Statute of Limitations

Chapter Nineteen

When Estelle left the hospital parking lot and drove south on Grande to the “four corners” intersection with Bustos, she found herself pausing at the light, even though it was green. A driver westbound on Bustos arrived at the light and looked across at her, puzzled. When his light turned green, he hesitated, and then accelerated away toward the west. Estelle watched him go. She recognized him, the sort of acquaintance seen at the grocery store a dozen times, perhaps earning a nod and smile when passing in the aisle.

The dash clock said it was just passing 11:00 p.m., an hour away from the end of that Christmas Day. What was this particular driver doing cruising the streets? Had he just visited Tommy Portillo’s Handi-Way convenience store down the street, grabbing a late-night donut just before Tommy closed at eleven o’clock? Maybe he’d run out of dental floss, just when his back molars had reached their limit of packed cracks. Or was he the one who had bashed Bill Gastner on the back of the head, and now, pleased at how well that episode had played out, drove around the village looking for another easy holiday score?

If someone had actually attacked Gastner-if Dr. Guzman was right-then that person, if not simply lucky, had calculated perfectly. Bill Gastner hadn’t surprised a burglary in process. He’d simply been walking toward the front-door stoop, keys in hand, ready to go inside. If the attacker had been surprised when Gastner drove in the driveway, if he’d been scouting the home for a possible burglary, he could have melted into the darkness without attacking and Gastner would never have been the wiser. Instead-if her husband was correct-he had struck with vicious accuracy, the sort of blow calculated to kill. Had he then stepped over the body, picked up the keys, entered Gastner’s home, and taken his time rummaging through the house?

The cold calculation of the crime was disturbingly familiar. Estelle gazed up Bustos toward the west. The taillights of the other vehicle turned south on Tenth.

Glancing to the left, Estelle let her foot slide off the brake and allowed the Crown Victoria to idle across the intersection. Janet Tripp had been approached after tapping an ATM machine for $350. It hadn’t been a confrontation. There were no signs of argument or confrontation, just one shot to the head, like a hit man. Take the money and run. Except the killer hadn’t run. He’d removed the body and dumped it in an arroyo north of the village. The body was bound to be found, but he’d achieved a head start, even if it hadn’t been as comfortably long as he might have liked.

South Grande was deserted, four lanes of black asphalt marked with moons of illumination from the sparse street lights. Window open, cool air whispering by, Estelle drove at not much more than a fast walk down South Grande, looking and listening with one part of her mind, the other off in the darkness somewhere.

Deputy Jackie Taber had parked her unit across Guadalupe Terrace from Gastner’s adobe, affording her a full view of the front of the property. Estelle let the car drift to a stop, blocking Gastner’s driveway. Behind her, she heard the click of a door, and in a moment Jackie stood beside the door of Estelle’s car.

“Collins is parked around behind in the pharmacy parking lot,” she said. “Nobody’s going to sneak around back there.” Gastner’s property had originally included five acres, but he had given most of it to Estelle and Francis three years before. The property now included the elegant, single-story Posadas Clinic and Pharmacy. Gastner had been left with a large, comfortable back lot overgrown with enormous cottonwoods, thick oak scrub, and a dozen other varieties of plants, most falling into the “weeds” classification.

“He’s stayed away from the house?”

“I told him to stay in his unit unless he actually had to confront somebody.” Jackie smiled. “That’s the extent of my guarantee. What’s the deal? Is Mr. Gastner okay?”

“He’s fine. And he’s lucky. Francis thinks that someone hit Bill on the head. If this guy then went inside the house, he had to use the house keys. I found those on the step. If he used them, then he just dropped ’em on his way out.”

Jackie remained silent.

“I haven’t checked inside yet,” Estelle added. “I borrowed Padrino’s keys at the hospital. There’s one for the back door, too. It’s under one of those little fake rock things right under the kitchen window. We need to check and make sure it’s still there.”

“Where do you want to start?”

Estelle stood quietly in the darkness, gazing at the old house. “Right at the gate, Jackie.”

The small courtyard, sheltered even from what little moonlight or starlight there might be, was a twenty-by-twenty-foot expanse of gravel and dirt with a flagstone walkway leading to the front door and the concrete step. The courtyard and walk were recent additions, built two summers before in a moment of boredom when Gastner had run out of other things to do.

An old shovel leaned against the blocks in the corner to Estelle’s left, marking the spot where Gastner had thought about planting a climbing rose bush. The shovel had yet to earn its keep, but he had gone so far as to mark the spot for the rose.

Estelle stopped and let the flashlight beam linger in the corner, illuminating the bent piece of rusted steel rebar projecting out of the ground at a haphazard angle. Now that she saw it, she remembered Gastner driving the length of steel in a couple of inches with the flat of the shovel, remarking that the hard-packed clay soil might grow the rebar just fine, but probably not the roses.

