Privileged to Kill

5

“You’re going to turn him loose.”

I didn’t respond to Sheriff Martin Holman. His remark wasn’t a question. I knew perfectly well that he meant it as one, but I didn’t have an answer for him. I sat down heavily in my ancient leather-padded swivel chair and tipped back into that comfortable lounging posture in which my brain had always worked its best. It wasn’t doing so well just then.

Holman moved away from my office door as Estelle entered, a steaming cup of herbal tea in her hand. She toed the door closed and the three of us looked at each other.

“What do you know?” I said to Estelle, and the instant the words were out of my mouth, I realized how petulant they sounded.

“The victim is an unidentified female, somewhere between eleven and fifteen years of age.”

“That’s it?” Holman asked.

“That’s it.”

“You think she was a Mexican national?”

Estelle frowned and sat down in the straight-backed chair by the small east window. She blew over the top of the tea and then said, “I don’t know, sir. I would guess that she’s Mexican. Beyond that, I don’t know. Bob Torrez and I went through her clothing. We found a single dollar bill. Other than that, nothing.”

“No label in the coat?”

She shook her head. “No. No identification, no candy wrappers, no nothing. We don’t know who she is, or where she came from.”

“Mitchell went to roust Glen Archer. If the kid went to Posadas schools, he’ll know her. Did someone talk to people who live around the school? Neighbors?”

“Deputy Mears is doing that, sir.”

“And no one has called to report a child missing?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s goddamn wonderful.” I looked over at the wall clock. “Two minutes to four in the morning, and we’ve got a kid dead and nobody is asking about her.”

“Maybe she was dumped by someone,” Holman said.

I glared at him and then relaxed, knowing he wasn’t as stupid as the remark made him sound. He’d had eight years as sheriff, and if the upcoming election went true to prediction, he’d have four more. After thirty or forty years, maybe he’d learn enough to take charge of his own cases. At least he had the good sense not to pretend he was a cop. “Of course she was dumped, Sheriff,” I said patiently. “I don’t think she just crawled under there and died on a whim.”

I leaned forward and rested my head in my hands.

“Maybe the crime lab will turn up something when it processes her clothes. Some fibers that shouldn’t be there, something like that,” Holman said, trying again.

Estelle Reyes-Guzman set the foam tea cup down on the floor beside her chair. “And there were no unusual marks at the scene. She wasn’t dragged through the dirt. She didn’t leave a trail of blood. At the moment, there’s no way for us to be sure about where she died.”

“Maybe she died right there. Maybe that’s where the assault took place…if there was one,” I said, and Estelle nodded. “Did Francis say how she died?”

“He’s not sure.”

I looked at Estelle with interest. “Oh?” Usually, very little escaped her talented husband’s attention.

“There were no obvious wounds, other than a torn left index fingernail. That’s where the blood on her hand came from. He thinks that possibly she was choked.”

“Huh,” I murmured. “Was she molested?”

“Maybe.”

Holman cleared his throat. “I think that all we need is one little piece, and he’ll talk. One little piece of hard evidence that ties him to the scene.”

“Who?” I asked. “Crocker?”

Holman nodded. “I think he’s just trying to test the waters. See how much we know.”

“We don’t need anything to tie him to the scene, Marty. He was there.”

“That’s what I mean.” Holman walked over to my desk and plopped down on the corner. Frustrated, he let his fingers mess with my papers. “He can’t be sure just what we know. One little connection is all we need, and that’s it.”

I looked across at Estelle. “Did you get a chance to talk with Pasquale at any length?”

“No, sir. Just a preliminary.”

“Did he say why he arrested Crocker?”

“Apparently because he was there, sir.”

“And that’s it?”

“I don’t see what other reason he needs, Bill,” Holman said. “Even if he didn’t commit the murder, Crocker knows more than he’s telling us.”

“You think so?” I said.

“How could someone be camped on the playing field and not see what was going on just a hundred yards away? I can’t imagine that girl sitting around quietly and letting herself be murdered. There’d be all kinds of ruckus. He’d be bound to hear.”

“If that’s the way it happened, Martin. She may have been killed before Crocker even got there. Let’s get Pasquale in here for a few minutes,” I said. “Let’s see what was going through the young man’s mind, if anything.”

Holman grunted. “You sound like you’re more concerned with protecting this bum of yours than finding out who butchered a little girl.”

I turned my head slowly and regarded Holman. “That was a stupid thing to say.” Silence hung heavily. The sheriff’s hands twitched nervously in his lap, and then he busied himself picking tiny pieces of imaginary lint off his knee.

