Heartshot (2 page)
By dusk, I’d had enough of parades, crowds, and noise. I drove up the smooth macadam of County Road 43, away from Posadas. The crowds would be gathering in the village park for the July Fourth fireworks display. The peace and quiet of the mesa top would be a good place to watch the rockets…not that I was in the mood for fireworks.
The road wound through the foothills that hid Consolidated Ore’s abandoned mine from casual view, and then passed within a quarter mile of the lake, one of the county’s most popular party spots. I turned off onto the dirt road and kept it slow and easy, windows down, radio turned low. There wasn’t much to listen to except the crunch of the big LTD’s radials on gravel.
The lake covered about three acres, and its attraction was obvious. Sheer rocks formed most of the perimeter, leaving only a hundred yards of semi-smooth, approachable shoreline. If you don’t think it was fun to stand on those sheer palisades on a hot summer night and dive off into the deep, cold water, then you ain’t never been a kid, as they say. Consolidated Ore had fenced the lake off and posted threatening signs every fifty feet. The Forest Service, whose land abutted Consolidated’s, had fenced it from their side. Most of the fences still stood, wires gleaming. The posted signs that remained here and there still carried portions of their original messages. The fences and signs served no useful purpose. Kids just parked outside the wire and slipped through. Or they cut it to make gates. Or just drove through it with four-by-fours until the wire was a useless snarl.
Along the short stretch of shoreline, dark smudges marked previous campfires. A favorite spot was over where the south palisade started, under a rock outcrop that protected the fire from winds and casual view. The rock was smoke-smudged from years of kids watching the embers pop while they worked up courage to do more entertaining things. Part of the attraction, I guess, was to see if you could get plastered before someone came along and told you to scram. Not many kids had drowned in the lake…there was enough of an aura about it that they were careful, even when drunk.
From where I parked, I could see that the shoreline and palisades were deserted. I figured that if I checked back around ten that night, I’d nail any party in the early stages. I headed away from the lake and the mine and spent an hour or so cruising the back roads. I left the busy state highways and county roads to the other two deputies…they were thirty-five years younger than me, and eager. Had it not been for Baker’s pregnant wife, I wouldn’t even have been working. Todd Baker was a nervous Nellie. I had offered to sit his shift for him, and he’d jumped at the chance. It was no sacrifice on my part. We rarely had three deputies working anyway…just on a few busy holidays. The extra coverage almost always turned out to be a waste. I figured to catch up on paperwork later on.
Deputy Bob Torrez jabbered away on the radio, passing license plate numbers to our dispatcher. He was working radar hard, keeping the tourists honest on the state highway. The other deputy, big, slow-talking Howard Bishop, kept quiet. He hated paperwork more than any man I knew, and wrote fewer traffic tickets than I did. If it had been up to him, our combined county files—enforcement, assessor, clerk, highway, everything—would have totaled about two papers. I was constantly on his tail, but it didn’t do any good. Bishop had aspirations toward the FBI, but he wasn’t going to make it, not with his allergy to pencilwork.
A couple of minutes after nine, I stopped at the Posadas Inn near the interstate interchange southeast of Posadas. They had a coffee shop and, with one exception, miserable food. Their iced tea, though, was rich and dark and delectable. I strolled inside. A guy in electric-blue Bermudas was at the register paying his bill, and he looked me up and down with interest.
He nodded a greeting and then, as I started to step by, asked, “Much hassle getting over the border and back?”
“Depends what you’re trying to smuggle across,” I said. I didn’t crack a smile, and he blanched, then tried a weak laugh. I fumbled for a cigarette, and when he saw that it wasn’t cuffs I was reaching for, he decided I was kidding.
“Me and the missus are going over tomorrow, unless it’s a hassle; then to hell with it, you know what I mean?”
“It’s no hassle,” I said, and lit the cigarette. “Just follow the rules. Stick with the limits. No problems at all. Very pleasant people.”
“Oh, yeah?” He sounded relieved.
“Yes.” I fed him the usual customs line. “Just remember that our laws are not their laws.” If he read the little Border Patrol pamphlet they’d hand him twenty-five miles south at the Regál port of entry, he’d see it in print.
Joe Tourist looked a little more interested. “You lived in these parts for some time?”
“Twenty years.”
