by Rex Burns
“He thinks we grabbed the nearest Indian to close the case. He’s doing a story on Indians, so now he thinks he’s got to protect their civil rights.”
The big man pushed back into the startled yelp of his chair and studied the ceiling. “I wonder how the First Amendment applies to pretrial publicity in favor of the defendant?”
That was the kind of theoretical question young assistant district attorneys liked to argue on coffee breaks, and Wager had heard detectives waste hours pretending to be lawyers. For him, it was no issue: “Gargan doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.”
“The real question is how equal the state’s right is to an unprejudiced trial. Ideally, it should be the same as the defendant’s, you know? But most of the rulings are in response to the defendant’s request. Now, if Gargan goes on a crusade against the police before the case goes to trial, that could make it interesting for the DA.”
Though most of the time he kept it hidden, Max had a college degree—sociology—and it tended to pop out when he got talkative. It wasn’t as bad as some—Golding, for example, who had a theory for everything. There had been a few times, in fact, when Homicide Detective Golding’s case of intellectual bullshit had come very close to being terminal. But Max was Wager’s partner, and you gave your partner a little more slack than you might someone else. Wager turned back to the pending memos and notices, and whenever Max would ask “Don’t you think so, Gabe?” he would grunt something between a yes and a no.
Far down the pile of papers was another routine notice, this one from the Colorado State Patrol, District Two, seeking information on a hit-and-run victim tentatively identified as Thomas Sanchez. Wager’s eyes skimmed past the name and jumped back, a prickly feeling tightening the flesh across his shoulders. Slowly he read the terse description—male, Hispanic, approximately fifty years old—and then the one-line history: the victim had been found beside Chaffee County Road 5 apparently struck by a car. Any law enforcement agency with pertinent information was requested to call. The circular was dated two days ago and had already been initialed by the detectives on the day shift.
Wager dialed the number and in a while a female voice said, “Colorado State Patrol, Salida Office.”
He identified himself. “I’m calling about a notice you sent out on a hit-run victim, possibly a Thomas Sanchez. Has he been positively identified yet?”
“No, sir. You’re the first call we’ve had on him.”
“Is he dead or alive?”
“He’s alive but still unconscious. Do you know him well?”
“Not too well. Why?”
“The victim’s features are sort of messed up. The person who gave a tentative i.d. didn’t know him too well, either, and couldn’t be sure it was him.”
“Can you send up a photograph?”
“We took some. But he looks even worse that way. The swelling should go down in a week or so, but we’d like to know who he is as soon as possible.”
There wasn’t a thing that told Wager it was definitely Tommy. How many Sanchezes lived in that part of the state? A hundred? A thousand? “Does this man have a lot of old injuries? Broken bones and scars?”
“He has a lot of new ones, Detective Wager. I don’t know about old ones.”
“Did you try fingerprints?”
“No record for this man as a John Doe, and there are so many Sanchezes that it’s like having nothing at all.”
And if Tommy had no criminal record or military service, there wouldn’t be any prints to match; he’d be just as hard to identify as his sons, who also had no record anywhere. “Where is he?”
“He’s in the county wing of the hospital right now. They’re pretty anxious to get a positive on him so they can locate the next of kin.”
And find out where to send the bill.
“We’d like one, too. We’re not so sure that it was a hit-and-run.”
“What’s that?”
She hesitated. “The doctor’s not certain about the types of injury. And we found no evidence at the scene or in the victim’s clothes or flesh of any vehicle. A man hit that hard, there should have been glass or paint or something.”
“You think it was an assault?”
“It could have been. Possibly linked with robbery—his wallet’s gone. But his watch and a big gold ring and a large silver belt buckle were still on him.”
“A big belt buckle? A cowboy belt buckle?”
“Yes.”
“I see. All right, I’ll drive down this morning. What’s your address there?”
