Bag Limit (27 page)
That night, even the coffee couldn’t keep me awake. I closed my bedroom door, content to have a dark corner for retreat. My mind was a jumble of possibilities and anticipations. But instead of lying there in the dark staring at the ceiling, I fell into an exhausting series of cinematic dreams, each more ridiculous and disjointed than the first.
I awoke at one point—at least I assume I awoke…the three-inch-tall red numerals of the clock made sense and told me it was 3:47—after arguing with Francis Guzman about where he should park his Porsche. He had reserved a spot in the new clinic’s freshly paved parking lot, but it was hidden from my kitchen window view by one of the large cottonwoods. I tried to explain to him that if he wanted me to keep an eye on his exotic machine while he was busy inside, then he needed to park it where I could see it. He didn’t appear to understand.
The next time I awoke, the clock announced 5:12. I stared at it for some time, trying to will my eyes into focus to make sure that either the numbers weren’t lying or my tired brain wasn’t scrambling the signals. For a die-hard insomniac, a full night’s sleep can be a rare thing.
The house was dark, and if the children were up to mischief, there was no way to hear them through the thick adobe walls and the massive wooden doors. I turned my back to the clock, enjoying the silence. I tried to imagine what early morning was like in a busy city like Veracruz. The place probably never went to bed at all. Traffic up and down the coast, or inland to Cordova, would be as constant as the flow on any inner loop in any large city. The Guzmans couldn’t sit out on a patio in the evening and expect to be wrapped in such companionable silence.
I knew I was kidding myself, of course. My bedroom was surrounded by two feet of dense adobe. If I got out of bed and went outside to my own patio, what I’d hear would be the traffic going by on the interstate a quarter of a mile away.
I grumped in disgust and rolled back over, swinging my feet to the cool tile floor. I slipped into a robe that Maria always folded over the back of the chair at the foot of the bed. She had high hopes of civilizing me. Normally I wouldn’t have bothered, but the house was full of people.
The single light over the kitchen range didn’t broadcast light down the hall, so I snapped it on and went about the routine of preparing the coffeemaker. When I was sure it was working hard enough to push water past its calcium-plated innards, I returned to my end of the house, showered, and got dressed. I hadn’t worn a uniform since I’d accepted the appointment to the sheriff’s post the previous spring, and the green and brown flannel shirt with heavy brown corduroy trousers looked like a good choice for the fitful autumn weather.
By 5:40 that Monday morning, I was standing in the kitchen again, fully dressed, a cup of steaming coffee in hand. The pull of my normal routine was powerful—to slip out the front door and spend the early morning hours cruising the highways watching the county wake up. This time of year, the sun would sneak around the northeast end of Cat Mesa, striking diagonally through the tawny prairie grasses, hunting shadows. Dawn was a few brief moments when everything in the county stood out in sharp relief.
I sighed. I cherished every soul in the house at that moment, and didn’t begrudge their visit one iota. But I liked my own company and I liked my own schedule. With six o’clock coming up, I was already several hours behind. Hell, half the county would be up and at ’em before I was even out of the house.
After refilling my cup, I stepped out the back door, closing it gently behind me. The air was crisp and still, the thermometer by the kitchen window touching thirty-eight degrees. I stepped away from the house, away from the light in the kitchen, and looked up through the cottonwood limbs. A billion or so stars looked back, just beginning to fade as dawn worked at the horizon.
I heard the doorknob rustle and turned to see my grandson.
“Hey, there,” I said. Tadd was wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt, and no shoes. “There are goat-heads out here, by the way.” He stopped short, aware of the awful pain that those little, triangular seed spikes could inflict. I ambled back to the patio and gestured with the cup. “There’s coffee.”
“Smells good,” he said, and stretched. “And five minutes, by the way.”
“Until what?”
He grinned. “The boys are awake. I could hear them talking and plotting.”
“Ah. Thanks for the warning. Is your dad up?”
“Yeah. He’s in the shower.”
“How about breakfast out,” I said. “The Don Juan opens at six. My treat.”
Tadd frowned. “Well, I was gonna do pancakes, if you didn’t mind.”
I laughed. “Why would I mind, Tadd? I was just trying to save you a little work. You’re supposed to be on vacation.”
Tadd shoved his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders against the bite in the air “Francisco said he didn’t think I knew how to make ’em. In his mind, only his mother knows how to do ’em right.”
