The Fourth Time is Murder

Chapter Eight

“May I?” Bill Gastner extended his hand and Estelle passed over the.45 automatic that had been holstered on Deputy Collins’ hip…and that had then taken an excursion through space. Gastner laid the gun in his lap and took off his glasses, inspecting the lenses carefully. He wiped away a small spot on the sleeve of his shirt, then replaced the spectacles with care.

The slide was racked back on the handgun, but the empty magazine was in place. Gastner thumbed the release and let the magazine slide into his hand, then laid it on the desk.

“I lived with one of these for a long time,” he said thoughtfully. “A very interesting, very old design.” He turned the gun this way and that, as if admiring it just before a purchase. “Collins fumbled it somehow? Is that the story?”

“He says that he drew the gun as he slid out of his truck, and then when he saw that there was no particular threat, maybe seeing that it was just a beer bottle that hit his truck and not a bullet, he went to reholster it. That’s when he fumbled it. The gun hit the truck-we have a chip in the Expedition’s paint, and there was a tiny speck of paint residue on the back sight.”

Gastner held the gun in two hands and rotated it, imitating its flight toward the truck’s fender. “And then he managed to grab it.”

“Apparently. After it bounced off the fender.”

“You sound skeptical.”

“Well, I’m not, really. We do that all the time, after all. We drop something, and make a grab for it. Sometimes the catches are spectacular, sometimes we don’t even come close.”

“We just don’t do it too often with a loaded and cocked gun,” Gastner said. “Still,” and he took a deep breath, “the gun didn’t go off when it struck the truck.” He turned the gun so Estelle could see the chamber clearly. “Nothing to feed it, nothing in its mouth,” he said, and waited until she nodded. Then he thumbed the slide release, and the slide shot forward with a metallic clang, closing the gun, leaving the hammer cocked. He bent over with a grunt, and whacked the butt of the cocked automatic on the floor, then did it again. The hammer remained cocked. He straightened up, turned the gun over, and tapped the hammer spur itself sharply on the metal edge of Estelle’s desk.

“Solid as a rock,” he said. “See, there’s just an infinitesimal chance that this gun is going to discharge when dropped.” Gastner turned the gun, holding it by the barrel. “It’s not like the old Colt single actions, where the only thing holding that hammer back was a thin little sliver of trigger steel. Drop that sucker on its hammer, and boom. But not this one. You have to be holding it so that the grip safety is depressed.” He pushed that broad, contoured safety on the back of the handle that a shooter’s grip on the gun would activate. “Unless he’s holding it properly, this prevents a discharge. Supposed to, anyway.”

He thumbed on the hammer safety on the side of the broad, flat slide. “You probably know all this better than I do,” he added, then charged ahead. “And if he’s carrying it with the hammer back, ready to go, he has to depress the thumb safety-if he remembered to click it on in the first place the last time the gun was holstered.”

Gastner snapped the safety up and down, and Estelle sat silently, watching him. “Ehhhh,” he said, and snapped the safety some more. “That’s a little softer than it should be,” he said finally. “Let me see his rig. You got it here?”

“Sure,” Estelle replied. She retrieved the deputy’s belt and holster from the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet and handed it to Gastner.

For several minutes, he manipulated the gun and holster, then sat back with a shrug. “It’s conceivable that the thumb safety worked its way out of position against the leather of the holster,” he said. “Especially sitting in a vehicle, with the added nuisance of a shoulder belt.”

He held up the gun. “I think…you might want to have Robert look at it…but I think this thumb safety is a little softer than it should be. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised that over time it worked its way down, into the ‘off’ position. When Collins grabbed the gun, he made one mistake.” Gastner held the gun up and his trigger finger lay along the frame, outside of the trigger guard, well away from the trigger. “Instead of having his finger like so, he curled it into the trigger guard…on the trigger. If the thumb safety had rotated down, guess what.”

Estelle didn’t see his finger move, but the hammer fell with a sharp snap. “Just like that.”

“Exactly, just like that.” He reached out and laid the gun on Estelle’s desk. “That doesn’t excuse the a.d.,” he said. “No matter what the gun did or didn’t do, his finger had to be on the trigger. Period. End of story. We could argue physics working against us if the gun had hit nose first, and firing pin inertia was involved. Blah, blah, blah,” and he waved his hand in dismissal. “But that didn’t happen.”

“Mitigating circumstances,” Estelle said, and Gastner laughed.

“Mitigate, schmitigate,” he said. “If his finger hadn’t been on the trigger, the gun wouldn’t have discharged, sweetheart. I’m not saying it’s impossible. Just very, very unlikely.”

“And that means that his training wasn’t adequate.”

Gastner regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, and she waited. “It could probably be argued,” he said after a moment, “that our training is never adequate, considering the job we do. Consider for instance last spring, when you scared the holy shit out of all of us. There are just those unfortunate moments when events conspire, no matter how adept, no matter how good, we are.”

“Desperate” was the word Estelle would have chosen to describe the incident to which Gastner referred, and not just the moment itself when the two shots from a 9mm in the hands of a highly competent gunman had bludgeoned her to the ground. The surgery and weeks of convalescence afterward had been the worst moments in her thirty-eight years of life. But that was not the issue here, and she pushed the memory from her mind.

“Bobby wants to fire him, sir.”

“His nibs will get over that. That would be a stupid overreaction. Tell him I said so. Hell, can that thought. I’ll tell him I said so.”

“That’s the catch,” Estelle said, and was about to add that telling Sheriff Robert Torrez anything was usually a waste of breath. “But it can be argued that the fault is not entirely the deputy’s. More intensive training might have resulted in safer gun handling.”

