Double Prey (13 page)
Estelle squirmed backward from the cave. Her tan trousers and white blouse shed billows of dust and debris as she brushed herself off. She took the jacket from Casey and spread it on a nearby rock, along with the radio.
“This is where we have to change strategies a little bit,” she said, and watched the puzzled expression on Casey’s face. “Freddy never said anything about any artifact
other
than the cat skeleton. Is that right?”
“Not to me. I don’t know what he told Mr. Underwood.”
“There was no mention in the newspaper article, either.” Estelle stepped closer to the girl, locking eyes. “Freddy had a handgun with him when we found him,” she said. “Its condition leads me to believe that he might have found it in this cave. He had it wrapped carefully in a cloth in his carrier. It wasn’t packed as if it was just something he habitually carried with him.”
“I…I don’t know about that. He had that little rifle, that’s all I know.”
“You didn’t see him bring it out of the cave on Sunday…along with the skull?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“And later in the week sometime…he didn’t mention the handgun to you? Or that he’d found one?”
“No, ma’am. He didn’t. Who would it belong to?”
“That’s a question, isn’t it.” Estelle looked first at her watch, and then the sky. Going on three o’clock, the sun was well past the edge of the mesa, and the shade around them was cool. “I need to get you home, Casey, but it’s going to take a few minutes.”
“Oh, there’s no hurry.”
“That’s good. First, I need you to call your mom and dad and let them know that you’re still with me, and that it’ll be at least an hour or two. I don’t want them to worry. As soon as I can round up a deputy to sit this site, I’ll drive you home. But we can’t leave it unprotected.” Casey didn’t question that, and they made their way down to the SUV, where Estelle waited while Casey called her mother. The conversation didn’t last long, and after a quiet conversation and then three or four “yes, ma’ams,” Casey closed the telephone.
“My sister Christine just got home from Cruces,” she said. “She hopes you’ll have time to stop by.”
“I look forward to seeing her,” Estelle said. She thumbed several digits into her own phone and Deputy Tom Pasquale answered promptly.
“
Tomás
, where are you now?”
“Workin’ my way up the canyon road. Sheriff told me to park it by the old homestead, and I think I’m just about there.”
“Stay on the west side of that,” she said. “There are tracks near the cabin foundation that I don’t want disturbed.”
“Ten four. I’m there now and there’s nothin’ going on. Well wait, I got one coyote across the arroyo, about six hundred yards out. And he doesn’t look too interested.”
Estelle laughed. “I need you right where you are. I don’t want anybody disturbing that scene. Not the canyon road or the arroyo. And there’s some evidence down this way that needs to be protected until morning.” Her curiosity about the cave was a powerful attraction, and the dark depths of that formation were independent of the day and night above ground. A generator and lights would be necessary in the cave, but whatever was there to be discovered had been lying there in the dust and bat guano for years—it could all wait until morning, when logistics became exponentially easier.
“Tony’s lookin’ for something to do. He was at the office earlier,” Pasquale said.
“I’ll tell him you suggested it.” As Estelle redialed the phone, she watched Casey Prescott. The young woman paced head down in front of the Expedition, hands in the back pockets of her jeans, idly kicking a pebble out of the ruts. Circuits clicked and then Dispatcher Ernie Wheeler responded. Estelle requested a deputy at the cave location, and suggested Tony Abeyta.
“He’s workin’ graveyard tonight, remember,” Wheeler said. Estelle could hear a voice in the background. “Jackie has the night off, but she says she can work if there’s a problem.”
“
Ay
, ” the undersheriff said, trying to visualize the personnel assignment board that hung on the wall behind the dispatch island. “Well, Tony gets to work graveyard out here in the middle of peace and quiet,” she said. “Check with him and find out for me. I need to know his ETA this location.”
In less than a minute, the dispatcher came back on line. “He’s on the way. He said he wants to stop by the house and change clothes. Just a few minutes.”
“Ten four. Thanks, Ernie. I’ll be coming in as soon as he arrives.”
She folded the phone thoughtfully as she approached Casey Prescott. So much time, Estelle thought. From the moments on Monday when Freddy had showed the skull to the teacher until his death sometime on Thursday, the young man had had ample time to return to the cave. Perhaps more than one trip. There was no reason to take the four-wheeler each time, except that the machine was obviously fast and fun to ride—and much cheaper to operate than the old, jouncing pickup truck.
