Bag Limit by Steven F. Havill Read Free Book Online Page A

said.
    “He just…” Hayes repeated, and tried to take a step toward the shapeless lump on the pavement. As I approached from the other side, the steel of the handcuffs winked in the headlights of the Border Patrol unit. One of the cuffs was empty and flung wide.
    There was no point in feeling for a pulse, but Gutierrez did anyway. Reeling as if someone had punched me, I made my way back to my patrol car and rummaged for the mike.
    “Posadas, three ten.”
    “Three ten, go ahead.”
    On automatic pilot, the words that would summon the troops spilled out. Deputy Taber estimated her ETA at six minutes, with Undersheriff Torrez right behind her. The ambulance would take twice that long. As far as Matt Baca was concerned, there was no hurry.
    I slumped back in the seat and waited. Mercifully, the highway was deserted, as if the world were recoiling in hushed silence. One of the federal officers found a black tarp and highway flares, and the other moved the Border Patrol unit so that it completely blocked the eastbound lane, lights flashing.
    I watched the amber numerals on the digital clock on the dashboard, but after a while even they drifted out of focus. My gaze was fixed somewhere out ahead, through the windshield and off across the dark prairie toward the south.
    “Are you all right, sir?”
    Startled out of whatever world I’d been in by the soft voice and a gentle hand on my left shoulder, I turned and looked up into Bob Torrez’s face.
    “No…I mean, I’m fine,” I said, and shook off the mental cobwebs. The first word out of my mouth had been the accurate answer. I hadn’t seen Torrez drive up, but now the area was practically daylight in a brilliant symphony of flashing lights that captured half a dozen moving shadows.
    “Deputy Taber is taking a statement from the truck driver,” Torrez said. “What he says jibes pretty much with what Gutierrez and his sidekick say happened.”
    “I’m glad everybody goddamn agrees,” I said, and pushed myself out of the car. “How the hell long have you been here?” An ambulance was backing up carefully toward the black plastic-covered lump, the vehicle’s tires straddling the center line. A hundred yards to the east, another set of red lights blinked where Taber’s patrol unit blocked the highway.
    “Just a couple of minutes.”
    I don’t know why that irritated me, but it did. I had the mental picture of them all tiptoeing around me, careful not to disturb the old man sitting off by himself. What the hell did they think I had been doing, writing memoirs with a DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from the door handle?
    I leaned against the rear fender of my car and watched the paramedics try to decide which part of Matt Baca’s remains to lift first onto the gurney.
    “Baca had his feet out of the car when Officer Gutierrez walked back to his unit,” I said. “For a few seconds, I was the only one immediately beside the kid. He bowled into me, and twisted, and I wasn’t fast enough to grab him. He took a handful of steps, lost his balance, and went backward out into the high-way, right past the back of the car, here.” I patted the back fender of the unmarked Ford, and then lowered my voice. “The driver of the truck hadn’t pulled over to the left very much. And he didn’t spike the brakes until after he hit the kid.” I took a deep breath, and my fingers groped at my shirt pocket where I used to keep the cigarettes. “Just like that. I don’t think that the driver ever saw him. He certainly didn’t have a chance to swerve or brake.”
    Torrez nodded and watched the paramedics. “Sosimo is home now?”
    “Yes. He’s drunk to the world, but he’s home. I suppose the two girls are too. I didn’t see them when I went in after Matt.”
    “Somebody’s going to have to let them know,” Torrez said. “When we get things cleaned up here, I’ll go on down there.”
    “No hurry,” I replied. “If you woke up Sosimo now, he wouldn’t remember a thing.