Statute of Limitations

Chapter Thirty

Less than an hour after Estelle left Sheriff Robert Torrez’s office early on that Sunday afternoon, her phone chirped. She had just parked the county car in her driveway after running several errands, and Francisco was halfway across the front yard toward her.

“Guzman,” she said, and held out a hand to her son. She was surprised to hear the characteristic monosyllabic greeting from the sheriff.

“Hey,” Torrez said, and the one word didn’t carry a flood of good will and holiday cheer. The intervening hour hadn’t improved his mood. “Where you at?”

“I just pulled into my driveway,” she replied.

“You got a few minutes?”

No, I don’t, she almost said. I’m going to spend the rest of this Sunday with my family. “Sure.” She reached across the seat and grabbed the two plastic sacks of groceries with her right hand, and handed them to Francisco, whose small hands deftly twined around the tops. “Give those to tía, hijo,” she said.

“We got us a problem,” Torrez said. “I’m in my office.” The connection broke.

“I thought Padrino was coming,” Francisco said.

Estelle sighed. “He is, hijo. After a little bit. Right now, Roberto el Gruñón needs to see me.”

“He could come over here,” Francisco said. “Tía and abuela have been baking all day.” His face beamed, and she saw the trace of powdered sugar near the left corner of his mouth. “There’s lots to eat.”

“Bobby’s not hungry right now,” Estelle said, and almost added, and that’s not the way el gruñón works. “You save some for Padrino.” She closed the car door. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

The little boy stepped back. “Okay.” The resignation in his tone was heavy, and he didn’t turn toward the house, waiting as if there were a chance his mother might change her mind.

“These things happen, hijo,” she said.

Her son’s expression was almost comical. Had he been old enough to frame the right words, he would have muttered, “Don’t make it a habit.”

As she drove back to the sheriff’s department, impatience prompted Estelle to run down her mental inventory of potential problems that might have reared their ugly heads, and she found herself centering on Mike Sisneros-if ever there was a lost soul, Mike was the very definition. With no clearcut direction for the case to go, nothing positive for him to pursue, all he could do was pace in circles and fume. The weekend even made it worse.

The sheriff’s office door was open, but Estelle paused at the counter of the dispatch island, where Gayle Torrez was busy organizing and straightening after two days of unplanned absence. As if the sheriff had been lying in wait for the first sounds of his undersheriff’s footsteps, his voice interrupted her greeting for Gayle.

“Hey?” His command was easy to interpret: If you’re there, get in here.

“Neanderthal man summons,” Gayle said, and beamed at Estelle. “You want to go out for some late lunch and leave him?” She knew her husband too well to be intimidated by his moods.

Estelle laughed. “Uh,” she grunted in reply, bending over and dangling one arm like an ape. She straightened up. “Did you see Jackie’s cartoon, by the way?”

“The one with Leona visiting Bobby in the hospital?”

“That’s the one. Has he seen it yet?”

“Ah, no. Jackie showed it to me yesterday.” She made the okay sign with index finger and thumb. “Perfecto,” she said, and then glanced toward the sheriff’s office door and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Linda said we should save it for the calendar.”

“That’s just what he needs,” Estelle agreed. The annual calendar project had become legendary, with photos of the sheriff’s department staff snapped during the year-some gorgeous portraits with stunning New Mexico scenery in the background, some loaded with pathos, some comic shots of deputies caught during unguarded, less than complimentary moments. “It’ll make a great cover.”

Torrez appeared in his office doorway, and for a moment his eyes narrowed at the tête-à-tête, obviously called at his expense. “Hey,” he said again, with somewhat less command.

“Uh,” Gayle grunted, a fair imitation of Estelle’s first reply. She reached out and hugged Estelle’s shoulder. “You have a good day,” she said.

“You bet.”

“You seen this?” Torrez said by way of the only greeting Estelle could expect to hear. He held up a folded copy of a metro Sunday newspaper.

“No. I forgot it was even Sunday,” Estelle said. “Are they giving Frank Dayan ulcers again?” The Posadas Register publisher lived in constant apprehension that the large metro dailies in the state would make his struggling weekly look foolish. Most of the time, it wasn’t difficult to do.