Estelle looked down the empty, silent two-track. At what point had Freddy Romero decided that there was enough interest in the cave to try to protect it with the cover story about Borracho Springs? Had he actually seen the handgun on his first visit, he would have recovered it. There was no way he’d leave it behind. Unless he was concerned that Casey would object, complicating his life with suggestions about what to do with the find.
“And no one else came by while you two were here, other than Herb Torrance’s brief stop earlier?”
“No, ma’am.”
Estelle shook her head slowly. “When you had the skull all wrapped and stashed on the ATV, did Freddy say that he was planning to come back? That he was planning to make another trip?”
“No. Earlier, he had mentioned getting some of his dad’s shop lights. Or even just a decent flashlight. But no, he didn’t mention it again.” She gazed back up the slope. So rocky and boulder-strewn was the mesa flank that their passing had left no tracks, nothing to indicate the cave’s location. And because of the lip of rock that overhung the work of the packrats, only the exhaling of cool air from the bowels of the earth would hint at the cave’s location.
Such odd circumstances had tangled in this lonely place, Estelle thought—and long before Freddy Romero first felt that gush of subterranean air.
The tire was clamped in the spreader, the sidewalls sprung wide to expose the inner surface. Sergeant Tom Mears had chalked the tiny imperfection five centimeters above the sidewall bead. As Estelle watched, he inserted a smooth wire probe.
“The exit hole, if there is one, could have been obliterated by the impact with the rock,” he said. Small-framed and fastidious, Tom Mears was one of those people for whom time stood still when he worked. When presented with a problem, he began by looking at the smallest parts, rather than the whole picture. He pushed a section of sidewall on the opposite side of the tire outward. It appeared that the rock had sliced into the sidewall just above the bead, ripping a large flap. “It’s just impossible to tell.”
Estelle looked again at the clear plastic evidence bag that Mears had handed her earlier. The fragment of brass was about the size of a snapped-off pencil tip—no more than half a centimeter long, and irregular in shape. Eyes concerned with seeing only a flat tire would have missed it.
“If this is from a rifle bullet…” She looked across at Sheriff Robert Torrez.
“It
is
a rifle bullet,” the sheriff said as if she were somehow contradicting him. “Nothing else it could be. There’s no brass in the wheel assembly or anywhere else on that ATV.”
“From earlier?”
“Now, we can’t be certain
yet
, but I don’t think so,” Mears offered. “That’s not much of a hole, but it
is
a hole. It’s nothing compared to what colliding with the rock did, but that’s enough of a hole to let air out over time.”
She turned to the ATV, now sitting on the concrete floor with a triangular jack supporting the left front suspension.
“Right here,” Torrez said. He knelt and took a mechanical pencil out of his pocket, pointing at a gouge in the soft plastic margin that formed the very front of the machine’s bodywork. The gouge in the colored plastic was just a touch, a faint scar that could have been caused by any number of things—a breaking tree limb, the pickup truck’s tailgate, a dropped tool. Mears maneuvered the shop light closer so Estelle could look through the five inch magnifier.
“It’s fresh,” she said. The film of grit and grime on the rest of the fender had not been disturbed by whatever had made the mark.
“And then here.” Torrez hefted the wheel. A small gouge marked the margin of the rim.
“You got the folder?” Torrez asked Mears, and the sergeant nodded. He retrieved a manila folder from the bench and handed it to Estelle. The digital photos were wonderfully clear. In the first, the wheel and damaged tire had not yet been removed from the ATV. The gouge in the plastic fender, where the fender swept over to join the bodywork, was aligned with the wheel and tire. A metal pointer aligned the scuff in the fender with the gouge in the rim and the tiny rent in the sidewall.
“How definite is this?” Estelle asked. So many things could have caused the ding in the plastic skirt. It didn’t appear difficult to rotate the damaged tire until the spot on the rim and in the sidewall were approximately opposite the mark on the fender, no matter what had caused either.
“Not one hundred percent,” Mears said. “Maybe a
long
way from one hundred percent. But it’s possible. I don’t see how the bullet could even strike the inside wall of the tire except from the front.”
“Would the one shot cause an explosive flat?”
“I would guess not.” Mears scratched his shoulder. “Those ATV tires aren’t inflated real hard.” He reached across and pushed his fist against the tread of the other front tire. Estelle could see it flex slightly. “They’re stout enough that they’d actually run flat for quite a ways. What you’ve got going into the tire are fragments.”
