I glanced at the wall clock. “Twenty-five minutes.”
Holman was already on his feet. “I’ll take care of it. You stay here.” I watched him hustle off, and shook my head. I must have figured the dead could wait attendance. I didn’t worry about explaining my preoccupation to Holman. What was going to be tough was explaining why I hadn’t taken the Beretta when it was offered to me.
***
After a while, the hospital didn’t even smell anymore. I didn’t notice the polish on the floor. Holman had returned, and for an hour or more we talked. Now he sat with his hands clasped between his knees, head twisted, slightly to one side, eyes staring without registration at the old issue of Sports Illustrated on the table beside him.
Estelle Reyes and Bob Torrez had shifted their operations from the park to the sheriff’s office, and every twenty minutes one or another of them called us and got the same negative answer. At a quarter to five, when there still wasn’t the faintest hint of dawn behind the curtains, Estelle Reyes walked into the waiting room. She looked so goddamned prim, like a grade school teacher ready to lecture the troops…except there was a little fatigue tremor twitching her lower lip.
“Officer Hewitt was apparently talking with the five teenagers,” she said without preamble. “Three of them say he was trying to buy grass. Two of them think he was really after something harder. A couple of the kids were just hangers-on. They don’t know what was going on. One of them said they all thought Hewitt was ‘funny,’ whatever that means. I think they were just hanging out, no particular, cohesive group. If any of them had actually been into drugs, been ready to sell, Hewitt would have suckered them in, that’s for sure.”
“And if all this was going on at midnight or after, where the hell were the village police?” Holman asked bitterly.
“And then Fernandez arrived,” Estelle Reyes continued, ignoring the sheriff’s question. “One of the kids was so shook when the shooting started that he crapped his pants. He ran home. Howard Bishop went to talk to him.”
“Who wouldn’t panic?” I muttered morosely. “I’m surprised it was only one.”
“And then?” Holman said.
“They all say that Benny Fernandez came across the grass like a man possessed. From the east side of the park.”
“Over by the apartments?”
“Right. Now, even in the dim light, Officer Hewitt would have been easy to recognize. The tallest of the five kids was five feet six inches. Hewitt is six-three.” Estelle looked at the paperwork on her clipboard, and took a deep breath.
Holman looked at me. “Did Fernandez ever have a chance to meet Hewitt? Did he know him?”
I shook my head, and Estelle continued, “They agree that Fernandez said something, but none of them understood him. It’s possible it was something in Spanish, who knows. He pushed Hewitt very hard. ‘Violently,’ one of the kids said. Like a football player. Hewitt apparently was caught off guard and stumbled backward and fell. He wasn’t able to catch himself, and went down hard. Two of the kids said that they saw Hewitt’s gun strapped to his ankle as he fell. Apparently, Fernandez did too. One of the five youngsters saw Fernandez pull out a ‘very large automatic.’ That’s how he described it. At that point, three of them agree that Hewitt said something like, ‘Oh, shit.’ Fernandez fired once. None of the kids are sure what happened, but it seems likely that Hewitt tried to roll out of the way. At the same time he pulled his own revolver from his ankle holster. Fernandez fired twice more. One of the youngsters says he heard the bullet hit Hewitt.” Estelle looked pained as she thumbed through her notebook. “‘It sounded awful,’ the kid said. They all agree, and this is important: that Hewitt fired once, while lying on his back, after he was wounded. We’ll get the autopsy report later, but I was just down at the morgue. The bullet hit Benny Fernandez just above his left eyebrow.”
Holman nodded slowly. “You just never know, do you.” He looked at me. “And up on the hill, Fernandez was cogent? Even calm, you said? Rational?”
“All those things,” I replied. “He even seemed relieved to be going home, relieved that it was over.”
“But apparently it wasn’t,” Holman said.
I looked at Estelle Reyes. “None of the five kids saw Fernandez before he started running across the grass toward Hewitt?”
