Blood Sweep

by Steven F Havill

  She considered swerving across the center median and charging back to Posadas. Airport manager Jim Bergin could have her in Mazatlán in six hours…after a long and hazardous light plane flight across the spine of Mexico. Or she could continue on beyond Las Cruces to El Paso and catch a commercial flight, with any luck arriving in the Mexican city sometime in the morning. But once in the airplane, she would be effectively trapped, no good to anyone. The damn, impotent phone was her only link.

  She found Leister Academy’s number and dialed again. The phone rang five times before the robot answered with a message menu. Estelle lost patience and disconnected. Of course, no one was manning the offices at Leister…five minutes after six there, and everyone had gone to dinner, the offices vacant. They weren’t worried. She touched the select to choose her eldest son’s cell phone. It rang twice.

  “Óla, Mamá.”

  The wave of relief was a punch in the gut, and she caught the car’s swerve before touching the rumble strip. “Francisco, where are you?” Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel, but she fought to keep the desperation out of her voice.

  “Right this minute?” She could hear various noises in the background, including odd, single notes hammered on a piano. “I’m helping Dr. Belloit tune the piano. Mamá, this is an amazing venue. I didn’t come down last year ’cause I had that sucky head cold, but this year is great. There’s enough gold leaf decoration in this concert hall to shame Fort Knox. It’s like playing in the middle of a sunburst!”

  “So everything is just fine with you and Mateo?”

  “Sure. The Wednesday afternoon host concert went really well, too. This is the one where they have all the school kids for an audience. Anyway, they’ve got this kid—I think he’s ten—who plays a bassoon and makes it sound like an operatic baritone. Oh, and you know who sang with us? You won’t believe it.”

  “Tell me.” A hundred questions faded, and Estelle relaxed back in the seat, content just to hear the gush of that beloved voice. He could have waxed eloquent about beach sand, and she would have been captivated.

  “Elfego Durán.” Francisco said the name as if Estelle would be bowled over by the news. The name was familiar, but Estelle chalked that up to having known a dozen Elfegos over the years, and perhaps a hundred Durans.

  “Ay, caramba.”

  “You’ve never heard of him, have you?” And before she could agree, he laughed in his grown-up, professional way. “He debuted at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City last season. He’s a contra-tenor, and just an amazing voice. Have you ever heard one?”

  “One…”

  “A contra-tenor. They sing up in the soprano range—really high. The best thing is that he’s going to do a duet with Mateo Friday night, and then again on Saturday at the big concert. They’ve worked up some of Lloyd Webber’s stuff.”

  “His ‘stuff’?” Sometimes—the occasions becoming more and more rare—Francisco Guzman demonstrated that he was still a teenager at heart.

  “Yeah. From Cats. And maybe from Evita. Older modern stuff, but it sounds just dynamic. He does this version of “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” that gives me goose bumps. I’ll bring the concert video home with me next time. They have really good recording facilities in this hall.”

  “I’m glad that it’s going so well, Hijo.” Her pulse had stopped pounding in her ears. “No glitches of any kind?”

  “Oh,” Francisco said airily, “You know, the usual stuff. There was something going on down the street yesterday. I don’t know what, but we were too busy to pay any attention. I mean, we rehearse and rehearse, and then we take a little break, and rehearse some more. But they were saying that a couple guys got wasted.”

  “Wasted?” That’s just what I need to hear, Estelle thought.

  “Somebody said they found two guys in an alley about a block from here. Nobody heard the shots, so I don’t know what happened. But of course we wouldn’t, inside the hall. The world could end outside, and we wouldn’t know it.”

  “And you’re home when?”

  “We’ll fly back to Leister early Sunday morning, which is kind of a drag. We have to get up at four-thirty or some such. But not to worry, Mamá. We’re fine here. And you know, you might be interested in this…the police presence is impressive.” She braked for an indecisive motorist, then punched the throttle hard to shoot past. “You’re in the car?” Francisco asked, hearing the growl.