Leaving as soon as the shift ended, Wager figured three hours down, an hour there, and then three back. It left enough time to get some sleep before the next tour of duty. Without the traffic in Denver and its broad suburbs, he made good time, and dawn began to redden the sky just after he crossed Kenosha Pass and tilted into the long descent leading to South Park. Its fifty miles of level, treeless meadow separated the Front Range from the mountains of the Great Divide; and the vastness and chill of altitude and the widely scattered, lonely specks of light brought the familiar sense of foreboding that Wager always had when he traveled this stretch of road. At this time of morning, he especially felt it, when the raw light began to outline the shadow of an occasional ranch house or gas station, and made the mark of man seem flimsy and huddled beneath the looming peaks and a wide sky that was both close and endlessly deep.
He had fished some of the meandering streams that cut trenches across the park’s windswept floor: Fourmile, Agate, the South Platte. Now ranchers were selling their land off in ten-acre plots to Denverites and Texans who parked trailers across the land like scattered square pebbles. They fenced the approaches to the creeks as their own; they used them for a couple of weeks, maybe for the one chilly month of July or August, and the rest of the year the land lay empty as it was now. This early in summer, the occasional dirt access road had not yet been churned to mud by the knobby wheels of traffic, and uncut patches of snow glowed in shaded depressions on the range. Deeper drifts began only a couple hundred feet up the flanks of the surrounding mountains, and some of them seemed big enough to last until the next snowfall in September. But they wouldn’t; a few days of sun and nights above freezing, and most of the snow would drain off in rivulets to swell the rivers that carved their way to the Mississippi a thousand miles away.
In the forty miles between Kenosha and Trout Creek passes, two vehicles whipped by him, both semis that left a tense whine in the cold air and a streak of black smoke fraying against the morning sky. It was warmer now, both because of the sun that cast the Trans-Am’s shadow on the twisting pavement ahead and because Wager was gliding into the valley of the Arkansas River. Below, past piñon-dotted hills of red sand that reminded him of New Mexico, the trees bordering the river made a wandering line of dark green against the paler shade of sagebrush. Beside the river, the busier lanes of US 24 led south to Salida, and Wager, half an hour from his destination, stopped at the junction for what the waitress assumed was breakfast. Through the window beside his booth, he saw the white walls and copper-green roofs of the state reformatory at Buena Vista. The lush fields, broken here and there by wire security fences, were still empty of prisoners, and, as he dipped toast into egg, Wager idly tried to remember the names of those he’d sent there. Fifteen—perhaps only twelve left inside now. This morning, as every morning, they would be eating a gummy breakfast off a scratched tray and then counting the silverware in at the wash window. Wearing un-ironed coveralls clammy with this week’s sweat because tomorrow was laundry day. Maybe they would live up to the institution’s name and be reformed; probably they wouldn’t. Probably they would come out thinking they were a hell of a lot slyer than when they went in, and then, when they finally killed somebody, they’d run across Wager again. And their next vacation at state expense would be hard time in the pen at Cañon City.
Vacation.
Wager sighed and finished his coffee, shaking his head at the waitress who hovered with a steaming
globe to offer a refill.
If it wasn’t for his promise to Jo, he’d be satisfied with this drive to Salida and back. See some nice landscape—look at the reformatory. What else could a man ask? But she wanted a three-week trip somewhere, and he had agreed. They still had not decided where. The number of places to visit seem to grow and grow, and so did the places he didn’t want to see. But even narrowing things down hadn’t helped. When he left for work last night, she had been talking about Europe again, and this time she didn’t seem to be kidding.
The final twenty-five miles went quickly despite the increasing traffic. Wager glanced at the directions given him and slowed as he saw the cluster of signs marking the town of Salida bordering the river ahead. The patrol office was a small new building surrounded by a graveled drive and set to watch over the highway’s traffic. Parked beside the building was a white sedan with the familiar winged emblem on its doors.
