Statute of Limitations

Chapter Thirteen

Sheriff Robert Torrez growled what might have passed for a greeting, and Estelle imagined him as embarrassed at having to talk on the telephone while lying half-naked and helpless in bed.

“I think they’re going to unplug me in the morning,” he said. “They aren’t sayin’ much except that I gotta stay overnight.” As if feeling that he’d already passed along more information than necessary, he changed the subject. “What’s up?”

“Bobby, Janet Tripp has been killed. Her body was found in the arroyo out on Highland Drive.” Silence greeted that announcement, and after a few seconds Estelle added, “One of the Romero boys found the body late this afternoon while riding his motorcycle.”

Torrez remained silent, and Estelle continued, assuming that the sheriff hadn’t simply passed into an unresponsive, drug-induced fog. “It looks like she was shot once in the head, but we don’t know anything more at the moment.”

“Where’s Mike?” Torrez asked, his voice husky. Estelle felt a twinge of relief. The sheriff wasn’t so under the weather that he failed to recognize the heart of the matter.

“Eddie went to Lordsburg to pick him up,” Estelle replied, and immediately realized that that was a poor choice of words. “We think he’s at his parents’ place. We wanted to break the news to him in person, and then make sure he gets back here safely. I don’t think any of us knows how he might react.”

Torrez grunted something incomprehensible, and it sounded like he was shifting in bed. Estelle heard Gayle’s voice in the background.

“Janet didn’t go over to Lordsburg with him?” Torrez asked. “Leave it alone,” he added, apparently talking to Gayle. “Who was the last one to see her alive?” Torrez asked, breaking off his exchange with his wife.

“We’re not sure yet, Bobby. Linda said that she, Bill, and Mike had been doing some preliminary organizational work this afternoon in the conference room. Linda says that Janet showed up for a few minutes around two or so.”

“Okay. And then?”

“She left right after that, apparently.”

“Mike went with her?”

“No. Linda says that he worked for a bit, then after a while left…. Linda assumes it was to go to Lordsburg to have Christmas dinner with his folks. That’s what he had been planning, anyway.”

“Huh. They have a fight or something?”

“We don’t know yet, Bobby. Mike doesn’t know anything about any of this yet.” The sheriff didn’t comment, and Estelle added, “At least we hope he doesn’t.”

“How long after Janet left the office was it before Mike went?”

“It couldn’t have been long,” Estelle said. “She was alive at two-and Butch Romero found her body at four or so. A lot can happen in two hours.”

“That’s for damn sure,” Torrez said. “Lemme know later tonight what you find out, all right? What weapon was used, by the way? Could you tell?”

“Perrone says a small-caliber gun. By what I could see, I’d guess a.22, held close.”

“Skull damage?”

“Entry, no exit, and not a whole lot of blood. Little or no back blast.”

“Could have been a.25, even.32,” Torrez said.

“Whatever it was, we think she was probably shot somewhere else, and then dumped. We’re looking for her car right now.”

“Huh. Did you talk with Bill yet?”

“No. Not yet. I’m headed that way.”

Torrez exhaled what may have been a melodious growl of irritation or a hum of deep thought. “Huh,” he said again. “So where was Janet headed when she left the office, if she wasn’t goin’ to Lordsburg with Mike?”

“We don’t know.”

“Linda doesn’t know anything? She’s always blabbin’ with somebody.”

“She wasn’t sure what Janet’s plans were…. It’s one of those things, Bobby. She wasn’t really paying attention to who was going where. But it seems to me that if Mike and Janet were planning to go to Lordsburg together, Mike would have gone looking for her when he was ready to go.”

“Maybe.”

“He wouldn’t have just driven off without her, Bobby.”

“And we don’t really know that, do we? Somebody sure as hell drove off without her.”

“Well”-Estelle hesitated-“we’d like to think that Mike wouldn’t.” Hard as it might be to start a nonexistent list of suspects with Mike Sisneros’s name, Estelle knew that the sheriff was right. Everyone, whether cop or not, whether friend or not-everyone had secrets stashed in the closet.

Something that sounded like a bedpan clanging against the side rail of the hospital bed was followed by Gayle’s voice, this time clear enough for Estelle to hear. “You’re not supposed to mess with that,” she said, and Estelle smiled.

“I’ll check back with you in a bit, Bobby,” she said. “We need to notify Janet’s relatives. Mike may have to help us with that. I don’t know her family.”

