Statute of Limitations

Chapter Fourteen

The moment Estelle saw Janet Tripp’s Jeep Liberty, a small piece of the puzzle, a very small piece, leaped into focus. The little blue SUV was parked in one of the diagonal slots at Posadas State Bank, just a few steps from the automatic teller machine, the only operation of the bank that remained open on Christmas Day. The ATM was inside a small glassed-in foyer, available for foot traffic only.

If Janet had been headed for the ATM, she would have pulled in, parked, and walked across the small parking lot to the foyer. The Jeep was parked precisely as one might expect if that had happened.

Estelle’s heart raced at the possibilities. She knew that ATM transactions were routinely videotaped, and if they were lucky, the small camera in the foyer might actually be working.

Deputy Tom Pasquale stood beside his unit, leaning against the front fender, arms crossed over his chest. He watched Estelle drive in and stop, but he didn’t approach, giving her time to look at the scene without interference. Estelle remained in her car for a moment. She pictured the Jeep pulling into the lot, pictured Janet choosing a parking spot that provided easy access to the ATM, and then easy out. She would have reached across to the passenger seat for her purse, or perhaps unzipped a fanny pack to find her ATM card.

If robbery was the motive, the killer-if he had half a brain-would have waited until Janet had visited the ATM, and approached her as she returned to the car with ready cash. Had he-or she-been parked toward the rear of the bank’s lot, waiting for a likely candidate?

Another possibility lay in Pershing Park, just across the street, perhaps a hundred steps from where Janet had parked. It would have taken just seconds to cross the street and the parking lot, stealthily on athletic shoes. Janet might not have heard a thing.

Estelle twisted in her seat and surveyed the park. The old tank, moldering on its concrete pedestal, the wheat-colored grass, the small gazebo, the dozen elms that all depended on village water-the place was far from being a garden spot. But it did provide a choice of cover.

A second question nagged Estelle. An obvious possibility was that Janet had been assaulted for her money. The opposite possibility was that someone had assaulted Janet Tripp because of who she was.

She turned back to the Jeep. Whatever the circumstances, it was easy to imagine the bullet’s path into Janet Tripp’s skull from the left quadrant, and then the projectile’s path slightly upward through her brain. And the attack was as cold-blooded as any underworld execution. The victim may have heard a small click or two and then… nothing.

Estelle pulled her car into gear and backed up, swinging it around to block the entry driveway to the bank’s parking lot. She shut it off and stepped out. As she did so, Pasquale pushed himself away from his backrest. Despite his best efforts, a grin spread across his broad face. During his short career with the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department, he had suffered plenty of uncomfortable, sometimes embarrassing, stumbles and blunders. Doing something right was always refreshing-for both him and his colleagues.

“I didn’t touch anything,” the young man said as Estelle approached. “I knew it was Janet’s SUV the minute I saw it, but I ran the plate just to be sure.”

“Good work.” She took a few steps toward the SUV and stopped. “What’s the chime?”

Pasquale looked puzzled. “The what?”

“I hear bells, like someone left on their lights, or the key in the ignition, or the door ajar.”

“Oh. I don’t hear it. Maybe they did. You want me to check?”

“No,” she said quickly as he started to turn toward the victim’s car. She approached slowly and stopped a dozen yards from the Liberty’s back bumper, turning to regard the bank. Situated on Pershing Avenue just a stone’s throw from Bustos, the main east-west drag through the village, the bank was anything but secluded. The ATM foyer, no more than ten feet square, was on the east end, nothing more than a porch enclosed with tinted glass, one exterior door, and no interior entrance to the bank proper.

Estelle looked back toward the street. Since she had pulled into the parking lot, not a single car had passed on either Bustos or Pershing. No one was in the park. The village was as quiet as only early Christmas evening could be-people full of too much food, lots of football on television, and plenty of gifts whose newness had yet to wear off. Company wasn’t heading home yet.

Deputy Tom Pasquale waited quietly, in itself something of an accomplishment. “Tomás, Tomás, Tomás,” Estelle said, and smiled at him even as she saw the look of uncertainty cross his face. “You didn’t look inside the car?”

“I did not approach the vehicle,” Pasquale replied formally, as if he were reading from one of his academy texts, shaking his head for emphasis.

