“Sir,” she said, “Ron Bucky called me this afternoon, about an hour ago. The hair sample that Bob Torrez collected from the steel frame of the bleachers matches Maria Ibarra’s.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. “How could it match hers? I thought Bob found the hairs higher up than what her head would be.”
“Unless she was being carried, sir. That’s what it looks like. And it fits. If they carried the body from a vehicle to under the bleachers, it’s not surprising that in the dark they’d crack a head somewhere along the way.”
“Too bad it wasn’t their own,” I said.
“The most interesting thing is the blood workup.”
“No, the most remarkable thing is that Bucky got someone to come in and work on a Sunday,” I said.
“Saturday, sir.”
“Whatever. What did they find out?”
“Maria Ibarra was clean. No drugs, no traces, nothing. No alcohol, even, which surprises me. Dennis Wilton was clean as well. No alcohol, no nothing.”
“And let me guess. Ryan House was…” I stopped to let Estelle fill in the blanks.
“His blood showed a moderate dose of temazepam.”
“What the hell is that?” I asked.
“It’s a sedative. Francis says that it’s similar to Valium. The sort of thing someone would take if they couldn’t sleep.”
“Prescription?”
“Most likely.”
“That’s interesting, because this morning I made some house calls.”
“So I understand.”
I stopped short, amazed yet again at the workings of a small town’s communication system. “Who did you talk to?”
“I saw Maryanne Scutt at the drugstore.” Estelle chuckled. “She said her daughter was scared to death.”
“She should be,” I said. “That accident was a horrible experience.”
“No, I mean of you.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m crushed. I was perfectly civil.”
“I’m sure you were, sir. What did you find out?”
“A whole handful of kids sitting on the left side of the bus saw Dennis Wilton’s truck pass by. Every one of them said that Ryan House was sleeping.”
The phone went silent.
“Every one of the kids I talked to, Estelle. The Scutt kid even remembers seeing the seatbelt holding Ryan’s jacket in place. He was using the jacket rolled up as a pillow. One of the other kids remembers seeing a patch of fog on the passenger-side window, right in front of Ryan’s mouth. Where he was breathing.”
“So he was sound asleep.”
“And helped on by the temazepam, no doubt,” I said. “I wouldn’t…” and I stopped at the sound of the doorbell.
“Someone’s here,” I said. “Can you hang on a minute?”
I rested the receiver on the phone directory, shaking my head at the interruption.
“You want me to get it?” Crocker called from the living room.
“No, I want you to sit still,” I said. By the time I had reached the foyer, the front door was already opening. Dr. Francis Guzman stepped inside.
I stopped short, frowning. “You didn’t have to come over,” I said.
“I hope not,” he replied cheerfully. “But as long as I’m here…”
“Your wife’s still on the phone,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
The young doctor followed me toward the kitchen. He glanced down at the mess on the floor and then I could feel his eyes on me as I picked up the receiver. My left hand worked just fine.
“Your husband just arrived,” I said testily. “What did he tell you to do, hold me hostage until he showed up?”
“You were asking the questions, sir.”
“Well, it was a slippery trick,” I said.
“Behave, sir,” she said, and hung up. I turned to face Guzman. He wasn’t smiling.
33
“This isn’t a stubbed toe, padrino,” Dr. Francis Guzman said. “You don’t get to take a pain pill and feel perfect come morning.”
“I had a stroke?” I asked, giving in finally. He had marched me into the bedroom, seated me on the edge of the bed, asked me a thousand questions, and poked and prodded.
“Yes, an episode of some kind. You aren’t on blood pressure medication?”
“I used to be.”
“But you haven’t been taking it, I gather.”
“No.”
He sighed and shook his head, holding up his hands. “You know what a stroke is, Bill. If the heart pumps blood too hard through a weak vessel in the brain, the vessel pops. Or a vessel gets clogged with cheese from all those burritos and a portion of the brain suffers. It’s that simple.”
I clenched my right hand. “It feels a little better.”
Guzman’s mouth twitched in a smile, but there wasn’t much humor in his dark eyes. “You have a good imagination, padrino.”
“So what, then? What do I do?”
“The best and safest thing is to admit you to the hospital and run some tests in the morning.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then out-patient testing,” he said. “We can’t rummage around much inside the head, but an MRI will tell us something. It’ll give us something to go on.”
“That’s the gadget the hospital got last year?”
He nodded. “All two point six million dollars of it.”
“And all on my tab, too,” I said. “Can it wait until next week?”
The doctor stood up and looped his stethoscope around his neck. “I don’t know, padrino. You might not have another episode for years, or you might have thirty seconds left on the clock.”
“That’s an encouraging thought.”
Guzman thrust his hands in his pockets. His heavy dark eyebrows knit together and he chewed on the corner of his lip as he assessed his patient. “It puzzles me why you’re so stubborn, I suppose,” he said quietly.
“It’s not just a question of being stubborn, Francis. Right now, we’re in the middle-”
He cut me off with a shake of the head. “No. Now look. Do you trust me?”
“Trust you? Of course I trust you.”
“No, I mean do you really trust me? Do you trust me not to exaggerate, not to be just an old maid worrywart?”
“Of course. If I needed a new heart, you’re the one who would zip it in.”
“Well, then, picture it this way. You’re hanging from a loose rock at the edge of a five-thousand-foot cliff. Do you trust me to drop you a rope?”
“Sure.” I knew damn well what he was driving at, but that didn’t mean I wanted to hear it.
“And as I was handing you the end of the rope, would you say, ‘Hold it, Doc. I’ve got things I have to do?’”
“This isn’t the same thing.”
“Yes, it is, padrino. There are always going to be ‘things to do.’ That’s what life is…‘things to do.’ Right now, your ‘thing to do’ is to trust us to do what we do best, and then take care of yourself. Trust Estelle.”
“I do trust her.”
“Then let her do it,” Francis said, his voice taking on an edge. “The Posadas County Sheriff’s Department can function without you for a little while.” He saw me winding up to say something, and added, “Eventually it’s going to have to function without you, my friend. Period.”
I looked at him steadily, like an old bulldog figuring the chances of catching the neighbor’s cat. Guzman didn’t flinch.
“What do you want, then?” I said.
“I want you admitted to Posadas General right now. This evening. I want you monitored, and then first thing in the morning, I want to run you through a battery of tests so we’re not flying blind.”
I turned and looked out the window at the wooden shutters, closed over the panes so I could sleep anytime day or night. My mind conjured up an image of an old fat man sitting in a wheel-chair, drooling from the right side of his mouth, the fingers of his right hand clawed into the cuff of his pajamas.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Yes,” Francis said gently. A light knock rapped on the bedroom door, and he stepped over to open it.
I heard Estelle murmur, “I’m here,” and he nodded and closed the door again.