Before She Dies (3 page)

Chapter 4

The cot was pushed against one wall of the jail cell with the brown wool blanket crumpled at the foot. The sheets and pillowcase told me all I needed to know. The final seconds of Sonny Trujillo’s life had not been a pretty way to go.

“Were you here?” I asked Deputy Tony Abeyta.

He shook his head. “No, sir. Not at first. Gayle called me on the radio for assistance. She was the only one in the building.”

I grimaced. That wasn’t unusual for a tiny department like ours, but it wasn’t going to make Gayle feel any better.

“We both attempted CPR until the ambulance arrived. It was just a few minutes.”

“Is everyone else at the hospital now?”

“Yes, sir. Sheriff Holman went directly there from home. And Gayle called Estelle just after talking to you. She went over to the hospital as well.”

I turned away from the cell and started down the short hallway that led to the front offices and dispatch. “You’ve written up a statement of what happened?”

“Yes, sir. It’s in the folder on your desk.”

“All right. Why don’t you call Bob Torrez back in for a little while to sit the radio. Stay here by the phone until Bob gets here. And then patrol central. We may need…” I waved a hand. “Who the hell knows what we’ll need.” I heard voices out front.

Frank Dayan stuck his head around the corner, saw me, and said, “Ah, here he is.”

“Hello, Frank.”

The publisher backed away to give me room to maneuver in the narrow doorway.

“Some night, huh?” he said.

“Yes, it is.”

“Do you have a couple of minutes?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I was just down at the hospital, and Sheriff Holman said I should come and talk with you.”

That’s because he doesn’t want to be bothered talking to you
, I almost said. “Frank, we’re not going to have anything for you for several hours yet. It’s that simple.”

He followed me past the row of bulletin boards and the snack machines by the drinking fountain. “Linda was going to stick around for a little while, if that’s all right with you.”

“Have at it.”

“You’ll have a statement, then?”

I stopped, turned, and looked at Frank Dayan with a combination of weariness, exasperation, and curiosity. If the Omaha, Nebraska, where he was from was not the center of the hot news universe, then where did that put Posadas, New Mexico? Long before first light of a Saturday, Dayan was worrying about his six-page Monday edition.

“Frank…yes. Now give us a break.” He nodded and back-pedaled a step. I caught Gayle Sedillos’s eye and beckoned her into my office.

I closed the door and put my arm around her shoulders as we walked across toward my desk. I saw that she was carrying the brown hardcover ring binder that included the jail activity logs. “You all right?”

“Yes, sir.” She took a deep breath. “I think so.”

“Did you check on Tammy? In the last few minutes?”

“Yes sir. She’s sleeping.” The three upstairs cells were reserved for juveniles and, on the rare occasions when we had them, women. The cells were small, neat, clean, and remote.

I motioned toward the swivel chair by the window. “Do you want anything?”

“To go home and go to bed,” she said. She managed the beginning of a grin.

“Wasn’t Tom Mears supposed to be working desk midnight to eight?”

“He called in sick. Ernie stayed until I came in at two.”

“Half the world is sick,” I said. I leaned back in my chair and tried to twist a kink out of my neck. “So tell me what happened.”

Gayle Sedillos was the best dispatcher and office manager we’d had in years. She had begun working for the Sheriff’s Department the summer of her high school senior year, and for the next six years had been steady, bright, and efficient.

I had tried, along with others, to get her married off on several occasions. We’d had no success. The standard department joke was that Bob Torrez, six-foot-four, movie-star handsome, and eligible, would eventually fall for Gayle Sedillos, petite and pretty, like a Mexican porcelain doll—if only we would schedule them on the same shift often enough.

She opened the log. “I checked the cells at two-oh-five downstairs and two-twelve upstairs. Trujillo was awake and restless. Woodruff was asleep.” Her finger traced the entries down the page. “I checked every fifteen minutes until about three. At that time I heard coughing sounds from upstairs.”

“Upstairs? Miss Woodruff?”

“Yes, sir. When I checked, I found that she had vomited. I asked her if she was going to be all right. She said she was, and that she was sorry about making such a mess.”

“That was at three or shortly after?”

“Yes, sir. I changed her pillowcase and cleaned up the floor by her cot. She kept apologizing for not being able to make it to the sink.”

“Did you call anyone?”

“No, sir.”

I made my tone as gentle as I could. “You should have, you know.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even if it’s just calling the road deputy in for a few minutes. When you have to be in a cell with a prisoner, call someone. You’re not a jailer.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If no one else is available, call me. But call someone.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then what happened?”