She nodded with satisfaction. “I think we need to call Sergeant Mears, Tomás.” She took a step toward the SUV. “And…who do we have left?”

“Ah…”

“Exactly,” Estelle said. She ran down the mental list. The sheriff was flat on his back in Albuquerque. Captain Mitchell was somewhere between Lordsburg and Posadas, hopefully with Mike Sisneros in tow. Jackie Taber was guarding one crime scene, and she and Pasquale were at another. “We need to call Tony back in. And Dennis is supposed to work graveyard tonight, right? Assuming he gets back from Phoenix in time.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, he can start work early if he does. We’re going to need all the crew we can scrounge up, Tomás.” She started toward the SUV. “Oh…and Linda. She’s at the morgue right now. But the minute she’s finished up there, we’re going to want her over here.” Pasquale nodded and turned to his unit to make the calls. “And I want this entire parking lot cordoned off. When the others get here, they can park out on the street.”

The Jeep’s front door was closed, but not fully latched. Estelle approached one step at a time, watching her footing on the clean asphalt. The insistent bong, bong, bong came from inside the vehicle, but she ignored it. It would continue until either the door was shut, the key was taken from the ignition, or the battery went dead.

Even though the sodium vapor lights around the parking lot were bright and harsh, she used her flashlight as well. Five feet from the driver’s door, she saw the first dime-sized blotch of brown crust on the black tar, and breathed another fervent prayer of thanks that Tom Pasquale hadn’t just clumped over to the SUV, obliterating evidence as he went.

She laid her flashlight on the pavement beside the blood droplet and walked back the way she had come. Tom was standing by his Expedition, talking on the phone with dispatcher Ernie Wheeler, and when he glanced at Estelle, she gave him a thumbs-up. From her own car she retrieved her large field case and returned. Careful that there was nothing else to disturb, she traced a bold circle of white chalk around the blood droplet. Between that spot and the Jeep, she circled four more splotches of blood, one as large as a silver dollar.

“What can I do?” Pasquale asked. “Everyone is on the way except Collins. Ernie’s still trying to get ahold of him.”

Estelle remained kneeling, sorting through her options. “We need to call the State Police again and fill them in, Tomás. They were alerted that we had a homicide, but now that we’ve got Janet’s car, they don’t want to waste time looking for that. That’s one thing off the list. And we might need their mobile CSI unit. I’m not sure yet.”

“Be nice if we knew what we should be looking for,” Pasquale said.

“Yes, it would.” She turned, looking back along the trail of bloodstains. “See the first circle of chalk?” Pasquale nodded. “We have a line of blood droplets leading from the Jeep. I’m assuming from, anyway, at this point. Okay?” Pasquale nodded again. “I need to know where that line of blood ends, Tomás.” She reached out her arm, pointing in line with the ragged trail of five white circles.

“You think she was shot in the car and then carried out?”

“I don’t know what to think yet. That’s what we’re going to find out.”

She rose, moving closer to the SUV. The driver’s window was rolled up. Estelle looked at the door critically. It was almost latched, caught on the last notch before chunking completely closed. The bell continued its gentle reminder. Nothing marred the new vehicle’s paint job, a light blue against which blood smears would have contrasted like neon.

Using her flashlight to eliminate shadows and hiding spots, Estelle worked her way around the outside of the Jeep and found nothing…no marks, no dings, no dents, no bullet holes. The hood was cold to the touch, as was the tailpipe.

The killer hadn’t fired through the window glass. Had he done so, it was likely that he would have had to shoot more than once. The heavy safety glass could easily deflect a.22 slug. That meant that either the window was open, or the door was. Had Janet Tripp just returned to the Jeep from the ATM, it was entirely possible that the door might be open while she fumbled with purse, keys, and seatbelt.

Without touching the door, Estelle played the flashlight around the interior, aided by the dome light. A purse lay on the passenger’s seat, the top of the southwestern beaded fabric unzipped. A wallet lay on the floor in front of the seat. She saw that the Jeep had electric windows. The key was in the ignition, turned to the off position.

