From the old drive-in theater to the Paradise Trailer Park was 1.7 miles, and it seemed like two hundred. I rounded the last sweeping curve and backed off. The road was nearly blocked with junk that had once been half of Posadas County’s patrol car fleet. The sight would have kept Holman babbling about budget for hours.
Torrez had pulled up directly behind Mrs. Sloan’s Oldsmobile, the light from his spotlight concentrated beyond on the trailer’s front door. Half in the trailer park’s driveway and half in the county road was Eddie Mitchell’s patrol car, its left front door, fender and wheel crumpled and jammed.
Thirty yards down the road sat Deputy Encinos’s Ford, its front end so crushed that the radiator would be wrapped around the front of the engine block. The hood was buckled so badly that even if the old thing had had the gumption to run, the driver wouldn’t have been able to see the road.
I blocked the rest of the driveway and got out of the car. Eddie Mitchell was sitting in the sand just out of the headlights’ glare, leaning against the rough trunk of a stunted juniper seedling that grew beside the trailer park’s collection of mailboxes.
I swept my flashlight up enough to see his pale face. He was hurting-and disgusted. “They’re right over there,” he said, pointing. I turned and looked. Deputy Torrez and Deputy Encino were escorting Miriam Sloan through the weeds from the direction of Ulibarri’s trailer. As they approached Torrez’s car, I could see that her hands were cuffed behind her back. With a deputy at each elbow, she had shrunk from stout and blustery to pathetic.
“She was trying to run up that way after the kid took off,” Eddie said.
“What happened to you?”
“Busted my ankle. He damn near punted me clear across the road,” Mitchell said ruefully. “And then he stopped, bam, and backed up full speed right into Paul. He stalled it, and for a minute I thought he was going to get out. I guess Paul was stunned or something, cause he didn’t get out of his car right away.”
“Probably a damn good thing he didn’t.”
“That son of a bitch got the truck going again and had to ram into the car a couple times to get his bumper loose. I couldn’t get out my door, and by the time I squirmed across the seat, he was gone. I tried one shot as he went by, but didn’t hit anything.”
I knelt down and looked at the deputy’s left ankle, now ballooning and crooked. “You want me to cut your boot off?” I said, and that fetched a look of panic.
“No, sir. I sure don’t,” he said.
“The EMTs will be here in just a few minutes,” I said. I watched as Torrez and Encinos deposited Miriam Sloan in the back of Torrez’s car. I had no desire to talk with the woman. Looking at her in court was going to be enough of a punishment.
32
By nine-thirty that evening our procedure was organized enough that each one of the deputies could work for a week nonstop. Bob Torrez was almost gleeful at the prospect of wrapping up nearly a dozen burglaries with one sweep. Sheriff Martin Holman was doubly perturbed-his house fire and break-in were not on the list, and half of his county fleet had been put in dry dock.
I broke away shortly before ten and started to dial Estelle. I had touched the first three numbers before I thought better of it. I didn’t want the phone jangling to wake the kid-or his parents for that matter.
I called Posadas General Hospital instead and checked with the nurses’ desk. Evelyn Bistoff was on duty and she told me that the Guzmans had spent most of the evening with old Reuben and then left the hospital at nine. Reuben was holding his own.
As the deputies started to tear the Sloans’ trailer apart, I felt confident enough to call Linda Rael into my office. The young lady was dragging but game…I admired her persistence. And this time, when she asked questions I gave her all the information we had. I knew that on several items I might be jumping the gun, but I wanted her-and her paper-to beat out all the big city, high pressure outfits.
The Sloans’ trailer revealed enough immediate evidence to corroborate Richard Staples’s story. Miriam Sloan had tried to sponge out most of a blood stain in the center of the living room rug, right beside the coffee table. The stain, spread to a circle of nearly a yard’s diameter, was covered with a cheap throw rug that still stank of polyester newness.
Early the next morning, deputies Paul Encinos and Tony Abeyta would play prospector, taking Staples’s map and excavating the first grave that had held Todd Sloan. Enough of his blood would have seeped into the sand that it would be significant evidence for the medical examiner.
Miriam Sloan hadn’t conned enough money out of the Department of Social Services to be able to afford to pay a lawyer, and Dean Ontiveros, the public defender, wouldn’t be back from a Las Cruces trial until late afternoon. The woman refused to say a word without Ontiveros present, so there she sat in one of our cells, sullen and trapped. Ontiveros was going to have a good time with her. If he was smart, he’d stay in Las Cruces.
By midnight we were organized and caught up with paperwork enough so that we could see the general flow of the case. And I was running on fumes.
I pushed back from my desk, shoving my reading glasses up into my crewcut and rubbing my eyes. I hoped that no one would walk through the door for the next five minutes. Given that head start, I could work up enough gumption to get up out of my chair and head for home.
There was nothing wrong with me that fifty hours of sleep and five thousand calories of food wouldn’t cure. The sleep would come in fifteen minute bursts during the next month…and maybe Estelle, Francis, and the kid would consider being treated to a middle-of-the-night dinner of Mexican food so hot it would ignite gasoline.
Sheriff Martin Holman startled me out of my trance. He’d been working the burglary list that Richard Staples had turned over to Bob Torrez, hoping something would show up. I think he would have been satisfied to discover just his Toro rototiller.
“I didn’t get a chance to tell you,” he said by way of introduction. I opened one eye and groaned. He thought I was just tired. I was groaning at the prospect of a mea culpa confession.
“I was impressed with the way the deputies handled all this.”
I nodded and waited, my hands hooked behind my head.
Holman eased forward into my office and hooked the door closed with his toe. “I felt a little bit foolish out there,” he said.
“Why would that be?” I asked. “You did what needed to be done.”
He smiled at that and sat down in the chair at the end of my desk. I was beginning to feel like a priest at confession. “What do you think?” he asked. “I mean, really?”
“About what?”
“About the way things are going.” He was looking at the top of my desk instead of eye to eye. I knew what he wanted to ask.
“Martin,” I said and let my chair swing forward with a loud squeak as I pulled my arms down. I folded my hands in the middle of my desk pad and looked at him with a mixture of amusement and respect. “Let me tell you something.” His eyes flicked up to mine and I could see a little apprehension there.
“We need good administration at the top. Any organization does. And we’ve got it. I know you’re not a cop, and I know that that bothers you from time to time. But I don’t think you really want to be, either. You seem to have an instinct about when to step back and stay out of the way.” He sighed with relief. “We’ve had a better budget, and better relations with the county commission, and better, more sensible cost management in the last three years than I can ever remember.”
“I appreciate hearing that.”
“Just concentrate on what you’re good at, Martin. Over time, you’ll catch on to the rest. Are you going to the FBI school this spring?”