Mitchell laughed. “You’re kidding. The chief didn’t bother with summary paperwork, Estelle. At least not back then. We got what we got, which isn’t much. It looks like the chief’s habit was to make an incident report, file it, and that was that.”
Those incident reports showed that Hank Sisneros had tried Chief Eduardo Martinez’s patience half a dozen times for various petty complaints before his arrest in May 1990, for DWI. That arrest was the last one recorded in the folder.
“This is it? Nineteen ninety is the last entry? Fifteen years ago? What does the county have on him?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Mitchell said. “I checked. Unless Bill remembers something.”
“Just a vague recollection that Hank was both a drinker and a fighter. He must have moved to Deming about then, or what?” Estelle asked. “This is the last entry. He suddenly starts on the straight and narrow after this DWI arrest in 1990. Either that, or he moves.”
“Something like that,” Mitchell said. “I don’t know the details. All this is before my time.”
“And I don’t remember,” Torrez said when Estelle looked his way. “Ask the walking directory,” he added, nodding in the direction of Bill Gastner’s exit.
“I will, when he comes back from his call. So…the Sisneros family were the chief’s neighbors. That’s interesting. When I was talking to Essie Martinez, I wondered why she should remember so much about Hank Sisneros. She knew that Hank didn’t get along with his wife, for instance. With Irene.”
“At least half the town would have known that,” Torrez said.
“I suppose that’s true. Not the half I live in, though.” She shrugged. “But it makes sense if Hank and Irene Sisneros lived right next door to the Martinezes. They’d hear every word.”
“Essie didn’t volunteer that they were neighbors. That’s kind of interesting.”
“No, she didn’t.”
Mitchell made a face. “How discreet.” He pursed his lips and whistled tunelessly. “Maybe there are other things that Mrs. Martinez conveniently didn’t notice or remember.” He pointed at the folder. “Take a look at the fence incident. About the third item from the back.”
“The fence incident?” She replaced the 1990 DWI report and leafed backward.
“That one,” Mitchell prompted. “Also 1990, by the way.”
Chief Martinez had been economical with words, with one brief paragraph written in tiny, neat block letters that used only a small portion of the space that the Uniform Accident Report form allowed:
Operator says he had borrowed dump truck from Wilton Griego, and was attempting to dump load of fines on driveway. Operator said parking brake failed, and vehicle rolled across the street and into fence and corner of tool shed at 407 South Sixth Street. Vehicle undamaged. Altercation with owner of shed. Counseled both operator of truck and owner of shed. Owner of shed says he will file will insurance company. Photo attached.
Estelle turned the report sideways so that she could examine the faded instant photo that had been stapled to the bottom of the form. The older-model dump truck had been moved by the time the photo was taken, and was parked at the curb. It appeared from the chief’s diagram and notations that Hank Sisneros had backed the loaded dump truck into his driveway, parked, and gotten out to release the tail gate prior to engaging the dump box. The old truck had lurched out of gear, ambled down the slight gradient of the driveway, bumped across the street and over the curb, and nosed into the neighbor’s decorative fence and the metal storage shed.
“‘Owner of shed,’” Estelle read, and looked up at Mitchell. “Brad Tripp.”
“Ain’t that interesting?” he said.
“Yes, it is,” she said. “‘Altercation with owner of shed.’ I like that.”
“Really descriptive, isn’t it?” Mitchell said.
Bill Gastner thumped into the room, and Estelle could see by the scowl on his face that he’d been less than successful in finding a short cut to Janet Tripp’s military records.
“Long shot,” he grumbled. “I called a sergeant buddy of mine who just retired. He’s got connections, still. He says that if I send in an official written request and call again a week from whenever, there might be someone who knows something who isn’t on vacation until the end of winter.”
He stopped short when he saw the three silent faces. “What?”
Estelle held out the accident report and he took it, taking a moment to shift his trifocals so could read the tiny print.
“This is the goddamnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said after a minute. “‘Counseled both’? Christ.” He shook his head. “But Eduardo was good at that. Counseling.”
“Did you know that at one time, all three lived door-to-door?” Torrez asked. “The chief, Sisneros, and the Tripps?”
Gastner’s face wrinkled in perplexity. “I’ll be goddamned,” he said. “No, I didn’t know that. What’s Essie say?”
“No mention.”
“Let’s ask her again,” Gastner said, and handed the accident report back to Estelle. “And ask the Tripp sister. What’s her name?”
“Monica. We haven’t talked to her yet,” Mitchell said.
“I’m not sure I’d wait until tomorrow,” Gastner said. “And I’ll be the bad guy and bring this up…. Mike didn’t mention any of this either.”
“On its own merits, there’s not much here to remember,” Estelle said. “This long ago, maybe there’s no bearing on anything that happened this weekend. Why would he remember this stuff?”
“That’s one way of looking at it. I’ll talk to Essie again, if that’s what you want,” Gastner offered. “It might turn out that she really does have a bum memory for things that happened fifteen years ago. And maybe not.”
“I’ll go with you,” Estelle said.
Torrez pushed himself to his feet with a painful grimace. “You do that. In the meantime, I think we need to find Mike,” he said to Estelle. “In 1990, he would have been a teenager. A kid’s memory is usually pretty good.”
Chapter Thirty-four
“Let us have a moment,” Essie Martinez said, patting her oldest son’s hand. Ray Martinez looked skeptically at Estelle and Bill Gastner, then shrugged.
“If you need anything…,” he said, and Essie patted his hand again.
Essie watched him leave the kitchen, and Estelle could see the quiet pride in her eyes. In everything but years, Ray was a copy of his late father.
“He’s doing so well now,” Essie said, and Estelle nodded, although she had no reference to what the “now” implied-whether the chief’s eldest son was a late bloomer, or had had his own share of troubles, or had experienced any number of other snarls that can alter the best laid plans. “Please,” the chief’s widow continued. “Sit.” She beckoned them to the kitchen table. “What can I get for you? You see?” She gestured at the laden countertops. “We have enough food for an army.”
“Nothing, thanks,” Estelle said. She glanced at Gastner and saw that the former sheriff was eyeing a particularly dramatic layer cake that had already been sampled, but he grimaced and turned away. “Essie, we need to talk with you again.”
“But I’ve told you all I can remember.”
“Maybe I can help,” Estelle said. “We’d like to hear what you recall about the spring of 1990.”
Essie did a fair job of looking blank. “That’s fifteen years ago,” she said. “Por Dios, how would I remember something like that.” Her eyes flicked toward Bill Gastner, then off into the neutral distance. When Estelle didn’t continue, Essie’s gaze wavered uncertainly. It’s there, Estelle thought.
“You had some interesting neighbors at the time,” she said after a moment. “The Sisneros family lived next door. You didn’t mention that when we spoke earlier this morning.”
Essie drew in a long, deep breath, leaning back in her chair with both hands braced against the table. “Well,” she began, then stopped. She pulled a wadded tissue out of her pocket and dabbed at her left eye. “Just Hank,” she corrected. “He bought that little house a couple of years before, when the Estancias moved out. He was going to fix it up as a rental, I think, but most of the time it just sat empty. When he and Irene divorced, he moved in and stayed there. Just for a few months. Irene, she wouldn’t have anything more to do with him. And then she went to Lordsburg and married that guy.”