“Can I help you, sir?” The female officer looked up from a corner desk crowded with papers and a radio charger unit. The clutter of charts and notices and the snap of the radio were familiar, and equally recognizable was the stale odor of coffee that had heated too long.
“I’m Detective Wager, Denver Police. I’m here to identify a hit-run victim.”
“Oh, yes!” She stood and shook hands, a heavy-set woman whose brown hair was cut just at her shoulders. She wore no makeup, and her grip was strong. “I’m Trooper Ingalls. I didn’t think you’d get here so soon.”
He explained that his tour of duty ended at three. Hers was over at eight, she said, and they talked a few minutes about their bureaucracies. Wager declined a cup of coffee, and finally she told him how to find the hospital. “My relief’s not due for an hour. But you can go look at him. I’ll call and tell the nurse to expect you.”
The hospital was a sprawling one-level building whose parking lot surrounded a flagpole and was beginning to fill with cars. Inside the entry, a board full of names listed doctors and medical units, and beyond that glowed the reception desk. Wager stood around until a gray-haired woman came through a door behind the desk to smile and ask if he was the one Trooper Ingalls had called about.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Follow me, please.”
Her crepe soles squeaked on the hallway’s wax, and breakfast odors, reflected like the streaks of glare from the overhead lights, drifted along the plain walls. Here and there, wide doors opened to glimpses of rumpled bed-sheets or a robed figure leaning for support against a chair back.
“What’s his condition?”
“It’s not critical, but he’s still in ICU.”
The woman turned down a corridor guarded by two swinging doors and then into an open room with a row of five beds. Two had curtains drawn around them, and Wager could see the busy white shoes of nurses at work. Two were empty and waiting under their array of chrome hooks and tubing and electronic monitors. In the last bed of the intensive care unit lay a small mound of covers. Transparent hoses ran from the mound, some holding a clear liquid, another moving slow, elongated bubbles of air and red-brown clots from the victim’s mouth and out of sight under the bed. Under the murmur of professionally cheerful voices from the curtained beds came the steady hiss of a suction machine.
“He’s still in a coma?”
“Yes. I’ll tell the duty nurse you’re here.”
Wager leaned over the waxy face to study it in the gray light of the room’s single distant window. Blood-crusted pinpricks of stitch marks closed red and swollen lines of sliced flesh across the shaved eyebrows, the mashed nose, and through the upper and lower lips. The man’s eyes puffed out almost as far as his nose, and against the white bandage wrapping his skull, the squeezed lids looked oily and black. A growth of whiskers peppered his jaw with white fuzz, and the asymmetrical swelling of the left side of his face lifted one ear higher than the other. In this light, it was difficult to trace resemblance to the face Wager knew.
But he had no doubt who it was, and the difference between what Wager saw and what he remembered as Tommy Sanchez made his stomach churn sickly around his morning’s coffee.
“You—what are you doing here? Speak: who are you?” It was a heavily accented voice—German, Wager decided—and belonged to a tall man who glared at him over a pointing finger. “Who let you in here?”
“I was asked to identify this man.”
“That is irrelevant. This ward is off limits. You should not be here. Stand over by that wall.”
Wager stared back at the blue eyes and did not move. “Are you the man’s doctor?”
“I am the chief administrator of this hospital and I have asked you a question. Now answer!”
“I am Detective Wager, Denver Police Department.”
“Please keep your voices down. Is something wrong here?”
“Nurse, what is this unauthorized person doing in here?”
The nurse, blond hair pulled back tightly under a cap, raised her eyebrows. “He’s a policeman. Mrs. Koontz said he could identify number five.”
“He should be accompanied by hospital staff at all times. He should not be left alone here to do Gott knows what.” The administrator turned to Wager. “Well? Do you know the patient? Speak!”
Wager’s voice gained its slight Spanish lilt. “Yes. I know him.”
“Well? Who is he?”
Wager smiled. “Your manners—did you learn them in Auschwitz?”
“That is impertinent!”
“Both of you please leave the ward. You’re disturbing my patients.”
