Before She Dies

Chapter 17

I awoke being scrutinized. Dr. Alan Perrone and Dr. Francis Guzman stood at the foot of the bed, Perrone holding a chart, Guzman with his hands thrust in the pockets of his white coat.

Perrone had led the charge when this same hospital had cut me open for an overhaul three years before.

I blinked and looked at Linda Real. She appeared to be peacefully sleeping.

“The young lady is doing a first-class job, sheriff,” Perrone said. “If she keeps it up, we’ll move her out of ICU in two or three days.” He leaned forward, tipped his head up slightly, and peered at me through his bifocals. “Then we can move you in.”

I waved a hand and pushed myself up out of the chair. “No, no. I’m just an innocent bystander, doctor.” My watch said I’d slept almost three hours, just enough to feel wretched-stiff, groggy, discombobulated. There were no windows in the ICU, but the sun would be up, even in February cheerful as always, peeling paint off cars and incubating melanomas.

I rubbed a hand over my face and shook my head. “Effective guard,” I muttered.

Perrone laughed. “Don’t worry about the nap, sheriff. There’s a most alert sentry outside the door.” I looked out one of the windows in the swinging doors and saw Deputy Howard Bishop sauntering back and forth, a cup of coffee in his hand.

“Marty Holman was by earlier,” Francis said.

“He should have said something.”

He shrugged. “He figured you needed the sleep. I’m not sure that the DA agreed with him, but Schroeder’s always impatient. There wasn’t anything going on here, and they stayed just a few minutes-just until the deputy got here.”

“Schroeder was with him?”

Francis Guzman nodded. “I don’t know what he wanted, other than just to be in on things.”

“I can guess,” I said, and moved to the bed and touched the back of Linda’s right hand. Her skin was dry and cool.

“She’s heavily sedated right now,” Francis said. “For the next day or so, all the surgery she’s had around her eye and jaw is going to be hurting like hell. She’s not alert enough to have a self-starter for the pain.” He pumped an imaginary button with his thumb. “Maybe later. Estelle tells me that you managed a conversation of sorts with Linda earlier.”

I grunted. “Hardly a conversation. But she’s a champ, I’ll tell you that.” I looked up at Guzman. He’d taken to wearing a neatly trimmed beard. If a Hollywood casting agent walked by, he’d sign the young physician up to play Ivanhoe in an instant. “We need a name, Francis. That’s the information she has that we need. A name. She said that she knows the person that the deputy stopped out on Fifty-six.”

“That’s what Estelle said.”

“Linda can’t talk, so I was holding her hand and she was responding to yes and no questions with a touch of her finger. If she gains enough strength to hold a pencil, she can scribble the name on a pad for us.”

“That’s a long shot,” Perrone said. “Maybe by the end of the week.”

Francis rested a hand lightly on my shoulder. “Estelle wants you to stop by the office this morning when you’re finished here.”

I chuckled. “When we both wake up, you mean.”

“That, too. But I think she’s got the name for you.”

I turned and stared at Francis. “I beg your pardon?”

“She matched a print.”

The young physician must have seen the annoyance as well as astonishment cross my face and he interpreted it correctly. He held up both hands. “Hey, have you ever tried making that young lady do something she doesn’t want to do? Right now, rest isn’t on her agenda.”

I planted my hat firmly on my head and hitched up my trousers. “I’ll check with you gents later,” I said, and headed for the door. As I walked out to the car, I realized it wasn’t Estelle’s nonstop pursuit that annoyed me. Hell, that’s one of the traits that made her such a formidable cop. What unsettled me was that she was burning up the trail while I slept in a chair. Old, fat, retired grandfathers dozed their lives away, not cops in the middle of a murder investigation.

***

Martin Holman’s office was the first door on the left on the way to dispatch. His door was open when I passed and I saw him and Ron Schroeder deep in conversation. Holman looked up and saw me walk by.

“Bill!”

I stopped and backed up to stand in his office doorway.

“Can we see you for a minute?”

I didn’t step into the room. “I’ve got about ten seconds,” I said. The district attorney was lounging with one elbow propped on Holman’s desk. He didn’t get up, but tapped his pencil on the legal pad he’d been filling with notes.

“Bill, where are we at with this thing?” He waved a hand in summons, but I stayed put.

“This thing?”

“The shooting.” He enunciated the word carefully, as if there might be a chance I’d misunderstand him.

“I can tell you better in a few minutes. After I talk with Estelle.”

“But so far you’ve got nothing. Other than a possible tire print and the report of a stolen vehicle from Albuquerque.”

I didn’t say anything. He hadn’t said it as a question and I was too tired to play word games.

“How’s Ms. Real?”

“She’s gaining,” I said. I didn’t add that Linda and I had played talking fingers.

Schroeder nodded and tapped his pencil again. After a few seconds he pushed himself upright and sat back in the chair. He folded his hands across his stomach and regarded me evenly, his eye blinks reminding me of when Camille, my eldest daughter, was taking piano lessons and had the metronome set on largo for some funereal piece she was studying.

