Bill Gastner Series

Posadas County, New Mexico, is home to aging Undersheriff, William C. Gastner, pushing sixty, and the considerable girth of his uniform belt. He has no other life than law enforcement with retirement looming inevitably near. Gastner’s routine is shattered by a tragic accident claiming the lives of several teenagers. The ensuing investigation launches an even bigger controversy with the discovery of a large stash of cocaine. The Sheriff’s Department and Gastner must face big-city crime invading their turf. Violence explodes as the investigation deepens, taking the life of an undercover officer. The department seems ill-equipped to handle crime of this scale, and it falls into the lap of one William C. Gastner. Ultimately he  must pilot the case to its final end, if his ailing heart, and portly body will only last that long...

Linda Real, Reporter for the Posadas Register, barely survives a nighttime patrol with one of Undersheriff Bill Gastner’s deputies. The officer is killed by a blast from the same shotgun that ruined her face. Sheriff Gastner again teams up with Estelle ReyesGuzman, with her usual sharp eye for physical evidence, to implicate Tammy Woodruff in the shooting. Tammy is a thrill seeking daughter of the local Republican County Chairman. Before Bill can interrogate her, she hightails it out of the County, only to be found crushed to death after her truck apparently went off the road. Her body was supposedly loaded with boozein fact too much alcohol for anyone to have consumed....

The disappearance of a young camper atop Cat Mesa convinces Undersheriff Bill Gastner and Estelle Reyes-Guzman that the boy has been spirited away.

Rolling stone Wesley Crocker seems a harmless enough free spirit when Posadas County Undersheriff Bill Gastner offers him a lift on the road, then spots him a free dinner. Crocker beds down for the night on the high school athletic field. By morning, 13-year-old Maria Ibarra is found under the bleachers a few feet away, and Crocker goes straight to jail. His account of how he spent the night is full of enough holes to keep him locked down. Meanwhile, a background check on Maria’s young life raises troubling questions.

Aging Posadas County Undersheriff Bill Gastner is taking a rare vacation in the mountains of Northern New Mexico. Still recovering from his quadruple bypass, Gastner heads to the hills to escape his physicians who keep preaching health reform. While there he intends to sort through his desire to reunite with Detective Estelle Reyes from San Estevan County. The plans for a peaceful vacation at Steamboat Rock Campground are interrupted by sirens. Reyes and Gastner do not meet for dinner, but for a murder case. A young pregnant woman seems to be the victim of a hit-and-run accident. Hers is the first in a series of deaths that pull Gastner off of vacation and onto the case...

At a wellseasoned sixtynine, Sheriff Bill Gastner knows his Posadas, New Mexico, territory as well as he understands the foibles of the human condition. So when a backhoe crushes a man to death, it’s more instinct than fact that leaves him feeling there’s more to this “accident” than meets the eye. Adding to his problems, anonymous letters charging his best deputy, Tom Pasquale, with hustling Mexican nationals for cash, are being dispatched around town. Gastner takes this one personally; he’s fond of his deputy, but he does want the truth. He also knows it’s an election year and dirty politics can happen anywhere. So can murder. Soon he’s got not just one, but two dead bodies. And a strong desire to make sure that when he does retire...it’s not by way of a wellaimed bullet.

Sheriff Martin Holman of the Posadas County Sheriff's Department didn't like flying. Much less at night, with bad weather. So why he took a plane ride over a nearby mesa under those dangerous conditions is a question as disturbing as why somebody shot the pilot dead from the ground--causing the plane to crash. Undersheriff Bill Gastner, a 60 something warhorse, just months away from retirement, now has a murder on his hands. The only possible lead is a roll of film and with it, Gastner is determined to find out what the late Sheriff Holman was up to. Following his sharp instincts and a tenacity born of long years as a cop, he uncovers a scheme of illegal doings and nasty buried secrets. Unfortunately, it could make his biggest case his last.

Bill Gastner, the reluctant sheriff of Posadas County, New Mexico, anticipates his last few days in office will be uneventful. That is, until local teen Matt Baca drives drunkenly into the back of Gastner’s cruiser, then flees into the night. His eventual capture turns tragic when the boy becomes irrationally violent and takes a fatal tumble into oncoming traffic. Adding to the tragedy, Matt’s father is found dead in his tiny kitchen. Is this all a terrible coincidence, or is something more sinister afoot? The dead teen’s fake ID troubles Gastner. He suspects it’s why Matt Baca was so intent on avoiding arrest for drunken driving. His theory leads him to the toughest, deadliest couple of days of his career. This is a case that proves small town life can deliver big trouble. Still, Sheriff Gastner proves his mettle, and resolves it by using the common sense of an old warhorse, and the soothing powers of a green chile burrito.

