“That too shall pass,” I said. “But it’s more interesting to think that ‘RH’ means Ryan House. And if it’s House, then we’ve got a good reason for a pickup truck with Ryan House in it to be interested in Wesley Crocker.”
I stepped away from the desk and toed the door of my den closed. “If Ryan House was somehow involved with the Ibarra girl’s death, and if he thought that Wesley Crocker had seen them…or had even caught a glimpse of their vehicle in the dark…”
“Maybe, sir.”
“Let’s say that Ryan House was riding in the truck driven by Dennis Wilton when it hit Crocker. Why, exactly, we don’t know. They go home and panic, seeing the bent grille guard. So, being the clever souls that they are, they take off the damaged guard, clean up the truck, and take off to the game for cover.”
Estelle nodded, but said nothing. I continued, “Impact with that boulder did a pretty thorough job of erasing evidence of the collision. In most people’s minds, entirely adequate, unless you look really close.” I stopped and frowned. “No one would take that kind of risk,” I said when the silence began to thicken.
My stomach growled, but I ignored it. Estelle reached into her briefcase and pulled out a small manila envelope. She produced three finger print cards and laid them side by side on the desk. One set was so clear it looked like it had been rolled at the office. The other was smeared and appeared to be only the bottom portion, across the lower third of the finger pad. The third was a print taken at the autopsy for Ryan House.
“This one,” Estelle said, and indicated the complete print on the first card, “is from a drinking glass used by Dennis Wilton at the hospital earlier today. It matches ten for ten with prints on file when the Wiltons applied for passports two years ago when they went to England. This one I lifted from the seatbelt buckle of the crash truck this morning.”
“It’s not very clear.”
“No, it’s not. But if you look in this area,” and she pointed with a pencil while she handed me a magnifying glass at the same time, “you’ll see enough similarities that you could imagine a match. Maybe one and a half, maybe two out of ten.”
I bent and studied the prints. “I’d like to see this under a stereo,” I said.
“That doesn’t help much, but some.”
I stood up with a grunt. “And so what. It’s the kid’s own truck. You’d expect to see his prints all over it.”
“This was taken from the passenger side seatbelt buckle, sir.” She indicated a point beside her left hip. “The lock side.”
“So?”
“This is a thumbprint, sir. It’s just about impossible to press the release of your own belt with your thumb. On either side, you’d do it with your index finger. Unless you were releasing the other person’s belt. If he reached across to unsnap the passenger’s buckle, he’d use his thumb, no matter which hand he used. If he reached across with his left hand”-and Estelle did so-“he’d use his thumb. If he reached down with his right hand, he’d use his right thumb.”
I sat down on the edge of my desk and crossed my arms over my belly, regarding Estelle skeptically. “What would be the point?”
“The point, sir, would be to kill Ryan House.”
30
Estelle Reyes-Guzman sat quietly while I mulled over that bombshell. Finally I said, “Do you have some reason to suggest that Dennis Wilton may have wanted to murder his best friend?”
“He’d have to be halfway suicidal to go about it like that, anyway. There are a thousand and one ways something could go wrong.”
“That’s true, sir. And I’ve been thinking a lot about that in the past few hours. The crash of that pickup truck into that rock is interesting in all kinds of ways. It’s an interesting set of circumstances. First, it appears that the truck was aimed at the rock, from the beginning. It never swerved, even after tearing through a fence.”
She stopped and looked at me, left eyebrow raised while I digested that information. “I’ve never tried it, sir, but I would think it would actually take some work to keep a vehicle going on track while it bumped and banged across a rough shoulder, through a fence, and then another hundred feet to the target.”
I shook my head skeptically. “We’ve both been to a number of accidents where the driver apparently just froze at the wheel, Estelle. That’s almost as common as jerking the wheel and causing a rollover.”
“Maybe. But in this case, it’s interesting that the impact was entirely on the passenger’s side.”
“That’s not hard to imagine, if you remember how the boulder was located, Estelle.”
She shook her head doggedly. “Second, the driver had the advantage of both an airbag and a shoulder harness-seatbelt combination. The passenger had neither. Third, the truck was traveling at a reasonable rate of speed. Plenty fast to be lethal without protection, but a pretty good gamble with protection, if the driver was the gambling sort.”
I shook my head. “Be reasonable, Estelle. There are lots of ways to murder people. I don’t think driving head-on into a boulder is high on the list.”
“Why not, if you were reasonably sure of getting away with it?”
“You could never be sure.”
“Not if you were an experienced adult. But a kid? They think in absolute terms, sir. And who would ever know?”
I laughed. “Well, if you’re right about all this, you know, for one.”
“But some kid, maybe with a touch of arrogance, who thinks police are as dumb as the one he comes in contact with all the time?”
“Thomas Pasquale, you mean?”
“Sure. If he’s the law enforcement experience level held to be typical, then the kid has every reason to be confident.”
I gazed at Estelle, trying to sort pieces. “I’ll ask it again: why would Dennis Wilton want to murder his best friend?”
Estelle put the fingerprint samples back in the briefcase along with the notebook and closed the lid.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Any guesses?”
“Well, sure, I can imagine all kinds of things. Maybe the two boys picked up Maria…she was pretty enough. And in this day and age, you never know what’s going through the minds of two young men in rut. Maybe things didn’t go so well, either through intent or accident. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what they might have had planned. She chokes and they panic.”
“And dump her under the bleachers? Christ,” I said. “Why wouldn’t they take her out into the middle of the prairie somewhere?”
“Because when the body was found, if it ever was, that would make it look like murder, sir. If the body was never found, you’re still looking at foul play. This way, by dumping her under the bleachers, police would be more apt to write it off as some sort of bizarre accident…especially when they discovered Maria Ibarra’s curious lifestyle.”
I looked at Estelle as all the jumble rolled through my mind. “What about the phone call? You think they called the village P.D. so that a cop like Tom Pasquale would respond?”
“That may be part of it, sir, but I think it’s simpler than that. The office number that was called isn’t recorded. Anyone who watches television knows, or at least believes, that all 911 calls are. By calling the P.D., they didn’t have to worry about a voice match.”
“We haven’t heard from the state lab, have we.”
“No, sir. But I called Lieutenant Bucky and asked him to expedite the processing of the hair samples that Bob Torrez found under the bleachers. I sent samples of both Dennis Wilton and Ryan House’s hair to the lab by courier earlier.”
“Where did you get Wilton’s?”
Estelle came close to smiling. “From his hospital pillow case.”