Paul Encinos had been caught off guard and it had killed him. His handgun had been found still snapped in its holster. The electric lock on the dashboard of his patrol car that held the shotgun had not been tripped. The deputy never had time to recognize his moment of panic.
Chapter 10
Sergeant Robert Torrez was bent over the fender of 308, his brows knit tightly together in concentration as he peeled the backing off a one-inch bright-blue circular sticker.
“Estelle’s better at this than I am,” he muttered.
I surveyed his handiwork, impressed. Centered over each mark of pellet damage was a colored sticker. He had used yellow dots for the first shot pattern, blue for the second, and red for the third. In place of the atomized driver’s side window, he had stretched a piece of clear plastic and then, by carefully extrapolating where the pellets had struck other surfaces of the car’s interior, he had dotted the probable locations of the pellets’ entry through the window.
I turned and looked at the dozen yard-square pieces of brown butcher paper that were laid on the garage floor. Each one had been blasted once with a shotgun. Each was carefully labeled.
The top six targets had been shot using one of the department’s 12 gauge riot guns, a pump action weapon with a twenty-inch barrel. The shots had been fired at distances beginning at five feet and then extending out in five-foot increments to thirty feet. The diameter of the pattern was clearly labeled.
The second set of targets had been riddled using the same type three-inch magnum number four buck ammunition, but this time fired from a shotgun with a standard length barrel.
“You can see a pretty significant difference in spread between the two guns,” I mused, kneeling down with a grunt and a loud cracking of the knees. “What was the choke on the field gun?”
“Modified,” Torrez said. “There’s a bunch of other combinations I could have tried, but this gives us a pretty clear picture.”
He picked up the last target in the riot gun series, the one fired at thirty feet, and walked to the car. “If you compare the size of the yellow pattern, the one we think was fired from the opposite shoulder of the highway, you’ll see that it’d be pretty easy to imagine a close match.”
“You sound overwhelmed with confidence,” I said. “None of the other series are that large.”
“Right,” Torrez nodded. “In order to get a spread like this with a regular field gun, you’d have to be backed off fifty or sixty feet.”
“You don’t really have very many definite pellet marks on the car to establish that pattern size, though.”
“Eight, sir. That’s why I said you could imagine a match. I’d hate to have to defend this in court.”
“Eight pellets out of a possible…”
“Forty-one. I know that isn’t a very good percentage, but it gives us a starting point. For the round fired through the window, I had only six definites to work with and another half a dozen probables.” He laid down the target and picked up another. “The round fired through the window was really tight when it hit the glass. Just under a foot in diameter.”
“And with a field gun, you’d still have to be backed away twenty or thirty feet for a pattern that big.”
“Right.”
I took a deep breath. “So we’re looking for a sawed-off twelve-gauge three-inch magnum shotgun that ejects its empties to the side.”
“Or a bottom dumper that the killer held on its side, like the Hollywood hotshots do.” Torrez mimed the stance, right elbow cocked high. I grimaced.
“In short, we don’t really know very much, do we?”
“No, sir.”
I straightened up and surveyed the perforated patrol car and paper targets. “We’re going to be able to figure out pretty much what happened from the time the trigger was pulled for the first time,” I said. “And that just about shoots our wad. We don’t know who, we don’t know why, we don’t know how many people were involved.” I looked at Torrez, hoping that he had some other answers that he’d been saving for last. He didn’t.
“Howard Bishop and Bing Burkett are coordinating highway searches, airport checks, that sort of thing,” I shrugged. “Good cooperation all around. I imagine that there’s something like a hundred deputies, troopers-even some of the critter cops working every corner of the state. No one’s turned up anything.” I thrust my hands in my pockets. “Did Sheriff Holman swing by and pick up the tire casts from you?”
“Yes, sir.” Torrez sounded a little skeptical. I grinned at the big deputy.
“The sheriff is not as stupid as we all sometimes think he is, Roberto.” Torrez had the tact to remain silent. “Did you tell the county yard foreman that we’d need this garage bay for several days?”
Torrez nodded. “He said whatever we needed. He said he’s got the only other key, so people won’t be wandering in and out until we give the word.”
The deputy carefully walked around his targets and frowned at me. “Sir, I’ve been wondering about the car, too. You know, we have a couple of coincidences here that are kinda interesting. One, Paul takes three oh eight here, instead of the car he usually drives. Two, he was out in the vicinity of the Broken Spur Saloon, which is where I had my last go-around with Victor Sanchez. And three, this all happened during the swing shift, which is when I work.”
“You’re thinking that maybe someone out there had it in for you and shot at Paul by mistake?”
“It’s possible, sir.”
I shook my head. “Not likely. For one thing, you don’t look a damn thing like Paul Encinos, even from a distance. You’re a head taller and fifty pounds heavier. However, I suppose that maybe at night, with the adrenaline pumping, a cop looks like a cop.”
Torrez turned and surveyed the riddled patrol car. “And what about it being my car?”
I snorted. “First of all, it isn’t your car, Roberto. True enough, you drove it most of the time during your shift. But on days, Tony Abeyta was using it. And half the time Howard Bishop drives it midnight to eight. So…” I strode quickly over to the car. “And finally,” I said, holding thumb and index finger to gauge the height of the black number decals behind the rear window post, “these little numbers are only three inches high. We notice ’em because it’s part of what we do. But to the average civilian, one patrol car looks like any other. Who’s going to notice a number and assume that the deputy inside is Robert Torrez?”
I stepped away from the car. “Victor Sanchez is a hothead, Robert, and that’s what makes a case of mistaken identity even more unlikely. If he’s got a complaint, he’ll climb right into your face. An ambush from across a dark highway isn’t his style.”
“Should I go out and talk with him?”
“No. Let me do that.”
“You want me to come along?”
I smiled and shook my head. “I want you to keep doing what you’re doing. Finish with the car and make sure you have a set of perfect photos. Then, when the sheriff tracks down the make and model of tires from those casts, hunt the right species down and get some photographs of those, too. Estelle is putting the shell casing under the microscope and we should have fingerprints a little later, if our boy got careless. By then, we can start pushing the Office of the Medical Examiner for whatever the autopsy showed.”
I shrugged with resignation. “None of the roadblocks turned up a thing. I canceled them just before I came over here. If the killer was someone just passing through, he’s long gone anyway. If it was someone local, then maybe pulling down the barriers will encourage him to stick his head out. I don’t know. In the meantime, it’s important to pay attention to all the little details.” I nodded at his targets and stickers. “Good work.”
“You sure you don’t want company going out to see Sanchez?”
“I’m sure.”
The late afternoon sun was dipping toward the San Cristobal Mountain peaks to the southwest as I drove out State Highway 56. The air was brilliantly clear with no breeze. For the first four miles, I didn’t pass a single car, coming or going. A handful of cattle didn’t bother to lift their heads as I motored past. Goddamned pastoral, is what it was.