“Okay,” Estelle whispered. This assailant hadn’t just reached in and grabbed Janet’s wallet from her hands…or rapped her on the head, or struggled with her in any way. From all appearances, he had padded up behind her while she sat in the car and popped her once through the brain, willing to risk a murder charge for a few bucks. The hair on the back of Estelle’s neck rose.

“Tape’s up,” Pasquale said, and Estelle startled. “Sorry,” the deputy said. “Lieutenant Adams said to let you know that he’s alerted his guys. He said that if you need his CSI team, just let State Police dispatch know. And I found one more blood droplet, about four feet from the last one you marked. That’s all, though.”

“Good. Look, tell me something,” she said.

“What?”

“Why would he shoot her here, and then bother to move the body?”

Pasquale’s eyebrows furrowed quizzically. “Lots of reasons.”

“If the killer was just after the money that Janet removed from the ATM, then why not just take it and be off? As quiet as it is tonight, who’s to notice her car, or even if they do, wonder enough to look inside? She’d slump over and be invisible to a casual passerby.”

“Well, we’d notice,” Pasquale said. “There’s no reason to park here at the bank. We’d kind of wonder when we went by on routine patrol and saw the vehicle, wouldn’t we?”

“I hope that we would. Then, we’d call in the license and find out that the car belonged to Janet Tripp. And then, knowing that she’s Mike’s girlfriend, we’d shrug and let it go.”

“I think that’s just about exactly what I would do-if we hadn’t found her body in the arroyo earlier.”

“Exactly. You wouldn’t look inside?”

“Well, I might.” He nodded. “Sure…I guess I probably would, with the car parked at a bank.”

“And if she’s not in it…”

“I’d do what you said.”

“Even if you saw her purse and what appears to be her riffled wallet lying on the seat and floor?”

Pasquale craned his neck to see past Estelle to the interior of the Jeep. “Well, sure. I’d wonder about that.”

“Yes, you would. I would too. What would you do?”

“I guess I’d try to contact her on the phone to make sure that she was all right. And when she didn’t answer, I guess that I’d probably call Mike. She’s with him more often than not, anyway.”

“Doing all that takes some time, doesn’t it. And that’s if you stopped in the first place to check the car. A unit this new might well belong to one of the bank officers, here to do a little extra work. And that’s if you stepped out of your unit to look inside it, once you ran the computer check.”

“Well, sure.”

“And all that changes if we find the car, look inside, and see a corpse, right?”

Tom Pasquale laughed. “Well, sure,” he said.

“So it might be worthwhile for the shooter to take the body and dispose of it to gain some time-maybe even after weighing the risks of being seen.”

Another county Expedition squealed to a stop at the curb on Pershing, and a slender man in jeans, checkered flannel shirt, and baseball cap got out. “Ah, here’s Tom One,” Estelle said, referring to Gayle Torrez’s habit of calling Mears and Pasquale the Two Toms. Sergeant Tom Mears ambled to the yellow tape that Pasquale had stretched from the front door of Estelle’s sedan to the front door handle of the bank. He stopped there, and Estelle beckoned, swinging her arm in a big circle to the left that would steer Mears well clear of the blood droplets.

When he saw the chalked circles, he angled inward and stooped to examine them. “You’re kidding,” Mears said, straightening up and scrutinizing the small vehicle. “Kinda bizarre, don’t you think?”

“Oh, sí.”

“If that’s her blood, it kinda gives us a link,” Mears said.

“I think so. I mean, it’s Janet’s car, it’s her only car, and it’s logical for her to have been in this spot. If she was going to Lordsburg with Mike Sisneros, then she might have wanted some cash along. But that was early this afternoon. She didn’t do that. She had other plans, same answer.”

“Was she going to Lordsburg?”

“We don’t know yet, Tom. We’ve got conflicting versions so far. Eddie went over there to talk to him.”

“He doesn’t know about Janet, then. That’s no good.”

“No.”

The other Tom made a noise that might have been a cough, a groan, or a strangled chuckle. “Unless…,” he said meaningfully.

“Yeah, unless,” Mears said. “But I don’t even want to think about that.” He glanced toward the street as one of the department’s Crown Victorias rolled to a stop behind his unit. “Here’s Abeyta. Let’s see what our three great minds can come up with.”

