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?”
“I might. I don’t know. But I’ve been thinking about it.”
“It’d be good for you.” I looked at my watch. “I need to check on Reuben Fuentes again. Is there anything else you need in the next little while?”
He flashed his best used car salesman’s smile. “You’d know that better than I.”
“Then I’m going home for a little bit.”
As I stood up, Holman opened my office door and asked, “Now that you’re in over your head with all this paperwork, what are you going to do about the christening you were planning to attend down in Tres Santos?”
I shrugged. “That’s something else hanging,” I said.
***
I walked through the front door of my home at seventeen minutes after midnight. The place was stone quiet and dark except for a single light that filtered out into the hall from my living room.
I hung my Stetson on the ugly hatrack behind the door. I’d bought the rack in a moment of weakness during the auction at the old Ortiz Hotel over in San Pasquale.
Estelle Reyes-Guzman was curled up on the sofa in the living room. She was wrapped in one of my bathrobes and it was a tent that would have covered five of her. She wasn’t watching
The Shootist
. The tube was dead. She was leafing through one of my ten-year-old copies of
New Mexico Magazine
.
“Welcome home,
Padrino
,” she said.
“Hey,” I replied. “Why are you still up?”
She ignored my question, a habit of hers that I liked to think she’d learned from me years before. “I listened to your scanner some,” she said. “Quite a chase you had.”
I shrugged. “The Trujillo kid tried to run and over-cooked it into the arroyo. Bob got the woman without any problems, though.” As far as I was concerned, Miriam Sloan was as much history as her pathetic boyfriend. Estelle correctly read my thoughts and changed the subject.
“We visited Uncle Reuben earlier this evening.”
“I know. I called the hospital. The nurse said you’d been there.”
“He seems so at peace.”
“I hope so.”
Estelle patted the cushion beside her and I sat down with a popping of knees and the creak of gunbelt leather. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get back up.
“What would you think of having the christening here?”
“I beg your pardon?”
She smiled at the startled expression on my face. “This is what I was thinking—” and she ticked off the points on her fingers. “Number one, you’re too busy right now to get away for any length of time. Number two, I can’t leave Uncle Reuben alone now. Three, Francis can drive down to Tres Santos, pick up mama, and be back here in two hours.”
She stopped counting. “Uncle Reuben isn’t taking medications any more and Francis said he would bring him here if you were willing. He and I could do as much for Uncle Reuben here as he’s getting in the hospital. That way, he’d be with us.” Thinking I might mind, she added quickly, “Just for the ceremony, sir.”
“Estelle,” I said, laying a hand on hers, “I’ve told you before. This house is yours.
Mi casa
…something something
casa
, or however that saying goes.”
“
Mi casa es su casa
.”
“Right. The saying means just what it says. If you want to have your mother up here, and Reuben, and whoever else, then have at it.”
“You wouldn’t mind? Francis said we were asking too much, and I guess we are.”
I grinned at her. “Hey, if I mind, I can always get in three-ten and go do some work, right?”
“And you would, too.”
“You’re going to invite the Diaz family up? Your mother’s neighbors?”
“There are twelve of them, sir.”
“So what? I’ve got five acres, five bedrooms. There’s a motel just five blocks away if we need it. Reuben will have a live-in physician to keep him happy. He can swap lies with your mother until all hours. It’ll be fun.”
Estelle made a funny face and then reached over to hug me…or as close as someone could come to a hug around someone of my girth. She didn’t let go right away and I knew she was well aware of the unspoken truth—that Reuben would be lucky to live through the next couple days, much less live through any sentimental conversations with his aging niece.
I pulled an arm free and looked at my watch.
“I’ve got to get some food,” I said. “Do you suppose Tommy’s Diner is still open? I haven’t eaten dinner yet, for God’s sake.”
“Would you mind some company?”
“Not at all. Are the two Francises awake?”
“No.” She stood up. “But I’ll tell my husband. He’s a light sleeper. I think they teach that in medical school.”
“Get him to come along,” I said.
“No.” Estelle shook her head. “Just the two of us.” She flashed me a smile as she vanished down the hall toward Camille’s bedroom.
In five minutes she was back, dressed in jeans and sweatshirt, looking more like the middle of a spring morning than the dark of a December midnight.
I was too tired to bother with changing. Outside, I felt the chill of the air for the first time that day. The county car was parked askew in my driveway, blocking both my Blazer and the Guzmans’ Isuzu.
“What the hell, we’ll take three-ten,” I said. “I’ve spent so much time in it the past twelve hours it feels like home.”
I started the engine and just as the big V-8 burbled into life, the radio barked a message. I ignored it but Estelle didn’t. She reached down and turned off the radio. The dashboard looked oddly blank without the dumb little amber light staring me in the face.
I laughed. “All right,” I said. “It’s a deal. Just this once.”
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