“That’s how it goes,” I said. “Is there anything you need from the store? They’re open by now.”
He shook his head. “You didn’t have any syrup, but we got some yesterday.”
I regarded my grandson with affection. “You’re good at this planning business, you know that? I don’t know what I’m doing from one minute to the next. Come on inside, before you freeze.”
Opening the outside door to the kitchen was the signal.
“Padrino!”
Francisco shouted at the top of his lungs. He rounded the corner of the kitchen island and collided with my legs. I had enough warning that I was able to hold the cup well away, only a minimal amount of coffee hitting the tiles.
“Easy, you little brute,” I said. “Where’s your brother?”
“C. G. went to wake up Mama and Papa.”
“I bet they appreciate that.”
“He always does,” the little boy said, as if that’s just the way the world turned.
“As soon as everyone’s up, we’re going to make some breakfast. What do you think of that?”
“That will be okay,” he said, and transferred his attention to Tadd, who was rummaging in one of my cabinets. “My mama will show you how to make pancakes,” he announced. He crouched and peered into the lower cupboard, one hand resting on Tadd’s shoulder.
“I know how to make pancakes, Frankie,” Tadd said.
“No you don’t. And my name’s not Frankie. Use that bowl there.” The two of them emerged with a large mixing bowl in hand.
“This ought to be something,” I muttered. “In case of emergency, the number of my insurance agent is right there, above the phone.”
Tadd grinned. “Under control, sir.” And I guess it was, since the seven of us sat down promptly at seven around the large kitchen table. Francisco and Carlos looked on wide-eyed as Tadd showed them the proper way to construct a pancake sandwich, a mammoth thing that combined eggs, pancakes, bacon, butter, and syrup in meticulous order. All that was missing was green chile, but I didn’t mention that.
I had cut a forkful of pancakes that reduced my stack to exactly half, following Francisco’s instructions on how to preserve the symmetry and integrity of the stack, when the telephone rang.
Tadd was up at the moment, returning to the table with the coffeepot.
“Shall I get that?”
“Please,” I said, and sighed. I had enjoyed a pretty good run—a decent night’s sleep and half a breakfast without interruption. “After Tuesday night, I’m just going to pull the damn phone jack out of the wall,” I muttered.
Tadd answered the phone in his usual efficient style, listened for a couple of seconds, and nodded. “Just a moment, sir,” he said, and turned to extend the phone toward me. “It’s Deputy Wheeler at the Sheriff’s Office, Grandpa.”
With one hand on the table and the other lightly on top of Francisco Guzman’s little head, I rose to my feet and maneuvered my way around to the phone.
“Gastner.”
“Sir, we’ve got a bad situation down south involving some hunters. Undersheriff Torrez has responded, but he asked that you come into the office ASAP.”
“I’m on my way. Give me about four minutes.”
I hung up and turned to look at the six faces. “Sorry about that,” I said.
“Anything we can do?” Buddy asked.
“Nope. Well”—and I stopped in my tracks—“there is. Show Dr. Francis the back acres. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Regal?” Estelle asked when our eyes met.
“I don’t know, sweetheart.”
For a heartbeat or two, she looked as if she might want to ride along, but I shook my head. As I left the kitchen, I pointed at Tadd. “Lunch today is my treat,” I said, and left before he had time to answer.
Ernie Wheeler was standing by the dispatcher’s console, a cup of coffee in one hand and a pencil in the other. He was in the process of saying something to Deputy Jackie Taber as I walked in—and both of them laughed. Ernie saw me walk through the door and his face immediately went serious.
“Sir,” he said, and set the coffee down on a small table behind him, well away from the console and all of its sensitive electronics equipment. “There’s a hunting accident of some kind down at the head of Borracho Springs.”
“Who’s on the way?”
“The undersheriff, Deputies Pasquale and Bishop, an EMT crew, and we just heard that Doug Posey is on his way with another Game and Fish officer. They were running a roadblock over near Animas. Oh, and Linda Real just headed out.”
I turned and looked at Taber. “Stick around for a bit, all right?” She nodded.
“Do you know what happened?” I asked.
“All we have is the original call-in, sir. It’s a cellular phone call from a Jerry Walsh. Here, I can play it for you.”
I waited while he manipulated the autotape. It was a slick gadget, allowing us to record all telephone or radio communications, and play back at any time, with the record feature still engaged. If someone called while we were listening to a previous recording, even that call was locked in and recorded.
