Privileged to Kill

by Steven F Havill

  Fortunately no one else had been on the highway or in the crosswalk when Officer Thomas Pasquale experienced his magic moment. When it was over, we heard no call for an ambulance or the coroner, so we were reasonably sure Pasquale hadn’t suffered any more injury than a slam-dunked ego.

  Estelle slowed the patrol car to a stop on the south side of the intersection and we surveyed the carnage. By that time, Deputy Tom Mears had set up a detour for both east- and westbound traffic. A few patrons of the Don Juan drifted toward the street corner to gawk, but there wasn’t much to see…just a trashed police car, on its roof in the middle of the street.

  The skid marks and vehicular junk told me all I needed to know about how the car had come to turn turtle. My imagination had no trouble filling in the details.

  Always competitive even in the dullest moments, Pasquale had been caught off guard by the dispatcher’s call. Maybe he’d been trying to grab a quick sandwich; maybe he’d been in the can reading a magazine. Whatever the scenario, he’d missed the call by a hairsbreadth. Back in the car, he heard the radio traffic and flew into action, trying to beat Sergeant Bob Torrez to the scene…which he could easily have done at a walk, since the sergeant was a dozen miles out of town.

  Thomas Pasquale had blasted his patrol car onto the bridge with lights and siren ablaze and awail and his right foot pasted to the floor. No doubt he hoped for a scene right out of Hollywood’s best. What he got was something else.

  I could picture the village’s patrol car, a somewhat long-of-tooth Chevy, launching just fine as it roared up onto the bridge, traveling who knows how fast. Unfortunately, Officer Pasquale had forgotten that automobiles aren’t motorcycles. There are no handlebars to haul back on so that the front wheels vault higher than the back for a graceful landing.

  The old patrol car had taken the leap, nosed down, and crashed its worn chassis front-end-first on the hard pavement. Various parts gave up the ghost, the front wheels lost interest in working in unison, and after a couple of dramatic swerves that left black rubber cuts in the asphalt, the car tripped over itself and flipped.

  I took a deep breath and shook my head. “Just remember,” I said to Estelle. “When you’re elected sheriff in a couple of weeks, reviewing Pasquale’s employment application is going to be one of your first jobs.”

  “Sobering thought,” Estelle replied. “But it shouldn’t take long.”

  Sergeant Bob Torrez was still working the intersection, tape measure in hand. He’d had nearly half an hour to take a few measurements, and he was making it last. It was probably the most fun he’d had in a long time.

  Holding the dumb end of the tape was Posadas Chief of Police Eduardo Martinez. With him was a young state trooper whose patrol car was slotted into the patrons’ parking area of the Don Juan. If the trooper’s dinner was cooling, he didn’t seem to mind. He kept laughing about something. Chief Martinez wasn’t smiling.

  I doubted that Thomas Pasquale was laughing either. I could see a dark shape sitting in the sergeant’s county car and assumed that it was what was left of the young officer.

  “Give me just a minute,” I said to Estelle, and got out of 310. Torrez saw me and I waved a hand at him, not wanting to interrupt his methodical work pace. The passenger’s window of his patrol car was up, and I rapped a knuckle on the glass.

  It buzzed down. Thomas Pasquale looked up at me, his face pale in the dull wash of the streetlights. He was holding a gauze pad above his right eye, and there was what might have been a speck or two of blood on the collar of his uniform shirt.

  “Let me see it,” I said, and pulled his hand away. The cut was an inch long, just a nick along his eyebrow. I grimaced with irritation, but it was directed at Bob Torrez and Chief Martinez for letting this kid sit there dribbling blood when he should have been at the hospital.

  “I hit the shotgun rack,” Pasquale muttered. “It’s nothing.”

  I straightened up and beckoned him out of the car. “Come on,” I said, trying for the right combination of fatherly and brusque.

  “Sergeant Torrez told me to—” he started to say, and then stopped, remembering the basics of rank.

  As we started back to 310, I caught Chief Martinez’s eye. “We’ll be at the hospital,” I called, and the chief nodded, always perfectly content to let someone else orchestrate.

