoice. That’s all. We got to inventory everything, you know.”

  “Done. That and two hundred and forty bucks for the ones already taken. And maybe the signs will help.”

  My radio belched out some static before Taylor had the chance to reply. “Three ten, PCS.”

  I twisted around and worked the radio off my belt “Three ten, ten eight.”

  “Three ten, ah, what’s your ten twenty location?” I looked heavenward, and even Derwood Taylor grinned at the redundancy.

  “Three ten is ten eight, Consolidated.” As I already told you, I didn’t bother to add.

  “Ah, ten four. Can you…?” and there was a pause. There he went again, consulting the wall chart. “Can you ten sixteen back here for a bit? No, I mean ten nineteen. Ten nineteen.”

  I sighed. “Ten four. ETA eight minutes.”

  “Yeah, roger that. Mears needs to talk with you.” I had explained to Miracle Murton on several occasions that all the eager ears in Posadas County didn’t need to hear his explanatory asides, but to no avail.

  “Thanks for comin’ by, Sheriff. I’ll tell the boss,” Taylor said. His face brightened. “And if whoever done it can come up with two hundred and forty bucks, why, that’s the end of it right there. We’d sure appreciate it.”

  As I turned around, I examined the tracks where Rueben Fuentes had backed his Toyota off the road, putting his tailgate right at the first pile of tempting ties. The bald back tires had lost grip here and there, spinning down through the bunch grass. Knowing the old bandit as well as I did, I knew that Rueben wouldn’t deny taking the heavy ties, pilfering from an unprotected stash immediately beside a public highway—as if they were being offered for public use. On occasion, I was sure that some of the state Highway Department’s gravel went missing in the same way.

  One thing I was sure of—Consolidated wouldn’t be getting the ties back any time soon. Once they were on the jobsite in Mexico, there they’d stay.

  Chapter Six

  “Point zero eight for young Browning, sir,” Deputy Tom Mears said by way of greeting.

  I stopped to digest and translate the blood-alcohol information. “Right at the legal limit…if he were an adult.”

  “That’s right. As a kid, point zero two would earn him a DUI. Bye, bye license.”

  I accepted the paperwork that Mears offered and read the fine print. “At zero eight, he might have been able to drive under normal circumstances. Might. But not at more than a hundred miles an hour. And not when he met a tricky exit ramp.”

  “No, sir.” Mears waited patiently while I scanned the rest of the document.

  “Elli was sober,” I said. “That’s interesting. Not even a taste, then. Fifteen years old, and she’s saying no?” Her brother was a different story. Orlando’s blood would have made effective antifreeze. “Point two one?” I read incredulously.

  “Really, really snoggered, sir.”

  “Damn near toxic.” Unlike Robert, his towering oldest brother, little Orlando Torrez might have weighed ninety-five pounds dripping wet. Like his mother, he had been slight of build, not much more than five feet tall.

  “There’s evidence that he was vomiting, maybe thrashing around not long before the crash. Traces in the Suburban itself, but plenty on the boy’s clothes. The preliminary post shows that there was so much liquid from his asthma inhaler that it had been running out the kid’s nose.” He handed me a page of notes. “Dr. Perrone is going to investigate this further, bu
t he thinks that Orlando Torrez was dead before the crash.” He pointed at one entry as he read it.

  ‘“Preliminary examination indicates acute system failure that appears to have been brought about in part by the combination of high blood-alcohol levels and possible corticosteroid overdose coupled with a major asthma attack. Evidence suggests cardiac arrest several minutes before the fatal crash.’” Mears sat back. “Like he said, that’s all preliminary, but Perrone said he was willing to bet on it at this point.”

  He accepted the paperwork back. “We won’t know for sure until the complete toxicology profile is complete, but I talked with Deputy Torrez, sir. He says that his brother had serious asthma. The kid used two different kinds of inhalers, including an empty one that we found on the floor of the Suburban. Another one went out the same window his sister did.”

  I sat on the corner of the deputy’s desk, arms folded across my chest, lost in thought.

  “Our witness remembers seeing someone trying to crawl over the seat, from front to back,” I said. “I find it hard to believe that Mr. Holmes would be able to see much, unless the Suburban’s interior light was turned on. Even then, with the speed and the collision? We need to find out about that. And if there was some sort of medical episode going on—if the kid is in the middle seat convulsing or something like that, then maybe his sister was trying to clamber back there to help him. Mr. Holmes says that he remembers seeing the front seat passenger up and leaning over the back. Could have been a lot going on in that Suburban just before the crash.”

  “And the driver is trying his best to get them to medical help as fast as he can,” Mears said. “I can see that.”

  “That’s possible. The sister sees that Orlando has stopped breathing and does what she can, all the while yelling at the driver to flog the horses. If he understood what the hell was happening. That might have been playing out when they took a chunk out of Mr. Holmes’ Cadillac.”

  Mears nodded. “I think that at this point, all we can do is backtrack ’em. I shot on over to Lordsburg, and found out nothing. The County Extension agent hadn’t heard of any 4-H gatherings, and Giradelli Trucking said they haven’t delivered the lo-boy for the float. So that hasn’t started. The agent said she hadn’t seen the kids since a club meeting two weeks ago.” Mears shrugged.