“I’ll call in Pasquale,” Estelle said after a moment, and I nodded.

“Thank you.”

“Well, you know what I mean,” Holman continued lamely as Estelle opened the office door. “We’ve got a killing here. Or at least, an unattended death. An innocent little kid.”

“I’m painfully aware of that,” I said.

“It’s just that if this is a murder, with every hour that passes, the odds of solving the case don’t improve. What’s the statistic? In instances where the crime isn’t witnessed, at least sixty percent of capital cases go unsolved? Something like that?”

I grimaced. “And other fascinating election eve trivia, Martin.”

“Now listen…You didn’t even ask Crocker if he did it.”

“That’s because I don’t think he did.”

“On what evidence?”

I leaned back farther and hooked my hands behind my head, regarding Martin Holman through my bifocals. The lower lenses made him nice and blurry, as if he were standing in a fog at a great distance.

“I think the evidence is supposed to go the other way,” I said.

“If you don’t think that he had anything to do with it, why don’t you let him go, then?”

“Because.”

This time, Holman actually grinned. “Yes?”

“Because…I’m as confused right now as you are. I don’t want to rush into some stupid mistake. It won’t hurt Wesley Crocker much more to spend a couple of hours as a guest of the county.”

“What do you mean, ‘much more’? It won’t hurt him at all,” Holman snapped. “And the sad thing is that nothing we do will bring that girl back either.”

“That’s the way it is,” I said and let my chair rock forward with a bang. Holman was about to say something else when he saw Officer Tom Pasquale standing in the doorway of my office.

The kid’s face was pale, and he nervously twisted the handle of his nightstick.

Sergeant Robert Torrez appeared in the hallway behind Pasquale. He caught my eye and asked, “Do you need me for anything?”

“Not for a few minutes.”

He held up a black-and-white photograph. “Mears is with Glen Archer over at the school. They’re doing a preliminary autopsy at the hospital, and Doctor Guzman wouldn’t let them in yet. I’m going to take one of the morgue photos and see if Archer can give us an I.D.”

“Good idea.” Principal Archer called us often enough in the middle of the night when some vandal popped a window or beat the crap out of a soda pop machine. Like it or not, trying to identify dead students was as much a part of his job as pinning ribbons on spelling bee winners. “You might get lucky.”

He nodded and left, and I beckoned Tom Pasquale toward a chair.

“Do you want me to stay?” Estelle asked.

“Yes, I do.”

Martin Holman paced his corner of the room, too nervous to sit. I fixed Pasquale with a steady stare and let the silence build for a few seconds.

“Officer Pasquale, we want to run through what we’ve got so far,” I said. “Before we make any other moves.” I picked up a pencil and drew a small circle on the notepad that lay in the middle of my desk calendar. “Who called the P.D. about the possible victim?”

“I have no idea, sir.”

“You took the call?”

“Yes, sir.”

“On the regular business line, not 911?” He nodded and I added, “And the caller wouldn’t give a name?”

He shook his head.

“Did you ask?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was it a man or woman?”

“A male voice, sir. If I had to guess, I’d say teenager. Late teens, maybe.”

“But you didn’t recognize the voice, then. Exactly what did the person say?”

“He said that there was a child’s body under the bleachers by the football field. He said the body was right beside the center foundation.”

“That’s the term he used? A child’s body?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He didn’t say, ‘a hurt child’ or anything like that? He actually said those three words…‘a child’s body’?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?”

“Sir?”

“When I saw you over at the school earlier, you said that someone called you,” and I used the eraser of my pencil to push the small pages of my notebook until I found the spot. “Someone called you to report a ‘possible downer.’ That’s what you called it. A ‘possible downer.’

Pasquale looked confused. “It’s just a slang expression, sir.”

I looked at the young officer and counted mentally to ten. When I had my temper under control, I said, “Let’s have an understanding, Officer Pasquale. We are in the middle of a homicide investigation. The apparent victim is a child, and we have a man in custody. This might be a nice time to dispense with slang and stick to facts and correct terminology. Does that sound reasonable to you?”

Pasquale flushed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Holman finally sit down, backward, buckaroo-style, on one of the straight-backed chairs. He was probably happy as a clam to have me angry with someone besides himself.

“Yes, sir,” Pasquale said, and I silently commended him on his self-control. He could have said, “Look, I don’t work for you, you fat old son-of-a-bitch. Get off my back.” And there wouldn’t have been much I could have done, except bluster.