“She’s got a sister, I think,” Torrez said. “Just a second.” A short conversation followed between him and his wife, the phone covered. Then he came back on the line. “Gayle says that she thinks Janet has a sister somewhere in Oklahoma or Kansas…one of those places. Bill would probably know.”

“Ah, he might. I’ll ask him. I’ll check back with you later, okay? Behave yourself.”

“Call tonight,” Torrez said, and Estelle could imagine how sidelined the sheriff must be feeling.

“Sin duda,” she said.

“Any change yet with Eduardo?”

“Nope. I’d like to say that he’s holding his own, but I guess that’s not the case. Perrone says he’s just lingering.”

“Huh.”

Estelle thought that she detected a touch of wistful regret in that single syllable. “Let me talk with Gayle for a minute,” she said.

“Tell her that I gotta get out of here,” Torrez said, and then Estelle heard the soft thuds of the telephone being passed.

“Hey,” Gayle said. “Estelle, what happened? You’re saying Janet Tripp was killed?” Her tone carried enough shock and disbelief to more than make up for her taciturn husband’s gruff calm.

“Earlier this afternoon, Gayle. And that’s all we know.”

“How awful.”

“I wanted to ask you…when Mike was working in the conference room earlier in the week, was Janet there any of the time?”

“Two or three times,” Gayle said. “She’s been in and out quite a bit the last couple of days.”

“That shows how much I’ve been paying attention,” Estelle said. “Was there anything going on between her and Mike that you could tell? Any friction? Any arguments?”

“They’re always lovey-dovey, Estelle. Well, in their own quiet way, they are. In fact, Bill mentioned to Mike a day or two ago that now that they’ve started on the project, he didn’t want anybody else who wasn’t actually working on it to be in the conference room. I guess Bill must have thought that Janet was going to end up sitting on Mike’s lap or something. Por Dios,” Gayle murmured, “this is awful. Have you talked with Mike yet? How’s he taking it?”

“Let her get back to work,” her husband’s voice groused in the background.

“No, I haven’t,” Estelle said. “Eddie’s on the way to do that right now. And Gayle…I’m sorry to have bothered you guys by calling, but Bobby really needs to know.”

“Please,” Gayle said quickly. “This will give him something to stew about so he won’t take it all out on the nurses. I wish I could help more with the sister, but all I know is that there is one, and I think she’s in the Midwest somewhere.”

“Mike will know. I’ll call back in a bit. You guys take care.”

She switched off the phone and walked outside to her car. The drive to the end of Highland Court took two minutes, and as she reached the end of the pavement, Estelle saw Jackie Taber’s unit parked fifty yards off to the side, tucked under a spray of junipers that had sprung up beside the foundation of a small shed.

The sedan bumped and pitched as she idled across the prairie so she could park window-to-window.

“Need a break?”

“I’m fine,” the deputy said. “It’s very, very quiet.”

“I brought the sheriff up to date, and we should be hearing from Eddie in a few minutes. I’m going to talk with Bill here in a little bit and then visit with Linda again. Everybody else is trying to track down Janet’s car.”

“If they stole her car and headed to Mexico, they’re long gone.”

“Most likely. But I put in a call to Naranjo’s office in Asunción and passed on the information to the judiciales. We’ll see.”

Her cell phone beeped and she flipped it open. Bill Gastner’s gruff voice greeted her.

“Merry Christmas, sweetheart,” he said. “I heard.”

“Sir, I was just setting out to track you down.”

“I figured as much.” He sounded weary. “You at the office?”

“No, but I can be in a few minutes.”

“Let’s have some peace and quiet. How about a cup of that awful tea that you drink? Over at the house. Mine, that is.”

“That sounds good. But give me fifteen minutes, okay? I want to stop by the hospital and see what Perrone has for us. Linda’s over there finishing up with her photos.”

“That’ll work. It’ll give me a few minutes to finish eating and then go home and figure out how to boil water.”

“Good luck with that,” Estelle said. “If something comes up, I’ll let you know.”

“Enough’s come up to last a lifetime, sweetheart. This is a goddamn Christmas Day for the record books. See you in a little bit.”

Estelle switched off and shrugged at Jackie. “If you come up with any interesting theories, I’d like to hear them.”

“I’m working on it,” the deputy said.

Estelle drove out of Highland Court wishing that she could force herself to sit still and let the evidence roam around in her mind until something clicked. Even a flash of intuition would have been nice.

