“Sir,” Gayle said, “we just had a telephone call about an aircraft in possible trouble. Tom Pasquale is on that side of the county, and I asked him to head out that way for a look.”
“By ‘in trouble,’ what did the caller mean?”
Gayle shook her head. “It was Mrs. Finnegan who called.”
“Oh. That explains that.” Charlotte Finnegan spent most of her waking hours “seeing things” and traveling to places that didn’t exist. I didn’t know if she suffered from Alzheimer’s or was simply tuned in to an alternative universe. Whatever the case, her husband Richard was a man of infinite patience. They lived on a small ranchette just inside the Posadas County line on County Road 43, a desolate stretch of overgrazed country where Charlotte Finnegan could certainly do no harm.
“You might call Jim Bergin and ask him if there’s been any traffic in or out of the airport in the last few minutes. Or if he’s talked to any transient aircraft on the radio.”
She nodded and started to turn away, then stopped. “The sheriff was going to leave a job application on your desk,” she said. “Linda Real’s.”
“I saw it.” I could see that she wanted to say something else, but I frowned one of my scowls and she changed her mind. Taking the electric razor out of the top drawer of my desk, I went to the rest room and chopped off the late-afternoon stubble and double-checked to make sure that I hadn’t left a trail of lunch down the front of my shirt.
The lighting in the Don Juan de Oñate restaurant wasn’t the best, but I wanted to look sharp if I had to do battle with a couple of women.
The battered, sagging booth seats in the Don Juan de Oñate restaurant had recently been replaced with genuine molded-plastic benches that were about as comfortable as sitting on ice. The goddam things were bright yellow. All Fernando Aragon needed now was a kiddy playland outside to complete the transformation.
I forgave Fernando all that because the food was unchanged. His wife Rosie and daughter-in-law Arleen still cooked the same amazing nuclear concoctions on which my system had depended for the past quarter century.
I slid across cold plastic and rested my right arm on the windowsill, tapping a nervous rhythm on the freshly painted white trim while I looked outside. There wasn’t much to see other than asphalt and dust. The wind was gusting from the southwest, fitful and without a trace of humidity.
Bustos Avenue was already grimy and littered with tumble-weeds and ragweed tops, Posadas at its dismal, dry, early spring worst. In another few weeks, we’d be pounded by a storm that would dump a couple of inches of rain in an hour and the desert would sprout a new harvest of things with thorns, spikes, and pollen.
Within a minute, the waitress appeared and slid a cup of coffee across until it rested at my left elbow. She placed a basket of chips and a bowl of salsa in front of me and smiled. Shewas a lot prettier to look at than the dusty street and empty parking lot.
“Did you want to wait for the others, or order now, sir?”
“The coffee’s fine, JanaLynn,” I said. “Are you ready for the big wedding?” Sheriff Holman referred to the pending knot-tying as “the department event.” He was probably right. Sergeant Robert Torrez, a thirty-six-year-old bachelor and fifteen-year veteran of the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department, had finally proposed to Gayle Sedillos, our chief dispatcher. Gayle was twenty-eight and had been with us since she turned eighteen.
JanaLynn was one of Torrez’s multitude of cousins, and I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if she were somehow related to Gayle as well.
“If it was up to Bobby,” JanaLynn said, “they’d just elope.”
“His mother would kill him,” I chuckled.
“So would I,” JanaLynn said and turned to go, adding, “I’ll be back in a bit with a refill.”
Three chips were all I had time for. Estelle Reye-Guzman’s van pulled into the parking lot, and I watched as she and Linda Real got out. I don’t know what I had expected, but Linda’s quick step matched Estelle’s as they crossed the macadam. They impressed me as two women with a purpose, and I took a deep breath.
Before the incident, Linda Real had been a vivacious, raven-haired dynamo. She worked long, odd hours and, like the rest of us, was none too careful about what or when she ate. As a result, her face had few sharp angles and she chose loose-fitting clothes to suit her pudgy frame.
From a distance, it looked like she hadn’t changed. She was wearing one of those slouch hats that would have been at home in the 1930s, pulled low and rakish. The wind tugged and fluttered the brim, and she clamped her right hand on the top of her head.