  Torrez continued writing on his clipboard as he walked over toward our car. He looked up from his report as I opened the back door and slid in. I waved a grateful Thomas Pasquale toward the front passenger seat. Torrez correctly interpreted the irritation in my expression and said, “He refused treatment.”

  “That’s fine. He’ll live, I’m sure. We need to ask him some questions, if you’re through with him,” I said.

  “Who was the pedestrian?” Torrez asked.

  “Wesley Crocker.”

  “You’re kidding. Killed?”

  I shook my head. “Just bruised, is my guess. Help Teddy clean up this mess. And keep your eyes peeled for a vehicle with damage to the right front, and flat black paint scraped off. If you need us for anything, we’ll be at the hospital.”

  Torrez touched the brim of his Stetson in salute, and flashed a rare grin at Pasquale. I pulled the door closed and settled back.

  During the brief ride, the young officer didn’t say a word. As we rolled past one of the convenience stores, several younger kids were in the parking lot and stared at us as if we were aliens. I’m sure Pasquale was glad that it wasn’t him sitting behind the steel prisoner’s screen in the backseat.

  Estelle parked in the slot reserved for the hospital administrator. Two slots down, in another reserved spot, was Sheriff Holman’s brown Buick.

  “Somebody let me out of this damn thing,” I said, and Pasquale shot out and unlocked my door. “We’re going to need your help, Thomas,” I said. “First, let’s make sure your eye isn’t going to fall out.”

  “It’s fine, sir.”

  “No, it isn’t fine,” I snapped. “It won’t hurt you one bit to have it checked. And I’ll sleep better. Humor me.”

  He did humor me, and it did hurt. First, an X-ray technician shot a couple of pictures that proved the kid’s head was still rock solid, after commenting dryly that it was a “busy night.” I took that to mean he had finished a series with Wesley Crocker. Then Dr. Alan Perrone poked in three stitches that were as neat as an old lady’s embroidery. Pasquale tried not to flinch.

  With the officer sporting a small, rakish bandage that might be mistaken for heroic if one were ignorant of the circumstances, the three of us left the emergency room and tracked down Estelle’s husband.

  Patricia Schroeder, a young RN who knew my insides like a road map after my own visits to those hallowed halls, met us at the nurses’ station and pointed down the hall.

  “The convocation is in 109,” she said. Her gaze flicked briefly to Tom Pasquale’s war wound and she offered the beginnings of a smile. It seemed to me that the young cop walked just a little straighter after that. Maybe he didn’t know that Nurse Pat was the wife of our district attorney, Ron Schroeder. It took more than three eyebrow stitches to impress her.

  Room 106 was occupied by Peggy Hammond and her nervous husband, Leslie. Les saw us walk by and raised a hand in greeting. I nodded but didn’t stop. Les was the dealership service manager where I’d purchased my truck, and I didn’t need an awkward conversation about oil filters or about his wife’s missing gallbladder. Next door, 107 was empty. Room 108’s solitary occupant was an ancient woman with nasal tube, vein tubes, medication drips—the works. She wasn’t conscious as the parade went by.

  I pushed open the door to 109 with the toe of my boot. Sheriff Martin Holman was leaning against the wall next to the window, his arms folded across his chest, threatening to crease his impeccable blue suit. His head was tilted in his characteristic “I’m listening closely” expression, and Dr. Francis Guzman was ticking a series of points off on his fingers. Standing near the
door was a singularly bored-looking Deputy Howard Bishop.

  Bishop turned and saw me and grinned, looking heavenward at the same time.

  Holman held up a hand to halt Francis in midsentence as he saw us enter.

  Bishop glanced at Pasquale and said, “Cut yourself shaving?” Pasquale had the good sense not to rise to the bait.

  I took Bishop by the elbow and steered him toward the door. “We need a vehicle with fresh damage to the right front, and scrapes where it’s missing flat-black paint…like maybe a grill guard on a pickup. Find it for me, all right? Coordinate with Mitchell and Torrez.”