  “On the way to Cruces, niño. Escorting the ambulance. Padrino fell and broke his hip. He’ll have surgery there in the morning.”

  “Ay. How did he do that?”

  “Just a senior moment. He lost his balance in the garage somehow.”

  “He’ll be all right? Does he have a phone in his room?”

  “He will have, querido.” She sighed ruefully. “And he’ll love to hear from you. But first we have to get there. We had a little trouble with the air ambulance, but we’re on the way now. By the time you get home, he’ll be eager to talk with you. Not so much right now, though.”

  “Is Papá with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then,” the boy said with “that’s that” finality.

  “You’ve met some interesting people during your tour? And what’s this ‘police presence’ you mentioned?”

  “The school keeps the circle pretty tight,” Francisco said. “They assigned this one young guy—he’s actually a captain, I think—to us. He’s like a shadow. Always there. When we go out on stage, he’s right in the wings, and he never watches us. He’s like one of those Secret Service guys, you know. Watching, watching, watching, scanning the audience. We had a press session this morning, and he was there too, along with three uniformed cops. Serious guys. The session was all right. You know, just the usual stuff.”

  “Any interesting questions that caught you by surprise?”

  Francisco laughed easily. “I wish. No, just lots of the same old stuff. They always want to know how long I practice every day, what’s the hardest piece, did I always want to play piano—things like that. And it seemed like they were all trying to figure out how come we’re not from big cities, Mateo and me. Only one or two knew where Posadas was, and not a clue about Dos Passos, Texas. I told Mateo he should just tell folks he’s from Dallas. Then it might make sense to them. I could say I was from Santa Fe.”

  Estelle chuckled. “Talented people only come from metropolitan areas, hijo.”

  “I keep forgetting that. Hey, one of the reporters asked me if the astronomy project was up and running yet. He knew where Posadas is. Or at least he’d heard of it.”

  “I’m impressed. Did anyone try to talk with you after the press conference?” Like someone claiming to be a long-lost uncle? But she kept the thought to herself.

  “Well, no. Leister likes to keep us quarantined. And we’re always chaperoned. Always. In fact double. Someone from Leister, and mi capitán. Mateo and I thought it would be relaxing just to walk around the city, but that’s not going to happen, unless they provide a phalanx of cops to go, too. We might have an arranged visit to one of the beaches tomorrow. Maybe. They worry a lot, these people.”

  And that’s good, Estelle thought. “But other than that, all is well?”

  “Seems so. They requested that I play the Appasionata tonight. That’s a big favorite down here.” The powerful, complex Beethoven sonata was a pianist’s challenge, Estelle knew. She had heard the twenty-four-minute beast several times in her own living room, and often glanced toward the ceiling to see if the crashing notes had jarred loose the plaster. Her mother routinely listened with her hands delicately covering her ears. But the piece was more than just dramatically loud in places…it was passionate, and it always brought tears to her eyes to see her young son interpreting that emotional chaos of the sonata with such depth.

  “You’ll do fine.”

  “Thanks. I’d better let you go, huh. Everyone else is okay?”

  “Just fine. And you be careful.”

&
nbsp; “Oh, sure. I have no choice. In fact, mi capitán is standing right at the end of the piano, watching me talk to you.” The boy laughed away from the phone. “He says hello.”

  “I’m proud of you, Francisco,” she said. “Call often.” She disconnected, and with a start realized she had no recollection of driving the last five miles.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sheriff Robert Torrez often had marveled privately about Bill Gastner’s sleep habits. True torture for Gastner would be lying on his back in a hospital bed, any movement more serious than picking his nose impossible. Double that torture when an efficient, well-meaning nurse would bustle into Gastner’s room at midnight to check his tubes and deliver “something to help you sleep.”

