One Perfect Shot

Chapter Eight

The Don Juan de Oñate opened at six, but the Aragons were always there early, and they never grumbled when I slipped in the back door. They probably enjoyed the rapture on my face when the first aroma of good stuff hit my nose. Some folks can’t function first thing without coffee. I had to have food, and at 5:15, I was wrapping myself around a gorgeously presented smothered breakfast burrito, the aroma of the green chile already loosening up the nasal floodgates. By 5:45, stoked by a short nap and now high octane fuel, I was set to face the day.

Eddie Mitchell’s grin-a rare thing-greeted me when I walked into the office.

“J.J. picked up his badge,” Ernie Wheeler offered. “He was pissed.”

“Well, good for him,” I said cheerfully. “Pissed but well rested.”

Ernie leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head with grand satisfaction. “First he thought it had just slipped off somehow, but Scott told him that he might want to check with you. He picked it up a little bit ago. Didn’t seem to want to stay around and gab, though.”

I nodded, thinking of the day’s challenges, all of them far more important than the village idiot. The staffing calendar told the story, and I grimaced. I needed about fifty people, and had a handful. “We’re going to do another sweep of Highland this morning, so I need every available body.” I hesitated. If I could round up half a dozen, I’d be lucky.

Both Ernie Wheeler and Deputy Mitchell would go off duty in a couple of minutes, but they weren’t clock-watchers. If there was something that needed doing, they’d do it. “When Barnes comes in, you want to work on this?” Ernie looked sincerely eager. The county manager wouldn’t be eager when he saw the overtime chits, but he didn’t have a corpse on his hands.

T.C. Barnes had managed to smash himself in a Highway Department accident years before, and joined us to work dispatch instead of sitting home. He had a casual attitude about clocks-to him, six a.m. meant anything ‘six-ish’-but Ernie never complained when his relief for the day shift showed up ten minutes late.

“I want to meet out on Highland at 7:30 on the button. Anybody you can find-I don’t care who, as long as they know how to take simple orders.”

“You want J.J.?”

“Sure. Why not?” I heard the front door open, and expected to see T.C. Barnes limping in to work. An attractive young woman-well, to me she looked about one click beyond a teenager-approached, and it wasn’t until she was within a dozen feet that I recognized her.

“Good morning,” I said. “I’m Undersheriff Bill Gastner. I understand you’ve talked with the sheriff.”

“Yes, sir. I interviewed with him yesterday.”

“You’re out and about early.” I offered a hand, and found Estelle Reyes’ grip firm, perhaps a little reserved. She’d come a long way from the little tyke I’d first met in Tres Santos, a long way from the last time I’d seen her at the high school. Rueben Fuentes’ grand niece had matured into a poised young lady. Rich olive skin set off a set of enormous, bottomless, black eyes. She’d cut her hair since the last time I’d seen her, now keeping it short and elegant. As if headed for a job interview, she wore a tan pants suit, the creases in the trousers military sharp.

“We were going to meet at nine?” I glanced at the wall clock.

“Yes, sir.” She didn’t offer an explanation of why she’d arrived at 6:07 a.m.

“How about now, then,” I said. “We’re going to get busy here in a few minutes.”

“I thought that might be the case,” she observed. She included both Eddie Mitchell and Ernie Wheeler in her greeting. I wasn’t surprised that Mitchell responded only with the briefest of nods, but Ernie looked uncomfortably flummoxed. One of those gangly young men who was easily embarrassed, his eyes were locked on Ms. Reyes as if she’d just stepped off the pages of a calendar or from the silver screen.

In my office, I hooked a chair out of the corner and slid it closer to the desk for her, then settled in my own creaky swivel chair. “So…I haven’t seen Reuben in a couple of weeks. How’s the old badger been?”

“He’s all right, sir. The usual old age complaints.”

I nodded. “And your mother?”

“She’s just fine, sir.”

Finding her file in the right hand drawer of my desk took a moment, and she waited patiently, hands relaxed in her lap. I cut to the chase. “Why ever would you want to work for us?” An intelligent young lady, on the gorgeous side of beautiful-working as a deputy sheriff for $19,000 a year in one of the smallest, most isolated rural counties in New Mexico-it didn’t make stereotypical sense. But my guess, from what little contact I’d had with this first child and now young lady, was that there was nothing stereotypical about Estelle Reyes.

“It’s an interesting area. And close to home.”

“Oh, we’re interesting, all right. What draws you into law enforcement?”

She hesitated for a moment, her dark eyebrows knitting. “The puzzles, sir.” A trace of a smile touched her face. “You spoke at school once, and I remember you saying that.” She made a circle with her hands. “That a difficult case begins with bits and pieces, and the challenge is to make them coalesce into something that makes sense.” She spoke in measured tones as if working hard to control a strong accent. And not many folks could use words like “coalesced” and make them sound natural.

“I see that I need to be careful about what I say.” I laughed, relieved that she hadn’t claimed the need to “help people,” the usual unthinking response. Her résumé was mercifully brief. “An associate’s degree in criminal justice from State. That helps. Planning on continuing with school?”

“Eventually, sir. When I can afford it.”

