Bag Limit (30 page)
What kept Scott Gutierrez staggering west might have been as simple as the warmth of the sun on his back and the gentle downslope of the terrain as one fold blended into another. He might even have imagined that he was making his way downhill toward Borracho Springs.
More likely, he’d just
moved
. His instincts drove him to put distance between himself and the man with the rifle down below, and that’s what he had done—for 890 yards.
Deputy Thomas Pasquale found Gutierrez curled up in a tight ball, deep in a thicket of mountain mahogany. Each stem was about the diameter of a finger, tough and resilient. The young man had wedged his way into the thicket by feel, laid his head on his arm, and passed out. The brush provided a canopy, shielding him from view from the air.
I watched the rescue effort through binoculars, and quickly picked up Undersheriff Robert Torrez. He stood perfectly still just west of where the rifle had been found, and examined the route across to where Pasquale waved his arms. The EMTs had already started clambering their way toward the victim, moving as quickly as the rugged terrain would allow.
Torrez picked his way across, stopping frequently to readjust his route and peer at the ground. After a minute, I realized what he was doing. Ever the hunter, he was following what little sign Gutierrez had left behind—telltale spatters of blood that to a less trained eye simply blended with the earth or the lichen on the rock faces. Now that Gutierrez had been found, and emergency help was on the way, Torrez took his time, reconstructing the route.
The seventeen minutes that it took Al Langford and Judy Parnell to reach Scott Gutierrez after Tom Pasquale’s first triumphant shout seemed hours.
People converged on the spot from the east and from below, including another backboard raced up the mountain from the waiting ambulance. I waited patiently, watching. Eventually, my telephone chirped and I snatched it up eagerly.
“Yes?”
“Sir,” Robert Torrez said, “we’re bringing him down now. Al says he’s stable. He’s sedated pretty good.”
“He’ll have to be, for that trip,” I said. “Whoever is carrying that gurney better be surefooted.”
“They’re doin’ all right,” Torrez said.
“How is he?”
“I can’t tell, sir. It looks to me like the bullet came at him from the left, but it’s hard to tell. Took a chunk out of the bridge of his nose, and then did a tap dance over his right eye. Kind of a grazing shot. A quarter inch more and it would have blown his face off.”
I winced. “Just the one injury?”
“As near as I can tell, sir. That one’s sure enough, though. He wouldn’t have had a clue about where he was going.”
“He wasn’t conscious at all when Pasquale found him?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, be careful. Bring him down easy, Roberto.”
“You betcha.”
***
The last vehicle drove out of Borracho Springs at 11:05 that morning. Shortly before that, two of Scott Gutierrez’s supervising officers from the U.S. Border Patrol had arrived. They didn’t stay long.
They would have left a lot happier if I could have told them exactly what had happened, and been able to explain Gutierrez’s role in the whole affair. As it was, they lingered just long enough to satisfy themselves that it had been a family quarrel of some kind, and to receive a guarantee from me that as soon as we had details, they’d be among the first to know. Driving into Posadas and waiting at the hospital didn’t appear to be on their agenda, but that was their business.
Of more interest to me were events in Las Cruces. I had heard no word from Deputy Taber, and the deafening silence made me nervous.
Shortly after eleven-forty, I closed the door of my office for a few moments of peace and quiet, ignoring the lengthy list of return calls that Gayle Torrez had kindly organized for me. I had looked at all the notes, and then at her. “But Taber hasn’t checked in yet?”
“No word,” Gayle said. “I talked to her a few minutes ago, and Connie was still in surgery.”
“You have the number handy?”
“Sure.”
With that in hand, I retreated to my office. The young man who answered the phone in Las Cruces sounded polite and efficient, and it took him less than a minute to find Jackie Taber.
“Sir, Connie is still in surgery,” the deputy said. “The head injury is not real good news, I guess.”
“Nothing else so far?”
“No, sir. She’s been in surgery for almost three hours, and they haven’t looked up once.”
“If you get a chance, try to pry one of ’em loose long enough for a progress report. They found Scott, by the way. He’ll probably be okay. One bullet hit him a grazing shot across the face. He’d wandered about a half mile west of where we found Connie.”
“Was he able to tell you anything?”
