Estelle Reyes settled into the chair across from my desk without so much as a drink of water, completely comfortable, completely at ease. My over-weight, over-caffeined, over-nicotined, under-exercised fifty-eight-year-old body could have used some of her discipline.
I passed paperwork across to her as I read through Larry Zipoli’s file, keeping my thoughts to myself. A half hour later, I tossed the folder toward her so she had someplace to put the stack of papers that she’d accumulated on her lap.
“None of this leaves the room,” I said. “Ever. Not to anyone.” Her nod was almost imperceptible, and I suppose I had no reason to be concerned. The day I’d spent with her hadn’t featured much more conversation than if I’d been driving around Posadas County by myself.
I folded my hands across my gut and relaxed back, closing my eyes. “So here is a man with a dozen infractions,” and I paused and looked at the note pad on my blotter. “Eleven separate incidents over the course of fifteen years.” I held up my hand and ticked fingers. “He wrecks a county dump truck and that’s put down to a ‘shifting load’ by the investigating sheriff’s deputy-who died of cancer a dozen years ago, by the way. You got to wonder how a few cubic yards of gravel shifts suddenly, but there you go. But Larry earns a letter of reprimand from Everett Carlyle, who was superintendent then, a year before Tony Pino got the job.” I closed my eyes again, seeing the parade of paper work as it drew a picture of an employee who might be a wizard with machines when sober, but a genuine liability when soused.
“Tony Pino is covering his own ass,” I said. “That’s what it amounts to. Ten of those incidents were on his watch. He sticks a letter in the file, but beyond that, what does he do? Does he turned Zipoli over to the county manager? To personnel? To any goddamn body? No.”
“Is he required to, sir?”
“I don’t know the answer to that,” I said. “Common sense would say ‘yes.’ But Tony never does. Larry Zipoli wrecks a truck, a couple of years later parks his county pickup in a bar ditch, ruins a taxpayer’s culvert with the road grader, is reported by a concerned citizen for drinking beer during his lunch hour-and we could fairly ask how many incidents there might have been that didn’t earn the goddamn letter from Pino.”
“Why didn’t he fire Zipoli long ago, sir?”
“Good question. The reason might be as simple as Tony Pino’s will power. Firing a long-time employee for something like this is damn hard to do…at least for some folks it is. ‘Well, he’s learned his lesson.’ That sort of thing. Except alcoholics don’t learn any lessons until tragedy forces the necessity. Zipoli could work magic with a road grader or back hoe even when half sauced. It could be as simple as that. Pino is short-handed, and can’t afford to lose an experienced employee. So he turns his back on all this stuff.” I waved a hand at the stack of papers. “No major catastrophes in the record-just a potpourri of little incidents.”
“It’s interesting that Mr. Pino continues to document all the incidents even though he’s disinclined to do anything further,” Estelle said. I enjoyed hearing the way her melodic Mexican accent touched the syllables. It made an awkward word like “disinclined” sound damn poetic. “I would think that puts considerable liability on him.”
“One would think so,” I agreed. “A lawyer would have a field day with all this during a trial for civil damages.” I stretched back. “You know what’s interesting? We don’t have a damn thing on Larry Zipoli in our department files. Not a damn thing. That’s how lucky he’s been-or how lucky the unsuspecting public has been.” I straightened the folder. “Going on twenty years on the job, and not a single ticket or violation. That’s a talent all by itself.”
For a long moment, I remained silent, staring at the front cover of Larry Zipoli’s personnel folder. “I need to talk with Marilyn Zipoli again.” I rested my hand on the folder as if it might levitate off the desk. “This is the kind…” I stopped when Eduardo Salcido appeared in my office doorway. His expression was one of resignation.
“I’m tired of talking to people who don’t know shit,” he said, and the mild profanity surprised me. He leaned against the door jamb, his hands thrust in his pockets. “I got two-two people who agree on what they heard or saw.”
“That’s better than none, I suppose.”
“How can you shoot a high-powered rifle in a quiet neighborhood and not have half the town hear it?” A bemused grin lit his features. “I tell you, jefito-we got to let people know when something is going to happen…tell them when they’re supposed to pay attention, so they can be good witnesses.” His frustration was understandable, of course. Nothing is more infuriating to investigators than witness behavior-those witnesses whose senses are simply turned off as they cruise through life, or those on the opposite end of the scale, who invent juicy tidbits in their eagerness to be of help to the police. And every shade in between.
“Who are the two?”
“You know the Deckers?”
“Sure.” Hugh and Tody Decker were active members in the Posadas County Sheriff’s Posse, a group of civilians who liked to dress up and ride horses in parades. The posse hadn’t chased a killer on the lam since the 1890s, but they were handy for managing traffic control during the Posadas County Fair.
“Tody says that her husband had just gone outside for something, I don’t know what. He came back in the house complaining about the shooting.”
“The shooting?” I asked incredulously. “You mean he claims he saw it?”
“No. He told his wife he heard a shot.” He nodded at my expression of skepticism. “Well, that’s what he said. He looked off that way, and claims that he saw a person walking toward a car parked right at the intersection of Highland and Hutton.“
The sheriff wagged an index finger. “Tody says she remembers exactly when that was, because Hugh had a dentist’s appointment in Deming, and she was worried about him being late. She looked at the kitchen clock while Hugh was fussing around trying to find his binoculars.”
“He found them, I hope.”
Salcido held out both hands in disappointment. “He saw the person get into his car. That’s all. He decided it was someone taking a shot at a coyote or snake or something.”
“He saw the gun?”
Salcido shook his head.
“Make and model of car?”
“A small sedan, he said it was.”
“That’s a goddamn big help.”
“Well,” Salcido sighed, “it’s something, you know. It rules out all the pickup trucks with the gun racks in the back window. That’s half the town, Jefito.”
“What time was all this? What did Tody say?”
“She said it was just after two. If she’s right, that cuts down the window of opportunity.”
“Huh.” I rested my chin on my fist. “But Hugh never saw the gun? That’s what he says?”
“That’s what he says.”
“Did Tody hear the gunshot as well?”
“She says she did. A single crack. That’s how she described it.”
I rose from my chair and walked across the small office to the two framed maps on the wall-one of Posadas County, the other the village itself. “The Deckers live right about there.” I jabbed a finger at the intersection of Sixth and Hutton.
“On the west side,” Salcido added.
“Right. He goes outside, looks to the north,” and I stroked a finger across the short distance toward Highland. “If the shooter was about here…” Both Salcido and Estelle Reyes let me muse with the map without interrupting my chain of thought.
“No one else saw a thing?”
Salcido hooked one of the military surplus folding chairs with his toe, turned it around and sat down with his arms folded across the back. He drew a small note book out of his shirt pocket and used his thumb to push through the pages. “There are a total…” he lingered on that word… “a total of seven people who heard shots. And the number varies, Jefito. From one to a whole string. Some heard a loud boom, like maybe a shotgun. Some heard what they assumed were firecrackers.” He looked up at me, the crow’s tracks at the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Now if you hear one rifle shot, how do you translate that into a whole string?”