“On what we pay, that might be a while. But there are lots of scholarships out there. Many go begging.”

“Yes, sir.”

I looked down her transcript, and saw a humbling array of A’s. If chemistry or anthropology or statistics had given her any trouble, there was no evidence of it. There was a minus sign after one of the A’s. “What happened in osteology? That’s not a course in the associate’s program, is it?” She’d need about seventy credits to fulfill the associate requirements, and her transcript displayed a hundred and two.

“No, sir. That’s a basic course in the pre-med program that they let me take. I had the flu and missed a lab practical.”

“Slacker.” I grinned at her and was rewarded with a tiny twitch of the corner of her mouth. “So, with this many credits, you’re not far from your bachelor’s.”

“No, sir.”

“It’d be a shame to let it slide.” I sighed. “And speaking of school, the next session of the state law enforcement academy begins in September. You have any problems with attending that next month?”

“No, sir. That will be fine.”

I leaned back. “The sheriff explained something of our way of doing business?”

“It’s my understanding that if hired, I would start in dispatch, doing office work, general duties like that, then the academy, then rookie assignments.”

“And you’re all right with that?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Not even in dispatch, Ms. Reyes. You’ll spend time observing dispatch during all three shifts. A rotation sort of deal. Your training officer would give you a schedule that takes you through weekends, days, swing, graveyard. It’s a grind. We’ll do that for eight or ten hours a day for two weeks, and toward the end of that time, when you’re familiar with the lingo and the procedures, you’ll be in the chair yourself-with a full-time dispatcher in the room with you at all times.” I hooked my hands behind my head. “Absolute, deep, depressing boredom. That’s what it is, most of the time. We find things to do to keep us sane. Filing, typing, waxing the floor, washing the windows, changing the oil on the cars.” I grinned. “You’ll have to get proficient at all that important stuff.”

“I can do that, sir.”

She seemed so serious that I had to chuckle. “I’m kidding, of course. We don’t want to put our trustees out of work. Anyway, after that, off and on, you’ll be assigned to ride with a deputy. You’ll do a couple of weeks on days first, to learn the community better than you ever thought possible. Every street, every back alley, every county road and two-track. Then we’ll put you in swing and graveyard. Now, I won’t kid you. Some of the road deputies won’t mind a passenger, but I know one or two who will mind, since you’ll be excess baggage, Ms. Reyes. Although you might carry a sheriff’s commission card and a badge, you won’t be certified as a police officer. That comes only after successful completion of the academy and various other qualifications. We cut lots of corners with other things, but not with that.”

“What the sheriff calls the hoops.”

“That’s exactly right. Now tell me…why ever would you want to do all that?”

“It suits me, sir. You’ve been with Sheriff Salcido for seventeen years, sir. You wouldn’t have stayed if there wasn’t something satisfying-something that suits you.”

I smiled at her, and wondered at the same time how much more about us this young lady had researched. I leaned forward and folded my hands on top of her folder. “You know, I’m used to hearing that people want a job as a cop because they want to help people.”

“That’s probably possible sometimes, sir. I’m not sure.”

“Really.” I waited for a handful of seconds for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. “Is there anything about the job that you don’t look forward to?”

“The deep, depressing boredom, sir.” Her eyes twinkled. “I would think that part of the challenge is making sure that doesn’t happen.”

“I wonder…” I started, then paused. “I wonder if you’ve given any thought to some of the other challenges that you’ll face.”

“For example?”

“For example, this is hardly a woman’s world, Ms. Reyes. At the moment, other than the sheriff’s wife who acts as our jail matron, we have one part-time female employee. Gayle Sedillos works relief dispatch from time to time. You know her?”

“Yes, sir. She was one year ahead of me in high school.”

“There you go. So when somebody leaves for greener pastures, she’ll swing in to full-time. She has no ambition or desire to be a road deputy, and at the moment, we don’t have one. Not a single female road deputy. And there are some folks out there who believe there shouldn’t be a single one.”

“I’m sure there are, sir.”

“Is what they think going to matter to you?”

“Only if it prevents me from doing my job, sir. They’re free to think what they like.” Those black eyes didn’t exactly smolder, but they reminded me of Katy Jurado’s expression when she bites her immature boyfriend’s head off in the ‘50’s film classic High Noon.

“It wouldn’t bother you to be the first one to walk into a saloon, looking to break up a bar fight?”

“That would be a good time to request back-up before the fact, sir.”

I laughed gently. “Which we don’t have most of the time.”

“Then I do the best that I can.”

I had no doubt that the combatants would instantly stop fighting at her entrance, probably hold out their wrists and say, “Cuff me…please.”

“Should things work out, when are you available to start? Did Sheriff Salcido ask you about that?”

“He said that would be up to you, sir. But he got the preliminaries out of the way.”

“Meaning…”

From her blouse pocket she drew out a small white card, and the deputy sheriff’s commission carried Eduardo’s signature and yesterday’s date. I examined it, amused. Maybe I should have been irked with the sheriff’s pre-empting my decision, but I’d been in both the military and law enforcement long enough to know that the guy at the top of the chain of command is free to act his conscience.

