“Most people aren’t so rational, but okay.”
“And we progress from there,” and she chopped the air in a line with her hand. “First one event, then another. We have the two kids in the motel trying to make some lame point about modern generosity with their Mary and Joseph thing…or whatever it is that they were doing. A nice way to spend Christmas Eve. Then the next day, on Christmas afternoon, a kid on a motorcycle finds Janet Tripp, dumped in a trash heap in the arroyo, the victim of a bizarre robbery. And then later that night, when he and I should have been having a meaningful and productive conversation, I get tied up in work and someone else takes the opportunity to club Bill Gastner over the head…but this guy, or gal, doesn’t take anything. He doesn’t take Bill’s wallet, or his keys, or go inside and ransack the house. It seems clear to me that the target was Bill.”
“Some old enemy, maybe,” Mitchell offered.
“There may be some of those. I don’t know what cases he’s working on at the moment, except he’s got some guy from Montana who keeps trying to bring horses into New Mexico without any paperwork…who knows why.”
“Or a burglar who thought he was trapped when Wild Bill drove up. He hides behind the wall, and when the old man’s back is turned, he grabs a weapon and swings.”
“But why?” Estelle said. “What sense does that make? He could just have huddled there in the dark for a minute until Padrino went inside and then slipped away as easily as can be-or just darted off when Bill’s back was turned. There isn’t going to be a foot chase, that’s for sure.” She ran fingers through her short black hair in frustration. “For us, all these events seem related.” She chopped her hand through the air again. “But maybe only because one comes right after another. That’s what’s confusing me.”
“If you don’t see a connection with all these things, I’m with you there,” Mitchell said.
The room fell silent, and from out in the hall, they both heard the quiet cadence of dispatcher Brent Sutherland passing information over the radio. Mitchell had turned down the volume of the speaker on his desk, and he reached across now and turned it up just far enough that Estelle could hear Deputy Tom Pasquale’s clipped delivery.
“We have three officers on the road for the quietest night of the year,” Mitchell said. “Taber’s out there, Pasquale’s running every plate he sees, and Mears is poking around who knows where. Adams has two state police officers in the county. The Border Patrol has a heads-up, along with every sheriff’s department in southern New Mexico. We have lots of eyes out there. And you and me are sitting here wishing we’d get smart.” He leaned forward and let his head fall, forehead resting on his hands. “Sleep would feel good. That might be the smart thing.”
He jerked upright. “The trouble is, we have some woodchuck out there with a gun who thinks killing a girl for a few bucks is a fair trade, and we got another creep who tracks down an old man and whacks him on the head with an iron pipe. They’re good company for our two creeps from Indiana who figure it’s fair to steal a car from an old man dying from a heart attack.”
“I keep circling around to that,” Estelle said.
“To what, Wardell and Jakes?”
She nodded.
“You want to tell me why?”
“I don’t know why, Eddie. Maybe just because that’s where all this started.”
“Huh.” He toyed with a pencil. “Eduardo deserved better than he got, that’s for sure,” he said after a minute. “It’s going to be interesting to see what charges Schroeder will agree to file against those guys.” He dropped the pencil. “I’m going home,” he said, and pushed his chair back, standing abruptly. “Roberto is coming home later today.” He looked at the clock as if to ascertain that it was after midnight, and officially Saturday. “Did I tell you that earlier?”
She shook her head. “You talked with Gayle?”
“Yup. His sister is going up to Albuquerque to pick the two of them up after Bob’s released. Gayle said he isn’t a happy camper. He’s got this whole regimen of therapy that he’s supposed to do several times a day, and a locker full of drugs. You can imagine how all that sits with him. He’d rather just go off by himself, hunting somewhere.”
“We have lots of hunting he can do,” Estelle said.
Mitchell snorted what might have been a laugh had he not been so tired. “He’ll like that.” He watched Estelle push herself out of the chair. “You need to go home,” he said. “Switch all this off for a while.” Estelle grinned. Eddie Mitchell still managed to sound very much like the chief of police he had been before the village and county had consolidated departments.
“Yes, sir,” she said, and managed a limp salute.
Moments later, as she walked out of the building to her car, she realized that she was bone tired, but wide awake. At home, Francisco and Carlos would be snoozing soundly, their world incomprehensibly simple from an adult point of view. If Dr. Francis wasn’t home yet, he would be soon. He would tumble into bed and be asleep before his head settled into the pillow.
Estelle paused with her hand on the door handle of the Crown Victoria. If she went home now, she would lie in bed staring at the ceiling, kept awake by the cacophony of images swirling in her mind, trying to discover answers in the mess. There certainly should be something more productive than doing that, she thought.
She knew who else would be awake, his insomnia honed by long years of practice. The Don Juan de O-ate Restaurant was long closed, so she couldn’t bring former sheriff Bill Gastner one of his beloved burrito grandes as a middle-of-the-night snack, but at least she could bring him a puzzle or two.
Chapter Twenty-two
The yellow plastic cone that announced caution on one side and cuidado on the other was placed dead center in the hospital’s main hallway, and behind it, Stacy Cunningham guided the floor polisher in gentle, sweeping arcs. He allowed the pad to nuzzle right up to the rubber wall trim on one side, then with a little shift of weight and pressure on the handlebars, encouraged the machine to float back the other way.
Cunningham saw Estelle enter and out of reflex looked over his shoulder at the large clock.
Taking two seconds to wait for the machine to complete its arc to the left, he then shut it off, letting his weight settle on the handles as if he had been expecting exactly this old friend to walk through the doors. “Hey, Merry Christmas,” he said cheerfully. “But I guess officially it’s over.”
“A whole new day,” Estelle said, and paused near the cone.
“Oh, you can walk on it. It’s dry. I’m just giving the final buff.”
“Thanks.”
“I was sorry to hear about Chief Martinez. He was a cool old guy.”
And you would know, Estelle thought. Stacy Cunningham had been one of those high-school students whom most teachers had fervently hoped would drop out and go away…the sooner the better. He had done neither. Estelle had had a number of conversations with Principal Glenn Archer and Police Chief Eduardo Martinez over the years about various students who had somehow run afoul of the law, or gotten themselves killed when their cars slammed to a stop before they did. Stacy had been the subject of conversation more than once, but somehow he had managed to survive the pitfalls.
“We’ll miss him,” Estelle said. “He was a good man.”
Stacy shifted his weight on the handlebars of the floor polisher. “Yep, he was a cool old guy,” he said. “I wish I’d taken more time to talk with him.” Estelle looked at him with some surprise. With the wash of freckles across his angular, homely face, the unkempt red hair, and too-thin body…and his history…it was easy to dismiss the young man as an empty vessel stuck with a job that no one else had the patience or inclination to do.