“Much drug running?”
I shrugged. “Same as anywhere along the border. Probably not as much as in Cleveland.” One of his eyebrows shot up, so I must have been close. “Have a pleasant trip.” I took a seat by the window. The lights outside illuminated the interchange, and I watched the traffic for a little while, sipping the tea. If the village was popping off fireworks, the displays were out of view, behind the motel. I enjoyed two minutes of peace and quiet before Tina, the waitress, came to my table to tell me I was wanted on the telephone.
The dispatcher that night, Gayle Sedillos, was efficient. She knew my hangouts, and was as astute as Miracle Murton was stupid. I said, “Gastner,” and she said, “Bob Torrez wants your help with a motor vehicle accident. He called for two ambulances already. County Road 43, one mile south of the lake.”
“I’m on my way.” I left the coffee shop without paying and seconds later 310 spun parking lot gravel and then chirped onto pavement, engine bellowing. Not more than ten seconds later, Torrez was on the radio.
“Three-ten, three-oh-seven. Ten-twenty?”
“Three-ten ETA in six minutes.” That was optimistic, since the lake was twelve miles away. But most of it was open road, and the Ford could sit fat and comfortable at a hundred.
Torrez acknowledged, then added, “Strawberry jam.” He’d been a deputy for five years, and in that time had acquired his share of the graveyard humor that kept us all sane. And I knew what he meant, as did anyone else who knew him even a little and was listening to the scanner. I cussed and backed off a little as I flashed through an intersection, then punched 310 hard up the hill.
The wrecked car had been heading downhill when it shot off the outside of a gradual sweeping curve. As I pulled to a stop, I could see in the glare of my headlights where the tires had first scattered the loose cinders of the shoulder. It was a Firebird, maybe six or seven years old, the kind with the big decal on the hood. One of the emergency units had arrived, but the scanner ghouls hadn’t, so there were no spectators underfoot yet. I heard the wail of other sirens as I scrambled down the bank, my way illuminated by the spotlights from above. The car had been airborne for the better part of 160 feet. Then it hit a rock outcrop and stopped dead, pounded into shapeless junk. The rescue crew was working with the gas-powered jaws and a half dozen wrecking bars. Torrez’s face was pale.
“They ran,” he said to me between breaths. He was working to tear a mangled door ajar. His bare hands and the wrecking bar weren’t going to do the job. “They were up at the lake, and I rolled in. I pulled up behind ’em just to check, you know, and they lit out. I stayed well back, ’cause I didn’t want this to happen.”
“You’re going to have to go in from the other side,” I said, and looked back up the bank.
“They were doin’ at least a hundred, sir. Had to have been.”
I could hear the hot, twisted metal pinging gently as it cooled. “How many?” I asked. The car was partially on its side, nosed into the rock like a big missile. From mangled plastic in front to the tip of its cooling exhausts, the wreck was now no more than ten feet long.
“We’re not sure yet,” Torrez said. “Can’t see nothin’.”
“Christ,” I muttered. I scrambled over rocks and through weeds to where one of the emergency medical technicians worked the power jaws.
“I can reach one here,” he shouted, and other hands took the jaws. He almost had to lie down to see. “A touch more,” he shouted, and the jaws groaned metal a fraction of an inch. “I can see most of it now. Shit.” There was a moment of silence, punctuated only by the idling motor of the jaws. We saw him twist a little, and then I caught a glimpse of light from his flashlight through a small crack.
“How many?” I shouted to him.
“Five,” he replied. “At least I think it’s five.” He wormed his way back out, looking sick. “You’ll have to peel the lid off, Bart,” he yelled. The car had hit so hard that it had folded in the middle. The roof had crumpled in, and I guessed that the top of the fire wall was no more than three feet from the back deck.
The EMTs continued to struggle, and I worked my way back up the bank. Gayle Sedillos had already called Emerson Clark, the coroner, and Detective Estelle Reyes. I made sure one of the deputies was available to help old man Clark down to the wreck scene when he arrived, and then I met Estelle Reyes as her car rolled to a stop. If she was apprehensive, she didn’t show it.
“You need a hand with anything?” I asked as she hauled a briefcase and a small suitcase out of the county car’s trunk. She was a small, slender girl, but it wasn’t her physical strength that I was worried about.
