One Perfect Shot

By Steven F. Havill

When a county employee is found shot to death in broad daylight while sitting in his county road grader, Undersheriff Bill Gastner is faced with puzzling questions. The simplest explanation - that an errant bullet from a careless target shooter's rifle blew out Larry Zipoli's brains - is soon discarded. The fatal bullet shows no rifling marks, and investigation reveals that the shooter walked directly toward the road grader, in full view of the victim - who did nothing to defend himself.

In addition to the demands of the investigation, Gastner learns that Sheriff Eduardo Salcido has hired a new deputy without discussing the matter with his undersheriff. And Gastner learns that the new hire is destined to be the fi rst female road patrol deputy in the history of Posadas County.

Thus begins Gastner's relationship with Estelle Reyes, whose shrewd observations shed important light on a crime that rattles all kinds of skeletons lurking in Posadas County closets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781615952809

Book preview

Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-one

A special note of thanks…

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Acknowledgments

Special thanks to David Gallegos, Jack Polen, and Henry Smith for their comprehensive tour of the Whittington Center’s Cat road grader.

Chapter One

I thought he was asleep, Evie Truman whispered. She stood with her arms crossed over her ample chest, shoulders hunched so far forward that the outboard ends of her clavicles were in danger of touching. Her feet, shod in simple house slippers, shuffled in the red dust of Highland Avenue. Her lower lip quivered. No one is ever prepared to be a witness, to be the first to arrive on a nasty scene.

Evie didn’t need to whisper. There we stood in the hot sun of that late August Tuesday afternoon with no one within a hundred feet to overhear our conversation. The insects and songbirds continued their enterprises as if nothing humans did surprised them. Evie’s broad face crumpled a little more as she watched the bulky red EMT rig approach, its gruff diesel muttering.

Farther down Highland Avenue, Deputies Robert Torrez and Tom Mears discussed with Posadas Coroner Dr. Emerson Clark how the elderly medical examiner might clamber onboard the towering road grader without risking damage to his arthritic, creaky body. Dr. Clark had wasted no time responding to our call. He hadn’t been deep in some patient’s bowels, or off at Elephant Butte fishing. But the old man didn’t look eager.

For her part, Evie showed no inclination to trudge back and join in that discussion with the coroner. She didn’t want another look at the limp, bloody corpse. I didn’t think she had much more to tell us. Other than promoting community relations, I wasn’t accomplishing a whole lot by standing in the hot sun digging at sand chiggers who migrated up my socks and commiserating about how miserable it was to discover a corpse cooking and bloating in the hot sun.

As if sensing that I was about to walk off and leave her stranded, Evie sniffed and said, I saw him earlier this afternoon, Bill. I did. I told you I did. He was working the bar ditch all along here, and everything was just fine. I can’t believe it. What a horrible, horrible thing.

Sure enough, the fragrant soil had been graded up out of the ditches, deposited in a precise, laser-straight windrow on the unpaved street. To finish the job, the operator of the Posadas County Highway Department’s road grader would stroke lanes down the side of the dirt street, creating a smooth, perfectly crowned finish bordered by straight, open ditches. Larry Zipoli was deft with the grader. Hell, he was better than that. He was an artist with the blade. He’d had thirty years practice with the highway department, and I doubted that there was a foot of roadway anywhere in Posadas County that Larry didn’t know down to the last pebble.

But Larry hadn’t finished his artistic grading job on the primitive lane on the north border of the village of Posadas. Half of Highland Avenue was finished, half was untouched, hard, pot-hole pocked and washboarded. Before he could finish, someone had put a high-velocity rifle bullet through the cab of the county road grader and through Larry’s skull. There the big machine sat, diesel engine idling, for most of the afternoon until sixty-one year-old Evie Truman made her run into town and discovered that Larry Zipoli was well beyond snatching a quick nap.

You went to the school shortly after noon? I asked. One of the issues most fascinating to a cop is finding out precisely when a corpse became a corpse. Freshly graded though it was, Highland already showed a plethora of car tracks. Evie wasn’t the only person to have driven Highland while Larry’s blood leaked unreported.

