Twice Buried

15

By eight-thirty that morning, we were handed one of the missing puzzle pieces, Martin Holman issued an order, and I couldn’t put off calling Estelle Reyes-Guzman any longer.

I closed my office door against interruptions and found the number I wanted on the roller file. The signals were traveling no more than thirty miles as the crow flies-probably less. But for efficiency, I might as well have been calling the moon.

Finally a small voice came on the other end.

“? Hola?”

“? Quien es?” I asked.

“Tinita,” the tiny voice said, well named.

“Tina,” I said, “is your father or mother home?”

A long pause followed my sudden excursion into English. “Tina?” I repeated.

“? Hola?”

I closed my eyes with frustration, trying to remember back forty-seven years to when I was a high school junior and Mrs. Hempsted had tried to twist my hopelessly Scotch-Irish tongue around Spanish I.

“Hija, quiero hablar with…con your madre or padre.”

That brought a response. The kid probably thought she was talking to a drunk. “Un momento,” she said primly. A couple loud clanks as the phone was dropped on the table were followed by a bellow of startling proportions from such young lungs.

“Hello?” a teenage voice said after a minute. “Who’s calling, please?”

I knew that Felicia Diaz was fourteen, and that sounded about right for this voice.

“Is this Felicia?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good. Felicia, this is Undersheriff Bill Gastner up in Posadas.”

“Good morning, sir.”

She was so damn polite I wanted to bottle her manners and sell them to parents of American teenagers.

“How’s your family enjoying the holidays?”

“Fine, sir. Even Roberto is home for a week.” Roberto Diaz was twenty-two or so and studying to be a dentist. Where he found the money for that was a mystery to me. I heard a voice in the background and Felicia said, “One moment, please.” She did a good job of covering the speaker of the phone, but I managed to hear her say something that included policia in it.

“Sir, here is my father.”

“Thanks, Felicia. You have a good holiday. See you next week at the christening.”

Roman Diaz’s voice was hearty and heavily accented. “Senor Gastner. Good to hear from you!”

“The same, Don Roman. How’s the family?”

“Fine, sir. Fine. When are you coming down? And let me assume that you need to reach Estellita?”

“You read my mind. I sure do. Is there any way you could send someone down the lane?”

“Tinita is on the way,” he said. “Do you want me to have Estelle call you or-”

“I’ll hold on if I might.” I had a good connection and didn’t want to risk losing it. Roman Diaz and I exchanged pleasantries about the weather, family, and the upcoming christening of Estelle’s infant son.

In no more than five minutes, our conversation was interrupted by a shout from Tinita’s tiny lungs. When Estelle came on the line she was breathing hard.

“Make yourself comfortable, doll. We’re going to be talking a while. This is Gastner.”

“Now what have you done?” She said it as a joke, in between breaths. “Are you in Posadas?”

“Of course. Where did you think I’d be?”

She laughed. “No way of telling, sir.” She took a deep breath. “How are you?”

“Fine. I really am. We’ve got a little problem of a different sort up here.”

“Oh? Que?” Her voice, once she found her breath, was rich and velvety.

“You remember Stuart Torkelson?” When she didn’t respond immediately I added, “He’s a realtor here…has been for years.”

“I know the name. I’m not sure I ever met him…wait. A great big man? White hair like one of those people in the silver hair commercials?”

“That’s him.”

“Right. He tried to sell Francis and me a home once. And I saw him again at a Lions Club luncheon where I was the guest speaker. He introduced me. What did he do?”

“He got himself killed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. How?”

I hesitated. “Someone shot him.”

“Right there in town?”

“No. About seven miles southwest of the village.”

She didn’t miss a beat. “Out by Uncle Reuben’s place?”

“Yes. One of the deputies was close-patrolling the area after an earlier complaint we had, and he found the body. About fifty feet off the road in that big pasture that fronts on both the county road and the old man’s two-track.”

“And he’d been shot?”

“Yes. Twice.” I told her every detail of what we’d found, including Torkelson’s tale of his confrontation with Reuben earlier.

“I don’t think so, sir,” she said when I’d finished.

“Neither do I. But it’s harder to argue with Martin Holman when he’s got the medical examiner behind him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, earlier I was operating under the assumption that a shotgun was used for the head wound. We didn’t move the body, and we didn’t do much of an on-site examination. The weather wasn’t cooperating, it was dark-that sort of thing. We took a half million photos and figured the examiner would tell us all we needed to know.”

“Sure. The deputies did a grid search for shell casings and the like?”

“Yes. And found nothing. But that’s not the point. The belly wound was caused by a heavy-caliber handgun, fired from far enough away that there was no flash burn, no powder. The slug hit him just above the belt and drove right on through. Through and through.”

“So no recovered slug.”

“That’s right. But Estelle, this is where I went wrong, I guess. The head wound was pretty massive. Lots of skull case missing, that sort of thing. I saw the wound and assumed shotgun, held close.”

“I don’t think Reuben ever owned a shotgun in his life.”

“That’s what I was figuring. But the medical examiner says the head wound was caused by a handgun, probably the same caliber as the other wound…and the damn thing was held so close that the corona was only a couple inches in diameter.”

“Under the chin?”

“Almost. The point of entry was right on the left jawbone, just in front of where the bone starts to curve upward toward the ear. The M.E. says the bullet hit that heavy bone and mushroomed right away.”

“Huh,” Estelle said. “And let me guess the bad news. Uncle Reuben was carrying one of his guns when he and Torkelson had their set-to a week ago?”

“That’s what Torkelson told me.”

“And he was wearing it in the post office too?”

“Yes. Three witnesses. No doubt about it.”

There was a long moment of silence and then Estelle said, “It doesn’t look good, sir.”

“Nope.”

“You find a corpse shot to death on the property of a person who you know carries a gun and who has been known to use it in the past and you’re bound to make certain conclusions.”

“Yep.”

“And Sheriff Holman wants you to arrest Reuben?”

“At least hold him for a preliminary hearing.”

“I suppose I can’t blame him. But he doesn’t know Reuben Fuentes like I do…or like you do.”

“No, he doesn’t. But he’s the sheriff. And he’s got the district attorney’s ear. They sit at the same table during Rotary.” Estelle ignored the acid in my tone.

“You can’t talk him out of it? I mean, where does the sheriff think Reuben will go?”

“He thinks the old man will run to Mexico.”

“Por Dios,” Estelle said with considerable acid of her own. “Ahora el se las da de experto.”

“Speak English, dammit.”

“Sorry, sir. I said now he wants to be the expert. Why can’t he stick to talking with the legislature about the budget?”

“Come on, Estelle. He’s not as much of an idiot as we first thought, three years ago.”

“He is if he thinks Reuben would leave his place for Mexico.”

“There’s always a chance.”

“No, there isn’t. He’s so old and…and…caduco that he probably doesn’t remember what direction the border is.”

I let that pass and said, “Sheriff Holman wants to go out this morning and bring him in for questioning.”

This time, there was more than exasperation in Estelle’s voice. “This is going to kill him, sir. If he thinks for one minute that he’s going to jail for something…especially something he didn’t do, it’ll kill him.”

“Yes.”

“Should I come up?”

“Yes.”

“I can be there in an hour. Will you have Holman at least wait until I get there?”

“It’s a promise, Estelle.”