“I don’t care about Dayan,” Torrez said, which Estelle knew was no understatement. In fact, she was surprised that Bobby had bothered to read anything but the sports pages and the comics of the Sunday paper. He turned to go back inside the office. Estelle glanced back at Gayle, and the sheriff’s wife waved a hand in dismissal. Estelle took the proffered newspaper as the sheriff settled carefully behind the desk, and Estelle saw a flinch of pain cross his face.

“We made the front page,” he said. “Did you know he was going to do that?”

“Who, and do what?” Estelle asked. She flipped the paper over and saw the headline, neatly centered over four columns at the bottom of the page.

Posadas Not So Peaceful

Murder, Assault Stalk Village Over Holiday

She frowned at the byline. “Todd Willis. That’s interesting. He didn’t go to Tucson after all?”

“Willis?”

“The young man who played Joseph at the motel on Christmas Eve. Friday night. The reporter who wrote this whatever it is.”

“I’m not worried about him and his dippy stories,” Torrez growled, and he grunted to his feet, crossed the small office, and closed the door. “What I want to know is who the ‘source’ is, if it ain’t you.”

Estelle settled in one of the chairs, holding up a hand to fend off further comment until she had read the story.

Posadas, NM-Investigation continues in Posadas County today into the death of a former Posadas Chief of Police after the man suffered an apparent heart attack on Christmas Eve after a confrontation with two travelers at a local motel. At the same time, officials are investigating the violent death of a Posadas woman on Christmas afternoon, and the assault on a former Posadas County sheriff only hours later.

Although refusing to say whether or not the three incidents are linked, Sheriff’s Department officials are not ruling out any possibilities.

Sources in the department said that the death of former village Police Chief Eduardo Martinez was announced late on Christmas Day. Martinez had apparently suffered a heart attack on Christmas Eve that may have been exacerbated by a confrontation with two men at a local motel.

In that incident, Bruce Jakes, 43, and Everett Wardell, 54, both of Hickory Grove, IN, were arrested and charged with multiple counts of assault, auto theft, and resisting arrest, sheriff’s officials said. Jakes and Wardell allegedly took Chief Martinez’s personal vehicle after the retired law officer collapsed in the parking lot of the Posadas Inn following an apparent heart attack. Martinez, 74, collapsed after talking to the two men, witnesses said.

Jakes and Wardell were apprehended shortly afterward in the border village of Regál by Posadas County Sheriff Robert Torrez and Undersheriff Estelle Guzman.

Less than twenty-four hours later, Posadas resident Janet Tripp, 30, was found shot to death late Saturday afternoon, her body discovered in an arroyo north of Posadas by a youth riding a motorcycle, police said.

Sheriff’s officials said that Tripp apparently had been killed by a single gunshot to the head, and that robbery appeared to be a motive. Police said that Tripp was killed after making a withdrawal from the Posadas State Bank’s ATM. In a bizarre twist, Tripp was reportedly the fiancée of one of the Posadas County Sheriff’s Deputies, officials said.

Within hours of the murder of Janet Tripp, police said that former Posadas County Sheriff William K. Gastner was assaulted near his home. Gastner was hospitalized for treatment of a head wound, officials said, and is listed in stable condition.

Officers refused to speculate on whether the killing of Tripp and the assault on Gastner were related.

“Sheriff Gastner has information that we’re currently processing,” a Sheriff’s Department official said. “It appears that he may have information that may help police identify his attacker.”

The undersheriff looked up at Bob Torrez. “See what I mean?” Torrez said. Estelle quickly scanned the rest of the article, but found nothing new.

“Let me show you the press release that I wrote yesterday,” she said, and started to get up. “I think it was yesterday.”

Torrez waved a hand impatiently. “Forget it. Just tell me the parts of this shit that you didn’t write,” he said.

“I never said anything about a relationship between Janet Tripp and Mike, Bobby. That’s nobody’s business but theirs-at least at the moment. And I certainly never said anything about Bill being able to identify his attacker. I said that he had been assaulted near his home, and that was it. I also never said that we were investigating any relationship between the incidents.”