Then the corner of the building blocked them from view, but when they opened the outer door, the change in air pressure made the inner door thud loudly against its stops. I pushed the basket of chips a little farther away and wiped my mouth with my napkin. Linda’s application rested in a manila folder on the bench beside me.
The two women appeared around the gold-embroidered velvet partition that divided the two rear dining areas. Estelle, her long black hair tied back in a ponytail, wore jeans, a University of New Mexico sweatshirt, and a light blue jacket…and she looked about eighteen rather than the thirty-one-year-old mother of two that she was.
I pushed myself along the yellow bench, but Estelle held out a hand. “Don’t get up, sir” she said and slid all the way in on the other side.
I continued to my feet anyway. “I’ve got to collect a hug from this gal,” I said. Linda Real grinned, a little lopsided perhaps, but game enough. Her perfume was strong and outdoorsy, and her hug lasted well beyond a perfunctory social courtesy.
“Have a seat,” I said. “It’s really good to see you.” I watched as she slid into the booth beside Estelle. She didn’t take off her hat. “JanaLynn’s around here someplace,” I added and sat down.
Indeed she was, and after she’d come and gone, I leaned forward and folded my hands in front of me. “So,” I said to Linda, “what do you think about this one heading off to the wilds of Minnesota?”
She grinned at Estelle. “Exciting. What a change.”
“Yeah,” I said, and then to Estelle, I added, “Your mom’s still doing all right?”
“She’s fine, sir. She told me today that she’s actually looking forward to the move.”
“Remarkable woman,” I said, still wondering how a tiny, elderly woman who, until a few months before, had lived alone in an equally tiny adobe house in rural Mexico, could find the strength to contemplate such a monumental change in life style.
“Tell me how you’ve been,” I said to Linda.
This was no time for pretending, and I gazed at her steadily, taking in the details of her battered face. Linda remained silent, enduring my scrutiny. Both Estelle and I had been with her the day she’d been released from the hospital. After that, she’d gone home to Las Cruces to recuperate. Time had slipped by, and I hadn’t seen her since then. Every now and then, I would receive a note from her and the tone was always upbeat. In the meantime, I’d had a surgical bout of my own and she’d sent me one of those funny, insulting cards that had made me laugh until I hurt.
She was a brave kid. Surgeons had managed to save the orb of her left eye, but the pupil was fixed and the iris dull. A dent the size of a quarter disfigured the outer corner of the orbit, with a heavy scar extending up into her eyebrow. The passage of time and some skilled makeup had blended most of the scarring on the side of her face and around her ear with her natural skin tone.
She didn’t offer to say how she’d been, but I could guess it hadn’t been fun. “The application says that you’re still facing more surgery.”
Linda nodded. “Dental work,” she said. She cocked her head slightly and her fingers traced a line down one side of her jaw. “They had to wire all this together. Apparently there were three or four pellets in a cluster, and they did a real tap dance. They busted off three lowers and two uppers. One of them went across and busted a tooth on the other side.”
I grimaced. “When’s the next round of surgery scheduled?”
“I’ve got two new permanent crowns waiting for me,” Linda said. “There’re a couple of procedures yet to go that involve building something that looks like the Brooklyn Bridge, but I think it’s all on an outpatient basis.” She didn’t move her jaws much when she talked, but her diction was clear and precise.
“Those are what Dr. Guzman refers to as ‘lengthy orthodontic procedures’?”
“Lengthy is in the eye of the beholder,” Linda said easily.
“I think that what’s at issue is the job description,” Estelle said, cutting right to the chase. JanaLynn arrived with our food, and we waited while she placed the steaming, fragrant
burrito grandes
in front of Linda and me, and a taco salad for Estelle.
Linda Real hadn’t lost her appetite, and even though she was forced to process the food entirely on the right side of her mouth, she attacked the meal with gusto.
“Job description?” I asked.
Estelle frowned as she worked loose a corner of the flower-petal taco shell. “If a dispatcher does nothing but dispatch, I don’t think that a physical handicap matters.”
