Prolonged Exposure (25 page)

Chapter 42

The receptionist at the Posadas County Electric Co-op smiled uncertainly at the four of us. Sheriff Holman put on his most diplomatic manner, but the tapping of his class ring on the plastic counter hinted at his impatience.

“Good morning. I’m Sheriff Holman. We need to talk with Matt Tierney,” Holman said. The receptionist closed the folder of papers she was wading through and looked up at the clock.

“I don’t think he’ll be free until after nine. They’re having their morning staff meeting, and that’s usually the time they finish up.” She smiled at Holman, and he smiled back. I saw his eyes drop to her name tag ever so briefly.

“Loni, do me a favor and buzz him, will you? Their meeting can wait. I can’t.”

Before she could answer, the door at the far side of the office opened and Matt Tierney stuck his head out. He held on to the doorknob as four other men filed out, discreetly disappearing into other offices. “Sheriff,” he said in a deep, powerful voice, “come on in.”

Holman, Estelle, Camille, and I trooped through the middle of Loni’s turf, and she gave each one of us a pleasant smile and nod.

“I saw you drive up,” Tierney said. “I was going to call you this morning if you didn’t call me.” He shut the door and gestured toward the still-warm chairs. Like a good service-club member, he stuck out his hand to Camille and said, “I don’t believe I know you.”

“Camille Stratton. I’m Undersheriff Gastner’s daughter.”

“Oh. That’s great. Visiting or working?”

“Visiting. A nice relaxing visit,” Camille said.

“I bet. Sit down, sit down.” He moved to the chair at the head of the conference table. “I’ve been hearing all sorts of stories, and I gotta tell you, none of it sounds good. What the hell is Browers up to, anyway? We spent a hell of a lot of time, man-hours, equipment—you name it—on that search, and now I’m hearing all kinds of crazy things. When the deputy came over last night asking to look at the personnel files, I didn’t know if I should let him or not without a court order. What the hell’s going on?”

Holman glanced at me, and I said, “It appears that Andrew Browers was involved in the abduction of Detective Reyes-Guzman’s son last night. It also appears now that Cody Cole’s disappearance last week was a scam.”

“A scam?” Tierney’s heavy eyebrows shot up behind his glasses.

“That’s right. What we need from you now is information.”

“I’ll be happy to help in any way I can—you know that.”

“First of all, it would be helpful to see a map of the entire Posadas Electric Co-op area. We’ll go from there.”

Tierney stood up and indicated the far wall. “Right here’s the system,” he said. The map was six feet wide and nearly as tall, a mass of lines, dots, squares, and other symbols.

I moved close and pushed up my glasses. Every house in the village was indicated by a small black square. Out in the county, the squares were few and far between.

I circled my finger around an area just south of Herb Torrance’s square. “This is where the Guzman child was abandoned last night,” I said. “He was found by some of the Torrance family who were out tending livestock. Browers is—or was—driving an RV—not his. It’s one of those huge self-contained things. But we know that he drove down this road. We’ve got deputies working this entire area,” and I circled the remainder of County Road 14, down to where it intersected State Highway 56. “The tracks where he pulled off the road here”—and I tapped the spot by Torrance’s ranch—“were clear enough. We’re hoping that investigators will find more on down the road. The county road is gravel, but if he strays just a few inches onto the shoulder anywhere, that thing is going to leave prints.”

Tierney wiped his eyes. Despite the cool room, he was already sweating. “You have no idea which way he’s going to go once he hits Fifty-six?”

“No, we don’t. I was hoping you could shed some light on why Browers might choose that route. Why County Road Fourteen?” I ran my finger from the village of Posadas southwest along State Highway 56 thirty-four miles to the tiny hamlet of Regal on the other side of San Cristobal Pass. “The border crossing at Regal is blocked. He’s not crossing there. And it’s been blocked since last evening.”

“What about to the east? Like over at Columbus? Or El Paso, even?” Tierney asked.

“The roadblocks are going to make that almost impossible, unless he changes vehicles and is very, very clever. The Border Patrol assures us that their aircraft will keep the border covered, but we all know that’s impossible. There aren’t enough men and planes to do that. We’ve had an airplane up off and on, and they haven’t spotted the RV. What I think is that Browers has a spot or two where he’s holed up. That’s why we came to you.”