“I’ve asked Captain Eschevera if he’ll handle the investigation into Sonny Trujillo’s death, Bill.”

“Him personally?” I asked, and Schroeder nodded. I’d known Adolfo Eschevera for years. He was as much of a dinosaur as I was, and ruled his dominion within the New Mexico State Police in true patron fashion. Martin Holman stood up quickly and motioned toward a chair.

“Sit down, Bill. Sit down.” I did and he looked relieved. I don’t know what he had expected. I tossed my Stetson on the edge of the sheriff’s desk.

“So,” I said.

“We wanted to move fast on this,” Schroeder said.

I glanced at the wall clock. “At five after seven on a Tuesday morning? I guess so. It must be an election year.” Holman grimaced.

“That’s not the case, Bill,” Schroeder said. He leaned forward. “We have to have a formal inquest into Trujillo’s death anyway, you know that. You know for a fact that his relatives are going to sue the county…and you…for all we’re worth. I mean, this is their opportunity to set themselves up for life, Bill.”

“We’ve heard that Sonny Trujillo’s mother, Juanita Smith, has hired someone from Bacon, Ortiz and McNally in Las Cruces to represent her,” Holman said.

“So we’re all supposed to face Mecca and bow three times?”

Schroeder chuckled. “They don’t have a case, but Bob Weems and I want to make sure. No mistakes. If someone from the Sheriff’s Department investigates, they’re going to make an issue of it.”

“Of course. I would, too, if I was them,” I said. “A dentist doesn’t drill on his own teeth. And Addy Eschevera is the best there is.” But I didn’t share that view of Bob Weems, the county’s attorney. He represented Posadas County part-time, attending meetings of the County Commission. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to give the commissioners a direct, positive answer to a question. The thought of Weems representing the county-and me-in a wrongful death lawsuit was enough to take away my appetite.

Schroeder picked up a manila envelope from Holman’s desk. “And Frank Dayan at the Register provided us with these.” He pulled the eight-by-ten photos from the envelope and handed them to me. “I didn’t even have to try a subpoena.” Dayan had managed to take a series of five photos during the brawl at the school, and they told the story pretty well. I adjusted my glasses and examined them with interest.

The first photo on the negative strip included the general melee, with only a small portion of me edged into the right side of the picture. The second shot clearly showed me holding Sonny Trujillo’s right hand, my fingers clamped over the cylinder of the revolver. The barrel of the gun was close to my face.

“That’s the most interesting part,” I said, and held the photo so Schroeder could see it. “Trujillo’s finger is in the trigger guard, clear as a bell.”

“And the trigger is pulled all the way back,” the district attorney said with satisfaction. “He pulled it and held it.”

The third photo caught the two of us just as Trujillo’s fist made contact with the side of my face, sending my glasses askew. The fourth image was slightly blurred from camera motion. Trujillo was down on the floor, I had regained possession of the handgun, and my right hand was groping around behind my belt for handcuffs. The last blowup showed a cowed Sonny Trujillo, blood running down his face, being escorted away, village officer Tom Pasquale on one side, me on the other.

“Great stuff for your scrapbook when this is all over, Bill,” Schroeder grinned.

“I don’t keep a scrapbook,” I said. I stood up and handed the envelope back. “What do you need?”

“I just wanted to tell you that someone from Eschevera’s office will be here sometime this week to talk with you. We have your sworn deposition already, but I’m sure they’ll want to speak with you as well. Just to cover all possibilities.”

“There aren’t any possibilities,” I said shortly. “We all know exactly what happened.”

Schroeder pursed his lips. “Bacon, Ortiz and McNally have a pretty good reputation, Bill. This isn’t something to take lightly. I can tell you right now what course they’re going to take.”

“What’s that?”

“That you shouldn’t have punched the kid in the nose. It’s that simple.”

I gestured toward the envelope of photos, but Schroeder shook his head. “They’ll say that the officer should have been able to restrain an intoxicated young man without breaking his nose.” Schroeder saw my eyes narrow and he added, “That’s what they’ll argue. I didn’t say they were right.”

I looked across at Holman.

“The whole affair is ridiculous,” he said. “I agreed with Ron that we should have Eschevera come in, Bill. That frees us up. I don’t want to just prove that you-that the department-did the right thing, Bill. I want to pound this kind of harassment right into the ground. I want to show that you defused a dangerous situation quickly and efficiently and that, if anything, Gayle Sedillos endangered herself when she entered that cell out of concern for the prisoners.”

I raised an eyebrow, impressed at Holman’s dramatic speech.

I stood up and retrieved my hat. “Well, all this shit is perfectly timed, I’ll tell you that.” My fingers groped for a cigarette and settled for patting my breast pocket.

“Why don’t you join us for breakfast?” Holman asked. I shook my head.

“Maybe later.” I left the two young politicos to their designs and hustled my way to Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s dark corner down the hall. The door was closed and locked. Irritated, I stalked to my own office and opened the door.

Estelle was seated in one of the chairs in front of my desk, notepad on her lap. Seated in the other chair, looking pale and scared, was Karl Woodruff.