“There’s four of us here,” Pasquale observed, stepping into the trap with alacrity.

“Uh-huh,” Mears said, and his thin face broke into a smile. “Process of elimination then, right?” He turned toward the Jeep. “One thing we want to be aware of right off,” he said. “If she was in the car when she was shot, and the shooter was standing by her door, then…” He paused.

“Perrone said the bullet struck her just behind the left ear, low on the mastoid, and ranged forward and up, Tom. It didn’t break out of the front of her skull.”

“That’s not surprising. The gun was close to her skull when fired, right? That’s what Abeyta said.” He reached out and rested a hand on Tony Abeyta’s shoulder for emphasis as the deputy joined the group. “Then we want the shell casing, guys.”

“What if it wasn’t an automatic?” Pasquale asked.

“Then we don’t get the casing,” Mears said easily. “But if it was, then the gun tossed it out to the right, or straight up-unless the shooter held it Hollywood ‘gangsta’ style. The empty case would either glance off the back window glass, or some other part of the car, or…” He peered toward the Liberty. “Is that the ignition warning that I’m hearing?”

“Yes,” Estelle said. “Key’s there, door’s ajar.”

Mears nodded. “If she was leaning forward, like maybe she was picking something off the floor, or just looking down at her lap, and the gun was pressed to her skull, then the casing might be inside here.”

“Unless he picked it up,” Pasquale said.

“Stranger things have happened,” Mears agreed. “Stranger things have happened. But for now, I want everything that’s on the ground-under, beside, off in the brush somewhere. Don’t just grind stuff into the asphalt with your big feet. Pay attention.” He turned to Estelle. “Do we know how much she got from the ATM? Do we know if she even made a withdrawal?”

“Not yet. No one’s touched anything inside the car. I haven’t even opened the door.”

“Then let’s do the simple things first,” Mears said. “That wallet and purse should tell us a few things. That’s where I want to start.”

Chapter Fifteen

If Janet Tripp had withdrawn money from the ATM at Posadas State Bank, there was no record of it in the Jeep. There had been no money or papers in her clothing when it was searched at the morgue. There was no cash in her wallet, no credit cards, no driver’s license, no ATM receipt, no nothing. Her purse held an assortment of typical personal items of no particular value, but nothing that made Estelle pause.

“Good surface for prints,” Mears said as he dropped the glossy black leather wallet into an evidence bag. “But I’ll be surprised. She was hit by somebody who knew exactly what he was doing. He’s not going to butter everything up with his fingerprints.” He looked at Estelle, who was crouched at the passenger side, in the open door. “What?”

“I don’t understand the fit,” she said.

“The fit? Of what?”

“If this is a typical robbery-if someone had the ATM staked out and wanted to make a score-why choose Christmas Day, why then shoot the victim, and why remove the corpse, other than to buy himself some time?”

Mears shrugged. “I don’t know, Estelle. Christmas Day is dull, without a lot of traffic. But maybe he figured that whoever stopped would be flat busted from last-minute shopping, and be more apt to withdraw a larger amount?” He grinned. “If you’ve already dug yourself a financial hole with too much Christmas shopping, what’s the harm of adding a little bit more to it? How’s that for far-fetched. Hell, I don’t know why. Maybe my brilliant brother has a theory.”

“And we need to call him, too,” Estelle said. Terry Mears, Tom’s twin brother, was vice-president of Posadas State Bank.

“Shooting the victim in the head,” Mears continued, “is a pretty sure way of making certain that she doesn’t talk, that’s pretty obvious. And you’re probably as close as anybody about why he moved the body. Or maybe he was thinking that a little nasty-time recreation with her might be in order. You know how these things can go.”

“Casing!” Tony Abeyta shouted. He had been working far to the right side of the Jeep, on his hands and knees close to the edge of the asphalt. He stood up suddenly, as if he’d crawled too close to a rattlesnake. Estelle saw that the single.22 long-rifle cartridge case rested in the channel between asphalt and the soil of the border garden.

Estelle looked back to the Liberty. “If that’s the one, the gun ejected it right over the roof of the car,” she said. “That’s quite a toss.”

“I have a bag,” Abeyta said, but Estelle held up a hand.