  “Yeah, now wait a second,” Holman said, and strode across the room toward Estelle and me. Wesley Crocker was lying in the bed, watching the action with keen interest. He sure hadn’t had this much entertainment up north when he’d been digging postholes for Thomas Lawton. The crow’s feet around his eyes were deep against his tanned, leathery skin. He didn’t look like a patient.

  Having been missing most of the day, I thought it best at that moment to let Holman finish one complete sentence.

  “I wanted the deputy here, just in case,” Holman said. He glanced at Estelle and almost immediately flicked his eyes back to me. “I called him in here. I know everybody is tired and working triple time, but it just seemed like a good idea. Just in case.”

  “Just in case what?” I asked. Martin Holman spent most of his time fighting with the county commissioners over budget, something he was good at. He knew as well as I did how desperately shorthanded we were. The last thing we needed was one of our deputies sitting in a hospital room guarding the bedpans…especially when every one of the officers hadn’t slept in a day.

  “Well,” Holman said, and waved a hand in desperation at my stupidity. “If someone tried to kill Mr. Crocker once, what’s to stop them from trying again?”

  For a long moment, I looked at Martin Holman. He’d recently given up his gold-rimmed aviator glasses for contacts, and I would have sworn that he’d ordered the shade called “intense blue.” And despite the long day, his hair was still perfect. The gray in his sideburns had crept upward, level with the tops of his ears—just right for the campaign. Next to him, Estelle Reyes-Guzman looked about sixteen.

  “First of all, Sheriff, we don’t know if it was a deliberate assault on Mr. Crocker.”

  “Well, who’s going to just drive up on the curb and hit a pedestrian who’s walking along, minding his own business?”

  “Anyone who isn’t paying attention,” I said. “And then they panic and leave the scene. It happens all the time.”

  “But it could have been an attempt.”

  “I suppose so. But what we need right now are officers out in the field, looking for the vehicle in question.”

  “I still think that we should leave a guard.”

  I inhaled as if I were sucking on a foot-long Cuban cigar and then let it out slowly, finding myself without the energy to argue. “Whatever,” I said, and walked over to Wesley Crocker’s bedside. “How are you?”

  “Just a little sore, sir. The good doctor here worries too much.”

  A ghost of a smile touched Francis Guzman’s face. “He’s got a badly torn ligament in his right knee,” he said, “and a broken right index finger.” Crocker held up the offending digit, now encased in an aluminum splint. “We’ve immobilized his knee with a cast, but we may have to go in and staple things back together. We’ll see.”

  Wes Crocker frowned, but I doubted that it was the treatment, or even the pain of the injury, that worried him.

  “How long is he going to need to stay here?” I asked.

  Guzman rested a hand on the bed frame. “Just overnight. When someone his age takes a tumble like that, we want to make sure. I want to hold him for observation, just in case.”

  And then what? I thought, but I didn’t say it. Instead I moved closer to the head of the bed and looked hard at Crocker. “And you didn’t see the vehicle?” I asked him.

  “No, sir. I sure wish I could tell you what it looked like, but no, sir, I didn’t see it.”

  Estelle Reyes-Guzman padded around to the other side of the bed, and Wes Crocker’s eyes tracked her as if she were coming toward him with a hypodermic needle.

  “What did you hear?” she asked.

  “Well,” Crocker said, and hesitated. “Nothing unusual, I guess.”

  “The vehicle wasn’t particularly loud?”

  “No, ma’am. In fact, maybe that’s why I never turned around. There was no reason to.”

  “What about afterward, as the vehicle was accelerating away?” Estelle asked.

  Crocker grinned sheepishly. “I was too busy goin’ end over end to notice, ma’am. But there wasn’t any big roar, or anything like that. I remember hearing the bike gettin’ all mangled. That was a hell of a screech, excuse the language. But it was.”

  “What are the chances the vehicle is local?” Holman asked, and I glanced at Estelle.

  “I suppose the chances are better than average,” I replied. “There isn’t much traffic on the interstate this time of year and this time of day, and few of them get off at Posadas to drive around our celebrated downtown.”

  “What I meant was that if the vehicle is local, we shouldn’t have any trouble finding it. How many cars and trucks are there in town, anyway?”

