Prolonged Exposure (13 page)

Chapter 23

Jason Black hadn’t been lying. I parked at the end of Guadalupe Terrace, walked two dozen paces, and stood at the edge of the arroyo. It was a grand view. Ahead of me rumpled chaparral stretched all the way to Mexico, studded with acacia and creosote bush, old car hulks, doorless refrigerators—all the things that made the southwestern desert so charming.

A few hundred yards off to my right was the back fence of Florek’s Auto Wrecking, one of the premier businesses of Posadas, located on the east side of the highway, just beyond the point where Grande Boulevard lost its village designation and became simply State 61.

And ahead of me, down in the gravel of the arroyo, amid a blizzard of other junk from other eras, lay the gray hulk of my filing cabinet and my wheelbarrow. It only made sense that once the burglars were finished with the wheelbarrow, it, too, should be tipped down into the arroyo.

“Watch your step, Dad,” Camille said, but the warning was unnecessary. We made our way down the steep, crumbling sides of the arroyo, grabbing the dry stumps of
chamiza
for purchase.

In places, the bottom of the arroyo had been swept clean down to the bedrock, and small pools of water from the recent rains would remain until the sun fried them dry.

The cabinet lay on its side and I was thankful for that. A handful of papers had remained inside, sheltered from the weather. Most of it was replaceable and didn’t matter anyway—several insurance policies, a brown envelope containing my military papers and a ribbon or two, birth certificate, vehicle titles—the sort of things that were incomprehensible and of no value to three kids hunting for gold.

I squatted down and rummaged while Camille commenced a systematic search of the bushes and niches surrounding the spot.

By the time it was twilight, we’d assembled a fair stack of papers and documents, envelopes and packets. I felt more relaxed than I had since arriving home. If I couldn’t remember what else might be missing, I reasoned it obviously didn’t matter much.

I got to my feet, brushed the sand off my knees, and picked up the framed photo that I had placed on top of the rescued items. Camille reached out and I gave it to her. She wiped a bit of moisture off the unbroken glass, letting her fingers trace gently around the narrow wooden frame.

“I’m glad you were able to recover this,” she said. “The rest probably doesn’t matter much.”

I nodded. In the fading light, the photograph could easily have been mistaken for Camille herself, rather than her mother.

She looked up at me. “And this is the only picture you’ve got? Of her, I mean?”

“Yes.”

She examined the photo again, taken during a vacation twenty years earlier in Acajutla, in El Salvador. Her mother had consented to posing on a mammoth sea-polished rock, the water almost emerald green behind her. That particular rock hadn’t been chosen at random, nor was this her first time to perch on top, knees hugged tightly, the entire reach of the Pacific in front of her.

I could remember the circumstances of taking the photograph. I could remember perching on the side of the rock and hoping that the barnacles wouldn’t slice my trousers to ribbons while I focused and cropped and tried this angle and that, until I had the light on her face just so, until the wind had positioned her hair.

If I had swung the camera slightly to the right, the picture would have captured her family’s home, where it nestled a long stone’s throw away from the constant murmuring of the sea.

She had been friends with that rock since she had been old enough to clamber up the twelve feet to its pinnacle above the surf. She had no photos of herself as a child, certainly none of her perched upon the rock. So, in middle age, returning to her home for a visit, she had consented to struggling up there one more time.

“This is the one you were always going to make copies of for each one of us, weren’t you?” Camille said.

“Yes.” I shrugged. “One of those things I never got around to.”

“Would you mind if I took it in tomorrow? I think that the film-processing place at the video store can make copies right there, without the risk of sending it through the mail.”

“Sure,” I said, feeling an instant pang of uneasiness. But I shrugged it off. If the photograph—frame, glass, and all—could survive a nighttime assault by three little hoodlums and a dumping in a rock-strewn arroyo, then it could most likely survive a twenty-four-hour photo shop.

As the light failed, we made our way north along the arroyo bottom to a spot where we could clamber out without difficulty. There were probably other items of mine that the wind had picked up and hidden here and there in the arroyo bottom, under rocks or bushes along the edges. Now that I had the photograph, I didn’t much care about the rest of it.

