Bag Limit (29 page)
“Use lots of film,” I said to Linda as she drew near. I was sitting on a rock a third of the way down—and her rapid progress up the canyon was an acute reminder that this was a young person’s game. She paused, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, the massive camera bag slung over her shoulder.
“I want details of the spot where Connie was standing when she fell, and anything else in the area. They say they’ve found her stuff, so that will be important. And”—I nodded back up the hill where Howard Bishop was waiting patiently—“that spot there, where we found Mr. Walsh.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’m on my way.”
“Take your time,” I said. I was talking more to myself than to her, since there was no reason for a healthy, hearty twenty-six-year-old to take her time with something as insignificant as a little mountain and a few boulders. I stood up and started downhill again, rediscovering for the umpteenth time that if I held my head just right, the lower portion of my bifocals blurred the rocks so that I couldn’t see a damn thing.
“Sir, we found his rifle,” Tom Pasquale’s voice was sharp and excited. I had just broken out onto the stretch of relative level ground by the vehicles, and I turned to look back uphill. It wasn’t clear who Pasquale was talking to, but that didn’t matter.
“Don’t touch it,” I said.
“No, sir.”
“Anything else?”
“No, sir. It looks like the rifle was dropped, sir. He didn’t just lean it against a tree. It’s jammed down between an old tree stump and some rocks.”
“Let Linda get pictures before you touch it or move it,” I said. “Are there any scuff marks that might show which direction he went?”
“It’s solid rock here, sir. Wait a sec.” I did, and then Pasquale added, “It looks like a blood smear, maybe. I don’t know for sure.”
“Robert, do you copy?”
“Sure do. And, sir, we’ve done all we can for the girl. Doug is going to stay with her and assist the EMTs when they get here. If you could get someone to light a fire under that helicopter, it’d be appreciated.”
We both knew that magic couldn’t be counted on, but it never hurt to hope just a little. It was more than eighty miles to Las Cruces as the Jet Ranger flew. If the state police pilot had been strapped in with fingers poised to throw switches when he got the call, that still meant that Connie French had an hour of agony to wait. It would be just as well that she was unconscious.
A steady stream of law enforcement personnel continued to arrive until the campground looked like a goddamned discount store parking lot. We had a string of Search and Rescue civilians, state police, Forest Service, Game and Fish, and Posadas County sheriff’s deputies daisy-chained across the lap of the San Cristóbal Mountains, scouring the rocks for some trace of Scott Gutierrez.
The list also included three grim-faced members of the United States Border Patrol. One of them was Taylor Bergmann, and I beckoned him off to one side.
“So, tell me,” I said, “do you know anything about this?”
Bergmann’s icy blue eyes surveyed the mountainside, and the various specks of color that inched across its face.
“Clueless,” he said and shrugged. “We’d only met a few days ago. In fact, the night of the accident when the kid got killed? That was the third time I’d met him.”
“You had no knowledge that his sister might be involved in something? Or that he might be?”
“No, sir, I did not.”
I turned to see a Suburu station wagon wending its way into the symposium. Frank Dayan leaned forward against the steering wheel, eyes big. I waved him to a spot where he wouldn’t block the ambulance.
“What we need to do, Agent Bergmann, is find Scott Gutierrez. He’s up there somewhere, he’s hurt, and he’s the one with all the answers just now. Undersheriff Torrez is right about there,” and I pointed past Bergmann’s shoulder. “They’re right at the base of that thing that looks like a petrified ballistic missile. Check in with him, and he’ll tell you what he wants you to do.”
Bergmann responded with a curt military nod and set off up the hill at a fast jog trot.
“What the hell’s going on?” Dayan asked. He had a camera with a large lens hanging from his neck. The light cotton jacket, polo shirt, and chinos would work just fine, but his penny loafers would serve him for about thirty seconds up on the rocks.
“Frank, we’ve got a mess. One man is dead from a heart attack.” The newspaper publisher pulled a small notebook from his back pocket. “Where’s Pam?” I asked, referring to the stout girl who served as his editor.