“Not yet. So you stick close at that end, and we’ll see what we can find out up here.”
“Yes, sir.”
I hung up and leaned back in the chair, letting the old, soft leather upholstery cushion my sore joints. I was allowed no more than five seconds before the phone buzzed. I groped for it without opening my eyes. “Yes?”
“Sir,” Gayle said, “your grandson is on the phone. He wanted me to make sure I wasn’t interrupting anything before I put him through.”
I looked at my watch. I’d made some vague promise about lunch, but I couldn’t remember what it was. In any case, I had eight minutes to make up my mind.
“Put him on,” I said.
The phone clicked. “This is Tadd, Grandpa.”
“How was your morning?” I asked.
“Neato,” the kid said. “We messed around all morning, and I kinda lost track of time. I wanted to check with you about lunch, but I asked Mrs. Torrez not to bother you if you were awful busy.”
“I’m not.” I spread out the callback notes, scanning the names. They could all wait. “Are you guys ready to eat, then? Are the Guzmans there?”
“Sure thing. Well, Dr. Guzman isn’t. He’s over at the hospital, I think. I called to ask you if you wanted me to put something on the grill?”
I gathered the notes and tossed them to one side. “Save it for supper, Tadd. I’d hate to see you rush a masterpiece. Let’s grab a burrito at the Don Juan.”
Tadd laughed. He muffled the phone, but I heard his bellow anyway. “You owe me five bucks!” A voice in the background mumbled something that I couldn’t hear.
“Who was that?”
“My dad,” Tadd said. “I made a bet with him that you’d suggest that.”
“It’s terrible to be so predictable,” I said. “I tell you what. There are a number of odds and ends hanging right now. How about if you guys just meet me there rather than me driving over to the house? I’m heading out the door right now.”
“You got it, Grandpa.”
As I left the office, Gayle’s phone was ringing, and I paused as she answered it. “If it’s Jackie Taber, I’ll take it,” I said.
She nodded, listened for a few seconds, and shook her head, then she put her hand over the receiver. “It’s Leona Spears,” she mouthed, and her eyes twinkled as I raised the corner of my lip.
“Tell her highness that it’s all a right-wing conspiracy, and the election has been called off,” I said over my shoulder.
I hadn’t been completely accurate, of course, when I told my grandson that there were just some “odds and ends” to wrap up. What we had was one man dead of a coronary, a young girl still under the surgeon’s knife after being pushed from a cliff, and her brother with his head nearly split open by a high-caliber rifle bullet. That was an impressive list, but one crucial element was missing: the why.
Until either Connie French or Scott Gutierrez could put together a coherent sentence, we were stymied. I had discarded James Walsh’s version. The ballistic evidence said that he was a liar, dying words or no.
As a first step, Robert Torrez was concentrating on Walsh’s background. The man had lied—even when he knew that he was having a heart attack. Of course, he didn’t know just that moment that he was about to die, but it takes some cold calculation to bring off tall tales when the old ticker is bouncing in your chest.
Walsh had said that Scott Gutierrez fired first, after pushing Connie off the rocks. The young man hadn’t fired first. In fact, he hadn’t fired a shot all morning.
The hunting rifles didn’t lie: Walsh’s .270 Winchester had been fired at least three times: Sergeant Bishop had found two empty casings on the ground about twenty feet east of where we’d found Walsh, along with the casing still in the chamber. Connie French’s little .243 had gone airborne over the rocks with her. The cheap scope was smashed to a million pieces, the stock was busted, and the chamber was empty.
That left Scott’s Remington .308—clean as a whistle, with a full magazine.
Torrez turned his attention to Del Rio, Texas—an interesting little resort city of thirty thousand people at the south end of Amistad National Recreation Area. Across the International Amistad Reservoir lay the Mexican town of Ciudad Acuña—and another thirty-eight thousand people. An interesting place, with lots of opportunity.
By the time I had walked out of the Public Safety Building heading for lunch, the undersheriff had already been on the phone with Lieutenant Leo Nuñez of the Del Rio P.D.
I pulled to a stop for the red light at Grande and Bustos just in time to see the Guzmans’ rental van gliding northbound on Bustos. They caught the light, and I tailed them west on Bustos to the Don Juan.