That night, as if a switch had been flipped by the emotional upset of losing and then recovering the only photograph that I owned of my wife, my system settled back into its comfortable, erratic schedule.

I awoke at 2:30 in the morning on that Wednesday and lay for a few minutes on my back, listening to the quiet sounds of the old house as the wooden vigas creaked and the two-foot-thick adobe walls breathed.

After awhile, I got up, dressed, and left the house. The air was sharp, but there was no wind. I slid into 310, started it, and backed out of the driveway. With my window down, I let the car idle up Guadalupe Terrace, turning first onto Escondido and then Grande.

At that hour, the wide, deserted street looked like something out of a cheap science fiction movie, one of those films where no one is left alive in a devastated city.

In comparison, the dispatcher’s station in the Public Safety Building was bursting with activity. The dispatcher, Ernie Wheeler, was absorbed in a paperback novel. He was sitting with his chair tipped back, long legs stretched out under the computer console. He looked up and did a double take when he saw me, and I grinned.

“Evening, sir,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you out and about tonight. Welcome back.”

“Thanks. I couldn’t sleep,” I said. “But what else is new. What’s going on?”

“Absolutely nothing. No night ops anymore up on the mesa, the sheriff says. I guess they’re going to continue the search come morning, but most of the troops have pulled out.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t look good.”

“No, it doesn’t. Did you happen to hear if Tiffany Cole is still up on the mesa? Or Andy Browers?”

Wheeler frowned. “I don’t know. Sergeant Torrez has been keeping track of that mess. He and Skip Bishop were talking earlier when I came in, but I didn’t pay any attention.”

“Any messages for me?”

Ernie shook his head. He leaned forward and looked at the desk log. “You missed the commotion earlier in the evening.”

“Commotion?”

“Mitchell and Tony Abeyta brought in a couple of juveniles in connection with the burglary at your place.” He leaned back and grinned. “Turns out their little prints are all over. They’ve admitted to breaking into six other homes, all down in that general area.”

“So what was the commotion?”

“One of ’em didn’t want to be booked, I guess. Melody Perez? You know her?”

“Never had the pleasure.”

“Well, she didn’t see what the problem was. Quite an attitude for a twelve-year-old. Her mother and father ended up apologizing for her.”

“That certainly makes it all hunky-dory, then,” I said. “As long as the parents are sorry. Did Deputy Mitchell happen to mention to you if my rifle was recovered? The Civil War relic?”

“He said it was. They need to hang on to it for awhile, though.”

“Of course,” I said. “As long as somebody knows where it is.” My mailbox was clear of all those annoying little “While You Were Out” messages, and no one was waiting for me in my office.

“I’m going to wander,” I said to Ernie. “Who’s on tonight?”

“Mears. Abeyta was on until two, and then he went home.”

I nodded. “If you need me for anything, I’ll have the radio on.” On the way out to the car, I stopped in my office and checked an address in the phone book.

Tiffany Cole’s address was listed as 392 North Fifth Street. I jotted down the address and the telephone number. I thumbed back a few pages and found Browers, A. L., listed at 407 North Fifth. Perhaps they met at a block party, I mused, and slipped the notebook back in my pocket.

Pershing Park was illuminated harshly by too many streetlights as I drove up Grande. More stores were empty than not, reflecting the limping economy of a village that had put too much stock in a single large mining company.

Salazar Mortuary looked prosperous, and I turned on Hutton Street just beyond the mortuary’s circular driveway. Most of the houses on Hutton had been built in the late 1950s, and at that time they had probably looked bright and cheerful. Now, they were slumping cinder block and peeling paint, with the kind of metal-framed crank-out windows that let in a trail of dust every time the wind blew.

I crossed Fourth Street and slowed the car to a crawl, with both front windows down. At the intersection of Hutton and Fifth, I let 310 roll to a stop along the curb, the headlights off.

Andy Browers’s house, across the intersection and two houses down, looked like every other. One-story cinder block, flat roof, narrow macadam driveway sloping up to what had once been a garage but now was another bedroom, or den, or playroom.

Except for a small outboard motorboat on a trailer, the driveway was empty.