Dayan looked pained. “Who’s the victim?”
“His name is Jerry Walsh. We haven’t even had time to check his license for the correct spelling of his name. He suffered a coronary, and died while we were talking to him. The second victim apparently fell a distance of about thirty feet. She’s in bad shape, and we’ve ordered a helicopter from Las Cruces.”
“Med-Evac?”
“No. State police. Right now, the problem is getting her down off the mountain. Then we’ll transfer to Med-Evac at Posadas.”
“How did she fall?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. Dayan looked up quickly, his pencil poised. “I’m not sure yet,” I repeated.
“And that’s it?” He scanned the mountainside as if counting all the people.
“Evidently not,” I said. “Ah, thank God.” The heavy
whup-whup-whup
of the Jet Ranger’s blades carried for miles.
“Where is she?” He squinted and leaned forward. “Over by that group of people up there?”
I nodded. “It’s going to be a trick.”
“I need a picture of that,” Dayan said. “Can I go up there?” I looked down at his shoes. “I’ve got some gear in the car,” he said quickly.
“Have at it, then.”
As the helicopter approached, I realized I was hearing two aircraft. Coming in from the west, a Cessna Sky-Master, that strange hybrid beast with one engine pushing and the second pulling, moaned over the top of the mountains and settled into a wide orbit over the area. It was a state police unit as well, and his cautious approach told me that he was already talking to the helicopter pilot.
I turned up the state police radio in the Bronco just loud enough that I could hear the conversation, and then settled against the fender of the unit to watch the show. There wasn’t much I could do
except
watch—and wonder where the hell Scott Gutierrez was hiding.
Jerry Walsh had called 911 just about the time I took my first bite of pancakes. Dispatch had logged the call at 7:02. It was hard to choreograph the skirmish, however it had happened, with the little information we had, but while domestic disputes may brew for days, weeks, even years, the actual violence that culminates is initiated and concluded in a matter of seconds.
Why they were hunting in such rugged country in the first place was something any eager hunter could explain…that’s where the deer went when hunting pressure increased. James Walsh hadn’t had time to fill us in on all the details, but their morning hadn’t been one of pursuing the wily eight-point buck. The image that had stuck in his mind was that of his two step-children up above him, their voices raised in argument. And then he’d witnessed Scott Gutierrez push his sister off the rocks.
Part of that story made sense. The two younger hunters would be farther uphill, eager to hunt—maybe eager to argue. Walsh himself might have been feeling the first uneasy symptoms of the cardiac attack that was going to kill him in a few minutes.
Shortly before seven, then, he had witnessed the episode. Perhaps it was 6:55, with the sun just peeking over the eastern horizon. When Connie had pitched over backward to slam into the rocks below, Jerry Walsh had shouted—screamed something—to attract Scott Gutierrez’s attention. Realizing that his stepfather had witnessed the deed, Gutierrez without hesitation had thrown his rifle to his shoulder and let fly.
The roar of the heavy hunting rifle must have reverberated across the slope of the mountain like a howitzer, and as the jacketed slug crashed into a rock near Walsh’s head, his pulse rate would have leaped exponentially.
I tried to imagine him diving for cover, wild-eyed and gasping for breath. The little grove of stunted oak was all he had. He said he’d pumped a few rounds back up the hill, and through the brown leaves had seen his assailant take a tumble.
That was how I imagined it. And by the time the last rolling echo died away, Walsh was left lying there, wondering what the hell to do as his pulse hammered and skipped. And then he’d remembered his cellular phone, and fumbled it out, punching in 9-1-1. At 7:02
AM
, Ernie Wheeler had picked up the call.
And where was Scott Gutierrez now? Bob Torrez had been first on the scene, sometime around 7:30. That would have given Gutierrez almost half an hour…and with the terrain, it was conceivable that he’d continued to move, unseen, even as the troops gathered down below.