“Did this Willis guy talk to somebody in dispatch? Where’d he get all this crap?”

Estelle shook her head. “I’ll ask…don’t think he did. I’d be surprised. You know as well as I do that they have standing orders not to discuss any aspect of a case over the phone with anyone outside the department. Every one of them knows Frank Dayan, and they’ve all been over this ground time and time again. They aren’t going to start blabbing just because it’s from some big out-of-town paper. They won’t read a police report or any other piece of public information over the phone to a reporter. They might read the call log, but that’s a summary that’s written for public consumption anyway. If there’s a question, they always say the same thing: ‘You’ll have to talk to the sheriff.’”

“And then I always say, ‘Go talk to Estelle.’” Torrez managed a tight smile.

“Yes, you do.” It was the first sign that Bobby’s blood pressure might be returning to something near normal, and Estelle was relieved.

“Did Bill talk to this guy? Willis what’s-his-name?”

“That’s a possibility, I suppose. Not likely, but possible. We both know that Bill’s not the blabby type….He’s been in our shoes as long as both of us put together. If he said something, especially without talking to us first, he had good reason.”

“Reason or not, I want to know,” Torrez said. “Just because I want to know, that’s all. There ain’t much we can do about it now, but we don’t need somebody goin’ off and playin’ the Lone Ranger on us.”

“That’s simple enough, Bobby. I’ll ask Padrino, and he’ll tell me if it was him. We were talking earlier this morning, and he’s coming over for dinner later on. Right now, it makes sense to me that we should dig a little deeper into Janet Tripp’s background. There’s just too much there that we don’t know, too many things about her death that don’t make sense as a random robbery-gone-bad.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Torrez said, and Estelle knew it wasn’t just gratuitous agreement for the sake of taking credit. He shifted on the uncomfortable chair. “Me and Eddie are going through the files, Estelle. First thing we did was check our own records-and as far as we’re concerned, Janet Tripp was clean. Not even a speedin’ ticket. Nothin’. The village files are somethin’ else. They’re a mess, for one thing. But Eddie was going to give it a try. We know there’s no rap sheet on her. No obvious file.” He shrugged. “But it’s worth lookin’.”

“I just don’t think that her murder was a simple robbery, Bobby.”

“You said that before.”

“Well, there’s just too much…” She hesitated. “I don’t know. Just too many circumstances that don’t make any sense to me.”

“So where you goin’ with it? Gastner?”

“His attack is linked somehow. I really believe that, and I couldn’t tell you why, except for the unlikelihood of coincidence. There’s something there that we’re missing. Bill agrees.”

“Huh.” Torrez stared off into space for a moment, chewing his lower lip. “So what’s next?”

“You said you and Eddie already made an end run on the files, and that’s a logical place to start. Anything and everything that’s even tangentially related to Janet Tripp-or anyone related to her. And anything that ties her to Bill Gastner.”

“If there’s something, it’s in the village files,” Torrez said.

Estelle nodded and tossed the newspaper on Torrez’s desk. “Have you talked any more with Mike?”

“Some. About Janet’s background, stuff like that. Eddie’s run through it with him again. There just ain’t nothin’ there. Just that she didn’t like Mike’s mother very much. Some friction here.” He shrugged. “But Irene Cruz is over in Lordsburg-was over in Lordsburg all day. So that don’t much matter.”

Estelle looked at the sheriff for a long time, mind churning.

“You’re gettin’ together with Bill today, then?” Torrez asked.

“Yes. I don’t know what he was thinking, if he’s the one who leaked that information. Maybe he thinks he can flush the attacker out, force him to try again.”

“That’s like grabbing a stock fence during a lightning storm,” Torrez said. “It ain’t too bright.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Estelle said.

“When you do, you might remind him that he ain’t sheriff anymore, either,” Torrez said, and Estelle was surprised by the sudden gentleness in his tone. “Anything that goes to the newspapers about what we do goes through your office. No other way.”

“I think he’s well aware of that,” Estelle said. “But he gets kind of stubborn about certain things. And as I said, he might have had good reason.”

“Yeah, well,” Torrez said philosophically. “I guess I can understand that. It’s his skull that got cracked.”