She consulted the log again. “I checked every five minutes or less, and by three-twenty she seemed to be resting comfortably. Trujillo was sound asleep. I was more worried about the Woodruff girl. When I checked at three-twenty-five, Trujillo was restless again. He wouldn’t say anything and I was going to call Deputy Abeyta in, but before I got to the radio, I heard violent gagging and choking sounds from his cell.”

“That’s at three-twenty-six or so.”

“Yes, sir. I went back to check and Trujillo was convulsing.”

“He was choking?”

“Yes, sir. I could see that he was turning blue. I tried everything I knew how to do. He lost consciousness and I tried to put a ventilator in place.” Gayle wiped one of her eyes. “It sure wasn’t like the CPR classes, sir.”

“You went into the cell with him, by yourself?”

“Yes, sir.”

I shook my head. “And at what time did you call for assistance?”

“Right after that,” she said. “I ran down here and called Tony.”

“And you asked that he call the ambulance?”

“Yes, sir. I didn’t want to spend the time at the radio. He called as he was driving back here.”

“And you continued your efforts at resuscitation until the ambulance crew arrived?”

“Yes, sir.”

Deputy Abeyta opened the door long enough to tell me that Bob Torrez had arrived to sit the radio and that he would be on the road.

“Is the young lady riding with you?”

“Sir?” Abeyta asked.

“Miss Real. The reporter.”

“Oh.” The young deputy looked over his shoulder. “I guess so, sir. She’s standing by the front door.”

“Have fun,” I said. “And when she asks for details about either Tammy Woodruff or Sonny Trujillo, just tell her I’ll have a statement sometime today.”

“Yes, sir.”

The door closed and I played with a pencil for a few minutes while I framed my thoughts. “When the ambulance arrived, was Trujillo showing a pulse? Were there any signs that he was responding?”

“No, sir. I continued CPR until Deputy Abeyta arrived. He relieved me and worked until the EMTs arrived a few minutes later. Neither of us could find a pulse, and from the time I started CPR, Trujillo never took a breath on his own, sir. I knew he was gone.”

“And after the ambulance arrived, you called Sheriff Holman, me, and Estelle.”

“Yes, sir. I called you first, then Estelle. And then the sheriff.”

“Sonny wasn’t living at home. Did Holman call the Trujillos?”

“He said he would try to locate them, sir.”

“And did someone call from the hospital to let you know that Trujillo had, in fact, been pronounced dead?”

“Yes, sir,” Gayle said softly. “Estelle called.” She scanned down the page. “At four-twenty.”

“Just before I walked through the door.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Gayle, I hope you know that you did everything you could.” She looked down at the floor. “These things happen,” I said. “We can’t have an ambulance on standby for everyone on the planet at every minute.” I glanced at the wall clock. “You can be sure that Sheriff Holman will be stopping back here when they’re finished at the hospital.”

For the next fifteen minutes, Gayle and I talked about inconsequential things until I was sure she was all right. Then I left her alone in my office so that she could write out a detailed statement without interruption of what she had just told me.

Out of habit, I walked upstairs and checked on Tammy Woodruff myself. She was curled in a tight fetal position, sleeping the deep sleep of the truly drunk, still hours away from the dawn of a new day and the new life she’d made for herself. She’d missed all the excitement, and that was just as well.

Try as hard as I might, I couldn’t bring myself to feel too sorry for Sonny Trujillo. As I trudged back downstairs, I did wonder how Frank Dayan was planning to bolt this entire mess together for his newspaper. It would be easy to misunderstand the incident at school with Trujillo, and just as easy to make a cesspool out of his death…even though he’d been given medical assistance for his bruised nose before he was jailed.

The back door opened and Sheriff Martin Holman walked in. Usually, he was as dapper as they come, impeccably dressed and with a catalog of just the right things to say poised at his lips. Like the talented used car salesman he had once been, he could convince almost anyone of almost anything at almost any time.

This wasn’t one of those times.

He saw me and said, “Jesus, Gastner,” as if that just about covered it.

Chapter 5

Sheriff Holman sputtered, ranted, and barked for about five minutes, and I listened without comment. Finally he stopped, took a deep breath, and looked sideways at me.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Sure.”

He walked over and toed the door of his office closed. “So what do you think we ought to do?”

“First of all, Martin, it doesn’t really matter what the newspaper does or says in all of this. We have no control over them.”

“I know that.”

“Then don’t worry about it.” He looked heavenward and I added, “From what Gayle tells me, from the way she describes the incident, it sounds more like Trujillo had a heart attack than anything else. An autopsy will show for sure. And second, if Sonny Trujillo’s parents decide to sue us, and they probably will, that’s what the county attorney is for. They don’t have a case, but they can do what they want.”

Holman shook his head. “I’m not worried about that.”

