Statute of Limitations

Chapter Four

“Look,” Willis said. He glanced nervously at his girlfriend. “We haven’t done anything wrong. We didn’t use a fake credit card, or skip out without paying. The manager offered this room, and we accepted. That’s all there is to it. I’m sorry about the old guy down the way, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that. I called 911, like we’re supposed to. And I’ve answered all your questions.”

“Mr. Willis,” Estelle said, “I’ll be happy to put you in touch with Traveler’s Aid if you’re having trouble.” She had a momentary thought about how nice it would be to put Todd Willis under bright lights for a half-hour or so, but other matters weighed more heavily.

“That’s not necessary,” Willis replied.

“I didn’t think it was, sir. And to tell the truth, at the moment I don’t really care about your room scam.” She saw his eyes narrow a little at her choice of words. “I assume that you at least implied that you couldn’t pay when you inquired about a room?”

“Has someone complained?”

“Your evasion makes me curious.”

“I’m not evading anything. I just don’t have to explain…” Willis’s protest faded.

“Mr. Patel just offered you a room at no charge? You didn’t have to ask?”

“Well, no. Look, we haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I suppose that out of the charity of his heart, he saw your fiancée’s condition and offered lodging. Is that it?”

Willis grimaced and fixed his attention on the bedspread.

“There would be no reason for anyone to offer a complimentary lodging otherwise…although it is the Christmas season. And you made certain that Miss Hart’s condition was noticed, since in both occasions, she accompanied you to the check-in desk. That certainly wasn’t necessary, was it…with it being so unpleasant out and her condition being so uncomfortable.” Estelle paused, watching the flush play up Todd Willis’s cheeks.

“So there appears to be some misrepresentation there,” Estelle continued. “But more important, you saw a man collapse, obviously hurt or ill. You never approached to check on the condition of the victim?”

“No…I already told you that I didn’t.”

“Yet you called 911 to report an unattended death. That’s what the dispatcher reported.”

“I…”

“And you said the victim was an old man.”

“Well, obviously he was. Anyone could see that.”

“Really. I wonder about that when you say you observed the incident from nearly the length of the motel, in poor light.”

“In the rain,” Gastner added.

Stacie Hart groaned and pushed herself up straighter on the bed. “Just tell them, Todd,” she said.

The young man weighed that suggestion for a moment and then shrugged. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I did go up there. I saw that the guy was lying all scrunched up, half on and half off the curb. When I got to him, I could see that his eyes were glassy, and he was unreactive when I spoke to him. It looked like maybe he had some froth on his lips, and I couldn’t find any pulse at his neck. I could see then that he was an older guy.”

“And the other two men were gone by this time?”

“Yes. They drove away before I actually started walking over that way. I couldn’t tell if they’d assaulted the older guy or not. I didn’t see any blood, but that doesn’t mean anything. They drove away in a hurry, though, after he collapsed. So I ran up there, saw that there was a problem, and called 911 on my cell.”

“And then you just left him there?”

“I didn’t want to move him. I mean, we’re not supposed to do that, right? I thought that I’d get a blanket from the room, but by the time I even thought to do that, I could hear a siren coming.” Willis took a step back and settled on the corner of the bed. “I just stayed out of the way.”

“Goddamn commendable,” Gastner said.

“Well…” Willis said, and gave up with a shrug.

“Why not just duck into the office and ask for a blanket? Or tell them to call the cops?” Gastner asked.

Willis looked skeptical. “Did you talk to the desk girl?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then you know why I didn’t try and explain to her. Miss Like Vague. Besides, I thought about doing that, but when I went by, her back was turned to the door and I could see that she was on the telephone.”

“At any time, did you see either of the two men strike the victim before they left?”

“No.”

“Did you see any contact between the three of them at all?” Estelle glanced at her watch.

“No,” Willis said. “But they were out of my view on more than one occasion. Something could have happened while I was inside this room, or when I was going back and forth to the van…any number of opportunities.”

“Did you see what direction they drove after leaving the parking lot?”

“No. They went around the end of the building, and I couldn’t see them after that.”

“What do you do for a living, Mr. Willis?” Estelle asked. She glanced again at the travel bag and camera case.

“I’m a…a writer.”

“Ah. You’re on assignment now?”