“What time did this come in?”
“I logged it at seven-oh-two, sir.”
The first thing I heard was Deputy Wheeler announcing himself, followed by a bunch of static and unintelligible voices. Wheeler’s voice was loud in comparison.
“Sir, I can’t understand you. Please try to speak slowly and distinctly.”
“God, I need help,” a man’s voice then said, and we could hear loud breathing, as if he were running and trying to talk at the same time. “He’s pushed her off, and now he’s taken a shot at me.”
“Where are you, sir?”
“I’m…just a second…I don’t think he can see…oh, shit.” Sounds of scuffing and scraping followed, with more unintelligible background. “Hello?” the voice said finally.
“Sir, where are you?”
“Listen,” the man said, sounding more in control. “This is Jerry Walsh. I need help, before my stepson goes crazy and starts up again. There’s no time…”
“Where are you, sir?”
“I…I’m not sure. I think we’re in a ways from Borracho Springs. That’s just past the camp. About three miles off…no, five or six miles in from Fifty-six, then on Forest Road 122, I think it was.”
“Has someone been hurt, sir?”
“My stepdaughter,” Walsh said. “She fell. He pushed her right off those rocks…no, wait a minute.” More loud breathing and scuffling followed. “That son of a bitch is trying to work his way around so he can get another shot at me.” A loud noise in the background could have been a muffled gunshot or a car door slamming. “Son of a bitch.”
“Sir…”
“You gotta send help. Oh…Christ…what’s this?” For the count of five, the phone was silent. Then the voice whimpered, “Not now. Come on…”
The recording went dead.
“We weren’t able to raise anything else, sir,” Ernie said. “The caller identification says it’s a cellular number issued to Jerry Walsh of Del Rio, Texas.” He paused to see if the name registered. It didn’t for a moment, and without waiting for me to plod through all my memory files, Wheeler added, “Scott Gutierrez’s stepfather.”
“There’s nothing else on the tape?”
“Nothing, sir. That’s all we know.”
“Hunting accident, hell,” I said. “They’re down there shooting at each other, for Christ’s sake.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jackie, let me have the keys to the Bronco.”
She handed them to me, and Wheeler was in the process of saying, “Sir, do you want…” but he was talking to my back.
“Jackie,” I said over my shoulder, “the unmarked unit is right here by the door. Make sure it’s got a full tank. Then stay put. I don’t know if someone’s going to be heading back up this way or not, but I sure as hell don’t want any door out of the county left open.”
The Bronco smelled a little of perfume when I slid in, and I had to kick the seat back so the steering wheel didn’t hit me under the chin. It was one of our newest units, and I headed south on Grande with the engine screaming.
“Three oh eight, this is three ten.” I rounded the curve onto State 56 just as Torrez came on the air.
“Three ten, three oh eight. Go ahead.”
“Three ten is just leaving the village. Ten-twenty.”
“About…” Torrez said and hesitated, judicious as ever. “About a mile on Forest One Twenty-two off Fifty-six. Coming up on Borracho Springs. Three oh six is right behind me.”
“Did you copy that shots were fired?”
“Ten-four.”
“Then be careful.”
“Ten-four.”
“Three oh six, did you copy?”
Pasquale’s voice didn’t carry the same note of glacial calm, but he managed to make his cryptic, “Ten-four, three ten,” sound as if he were responding to a minor fender bender in a parking lot.
Three miles east of the Broken Spur Saloon, a dirt road intersected State 56 and angled off to the south. The county didn’t bother to blade it, since school buses didn’t make pickups anywhere along its length. After less than a mile, the road cut into Forest Service property and became Forest Road 122. Once a year in late summer, the U.S. Forest Service drove the grader along it to knock the rocks off and fill the ruts as far as Borracho Springs, one of the premier camping spots for hunters.
The spring hadn’t dripped out of the rocks in years, but it was obvious by the litter and trash that water wasn’t the drink of choice anyway when a day of hunting was over.
The terrain rose swiftly after the campsite, blending into the rump of the eastern slope of the San Cristóbals—rugged canyons with jagged and crumbling granite that had killed its share of careless hikers and hunters.
Fourteen minutes later, I braked hard for the turnoff onto the dirt road, damn near sliding past it. The Bronco jounced across the cattle guard and fishtailed on the loose gravel.
