I snapped out my flashlight and trudged back to the car. The coffee smelled wonderful as it gurgled out of the Thermos, and hit the Cigarette NOW! switch really hard. Leaning on a convenient fender, headlights illuminating the bridge ahead of me, I contemplated and sipped coffee. Tires make a lot of noise, and I could hear the approaching eastbound car even before it slowed for the village. In a few minutes, it crested the rise and slowed when the driver saw the cop car on the shoulder. The cop himself made quite a picture, fat and lazy with a cup of coffee, leaning on the front fender and admiring the heavens.
“Taxpayer’s money,” the driver might have mumbled. I lifted a lethargic hand in greeting and watched his taillights fade off to the east before they disappeared behind a rise.
Someone so heroically wired that he could slam his own truck to a stop, then plunge down into a raging torrent to save two petrified girls, enduring the pounding of the water and the bruising of the concrete until yet another pair of hands helped him up the abutment-hell of a guy. And yet years later, Larry Zipoli, that incredible man of action, had sat in his road grader like a lump while someone walked toward him with a rifle and put a bullet through his head. No dive for cover, no hand raised in protest.
I refilled with Sumatra, thought about that some more. Eighteen years can force a lot of changes in a man.
Next time we enjoyed a thunder boomer that stretched from cloud to ground in an unbroken gray wall of rain, I was going to drive down to this arroyo and watch the water. Maybe I should write a letter to the right bureaucrat up in the State offices. New Mexico liked to name things after heroes, and might mark this the Larry Zipoli Bridge-provided that the memory wasn’t smeared along the way.
Coffee drained from cup and bladder, I settled back in the car and saw that midnight had come and gone. I was as awake as if someone had blown reveille.
The Sheriff’s Department needed convertibles…at least they needed to buy one for me. As a distant second best, I lowered all four windows and let the prairie waft through as I motored-dawdled-back toward Posadas. State 61 morphed into Grande Boulevard as I passed under the interstate, and as 310 drifted along under the ugly wash of the street lights, I wondered, for the millionth time, why the village wasted so much money trying to beat back the darkness. After all, any burglar worth the name could afford a good flashlight.
Grande T’d into Bustos, and I swung west, even though the Don Juan de Oñate at Bustos and Twelfth would be closed. North on Twelfth, up and over the steel bridge across the flood control ditch that once had been an attractive arroyo, and through the neighborhoods bordered by Hutton. In a few minutes I found myself drifting the car to a stop, lights out, at the intersection with Highland, right where J.J. Murton had been parked when I lifted his badge, and just about where another car had been seen by Hugh Decker earlier in the day.
I was sure that the southwestern breeze here carried a bouquet subtly different than down at the arroyo. On Hutton, the air picked up urban scents-diesel, ragweed, irrigated and mown lawns, full dumpsters, the dust from dirt lanes. For a moment, I considered my newly refined sense of smell a gift, a reward for abstaining from corrosive cigarette smoke for seventy-two hours. Or an imagination in high gear, fueled by the beans of Sumatra.
As I got out in the quiet of the night, I pushed the door against the latch until I heard the sharp click. It seemed important not to have to hear the rude slam of a door. The intersection was unmarked by a stop sign, just a dirt T scraped in the desert. I shot the beam down Highland. The road grader with the hole punched through the windshield had been driven back to the yard. Nothing remained to catch the flashlight beam, not even a curious coyote.
The rumble of a big V-8 drew my attention, and I turned to see the dim shape of the car approaching on Hutton, headlights off. The patrol car eased to a stop behind mine, and I ambled back to greet my visitor. Eddie Mitchell disembarked, nudging his own door shut without even the click. That reminded me why I liked this burly easterner who had adopted our county. He didn’t talk a whole lot, but he seemed always in tune with his surroundings.
“Evening, sir.”
“Spectacular,” I said. I craned my neck back and looked at the heavens again, enjoying the vast spread until I felt the satisfying little pop of neck vertebrae relaxing into place. “Are you doing any good?”
“Some. There’s a group of kids downtown who ought to be home by now.”
I nodded across the field toward the nearest houses. “Hugh Decker claims he heard a single gun shot at three minutes after two, and then looked across his fence to see a car parked here, with a single individual walking back to it from the direction of the road grader.”
“Two oh three, sir?”
“Exactly. He checked his watch when he heard the gunshot. He didn’t recognize the person, though, or the car, or anything else. Just distant images.”
“But a car, not a pickup?”
“That’s what he says.”
“Color?”
“Medium to dark.” Just enough moon and starlight touched the young deputy’s face that I could see the ghost of a smile. “Yeah, I know-it’s the kind of vehicular description we all dream about,” I added wryly. “But it’s something. I don’t know what the hell what, but it’s something.”
“Is the chick coming on board?”
The question shifted tracks so fast that I was left on the siding for a few seconds. “The chick?”
“Your ride-along earlier today.”
“Ah. Miss Reyes. The chick. Yes, it looks that way. The sheriff offered her the job, anyway. Maybe after all this, she’ll have second thoughts, although I hope not. She’s one bright young lady.” Chick.
“Interesting.” His stony expression wasn’t exactly aglow with approval, though.
“I’m sure that you had the opportunity to work with some female patrol officers in Baltimore. The chicks.”
“Yes.” The reply was flat and noncommittal.
“She’d be our first, other than in dispatch.”
“She’s workin’ to be a patrol deputy, you mean?”
“Sure. I think it’s about time that Posadas joined the twentieth century, don’t you?”
“She’s a little on the petite side,” Mitchell observed.
“Maybe we’ll put her on a weight lifting program to bulk her up a little. We’ll find out how she does the first time that she has to respond to a bar fight.” That earned a flicker of a smile.
“Her uncle’s that old guy who lives out by the Torrance ranch?”
“That’s him. Her great uncle, Reubén Fuentes.” That Eddie Mitchell knew not only about Reubén but also that Estelle Reyes was his niece told me that either the deputy was most observant-which he was-but also that the staff had been discussing our new hire-and that didn’t surprise me.
“The old man who wears a gun most of the time.”
“That’s him. You’ve met him a time or two?”
Mitchell nodded. “Tonight he was at the Handi-Way, coming out with a brown bag. My concern was more for the four or five kids in the parking lot, not him. He was walking steady enough. Warm as it is, he’s still wearing gloves. He a closet cat burglar or something?”
I laughed. “There’s no telling these days, Eddie. I can guess what was in the brown bag, though. And he’ll be all right until he cracks the bottle. When he gets into that, we can all hope that he’s safely at home.”
“Might have been potato chips,” Mitchell said.
“Oh, sure thing.”
He shrugged and scanned the lights to the south. “The saloon in María is quiet tonight?”’
“Like a church.” I turned and smiled at him, amused that he’d known where I’d been. “Somebody reported me?”
“No, sir. I saw you heading south on 61. There’s not much else down that way.”