What the driver couldn’t know was that after his car left the pavement, he had no more than fifty feet to haul his vehicle to a stop. That wasn’t enough, even for a union-scale stunt driver with two or three rehearsals.
I had time to recognize the oncoming missile as some sort of little compact car, and I grabbed the steering wheel to brace myself. Just before his car T-boned mine, his headlights flicked off. It must have been a hell of a surprise. One instant, he was cleverly reaching for that switch to kill the headlights, and in the next found himself collecting an aging Ford Crown Victoria as a hood ornament.
The little car crashed into the left rear passenger door and quarter panel of 310, sending a shower of busted glass that sprayed the back of my head. The impact jolted the patrol car sideways, uncomfortably close to the yawning open spaces.
For about three seconds after that, things were pretty quiet. I could hear my heart pounding, and then a quiet tinkle as a few fragments of glass tilted out of the remains of the window behind me.
Without taking my eyes off the car, I reached out slowly and picked up the microphone. “Three oh eight, I’ve got company.”
The radio squelch barked twice, but I was more interested in the voices coming from the little car. I didn’t know if they had actually seen me sitting in the patrol car or not—it was possible that the driver had hit the lights before my presence registered on their hyperactive little pea brains.
The driver bailed out in a drunken dance that left him on his hands and knees, one hand clutching the open door, the other on the ground.
At the same time, with my flashlight a comfortable weight in my hand, I opened my own door, taking my time. I snapped on the beam and framed the wild-eyed face. The kid was sloshed. He let go of the door frame, reared to his feet, and took a staggering step toward the back of his car. I could smell the alcohol, the concentrated aroma from a six-pack that’s had a wild ride around the inside of a car.
“Just hold it right there,” I barked. He flattened against the car as if without its support his spine might turn to Jell-O and he’d fall on his face. He wasn’t bleeding, and all four of his limbs bent in the right places. He just didn’t know what to do with them.
With my free hand I fished the handcuffs from the back of my belt. “Turn around and put your hands on the car,” I ordered. The other two occupants hadn’t budged, and as long as they stayed put, things would be fine.
I twitched the light just enough to take a quick glance at the kid riding shotgun. He was rocking back and forth holding his face, blood pouring over his fingers. No doubt the dashboard had tap-danced across his mouth, lacing a few teeth through his lip. In the back a third party animal braced both hands against the seat in front of her, staring bug-eyed at me. Fourteen years old and the daughter of an acquaintance of mine, she had reason to be scared.
The kid standing by the car hadn’t moved, and I gestured with the flashlight. “Turn around,” I repeated. About that time, more lights poured through the trees, and Bob Torrez’s patrol unit almost slid past the fire road. He turned in, the stiffly sprung vehicle jouncing on the ruts.
The kid took one look at the flashing red lights on the roof of the Expedition and spun away from me, darting around the back of the little car. He tripped over something and fell hard, then got up and lurched off down the lane toward the darkness. At one point he was headed straight for a thick grove of scrub oak, but he changed course at the last minute, picking up speed as he went.
Torrez appeared, framed in the headlights. He and I stood and watched as the kid zigged out of the beam of my flashlight.
Torrez showed no inclination to spring into action, and instead said, “Well, that’s neat.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to run after the kid. At seventy years old and three days from retirement, I wasn’t about to run after anything.
Torrez turned the beam of his own light into the car. “Pretty good idea you had, to let Matt drive your car, Toby,” he said. He bent down and rested his forearms on the windowsill. The kid was in no mood for sarcasm, and responded with a pathetic whimper. “Let me see your face,” Torrez said and reached into the car. With one hand on top of the kid’s head, he held him quiet. The youngster still managed to cringe downward, his hands trying to ward off the undersheriff’s monstrous paw.
“Move your hands,” Torrez commanded, and the kid let them sink halfway to his lap, poised and ready should some part of his injured anatomy decide to fall off. With my light from the other side, Torrez could see the damage, and after a moment he said, “Sit tight. You’ll be all right.”
He turned the light on the girl in the back. “Nice night, eh?” he said. “You all right?”
She managed a nod.
“No cuts, no hurts?”
She shook her head.
“You sit tight too,” he said, and turned back to me. “If you’d request an ambulance, I’ll get something for Toby’s face.”