Keeping her feet as close as she could to the plastered wall, she crossed to the corner as Jackie added more light from the walkway.

“You think?” the deputy asked.

“I don’t know.” She slipped on a pair of cotton gloves, bent down, and with the tip of her index finger touched the top of the bent stake. It rocked easily in its hole, barely deep enough to sink through the crushed stone cover to the clay underneath.

“Let me get a large bag,” Jackie said, and Estelle knelt beside the stake, examining the ground. The crushed stone formed a uniform, featureless expanse. A busload of people could have stood in this corner and not left a single track. Whoever had assaulted Gastner could have crouched here, just as she crouched, and the twenty-four-inch-long piece of rebar would have presented itself as an easy weapon. But why not the shovel, itself heavy and lethal?

Estelle swung the light methodically, gridding the crushed stone surface in the corner. No cigarette butts, no gum wrappers, no blob of half-dried tobacco juice. Nothing indicated that a human being had stood here, waiting in the darkness.

“Here,” Jackie said, touching Estelle on the shoulder. The rebar came out of the ground with little effort. Even the rain of earlier in the day hadn’t been enough to soak through the blanket of crushed stone to the dense clay underneath. Holding the steel by the last half inch of one end, she gently lowered it into the plastic bag and zipped the top closed.

“Anything on it?”

“I can’t tell in this light,” Estelle said. “But I’m willing to bet.”

“If he wanted a weapon, why not use the shovel?” Jackie asked. “You want that, too?”

“Yes. But I don’t think that’s what he used. The marks on the wound seemed pretty characteristic.” She examined the corner once more. “Why, though?”

“Because it’s handy?”

“Sure enough it is. But if he came here planning to assault Padrino, why wouldn’t he have had a weapon ready? Why take up the rebar as a last-minute substitute?”

They heard a vehicle turn onto Guadalupe, and in a moment Tom Pasquale’s Expedition pulled in behind Estelle’s unit.

“Where do you want me?” he said as he approached the courtyard gate. “Sarge said he’s about wrapped up over at the bank and that I should get over here.” He saw the evidence bag and shovel in Jackie’s hands. “Gardening?”

“That’s it,” Jackie said.

“We’re about to go inside,” Estelle said. “I think the chunk of rebar that Jackie has in the bag is the weapon. We haven’t covered the area around the doorway yet, so go lightly.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Anything at all, Tomás.” She pointed with her light toward the front door. “He was lying half on the step, head in the bushes there on the right when I found him. So we have some compromise already. I went right to him without much regard for anything else, thinking that he had tripped, or had another stroke, or something like that. And then the two EMTs did what they do. So I’m not sure what we’ll find.”

“I don’t figure,” Pasquale said.

“Someone came up behind the sheriff and hit him on the head,” Jackie said. “And down he went. That’s what we have.”

“No, I mean where did you find the weapon?”

“If it is a weapon,” Estelle said. “It was stuck in the ground over there in the corner. That’s where it’s been for a couple of months now.”

“So why would he put it back?” Pasquale asked.

“Neat and tidy,” Jackie offered. “If he just hits the sheriff with it and drops it, that’s pretty obvious. Stick it back where it was, and we might go for quite a while thinking the sheriff hit his head after an accidental fall.”

“Simpler just to take it along and chuck it in the bushes somewhere,” Pasquale said.

“Nos vemos,” Estelle said. “For now, we have what we have.” She stepped toward the front door. The gravel bordering the flagstones was scuffed here and there where the EMTs had worked with the gurney and backboard. “He had the keys in his hand,” she said, and paused, picturing Bill Gastner’s lumbering figure as he approached the stoop. “I’ve seen him open this door a thousand times,” she said. “He waits until he’s right here before he finds the right key.”

“The porch light works?” Pasquale asked.

“He doesn’t use it,” Estelle said. “He does have one of those little plastic boots that he keeps on the door key, so he can separate it out from all the rest. Then he fumbles around trying to find the keyhole.” She played the light around the heavy, carved door with its brass hardware.

“You said that you have the keys?” Pasquale asked.

“Yes, I do,” Estelle replied. “But I’m not there yet.”

“This is fresh,” Jackie said. She brought her light close to the door jamb. The wood was scarred, with a chip gouged out and hanging by a strand.

“Ay,” Estelle breathed. “Look at that.” She bent close and saw that the rip was indeed recent, the wood gouged right through the surface stain into the soft pine underneath. “Tomás, was Linda still over at the bank?”

“I think so. You want her here?”

“Yes indeed. Use the phone, though. Not the radio.”

