Before She Dies

Chapter 38

The Posadas County Sheriff’s Office filed no charges against Victor Sanchez. Over the next several days, we were able to piece together a version of what his son had done that satisfied us. We might have been wrong in a detail or two, but only time and a few lucky breaks would ever provide the answers.

We found the police scanner stowed under the seat of Mateo Esquibel’s old truck; it was the type of radio unit with a power jack that plugged into the cigarette lighter. If Carlos Sanchez had overheard Deputy Encinos respond to the radio call about a possible disturbance on East Bustos Avenue that Sunday night, he may well have gotten nervous.

We didn’t know yet where in the state the stolen truck had come from, but odds were good that it had ended up being parked for a short while among the many vehicles behind Nick’s dealership. If Tammy Woodruff had had the key to the stolen pickup, and all she had had to do was start the truck and drive off to Mexico, it should have been a slick deal. But Tammy was Tammy.

Waiting in Regal, Carlos had made the decision to drive back toward Posadas, using the old man’s truck. The trailer hitched on behind was a typical Carlos Sanchez touch. The rig would look as innocent as the old man. He would have seen the stolen truck parked along the highway, and he would have seen the patrol car behind it, emergency lights flashing. And that had to have been when Carlos took the step to bail Tammy out of trouble, knowing full well that she probably wouldn’t have been able to keep her mouth shut. She’d sealed her own fate, of course, when Carlos realized what a liability she really was.

The state crime lab provided a match between the firing pin impression of Carlos Sanchez’s pump shotgun and the impression struck in the primer of the single fired shell casing that he’d pumped into the grass along State 56 that Sunday night.

And Sergeant Torrez demonstrated to us how Carlos could have driven Tammy Woodruff’s truck over the edge of San Patricio Mesa. It didn’t take a gymnast to stand on the chrome running board with the driver’s door open, since the vehicle could go over the edge at an idle and gravity would still get the job done. From there, it was a simple hitchhike back to town.

Nick Chavez closed the auto dealership for two days while we went through the building one shelf, one drawer, one file, even one toolbox at a time…including Nick’s own office. Two days of patient searching gave us one answer that didn’t surprise me. Carlos Sanchez had kept no records. Not at the dealership, not in his apartment, not in the bank safe-deposit box that we opened on court order.

There was no magic little book that listed who his drivers were, who his contacts were in other dealerships around the state or in adjoining states, or who his Mexican contacts had been. When his father put a bullet through his son’s heart, he effectively erased all of that information.

There was no doubt that Carlos Sanchez had known where his father kept cash receipts at the saloon, and that his father had the bad habit of letting receipts accumulate. In one swift grab, Carlos Sanchez had been able to take nearly three-thousand dollars from his father-additional insurance for his trip south that night.

I wondered what had stung Victor Sanchez more-knowing that his son had committed the murder of Paul Encinos and Tammy Woodruff, or knowing that Carlos had stolen from him.

I stood in Linda Real’s hospital room Friday morning, feeling emotionally drained after the Thursday morning service for Paul Encinos and the two days of fruitless searching at the dealership and Carlos Sanchez’s apartment. Linda had accepted the news of Carlos Sanchez’s death with a tiny, resigned nod.

“I was going to stop by Estelle’s place for a few minutes to pick up some paperwork. Any messages?”

Linda’s good eye winked at me, and she said, “Nhhhh.”

The legal pad was on the bedside table, and I slid it under her hand, and handed her a pen.

Ask her if she’ll stop by once in a while, she wrote. I twisted my head and looked at the message. Linda’s handwriting was getting stronger and faster.

“I’ll do that,” I said.

You have all the answers now?

“I wish we did, Linda. Some things we may never know.”

She quickly penned, ??

I smiled. “Am I off the record?”

What record?

I patted her hand. “Lots and lots of things we don’t know, Linda.”

The biggest and juiciest?

I laughed. “Now you sound like a reporter, young lady.”

It’ll give me something to think about.

“All right. We don’t know how Tammy Woodruff got linked up with Carlos in the first place. I suppose there’s no magic in that-they could have met in a bar, almost anywhere. But we don’t know why Tammy agreed to drive one of the trucks for Sanchez. We don’t know why she allowed herself to get involved.”

Linda’s pen hovered over the page, and I could see the portion of her forehead that wasn’t covered in bandages furrow.

Excitement, she finally wrote.

“Maybe. And why would he talk to her about what he’d done?”

HEY-boys show off for girls!!!

“You think it’s that simple?” She winked at me. “Maybe so. Is there anything I can get for you while I’m here?”

No. By the way, I told Mom that if she made trouble for you people, I’d never speak to her again.

“That’s nice to hear.”

Her pen made little circling motions before she wrote, Sonny Trujillo? What will happen?

“I don’t know, Linda.” I took a deep breath. “It’ll depend on how good the lawyers are. They’ll get rich, that’s for sure.”

