The bridge is nearly a foot higher than Twelfth Street before Twelfth ramps up on its southbound approach. When patrons of Don Juan’s were dining in the restaurant, they could hear the regular clatter as cars bounced from the asphalt of the street onto the old steel plates of the bridge. From the bridge, it was about a hundred feet to the intersection immediately beside the restaurant.
Fortunately no one else had been on the highway or in the crosswalk when Officer Thomas Pasquale experienced his magic moment. When it was over, we heard no call for an ambulance or the coroner, so we were reasonably sure Pasquale hadn’t suffered any more injury than a slam-dunked ego.
Estelle slowed the patrol car to a stop on the south side of the intersection and we surveyed the carnage. By that time, Deputy Tom Mears had set up a detour for both east- and westbound traffic. A few patrons of the Don Juan drifted toward the street corner to gawk, but there wasn’t much to see…just a trashed police car, on its roof in the middle of the street.
The skid marks and vehicular junk told me all I needed to know about how the car had come to turn turtle. My imagination had no trouble filling in the details.
Always competitive even in the dullest moments, Pasquale had been caught off guard by the dispatcher’s call. Maybe he’d been trying to grab a quick sandwich; maybe he’d been in the can reading a magazine. Whatever the scenario, he’d missed the call by a hairsbreadth. Back in the car, he heard the radio traffic and flew into action, trying to beat Sergeant Bob Torrez to the scene…which he could easily have done at a walk, since the sergeant was a dozen miles out of town.
Thomas Pasquale had blasted his patrol car onto the bridge with lights and siren ablaze and awail and his right foot pasted to the floor. No doubt he hoped for a scene right out of Hollywood’s best. What he got was something else.
I could picture the village’s patrol car, a somewhat long-of-tooth Chevy, launching just fine as it roared up onto the bridge, traveling who knows how fast. Unfortunately, Officer Pasquale had forgotten that automobiles aren’t motorcycles. There are no handlebars to haul back on so that the front wheels vault higher than the back for a graceful landing.
The old patrol car had taken the leap, nosed down, and crashed its worn chassis front-end-first on the hard pavement. Various parts gave up the ghost, the front wheels lost interest in working in unison, and after a couple of dramatic swerves that left black rubber cuts in the asphalt, the car tripped over itself and flipped.
I took a deep breath and shook my head. “Just remember,” I said to Estelle. “When you’re elected sheriff in a couple of weeks, reviewing Pasquale’s employment application is going to be one of your first jobs.”
“Sobering thought,” Estelle replied. “But it shouldn’t take long.”
Sergeant Bob Torrez was still working the intersection, tape measure in hand. He’d had nearly half an hour to take a few measurements, and he was making it last. It was probably the most fun he’d had in a long time.
Holding the dumb end of the tape was Posadas Chief of Police Eduardo Martinez. With him was a young state trooper whose patrol car was slotted into the patrons’ parking area of the Don Juan. If the trooper’s dinner was cooling, he didn’t seem to mind. He kept laughing about something. Chief Martinez wasn’t smiling.
I doubted that Thomas Pasquale was laughing either. I could see a dark shape sitting in the sergeant’s county car and assumed that it was what was left of the young officer.
“Give me just a minute,” I said to Estelle, and got out of 310. Torrez saw me and I waved a hand at him, not wanting to interrupt his methodical work pace. The passenger’s window of his patrol car was up, and I rapped a knuckle on the glass.
It buzzed down. Thomas Pasquale looked up at me, his face pale in the dull wash of the streetlights. He was holding a gauze pad above his right eye, and there was what might have been a speck or two of blood on the collar of his uniform shirt.
“Let me see it,” I said, and pulled his hand away. The cut was an inch long, just a nick along his eyebrow. I grimaced with irritation, but it was directed at Bob Torrez and Chief Martinez for letting this kid sit there dribbling blood when he should have been at the hospital.
“I hit the shotgun rack,” Pasquale muttered. “It’s nothing.”
I straightened up and beckoned him out of the car. “Come on,” I said, trying for the right combination of fatherly and brusque.
“Sergeant Torrez told me to-” he started to say, and then stopped, remembering the basics of rank.
As we started back to 310, I caught Chief Martinez’s eye. “We’ll be at the hospital,” I called, and the chief nodded, always perfectly content to let someone else orchestrate.
Torrez continued writing on his clipboard as he walked over toward our car. He looked up from his report as I opened the back door and slid in. I waved a grateful Thomas Pasquale toward the front passenger seat. Torrez correctly interpreted the irritation in my expression and said, “He refused treatment.”
“That’s fine. He’ll live, I’m sure. We need to ask him some questions, if you’re through with him,” I said.
“Who was the pedestrian?” Torrez asked.
“Wesley Crocker.”
“You’re kidding. Killed?”
I shook my head. “Just bruised, is my guess. Help Teddy clean up this mess. And keep your eyes peeled for a vehicle with damage to the right front, and flat black paint scraped off. If you need us for anything, we’ll be at the hospital.”
Torrez touched the brim of his Stetson in salute, and flashed a rare grin at Pasquale. I pulled the door closed and settled back.
During the brief ride, the young officer didn’t say a word. As we rolled past one of the convenience stores, several younger kids were in the parking lot and stared at us as if we were aliens. I’m sure Pasquale was glad that it wasn’t him sitting behind the steel prisoner’s screen in the backseat.
Estelle parked in the slot reserved for the hospital administrator. Two slots down, in another reserved spot, was Sheriff Holman’s brown Buick.
“Somebody let me out of this damn thing,” I said, and Pasquale shot out and unlocked my door. “We’re going to need your help, Thomas,” I said. “First, let’s make sure your eye isn’t going to fall out.”
“It’s fine, sir.”
“No, it isn’t fine,” I snapped. “It won’t hurt you one bit to have it checked. And I’ll sleep better. Humor me.”
He did humor me, and it did hurt. First, an X-ray technician shot a couple of pictures that proved the kid’s head was still rock solid, after commenting dryly that it was a “busy night.” I took that to mean he had finished a series with Wesley Crocker. Then Dr. Alan Perrone poked in three stitches that were as neat as an old lady’s embroidery. Pasquale tried not to flinch.
With the officer sporting a small, rakish bandage that might be mistaken for heroic if one were ignorant of the circumstances, the three of us left the emergency room and tracked down Estelle’s husband.
Patricia Schroeder, a young RN who knew my insides like a road map after my own visits to those hallowed halls, met us at the nurses’ station and pointed down the hall.
“The convocation is in 109,” she said. Her gaze flicked briefly to Tom Pasquale’s war wound and she offered the beginnings of a smile. It seemed to me that the young cop walked just a little straighter after that. Maybe he didn’t know that Nurse Pat was the wife of our district attorney, Ron Schroeder. It took more than three eyebrow stitches to impress her.
Room 106 was occupied by Peggy Hammond and her nervous husband, Leslie. Les saw us walk by and raised a hand in greeting. I nodded but didn’t stop. Les was the dealership service manager where I’d purchased my truck, and I didn’t need an awkward conversation about oil filters or about his wife’s missing gallbladder. Next door, 107 was empty. Room 108’s solitary occupant was an ancient woman with nasal tube, vein tubes, medication drips-the works. She wasn’t conscious as the parade went by.