Privileged to Kill

33

“This isn’t a stubbed toe, padrino,” Dr. Francis Guzman said. “You don’t get to take a pain pill and feel perfect come morning.”

“I had a stroke?” I asked, giving in finally. He had marched me into the bedroom, seated me on the edge of the bed, asked me a thousand questions, and poked and prodded.

“Yes, an episode of some kind. You aren’t on blood pressure medication?”

“I used to be.”

“But you haven’t been taking it, I gather.”

“No.”

He sighed and shook his head, holding up his hands. “You know what a stroke is, Bill. If the heart pumps blood too hard through a weak vessel in the brain, the vessel pops. Or a vessel gets clogged with cheese from all those burritos and a portion of the brain suffers. It’s that simple.”

I clenched my right hand. “It feels a little better.”

Guzman’s mouth twitched in a smile, but there wasn’t much humor in his dark eyes. “You have a good imagination, padrino.”

“So what, then? What do I do?”

“The best and safest thing is to admit you to the hospital and run some tests in the morning.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then out-patient testing,” he said. “We can’t rummage around much inside the head, but an MRI will tell us something. It’ll give us something to go on.”

“That’s the gadget the hospital got last year?”

He nodded. “All two point six million dollars of it.”

“And all on my tab, too,” I said. “Can it wait until next week?”

The doctor stood up and looped his stethoscope around his neck. “I don’t know, padrino. You might not have another episode for years, or you might have thirty seconds left on the clock.”

“That’s an encouraging thought.”

Guzman thrust his hands in his pockets. His heavy dark eyebrows knit together and he chewed on the corner of his lip as he assessed his patient. “It puzzles me why you’re so stubborn, I suppose,” he said quietly.

“It’s not just a question of being stubborn, Francis. Right now, we’re in the middle-”

He cut me off with a shake of the head. “No. Now look. Do you trust me?”

“Trust you? Of course I trust you.”

“No, I mean do you really trust me? Do you trust me not to exaggerate, not to be just an old maid worrywart?”

“Of course. If I needed a new heart, you’re the one who would zip it in.”

“Well, then, picture it this way. You’re hanging from a loose rock at the edge of a five-thousand-foot cliff. Do you trust me to drop you a rope?”

“Sure.” I knew damn well what he was driving at, but that didn’t mean I wanted to hear it.

“And as I was handing you the end of the rope, would you say, ‘Hold it, Doc. I’ve got things I have to do?’”

“This isn’t the same thing.”

“Yes, it is, padrino. There are always going to be ‘things to do.’ That’s what life is…‘things to do.’ Right now, your ‘thing to do’ is to trust us to do what we do best, and then take care of yourself. Trust Estelle.”

“I do trust her.”

“Then let her do it,” Francis said, his voice taking on an edge. “The Posadas County Sheriff’s Department can function without you for a little while.” He saw me winding up to say something, and added, “Eventually it’s going to have to function without you, my friend. Period.”

I looked at him steadily, like an old bulldog figuring the chances of catching the neighbor’s cat. Guzman didn’t flinch.

“What do you want, then?” I said.

“I want you admitted to Posadas General right now. This evening. I want you monitored, and then first thing in the morning, I want to run you through a battery of tests so we’re not flying blind.”

I turned and looked out the window at the wooden shutters, closed over the panes so I could sleep anytime day or night. My mind conjured up an image of an old fat man sitting in a wheel-chair, drooling from the right side of his mouth, the fingers of his right hand clawed into the cuff of his pajamas.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“Yes,” Francis said gently. A light knock rapped on the bedroom door, and he stepped over to open it.

I heard Estelle murmur, “I’m here,” and he nodded and closed the door again.

“For God’s sakes, what is this, the gathering at the wake?” I snapped. I stood up and straightened my clothes, glancing at Francis with irritation. He stepped to one side as I headed for the door, the burst of anger giving me some momentum. I knew that if Estelle saw the mess in the kitchen, she’d be down on her knees, cleaning.