“Depending on the handicap, of course,” I said. “But let’s look at the facts. Our department is a small one. Hell, not small. Miniscule. With twelve full-time employees to cover seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, everyone has to be a jack-of-all-trades.”
Linda started to say something, but Estelle leaned back and put her fork down. “And you’ll remember, sir, that’s one of the things we talked about that needs to change.”
“Sure enough,” I said. I knew exactly what she was driving at, and in a normal world with normal budgets and legislators who had their heads screwed on straight, there would have been no argument.
“Especially where the dispatcher is concerned,” Estelle pointed out.
I poked at my burrito and rearranged an ocean of sour cream. “If you were working dispatch, what’d be your job?” I asked Linda.
“Radio. Telephone. Fax. Computer. Some filing. Talking with walk-ins.” She leaned forward eagerly, fork poised. “And I’d really like to continue working with photography. I think I can make a contribution there.”
I nodded. “I have no doubt of that. And in a perfect world, those things you mentioned would be the bulk of what a dispatcher’s job would be limited to. But this world is far from perfect. Sometimes the person working dispatch needs to tend to someone in the lockup. That’s what Francis was talking about when he mentioned duties beyond the radio. And there are times when the officer working dispatch needs to assist in booking procedures, too.”
“But always with another officer in that case, sir,” Estelle observed. “And if the dispatcher needs to go into the lockup, it’s just to check quickly on the general situation, not to enter the cells.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “That’s the way it should be. There should be nothing that takes the dispatch officer away from the communications console. I know that. And when it happens, we’re setting ourselves up for disaster.” I took a sip of coffee. “I’m sure you both remember Sonny Trujillo. The kid who choked to death in one of our cells? Gayle Sedillos was all alone when that happened. Granted, she probably shouldn’t have been. But we were busy with another case, and we were shorthanded.”
Estelle nodded and turned to Linda. “We get caught sometimes, Linda. We put ourselves in a position where we
hope
that the dispatch officer can get to the radio or telephone immediately. It doesn’t always happen. It
hasn’t
always happened.”
Both women looked over at me and I shrugged. “Linda, you’re an intelligent, gifted young woman. I have some idea about what you’re going through. But you know, for the life of me, I don’t understand what attracts you to the dispatch job. It’s deadly dull ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent of the time. The starting salary we pay is less than welfare. On top of that, any new dispatcher will have to work graveyard…” I let it trail off and raised an eyebrow at her expectantly.
“I don’t think I could explain why I want to do it,” Linda said softly. “It’s just something I’m comfortable with in my mind.”
“Comfortable with…”
She nodded. “I’ve watched Gayle Sedillos work, and she seems so confident and professional. Part of a team.”
I looked down at my diminishing burrito. “Let me ask you something straight-out.” I put down my fork and pushed the plate away. “Does your wanting to work for us have something to do with the incident two years ago? With the shooting?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I think that if I’d been through what you have—and what you’re still going through because of it—I’d sure as hell distance myself from anything to do with police work.”
Linda bit her lip. “What happened to me could have happened anywhere, anytime. I could have walked into a convenience store at the wrong time. Or stopped my car at just the wrong intersection at just the wrong time. Or a thousand other scenarios.”
“So you’re not trying to put something right? Not trying to get back on the horse that bucked you off?”
“No, sir.”
“There’s a certain personality profile we look for, Linda. You mentioned Gayle Sedillos. She’s about as good as they come. Levelheaded, commonsensical, quick-thinking, a good communicator.”
“I think I’m all of those things, sir.”
“I won’t argue that.” I took a long breath. “And as you suggest, you’ve got some camera skills that we’re going to need when Estelle leaves us. Let me ask you something else. In the event that the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department were to hire you—”
JanaLynn appeared around the partition, pointed at me and then mimicked holding a telephone to her ear. “Hold that thought,” I said. “Excuse me for a minute.”
From the booth where we were sitting, I would have guessed that the restaurant was empty. As I walked around the first partition, I was startled to see a fair sea of heads as dinner-hour patrons picked up. JanaLynn reached under the counter by the cash register for the telephone and handed it to me.