“I don’t need no ambulance,” the kid said thickly, the first coherent words I’d heard him utter. He leaned forward toward the dash. He looked as if he was about to throw up.
“I’m sure you don’t, tough guy,” Torrez said. “Stay in the car.” He grinned at me, and then hustled back to the Expedition. I waited until he returned before turning to the radio to hail dispatch.
Now that Torrez had put a name to him, I recognized the injured youngster as Toby Gordan. His mother, Emilita, was going to be really pleased. She worked as a custodian at Posadas County Hospital and lived just a handful of blocks from her work. That was convenient too, since her only car was now a couple of feet shorter than it had been.
With an ambulance on the way, a clean compress holding Toby’s remaining teeth and lip in place, and the girl snuffling but otherwise behaving herself in the backseat, I said to Torrez, “What do you want to do about the driver?” I indicated the darkness into which he’d fled.
“Like I said, I know where he lives,” Torrez said. He straightened up and rested a beefy arm on the roof of the car. “That’s Matt Baca, my uncle Sosimo’s oldest kid.” He ducked his head and looked in the car. “That’s who was driving, right?”
Toby Gordan managed a “mmmph” through his tears and loose teeth, but the girl in back, Jessie Montoya, nodded.
“Where’d you guys get all the beer? Did Victor Sanchez sell it to you?” Torrez asked, but Jessie just looked down at the floor mats. Sanchez owned the Broken Spur Saloon on State 56 where the chase had started, and he knew better. Torrez sighed and glanced at the luminous dial of his watch. “I just caught a glimpse of him, but it looked like our runner was wearing a T-shirt and jeans,” Torrez said. “No coat.”
“That’s it,” I said.
Torrez leaned away from the car and looked up into the night. The scrub oak leaves were fitful against a clear and star-studded sky. The moon had slipped behind the bulk of Santa Lucia. The kid would be running by feel and by guess. As drunk as he was, he wouldn’t have much luck with either one.
“It’s not going to freeze tonight,” Torrez said. “He’ll be all right as long as he doesn’t trip and break his neck.”
“Which he’s apt to do,” I said. “You’ve been down this road?” I realized that it was a dumb question before the words were out of my mouth.
“Lots of times,” Torrez said. His passion was hunting, and wherever anything with fur or feathers went, there went Robert. “It dead-ends about two miles to the east, along this ridge. If he makes it that far, he’ll have to run another three miles cross-country to reach the power-line access road over the top. He ain’t going to do that. Not at night.” He looked at the sky again. “Well,” he said, and glanced at me. “I’m going to stroll on after him a little bit, just in case he discovers some sense out there and changes his mind.” He shifted his handheld radio on his belt a bit, fiddling with one of the knobs. “I’m on channel three.”
The two kids in the car seemed content to sit and snuffle in relative silence, so I made constructive use of the time to fill in most of the blanks on the Uniform Traffic Incident report. I had almost finished when another patrol car, followed by the ambulance, added their light show.
Deputy Thomas Pasquale and two EMTs hustled into the glare of headlights. I looked up at the deputy from where I sat behind the wheel of 310. “And here I was, parked in the middle of everywhere, minding my own business,” I said.
“Are you all right, sir?” Pasquale asked, and before I said, “Fine,” the two paramedics had found the blood in the other vehicle. Despite their gentle, professional ministrations, we were treated to a pathetic series of yelps, groans, and whines as they got the kid out of the car and strapped to the gurney for the trip back to Posadas General.
I got out of the car and tossed the clipboard and report on the seat. “She’s going to need a ride,” I said to Thomas. “Let’s see what she wants to do.”
What Jessie Montoya wanted to do, no doubt, was slink out into the woods somewhere and wait until the world went away. She was the picture of absolute humiliation, cringing away from the young female paramedic who was ready to crawl inside the car if need be for the answers she wanted. Finally satisfied that the girl was unharmed, the EMT backed out of the car.
“She’s all right,” the paramedic said, and glanced at the front of the vehicle. “Not much of an impact. If the kid up front had had his seat belt on, he probably wouldn’t have smacked his face.” She grinned. “You have a good night, Sheriff.”
“Thanks,” I said, and the EMT stepped out of my way. I bent down with one hand on the roof for balance, keeping the flashlight beam out of Jessie Montoya’s face. The harsh headlight beams through the back window haloed the hair around her head, hiding her eyes. The smell of urine had overpowered the beer.