But she had outfoxed me. She’d cleaned the floor before she’d come back to the bedroom to let her husband know that she was in my house.

She saw me standing in the archway to the kitchen and held up the handle of the coffee decanter. “Do you have another one of these, sir?”

“No,” I said. I gestured at the floor. “And you didn’t have to do that.”

She shrugged. “How are you?”

“Fine,” I said. “And did Bucky have anything to say about the paint chips?”

She shook her head. “No, sir. He said they might have trouble with that. What we sent him wasn’t much more than a little powder…he said it’s going to be a hard call.”

“Black is black, for Christ’s sakes,” I said. I noticed that Francis was the only person in the living room. “Where’s Crocker?”

“He went into his room, sir.”

I grinned. “Family squabbles bother him, sweetheart.”

“What did Francis say?”

I glanced at Guzman, who was standing with his hands behind his back, examining the titles of the books on the shelf beside the television. “He wants to commit me.”

“Admit,” he said from across the living room. “You don’t need mental help yet.”

“It amounts to the same thing,” I said. I lowered myself onto one of the kitchen chairs. I had no sooner touched the chair than the telephone rang. Estelle reached for it, one eyebrow up in question.

“Go ahead,” I said.

“Detective Reyes-Guzman,” she said, and I got the impression that she had been expecting the call. She listened for several seconds, then said, “Is Sergeant Torrez standing by?” Apparently he was, because she nodded at the response. “Good. Tell Pasquale not to do anything. Just sit tight. Have Sergeant Torrez park on the opposite side of the block, just in case.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, but Estelle held up a hand, stalling me while she listened. I could feel my blood pressure inching up another notch. Dr. Guzman was still looking at books.

“No,” Estelle said, “tell him not to leave his car. Period. And tell him to keep his windows rolled up so she doesn’t hear the radio. Sound carries.”

I couldn’t stand it any longer and pushed myself to my feet.

“I’ve got a handheld with me, so have him call me directly on car-to-car. Make sure he understands that. A lot of people have scanners.”

She rang off, and I tried my best to be civil. “Well?”

She glanced first at her husband, and faced me. “That was Ernie Wheeler. He’s on the radio with Tom Pasquale. Pasquale says that Vanessa Davila left her trailer and walked to a house a few doors down on Escondido Lane. Number 135. Just a minute ago. From where he’s parked, he can see her. She apparently has broken a side window and has gone inside.”

“What?”

“B and E a neighbor’s house, sir.”

“You said you had a radio. Where is it?”

She pointed over on the counter where she’d put her purse and jacket. She crossed the kitchen and picked it up, then handed it to me. I fumbled the buttons and then keyed the mike.

“Posadas P.D., do you copy?”

“Ten-four.” Tom Pasquale’s voice was loud in the kitchen. If he’d opened the window and shouted, we could have heard him through the small forest that separated my house from Escondido Lane.

“Is the subject still in the house?”

“Ten-four.”

“Any other activity around there that you can see?”

“Negative, sir.”

I let the radio rest on the table. “Do we know who lives there? One thirty-five is about Toby Romero’s place, isn’t it?” It was dark outside, and I tried to imagine what Vanessa Davila might be doing, thinking that she could get away with something as stupid as residential burglary.

“She’s still inside,” Pasquale’s voice said. “Do you want me to move in?”

“That’s negative,” Sergeant Torrez’s voice barked before I had a chance to move my hand. “Stay put. We want to know what she’s up to. I’m working my way around there. She isn’t going anywhere.”

“Bob,” I said, keying the mike, “is that Toby Romero’s place?”

“Affirmative.”

“What the hell is she doing?” I said to Estelle, but she just shook her head.

“There’s a light on inside now,” Pasquale said, his voice hushed.

None of the rest of us responded.

The seconds ticked away, and I could measure their frequency against my pulse, two heartbeats for every tick of the second hand.