In this case, I knew what statistics predicted. Estelle Reyes would work for us for a year or so, then either be headhunted away by a better-paying job, or be swept away by a husband. We were a stepping stone on that path for her, but it made no sense not to benefit from her skills while we could.

“How are you with a camera?” Her résumé reported that her high school experiences included membership in the photography club, but what that accomplished was anyone’s guess. Her college transcript included two courses specific to forensic photography.

“It’s one of the tools of the trade,” she said. “I’m comfortable with a camera, sir.”

“Darkroom?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve processed film at school. Only black and white, never color.”

“Which is fine, since we don’t have color facilities. Yet.” I closed her folder and leaned back. “So explain chain of evidence to me.”

“Sir?”

I handed the commission card back to her, worth no more at the moment than such a card given by the sheriff as a courtesy to a county commissioner. It was a long way from that to responding to an incident as a trained, certified police officer. “If you did a ride-along with me today, out at the homicide scene we’ve got going on, what’s the issue with you taking photos? Even if you have a talent that way?”

She hesitated, and I noticed that she didn’t ask, “What homicide scene?”

“Well, for one thing, I’m not a member of the department, sir. If I were to take a photograph that later might be useful in court, and the attorneys could prove that at some time in the process, the photos had been out of the department’s possession, that would be an issue. You couldn’t say beyond any doubt that when the material was out of your possession, the photographic evidence had not been tampered with or altered. The photos could be called into question if that were the case. The chain of evidence would be broken because at some point, the evidence was not in your possession or control.”

I nodded, impressed. “So you see the issues.”

“I think I do, sir.”

I pushed myself away from the desk and turned to one of the heavy filing cabinets. It took me a moment to fumble the correct key, and Estelle Reyes waited patiently. In the center drawer I found the box I wanted and slid the top off. “Pick a number. I have eleven, twelve, twenty-seven, and thirty.”

“Twenty-seven, sir.” She didn’t ask why.

I picked up the heavy brass seven-point badge with the colorful enameled state seal in the center. “Let me have your commission card back for a moment,” and when she handed it to me, I wrote her badge number in black ink in the appropriate space, then handed both badge and card to her. “Congratulations, young lady. Make us proud.” I shook her hand, and her smile was radiant. “You were already sworn in when you signed that commission card with the sheriff. And you’ll be sworn in a couple more times before you’re through with all the ceremony. And…” I heaved a heavy sigh. “You have a ton of paperwork to complete, or the county won’t pay you. Later today, see Sandy Bacher over in the main county offices, and she’ll skate you through the payroll hoops. And after that, you could stop by the Department of Social Services and apply for food stamps, since with what we pay, you’ll probably qualify.”

I watched as she tucked the badge into her slender black purse. “You know, we’ve never established a uniform for female officers, but I would suggest that your first move is to get rid of the purse. That’s an extra nuisance that might get in your way.” I smiled. “The pants suit looks just fine. We don’t stand on much ceremony around this joint. It’s not quite as simple as the days when you were handed a badge, gun, and the reins to a county horse, but damn near. I’ll talk to Eduardo and see if he has something in mind for a uniform. But I doubt it.”

Holding up an admonishing finger, I added, “Now tell me why you don’t wear that badge in public, or flash it around.”

She hesitated, then said, “After the paperwork, I’m a member of the staff, sir. But not being a certified officer, I wouldn’t want a misunderstanding with the public. For all legal purposes, I’m as much a civilian as anyone else on the street. I can’t respond to an incident as a certified officer would.”

I nodded. “That’s right. All it says is that you work for us in some capacity. That’s all. You don’t use it to try and dodge speeding tickets, or restaurant discounts, or anything like that. The appropriate place is in your wallet. Have you ever been sued, by the way?”

“No, sir.”

“Understand that when you make mistakes, or even when you don’t, you’ll be a favorite target for all the wackos who want to make a quick buck at the government’s expense. We try not to do stupid things to encourage litigation. Walking into situations without preparation, backup, or even proper authority is one way to encourage the wackos. We have a wonderful county attorney, but he can’t work magic if you don’t use your head.”

“Yes, sir.”

I surveyed my desk. “So…that’s enough yakking. We have a long day ahead, and contrary to what I just got finished explaining, I’m not going to have you sit in dispatch today. We have too much to do, and I’m about fifty bodies short of what I need. And this is too good an opportunity for you to miss. Are you ready to go to work?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. By the time the day’s over, you’ll be royally sick of hearing me talk. I like to preach when there’s somebody to listen. Most of the time, I’m talking to myself. You’ve had breakfast?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, because in this business, you’ll never be sure where your next meal is coming from.” I started toward the door, then stopped. “One more thing. At all times, what you think is important to me, and to the sheriff. Don’t keep ideas, or intuitions, or hunches, to yourself. Share, share, share. Use your own judgment for when and how to do that. I’ll want to see how you make those decisions. We’re a team, Ms. Reyes. Yes, there’s a chain of command, but since I’m your training officer for the next few weeks, not to worry about that. What you need to know is that we’re not in competition with each other. And that starts today.”