In the reserved staff parking at Posadas General she found Linda Real’s tiny, aging Honda nestled in beside Alan Perrone’s elegant BMW. Entering through the Emergency Room doors, she made her way downstairs. Lights were on in the Coroner/Deputy State Medical Examiner’s office, but the door was locked. Estelle continued down the hall toward a set of double security doors and touched the blue pad on the wall. The doors swung open, and she saw that the morgue lights were on.

She rapped on the stainless steel door and waited, watching the small speaker by the door as if the words would somehow appear there in print.

“Yes?” Perrone sounded officious and peeved.

“It’s Estelle, sir.”

“Oh, good. My office is open. Get yourself duded up. Yellow cabinet.”

“I’ll be right back.”

“Door’s open,” Perrone said.

Estelle returned to Perrone’s office and found the tall yellow cabinet as organized as everything else in the physician’s life. She donned a blue mesh cap that encapsulated her hair from forehead to the nape of her neck, a long plastic disposable gown, blue booties, and latex gloves. The stainless-steel doors opened soundlessly at the press of another “elbow” button, and she saw the similarly garbed Linda standing close beside the medical examiner, bending slightly at the waist to focus her bulky camera on something to which Perrone pointed with a probe.

“Come and look at this,” Perrone said. Linda looked up from the camera and stepped back.

“How are you doing?” Estelle asked. Linda had a brave face painted on, but she was even more pale than earlier, out at the arroyo.

“Okay,” the photographer said, and she shook her head. “If I just look through the camera, I do all right.” She waved a hand toward Janet Tripp’s shrouded body, now facedown on the table. “It’s hard to believe that just a little while ago…” She let her voice trail off.

“Estelle, you’ll be wanting this,” Perrone interrupted. He swept a small plastic evidence bag off the stainless-steel table beside him. “Twenty-two hollow point, in three fragments.” He held the bag out to Estelle. “Nothing unusual there. The bullet traveled from left to right, and the major fragment struck the inside of the cranium just above the right eye. That’s an uphill trajectory, and we can assume several scenarios.” He paused for breath. “First, the shooter might have been left-handed. I’m not saying he was,” he added quickly. “But he could bring up the gun and shoot, and the bullet goes in behind the left ear and comes to rest over the right eye.” He shrugged. “He could have been standing behind her, his gun hand a little lower than her ear. Or, she could have been sitting down, head bowed forward. The killer could have shot from behind, either right-or left-handed.”

“If she’d been sitting in her car…” Estelle offered.

“That’s possible. But its being a.22 is going to give you trouble. The most common round in the world. And fragmented so that marks are difficult.” He beckoned Estelle closer, and the odd, cloying smell of death rose like a curtain. “The gun was held either right against her skull, or very close…a fraction of an inch. Right there.” He touched the victim’s skull just behind the left ear. “Some characteristic powder stippling, singed hair, nice corona.”

Estelle bent down. Janet Tripp’s hair was a rich blond, truly the color of clean, fresh oat straw. She had worn it short and casual, the sort of easy style that fell into place with a shake of the head. Now, the hair around her left ear was caked with blood and particulate.

The coroner glanced at Linda, who was studiously examining the far wall.

“Nothing else of interest, Estelle,” Perrone said. “Nothing under her fingernails except some arroyo sand. She wasn’t assaulted, or struck, or anything else. Her clothing was intact, and only as disarranged as we might expect from being carried and then dumped. The only blood on her clothing was on the left shoulder and upper left back of her blouse, along with a spot or two on the right. I wish I could hand you something on a platter, but I can’t.”

“We’ll see,” Estelle said. “Have you fixed a time of death?”

“I examined her at four forty-five. I would guess that she had been dead less than an hour.”

“Less than an hour?”

“That’s right. Butch Romero doesn’t know what a lucky kid he is. If he hadn’t lingered over another piece of fruitcake before going riding, he might have ridden into something pretty nasty.”

“Ay,” Estelle murmured. “That close.”

“That close.”

“Will you process the film tonight?” she asked Linda.

“Sure.

“And I’ll get started on everything else,” Perrone said. “Toxicology, whatever. I’ll be surprised if anything comes up. I don’t have a whole lot of lab equipment here. There’s a few simple things I can do, but I think we’re going to end up waiting for the state lab to mull things over. And with the holiday, don’t hold your breath.”

Estelle grimaced.

“Is Mike back yet?” Linda asked.

“On the way, I think.” Her cell phone rang, obscenely loud in the tomblike hush of the morgue.

“Guzman.”

“Estelle, it’s Pasquale. We found Tripp’s car.”