She nodded vigorously, and the nodding morphed into a sad side-to-side shake. I left my grade book at school, and thought I’d want it for later. We have that all-day faculty meeting tomorrow, you know. Now, he was just turning his grader around down there by the intersection with Hutton, and we both waved. He had to wait for me to go by.

And then you discovered what happened on the way home from that errand?

No, no. Her response was immediate and snappy, a tone that would work with a recalcitrant eighth grader. "It was most likely around three o’clock. I needed to do a little shopping, and I thought, well, certainly, he would have finished grading that little street by now. And of course, there are any number of other ways to go into town. See, I had this nagging thought that there was just something that I had forgotten at school. Anyway, there he was, parked right along the side of the bar ditch."

Her hands fussed. I don’t know why I even noticed him, Sheriff. I mean, what business is it of mine? But what did they do to him? I mean, so much blood. She gulped a breath. I think I looked more closely because the machine was idling, you know. It’s so loud. But his head was back against the window, and I was sure he was asleep. Until I looked closer. Her hand fluttered up to cover her mouth.

It was painfully obvious what had been done to Larry Zipoli. At a glance, he looked asleep, until you saw that blood had flowed down from his left eyebrow to the hollow of his eye, and then down the fatty cleft beside his nose, across his parted lips, and then down chin and neck to matt on the front of his grubby t-shirt. His heart had stopped and blood pressure had dropped before enough blood had been pumped to form a puddle on the floor. But there was plenty spread across his enormous belly. His head rested back against the cab’s rear window, jaw slack, eyes half-lidded.

Having no doubt heard her share of all the old, lame jokes about highway department employees slumbering on the job, I could imagine that Evie Truman might have thought Larry was catching himself an afternoon nap, all warm and toasty with the August sun streaming through the glass of the grader’s cabin. A little too toasty, maybe. The center portion of the windshield was canted open from the bottom a couple of inches, with the left-hand door wide open, latched back against the cab frame.

We’ll need a deposition from you, Evie. As much detail as you can remember, starting with the first time you drove by. What you did, what Larry did. Who you saw.

I’m going to have nightmares about this, Sheriff. I mean, I didn’t see anyone in the area, no one at all. But if I had come along a little earlier… Her face started to crumple again, and I patted her substantial shoulder.

One of us will walk you through it. I can either swing by your house later this evening, or you can come down to the office at your convenience. If I’m not in the office when you stop by, the sheriff will be, or one of the deputies.

Evie took a deep, shuddering breath. May I bring Carl for moral support? Before I could answer with more than a nod, she reached out a hand and touched me on the forearm. Larry’s family…

We’ll be contacting them first. Marilyn Zipoli worked at Posadas State Bank as a cashier, and her day was about to fall to pieces. At this point, Evie, I’d rather that you didn’t talk to anyone else about the incident. Sometimes it’s hard to tell in the beginning what’s important and what isn’t. Carl understands that. Her husband of decades had been a Game and Fish officer before ruining a spinal disk while unloading one of the department boats at Elephant Butte.

I watched Evie retrace her steps to her Mercury, and then rejoined the party. Bob Torrez had worked a pair of cotton gloves over his huge hands. On down the road, just beyond Evie’s car, the EMT unit had rumbled to a stop beside Deputy Mears’ Bronco, effectively blocking the street. They’d sit there until we waved them in. To the east, Highland was blocked by Torrez’s own patrol unit, pulled crosswise in the road beside mine.

An orange county truck had stopped behind the deputy’s car, and I recognized Tony Pino, the county’s Highway Superintendent, and his foreman, Buddy Clayton. They made their way along the bar ditch, in no hurry to see what they had to see.

So. I made no move to climb up on the grader. I’d already done that and seen all I needed to see. Besides, one person in that tiny cab was a crowd. But I wanted a second opinion of the scenario before I had to explain to Tony Pino how one of his best men had come to die on this quiet afternoon.