“Don’t move it until Linda takes the photos, Tony. And we don’t know for sure if this is the one. So measure about four times, okay? Mark it with a flag, then just leave it alone.”

“You got it.”

Estelle moved off to one side and opened her phone. In a moment, Linda answered, her voice sounding small and far away.

“Hey,” Estelle said. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, I guess so. I’m down in the darkroom.”

“Ah.” Estelle knew that it was one thing, out in the open with others to provide support, to deal with death and destruction, especially if the victim was family. But it was worse to watch the grotesque images appear out of the chemical bath, ghostly apparitions that gazed up out of the developer tray in the hushed and musty tomb of the lonely downstairs darkroom.

Linda Real usually handled such things with aplomb and good humor. The rules changed when violent death became personal, taking a step closer.

“I wanted to finish up the black and whites,” she said. As standard procedure, she took triplicate photos, one set in black and white that she could develop herself, a set with another camera in color-film that would have to be sent out for processing, with both the attendant risks and delays-and finally finishing up with digital shots for instant reference.

“We found Janet’s car, Linda. As soon as you can break loose…”

“I’m on my way.”

“We’re in the bank parking lot.”

“Gotcha.” Linda sounded as if she might revive. “I could use a little air.”

Estelle returned to the Jeep. “Do you want to call your brother, or do you want me to?” she asked the sergeant.

Mears laughed. “I’ll get him. He’s just sitting in front of the television, anyway, fat and happy.”

Estelle knew that at least half of that wasn’t the case. Both Tom and Terry Mears were angular, slim, and barely average height. “I want to know if Janet withdrew anything from her account…and how much. There should be a time on the ATM slip, shouldn’t there?”

“I would think so. I don’t use ’em, so I can’t tell you for sure. Bro’s going to ask for a court order, you know.”

“Ay, I was afraid of that. Well, tell him that we’ll need to look at the ATM transaction tape, and also at the video. In the meantime, I’ll go get the paperwork from Judge Hobart.”

“Better you than me,” Mears said. “By the way, I’ll use the black light to make sure, but I don’t think we have any blood spatters in the vehicle itself.”

“That’s surprising,” Estelle said.

“Nah, not really. Not with a.22. Pops a nice hole, not much blow-back, not much in the way of bone chips on the outside. Plays hell on the inside, but not otherwise. But we’ll see.” He knelt down by the Liberty’s running board and looked up toward the driver’s window, then played his flashlight upward at the soft, finely textured fabric head liner.

“We might get lucky and find some powder residue on the liner,” Mears added.

“And if you’ll get your brother, I’ll see about the warrant.” She glanced at her watch, remembering her promise to former sheriff Bill Gastner. What was supposed to be fifteen minutes had mushroomed into an evening. “I was going to talk to Bill about what happened in the office earlier this afternoon, but I never made it. I’ll get him to go with me to Hobart’s. That’ll mellow the judge down some.”

“Linda’s on the way?”

“Yes.”

“Good. We need to impound this puppy, too. Get it over into the secure barn so nobody dinks with it,” Mears said, and shook his head. “We’re going to have a long, long list of folks wondering about whatever happened to their nice holiday.”

“Remind them that Janet Tripp can’t wonder about anything anymore,” Estelle said. Far off to the north, she heard the moan of an aircraft, and her own spirits rose. As it approached fast and direct, she could tell that it was a twin jet-prop. “And that has to be the air ambulance,” she said. “I need to pick up Francis at the airport.”

“Merry Christmas,” Mears said.

“People keep telling me that. If I hear it long enough, I might start believing it.”

Back at her car, she opened the door and removed the plastic crime-scene tape that Pasquale had strung up, repositioning it to Mears’s unit. Then she headed to the airport, six miles away at the foot of Cat Mesa. By the time she arrived there, the Piper Navajo had parked, its engines spooling down to idle. Estelle left her car at the chainlink gate and walked out across the tarmac toward the air ambulance. In a moment, Francis gingerly made his way down the little folding steps from the plane, turning to wave at whomever was inside. The moment he was around the wing and clear, the engines shrieked, the nose wheel cocked sharply to the left, and the Navajo surged back out to the taxiway.