“There’s no change in his condition?” Wager ignored the administrator.
The nurse shook her head.
“You—come with me!”
Wager took a business card from his wallet and handed it to her. “Can you ask his doctor to give me a call as soon as there’s any change?”
“Did you hear me?”
She nodded, a worried glance at the administrator.
Wager smiled thanks and followed the tall man’s stiff-kneed stride into the hallway and down toward the reception desk. The man aimed at a door marked Hospital Administrator; Wager turned toward the exit.
“Where do you think you are going?”
“Wherever I want to.”
“You will come here! I will report you to your superiors!”
“Amigo, I have no superiors. And if you want to stop me, you’ll have to put me under arrest.” Wager’s cheeks tightened into a wide grin. “And if you put me under arrest, you will want to get a very good lawyer for yourself. Because false arrest is a misdemeanor—and I will be very happy to see you spend a few months in jail.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“You’re goddam right I am. Try me and see if I’m lying.” He waited a long minute to give the man a chance, but he only stared at Wager, his mouth a tight purse and his jaw chewing what he would like to say. “Adios.”
In his car, Wager breathed away his anger and thanked whatever gods were left that the German had not tried to hold him physically. He would have resisted, of course, and the local cops would have come; and Wager, armed and outside his jurisdiction by more than a hundred miles, would have ended up with six weeks’ paperwork to explain it all. And no vacation—which might not be so bad after all.
He pulled into the parking lot of the Highway Patrol office, pleased to see that Trooper Ingalls’s car was one of the two cruisers sitting there.
“Did you know him?” She leaned over the desk pointing to something on a paper for her replacement, a wiry and dark-haired man who looked up and half smiled because Ingalls knew him.
“It’s Thomas Sanchez. He has a ranch near Antonito.” He fished around in his wallet for a slip of paper. “Here’s the rural route and telephone number. I’m sure he lives alone down there.”
Ingalls copied it down. “Any idea what he was doing here?”
“No. He has two sons, James and John. They’re working on a ranch over in Ute County, the T Bar M. As far as I
know, they’re his only next of kin.”
“That’s probably in District Four.” She made a note to herself.
“Will your office be in charge of the investigation?”
“If it’s automobile-related. If not, we’ll turn it over to the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office.”
Wager nodded, understanding that sheriff’s officers were as jealous of their jurisdictions as any other police agency, including Denver’s. And that their detectives probably shared the same suspicion of the State Patrol’s ability to investigate criminal acts. Chasing speeders was one thing; running an investigation into an assault or homicide was something else. But every now and then one of the Smokies would see himself as a one-man police force, and you had to guard against that. The same defensiveness would greet Wager if he tried to poke into the sheriff’s business, and he had to remember that despite any feelings he might have at seeing Tommy lie there like a pound of ground meat, it wasn’t his case. “Would you call me when Sanchez regains consciousness? Or if it turns out to be a beating?” He handed her one of his cards.
“Be glad to. And thanks for coming all the way down here.”
When Wager reported in, the long drive seemed as insubstantial as a half-remembered dream. On the trip back, slower because of daytime traffic, his mind had dwelled on Tom’s bloated, purple face and his stillness in the network of tubes and sensors. And he had turned over the obvious questions. If Tom was hit by a car, what was he doing that far north of Antonito on foot? If he was beaten, why? The first question had a dozen possible answers—looking at stock and ran out of gas, or drunk and hitchhiking. Whatever. The answer to the second question could fall into three areas: robbery, the results of general hell-raising, or maybe something to do with his sons. He had had no wallet when he was found, but other valuables, easily pawned or melted down, had been left. Still, robbery was a good bet, because like a lot of cowboys, Tom enjoyed the feel of a roll of cash, and he liked to carry that roll with him. Finding that much money, the robber might have left the other things. In other words, there was nothing at all so far to indicate that his sons were somehow involved. Except the meeting last week to ask Wager to butt out.