For the first mile, I didn’t need to lift my foot. The road was the width of the Bronco and fairly smooth. I rounded a sweeping corner where the road avoided a deep arroyo and came upon a Posadas County Emergency Services ambulance parked by the fence in front of the Forest Service cattle guard.
An EMT stepped out of the unit and across the road. I opened my window and slid the Bronco to a stop.
“Sir, the undersheriff told us to wait here until he was sure of the situation,” she said. I didn’t bother to take time trying to remember who she was.
“Outstanding,” I said. “Stay put.” She nodded and stepped back. “Were you behind Linda Real?”
“Yes, sir. She went on ahead.”
“Wonderful,” I said. In another mile, the Forest Service road cut its way up out of the bunchgrass and creosote bush into the few scattered live oaks, juniper, and cholla. Why the deer liked the area, only they knew.
Gigantic boulders dotted the rising slope. Many of them were large enough to hide a house—much less an unbalanced young man with a high-powered, scoped rifle. The route wound this way and that and finally, just after the road reared damn near vertically to climb over a massive granite dike, it cut hard to the right, around the flank of mountain that hid Pierce Canyon and Borracho Springs. A bullet-riddled sign announced
BORRACHO SPRINGS, 1/2 MILE,
with an arrow pointing off to the right.
There was no way to guess where the path went just by guesswork. To the uninitiated, the road would have to levitate straight up, but the original bulldozer driver had been adept at finding the various slices and dices that wound the road up the hill.
“Three ten, three oh eight. You’re coming up on us in about a quarter mile.”
I had just enough time to consider the brake pedal before I went around a final rock outcropping and saw a collection of county vehicles. As I slid to a stop, I quickly counted heads. Linda Real was sitting in her own Jeep, and the other four marked units were all nosed into the same collection of trash cans that the Forest Service provided, and that no one apparently used.
Off to the side was the white Durango with Texas plates that Scott Gutierrez had been driving when my son and I had crossed his tracks in Regal during the early morning hours on Sunday. To the left of it was one of those small pop-up campers. If it had been used the night before, it wasn’t obvious. All the gear was still neatly stowed.
What must have been one giant, spectacular crash eons before, had left a series of boulders that provided a barricade for the springs. At one time, water had even pooled beneath the boulders’ knees, but that had dried up sometime in the 1880s. The rocks afforded adequate cover for us, protection from someone who might be up the hill and trigger-happy.
I saw Torrez and Pasquale standing together with New Mexico Department of Game and Fish officer Doug Posey and another young man in civilian clothes. Sergeant Howard Bishop was in the process of plodding toward them from his unit, a rolled-up map in hand. Torrez was talking on the phone.
Jackie Taber’s binoculars were on the passenger seat, and I scooped them up as I slid out of the vehicle. The mountainside loomed above us, massive and silent.
“Sir,” Torrez said as I approached, “I got Walsh’s mobile number, but it’s busy. I’m seeing if the cellular operator can patch me through as a third party.”
“Any sign of anybody up there?” I scanned the rocks with the binoculars.
“No, sir.”
I continued my sweep across the mountainside with the binoculars. “Do we know anything about this situation other than what we heard on the initial phone contact?”
“No, sir.” Torrez dropped the phone from his ear and regarded it with impatience. “Nothing.”
“And nobody’s come out since that call?”
“Not as far as we know.”
“We came in from the west,” Posey said. His was the slow, measured cadence of West Texas. “By the way, sir, this is Officer Wade Kearns.”
I shook hands with the young critter cop, then stood with my hands on my hips, gazing up at the mountainslope. “Well, this is a hell of a deal,” I said.
Torrez nodded. “If he was calling from a spot just beyond the springs, then he should be just above these rocks. He should have heard us approach.”
“Give him a holler,” I said.
Torrez nodded and slipped into his unit. The public address system was spectacularly loud, and all of us stared uphill as if we could see the undersheriff’s words bouncing off the rocks.
“Mr. Walsh? James Walsh? This is the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department. Can you hear us?”
We waited, straining. There was no breeze to tickle the vegetation, just the sound of our own pulses in our ears.
Torrez repeated the message, waited a minute, then said, “Scott Gutierrez, can you hear me? This is Undersheriff Robert Torrez. Can you hear me?”
The hills remained silent.
Torrez tossed the mike onto the seat of his unit. “We need to go on up,” he said.