  “Probably only a thousand or two,” I said. “And now you know why I’d rather Deputy Bishop wasn’t tied up here.”

  “I can stay here,” Thomas Pasquale said. He had spent the time standing quietly just inside the door.

  “You sure?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir.” It wasn’t the first time I’d saddled Pasquale with chair duty, but this was the first time he had volunteered.

  I turned to Holman. “Give me ten minutes to talk with the officer”—I nodded at Pasquale—“and then I’ll be back down at the office. We’ll spread all the parts out on the table and see what we have.”

  Holman nodded. “What about Mr. Crocker?”

  “What about him?”

  The sheriff grunted an impatient monosyllable and thrust his hands in his pockets. “When he’s released? Tomorrow morning, maybe?” He turned to Francis Guzman and the doctor nodded.

  “Probably,” Francis Guzman said.

  Holman turned back to me and raised his eyebrows. “Released to what? Where’s he going to stay? With you?” He meant it as a joke, of course.

  I’d lived alone for more than a decade. I had never taken in a stray dog or cat, and I didn’t leave my porch light on at Halloween. Except for Francis and Estelle, I could count on one hand the number of people who’d spent more than a minute inside my front door. I treasured the deep, dark silence of my old house. I wasn’t about to break old habits and play nursemaid to a vagrant with a busted leg.

  And so I was as surprised as anyone else when I said, “If it comes to that.” It was about as gracious an invitation as anyone was going to get.

  17

  We sat in the little conference room just kitty-corner from the nurses’ station. From there we could see down the hallway beyond Wes Crocker’s room…not that I expected to see a cadre of hit men in ski masks suddenly plunge out of the janitor’s closet at the end of the hall.

  I pushed a cup of coffee across the table toward Thomas Pasquale. “You probably would do better with a stiff bourbon right now, but this will have to do.”

  He accepted it without relish, but the Styrofoam cup gave his nervous fingers something to play with even if he wasn’t addicted to caffeine.

  Estelle had her small notepad out, and I took a sip of coffee and then got to the point.

  “Officer Pasquale, earlier last night, before the call that alerted you to a possible body under the grandstand, you talked with a group of teenagers. In the parking lot of Portillo’s Handy-Way.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who were they?”

  “The names, you mean?”

>   “Yes.”

  Pasquale frowned and looked down at the polished Formica of the tabletop. “Jesus Quintana, Garrett Alvaro, Sean Best…” He stopped and ticked names off in his head, rapping his fingers against the tabletop at the same time. “I think one of them was Tiffany Styles.”

  “That’s it? Just the four of them?”

  “There were five, I think,” Pasquale said. “P. J. House was the other one.”

  “What were they doing?” Estelle asked.

  “Just hanging out,” Pasquale replied. “There’s a couple of video games at the store there.”

  “Why did you happen to stop?”

  “Someone called in a complaint that the kids were skateboarding in the street and giving the traffic a hard time.”

  “What did the kids tell you?”

  “They said they were just yelling at some friends who drove by earlier.”

  “Who was that?”

  “They didn’t say.”

  “Do you know those kids very well?”

  Thomas Pasquale took a minute, then said, “Most of ’em. I know that P. J. House would throw a brick through your windshield as easy as not. He’s a punk. I think he does the things he does because he can’t keep up with his older brother.”

  I nodded, knowing the older brother, Ryan House, by reputation. The kid was probably valedictorian of the senior class. He also led the basketball team and played baseball well enough to set people talking about the pros.

  “What about the others?”

  “Well, sir, Garrett Alvaro would rather live in L.A., but he’s just a wannabe. He likes to wear that stupid hair net, and those goofy clothes. It’s all fake. The others…they’re okay kids.”

  “We’re told that you were a little rough with at least one of them.”

  Pasquale looked up quickly when I said that. “You’ve got to be kidding. Alvaro started to shoot his mouth off, swearing at me and so on, so I pushed him up against the front fender of the patrol car and told him to cool it. That’s all. It was no big deal.” He leaned forward. “Do you think there’s some connection somewhere in all of this?”