A nurse wheeling a heavily laden cart pushed through the door, and Linda hastily wrote, You’ll ask Estelle to visit when she can?

“Yes, I will. And I’ll drop by now and again.” I patted her hand again, put the pad back on the table, and shoved the pen in my pocket. I put the palm of my hand on her forehead. “Thanks for everything,” I said, and she winked.

***

Pellets of snow drove down from the north, bouncing off the hood and windshield of 310 as I pulled into the Guzman’s driveway on South Twelfth Street. I gathered up half a dozen folders of paperwork that needed the signature of our chief of detectives-our only detective-and shoved them under my coat so the three-carbons wouldn’t water spot.

Dr. Guzman opened the door for me. “I was just on my way to the hospital,” he said. “Did you stop and see Linda?”

“Yes, I did. She’s doing fine, all things considered. Is Swan Diver here?”

Francis grinned. “She’s in the study with my aunt.”

I followed him through the living room debris produced by the cyclone of a small child and into what had been the master bedroom. The year before, Francis had hired contractors to gut the place, turning it into a book-lined office.

Estelle was parked in a recliner, her crutches lying on the floor beside her. Sofia Tournal, looking for all the world like the attorney that she was with her dark tailored suit and severe white blouse, sat in the leather chair behind the desk. She nodded pleasantly at me. I wondered what she really thought about the first bizarre week of her visit.

I greeted them both with a tired smile and then said, “Work,” holding out the folders. “Do something constructive.” Estelle accepted the folders and hefted them. “All the unanswered questions,” I added.

“Fewer and fewer,” Estelle replied. She lay the folders carefully on the edge of the desk. “Did Gayle Sedillos get a hold of you?”

“No. I was at the hospital. What did she want?”

“The Albuquerque PD called. A certain young lady”-she opened the leatherette folder that was resting in her lap-“a Carlita Nolan, one of the office staff of Todd Svenson Motors in Albuquerque? She turned herself in to the PD this morning. She says she worked with Carlos Sanchez. And she says she knows several others who did, too.”

“She managed to hold out for two days, huh?”

Estelle grimaced. “She was, or thought she was, making progress toward being Carlos’s girlfriend. A little posthumous revenge, perhaps, for his dalliance with Tammy.” She smiled grimly.

“One more question down,” I said.

I looked at Sofia Tournal. She had a pad in front of her, and all I could see was that it was two columns of hen-scratching.

“And are you still finding life in Posadas to be the pastoral, peaceful vacation time that you expected?”

Sofia smiled and leaned back in her chair. “All we need do,” she said slowly, choosing her English words with care, “is break a leg.” She gestured toward Estelle. “Then we have time to visit.”

“You know,” Estelle said, “you never did answer my question.”

“Question?” I asked.

“Remember last Sunday night? At dinner?”

“Last Sunday is a lifetime ago, Estelle. What did you ask me?” I knew damn well what she had asked me.

I saw Sofia smile and push the pad she’d been writing on toward Estelle. “You see?” she said to Estelle, and turned her smile on me.

“What question?”

“I asked what you thought about me running for sheriff.”

I shook my head. “No, you didn’t. You told me you were thinking of running. You didn’t ask me what I thought.”

“Hmmm,” Estelle said, and frowned. “Well?”

“What do I think?”

“Yes.”

I ran my fingers around the rim of my Stetson, forehead furrowed in the deepest of concentration. Estelle waited patiently. Finally, I looked up at Sofia and gestured at the pad. “Are those all the pros and cons? Is that what you two were talking about?”

Sofia nodded, and Estelle said seriously, “It’s not such an easy decision to make, I’ve discovered.”

“Well,” I said, and Estelle looked up expectantly. She looked younger than my youngest daughter. “I’m probably the wrong person to ask, sweetheart. If you lose the election, you’ll be disappointed, of course. And I don’t know if Marty Holman has a vindictive streak. And if he loses the election…” I hesitated and then grinned. “Then I lose a decent administrator on the one hand and my chief of detectives on the other. You’re the one then who would always be tied up in endless county commission meetings.” I held up my hands. “Lose, lose. It’s a tough choice.”

I knew it wasn’t the answer that Estelle had wanted to hear, but that was politics. I turned to Sofia Tournal. “Have you had dinner out since you arrived here? I mean, other than in fits and snatches, or out of a bag?”

She looked mildly surprised. “No. I haven’t.”

“Well, then,” I said, “how would you like to have dinner with me this evening, just you and me, and we will discuss this young lady’s political future. No interruptions. No telephones. No radios. No fried chicken in a cardboard box. And no baby-sitting.”

“Sir…” Estelle said.

“About seven?” I asked, and Sofia nodded demurely.

Estelle took a deep breath and then let it out slowly as she broke into a grin. I turned to go and gestured at the two-column list. “Keep working,” I said.