The front door, a massive, carved affair from a mission deep in Mexico, was recessed in the small courtyard. Had Gastner possessed the faintest tinge of green in his thumbs, realtors would have described the entryway courtyard as “inviting and charming.” As it was, it more resembled a fortress, plain and utilitarian.
Estelle pulled her small flashlight off her belt to navigate the short distance from her car through the gateless portal, across the courtyard to the front door, and stopped short. The small beam of light caught first a pair of boots, then corduroy trousers, and finally the large body lying half on and half off the single concrete step, head deep in a runty acacia that Gastner had allowed to grow to the right of the door as his “guard dog.”
“Padrino!” she gasped, and darted forward. The acacia was a nasty little bush, and its stubby thorns and sharp, leafless twigs had cut Gastner’s face in half a dozen places as he had crashed down.
Even as she checked the old man’s neck for a pulse, she realized that she herself was in danger of hyperventilating. She forced herself to breathe evenly, eyes closed, as her fingers traced along the side of his neck. Responding to her touch, one of his hands lifted from the gravel a few inches, and hovered helplessly.
“Padrino,” Estelle whispered. She flicked the light across his eyes, and saw him grimace and clamp them shut. Slipping her right hand behind his head, she reached across to pull a threatening acacia limb away from his eyes.
“Don’t try this at home,” Gastner said clearly.
Estelle couldn’t have laughed if she had wanted to. Holding his head in one hand, she managed to pull her phone from her pocket and dialed 911. Ernie Wheeler answered on the first ring.
“Ernie, this is Estelle. I need an ambulance at Bill Gastner’s house right now. I don’t know what the problem is. Just get one here.”
“Ten four,” Wheeler said quickly, and Estelle pocketed the phone, reaching up to cradle Gastner’s head in both of her hands. He murmured something that didn’t make sense. Loath to move him, Estelle simply waited, crouched at his side with his head in her hands. His upper body lay on the ground and his hips and legs lay twisted and awkward on the broad step.
After a minute, his hand slowly lifted until he could grasp her right forearm. He held onto her with a surprisingly strong grip. In the distance, she heard the ambulance, its siren piercing in the calm, damp air.
“I don’t know,” Gastner said. “Hell of a thing.”
His legs appeared to be straight, ankles and knees pointing in all the right directions. His breathing was shallow but regular, and his pulse was steady.
“A good argument for a porch light, sir,” she said. Her own pulse had slowed enough that her heart felt as if it might not rip loose after all. Gastner raised a single index finger to acknowledge the comment without moving another muscle. She shifted her hands in an effort to cradle his heavy skull and immediately sucked in a sharp breath even as Gastner winced. Her right hand came away wet with blood.
She could hear the siren marking the ambulance’s route down Grande, heard the vehicle brake hard for Escondido, accelerate again, and then slow for the sharp turn onto Guadalupe. Lights flashed across the cottonwoods, and the ambulance swung wide, then backed up toward Estelle, its own Christmas tree of lights winking.
Eric Sanchez appeared from the driver’s side, with Matty Finnegan making her way around the right side of the vehicle. While Sanchez opened the rear doors, Matty knelt by Estelle.
“Did he fall?” she asked as she slipped the stethoscope’s earpieces in place.
“I think so,” Estelle said. “I found him lying here just a couple of minutes ago.”
“I didn’t fall,” Gastner said with surprising vehemence.
“Easy, sir,” Matty said.
“He has a wound of some kind on the back of his head.”
“Hit something when he went over, I bet,” Matty said brusquely. “Sir, can you hear me?” She bent close, probing with her fingers while Estelle held her flashlight.
“Stop shouting,” Gastner said, and Matty laughed, grinning at Estelle. “He hasn’t changed a bit,” she said. “Sir, did you hit your head on something when you fell?” She looked over at Estelle and frowned. “He’s got a nasty laceration on the back of his head. Eric, we’ll want a good pad and easy pressure on that.”
“I didn’t fall,” Gastner said.
“That would explain the horizontal position,” Matty quipped. She slipped a blood-pressure cuff around his upper arm, and as she pumped, she turned to her partner, who had clattered the gurney close at hand. “We’re going to want the backboard, Eric. Pulse is 90, BP”-she paused as she held her light to read the dial-“just about 140 over 95.” She patted Gastner’s arm as she pulled off the cuff. “If I didn’t tell ya, you’d ask, right sir? Not too bad, though.”
Sanchez handed her a neck brace, and she deftly slipped it into place as he worked to secure a temporary bandage around Gastner’s head, tramping down the acacia in the process. “Nice bush,” she said as the last Velcro fastener grabbed into place. “Sir, we want to move you out of the vegetation. Are you up for that?”
Gastner grunted something that might have been a yes.
“Do you hurt anywhere else? Ankles? Knees? Hips? Back?”
“Absolutely fit,” Gastner said, and this time he managed to open his eyes. “Who are you?”
“I’m Matty Finnegan, sir. You know my mom and dad.”
“Of course I do. I know you, too.”
“That’s good, sir. We’re going to try and get you on the backboard.” That took considerable muscle and maneuvering, with Estelle holding Gastner’s head and the thick pad of bandage Matty had gauzed in place to cover the head wound.
Once Gastner was secured to the backboard and gurney, the three of them worked in careful unison to heft his portly carcass into the ambulance.
“Let’s rock and roll,” Matty said. “See you at the hospital, Sheriff,” she said, and when she saw how pale Estelle’s face was, she added, “He’ll be okay, Estelle.”
“I’m right behind you,” Estelle said. She could hear Eric Sanchez on the radio, advising Posadas General of an incoming head injury. She watched the ambulance pull out of the driveway and for a moment found herself unable to move. Common sense worked its way into her brain, and she realized that Padrino was now in good hands-there was nothing she could do for him at the hospital.
Behind her, the house loomed dark and cold. Still wanting to follow the ambulance, she forced herself to turn and walk across the small courtyard. It appeared that Gastner had been stepping up to enter the house, miscalculated, and careened into the acacia head-first. It was the sort of simple trip that a teenager would handle with a corrective skip. Gastner, seventy-one years old, overweight, and always fighting his trifocals, had managed a full gainer.
The crushed bush showed splotches of blood, but Estelle could see nothing against which he would have torn his scalp, unless he had first struck the sharp edge of the step.
She checked the front door and found it locked. Off to the left, her light caught the glint of keys, and she stooped to pick them up, recognizing the leather key fob. That made sense. As Gastner had stepped toward the door, he’d been fumbling his keys. When he went flying, so did the keys. She pocketed them and walked quickly back to her car, where she settled into the seat with a loud sigh.
“Caramba,” she said to the quiet night. She leaned her head back against the rest and closed her eyes, but her hands were on autopilot, finding the telephone. She opened one eye and regarded the display, then selected Tom Mears’s number.
“Mears.”
“Tom, this is Estelle.”
“Oh, good. Look, Terry will come over the minute we have that court order,” he said. “I wish I could say that we’ve found a magic bullet of some kind, but we haven’t. We need to know what’s on that ATM receipt.”