“Fine. Let’s take one thing at a time. Now, if it wasn’t a heart attack, Trujillo’s death was probably avoidable.” Holman looked pained, but I ticked the points off on my fingers. “Yes, we could have had a deputy with him the entire night, baby-sitting. And yes, we could have checked him into a hospital for observation, even though a physician said that it wasn’t necessary and gave us a signed release. And yes, we could have done a lot of things that we didn’t do. But we didn’t. We assumed that he was intoxicated, which he was, and that he’d sleep it off.” I shrugged. “Just like millions of other drunks before him.”

Martin Holman picked at a perfectly manicured fingernail until he realized what he was doing. He thrust his hand in his pocket. “You know what worries me?”

“No.”

If Holman hadn’t looked so pained, I would have smiled. He’d been back less than a week from another one of those ten-day seminars that tries to teach administrators some aspect of the convoluted criminal code. As he was discovering, it wasn’t really the letter of the law that mattered.

Holman walked around his desk and sat down in the overstuffed leather chair with a thump. He motioned to the swivel chair. “Sit, sit, sit,” he said. “You just stand there like some calm Buddha. It makes me nervous.”

I let pass his comment about my considerable girth. “I don’t dance well,” I said.

The sheriff smiled ruefully. “I wish to hell I had your nervous system.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I mean, I don’t give two craps if I win the election in November or not.” He held up both hands and hastily retreated from that ridiculous remark. “Well, that’s not true. I do care. But I want to do what’s right in this mess. And you’re going to have to give me a hand. I mean, you’ve got a zillion years of experience in these things.”

“Right,” I said. “That’s why the newspaper has a picture of me breaking a fat kid’s finger and punching him in the nose.”

“He was twenty-one, wasn’t he?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Should he have been in the hospital? I mean, really? I don’t care what the doctors said. What do you think?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Martin. He didn’t die because of any injuries from the brawl. He choked to death on his own vomit. Either that or his heart got insulted once too often. Sure, his nose was probably a little bit plugged. But hospitals don’t admit patients for broken noses and cracked fingers. It’s as simple as that. And if Dayan wants to make a story out of nothing, I guess that’s his department.”

“That’s what worries me,” Holman said with finality. “Having a prisoner die in the county lockup isn’t exactly ‘nothing,’ as you put it. But maybe Dayan will have the good sense not to run it on page one. The classified section maybe. But see, everyone knew Trujillo and his record, and quite a few of them probably will think he got just what he deserved. But the others…” He picked up a pencil and tapped a dozen dots on his desk blotter. “Did Trujillo have the booze with him at the game?”

“I have no idea. I’m sure no one else does either.”

Holman took a long, deep breath. He looked at me for a minute, assessing. “You normally don’t cover games, do you?”

“No. The deputy who took the job has the flu. Or did have.”

“What prompted you to unload your gun before going in the gym?”

I shrugged. “The odds of running into armed felons inside a school during a basketball game are pretty remote, Marty. If I needed a loaded weapon, it would take only seconds to put the shells back in the gun. The most likely thing to happen during a game is just what did happen…a scuffle. The last thing I want is to have some high school kid jump on my back and grab a weapon out of its holster.”

“And that’s just what did happen,” Holman said.

“More or less.”

“Do the other deputies do the same thing? I mean, do they unload their weapons when they’re at a game?”

“Yes. At least they’ve been told to do so.” I grinned. “They all think I’m foolish for ordering such a thing, too.”

“Imagine if it had gone off,” Holman said, and I grimaced.

“I’d rather not, thanks.”

Holman glanced at his watch. “Karl Woodruff will probably be down before long to spring his little girl. He called me back, about an hour after we arrested her. We talked for about twenty minutes. I’m pretty sure he’s going to swear out a complaint against Victor Sánchez.”

“He can do that.” I shrugged.

“Woodruff contends that the bartender shouldn’t have continued to serve his daughter after she was already so obviously intoxicated.” I chuckled and Holman looked surprised. “It is against the law, Bill. To serve an intoxicated party.”

“Yep. It’s always somebody else’s fault, sheriff.”

“Well, wouldn’t we be within our rights to ticket Sánchez for violation? Shouldn’t Sergeant Torrez have done that?”

“I suppose. By the letter of the law. I can’t think of when we ever went after a saloon keeper because one of his adult patrons strayed across the double yellow. If we go after one, we have to go after them all. All of them. We won’t have time to do anything else. Although the way the mood of the country is right now, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it come to that.”

“Will you at least go out and have a talk with Victor Sánchez?”

“Sure, if you think there’s any point.”

“He’s a hothead,” the sheriff said. “I want him to know from the beginning that we’re not singling him out, or his saloon, or anything like that. If Woodruff presses the issue, that is. Maybe he won’t. I just don’t want Victor Sánchez jumping on one of our deputies because he thinks we’ve singled him out.”