One shot, sir. Deputy Torrez stood below the grader’s doorway, one boot on the blade and one on the first rung of the two-step ladder, perhaps ready to catch the elderly coroner should Dr. Clark inadvertently step backward through the doorway. The deputy pointed up at the windshield. Sure enough, the hole through the dusty safety glass was big enough to poke a pencil through, immediately beside the center stud that attached the windshield wiper rubber to the wiper arm. The deputy tapped his own forehead above the left eye.

Through and through? I stepped around the end of the blade, moving back to the first of the two mammoth rear tires. The cab window behind the driver showed no holes, no explosion of brain and skull against glass.

No, sir. Torrez sounded a little surprised. I stood with my hands in my pockets, looking up at the hole in the windshield, then pivoted and gazed off down Highland Avenue, trying to imagine where the bullet had come from. To the southwest, the nearest house was three hundred yards away on Hutton Circle, with nothing north of that. Highland Avenue, a grand name for the lane-and-a-half cow path through the cacti and chamisa that Larry Zipoli had been grading, marked where the village of Posadas met prairie. Within a quarter mile of this lonesome spot, dozens of folks might have heard the gun shot. And enough tracks marked the freshly graded surface that a dozen folks might have driven by, perhaps laughing at the notion of another public employee snoozing on the job. It had been Evie Truman’s misfortune to be so observant.

Dr. Clark stood in the grader’s doorway, both hands on the frame. The climb up had been hazardous for the old man, and I had told him not to bother. It was clear to me that Larry Zipoli was as dead as dead can ever be, and any other mysteries would be solved on the autopsy table. But the good doctor had persisted, perhaps more out of professional curiosity than anything else. He had stepped up first onto the blade’s support structure, and from there across to the first chain step. Torrez, who was tall and powerful enough to have lifted Dr. Clark up into the cab, had supported him from behind, not in the most dignified fashion for the old physician.

Now, Dr. Clark lowered himself with exaggerated care, taking time to place each polished shoe, both hands gripping the hand rails with white knuckles. Safe on the ground, he snapped off his rubber gloves, scowling as he did so.

I don’t think he moved one iota after being hit, he announced. You see the way his hands are? Larry Zipoli’s arms hung limp, his hands open, the back of his right hand settled against one of the control levers beside the seat. Dead before he knew what hit him. His hands aren’t even bloody. He never grabbed his head, or anything else. No particular cadaveritic spasm. He pointed at the floor where the remains of a stogie rested between the victim’s feet. Smokin’ a cigar, didn’t even spasm to hold on to that.

It’s dead out, Torrez offered. The cigar, I mean.

The elderly physician looked sideways at me. You knew Larry about as well as I did. Who’d want to do a thing like this?

I didn’t reply to the rhetorical question.

Yesterday morning he was gradin’ the shoulders of McArthur right in front of my place, Torrez offered.

You talked to him?

Nope.

Out of habit, my right hand explored my shirt pocket, scouting out a cigarette. The pocket was empty, though, my latest effort at quitting now three days old. I took a step or two toward the front of the machine, partly out of curiosity, partly to put a few feet between my nose and that fragrant cab.

The grader’s long prow, with the large blade resting on the ground and the two front wheels cocked at an absurd angle, held all of the hydraulic guts of the machine, and I stopped by the end of the blade, touching it with the toe of my boot.

A dozen feet ahead of the blade, a stain on the reddish earth spread wide just inboard of the left front tire. Keeping one hand on the frame beside my head so I wouldn’t crack my skull, I knelt beside the tire and touched a finger to the sand, then smelled it. A spray of hydraulic fluid had soaked the ground. The nearest line ran down from a junction box on the frame, out along the axle beam to the hydraulic ram that steered the front wheel. The spurting fluid had soaked the old yellow paint, and I could see where it had run down around the hydraulic piston, aiming for the ground. Most of the maze of hydraulic lines on the machine were Cat yellow. This one immediately above the leak was obviously new, a nice clean black, with wrench marks on the fitting at each end.