“If you’re talkin’ about an explosive blowout that would cause a swerve into the rocks, the odds are slim and none,” Torrez said.
“So, then.” Estelle leafed through the portfolio of photographs. She paused at a macro enlargement, shot through the stereo microscope in the downstairs darkroom in the Public Safety Building. Torrez reached past her arm with the pencil and indicated a portion of the photograph.
“That’s a rifling groove,” he said. “Part of one, anyway. There’s no doubt in my mind about that. That’s a bullet fragment. We’re lookin’ at part of the brass jacket.”
“That won’t tell us much, except that if it
is
a bullet, it’s a small caliber, high-velocity job. The sort of thing that just explodes when it hits something hard.”
“You got that right,” Torrez said. “Something big and lumbering like a pistol bullet would just stay in one piece, more or less. And if it was a big bore, high velocity rifle, the damage would be significant to the wheel rim and the tire both.”
“Could it have happened before Freddy rode out from the truck, then?”
“No.” Mears looked at Torrez for affirmation.
“Nope,” the sheriff said. “Unless he’s so numb that he rides several miles and doesn’t notice he’s got a flat tire. Ain’t going to happen.”
“Then somebody took a shot at him,” Estelle said. “By accident or intent.”
“Maybe,” Torrez said. “It’d be a hell of a shot to pot a tire intentionally when the target is movin’ at thirty miles an hour, up, down, sideways. Just not likely. More likely the shooter was tryin’ for something else.”
“To hit Freddy, you mean?”
“Maybe. Could have been shooting at something else entirely.”
Estelle envisioned Freddy Romero’s ATV blasting along the two-track, the snarl of its marginally muffled engine carrying for a mile or more. A hunter would have heard him coming. So would a coyote. That a hunter was poised to take a shot at a varmint, and shot in such a way that suddenly the four wheeler leaped into the bullet’s trajectory…
She shook her head. The country around Bender’s Canyon didn’t lend itself to long shots—too many scrubby trees, undulating hills, the buttress of the mesa itself. The odds were good that if someone had struck the four wheeler with a bullet, he’d meant to do it.
“Linda’s going to have a long day.” She rapped the folder of digital prints. “When we go out to take another look at the cave, I want her to take photos before anyone crawls in there.”
“That’s a trick,” Torrez said.
“I know that
Freddy
crawled in at least part way, and probably more than once. There’ll be marks from that. I think he found the pistol in there, maybe on a second trip. The first time, Casey held his ankle.” Estelle smiled sympathetically. “She didn’t want him going in at all. I don’t think he could have seen much with just the flame from a cigarette lighter. That’s all he had with him.”
“The first time,” Torrez amended.
“Exactly. When I slid in there, I had to scoot over a bit before I saw the holster and belt fragment. Freddy would have seen that too,
if
the pistol was in the holster. But I don’t think it was.”
“Wouldn’t have been all covered with shit if it was,” the sheriff added. “You didn’t go farther than that?”
“No, I didn’t. And I lifted the holster just far enough to identify what it was. It’s still in place, and I want photos. Once we crawl in there and disturb the cave, that’s it. Whatever evidence there might be will be ruined. So we need to take our time and do this right.”
“Posey wants to be in on it,” Torrez said. “It’s their cat, after all.”
“I don’t blame him. We’re going to need all kinds of people that we don’t have. But right now, I don’t care about a dead cat. I care about finding out what happened to my neighbor.”
By the time Estelle Reyes-Guzman was satisfied that she’d seen all there was to see with the four-wheeler, and then surveyed the photo array of the cat skull, finally finishing up by willing herself to review for things missed, it was nearly nine o’clock that Saturday evening. Before heading home, she phoned Bill Gastner. For a moment, she thought he might have gone out on another of his night-time recons, but on the eighth ring, he answered the phone.
“Damn, you’re patient.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you gone home yet?”
“No. I’m about to.” She quickly filled him in on what they had discovered. “I wanted to know if you’d found a date for the cat in my great-uncle’s journals
Padrino
.”
“No. But I’m gradually going blind trying,” he laughed. “I’ve gone back to 1967 so far. Nothing yet. No
gato
, no
jaguar
. ”
“Interesting. We’re going spelunking in the morning, if you’d care to join us.”
“That’s the darkness and bat-shit thing, isn’t it.”
“Oh,
sí
. ”
“ You’re going to actually need my help?”