“No,” she said, already looking for the best route down the hill. I let her go, and corralled Howard Bishop into managing traffic and the growing ring of spectators. The scanner ghouls were out in force now. In another ten minutes, there would be no place to park along the shoulder of the road. Most of the curious stood back where we told them, quiet and shocked. Some wanted to know who was in the car, some just wanted to look at mangled flesh.
As the EMTs took the car apart, Estelle Reyes’s electronic flash ripped harsh light into the car again and again. Eventually enough metal was can-openered loose so that we could make some progress. Clark arrived. He was a semi-retired orthopedic surgeon, and a damn good coroner. He stood grimly by, and as the victims were reached, he stepped forward and pronounced them, one after the other, dead. Reyes took more pictures. I could see that figuring out where each one had been sitting before the impact wasn’t going to be easy. In this case, the only obvious one was the driver himself. Not content with the original, he’d bought a new steering wheel at one of those discount houses. The spokes were cheap spring steel. They hadn’t broken, but the spokes had folded forward as the heavy engine drove the column back. It was difficult to pull the kid off the steering column, since the fancy hub of the steering wheel had tangled in the remains of his seat back after crushing through his chest. The EMTs were still working to remove him when I heard shouts up on the road. I glanced up and saw Bishop, illuminated in the headlights, physically restraining Benny Fernandez. I scrambled up the bank.
“Benny,” I shouted over his babbling, “we’re not going to let you go down there.”
“Ricky,” he sobbed, and lunged toward the bank. Bishop hugged him still.
“We’ll do all we can, Benny,” I said, and helped Bishop carry the man away from the shoulder of the road, guiding him toward my car.
Someone came up and started talking to Fernandez, and I snapped, “Get out of here.” I held Benny’s arm. “Get in the car, Benny.”
“They called me at the store,” he said. “They said it was his car.”
“It’s his car, Benny.” I silently cursed the idiot who thought he was doing the man a favor. It’s bad enough when a cop and a priest pound on the door at two in the morning. There was no call for this.
“The hospital,” Benny said, pathetically hopeful. “They’ll take him to the hospital, won’t they?”
“Yes. Maybe you should go there and wait. I’ll have Deputy Bishop take you down.”
He made for the door handle, and before he could pull it, I snapped down the electric locks. “Benny, let the deputy take you down. You’re in no shape to drive. I’ll make sure one of the other officers takes your car down for you.” He slumped a little, then nodded, beginning to give up. I flipped on the PA switch of the radio. “Deputy Bishop,” I said, and thirty feet away, Howard turned around. I waved him over. “Would you drive Mr. Fernandez down to Posadas General? I’ll handle things up here.”
Bishop nodded, and Fernandez was gone before they started to bring up the body bags. The thought struck me later that Benny hadn’t even asked if his son was dead. And like a gutless wonder, I had avoided being the one to break the news. No more parents showed up at the site. But by then, Bishop would have found a telephone and called the names to Gayle, and she would have started lining up the appropriate clergy.
At eighteen minutes after two, Les Atawene backed up his big diesel tow truck so that the rear duals were within a foot of the embankment. Bob Torrez and I cleared the crowds back.
“Damn it, aren’t any of you folks sleepy yet?” I shouted at a group of stubborn ones. “Why the hell do you make us work around you!” One of them persisted in standing in the wrecker’s way, and Les tapped the air horn. The guy said something obscene, and I heard it. “Just run over the son of a bitch,” I barked at Les. The man flashed his middle finger at me, but he stepped out of the way, so I ignored him. Les hauled the heavy cable down to the wreck and saw right away that he had problems. If he hitched on to the only part of the car that was completely in the clear, about all he’d pull up the bank was a ruptured rear quarter. He stood and looked for a minute. The big wrecker’s floodlights made it artificial noontime. He and his boy finally circled the cable completely around the wreck, from front to back, top to bottom. When the winch began to tighten, the cable pulled the wreck together into one not-so-neat ball. But it stayed together, and up the hill it came, groaning and twitching and smoking like some living thing.
As the mess crept up the hill, I saw Estelle Reyes crouching low, looking inside the car. She probed with the flashlight, then waved the beam quickly up the hill at Les. “Stop it a minute!”