“Jessie, why don’t you step out of the car.” I tried to sound as if she had a choice. “Let’s make sure everything still works, okay?”
She murmured something that I couldn’t hear. I held out my hand. “Come on.” She turned a bit sideways, swinging one blue jean-clad leg out of the car. “Are your folks home?” She didn’t respond, still struggling with the humiliation of being caught with soiled pants. “If they are, we need to give them a call.”
“I’ll find my way home. Just let me go,” she said, and there was a quiver to the petulance.
Tom Pasquale appeared at my elbow. “Here’s the number, sir,” he said, and handed me his notebook. I shined the light on the page and could have imagined that there was writing there. Jessie Montoya shrank back on the seat, out of Deputy Pasquale’s view.
“Tell me what it is,” I said to Tom, and dug the small cell phone off my belt. Before I dialed, I said to Jessie, “What time were your folks expecting you home?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do they know that you’re with Matt and Toby?”
That brought a little shake of the head.
“What stops did you make before the Broken Spur?”
“Before the what?”
“The saloon down in the valley. Your last stop before this mess here.”
“We were just like…around, you know? I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember any specific place?”
“No.”
“Who had the booze?”
No matter how she answered that, Jessie Montoya could see trouble on the horizon, so she ignored the question and turned her attention instead to the task of getting out of the mangled little car. She stood with her back to Tom Pasquale.
I dialed the number, and in a moment, a pleasant contralto voice answered the phone. “Donna?” I said. “Bill Gastner here. How are you folks doing tonight?” I didn’t bother apologizing for the late hour. Young Jessie could do the apologizing later. I tried to keep my tone light, and apparently succeeded. Maybe Donna Montoya thought it was a last-minute, midnight campaign solicitation.
“Sheriff! So nice to hear from you. We don’t see much of you anymore.”
“Busy, busy, Donna. Look, the reason I called. Jessie’s going to need a ride home, and I just wanted to make sure one of you was going to be there when we drop her off. We should be back in Posadas in another half an hour or so.”
A dead silence followed. “Jessie? What do you mean?”
“Jessie, your daughter. She’s here with me.”
“With you? How’s that possible? She’s in her bedroom, sound asleep, Sheriff.”
“Take a minute and go check, ma’am,” I said. “I’ll hold.” She did so, and I glanced at Tom. “The old ‘out the window’ trick,” I said to him, and Jessie ducked her head and slumped her shoulders another notch.
In less than a minute, Donna Montoya was back on the line, this time with considerable urgency in her voice. “Sheriff, where are you? What’s going on?”
“Jessie is fine, Donna. She was out with a couple of other kids, and they managed to bang their car up a bit.”
“Oh, my God. You’re kidding.”
“No, ma’am. We’re about half a mile from Regal Pass on Fifty-six.”
“Oh, for God’s sakes.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you’re sure she’s all right?”
“Yes, ma’am. She’s fine.” Describing Jessie Montoya just then as “fine” was a bit of a stretch.
“Do you want us to come down to get her? I mean, who was she with? Are they all right?”
“She was a backseat passenger in a vehicle operated by Matt Baca, ma’am. Toby Gordan was also in the vehicle, riding up front. And no, it won’t be necessary to come get Jessie. I’ll just have Deputy Pasquale drop her off on his way back to the office. He’s about ready to leave now. You might keep a watch out the window. It should be about twenty minutes.”
“Let me talk to her, please,” Mrs. Montoya said, and I could hear the coiled cat-o’-nine-tails in her tone.
“Sure.” I extended the phone toward the girl. “Mom wants to talk to you,” I said. Jessie pushed away from the car, took the phone, and stepped away a couple of paces, her back to us.
“Thomas,” I said, “make sure she rides in the backseat, and make sure the first thing you do is radio in time and odometer to dispatch. Do the same thing the instant you park in front of Montoya’s.”
“Yes, sir.” The reminder was probably unnecessary. Circumstances were rare when we provided taxi service, and I wasn’t about to summon a matron all the way from Posadas to escort a fourteen-year-old drunk. We didn’t need a couple of distraught parents on the highway either, not when the deputy was headed in. But there was no point in taking chances. She could enjoy the ride behind the wire mesh with doors that had no handles or window cranks. Maybe it would make an impression.