“No, sir. They said that there were several people out all around the park. Apparently the late hour didn’t brother anyone. Certainly not the kids. They said they were getting nervous, though, that the village police might drive by. But they said Hewitt laughed and told them he’d fixed that up good. Something about cross-eyed headlights.”
“He did that, as a matter of fact.”
Holman asked, “Did Hewitt make a buy from any of the kids?”
Estelle Reyes shook her head. “Apparently not. We’ll have to ask him, to be sure. But those kids were scared enough about the whole thing that I think they would have told me. I get the impression they thought he was some kind of big-city freak. He made them nervous.”
“He enjoyed playing the undercover role to the hilt,” I said. “Maybe too much so. He had nowhere near enough experience. We should have realized that. I should have monitored what he was doing much more closely.”
Holman slapped the arm of his chair lightly. “This is no time for self-flagellation, Bill. Sure, maybe he was inexperienced. Maybe you should have confiscated Fernandez’s gun. But that’s all wonderful twenty-twenty hindsight. What we need to know is what triggered Fernandez. When he left you, he was mellowed out and homebound. What, about an hour later? About that? You had time to go out to the airport for a while. An hour later, he dashes into a park, charges into a gang of kids, and blows one of them away. We have to know exactly why.”
“There’s only one person who saw Fernandez before he ran into the park, and that’s Art Hewitt,” I said. “He was able to tell me that he saw a person he thought was Fernandez talking to someone on the sidewalk on the east side of the park. Now, Doc Sprague lives over there, in those new apartments, and he says that he heard the shots. But there was no reason for the doc to be looking out beforehand. He says he didn’t see anyone.”
Holman looked up at Estelle Reyes, and he put his fingers against his lips, deep in thought. We waited, and finally the sheriff said, “But there’s no reason for Hewitt to make something like that up. So what do you plan to do?”
Even though the question wasn’t addressed to me, I was ready to answer, but Estelle put her small notebook back in her pocket and said, “Until we know exactly what happened, we keep digging. There are a lot of people who live around that park. We’ll talk to all of them. And somebody might come to us.” She turned at the sound of footsteps coming up the polished hallway behind her. Dr. Alan Perrone’s gown was blood-spattered, but he was obviously too tired to care. With him was Eva Young, a middle-aged surgical nurse who would manage to look stylish and groomed in the middle of a volcanic eruption.
She nodded at us and headed off toward the nurses’ station.
“We’re transferring Mr. Hewitt to Albuquerque,” Dr. Perrone said. He held a manila envelope in one hand, and motioned down the hall with it. “Come on into the office for a minute.”
The three of us obediently followed, and he closed the door behind us.
“How’s he going to do?” Holman asked, and Perrone pulled out the X ray and snapped it into the wall light.
“We’ve got some real problems,” Perrone said, facing the X ray. “But to give it to you in a nutshell.” He pulled a pen from his pocket and used it as a pointer. “You can easily see the largest fragment in situ way over here, right behind the heart.”
“Christ,” Holman muttered.
“The point of entry was over here, exactly under the last rib on the right side. There was minimal damage to the ascending colon, but considerable to the right kidney. About this point, the bullet began to shatter.” He shot a quick glance at Holman, frowned and turned back to the X ray. “Considerable damage to this lobe of the liver. Then tearing of the central tendon here. The diaphragm.” His index finger traced a diagonal, upward path. “Most worrisome, of course, is the cardiac damage. This is the bullet’s center core and part of the brass jacket. It shows up very plainly. We’ve managed to achieve some stability with the patient, but arrangements have already been made to fly him to Albuquerque. They have far more advanced facilities there, and in addition”-Perrone raised an eyebrow-”they have Dennis Chatman. He’s the best cardiac surgeon I’ve met. Luck was with us because he was in Las Cruces, and he agreed to meet the air ambulance and ride over. That way, he can be with the patient en route.”