Free Out of Season by Steven F. Havill

throat.
    The road led straight to the Boyds’ ranch house, and we kept the speed down while driving through their yard. Just behind the barn, we thumped across a cattle guard and pulled up onto the graveled surface of County Road 9010. This was barely a track and a half wide, but in comparison to jouncing across the open mesa, it was a boulevard.
    We drove due east and before long, reached the intersection with County Road 43, the paved arterial that would take us to Posadas.
    I paused at the stop sign and pointed to the left, toward the north. “The Finnegans live up that way about a mile. Remember the last cattle guard?” Buscema nodded. “All the land on this side of that fence line belongs to Richard Finnegan. On the west side, it’s Johnny and Edwin Boyd’s.”
    “Big spreads,” Buscema said.
    “With not much on them,” I replied and pulled the Bronco out onto the county road. Buscema hefted his briefcase onto his lap and snapped it open. For the next several minutes, he was engrossed in his paperwork.
    We were still three miles north of Posadas, humming along on blessedly smooth pavement, when the mobile phone beside me chirped.
    “Hi-tech stuff,” Buscema said as he watched me fumble the thing to my ear. With my other hand, I turned on the radio.
    “Gastner.”
    “Sir, this is Linda.”
    For a moment, my mind went blank, but experience had taught me not to bother fighting it. “Linda who?” I asked.
    “Linda Real, sir. Gayle has been trying to raise you on the radio and I’ve been working the phone.”
    “We’ve been out of range on both counts,” I said. I didn’t bother to add that the radio hadn’t been turned on until that moment. “What’s up?”
    “Estelle said it’s important that you swing by the hospital at your first opportunity, sir.”
    “She’s got some news for us?”
    “I don’t know, sir. That’s all she said. She did say that if we weren’t able to reach you by”—she paused—“seventeen hundred hours, we should send a deputy up to the site for you.”
    I glanced at the clock on the dash. We’d saved a deputy a long, rough ride by six minutes. “We’re just coming down the hill past the mine. ETA about six minutes.”
    “I’ll inform her, sir.”
    “Thanks.” I dropped the phone on the seat and glanced at Buscema. “Something from the hospital. I don’t know what.”
    Less than a mile from town, another department vehicle passed us northbound. It was Sergeant Mitchell, flying low. As he passed us, the radio squelched twice, and even before I had time to wonder where he was bound, I saw his four-by-four slow abruptly, turn around and charge after us.
    “Three-ten, three-oh-seven.”
    I picked up the mike. “Three-ten.”
    “Three-ten, did you copy the message from three-oh-six?”
    “Ten-four. We’re heading to the med center now.”
    Buscema glanced at his watch. “Are your boys usually this eager?” he asked.
    “They better be,” I said.
    “Are most of the deputies locals? Homegrown?”
    “Some are. Some not. Sergeant Mitchell, the hot-rod in our rearview mirror, spent about five years in Baltimore.”
    “Now that’s a little cultural shock,” Buscema said. “What keeps him here?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. I grinned at him. “The peace and quiet, maybe.” We entered the village and turned southwest on Pershing. I knew the hospital’s layout intimately after hundreds of visits over the last decade since the facility’s construction, and knew exactly how to save time and steps. I parked in an “Ambulance Only” slot near the emergency-room door. Mitchell pulled in beside me.
    Estelle Reyes-Guzman was waiting for us. I introduced her to Buscema, and the federal agent’s eyebrows shot up for just a second before he nodded brusquely and recovered his composure.
    “Francis is waiting in X-ray,” Estelle said, and we followed her down the polished, antiseptic hallway, made a shortcut through the kitchen and then took the back door to