Francisco and Carlos were wound up like two little springs. “They should have been running up and down the mountain this morning,” I said to Estelle. As I opened the restaurant door for them, I tapped the sign taped to the glass.
“They’re closed tomorrow?” Estelle asked. “How’s that possible?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “The one day that we need a place to celebrate, they close. Tadd’s going to have to dream up something.”
“No problem, Grandpa,” Tadd said. He had a firm grip on two little hands as he herded the kids inside.
We’d hit the place at high noon, a busy time for the Don Juan on any day, but especially on a Monday with the Lions Club meeting in the Conquistador Room. We found a quiet spot on the other side of the restaurant where we could pull two tables together.
“Is Francis going to make it?” I asked.
Estelle shook her head. “He’s playing golf with Alan Perrone…at least he was supposed to.”
“Then he’s going to be a while. I imagine Perrone’s got his hands full.” In between mock skirmishes with Francisco to keep him out of my chips, I recapped the morning for Estelle. “And I didn’t know that your husband played golf,” I added.
“All doctors play golf,” Buddy said. “It’s a rule. If you look at their license to practice, it’s got a little space down at the bottom to record their current handicap.”
“The Posadas Country Club might change all that. And if Francis eats out there, you may never see him again.”
“They actually built that course? The one over by the high school?”
“They actually built it, rattlesnakes, antelope, wind and all. Nine holes. The only real difficulty has been training the prairie dogs to dig the pin holes straight down. They’re a little sloppy.”
I looked across at Estelle. “Did you guys get a chance to look at the back property this morning?”
“We built a fort in the leaves,” Francisco announced around taco chip crumbs before his mother had a chance to answer.
“A leaf fort? How does that work?” I asked.
“It’s a long story, Grandpa,” Tadd said with a sad shake of his head.
“Well, you cheated,” Francisco said, and butted my grandson’s arm with his head. His younger brother nodded in sober agreement.
“Francis, Bill, and I walked the whole thing,” Estelle said. “It looks like they’re planning to build something down on Escondido a ways where they extended the water line.”
I nodded. “I’ve heard fifteen different stories about that, everything from another trailer court to a new truck stop. Whatever it is, I don’t think it would affect my property much, except by increasing the traffic around the back side. So what did you guys think?”
I reached out with a chip, loaded it with salsa, and was navigating it to my mouth when I saw one of the county cars pull into the parking lot. Deputy Tom Pasquale got out and strode purposefully toward the Don Juan’s front door.
“They found me,” I said. “Pasquale isn’t coming here for lunch.” I poked Francisco in the ribs. “Excuse me,
niño
. I need to slide past you.” I managed to navigate myself away from the crowded tables without disaster, and met the deputy out in the foyer.
“Sir, Jackie Taber just called from Cruces. They think that Connie French is going to make it.”
“That’s good news.” I looked at him expectantly, since the eager expression on his face told me that he hadn’t driven to the restaurant just to tell me that.
“And there was something else, too,” he said. “She’s got a bad skull fracture, a smashed lower right arm, a broken left shoulder, a fractured pelvis, and a broken knee. The left knee.” He ticked the list off on his fingers as he made his way down the injured girl’s anatomy.
I grimaced. “That’s quite a ‘something else,’ Thomas. There must be a bone or two that she didn’t break. No spinal damage?”
“They think not. But she had a bullet wound in her right calf.”
“A bullet wound?”
“That’s what they said. Not too serious, like maybe from a ricochet. They removed a pretty good chunk of brass jacket that was wedged up against the bone.”
“Enough there for a rifling match?”
“Bob says that it’s worth a try. In the meantime, me and Linda and a couple of the others are going back down to look for the bullet strike.”
“Walsh is the only one who fired,” I said. “So who was he shooting at? You can’t intentionally hit someone with a ricochet. He was either aiming at Connie and missed, or he was aiming at Scott—and missed.” I shook my head, perplexed. “Keep me posted, all right?”
He nodded and turned toward the door, eager to be on the road. I turned to go back inside. I’d asked Estelle a question. I was eager to hear an answer.
