I reached in and slipped my finger behind his badge, pulling it gently forward so I could toggle the clasp. It released easily and I straightened up, dropped the badge in my shirt pocket and left Officer Murton to his dreams. I let 310 idle backwards a ways so I wouldn’t awaken the sleeping beauty, and a quarter mile down the road, I keyed the mike.
“Three oh six, three ten.”
“Three oh six, go ahead.” Deputy Scott Baker’s response was instant and alert. He hadn’t been snoozing, even though he was off-shift and earning himself some overtime.
“Things quiet?”
“That’s affirmative.”
“Be aware that you don’t have coverage on the west end,” I said, and let Baker puzzle about that for an instant or two. Somewhere in Posadas County, someone with too much free time would be listening to his scanner, and he could puzzle too.
“Ah, ten four, three ten. You want me to swing over that way?” He was probably sitting up straight, trying to see through the half mile of darkness to where J.J. Murton was parked.
“Negative. Just be aware. He’ll wake up after a bit.”
That earned a moment of silence. “Ten four.”
“PCS, three ten is ten eight.”
“Ten four, three ten.” Dispatcher Ernie Wheeler wasn’t sleeping, either, and I could almost hear the pucker of Ernie’s forehead.
The rest of the night was silent, nothing but the coyotes yipping and more vehicle registrations being checked. I accomplished nothing else. It would have been nice to say that by dawn, we had answers. But we didn’t. By three I’d had enough of being vertical, and went home to try for a few minutes sleep. I left J.J. Murton’s badge with dispatch. Murton probably had a more restful night than I did.
Chapter Eight
The Don Juan de Oñate opened at six, but the Aragons were always there early, and they never grumbled when I slipped in the back door. They probably enjoyed the rapture on my face when the first aroma of good stuff hit my nose. Some folks can’t function first thing without coffee. I had to have food, and at 5:15, I was wrapping myself around a gorgeously presented smothered breakfast burrito, the aroma of the green chile already loosening up the nasal floodgates. By 5:45, stoked by a short nap and now high octane fuel, I was set to face the day.
Eddie Mitchell’s grin-a rare thing-greeted me when I walked into the office.
“J.J. picked up his badge,” Ernie Wheeler offered. “He was pissed.”
“Well, good for him,” I said cheerfully. “Pissed but well rested.”
Ernie leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head with grand satisfaction. “First he thought it had just slipped off somehow, but Scott told him that he might want to check with you. He picked it up a little bit ago. Didn’t seem to want to stay around and gab, though.”
I nodded, thinking of the day’s challenges, all of them far more important than the village idiot. The staffing calendar told the story, and I grimaced. I needed about fifty people, and had a handful. “We’re going to do another sweep of Highland this morning, so I need every available body.” I hesitated. If I could round up half a dozen, I’d be lucky.
Both Ernie Wheeler and Deputy Mitchell would go off duty in a couple of minutes, but they weren’t clock-watchers. If there was something that needed doing, they’d do it. “When Barnes comes in, you want to work on this?” Ernie looked sincerely eager. The county manager wouldn’t be eager when he saw the overtime chits, but he didn’t have a corpse on his hands.
T.C. Barnes had managed to smash himself in a Highway Department accident years before, and joined us to work dispatch instead of sitting home. He had a casual attitude about clocks-to him, six a.m. meant anything ‘six-ish’-but Ernie never complained when his relief for the day shift showed up ten minutes late.
“I want to meet out on Highland at 7:30 on the button. Anybody you can find-I don’t care who, as long as they know how to take simple orders.”
“You want J.J.?”
“Sure. Why not?” I heard the front door open, and expected to see T.C. Barnes limping in to work. An attractive young woman-well, to me she looked about one click beyond a teenager-approached, and it wasn’t until she was within a dozen feet that I recognized her.
“Good morning,” I said. “I’m Undersheriff Bill Gastner. I understand you’ve talked with the sheriff.”
“Yes, sir. I interviewed with him yesterday.”
“You’re out and about early.” I offered a hand, and found Estelle Reyes’ grip firm, perhaps a little reserved. She’d come a long way from the little tyke I’d first met in Tres Santos, a long way from the last time I’d seen her at the high school. Rueben Fuentes’ grand niece had matured into a poised young lady. Rich olive skin set off a set of enormous, bottomless, black eyes. She’d cut her hair since the last time I’d seen her, now keeping it short and elegant. As if headed for a job interview, she wore a tan pants suit, the creases in the trousers military sharp.
“We were going to meet at nine?” I glanced at the wall clock.
“Yes, sir.” She didn’t offer an explanation of why she’d arrived at 6:07 a.m.
“How about now, then,” I said. “We’re going to get busy here in a few minutes.”
“I thought that might be the case,” she observed. She included both Eddie Mitchell and Ernie Wheeler in her greeting. I wasn’t surprised that Mitchell responded only with the briefest of nods, but Ernie looked uncomfortably flummoxed. One of those gangly young men who was easily embarrassed, his eyes were locked on Ms. Reyes as if she’d just stepped off the pages of a calendar or from the silver screen.
In my office, I hooked a chair out of the corner and slid it closer to the desk for her, then settled in my own creaky swivel chair. “So…I haven’t seen Reuben in a couple of weeks. How’s the old badger been?”
“He’s all right, sir. The usual old age complaints.”
I nodded. “And your mother?”
“She’s just fine, sir.”
Finding her file in the right hand drawer of my desk took a moment, and she waited patiently, hands relaxed in her lap. I cut to the chase. “Why ever would you want to work for us?” An intelligent young lady, on the gorgeous side of beautiful-working as a deputy sheriff for $19,000 a year in one of the smallest, most isolated rural counties in New Mexico-it didn’t make stereotypical sense. But my guess, from what little contact I’d had with this first child and now young lady, was that there was nothing stereotypical about Estelle Reyes.
“It’s an interesting area. And close to home.”
“Oh, we’re interesting, all right. What draws you into law enforcement?”
She hesitated for a moment, her dark eyebrows knitting. “The puzzles, sir.” A trace of a smile touched her face. “You spoke at school once, and I remember you saying that.” She made a circle with her hands. “That a difficult case begins with bits and pieces, and the challenge is to make them coalesce into something that makes sense.” She spoke in measured tones as if working hard to control a strong accent. And not many folks could use words like “coalesced” and make them sound natural.
“I see that I need to be careful about what I say.” I laughed, relieved that she hadn’t claimed the need to “help people,” the usual unthinking response. Her résumé was mercifully brief. “An associate’s degree in criminal justice from State. That helps. Planning on continuing with school?”
“Eventually, sir. When I can afford it.”
“On what we pay, that might be a while. But there are lots of scholarships out there. Many go begging.”