Willis hesitated just enough that Estelle sensed his uneasiness. “Yeah, I guess. Sort of.”

“Interesting. Mr. Willis, it may be necessary for us to talk to you again. Is there a number where we can reach you in the next day or two?”

“We’re going to visit Stacie’s family in Tucson. That was our plan, anyway.”

“Are you all right with that?” Estelle said, turning to the girl.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re sure?”

The girl nodded.

“When’s the baby due?”

“Around the tenth,” she said.

“Ah,” Estelle said. “We’ll need a name and number there where we can reach you, Mr. Willis.”

He turned to his fiancée, but she was already rummaging in her purse. She produced a business card and jotted the information on the back, then extended the card to Estelle. “That’s my sister’s number in Las Cruces, too,” she said.

Estelle flipped the card over and saw Stacie Hart’s name printed in simple script with address, home phone, and e-mail listed. “You sister owns the van?”

Stacie nodded. “We were out in Tucson for Thanksgiving, and our car blew its transmission on the way home. She’s letting us use the van while our car’s being fixed.”

“A transmission? That’s an expensive proposition,” Gastner said.

“It’s on warranty,” Stacie said, and Estelle grinned at the comment. See, we’re cooperative, the superfluous information shouted. “And that van’s not much of a bargain, either.”

“I hope everything goes well for you,” Estelle said. “We’ll be in touch. You’re heading straight through tomorrow to Tucson?”

Todd Willis nodded.

“No more stops to see if there’s room at the inn?” Gastner asked. “That should be an interesting story.”

“No more stops,” Willis said but he didn’t rise to Gastner’s remark.

“I hope that we won’t have to bother you again tonight, but it’s a possibility,” Estelle said.

“I understand,” the young man said. He held the door for them, nodding pleasantly. “Have a Merry Christmas.”

“Indeed,” Bill Gastner muttered. “You do the same.” He looked hard at Willis for a moment. “This Mary and Joseph thing,” he said. “I wasn’t aware that they feigned indigence in order to find lodging. I’ll be interested to see how you twist that around in your story.” He didn’t wait for Willis to answer before turning away.

Outside the stuffy motel room, Estelle saw that the county’s flatbed car hauler had arrived. The decrepit Dodge was cranked halfway aboard, looking lopsided and bedraggled in the rain.

“East or west?” Gastner said when the door of Room 110 had closed behind them.

“West,” Estelle said immediately. “Unattended death. That’s interesting. The average Joe on the street doesn’t use that term, sir, but Willis did when he talked with dispatch.”

“Cops, EMTs, firemen, coroners, newspaper reporters-all the odd folks. It took a while, but his name came to me.”

“Oh?”

“Todd Willis. It’s a byline I’ve seen now and then in one of the Las Cruces papers. I did a long telephone interview with him once, back when I retired from your esteemed department.” He huffed a chuckle. “Only a matter of time before my steel-trap memory dug him up.”

“I like your theory about the story he’s working on,” Estelle said.

Gastner snorted in disgust. “I’m not much of a biblical scholar, but I never realized that Mary and Joseph were looking for a freebie.”

“A plea for charity on Christmas Eve is a nice setup,” Estelle said. “I’ll be curious to find out what percentage refused them lodging.”

“And a village named Posadas is a perfect target,” Gastner grumbled.

“Mr. Patel put a dent in their statistics,” Estelle said, and she moved away from the building, looked up into the night sky, and wrinkled her nose against the fine drizzle. “And that’s kind of neat. But they’re not our problem right now, unless Miss Stacie goes into hard labor in Room 110.”

They watched as the flat bed of the car hauler thumped horizontal with its load and Stub Moore and his helper cranked the tie-downs tight. “It doesn’t make any sense to steal a car back east, get this far, and then circle around and head east again.” She glanced at her watch again. “Tommy was headed toward Regál, and the State Police are covering the interstate all the way to the state lines in both directions, so those two aren’t going to make it very far.”

“Or they could be smart,” Gastner said. “Slip south through María, work their way east toward El Paso and the border crossing there.”

“They might do that. And they might have riffled through the chief’s glove box and found his address, and gone over there and robbed the place blind while the rest of the folks are at the hospital.” She glanced at Jackie.