I scanned the side of the San Cristóbals. The ground lay in a series of wrinkles and folds. A strong back-country hiker could cover a lot of country in a half hour, could easily travel far enough to be out of sight. Off to the west, a large ridge folded down toward the state highway, four miles away, hiding where the pavement curved up through the mountain to Regal Pass. To the east, the terrain sloped gradually toward the flat country just north of the little village of Maria right on the border.
My watch said that it was twelve minutes after nine. The young man could have been hiking for more than two hours. He could be damn near to the border if he had headed south—straight up to the peak and over the other side.
There was no reason for Scott Gutierrez to go in any of those directions. What made sense was that he’d come back down the mountain the same way he’d gone up—making sure that James Walsh was no longer a threat. He’d come down to find that he hadn’t hit Walsh with a stray shot—the man was stricken with a coronary. Gutierrez would return to the camp and make his decision there. His sister had fallen, his stepfather had had a heart attack. Nicely done.
But that hadn’t happened. For one thing, that scenario didn’t account for James Walsh still being alive to tell his version of the story. Second, the Durango was still parked down below. Scott hadn’t taken it.
Instead, one of those high-powered bullets that had been singing across the canyons had clipped Gutierrez solidly enough that he’d dropped his rifle, left a patch of blood on the rocks—and then staggered off, disoriented and out of control.
I took a deep breath. That’s what made sense to me. There would be no way to predict in what direction Scott Gutierrez was moving, if in fact he was still moving at all. He had the answers that I wanted. Now it was a question of whether he bled to death before he was found.
The sky was clear and calm, sunshine streaming in at angles that carved dramatic shadows on the rocks. The helicopter extraction of Connie French went like clockwork, once she’d been gently neck-braced and IV’d and splinted and then strapped securely into the lightweight aluminum gurney. Nevertheless, it must have been a hell of a ride, dangling far below the chopper as it swung away from the mountain.
The state police chopper pilot made it look easy, the brightly colored helicopter appearing as if it had been painted in place against a canvas backdrop. Less than two minutes later, the ground team caught the gurney as it hung suspended near the ambulance. The transfer to the ambulance went just as quickly. An occasional dust devil was kicked up by the blades’ downwash and spun off to dissipate among the rocks.
In minutes, the chopper angled away, and the ambulance was easing out the dirt road for its rendezvous with the Med-Evac plane waiting at the Posadas Airport with Deputy Taber.
Odds were slim that Connie French would regain consciousness, but if she did, her version of the story would be interesting to hear.
James Walsh’s body came down the mountain less dramatically.
All the possibilities and images kept parading through my mind in an endless cycle. “Goddamn useless,” I muttered. I hauled out the heavy binoculars again and rested my elbows on the hood of the Bronco with my belly braced against the fender. With my glasses off, I scrutinized the mountainside, scanning ahead of each member of the search party.
My cell phone chirped to interrupt my concentration. It was the undersheriff.
“Sir,” he said, “this doesn’t add up.”
“No shit,” I said. I couldn’t have told him
why
it didn’t, but I was glad someone else shared my apprehensions. “Where are you?”
“I’m still at the original site. Up on top.” I swung the binoculars and saw him standing on the promontory from which Connie French had launched—or been launched. Torrez’s use of the phone, rather than the very public radio, wasn’t lost on me.
“What have you found?”
“Not much,” he said. “But Scott’s rifle is a hundred and sixty feet from where Connie fell.” He paused, and I could see him moving off in that direction. “That’s where the blood is, too.”
“Right.”
“It would take a few minutes to get over there from here, sir. That’s one thing. If it happened the way Walsh says it did, that doesn’t add up. Scott pushes Connie, she falls, Walsh yells, Scott fires. Walsh ducks for cover, and returns fire. All in a matter of seconds. These aren’t two guys who are hunting each other, jockeying for position. You know what I mean?”
“Yes. More of a reflex thing.”
“Exactly. But somehow, Scott gets hit. At least, that’s what Walsh says. He manages to travel a hundred and sixty feet before dropping his rifle.”
“Or his blood.”
“Yes, sir.”
“A hundred and sixty feet isn’t much, Robert.”