I’ve done all I can do here, Dr. Clark called to jar me out of my reverie. Looks like Tony wants to talk to you. It’s odd… He stood back and regarded the mammoth machine.

What would that be? I asked.

Whoever fired that shot must have been a ways off, Clark said. Could have been damn near all the way down Highland, here. The bullet hits the windshield and then him, all pretty much in a straight line. The gunman didn’t stand right down here on the roadway, or even in a truck that stopped by. He took his shot dead on, from the front. He took a deep breath. That’s my take on it, and now I’ll shut up and get out of your way.

You’ll let us know ASAP what you find in the prelim.

Don’t I always, the old man growled. What more there’ll be, I couldn’t guess, except the bullet that sure as hell killed him is still lodged in his brain. Kind of odd entrance wound, no exit. He shrugged and removed the stethoscope from around his neck, absently straightening out the rubber tubes.

I’ll have the details for you, but I can tell you right now, there’s not much mystery about that part of this deal. You can take the rest of your pictures now, and then tell the kids to get him out of there. He turned and waved a hand at Deputy Torrez, grimaced again at the road grader and raised his voice for emphasis. And thanks for shutting that damn thing down, Bobby. My God, some peace and quiet is nice. I couldn’t hear myself think.

Deputy Torrez, just coming on duty that afternoon, had been the first on the scene, with me following. The grader had been running when we had arrived, and neither of us had been in any hurry to shut it down. Once a crime scene is tampered with even in the most insignificant way, there’s no going back. But when we’d seen most of what we were going to see, even heard the last thing Larry Zipoli might have heard after the snap of breaking glass and the bolt of destruction through his brain, we needed some peace and quiet. We might be content to shout at each other, but Dr. Emerson Clark wouldn’t have been.

Torrez had slipped a leg past the victim’s slumped corpse, and planted his heel on the kill pedal. The diesel sighed to blissful silence.

That simple motion added another piece to the puzzle. Larry Zipoli, facing a threat or even an innocent conversation with someone, had but to shift his right foot an inch or two to do the same thing. He hadn’t done it. He either hadn’t felt the need, or hadn’t had the time.

With the coroner satisfied, and with a hundred photos shot by Deputy Tom Mears and myself, it was time for Larry Zipoli to make his last trip. Rigor hadn’t yet set in. A damn good thing, too. We’d have needed a sky crane or a chain saw, or both. The ‘kids’, a couple of county paramedics neither of whom had yet enjoyed a thirtieth birthday, still would have had a struggle with Larry Zipoli without Bob Torrez’s help. Zipoli was a big fellow, huge of belly and thick everywhere else, probably topping two-fifty. There was no graceful, dignified way to hoist him out of that cramped little cab. He came out feet first, with Torrez holding him under each arm and the rest of us down on the ground to add support. By the time the EMTs had their grim cargo stowed in the ambulance, the rest of the troops had started to arrive.

Tony Pino and Buddy Clayton, understanding how we worked a scene, hadn’t just barged in after they had arrived. They patiently stayed a couple dozen yards away, smoking and talking in hushed tones as they watched us work, not eager to move a step closer to the blood and smell. I beckoned, and they approached with trepidation, as if they were trying to walk on eggs.

Chapter Two

Before Pino and Clayton reached us, Sheriff Eduardo Salcido’s black Impala nosed to a stop, and he hadn’t pulled his bulk out of the car before a state police cruiser joined us. Highland had become a parking lot. The sheriff cocked a pistol-finger at the state officer before they shook hands, and the two men stood by their cars for a moment, hopefully figuring out how they might approach without planting size twelves all over the crime scene. I waved them toward the far shoulder of the road.

Tony, I don’t know what to tell you, I said to the highway superintendent. Someone put a shot right through the windshield. It appears that Larry was parked right here.

Jesus, Tony whispered. Not Larry. My God. He stepped closer to the framework below the cab, putting him at eye level with the floor of the grader’s cab.