I stepped back and pulled a chair close to the map. Seated, I was looking right at the intersection of Country Road 14, where it wound down from the mesa, and the state highway.

“The staggered dash-dot blue lines are the transmission lines along the highway?”

Tierney bent down beside me. “That’s right. Basically, you can see our entire grid there. These are transformers,” he said, pointing with the tip of his pen at a red triangle.

“What do the little flags mean?” Estelle asked.

“That’s where crews are currently working. We do that so that anyone who comes in here can glance at the map and see where our resources are. We keep it updated with every job ticket we send out. The initials on the flag represent the actual crewman who’s working.”

“Each man has his own flag, then,” I said.

“That’s right.”

“Where was Browers working last?”

Tierney took a deep breath. “We had his flag up at the search site from the day that the boy was reported missing. Then he took some annual leave, so the flag came off the map. On the personnel board out in the office, he’s shown as on leave.”

“Tell me about this,” I said. To the east of Regal, up in the rugged San Cristobal Mountains, was a collection of five personnel flags and another small number flag. I bent close. “Number one oh nine,” I said. If I extended Browers’s route south from the intersection of County Road 14 and State Highway 56, the arrow would point roughly at site 109.

“That’s a major repair site,” Tierney said. “We have a block of transformers there. You can see that’s a junction of several lines. The main transmission line from our Posadas substation follows the Guijarro wash there. That’s a pretty good cut through the mountains, and it saves us having to make an end run all the way around the west side of the San Cristobals. Then, right where those flags are, one line goes to Regal itself, another heads east over toward Maria, and one shoots west, sort of following the county line, over into Arizona.”

“This solid line…” I said, pointing south from State Highway 56.

“That’s a service road. We’ve either got a service road or clear land easement along every one of our lines.”

“But it’s not a road,” Holman mused.

“Well, not what the highway department calls a road,” Tierney said. “But it’s clear enough that a four-wheel-drive vehicle can usually get through. Sometimes we have to use a Cat.”

“And a big RV?”

Tierney laughed. “No way. Certainly not down there. Those rocks would tear the tires to pieces. It wouldn’t have the clearance or the traction.”

I sat back. “What if after he hit the state highway, Browers just crossed the road and took the electric easement straight south, following the transmission lines.”

“He’d probably be able to bump along for about three miles. As soon as the lines started up through the pass there, it’d be much too rough.”

“And then he’d be about what, five miles from this work site where they’re messing with the transformers?”

“Closer to seven.”

“And there would be vehicles there, wouldn’t there?” I looked at Tierney. “And if he got one of your utility trucks, there wouldn’t be much to stop him from following this line east toward Maria. It parallels the border, and he’d have no trouble finding a spot to cut the fence.”

Tierney wiped the sweat off his forehead again.

“And those are nice trucks, too, as I recall,” I added. I looked back at the map. “Would Browers know about this work crew?”

“Sure,” Tierney said. “As I recall, he would have been assigned there. And he’s worked there before. We had to juggle things around when we had the search for his stepson. A lot of our men were in on that.”

“He would have been assigned there?”

Tierney nodded. “He’s one of our transformer techs.”

I ran a finger south, along County Road 14, frowning. My finger dropped across the state highway and trailed down into the mountains. “Bingo,” I whispered.

“Which way do your work crews go to that site?” Holman asked. “It almost looks shorter to go to Regal and then cut over to the east and into the hills.”

“That’s the way they will go,” Tierney said. “Especially with the weather the way it’s been.” He pointed at a spot just north of the San Cristobal ridge. “There’s a lot of clay right in through here. We usually don’t go that way unless we’re using a Cat.”

“Does Andy Browers know that?” I asked.

“I’m sure he does. He’s been with us for seven years, so he’s seen most of the county in that time. And like I said, he’s worked down there before.”

“If they’re on foot, it won’t make any difference,” Estelle said. “If Browers abandons his vehicle and decides to walk to the top and then over, he’ll run right into the work crew when they drive up the other side from Regal.”