Hell, I knew that Posadas was a meager, dusty little place, a dinky watering hole in perhaps the most bleak part of New Mexico. I knew that where Dr. Francis Guzman and his family ultimately decided to settle was none of my affair. And depending on the current definition of “opportunities,” there were probably more of them in a myriad of other places.
In all fairness, Estelle Guzman’s answer was the best that I could hope for. “We’ve got so much to think about,” she said.
“Yes, you do,” I said, and let the conversation drift to other topics. The six of us ate enough for twelve, a leisurely, sloppy grub fest that ended with sopaipillas squirting honey in all the wrong places.
As I was starting my third cup of coffee, Fernando Aragon sauntered around the small island where the coffee machines lurked. He picked up one of the decanters and brought it to our table. I covered my cup with my hand but quickly moved it when he showed every intention of pouring anyway.
“How was everything?” he said.
“Awful, as usual,” I replied. “The chile was green, the sopaipillas were full of hot air…all that sort of thing.”
“Good, good,” he said, and favored the two wide-eyed children with a vast, perfectly capped grin. “Those kids are sure growing up, eh?”
“Kids do that,” I said. “And by the way, what’s with the sign on the door? How can you do that to me?” I nudged my empty plate. “What’s life without a green chile burrito, especially tomorrow?”
“How’s it feel, eh?” Fernando said. “You finally going to do it?”
“I have no choice.” I grinned. “And it’s a good time, Fernando. Robert will do a fine job.”
“I’m sure he will. So what are you going to do with yourself? All this time on your hands.”
“I don’t need to worry about that until tomorrow,” I said.
Fernando grinned. “I hear that you’re going to take over Cliff Larson’s job.”
“This is indeed a small town,” I said. “I’m going to help Cliff out for a few weeks. That’s all. It’s a favor.”
He regarded me through narrowed eyes, and then swung his gaze to Estelle. “What do you think about this guy?”
“El resolvera su problema aunque le lleve toda la noche,”
she said.
Fernando Aragon laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. “This guy,” he said, and if possible his accent thickened for the occasion. “At six o’clock in the morning, he’s at the door, wanting dinner.”
“That’s because you don’t open at five,” I said. “When ordinary people eat.”
“That’s okay,” Fernando said. “When you stop coming in, that’s when we sell the place. To hell with it.” He smiled widely again. “People today don’t appreciate what it takes.” To Estelle he said,
“El esta en ayunas de mañana?”
She shrugged and said in English, “I think so.”
“You think so what?” I asked.
“We’re painting the kitchen ceiling tomorrow,” Fernando said. “That’s our excuse for closing. I told her that if you’re starving to death, drop by and knock on the back door. I’ll fix you something.”
“Paint chips and all,” I said. “Thanks, anyway. I can survive a day.”
He patted me on the shoulder again, and nodded around the table at each one of us in turn. “Take your time. I have to go back in the kitchen and mix paint, but if there’s anything else you want, just ask Janalynn.” He held up a hand in salute.
“Hasta…hasta cuando.”
“Thanks, Fernando. Give my regards to your lovely wife.” I watched him saunter back to the kitchen, sliding the coffee decanter back in place with one smooth, practiced motion without breaking stride.
I turned to Tadd. “So tell me what they
actually
said, Tadd.”
He grinned at Estelle, who raised one eyebrow in that characteristic expression that said she was waiting for someone to dig a deep enough hole.
“She said that you’d figure out what you wanted to do if it took you all night.”
“Uh-huh. And he said?”
“Uh…that he’d see us whenever.” He shrugged. “
Hasta cuando
means sort of like that. See you whenever.”
“I see.” I studied him through my bifocals for a minute. “You’re pretty good in that language, son.”
“Yes, he is,” Estelle said, and took a deep breath. “Well…they probably want some peace and quiet around here. What’s on your docket for the rest of the afternoon?”
“I need to run by the hospital for a few minutes,” I said. “When Scott Gutierrez comes out of it, I want to make sure he knows that he’s not going to have to wade through this mess all by himself.”
“If you see Francis, would you tell him that we were going to go over to the Twelfth Street house for a bit?” She looked at Buddy. “Do you want to come with us?”
“Tadd might,” my son said. “I’ve got a few things I need to do. If you’d drop me at the house, that would be fine.”