No one witnessed it. Evie Truman happened by and found him. She’s the one who called us.

He’s dead? That seemed so obvious as to be comical, but what the hell. When we don’t want to believe the ugly way things are going, we’re apt to say silly things.

Yes, sir. Probably never knew what hit him.

My God.

I’m going to get together with you later, Tony. We’re going to need Larry’s schedule, things like that. What he was doing this morning, and so forth.

Yeah, sure. Pino’s voice was distant. He gazed up at the bullet hole through the windshield. Why…accident, you think?

I have no idea, Tony. None. We’ll be working on that.

I turned as Sheriff Salcido approached. He walked with his hands on his rump, fingers in his back pockets, head down to watch where he put his feet. Although he was a couple of months younger than me, I still looked at Eduardo Salcido as an older man—at least until I happened to look in the mirror. Over the past ten years, after I was named undersheriff, Salcido had become less a hard-riding lawman and more of a comfortable bureaucrat, perfectly willing to turn the responsibility of day-to-day operations of the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department over to me.

By no means a lazy man, Salcido simply redirected his energies as the years crept up on him. I suppose I did the same thing without ever noticing. He was good at dealing with the county commission. I wasn’t—and didn’t want to learn. He could give a lively, amusing talk to the Kiwanis Club, while I fumbled and stumbled. He enjoyed talking to a classroom of sixth graders. I’d rather drop rocks on my feet. I preferred long, quiet ambles through my county at any time of day or night, windows down, listening, watching, even smelling that wonderful prairie. And most of the time I did that while the rest of the county was snoozing.

Who we got here? Salcido asked when he was within easy conversational distance. His accent was heavy, musical, even soothing. He could thicken it, or dilute it, depending on the circumstances. He reached out a hand and shook hands with each of us in turn, his grip like squeezing a concrete block.

Larry Zipoli. One shot, from the front. I pointed at the windshield.

For heaven’s sakes. The sheriff’s frown darkened. He stood four-square, a few pounds heavier than me but four inches shorter than my five foot ten. If he had a neck, it grew buried under muscle somewhere on top of massive shoulders. For a while, he’d sported a droopy mustache, but then abandoned it, claiming it made him look like something from one of those movies.

Bob Torrez waited patiently off to one side. Deputy Tom Mears had trudged west on Highland, seeking a panoramic photo of the crime scene. Salcido shook his head wearily and made a point to shake hands with Torrez who, at six four, towered over him. If Sheriff Salcido left the scene for ten minutes and then returned, we’d be treated to the same handshakes, except it wasn’t token. Eduardo Salcido kept his circle connected.

For a long moment, the sheriff said nothing, taking in the mountain of machinery parked in the sun, the obvious insult of it all. He stretched, rubbing the right side of his upper belly where I knew his cranky gall bladder fussed. Kindred spirits in that regard, the two of us.

You got tracks down there? He pointed with a little nod toward the west, where Mears was making his wide-angle survey. Freshly graded like that, he added. Something will show.

Sure enough, I said. He was about half finished. So this lane is hard-packed. Not much is going to show unless they drove in the fresh stuff.

Salcido squinted up at the cab. "Por díos, this is no good." He turned and looked back down the road, trying to make the geometry work. It was a good hundred yards west to the intersection with Hutton, maybe a hundred and fifty. The rifle shot could have come from across the intersection, anywhere out on the prairie. Dips, arroyos, brush—there was plenty of cover. I had only a general working knowledge of how much a high velocity bullet dropped at various distances, but at a hundred yards or so, a couple of inches would cover the mid-range trajectory. I was uneasy about that, since a heavy caliber rifle bullet should have popped through both the windshield and Larry Zipoli’s skull, perhaps even out the back window. To stop short, somewhere in his brain, had to be telling us something.

To clear all the gear in the front of this rig, and then go straight into the cab? That’s interesting, don’t you think? The sheriff reached out and took Bob Torrez by the elbow as if expecting the deputy to say, "Yes, I do think it’s interesting."

