Until they could appear for preliminary arraignment before the judge, the two men could enjoy the sterile comfort of separate cells. There was no reason to doubt their pitiful tale.
Bruce Jakes had worked for an auto parts store in Hickory Grove, Indiana. The week before Christmas, his uninsured 1982 Datsun pickup truck, parked at the curb under a growing pile of snow, had been totaled by one of the Hickory Grove city snowplows. As that storm stretched on and on, the leaden skies over Hickory Grove remained bleak and oppressive, crushing the winter-weary Hoosiers.
Bruce Jakes’s string of bad luck and the dismal weather finally prompted Jakes to suggest, during a long drinking binge with his unemployed pal, Everett Wardell, that the sunny climes of the Baja were just the place for two Indiana slush-kickers. Neither had ever visited Baja, but Jakes had seen enough of it during coverage of an off-road race on ESPN that it looked like heaven compared to the mounds of snow. One thing led to another.
Responsible for closing the auto parts store at noon on Saturday, Jakes had done just that…after pocketing the cash portion of the week’s receipts. Secure in knowing that the store’s owner was enjoying two weeks in Georgia with a daughter’s family, Jakes then stole the well-worn Dodge sedan that belonged to the store owner’s wife. With pockets flush and the car sort of eager, Jakes and Wardell had headed west.
They had a full day’s head start. The store owner’s teenaged son reported both the stolen car and pilfered store the following Monday morning. By that time, Wardell and Jakes were long gone.
When they crossed the Mississippi River on Sunday afternoon, they had outrun the winter storm. The skies cleared and they motored on, convinced that the gods were smiling on their enterprise. The interstate seemed a safe place, and the old Dodge blended in with traffic.
The first tickle of sour luck struck Monday afternoon in eastern Oklahoma. Whether it was flu or food poisoning, a virulent bug laid them both flat on their backs, and the motel outside of Claremore became their home until they were able to stagger back onto the road.
Trading driving chores, they had made it as far as southern New Mexico before the weather turned bad again near Las Cruces, and then a bit later the right front tire gave up the ghost-almost exactly halfway between Deming and Posadas. Bolting the silly little space-saver spare on the Dodge, the two men wobbled ever westward into Posadas, stopping at the Posadas Inn on Christmas Eve. By now road-weary, they saw the inn as a safe haven for the night. They would tackle tire troubles the next morning, if they could find a service station open on Christmas Day.
Temptation smiled on them through the drizzle that Christmas Eve. In the motel’s parking lot, they chanced to pull in beside a nice, shiny new Buick LeSabre, warmed up and ready to go, with an owner who barely had the strength to haul himself toward the motel entrance. Everett Wardell had seen heart attacks before-both his father and two brothers had died of them. He could tell that the little stout man with the pale, sweaty face and bluish lips wasn’t going to need the Buick much longer.
Neither Wardell nor Jakes knew anything about border crossings, but with the impulsive theft of the Buick, life was becoming complicated enough that Mexico seemed like a good idea, sooner rather than later. Arriving in Regál innocent of the realization that now they were only minutes ahead of the law, they were astonished to find the border crossing closed for the night-whoever had heard of such a thing?
That presented a problem, since both men knew from the movies that both the big crossing behind them at El Paso and the one farther ahead somewhere in Arizona were crawling with Border Patrol and other cops at all hours of the day and night-holidays not withstanding.
The brainstorm of hiding at the little picturesque iglesia had been Wardell’s, part of his life philosophy whose cornerstone read, “When in doubt, do nothing.” Parking beside the bulk of the church, the Buick remained in the shadows, its license plate hidden. Had the headlights of Deputy Tom Pasquale’s patrol unit not glinted briefly off the Buick’s headlight chrome, the fugitives’ luck might have held.
The inside of the church was warm and inviting, and both Jakes and Wardell relaxed, chatting with the ancient man who kept the fire stoked. Had the scene not been interrupted so rudely a few minutes later by the young man and woman who, it turned out, were far more than just a young couple, Wardell and Jakes might have been invited over to the old caretaker’s house after church services for some holiday cheer.
Fifteen minutes after midnight on Christmas morning, Estelle Reyes-Guzman finished the preliminary paperwork and recorded the requisite message on District Attorney Dan Schroeder’s voice mail. She cranked out a brief press release for Frank Dayan, publisher of the Posadas Register, knowing that the release would prompt a flood of additional questions that she either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, answer.
The fugitives were in separate cells in the Public Safety Building lockup, no doubt staring sleeplessly at the ceiling and thinking that this was turning out to be one of their least merry Christmases. Confirmation of their story had already arrived from the Hickory Grove, Indiana, police department.
Stopping at the small newspaper office just long enough to slip the release through the mail slot, Estelle then continued on to the hospital, where she found that the extended Martinez family had pitched camp, taking over the small waiting room beside the intensive care unit. Father Bertrand Anselmo had stayed with them.
Estelle spent half an hour with the family after looking in on the chief. Eduardo Martinez remained unresponsive amid the welter of tubes and sighing machinery. His body was there, but he was clearly no longer in residence. Having done as much as he could, Dr. Francis Guzman had gone home, leaving the ICU in the efficient care of the unit nurse.
Shortly after 1:00 a.m., Estelle left the hospital as well. The rain had stopped. She drove slowly with her window down, savoring the sharp wind from the southwest that carried a bouquet of aromas from the wet desert. She could see a scattering of stars breaking through the scud over the San Cristóbals.
Turning south on Twelfth Street, she saw that her husband’s SUV was pulled into their driveway, tucked in close to the neighbor’s fence so that Estelle would have plenty of space to park her county car.
Sofía Tournál’s Mercedes was parked at the curb in front of the house as if poised for a swift getaway, but in truth, Francis Guzman’s aunt would have reveled in the opportunity to spend a long evening with Estelle’s sometimes acerbic mother and the two little boys.
If not feeling actually cheated or jealous, Estelle did feel a pang of regret that she had passed Christmas Eve investigating the exploits of two misfits from Indiana, her mood driven further into melancholy by Eduardo Martinez’s illness.
She punched off the headlights as she nosed the car into the driveway. As she got out, she saw that besides the porch light, a single light burned in the living room. She pushed the car door closed with her knee so that the latch made no more than a quiet click. Standing still for a moment, she inhaled the tang of the sharp, damp air. The antiseptic smells of the hospital still clung to her, the same smells that lingered on her husband’s clothing as a sort of permanent trademark.
The front door opened, and Sofía Tournál stood framed by the porch light.
“Qué noche,” she said as Estelle approached the step, then switched to her elegantly accented English. “The good doctor came home about an hour ago.”