“Let’s look at the time,” I said. “They took Francis at six-oh-three. The ruckus down at the motel was sometime around six-thirty. Cole is stabbed or shot, or whatever happened to him, and they return to North Fifth Street. They take him inside and try their best to patch him up. It doesn’t work. Or maybe they think they’ve succeeded. They load him into the big RV and head out. They may have thought at first that with out-of-town plates, it would be ignored. That would still be only about seven o’clock—and we were still ignorant of what was going on. By the time Erma managed to alert us, it’s going on eight. By that time, Browers could already have been out beyond the Torrance ranch. Even if he hadn’t heard about the roadblocks, this area would make sense to him as a place to ditch the body.”

“Francis has no concept of what time anything happened, sir,” Estelle said. “It was dark—that’s all he’ll say.”

“We had the airplane in the air by nine o’clock, nine-thirty at the latest, as soon as we discovered that the RV was gone. So he had time. Lots of time. He drove out here, buried the body. He had time to drive all the way down here,” and I tapped the intersection of County 14 and State Highway 56. “By then, he must have known that the borders would be closed and that the highways would be jammed with cops looking for Francis.

“I don’t know of any place along County Road Fourteen where he could hide that thing, although as long as his lights were off, the airplane wouldn’t see him.”

“What if he crossed the state highway and continued on ahead?” Tierney said. “He’s got just a mile of pretty hard-packed prairie, and where the power lines cut across the wash, there’s even been some dozer work done. It’s conceivable that he could have worked his way to about Wilson’s Tank, with just a little luck.”

I peered at the map. The San Cristobal range was one of just a handful in the continental United States that ran generally west-east for part of its length. The range looked like an upside-down crescent, with its western end just northwest of Regal, and then curving east and south, down into Mexico. The north slope of the range drained into the same valley that was the roadbed for State Highway 56.

Parked at the intersection of County Road 14 and State 56, Browers would have been looking at the back side of the San Cristobals, with Mexico just on the other side, tantalizingly close. To him, the mountain wasn’t a barrier; it was an opportunity.

“Wilson’s Tank is right here,” Tierney said. “We used that area for a while as a staging spot for equipment and supplies when we ran the new line across.”

“What’s there?” Holman asked.

“The Guijarro cut is pretty narrow there, lots of trees down in. There’s an old corral, some stock chutes, and the water-collection platform and tanks. That’s about it.”

“Suppose he was able to make his way there,” I said. “That’s about two and a half miles?”

“About that.”

“He could have been there by nine o’clock. If he had to walk the rest of the way, how far is it?”

Tierney wiped his forehead again, looking pained. “First of all, it’s one hell of a walk. I mean, that’s rugged country, even staying right under the power lines. It’s the sort of track that’ll jounce your teeth out, using compound low in a four-by-four.” He put his hands on his knees and got his bifocals into position. “I’d have to guess seven or eight miles. Uphill. Tough walking.” He stood up and looked at me.

“Bill, he’s got a woman and a three-year-old boy with him,” Holman said. “He wouldn’t try something like that with them. For one thing, he’d have to carry the boy most of the way.”

“Maybe,” I said. “He might have them with him. He’s dumped his other complications along the way. He might continue the habit. But you’re right. He’s certainly not going to do it in the dark.”

“I don’t know,” Tierney said. “Walking from pole to pole, it’s hard to get lost. Our crews work at night all the time.”

“But it’s sure hard as hell knowing where to put your feet,” I said. I frowned, knowing damn well that Andrew Browers was still young enough to know exactly where his feet where.

I looked at the map again. “All right. Here’s the deal. He knows the work crews will be right here”—and I stabbed the map just south of the ridge—“when?”

“They pull out of here about eight-thirty, normally. They were a little late today. Say closer to nine. It takes ’em an hour and a half to make the drive. One hour to Regal and beyond, the last half hour up the power line to the relay and transformer station.”

“So, ten-thirty.” I looked at my watch. “It’s nine-fifteen right now. If Browers spent the night at Wilson’s Tank and then, come dawn, made the hike up hill, he’d make that seven miles by ten easily. He’ll be there waiting.”