“I’ll check on that,” the deputy said. “Tony Abeyta and I are going to talk with the other guests here at the motel, too. Just on the off chance that someone saw something. There’s only a couple, but you never know.”

Estelle watched the stocky woman hustle off toward her vehicle. “If I were them, I’d stay on the interstate westbound,” she said. “Rainy night, cops few and far between, they could do that and shoot all the way west out of the state. Their luck’s run pretty smooth so far.”

“All the way from Indiana, or wherever it was,” Gastner said. “Publish all the bulletins you want, but somebody has to read them in order for BOLOs to do any good.”

“True enough.” She nodded toward her car. “I want to stop by the hospital,” Estelle said. “We have two to worry about over there. I thought Bobby looked pretty wretched tonight.”

“Ah,” Gastner scoffed, “he’s okay. Mr. Sunshine is one of those folks who makes a lousy patient, is all. I’m sure he’s thoroughly tired of hurting by this point. He likes to be in the middle of things, and here he is, forced to hobble around like an old man. He’s not even good competition for me.”

As they drove out of the parking lot past the motel’s main entry, they could see Adrian Patel and Miranda Lopez in close conversation with Deputy Mike Sisneros.

“I wonder why he came down here,” Estelle said. She started the car and sat for a moment with her hand on the gearshift.

“Who, the chief? He needed aspirin,” Gastner said. “At least that’s what he thought he needed.”

She shook her head in resignation and pulled the car into gear, turning toward the entrance to Grande Avenue.

“Eduardo always did like the café here,” Gastner added. “He said they had the best iced tea in town, and he was probably right. So he was used to coming here. The lobby is always open, and he knew where the vending machine was.” Gastner thumped the side of the door thoughtfully with the back of his fist. “There’s no accounting for what people do when they aren’t thinking straight.”

Estelle’s cell phone chirped, and she pulled it out of her pocket. “That includes young Mister Willis,” she said to Gastner, and then acknowledged the call.

“Estelle,” dispatcher Brent Sutherland said, “I tried to get you on the radio, but you must have been out of the car.”

“Just preoccupied,” Estelle said, and at the same time reached over and turned the volume of the radio up. “What’s up?”

“Tom has the chief’s car in sight,” Sutherland said, and even as he said it, Bill Gastner pointed ahead of them. The bright lights of a fast-moving vehicle had materialized on Grande, and in a moment Sheriff Robert Torrez’s unmarked Expedition howled past southbound, grill lights pulsing. “The vehicle is parked at the church in Regál.”

“At the church?”

“That’s what Pasquale says. I just told the sheriff, and he’s on the way. Mike’s headed out that way, too.”

“Roger that,” Estelle said, and she swung a wide U-turn on Grande. “Are the two suspects in sight? Are they with the vehicle?”

“Negative. Tom thinks that they’re inside the church.”

“What’s his twenty right now?”

“He’s just up the road, in the turnoff to the water tank. He said he drove past the church lot, down toward the border crossing, and saw the car. I didn’t know whether or not Chief Martinez still had a scanner in his car, so I wanted to stay off the radio as much as I could,” Sutherland said.

“That’s good. We’re on the way. Tell Tom to stay put unless they come out of the church and it looks as if they’re going to take off.”

“You got it.”

She handed the phone to Gastner and pulled the mike off the clip.

“Three oh eight, three ten. We copy the info on Bert’s Place. We’re a minute or so behind you.”

“Ten four.” Torrez’s reply in his habitual radio voice was not much more than a murmur. “Bert’s Place,” the radio moniker for the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora in Regál, where Father Bertrand Anselmo was the priest, was one way to keep scanner aficionados-and perhaps the two car thieves if they had a radio-in the dark about location. Torrez’s voice broke the silence once again.

“Three oh two, sit tight.”

“Now that’s bizarre,” Gastner said. He reached out and braced one hand against the dash when Estelle braked hard enough to make the tires howl as they turned onto State 56, the highway leading southwest the twenty-three miles to Regál Pass and the little village beyond on the Mexican border. “Why would two car thieves hole up in the church? That’s not good news.”

“No, sir,” Estelle said. She accelerated hard, and far ahead of them, they could see the taillights of the sheriff’s vehicle as she closed the gap between them.