One Perfect Shot

Chapter Forty-one

Late the next morning, Deputy Howard Bishop drove the county road grader from the Quonset hut in the corner of the maintenance yard the several blocks out to Highland Avenue. He parked facing west, the cleats on the machine’s massive tires settling into the exact spot where it had originally rested with the dead Larry Zipoli slumped at the controls.

Mo Arnett, seeing cooperation as his best defense, marked a site photo for us, the little ‘x’ indicating where he remembered standing when he pulled the trigger. Using that and Deputy Robert Torrez’s best guestimate of yardage, we set the heavy camera tripod so that the camera lens would match Mo’s eye level, five feet three and one half inches off the ground.

The department owned a fleet of junky little cameras, one aging but high quality reflex, and a Polaroid. I settled for Estelle’s elegant new Nikon F, and I was impressed when she chose a 70mm lens because it was the closest to matching the image seen by the human eye. I hadn’t thought of that, and it made me feel like a Neanderthal. That, I reflected, is why we hired young people. I felt an uncoplike, parental stab of pride from the git-go.

The grader’s windshield, sporting a messy bullet hole beside the wiper blade, was heavily veiled with red dust and years of grime from diesel smoke and oil fumes. How Larry Zipoli could have seen clearly enough to blade the damn road was a mystery. With the sun slanting on it, it was impossible to see through the dull silver slab of glass.

As the afternoon wore on well past any likely time for Mo to have fired the shot, right up to when I first spoke with the shaken Evie Truman, matters only got worse. Mo Arnett had been telling the truth. It was unlikely that he could have seen even the vague outline of the victim inside the cab. Nervous, apprehensive, probably about ready to piss his pants, Mo had not looked closely enough. The grader was parked, the door open, and no one evidently around. So he took the shot. Bookmakers might have said the odds were against him, having grabbed the wrong ammo, the bullet wandering down the barrel to wobble and wander, finding its lethal way. But despite the odds, Mo had managed one perfect shot.

“I think that’s all Schroeder will need,” I said to Estelle at three o’clock. Conditions hadn’t changed except for a pesky breeze.

She dismantled the camera from tripod, rewound the film and dropped the thirty-six exposure canister into my hand. “Schroeder will be disappointed?” she asked. “He’s hoping for murder one?”

I shook my head. “We don’t hope for one thing or another, Estelle. What is, is. Our job is to find out just that, and Schroeder’s job is to make the punishment fit the crime.” I chuckled at that little bit of sanctimonious wisdom. “That sounds pat, doesn’t it? But that’s the way it should work.”

“I can’t imagine Mo in prison,” Estelle said, and I grimaced.

“Let me tell you, by the time they’re finished with all the psychobabble about the influence of a thoughtless, domineering father, a numb mother, and all of Mo’s other troubles with every relationship he’s ever had since birth? I’ll be surprised if the kid lands anything beyond three or four years in some rehab center.”

“Are you okay with that, sir?”

I looked at her in surprise. “I’m okay with that. There are a lot of things I could wish for, but wishing isn’t going to make them so. So I do what I do and don’t stew about it. Mo Arnett made his choices, we catch him, and now it’ll be interesting to see how he turns out. We can hope that we don’t end up chasing him again.”

“I suppose that happens,” the young lady mused.

“We hope to get there before he pulls the trigger next time. That’s something to wish for, I guess…that we could get there before that happens, whether with Mo Arnett or someone else.” I shot the legs of the tripod in and folded it to fit the black bag. “That’s a rare thing. And that’s job security, I suppose.”

We settled back in the car and watched the grader trundle away, bouncing rhythmically on those big donuts as Deputy Bishop guided it back to the county barns. Despite years of being operated with a windshield full of cracks, it would be changed out now, removed with great care and entered into evidence, bullet hole included.

“Tomorrow I’ll have a dispatch schedule for you.” I made an entry in my log. “And that will be a challenge for you. Sitting dispatch for eight hours when nothing much is happening? That’ll be a challenge.”

I looked across at her just as she frowned, her expression telling me that for the first time she might be ready to question the scheme of things. “And you understand that nothing about this case is to be discussed with anyone other than the sheriff, me, or the district attorney. Nothing.” Her nod was impatient. “You did extraordinarily well these past two days. I want you to know that.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“There’s a lot of work now, keeping Schroeder happy with the evidence. But part of the heat is off. We got the bad guy off the street. And that always makes me really hungry.” I held up the canister of film. “I’ll give this to Deputy Baker so he can make a set of prints for the D.A. In the meantime, may I buy you something at the Don Juan?”

Estelle made a face that I couldn’t translate. Disappointment, distaste, impatience, maybe a potpourri. “How will we pursue the Orosco, sir?”

“The what?”

“The tres retablos, sir. The more I examine the photographs from Veracruz…”

Despite what the young woman might have thought, I hadn’t forgotten Jim Raught’s treasure, and the various possibilities they offered. Stolen art? A cunning copy? A lucky-and legal-purchase, or the tip of an iceberg that might lead to who knew what depths of international art theft. And I knew what Estelle Reyes wanted just then.

“The best thing to do,” I said judiciously, and hesitated as I frowned at the steering wheel, “is to hand this over to Tom Mears to handle. He’s careful, thoughtful, thorough…” I stopped there, amused at the expression on Estelle’s dark face. Deputy Mears could handle the art case thoroughly and efficiently, and, I was willing to bet, the young lady would bite her tongue and go with it. But she didn’t know me well enough yet to realize my suggestion was in jest.

“You really don’t want to sit dispatch, do you,” I laughed. “Any excuse at all.”

“I’m looking forward to it, sir. It’s just that…”

“All right, then, what do you want to do? What do you think your next step should be?”

Her relief was palpable. “At least we might talk with Mr. Raught again, sir. I want to know how he acquired that artwork.”

“And if he chooses not to tell us?”

“I think he will, sir. He’s too proud of it not to.”

“Ah.” I nodded. “And if it’s an innocent fake, acquired legally?”

“I’ll apologize to him for wasting his time, sir.”

“And if it is, in fact, the original Orosco?”

“Then it needs to be returned to its home in Veracruz.”

“If you’re tied up with dispatch tomorrow,” and I glanced at my watch, “that means we should go after this today.”

“Yes, sir.” She managed not to sound too eager.

I sighed. “There’s always something else on the horizon in this job,” I said. “All right, we’ll go see Jim Raught. After some dinner, we’ll pay the gentleman a visit.” Estelle Reyes looked down and smoothed the leather cover of her soft brief case, forcing patience. “That’s one thing you’ll learn as you go along, sweetheart. When a few minutes present themselves to enjoy a green chile burrito, you take ’em.”