“Let’s play it by ear for dinner, then,” I said.
“I was thinking of green-chile cheeseburgers on the grill,” Tadd said instantly, and Francisco’s eyes bugged with delight.
“Arg,” I said. “More food.”
Janalynn Torrez waited by the front register, and I expected to see her start digging for the ticket. “It’s on the house today,” she said with a smile.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“We hope you enjoyed it.”
“Well, of course we enjoyed it,” I said, flustered. “Thank you very much.” I slipped a twenty out of my wallet and put it in her hand. “That’s for putting up with all the mess, Jana.”
She blushed. “Thank you, sir.”
“Hasta cuando,”
I said.
Tadd was holding the door for me. “That’s pretty good, Grandpa.”
“It’s just that natural Gastner ear for language,” I said. Estelle heard me, but made no comment.
***
I exchanged the aromas of the Don Juan for the sterile bouquet of disinfectant at Posadas General Hospital, where instead of black velvet renditions of the conquistadors, the artwork consisted of light green walls and the reflections in the polished floor tile of the Danish-style furniture.
Anne Murchison Shalley looked up from the nurse’s station, saw me, and beckoned. I’d known Anne since she was in grade school. Her mother, Helen Murchison, had been head nurse for years at Posadas General, and knew my insides better than I did. While I had often described Helen as an old battle-ax, Anne was a delight for the eye.
“Sir, Dr. Perrone said that if you came in, I should tell you that Scott Gutierrez would be able to speak with you for just a few minutes.”
“Just a few is all it will take,” I said.
“He’s going to be in a lot of pain,” she added, and her sympathy was genuine.
“Where’s he at?”
“Intensive care recovery,” she said. “You can’t miss it.”
She knew how often I’d been there myself. I turned the corner at Radiology and saw Sergeant Howard Bishop down the hall, leaning against the wall with one hand, deep in concentration. He looked up as I approached.
“All the docs just left a few minutes ago,” he said. “Is Francis Guzman working back here again? I saw him with Perrone.”
I shook my head. “No. Golfing buddies. They’re just visiting. They’re staying over at the house.”
“Estelle, too?”
“Yep. Her too.” I thought Bishop’s expression was a touch wistful. “Is he conscious yet?” The facility had glass partitions, but the sliding curtain had been drawn around Gutierrez’s bed.
“I heard one of the nurses talking to him a bit ago, so I guess he is. I haven’t been in. Bobby said to post a watch in the hall, so here I am.”
“Long day, huh.” I didn’t wait for his reply, but stepped past and pushed the door open. I didn’t recognize the nurse at the ICU desk, but she apparently knew who I was. She nodded and remained seated, caught up in paperwork.
I stepped around the curtain and looked at Scott Gutierrez. His head was bandaged down to the tip of his nose, and he had enough lines and hoses plugged into his system to support a fair-sized village.
He raised his right hand a few inches off the sheet, as if he could sense who had invaded his domain by the change in air pressure.
“Scott, it’s Bill Gastner,” I said.
“Hi,” he replied.
“Can you talk with me for a few minutes?”
After shifting a tiny bit on the bed as if winding up for the effort to speak, he said, “Yes.” He sounded almost normal, like a person with plugged sinuses. He was lucky he still had sinuses. He reached up and touched the bandages lightly. “This is not going to be good, is it?” He spoke slowly, trying his best to make each word come out right with a minimum of movement.
“You’re going to be fine,” I said, unable to think of anything more creative than the standard line. I didn’t know—and Scott probably didn’t, either—if his vision had been saved or not. “Connie is doing all right, too, Scott. She was banged up pretty badly, but she’s going to be all right.”
“I couldn’t catch her,” Gutierrez said. “I remember that. I couldn’t catch her.” He took a deep breath, very slowly. “I remember the look on her face.”
“She’s going to be fine.”
“Walsh?” It wasn’t “Dad,” or “my stepfather,” or anything else that might be tinged with affection.
“He’s dead, Scott.”
He lifted his hand again, then let it drop on his stomach. “How?”
“Heart attack. We found him just a few feet from where the shots were fired.”
“He shot twice,” Gutierrez said. “Really fast. I heard the snap of the first one. Right over my head.”
“Then what happened?”
