He gazed down at the various hoses and pipes that held him prisoner.
“I was thinking some chile would taste good right about now.”
“Francis wants you here overnight, sir. It’s a good idea, too. Just behave yourself.”
“There’s always delivery.” He grinned at Estelle’s withering look. “You been home to get some sleep yet? Stupid question.” He held up a hand to stop her from leaving. “What’s Mike say, by the way? You told me that Eddie went to Lordsburg to fetch him.”
Estelle took a deep breath. “That’s next on the list,” she said.
“Leave him to Eddie, sweetheart. Talk to them in the morning. Tell Jackie what you’re looking for, and let her go at it. You go home and get some sleep. And when you see her next time, tell your Aunt Sofía that I’m sorry I didn’t get over there this evening. I was supposed to help finish off the menudo.”
“I’ll have her bring you a bowl,” Estelle said, and saw the look of panic as Gastner jerked the sheet even farther up over the mound of his stomach.
“God, not here,” he said quickly. “I’m not my usual suave and debonair self just now.”
She bent down and kissed him lightly on the forehead. “I’ll keep you posted, sir. Don’t do anything foolish. If you remember something that you think I should know, give me a call.”
Chapter Nineteen
When Estelle left the hospital parking lot and drove south on Grande to the “four corners” intersection with Bustos, she found herself pausing at the light, even though it was green. A driver westbound on Bustos arrived at the light and looked across at her, puzzled. When his light turned green, he hesitated, and then accelerated away toward the west. Estelle watched him go. She recognized him, the sort of acquaintance seen at the grocery store a dozen times, perhaps earning a nod and smile when passing in the aisle.
The dash clock said it was just passing 11:00 p.m., an hour away from the end of that Christmas Day. What was this particular driver doing cruising the streets? Had he just visited Tommy Portillo’s Handi-Way convenience store down the street, grabbing a late-night donut just before Tommy closed at eleven o’clock? Maybe he’d run out of dental floss, just when his back molars had reached their limit of packed cracks. Or was he the one who had bashed Bill Gastner on the back of the head, and now, pleased at how well that episode had played out, drove around the village looking for another easy holiday score?
If someone had actually attacked Gastner-if Dr. Guzman was right-then that person, if not simply lucky, had calculated perfectly. Bill Gastner hadn’t surprised a burglary in process. He’d simply been walking toward the front-door stoop, keys in hand, ready to go inside. If the attacker had been surprised when Gastner drove in the driveway, if he’d been scouting the home for a possible burglary, he could have melted into the darkness without attacking and Gastner would never have been the wiser. Instead-if her husband was correct-he had struck with vicious accuracy, the sort of blow calculated to kill. Had he then stepped over the body, picked up the keys, entered Gastner’s home, and taken his time rummaging through the house?
The cold calculation of the crime was disturbingly familiar. Estelle gazed up Bustos toward the west. The taillights of the other vehicle turned south on Tenth.
Glancing to the left, Estelle let her foot slide off the brake and allowed the Crown Victoria to idle across the intersection. Janet Tripp had been approached after tapping an ATM machine for $350. It hadn’t been a confrontation. There were no signs of argument or confrontation, just one shot to the head, like a hit man. Take the money and run. Except the killer hadn’t run. He’d removed the body and dumped it in an arroyo north of the village. The body was bound to be found, but he’d achieved a head start, even if it hadn’t been as comfortably long as he might have liked.
South Grande was deserted, four lanes of black asphalt marked with moons of illumination from the sparse street lights. Window open, cool air whispering by, Estelle drove at not much more than a fast walk down South Grande, looking and listening with one part of her mind, the other off in the darkness somewhere.
Deputy Jackie Taber had parked her unit across Guadalupe Terrace from Gastner’s adobe, affording her a full view of the front of the property. Estelle let the car drift to a stop, blocking Gastner’s driveway. Behind her, she heard the click of a door, and in a moment Jackie stood beside the door of Estelle’s car.
“Collins is parked around behind in the pharmacy parking lot,” she said. “Nobody’s going to sneak around back there.” Gastner’s property had originally included five acres, but he had given most of it to Estelle and Francis three years before. The property now included the elegant, single-story Posadas Clinic and Pharmacy. Gastner had been left with a large, comfortable back lot overgrown with enormous cottonwoods, thick oak scrub, and a dozen other varieties of plants, most falling into the “weeds” classification.
“He’s stayed away from the house?”
“I told him to stay in his unit unless he actually had to confront somebody.” Jackie smiled. “That’s the extent of my guarantee. What’s the deal? Is Mr. Gastner okay?”
“He’s fine. And he’s lucky. Francis thinks that someone hit Bill on the head. If this guy then went inside the house, he had to use the house keys. I found those on the step. If he used them, then he just dropped ’em on his way out.”
Jackie remained silent.
“I haven’t checked inside yet,” Estelle added. “I borrowed Padrino’s keys at the hospital. There’s one for the back door, too. It’s under one of those little fake rock things right under the kitchen window. We need to check and make sure it’s still there.”
“Where do you want to start?”
Estelle stood quietly in the darkness, gazing at the old house. “Right at the gate, Jackie.”
The small courtyard, sheltered even from what little moonlight or starlight there might be, was a twenty-by-twenty-foot expanse of gravel and dirt with a flagstone walkway leading to the front door and the concrete step. The courtyard and walk were recent additions, built two summers before in a moment of boredom when Gastner had run out of other things to do.
An old shovel leaned against the blocks in the corner to Estelle’s left, marking the spot where Gastner had thought about planting a climbing rose bush. The shovel had yet to earn its keep, but he had gone so far as to mark the spot for the rose.
Estelle stopped and let the flashlight beam linger in the corner, illuminating the bent piece of rusted steel rebar projecting out of the ground at a haphazard angle. Now that she saw it, she remembered Gastner driving the length of steel in a couple of inches with the flat of the shovel, remarking that the hard-packed clay soil might grow the rebar just fine, but probably not the roses.
Keeping her feet as close as she could to the plastered wall, she crossed to the corner as Jackie added more light from the walkway.
“You think?” the deputy asked.
“I don’t know.” She slipped on a pair of cotton gloves, bent down, and with the tip of her index finger touched the top of the bent stake. It rocked easily in its hole, barely deep enough to sink through the crushed stone cover to the clay underneath.
“Let me get a large bag,” Jackie said, and Estelle knelt beside the stake, examining the ground. The crushed stone formed a uniform, featureless expanse. A busload of people could have stood in this corner and not left a single track. Whoever had assaulted Gastner could have crouched here, just as she crouched, and the twenty-four-inch-long piece of rebar would have presented itself as an easy weapon. But why not the shovel, itself heavy and lethal?
Estelle swung the light methodically, gridding the crushed stone surface in the corner. No cigarette butts, no gum wrappers, no blob of half-dried tobacco juice. Nothing indicated that a human being had stood here, waiting in the darkness.