The bullet’s going to tell us a lot, Torrez said instead. It ain’t no .22, I can tell you that much.

You keep after it, Bobby. The sheriff turned and gazed down Highland, lips pursed. Without looking, he reached out a hand and touched my shoulder, as if he had to have physical contract in order to talk to someone. "This is bad, jefito. I didn’t respond, and Salcido obviously didn’t expect an answer. I didn’t mind his slang nickname for me. He’d called me what translated as ‘little boss’ since the day he’d hired me, although I was neither. He glanced at his watch. Have you talked to la esposa?"

That’s next on my list, I said.

Salcido shook his head. Let me do that. I have to swing back that way anyway. I’ll find his pastor, and we’ll go on over. His hand reached out to Tony Pino. You’ll go with me?

Sure, Sheriff. You bet. Jesus, I hate this. What the hell are we going to tell her?

What we know, Salcido shrugged. Right now, she needs to go down to the hospital to be with Larry. He turned to me. You need any more hands to get this measured up?

We’re set.

Wrong spot at the wrong time, Salcido mused. He reached out to make contact with State Patrolman Frank Aguilar. This guy here…he can hold the idiot end of the tape measure, you know. The sheriff grinned and flashed some gold. You gotta wonder… He let the thought drift off. Somebody had to see or hear something. They got to come forward.

We can hope so. I didn’t feel particularly optimistic. Evie Truman found him and called us. That gives us a time window. She saw him alive just after noon. If anyone else drove by, he didn’t stop. It was shortly after three o’clock when she drove by the second time and found him dead. That’s three hours of opportunity.

Well, then, we talk to people, Salcido said. Somebody knows something. He didn’t have time to radio in, did he? I mean back to the maintenance barn. He turned to Tony as he said that, and Pino shook his head.

He had trouble with the rig this morning, I know that. He had it back at the yard right around lunch time. Pino said.

And still some trouble. I nodded toward the hydraulic leak up front. I ushered them to the spot, and for a long moment, Tony and Buddy squatted under the rig, examining the new hose.

He blew that this afternoon, Tony said, and stood up with a grunt. He radioed in. I know that. Who brought him the new one, Bud?

Clayton wiped his mouth. He looked as if he’d been considering throwing up ever since he’d watched Larry Zipoli sag down out of the cab, dead face covered in blood.

Jeez, Buddy allowed. Who was that? I don’t know. One of the boys in the shop. I know that Zip called in on the radio and told ’em what he needed.

No big deal to change that? I asked.

"Nah. Easy. That little one is easy. He turned and patted the big yellow frame beside his head. Break one up inside, and it’s a pain in the ass."

Does he have to shut down the machine to do that work? Salcido asked.

"Don’t have to, but I guess he would."

Blow a hose, call for help, wait for the replacement, take the old one off and put the new one on, I thought. Then fire up the machine and back to work. But before he can put the machine into gear, blam. He’s dead.

Tony kicked a boot in the dirt in frustration. Shit, I don’t know. I was out most of the morning.

After the shot, he sure as hell didn’t radio anybody. What we know for sure is that when he was found, he was sitting in the seat, stone dead. The engine was idling, the gears in neutral, blade down. Beyond that, we don’t know diddly, I said.

The sheriff shook his head sadly and thrust out his lower jaw as if loosening a necktie. You let me know what you need. He nodded toward the state policeman. If we need to ask for more help, we will. He paused. I didn’t know this Larry too well. I see him around, you know. But beyond that… He shrugged and then brightened with another thought. He stepped away from the group and took me by the elbow, walking me toward the rear of the machine.

I interviewed a friend of yours this afternoon. A young lady that I think we should hire.

There aren’t a whole lot of young lady friends in my life at the moment, I laughed.

Reuben’s grandniece? The sheriff’s eyes twinkled.