“It would be more to the point to talk with Karl Woodruff,” I said. “But I’ll swing around there this afternoon.”

By two that afternoon, I finally broke away from the blizzard of paperwork and a half dozen other irritations—not the least of which was attending Tammy Woodruff’s arraignment before Judge Les Hobart. She was cleaned up and pretty, just like the photograph the
Register
had run on the front page three years before when she’d been the Posadas County Fair Queen.

Her father was conspicuous by his absence. Maybe he was sticking to his guns, forcing his daughter to face the court by herself.

And Tammy was contrite…or a damn fine actress. Judge Hobart fell for it and whacked her with a hundred-dollar fine and DWI school on the one charge and restitution for the broken camera to satisfy the assault charge.

She paid with a personal check and left Judge Hobart’s mobile home-office with a smirk on her face. Sergeant Torrez looked at me and shrugged as if to ask why he’d bothered to get out of bed for this show.

I’d promised Sheriff Holman that I would talk with Victor Sánchez. The sheriff was right. In an election year, good community relations were top priority.

After the arraignment I drove out State Highway 56 to the southwest. In four miles I passed the first of the Sánchez family enterprises, Wayne Feed and Ranch Supply. Victor Sánchez’s brother Toby owned that business. He’d bought it from Dick Wayne’s widow ten years before and never bothered to change the name over the door. I couldn’t see that there were enough ranchers left in Posadas County to support the place, but maybe he sold a fortune in windmill parts.

The highway swept around the bulge of Arturo Mesa and then crossed the bridge over the Rio Salinas…a dry wash with pretensions during summer thunderstorms. On the west side of the bridge was a sign that announced the quiet little village of Moore. It had every reason to be quiet. The one house and the mercantile building that still stood under the brittle limbs of half a dozen dead cottonwoods were vacant and vandalized.

Three miles farther on the land flattened out, dotted here and there with marginal ranches that grazed a handful of bony, tough, range cattle. The Rio Guijarro snaked under the highway at mile marker seven. This stream managed to pass a little water most of the time.

Seeing an opportunity, Victor Sánchez had opened his Broken Spur Saloon and Trading Post on the banks of the Guijarro in 1956. And when he saw that those cottonwoods weren’t about to die but were in fact thriving, he went a step further and opened Guijarro RV Park and Camp Sites in 1987. He reckoned that there was enough snowbird and tourist traffic headed down State 56 to Regal and the Mexican border crossing that he might do some good business.

I turned 310 off the highway and rolled into the Broken Spur’s parking lot. Down the road I could see the blades of Howard Packard’s windmill turning in the light breeze. Sergeant Torrez was right—it was a good place from which to watch the bar’s parking lot.

A beer delivery truck was angled so that its side roll-up doors faced the building. Nosed into the shade on the other side of the building was a faded blue and white 1976 Ford half-ton pickup. I shut off the county car and got out, immediately wishing I’d worn a warmer coat. The wind was from the west, picking up a little as the sun dipped low.

The driver of the beer truck saw me first as he wheeled the dolly back for another load.

“How you doin’? Is Victor in there?”

He shook his head. “Junior is, though. He’s in the kitchen.”

I made my way inside, stepping around piles of boxes, a collection of brooms and mops, and scores of aerosol cleaning products—and all the other junk that keeps a place habitable and the health inspectors happy. Junior Sánchez was bending over the sink, snipping fat off chicken carcasses. He straightened up with a hunk of chicken in one hand and large kitchen shears in the other and blinked as I shuffled in.

“Dad’s not here,” he said without preamble or greeting.

I leaned against the counter and surveyed the mess he was making. Not the brightest lad on earth, Junior Sánchez was lucky that he had a steady job with Dad. His older brothers had struck out on their own, Juan heading for California last I’d heard and Carlos working at Chavez Chevrolet-Oldsmobile.

“What are you fixing?” I asked.

Junior turned and looked at the pile of chicken. “Saturday’s always a big fajita night,” he said, and poked at a thigh with the scissors. “Got to get all these ready.”

“Are you still showing the games on the big screen in there?” I asked, nodding toward the double doors that swung into the barroom proper.

“Oh, sure,” Junior said.

“I might have to come over for that,” I said as smoothly as if I meant it. “When’s your dad going to be back?”

Junior went back to snipping. “I don’t know. He had to get something fixed for the bathroom. One of the toilets wouldn’t flush.”

That would be more grim for a busy barroom than running out of fajitas, for sure, I thought. “Well, it’s nothing that can’t wait,” I said. “I was just out this way, and thought I’d see him for a bit. But it’s no big deal. If you happen to think about it, tell him I was here, would you?”

The kid nodded and I left him to his chicken.