The boat and trailer almost hid the grille and front bumper of another vehicle that was backed in beside the house, scrunched between the building and the block wall separating the property from the neighbors.

I pulled 310 away from the curb, swung right through the intersection, and slowed to a crawl. The vehicle was a large motor home, about the same size as the one used by the Bronfeld family, although older and more angular. I swiveled the spotlight and clicked it on. The beam lanced out and illuminated the house and RV. I could see jacks under the front axle, propping up the front end so that the monster sat level.

Browers had been using a camper that slid into the back of his three-quarter-ton pickup, a wise choice for Cat Mesa. The big RV would be fine on the open road, sticking close to the nearest cable-television hookup. It would be helpless on the narrow, winding, rock-studded paths up on the mesa.

I drove around the block, retracing my tracks to the same intersection, and this time turned the other way. The third house on the left was 392.

Two vehicles crowded the narrow driveway. One, a light blue Corsica, was dwarfed by Andy Browers’s huge GMC truck and camper.

It appeared the exhausted parents had called it quits for the night. That surprised me, since Tiffany Cole hadn’t shown any weakening of her stubborn streak earlier. But fatigue has a way of building until it finds the weakest link in a person’s constitution.

I jotted down the license number of the Corsica, thumbed the mike, and jolted Ernie Wheeler out of his paperback.

“PCS, three ten. Information request on New Mexico Tom Lincoln Paul one niner seven.”

“Three ten, PCS, stand by.” I grinned. Ernie Wheeler sounded as if he’d been poised over the microphone, expecting my call.

While I waited for the computer to spit out what it knew, I drove on down the street to the intersection of Fifth and Blaine and turned around, punching off my headlights as I did so. No sooner had my wheels scrubbed the curb than the radio crackled again. I buzzed up the windows so our conversation wouldn’t be public knowledge on the quiet street.

“Three ten, PCS. Be advised that New Mexico Tom Lincoln Paul one niner seven is issued to a 1996 Chevrolet Corsica, blue over silver, registered to Alicia T. Cole, Three ninety-two North Fifth Street, Posadas. No wants or warrants.”

“Ten-four, PCS.”

I drove past Tiffany Cole’s house, my headlights still off. I had seen Browers’s truck up on the mesa and didn’t bother running its plate. But the big RV in Andy Browers’s yard interested me. With the vehicle hidden in the dark shadows two houses down from the nearest streetlight, it was impossible to tell if it was just a corroded-out hulk waiting restoration or a newer unit waiting for its first outing.

I pulled up to the curb three or four houses farther on. If one of the deputies had stopped to check out a vehicle without calling in, I’d have given him a withering reprimand. But that was them.

With flashlight in hand, I got out of the car and strolled across the street. I stepped up on the rough sidewalk and ambled down toward the house at 407. The night was so quiet, I could hear the occasional tractor-trailer on the interstate, a full mile to the south.

No dogs barked, no nothing. I stopped by the rear of the motorboat and turned on my flashlight. The RV hadn’t been there too long, either that or Andy Browers was meticulous about snipping weeds. The rear tires had pressed obvious tracks in the gravel.

Moving carefully, one hand on the block wall, I made my way along the RV until I came to the rear, as high and square as any diesel bus. The New Mexico license was current.

Holding the flashlight under my armpit, I jotted down the number. The only other identification was a dealer logo mounted just above the bumper beside the left-rear taillight. I wrote down the logo and moved around the other side of the unit.

In the poor light, with shadows from my flashlight harsh, I damn near tripped over the power cord. It snaked out of the house from what had to be a bathroom window, and it was plugged into the side of the RV, just in front of the right-rear duals.

“Huh,” I muttered. The unit would provide damn near all the comforts of home, that was for sure. And once again, I found myself admiring Andy Browers’s good judgment. He had never tried to navigate Cat Mesa in it. If he had, the monster would probably still be up there, mired up to its fancy hubcaps in mud, or trapped between a couple of oak trees when he discovered there was no space to turn the flagship around.

Watching my step, I made my way back to 310. The patrol car burbled to life, and I keyed the radio. “PCS, three ten. Information New Mexico recreational vehicle tag Baker Echo zero zero one.”