My mind went blank. Reuben Fuentes was a basically good-natured old codger who enjoyed a wonderfully casual relationship with the law, often fueled by excessive bouts with the bottle. A stone mason gifted with remarkable skill and artistry, he had relatives a few miles south in Mexico, and pretty much ignored the line in the dust drawn by the Border folks when he needed to haul rocks or cement or bricks from job to job. I found him immensely likeable, had bought him lunch on several occasions, and had made a trip or two with him south of the border—more than once to make sure that he didn’t end up a permanent resident of a Mexican prison.

I don’t know the grandniece.

Oh, sure you do. I want you to talk with her, too. I set it up for tomorrow. She’ll come in first thing.

Does this grandniece have a name?

Estelle Reyes? Teresa’s adopted kid down in Tres Santos? Fresh out of school. She’ll be a good one.

The memory flooded back, but it was of an eleven year-old urchin playing under the cottonwoods in Tres Santos, Mexico. Reuben had introduced me first to his aging niece, Teresa Filipina Reyes, a woman who eked out a living teaching school in the tiny village, and then to the skinny little twerp whom Teresa had adopted from the church orphanage a decade before. Reuben and I had had other issues to attend to that day, but I knew that a few years later, when the child turned sixteen, she had come across the border to live with Reuben and attend Posadas High School. Maybe she’d come across legally, but knowing Reuben, ceremony perhaps had not been stood upon.

I knew about her during her two years at the high school, but not much else. She’d been in classes once in a while when Salcido or I had given guest talks during career day, but managed to get through her two years of public school without showing up on law enforcement radar. As far as I knew, no raucous parties, no lead foot, no experiments with alcohol or weed, despite her guardian’s propensity for sauce. And then she’d gone off to college. Since Reuben Fuentes wasn’t the sort to blab about his relatives, the girl had dropped off my planet.

I didn’t even know she’d sent in an application to work for us, I said. Most of the time, such things would have crossed my desk, but Eduardo Salcido was Eduardo, after all, operating under the patron system more often

Reviews for One Perfect Shot

[jamespurcell · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Flashback episode introduces Estelle Reyes to the series. Clearly a keeper as she assists Under-sheriff Bill in tracking down who shot the man in the road grader. Good characters and an interesting environment make for another pleasant read in this solid series.

[condorena · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It is always nice to read about a favorite character when he or she is just starting out in their career. In this case it is a story told during the days when Estelle Reyes was on her first days in the job of Deputy for the Posadas county police.

It foreshadows her special intuition and very sharp eyes when it comes to incongruities at the scene of the crime. Bill Gastner is as solid and unflappable as ever and he walks her through the initial points of good law enforcement.

The case is one that fits Bill to a tee, a dead man in unusual circumstances, no apparent clues, but a puzzle for which the pieces are out there and he will find them and put them together.

[dougbq · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A good, pleasant read. If you are looking for a book to pass the time, you surely could do less than this. Posadas County, NM is a rather small place with the type of crime you expect in a small county. When a county worker is killed in an odd shooting, the entire sheriff's deparment goes to work. Following them holds your interest.

[readinggeek451 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Set in 1987, when Bill Gastner was still an undersheriff and Estelle Reyes a brand new rookie. A county employee is killed by one perfect shot through the windshield of the grader he was operating. But there's something very odd about the bullet.The series has been better.

[rhonda1111 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One perfect shot was a good book, but had trouble to get into at first. The last few books I have read have been great so that did effect how I judged this book. It was one where I could read some and then go to something else and come back to it.Larry was shot in his grader a hard shot that instantly killed him. Bill the under sheriff is the main cop who works the case. Bill is also training a new cop Estelle Reyes, she will be their first female cop on patrol.Thier was a lot of talk about riffles,bullets that was necessary to story but I could not keep that straight in my mind.It shows how piece by piece they try to put the pieces together to figure what happen, how it happened, why someone shot Larry. It was good to see so much of that in the book.Their was a lot of facts but not much to Estelle interaction that I wanted to know more about and from her. Also wanted to know about the art she thought was stolen, maybe thats for another book.Now I know that this was book 9 in a series I would like to read the other 8 books.I was given this ebook in exchange of honest review.