“Before we could move, he shot a second time. The bullet hit the rock.” He stopped and seemed to be marking time, his index finger tapping the sheets. “I thought that it hit Connie. She kinda jumped. She lost her balance. I couldn’t grab her.”
“She’s going to be all right, Scott.”
“She went right over backward.”
“He shot again, though. Do you remember that?”
“Oh, yeah. I remember that.” He fell silent again and I watched as he lifted his right hand as if in slow-motion. He carefully ran his finger under the edge of the bandage on his right cheekbone. “Uh,” he said and took another deep breath.
“Do you want me to ask the nurse to get you something?”
“No.” He lowered his hand to the automatic morphine dispenser’s plunger that was clipped to the bed rail. He didn’t press the button. “I could see…see that he was trying to line up again, and I dove off to one side.”
“Did you try to shoot back?”
“No.” His left hand lifted an inch off the sheets. “I didn’t even think about that. Can you believe it? I didn’t even remember I had a damn rifle in my hands. And then it felt like somebody hit me in the nose with a baseball bat. I couldn’t see, I didn’t know what the hell…” He pulled his right hand away from the morphine dispenser.
“Do you remember dropping your rifle?”
“No. I don’t remember that. I don’t remember much else, except I couldn’t see where to go.”
I reached out and touched the back of his hand, just a couple of fingers, just enough to make contact. “Why did he do it, Scott?”
“Because Connie was going to quit.”
“Quit what?”
“She was making fake licenses for him.”
“Driver’s licenses, you mean?”
“Yes. Like the one Matt Baca had.”
“He told you this?”
“No. Connie did. She told me last week what she’d done. That she’d run one once in a while for Walsh. He paid her eight hundred bucks. He lines ’em up down south, in Acuña. They come up here when she’s working by herself. She’d help ’em with the test, whatever they needed.”
“Fake addresses?”
“Yes. And especially commercial tickets. You’d be surprised…” He stopped suddenly. His right hand moved halfway to his face and stopped. “Jesus,” he breathed. “You’d be surprised how many truckers down in South Texas live in Posadas, New Mexico.” He made a little snuffling sound as if the laugh had been stopped short, followed by a groan of pain.
“I don’t understand about Matt.”
“She made him a fake license.”
“For eight hundred bucks? You’re kidding.”
“No. No money. She was hot to trot as far as he was concerned. For a little while, anyway. Then she got nervous, and realized that Matt was going to really screw things up if he wasn’t careful.”
“And she told you this when?”
“Last week. She was scared, sir. Walsh had a good thing going. An easy place to get the right paperwork.”
“Why did he do it?”
“Money for one thing. For another, it was easier to sell ’em a car if they’re citizens. A lot of ’em wanted it registered in this country.”
“Banks fall for that?”
“No. It was used cars and trucks. He carried the papers. Right at the dealership.”
“So Connie panicked and told you about all of this?”
“Right. I thought maybe I could just nose around, you know, and straighten things out. I guess I thought wrong.”
I felt a presence behind me and heard the curtain. I turned to see the nurse hovering. “Give us just a few more minutes, all right?” She retreated after closing the curtain. Scott took another deep, careful breath. “Walsh was coming up here to go hunting. He’s done that for a long time. This time, though, he probably figured to calm Connie down. Tell her she had nothing to worry about. And then the thing with Matt happened. She flipped out when she heard about it. And then Matt’s father on top of it.”
“Were you involved in that?”
“Yes. I saw Sosimo walkin’ on the road. I thought maybe I could go in and get the license back. I didn’t count on old…old Sosimo having a thing about the U.S. Border Patrol.”
“You mean he didn’t let you in?”
“Oh, he accepted the ride, and he let me in the house. I had to promise to drive him into Posadas so he could get his old truck. But when I asked him if I could look for Matt’s license, he went ballistic. We struggled a little, but it was mostly me just trying to calm him down. He lost his balance and broke the window in the back door, and then he popped. That was it.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this?”
“I thought there might still be a chance to find that license. If I had that, then there was no evidence for you guys against Connie. But you told me you’d found it, so…” His right hand moved slightly in lieu of a shrug. “But she heard what had happened down in Regal, and went off the deep end.”
