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

Let him sleep it off.”
    “Hell of a deal.”
    “Yes, it is. And I’ve been thinking and thinking, and I haven’t come up with any answers.” I turned and faced Torrez. “Number one, up on the pass, what’s the first thing Matt did after his car rammed into mine?”
    “He bolted.”
    “Damn right he bolted. He didn’t wait two seconds to see if his friends were hurt, or to see who he hit, or any of that. He just flat ran. And it looks like he ran all the way home, too. When I got to the house, he was crashed out, dead to the world on the couch. Flat busted.”
    “Did you have any trouble with him?”
    “That’s what I’m getting at,” I said. “I had the cuffs slapped on him while he was still asleep. For a little bit, he was pretty belligerent, but when I mentioned that I might have you carry him out to the car, he just calmed right down.”
    “We’ve had our share of run-ins in the past.” He hunched his shoulders as if the cold was beginning to seep through his jacket. “You may remember that he was the one who fell down the stairs a couple of years ago, back when the juvenile cell was on the second floor.”
    “I’d forgotten that. He took a swing at you then, as I recall.”
    “Sort of.”
    “Well, whatever the reason, the peace and quiet didn’t last. About the time we passed the saloon, maybe a little later, he starts kicking the glass. Now what the hell is he going to do when it breaks? The door’s locked, so he can’t get out.”
    “Maybe he hadn’t figured that part out,” Torrez said.
    “Maybe not. But he worked away at that window until he popped it. And then when he had another chance to bolt, he took it.” I shook my head in disgust.
    “What did he say to you? Anything at all during the drive?”
    “Just a colorful vocabulary.”
    “Anything to the two officers?” He nodded toward Gutierrez and Bergmann, who were in conference with Jackie Taber and the truck driver.
    “Nope. He didn’t say squat from the time I woke him up until this. Other than cussing me and my ancestors. And you and yours. Half of it was in Spanish. Probably all the good stuff.” I stood up straight and tried to stretch the kinks out of my left arm. “Why did he run, Bob? Like you said before, we know where he lives.”
    “There’s no telling what goes through their heads, sir. Especially when they’re half-blasted. Something that seems dumb as shit to you or me makes perfect sense to them. At least we know where Matt bought the booze.”
    “We do? Where?”
    “I talked to Tommy Portillo. He remembers that Matt stopped by the convenience store shortly before ten. Beer and a couple of pints.”
    “Tommy knows better than that,” I snapped. “Jesus, he’s got kids who go in there all the time, and we’ve never had a complaint of sales to minors. I always thought he was one we didn’t have to worry about.”
    “He maintains that Matt had a valid ID that showed he was twenty-one, going on twenty-two. He says that he doesn’t know Matt all that well, so he glanced at it, saw that it was all right, and let it go. Matt’s one of those kids who could pass for anything between fourteen and legal.”
    “Like hell it was a valid ID.” I pulled the driver’s license out of my shirt pocket and handed it to Torrez. “I took this out of his wallet. He had this and seven bucks. The license says he turns nineteen in December.”
    Torrez nodded his head slowly. “He would have been nineteen on the thirteenth of December.” He tapped the plastic card against his thumbnail. “Portillo didn’t look very closely.”
    “Shit,” I said. “Damn right he didn’t look close. Either that or he can’t read, the dumb son of a bitch. I can’t believe he’d do a thing like that. Hell, he knows what kind of a heller your cousin is…he has to.” I grimaced in frustration. “And he couldn’t look out his own damn store window and see a carload of kids? Where the hell does he think the booze is going,