  Torrez, on the other hand, had never had a moment’s trouble slipping into a deep snooze. Rarely had he lain in bed, staring at the dark ceiling, listening to the sounds of the night, alert for the telephone imperative, chewing at the troubles of the previous day, or concerned about what morning would bring. For years, he had enjoyed the four to midnight shift at the Sheriff’s Department for its occasional adrenalin rush, never minding the odd hours. Sleep came easily when the work was done. He had become a master at keeping other people’s troubles at a distance, never adopting their misery.

  Since his election to the top spot in the department, Sheriff Torrez had avoided working an administratively logical day shift, when he might be available to talk with interested civilians. He avoided the tedium of county commission meetings where he fought the urge to doze off, or confabs with the county manager, or private moments with the press. He even avoided anything remotely resembling electioneering. He didn’t speak at service clubs. He didn’t grant election year interviews. He didn’t trudge door to door with hand-outs. The dedicated band of volunteers who made sure he was elected every four years—now counting three elections under the belt with a fourth coming in only months—worked in a vacuum as far as Robert Torrez was concerned.

  Instead, he roamed around the clock and the county, reminiscent of what he considered the most important lesson he had learned from Bill Gastner—know the turf better than anyone else. There was no highway, road, or two-track in the county that Torrez couldn’t bring instantly to mind. His understanding of the county, if it could be transferred from his mind to paper, might resemble nothing so much as a detailed topographic map. On top of that, he knew the names, habits, and schedules of every rancher, and where domestic disputes were most likely to erupt. A personal benefit of his prowling was that he had a fundamental understanding of where the game herds were and what the wildlife population levels might be. He did not have to wait for surveys from the Department of Game and Fish.

  His hunts were frequent and unannounced, and most of the time legally licensed. And alone, always on foot, never with the snarl of a four-wheeler. He had no “hunting buddies.” He never offered to take a friend or relative hunting, and never accepted any of the frequent invitations to do so. In an emergency, if someone needed to bend his ear, the Sheriff’s Office dispatcher usually knew where he was. Usually.

  Such behavior might have been hard on even the most patient wife. Bob Torrez had solved that challenge by marrying, after a quiet, ten-year courtship, his first passion—the Sheriff’s Department office manager and chief dispatcher, Gayle Sedillos Torrez. By the time that ceremony was finally marked on the calendar, Gayle knew her husband’s habits well, and was expert at living comfortably with his idiosyncratic behavior.

  On this particular Thursday morning, as the clock came up on 3:15, Torrez lay wide awake on his back, staring at the ceiling. Beside him, the whisper of Gayle’s breathing was regular as a metronome. From across the room, two-month old Gabe explored the mysteries of his baba, slupping and twisting and shaking his tiny hands, content in the dark. The infant slept in short spurts like a well-fed pup, with stretches, gurgles, and happy little noises punctuating his waking moments.

  “What’s on your mind?” Gayle’s voice was warm breath against his ear. Earlier, he had told her about the day. There was no point in trying to gloss over the details. With intense concentration, she had inspected the shattered remains of his rifle scope, had examined Sergeant Jackie Taber’s skillful map of the incident area, had listened to her husband’s clipped description of all the rest…temperature, wind velocity, time of day, details of his own antelope shot.

  She knew that her husband mulled a fundamental question: did the shooter miss on purpose, or had all the tricks that terrain and weather could play on a high-velocity bullet fired at long range been responsible for the ten or twelve inches deviation from skull to scope.

  He had refused even to consider that the shot had been an accidental discharge—perhaps someone reacted to a flash of reflecting sunshine in the distance and scanned the country with a scoped rifle, carelessly doing so with his finger on the trigger. That scenario made sense to Gayle. After the accidental round was fired, the shooter would have fled in panic. Doing such a hare-brained thing was so foreign to her husband’s training and expertise that he couldn’t imagine anyone else being so stupid—although he wryly admitted that he dealt with stupid people on a daily basis.

  Thinking about the day had stirred an awful hollow darkness in her gut, and knowing that her husband couldn’t drift off to sleep meant he had no satisfactory answers either.