“Up here, it is. And it’s on an angle, uphill.” I saw him stretch out his arm. If he had taken a step or two away from the edge of the rock, I’d have been happier.
“All right. I’ll buy that. What makes sense to you?”
“I think that
if
Scott was hit, he was struck near the place where he dropped his rifle, and where there’s the trace of blood. Not way over here. But…” He stopped.
“But what?”
“His rifle fell eight or nine feet, down in a jumble of smaller rocks. It wedged up against an old stump.”
“That’s what Pasquale said.”
“And it hadn’t been fired, sir.”
“What do you mean, it hadn’t been fired?” I asked, too frustrated to keep the really stupid questions from slipping out.
“Just that, sir. This rifle hasn’t been fired since the last time it was cleaned. There was even a trace of lint just ahead of the front sight, near the crown of the barrel. Probably from the rifle case.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Sir?”
“I’m here. I’m listening.”
“The rifle wasn’t fired.”
“Was there a round in the chamber?”
“No, sir. Five in the magazine.”
“Hold on a minute.” I pulled my radio off my belt. “Howard, do you copy?”
“Yes, sir.” Bishop sounded bored.
“Did Linda take all the photos of Walsh’s rifle that she needed?”
“I believe so.”
Linda Real’s voice broke in. “Sir, I think I covered it from every angle.”
“Good. Howard, have you bagged it up yet?”
I heard him chuckling as he pressed the transmit button. “That’s negative, sir. I didn’t bring any evidence bags up here with me.”
“I need to know if it’s been fired.”
“Walsh said that he did, sir.”
“I know he
said
that he did. Check for me.”
“Just a minute.”
I could picture the slow, methodical Bishop trying to figure out how to handle the rifle without ruining whatever prints might be on it. In a moment, the radio crackled to life. “Sir, that’s affirmative.”
“Round in the chamber?”
“Affirmative. One in the chamber, one in the magazine. Safety is off.”
“Linda, did you take photos that would show the position of that safety?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Howard, put the safety on. Otherwise, leave it alone. I’ll get someone to run up a large evidence bag. Don’t let anyone else near the thing.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So,” I said into the phone.
“I heard,” Torrez replied. “Walsh fired, Gutierrez didn’t.”
“Unless he had another weapon with him. He’d have a handgun, I’m sure.”
“Not a weapon of choice for up here, sir,” Torrez said.
“So why would Walsh lie?”
Torres hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe he saw Scott push Connie, and took a shot at him right then, without giving Scott time to react. That’s possible. And then he got to thinking…his actions would seem more justified if Scott had fired first.”
“Think on it,” I said. “I told Howard I’m sending up some evidence bags. Be really careful how you treat that rifle.”
“Oh, yeah,” Torrez replied. “I’ll be careful.”
A kid barely old enough to vote and wearing a Forest Service uniform shirt had picked his way down the hill and was headed toward his pickup, whether to find a smoke, or toilet paper, or just water, I didn’t know or care. I sent him back up the mountain with a supply of large black plastic evidence bags and tags, and then called Gayle Torrez.
“Gayle, call the medical center in Las Cruces for me. Tell Jackie Taber that I need to know the extent and nature of Connie French’s injuries the instant that information is available.”
“Yes, sir. I just got off the phone with them, and the Med-Evac’s ETA is about ten minutes.”
“All right. Make sure Jackie understands the urgency of this.”
“Yes, sir. You want extent and nature of injuries.”
“That’s it.”
“Any word on Scott Gutierrez yet?”
“Nothing. He’s evaporated. We’ve got fifty people on this mountainside, in broad daylight, and an aircraft circling overhead. We can’t find him. Not a damn trace.”
“Estelle stopped by for a few minutes a little bit ago. She asked if there was anything that she could do.”
“I wish,” I said. “There are certainly other places I’d rather be, I can tell you that. Have Jackie get right back to me the second she knows something.”
I tossed the phone on the hood of the Bronco and was reaching for the binoculars when I heard the shout, far over to the west. It was too far to recognize the voice or the words, but in an instant my radio brought confirmation.
“Sheriff, we’ve got him.”