Former Posadas County Sheriff Bill Gastner, now a New Mexico Livestock Inspector, is enjoying a day on Herb Torrance’s Ranch-soaking in the sun as he counts a small herd of cattle and thinking about an upcoming lunch with an old friend back in town. But Bill soon finds himself ferrying a broken cowpuncher in the back of his SUV, headed out to meet an ambulance.

When the first Posadas County Mystery, Heartshot, was published in 1991, Bill Gastner was the county undersheriff. Over time Bill became sheriff, then retired, and Robert Torrez took over the top spot. But what were Torrez's first days as a rookie officer like? Terrible! It's 1986. Undersheriff Bill Gastner is enjoying his usual insomnia alone inside his old adobe when jolted by a horrendous noise. Dreading what he will find, he hastens to the nearby interstate exit where a violent crash has occurred. Not only is the vehicle that struck the support pillars totaled and the driver and a passenger crushed inside, a dead boy has been ejected. As the appalled Gastner recognizes the youth and swings into action, the first deputy to join him at the scene is rookie Robert Torrez, the department's newest hire. Before Gastner can head him off, Torrez sees that the boy is his spirited younger brother. And the girl crushed inside the SUV is a younger sister. The driver of the Suburban, also dead, is the assistant district attorney's teenage son. Two local family tragedies. A shaken couple reports that when the Suburban, careening at nearly 100 miles an hour, passed them on the interstate, activity inside hinted at its occupants' panic. Were the three dead kids running from someone - or something - rather than speeding? Further investigation reveals that a fourth teen should have been in the vehicle but is now missing. Where had the four kids been? And why? It appears they'd lied to their parents. Following his usual meticulous procedure, Gastner traces the vehicle's path to a remote canyon with attractive caves. The discovery he makes there balloons the case and introduces possible murder. Yet with a lack of witnesses hampering Sheriff Salcido, Gastner, Torrez, and other deputies, errors working the case can too easily be made.

What do you do when you inherit $330 million after taxes? If you're New Mexico rancher Miles Waddell, you build a dream. A flat-topped mesa and a third of a billion dollars equals NIGHTZONE, an astronomy-based theme park, complete with giant radio telescope, a bank of smaller scopes linked to a theater, five-star dining in a restaurant with retracting dome ceiling, a hotel/resort, tram car access, and a narrow gauge steam locomotive to carry tourists to the mesa top. Glorious. And too ambitious for many residents of Posadas County. Waddell's dream begins to sour as one night two eco-terrorists make an opening statement by chain-sawing down power lines that feed the development. One of the terrorists is killed by a bucking power pole. From 20 miles away, former Posadas Sheriff William K. Gastner spots a pair of headlights as the dead man’s companion speeds from the scene. Charges quickly include murder when the fleeing conspirator is stopped by a cop and guns the lawman down. Hours later a second shooting occurs when Gastner stops to assist Sgt. Jackie Taber during an unrelated traffic stop. Always the last to pull a trigger, the now 74-year old Gastner becomes the focus of a second investigation by the over-stressed District Attorney and Sheriff’s Department. Meanwhile, Waddell's troubles with rumor-mongers and anti-government thugs continue. A tired Gastner is unwilling to work security for NIGHTZONE, but security has become essential. There is a bright spot: Gastner’s godson, 13 year-old Francisco Guzman. The musical prodigy’s conservatory has scheduled a double concert in Posadas, part of a national tour. Yet the timing of this stellar event could not be worse with the retired Gastner and the whole community tangling with lethal avengers and agendas.

Posadas County Undersheriff Bill Gastner knows that ancient Anna Hocking didn’t fall down the fruit cellar stairs by accident. He is also certain that old man Reuben Fuentes knows nothing about the bodies scattered on his dusty, southern New Mexico ranch. No Spring Chicken himself, Bill summons his former deputy, Reuben’s niece Estelle, from Mexico to help clear her uncle of suspicion. Eventually this generation spanning law enforcement team finds a thread tying all the crimes together. The thread leads to a killer with no conscience...