“I think so.”
“Well, all right then. How about you pick me up?”
“Done.”
“Who buys breakfast?”
“The county will, sir.”
“Fat chance. I know how this is going to go—about twelve hours out there in the sun without food. I’ll buy.”
By the time she reached home that night, Irma Sedillos had gone home, Teresa and the two boys were in bed, and her husband was engrossed in his office, the light from the computer screen casting weird shadows down the hallway.
She settled in the large leather chair, and waited until the physician had finished whatever thoughts were driving his fingers as they flashed over the keyboard.
“How’s it coming?” she asked as he swiveled his chair around.
“Like crazy,” Francis said. “You look absolutely beat.”
“I am.” She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, then reached out and circled his legs with one arm as he walked around her chair, bending down to sink powerful fingers into the muscles of her neck and shoulders.
“You’re one big bunch of knots,” he whispered, working down the kinks. “I stopped by to talk with George and Tata for a few minutes. They’ve got a flood of relatives and friends at the house.”
“I saw the traffic when I drove up.” She sat bolt upright, eyes closed, as his fingers drove down her flanks, following the tension down to her beltline. “I spent the evening with Casey Prescott, out at the cave where they found the cat.”
“How’s she taking all this?”
“Well, she’s struggling with it.”
Her husband shifted both hands and worked on her right side, and she leaned against him. “Why did you need to do that?” he asked.
“The cave? It turns out,” and she shifted her weight as he did, “that Freddy lied about where he found the cat skeleton.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. It’s actually a spot over behind Herb Torrance’s place, at the north end of the canyon. When we found Freddy, there was a handgun in the carrier of his four-wheeler. There’s every reason to think it came from the cave as well.”
Francis paused, and his hands moved up and encircled Estelle’s skull. “Now that’s bizarre.”
“It is. And I have a feeling that things are going to get
más bizarro
before we’re through with all this. There’s evidence that someone took a shot at Freddy shortly before his crash.” His hands hesitated at that, and then she groaned as he worked his thumbs in unison up the sides of her neck and over the dome of her skull. His silence was question enough. “We’re not sure how that might have happened.”
“I talked with Alan,” he said. “He has the autopsy scheduled for tomorrow. He didn’t seem to think there would be any surprises. But you said someone shot
at
him. They didn’t hit their mark.”
“
Nos vemos
.”
“The shot caused the crash, you think?”
“I just don’t know. I can’t imagine any other way.” She reached up and took one of his hands in hers. “But I can’t imagine
that
, either.” It seemed an enormous effort to pry herself out of the chair. “Let me shed some hardware.”
She unclipped the holstered pistol from her belt, along with the two-way radio, cuffs, and the leather badge holder and stashed them on an upper shelf beside the door. “What’s the update on Butch? Do they know anything yet?”
“I talked with Dr. Berryman on the phone at some length this afternoon. The boy is responding to treatment as best as can be expected. They’re in uncharted waters with this, I think.” He hunched his shoulders, a habitual expression of
I don’t know
that Estelle often saw mirrored by their oldest son, Francisco.
“Your mother asked me tonight if you’d made up your mind about Leister,” he added.
“
Ay
, ” she moaned. One of the brochures about Leister Musical Conservatory had been near at hand for a week now. She’d probed the school’s background and reputation, talked with professors, students, and graduates…a check as thorough as if national security was involved.
The campus in Philadelphia was picturesque, the stone, ivied buildings surrounding a verdant quadrangle crisscrossed with cobblestone walkways, a scene that could have been shot at any number of eastern campuses. Her son had surprised her by discovering Leister on the internet after a recommendation from the itinerant elementary school music teacher—a woman Francisco didn’t particularly like, but to whom he’d apparently listened with at least half an ear. The little boy had presented Estelle with the notion of attending Leister two weeks before, when the brochures he’d ordered arrived in the mail.
The resident school offered an interesting curriculum—a music-driven program that presented the full spectrum of traditional middle and high school courses wrapped around a core of intensive music theory, application, and performance.
Acceptance at Leister was determined by audition, and Estelle was surprised to see the claim that a full sixty percent of the 230 students were on full-ride scholarships. Apparently, the bulk of the school’s funding came from massive endowments.
“I talked with Maestro Miles Cornay a day or two ago.”
“You’re kidding. How did you manage that?”