“You got it.”

With a hand on Jackie Taber’s shoulder, Estelle said, “You’re about Padrino’s height. Let’s try this.” She maneuvered the deputy into position, imitating Gastner’s position as he reached for the lock. “If you’re bent over trying to find the keyhole, that puts you just about like this,” she said. Raising the plastic evidence bag, she held the rebar out, as if clubbing the deputy on the back of the head. “And there you are. It would have been easy for the bar to strike the door jamb, maybe at the same time as he hit Padrino.” She held the position for a moment. “Lean a little against the jamb,” she instructed, trying to imitate the position she’d seen Gastner assume innumerable times as he slumped against the short wall while sorting keys.

“It’s a good thing, then,” Jackie said. “If the end of the rebar hit the jamb at the same time as the rest of it struck him in the skull, it might have saved his life.”

“That close,” Estelle whispered.

“You might get a matching impression in the wood.”

“Maybe. Not in this light, though.” With the sides of both thumbs, she gingerly tried the door latch, keeping her touch on the outside edge of the flat brass surface. “Still locked.”

“Unless he went inside, did his thing, and made sure it was locked on the way out.”

“Maybe. And then he just drops the keys. Maybe.”

“Any prints, you think?” Tom Pasquale asked, returned from his brief conversation with Linda Real.

“I would bet not,” Estelle said. She drew out the wad of keys. “There’s also the matter of the clumsy responding officer,” she said. “I picked these up when the EMTs were here. I assumed that Padrino had fallen, and…” She shrugged. “My prints are on them, that’s for sure.” She selected the key with the blue plastic marker and slid it into the door lock. It opened easily, and with one finger she pushed the door open a foot until it hit the resistance of hinges long in need of lubrication. The resulting creak was eerie and loud, a sound Bill Gastner had found amusing and friendly.

The scent from inside the house was familiar-old wood, old leather, musty carpets too long from a cleaning, the hint of Gastner’s characteristic aftershave.

“Let me go in,” Estelle said. She bent down, letting her flashlight beam angle across the age-polished Saltillo tile of the foyer and hallway. Damp footprints would show like neon signs. “I don’t think he came inside,” she said, and reached across to flip on the hall and foyer lights. Nothing appeared out of place, and she walked down the hallway toward the sunken living room and kitchen, staying close to one wall.

A half pot of coffee sat cold on the kitchen counter, a habit Gastner had cultivated in an effort to remember to turn off the coffee maker when he left the house, having burned up several in recent months. The back door leading from the kitchen out into the overgrown patio was locked.

She crossed the living room and checked the guest bedrooms, finally peering into Gastner’s office. Nothing appeared out of place. An expensive Civil War musket that had been stolen and retrieved once before still hung over the east-facing window. The light gray sifting of dust on his massive mahogany desk was undisturbed. She crossed to the far corner and a four-drawer filing cabinet with a locked security rod that Gastner had purchased several years before. It was secure.

On the other side of the house, Gastner’s bedroom appeared normal enough, right down to the fastidiously made bed, its corners still tucked in the military fashion.

“All clear,” she said, and relocked the front door.

“You think he was scared off somehow?” Pasquale asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t much like the other possibility.”

“What, that somebody just wanted to bash his head in?” Pasquale said, and Estelle winced at the blunt assessment.

“Maybe that,” she said.

“The sheriff still had his wallet and money?”

Estelle nodded and turned to watch Linda Real add her vehicle to the growing parking lot on Guadalupe Terrace. “Jackie, will you give Linda a hand with what we have here? Tom and I will check the garage and around back. I don’t think we’re going to find anything, but I want to be sure.”

She was halfway to the garage, her flashlight and Pasquale’s sweeping the gravel driveway, when her cell phone chirped. The sound was loud in the quiet night air.

“Guzman.”

“Querida,” her husband’s soft voice said. “You okay?”

“Sure. Are you home?”

“No. Look, Eduardo Martinez died a little bit ago. I wanted to let you know. I set the time at 10:58.”

She stopped in her tracks, and looked up at the night sky. A few stars were showing, the others obscured by traces of wispy clouds.

“You there?” Francis asked.

“Yes, I’m here,” she said finally. “I’ll stop by in a few minutes.”

“That’s not necessary. Essie and the others all went home a few minutes ago.” When she didn’t respond immediately, he added, “Are you all right?”

“Sure. Did you look in on Padrino?”

“He’s fine, querida. He’s going to be just fine. I told him about Eduardo, and he was philosophical about it. He said he’d get together with Essie a little later, after the family thins out some. The hard part will be keeping Padrino from getting up and walking out of the hospital when our backs are turned. You know how he is.”

“We won’t turn our backs,” Estelle said.