  Bobby took his time answering. “Just thinkin’.” Gayle had never heard her husband whisper—she didn’t think that he even could, but his voice was soft and restrained, just enough to prompt a gurgle and squirm from Gabe.

  Gayle said nothing for a moment, choosing her words carefully. “I want to know,” she whispered finally, “how the shooter knew you were out there. Out there in that one spot, where he must have known how to angle around you from the rear, finding a spot for a clear shot.”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Did you tell anyone at the department where you were headed?”

  “Nope. I guess I mentioned it to Miles one time or another. He told Bendix, the foreman.”

  “And so the grapevine grows. You didn’t see anyone following you out?”

  Torrez remained silent, loath to admit that he hadn’t paid much attention to what was in his cracked rearview mirror. “Keep it simple,” was the old adage, and that he’d been followed was the simplest answer of all.

  “Did you stop and talk to anyone while you were out there?”

  “Nope. Not before. I saw Carl Bendix afterward. That’s when he told me that Waddell had mentioned I’d be out there sometime. I never told nobody just when.”

  “Did you see anyone else on the county road when you were driving in to Waddell’s place?”

  “Nope.” Would he have noticed a plume of dust behind him on that busy county road, even if there had been one? Contractors and vendors came and went with a traffic volume long unthinkable in that quiet section of the county.

  She let her breathing settle, let the rise of panic settle. “Somebody is an opportunist. He saw your truck, and decided to take a chance.”

  “Yep. That’s what I’m thinkin’.”

  “That’s the connection, then.” She rested a hand on his chest, rocking him gently from side to side. “We’ll all have to work on that.” Her hand paused. “You have a signed landowner’s letter of permission from Mr. Waddell.”

  “Yep.”

  “So as you said, he knows. That’s a start.”

  Across the room, Gabe uttered a little grunt of satisfaction.

  “That’s his take on the whole deal,” Gayle laughed. “Whose turn is it?”

  “It’ll give me something else to think about,” Bobby said, and heaved himself to a sitting position. Barefoot and wearing only his boxer shorts, he swung out of bed and padded across the room. “What you up to, cachorro?” The infant gurgled and flailed his arms. “You smell like shit,” the sheriff said. “We gotta get you housebroken.”

  He had unpinned the first side of the fragrant diaper when the phone rang, a m
uted buzz on the nightstand. “Trade you,” he said, but Gayle had already slid across the king-sized bed and picked up the cell phone.

  “This is Gayle Torrez.”

  “Good morning, Gayle. Mike Sands at the S.O. Sorry about the hour, but is the boss man available?”

  “He is. Just a sec.” Torrez exchanged infant for cell phone.

  “What?” Torrez palmed the phone in a huge hand. Sands, who had worked midnight to eight dispatch for only a month, hadn’t finished his study course in Sheriff Robert Torrez 101. He immediately assumed the monosyllabic greeting meant he was on thin ice with the sheriff.

  “Sir, I’m sorry to bother you.” He paused, waiting for some assurance.

  “What’s up?” Torrez said. His tone was matter-of-fact, almost gentle.

  “Sir, we have a situation down just past the overpass. Deputy Sutherland says he has one apparent victim in a parked vehicle.”

  “Apparent?”

  “I mean he is, sir. Dead, I mean.”

  “Where’s he at?”

  “Go past the motel, under the overpass, and turn right on that little dirt access road. Maybe a hundred yards down that, Sutherland says.”

  “One fatality?”

  “Yes, sir. He says so, sir.”

  “Then get everybody on it.” Sands had learned in the first week what either the sheriff or undersheriff meant when they ordered, “Everybody.”

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes. Tell Sutherland to keep his eyes open.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Torrez disconnected. “I didn’t want to sleep anyway.” Gayle had heard the word “fatality” and knew better than to waste her husband’s time with questions. She finished up with the infant, who thankfully didn’t have a clue about how ugly his world could be.