“Sure. He was rusty, like most of us. And it could be argued that his immediate supervisor should have inspected the firearms more frequently. Who’s his shift sergeant?”

“We don’t have a day sergeant,” Estelle said, and by the trace of a smile on Gastner’s face she knew that he knew that perfectly well. Both she and Captain Eddie Mitchell served as supervisors during the daytime shift, with Mears assigned as patrol sergeant for swing. Tom Pasquale worked graveyard with Mike Sisneros-with the sheriff and undersheriff on call if they were needed.

“What I want to-,” and she was interrupted by the phone. Her husband’s voice was like a welcome warm blanket, and she glanced at the clock.

“Querida,” Francis Guzman said, “I just got back. How are you doing?”

“I’m sitting here in my office ruminating with padrino. How’s Kerri?”

“Ah, you heard about that. Well, she’ll be all right, I think. She’s up in Albuquerque at University. Or will be shortly. The flight left almost an hour ago.”

“What happened?”

“It looks like a mitral valve prolapse,” he said. “Just like that. If she hadn’t been surrounded by all kinds of people who just happened to do all the right things, she’d be gone. The athletic director was walking right behind her when she went down, and he’s the hero of the moment. She’s a lucky kid.”

“She’ll be all right, though?”

“I think so. Look, the reason I called, querida, other than needing to hear your voice, is to mention that Alan wants to talk to you about your car accident victim. He was going to keep him on ice until a more civil hour, but he and I ended up doing a prelim on him. Some interesting things you need to know about.”

“Does Alan want me to call him right now?”

“If you can.”

“Then I need to do that, and then I’ll be home, querida.”

“I’m on my way there now,” the physician said. “Are you staying warm?”

“Oh, sure. I’m fine.” She was amused and touched by her husband’s gentle hovering, exponentially increased after her lengthy bout of recuperation.

“She needs to eat more,” Gastner said loudly, and Francis laughed.

“He’s right, you know,” the physician said.

“I am eating more, mi corazón,” Estelle said. “Just not in the middle of the night.” She looked at the clock again. “How long ago did you talk with Alan?”

“About six minutes.”

“Then I’ll call now. Thanks, querida. We have a houseful of juveniles that we need to send back to Lordsburg with their parents, and then I’ll be home.”

“Take care. Te amo.”

“Always.” She rang off and, as she dialed medical examiner Alan Perrone’s number, said to Gastner, “Kerri Gardner is going to be all right. Bad heart valve.” He grimaced in sympathy.

On the third ring, Dr. Perrone found his cell phone. His voice sounded distant and tired.

“Alan, it’s Estelle.”

“Hi. Go home and go to bed,” Perrone said without hesitation. “It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

“Francis said you might have something for me?”

“Well, it’s preliminary, but interesting. For one thing, I think that you guys are right. That looks like a boot or shoe print on the palm of his left hand. It’s not very clear, but that’s sure what it looks like to me. Your miracle girl spent a lot of time burning film…or digits, or whatever it is photographers do these days. The shoe tread looks like one of those waffle stompers, or even a running shoe with aggressive tread. There was enough mud that it left a pretty good impression. And that’s consistent with the other.”

“The other?”

“Look, this guy would have died in minutes or maybe hours at best. He was busted up so badly that any significant movement was out of the question. Multiple fractures and lacerations-just beaten to pieces. His right chest was so badly flailed that if he was breathing at all, it was just out of his left lung. Even if the EMTs had gotten to him seconds after the crash, he wouldn’t have made it to the hospital. Four of his ribs lacerated the hell out of his liver.”

“I don’t understand why someone would step on his hand,” Estelle said.

“Two explanations that I can think of,” Perrone said, and yawned loudly. “Excuse me. First, it might have been an accident. The step, I mean. The Good Samaritan witnesses the crash and scrambles down the bank…and steps on him by accident. Or, as I think now, the Good Samaritan used his foot to keep the victim’s left hand out of the way. That arm was busted in a couple of places, but the victim might have been able to move it some. He would have been convulsing, maybe. Flailing a little bit. Or, the killer might have thought that he might.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You know I don’t,” Perrone said.

“That’s grotesque. And you said ‘killer’?”

“Well, think on this one, if you want grotesque, my dear. If you were lying on your back in a million pieces, and someone pours beer into your gaping mouth, drowning you in the stuff, you’re going to thrash around a little bit…no matter how it hurts.”

The line fell silent.

“That’s what happened?” Estelle asked finally. She pictured a crushed and battered Christopher Marsh lying gurgling and moaning among the rocks, and then the shadowy figure looming overhead. If Marsh had been capable of cogent thought at all, he might have gasped a plea for help. Help was not what he got.

“I’m thinking so.” Perrone let it go at that without further explanation.

Estelle sat motionless, staring off into space.

“You still there?” Perrone asked. “Let me take another gander tomorrow morning. You’ll want to be here.”

Estelle shook her head to clear the image. “Yes, I will. I have to hope that you’re wrong.”

“Hey, we’ll see. I’ll have more for you then,” he said. “But I know I’m right with the preliminaries. There was beer in his esophagus, and in his windpipe, and aspirated into his lungs. A lot of beer. It isn’t a question of having just taken a gulp an instant before his truck clobbered that deer. He choked on the stuff, and when he stopped breathing, whoever it was just kept pouring. Not a pretty picture. I’m not sure I’d want to meet up with this guy.”

“And you’re sure that Chris Marsh was alive at first?”

“I’m one hundred percent sure. A dead man does not aspirate beer into his lungs. Or lung, I should say. Only one of ’em was working enough to matter.”

“Ay,” Estelle whispered, and when she saw that Bill Gastner was watching her like an old basset hound, “I’ll be in touch, Alan.” She hung up the phone and sat back. “Our accident victim drowned.”