“Smooth as silk,” Francis said. “Flying at night is neat, querida.”

“I’ll take your word for it, oso.” She snuggled into his arms and enjoyed her own airborne moment as her “bear” swung her around, her feet well clear of the ground.

“How’s it going?” he whispered in her ear.

She sighed. “Not good, oso. Not good. And it’s not going to improve much, either.”

“What’s going on? I phoned Alan, and he said Eduardo was slipping. He also said you had a homicide of some sort. We had a bad connection, and I didn’t get the details.”

“A homicide of some sort,” Estelle repeated. “We have the kind where someone’s been killed to death.” But she didn’t smile, and neither did Francis. He saw the look of misery in her eyes and lowered her until her feet touched the ground. “Someone I know?”

“I don’t think so. Janet Tripp? She’s Mike Sisneros’s girlfriend.”

“My God. This happened just this afternoon?”

“Yep.” She took his hand as they walked back to the county car. “Remember Butch Romero?”

“Sure.”

“He found the body in Escudero Arroyo.”

“Wow.”

“One gunshot to the head. Just dumped in a tangle of old cars. Nothing else. It’s looking like she was attacked over at Posadas State Bank, and then dumped in the arroyo afterward.” Francis tried to settle his bulk in the passenger seat and yelped as he cracked his knee against the computer that grew out of the center console in front of the radios. “Let me fold that out of your way,” she said.

He thumped his left elbow against the shotgun in the rack between them. “You need some more junk in this car,” he said. “It’s a miracle that it has enough power to move.”

“We don’t get a lot of passengers up front,” she said. “A veces no está en situación de exigir nada.”

“Your mother says that,” Francis said as Estelle backed the car away from the gate. “Her version of ‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’”

“She says lots of things. And after today, she’s going to be at her acid best,” Estelle said. “I haven’t been home since 4:05 this afternoon, and we haven’t even started yet.”

“Any good leads?” Francis settled with one hand looped through the panic handle as the car accelerated hard on the highway toward Posadas.

“It’s bizarre,” Estelle said. “And no…nothing that sends us in any particular direction. That’s the trouble.” She paused as she let the car drift toward the center line as they raced around the sweeping corner, and then pushed hard through the intersection with County Road 43. “Every minute that we dawdle, the killer puts more miles between him and us.”

Francis leaned over the center console equipment, gazing at the speedometer. “Dawdle has a new definition in this household,” he said.

“If I could figure out a way to be in three places at once, I’d try it,” Estelle said.

“Alan’s doing the autopsy?”

“As we speak. I just came from there a little bit ago.”

Francis looked hard at her. “Is there anything that makes you suspect the deputy? The boyfriend?”

“Por Dios, I hope not,” Estelle sighed. “But we can’t be sure. Not yet. Eddie went over to Lordsburg to get him.”

“Bizarre,” Francis said.

“Oh, sí.”

“Sofía is okay with the two terrors?”

“She’s in heaven…or so she says. We were all out for a nice afternoon walk when Butch found the body. And then he found us. That ended the nice walk.”

They swung into the hospital parking lot where Francis’s vehicle had been left. “You going home now?” he asked.

Estelle shook her head. “I can’t, querido. I need to talk with Padrino about this afternoon. He’s one of the last people to see Janet alive.” She glanced at her watch. “And I was supposed to do that hours ago.” She rested her forehead against his, the two of them bent over the junk between their seats.

“Be hard as hell to make out in this car,” Francis said.

“That’s what the back seat is for.” Estelle laughed.

“I need to check on Eduardo,” he said, and tipped his head back until their lips met.

“Do what you can for him.”

“Oh, for sure,” he replied. “And I’ll check in with Alan and see what he needs.”

“Maybe next week sometime, we can get together for a while and pretend that we have a life.”

“It’s a deal.” He opened the door and pushed himself out. “Be careful, querida.”

“Love you, oso.”

As she accelerated out of the parking lot, she watched Francis in the rearview mirror, watched as he trudged toward the emergency room entrance. She stopped at the highway and looked again. From that distance, just before he pulled open the doors, his figure in the evening light looked just like Francisco, and she felt a pang of loss as he opened the door and disappeared inside.