I softened my tone one click and asked, “So when you responded, you did not assume that the call was a crank call…a joke. You felt there was some chance that you were responding to a possible death, even though the caller did not use the emergency number?”

“Yes, sir. That’s the way the boy’s tone of voice impressed me.”

“You thought he was serious,” I said, and Pasquale nodded. “But you didn’t think it was necessary to call for any backup? You knew that Sergeant Torrez was working the county, did you not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was he busy?”

“Yes, sir. He had just responded to a domestic dispute call north of the village. I didn’t think it would hurt to make a preliminary check and then call for backup if necessary.”

“And so you arrived at the school. Where did you park?”

“Along Olympic, right next to the visitors’ side of the field. I jumped the fence and ran across the field.”

“Did you have your handheld radio with you?”

“Sir?”

“Your handheld. You left your patrol car, so I presume you had your portable radio with you in case you did need backup.”

Pasquale took a deep breath, and the flush rose again. “No, sir.”

“What did you do then?”

“I ran across the field, ducked under the bleachers, and saw the body. There was no response to my verbal orders, so I checked to see if the victim was alive.”

“How?”

“I felt the neck for a pulse. There wasn’t one. The skin was cool to the touch. There was no sign of respiration.” He sounded as if he were reading from a freshman criminology textbook.

I leaned back and tossed my pencil on the blotter. Before I could form the question, Martin Holman said, “And when did you first see the suspect?”

Pasquale’s head snapped around and he looked first at Holman and then at Estelle Reyes-Guzman. Estelle’s expression was politely expectant.

“I saw him as I ran back toward the patrol car. He was standing by the fence, over at the east end of the field. Outside the fence. I remember seeing his bicycle. It was leaning against the fence.”

“The arc lights are pretty bright there, aren’t they,” Holman said helpfully.

“Yes, sir. There are two right at the end of the field.”

“You had satisfied yourself that the victim was dead, and then you approached the suspect,” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

“You didn’t think that with a homicide on your hands, it might be a good idea to call for backup from an experienced, certified officer?” I asked.

Pasquale looked at the floor and took a deep breath, almost a sigh. “I suppose so, sir. I did go back to the car first, though. I heard Sergeant Torrez tell dispatch that he’d be ten-ten for a little while. I was going to call in, but then I didn’t want there to be any chance of the suspect slipping away. I didn’t see any reason that I couldn’t handle it alone. And I had seen him earlier, over at the convenience store. I knew he was an older guy. I knew he was a vagrant.”

I reached out and took the pencil again, toying with it. “A vagrant? You mean if I decided to ride a bicycle across the country, that makes me a vagrant?” With my girth, it would have made me dead, but no one in the room smirked.

“No. That’s not what I mean. I mean, he had everything he owned on that bike of his. So, a homeless guy. Not necessarily vagrant. Homeless.”

“Why did you arrest him, Officer Pasquale?”

“Sir?”

“Why did you take him into custody? On what evidence?”

“I asked him how long he’d been camping near the field. He couldn’t tell me, other than that maybe it had been since just after dark. Since it was nearly two by then, I figured the chances were excellent that the victim had been killed, or dumped, since Mr. Crocker had arrived at the field. He had to know something about it. But he said he didn’t. So I informed him of his rights and took him into custody.”

“I asked you this once before, but I’ll ask again. Did he resist in any way?”

“No, sir, he did not. In fact he was unusually cooperative.”

“Do you know why he was cooperative?” I asked.

Pasquale’s forehead wrinkled and he shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t suppose I do. Except he must have known that there was nowhere he was going to go.”

“How true. And then you took him to the village lockup?”

“Yes, sir. I was about to call the sheriff’s office when Deputy Eddie Mitchell arrived.”

“One more general thing, Officer Pasquale, and then we’ll want to go over this again. When you saw Mr. Crocker at the convenience store, what time was that?”

“I’d have to look at my patrol log, sir. But I would guess it was about eight-thirty or so.”

“Were you responding to a call when you saw him?”

“A call at the store? No, sir. I stopped to talk to a group of middle-school youngsters who were in the parking lot.”

“What were they doing?”

“I saw two of them making obscene gestures at a passing motorist, sir.”

“Ah. So you were busy with them and chose to ignore Mr. Crocker.”

“Yes, sir. And I can see that was a mistake, sir. If I’d stopped to talk to him then, maybe that little girl would still be alive.”

I decided to let Officer Thomas Pasquale agonize over that judgment call without assistance for a while. It would be cause for some long, sleepless nights. And maybe that was just what he needed.