She wagged an eyebrow at him. “We have ways.” She smiled. “No, I was going to talk to you about it, but Butch and then Irma…I got distracted. Anyway, Dr. Cornay gave Leister a shining endorsement. He said the place changed his life.”
“How so?”
“That’s where he discovered conducting, apparently. They encouraged him in that direction.”
“And now he’s principal conductor in New York,” Francis said. “Not bad.”
“He suggested we do nothing until we have the chance to visit. In fact, that’s what all the references told me. Unequivocal recommendation, but you have to go there and look for yourself.”
“Then we need to schedule that, if Francisco is serious.”
“I
think
he is.”
“He’s been quiet about it.”
“That’s what makes me think he’s serious,” Estelle said. “I get the feeling that he’s afraid we’ll say no if he pesters.”
“Then we need to visit for everyone’s sake,” her husband said. “We can’t just say no…just because. And we need to do it sooner rather than later.” He wrapped Estelle in his arms. “Right now, he’s trying to make sense of everything that’s happened yesterday. We talked for a while before he went to bed, and he told me that Carlos came out with a zinger. Carlos asked him how long Freddy had to be dead.”
“
Ay
, how long,” Estelle groaned. “A long, long time.” She thumped her forehead against his chest. “Things can change so fast. You know, when I was holding Butch, waiting on the EMTs, his brother was already lying dead out in Bender’s Canyon.”
“There’s nothing you could do about that,” Francis said.
“I think that someone watched Freddy die,
oso
. It doesn’t look as if they even went down into the arroyo to check on him. They just left him there.”
“But you’re not sure of that.”
“No. I’m not sure. As
Padrino
is fond of observing, I have this cloud of tiny puzzle pieces swirling around my head. None of them make sense. None of them fits. All I know is that the roof has fallen in on my neighbors and there was nothing I could do about it.”
Francis enveloped her in his arms again. “We can’t imagine how things might have gone for Butch if you hadn’t responded so quickly,” he said, and Estelle patted his arm impatiently.
“Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good,” she said. “I…
he…
was lucky despite being so
unlucky
. ” She patted his arm again. “Freddy didn’t even enjoy the tiniest snitch of luck.” She drew away.
“You ready for some sleep?”
“I’m ready to try,” she replied. “Let me look in on
los hijos
first.”
The boys’ bedroom door was ajar, and Estelle toed it open just far enough to slip through. The two heavy bunk beds, site of such joyful carnage, pillow fights, and tent castles most of the time, were stone quiet. Carlos, who enjoyed the top bunk since his sleep patterns mimicked a hibernating bear, was a small lump under a light blanket. He didn’t stir at his mother’s presence, and Estelle saw that his hands were tightly clasped under his chin.
Francisco, on the other hand, was a prowler at night. He might rise half a dozen times, his mind a whirl. His soundless practice keyboard rested on the window ledge within easy reach, and Estelle knew that it wasn’t unusual for the little boy to rise, pad out to the living room swathed in his favorite corduroy robe, and sit at the grand piano, fingers roaming the keys with a touch so light that the action didn’t twitch.
The nine year-old didn’t fight his nocturnal restlessness, and Dr. Guzman’s theory was that the “wolf gene,” as he called it, was inherited from the boy’s late paternal grandmother, an architect who had done as much work during the night as she had the day.
Estelle knelt down beside the lower bunk.
“When is Butch coming home?” Francisco whispered.
“Soon,
hijo. Papá
says that he’s going to be all right.”
“Does he know about Freddy?”
“I suppose so,
hijo
. His parents would tell him.” She touched his forehead, smoothing back the lock of black hair that always threatened his eyes.
He let out a long sigh. “I don’t think I want to go.”
“To Leister, you mean?”
He nodded.
“I think we should visit,
hijo
. So does
papá
. People can put anything they want in a brochure. You need to see it. You need to talk with people about it.”
“Do you think I should go?”
She stroked his cheek. “I think we have to work hard to find just the right school,
hijo
. This is an important decision for you. For
us
. ”
“Butch and Freddy were best friends,” Francisco said.
“Yes, they were. And Butch is going to be grateful that you and he are friends,
hijo
. He’s not going to feel very good for a long, long time.”
“We can’t be friends if I’m at Leister.”
“Ah.” The little boy’s logic tugged at her heart. Time would heal, she knew, and they would be able to visit the musical academy and make a decision. But the immediate hurt needed to stop first, and she felt as if a huge scimitar was poised over their heads, waiting for an unguarded moment.