Another spasm shook Kiki’s shoulders, and Estelle waited silently, arm around the girl, until one of the EMTs appeared at the door. “We need a blanket,” she said. In another moment, Kiki Tafoya was wrapped snuggly, and Estelle backed off, giving the EMT room to work.
“Let’s take a look,” she said. Bob Torrez had turned sideways in the office door, hands still in his pockets. Dr. Alan Perrone was writing quickly on a small aluminum clipboard, talking just as rapidly. Behind them, seated at his desk, was George Enriquez.
“Single, large caliber gunshot wound to the head,” Perrone said without looking up from his writing. “My best ballpark guess is sometime yesterday. I’ll be able to narrow that down some for you, Estelle. For the moment, I’m finished here.” He tapped a period with his gold ballpoint and sighed. “I don’t think the young lady who found him is going to be in any shape to tell you much. At least not for a few hours.”
“We’ll talk to her when we can,” Estelle said. Without stepping closer to the ornate wooden desk, she regarded Enriquez. The man was slumped back in his chair as if napping, head lolled to the right. The top of the chair back cushioned his head at the junction of spine and skull. His jaw hung slack.
The single bullet had crashed into his skull through the thick, silver hair of his left sideburn, leaving a large corona of powder dappling that extended to the corner of his left eye.
“The bullet is in the wall over there,” Torrez said. He extended an arm past Estelle’s shoulder, pointing. “It hit the edge of the bookcase, punched through the side support, and then smacked into the wall. It didn’t go through.”
Estelle nodded and moved around the desk.
“A thorough job,” the sheriff observed. The single bullet had passed obliquely through the victim’s skull, exiting along with a large chunk of skull from behind the right ear. “The weapon is under his chair.”
Enriquez’s body rested like a sandbag in the modern fabric-and-fiberglass swivel chair. His left arm hung straight down, index finger extended as if he’d been pointing at the large revolver that lay between two of the swivel chair’s five black legs. His left shoe rested flat on the clear plastic carpet protector under the chair, and his right leg was extended under the desk.
“It’s supposed to be a pretty standard picture,” Torrez said, and Estelle looked up at him quickly. He didn’t elaborate but let the remark pass with a shrug.
Kneeling carefully on the carpet an arm’s length from the corpse, Estelle looked at the revolver. Its satin stainless-steel finish was flecked here and there with gore, but she could easily read the legend on the right side of the barrel.
“What do we know about this?” Estelle asked, not because anyone had had the time to run the weapon through NCIC or put it under the microscope but because Bob Torrez’s consuming personal interest in firearms made it likely that the sheriff had already reached some conclusions.
“Smith and Wesson Model 657,” he said. “Stainless, forty-one mag, and the grips probably didn’t come with the gun.” Estelle looked at the grips and frowned. “The stainless usually comes with soft, black rubber grips,” Torrez said. “Those wood ones are the standard issue on older models of blued guns. Some folks like the looks better, with the fancy grain and all. The wood is goncalvo alves, I think.”
Using her pen, Estelle reached out and moved Enriquez’s hand slightly, looking at the palm for a long moment.
“I didn’t see any, either,” Torrez said. “Neither did doc.”
George Enriquez’s hands were soft and well manicured, not the work-hardened, calloused hands of a laborer. The undersheriff looked back and forth, from hand to revolver. Estelle could imagine that the big magnum was a challenge to fire one-handed in any case, requiring a firm grip. Someone about to unleash that tremendous, shattering power against his own skull would have held the gun so hard his knuckles would have been white and trembling. The resultant recoil would have pounded the sharp checkering of the hardwood grips into the palm of the victim’s hand, leaving characteristic marks.
“That’s a puzzle,” Estelle murmured. She stood up and stepped back from Enriquez’s chair. “I’m surprised that the revolver would land there.”
“You ain’t the only one,” Torrez said. “Recoil’s going to bust it back. If he had a death grip on it, maybe it stayed in his hand and then just kind of fell on the floor under the chair, there.” He grimaced. “Not likely.” He knelt, balancing on the balls of his feet. “If he had a death grip on it, then relaxed…” he glanced back up at Estelle, “I’d expect to see the weapon directly under his fingers, wouldn’t you?”
“Probably.”
“But it’s not under his fingers. It’s a good foot away from his hand, in a direction that would have taken some effort to accomplish.” He stood back up with a creak of leather.
“No signs of forced entry, though?”
“None.”
“And no struggle.”
“Nothing that’s turned up yet.”
“And he had plenty of reason,” Estelle said.
“Maybe. Maybe not. If he was the suicidal type, I’d say yes. But we don’t know that he was. Folks face a grand jury probe all the time without offing themselves.”
“Did you already send someone over to notify Connie?”
Torrez nodded. “Taber picked up Father Anselmo and swung by. Nobody’s interviewed the woman yet.” He looked expectantly at Estelle.
“I’ll break away from here in a few minutes and see what she has to say.”
“Best of luck,” the sheriff said, then followed her gaze to the far wall where the small bullet hole pocked the textured plaster. “You’re thinking that you’d like to make sure the bullet we dig out of that wall comes close to matching this revolver?”
Estelle shrugged and smiled at the sheriff. “It’s just a small detail.”
Torrez grinned. “Oh, si.”
Chapter Twelve
In another hour, Estelle was convinced that George Enriquez’s office was not going to offer any easy answers. Photographed, scrutinized, measured, and probed, the insurance agent’s body was finally released to the EMTs. Dr. Alan Perrone nodded curtly as the gurney was wheeled out the door.
“I’ll let you know,” the medical examiner said. “There are some interesting questions here.” He glanced back at the gore-draped chair, empty behind the spattered desk, as if he’d forgotten something. For a moment he watched as Linda Real maneuvered for a close-up series of the blood and gore spatters across the top of the chair, then turned to watch preparations for the excavation of the bullet lodged in the wall. “Let me know about that, too,” he said. He nodded once again at Estelle and left, black bag in hand.
Working meticulously under the watchful eye of Linda Real’s videotape camera, Sheriff Robert Torrez and Chief Eddie Mitchell spent twenty minutes extracting the mushroomed revolver slug, first carving an impressive hole in the plaster and Sheetrock to give them room to work.
“If we’re lucky, we won’t end up out in the alley,” Mitchell muttered as he nudged the chards of Sheetrock into a neat pile near the baseboard.
“Nah,” Torrez said. “It’s right here.” The victim’s skull had slowed the bullet sufficiently that the wall stud and a section of electrical wiring had finished the job. With the tip of his heavy pocket knife’s blade, Torrez worked around the wiring, removing splinters of the wall stud until the deformed bullet could be nudged gently from its resting place without further damaging the soft lead. As Torrez dropped the slug into an evidence bag, he mouthed something that Estelle couldn’t hear.
The undersheriff raised an eyebrow. “No surprises?”
“I don’t think so,” Torrez replied. “Half-jacketed lead bullet…same general kind that’s loaded in factory ammo.” He held the bag up to the light. “And it’s forty-one.”