Prolonged Exposure (3 page)

Chapter 4

My daughter’s sympathy did not extend to agreeing to a trip out to the wilds of Cat Mesa. “They don’t need you for that,” she said flatly, and instead, she suggested that it might be nice if we worked to put to rights the wreckage of my home. She was right, of course, but I didn’t have to like it. Every time I glanced at the mess, my anger returned. A trip to the mesa would have put it out of sight, out of mind.

I plugged in the coffeemaker and watched it brew while she started on the books in the living room. She paused when she came to the picture of her younger brother kneeling in front of his jet airplane with his son. “Billy looks about eighteen years old in this,” she said, and grinned.

“He almost was,” I said.

She carefully placed the framed photo back on the shelf, a colorful break between the tomes of Grant’s memoirs on one side and Lee’s on the other. “You don’t have very many pictures, Dad.”

“I’ve got lots of pictures.”

“I mean out. Where you can see ’em.”

I couldn’t have told her why that one photograph of my youngest son rested there by itself. “I rotate,” I said. “That way, I don’t get confused by too many faces.”

She cast one of her famous withering glances my way. “Do you want a cup of coffee?” I asked.

“No. And you shouldn’t be drinking that stuff, either.”

I poured myself a mug and walked down into the living room. I had arranged my considerable collection of books in general categories by wars: a section on the French and Indian, then the Revolution, 1812, Civil, and so on. Military history wasn’t a passion, but it seemed a logical way to come to grips with a nation’s progress.

I bent down to pick up one of my favorites, a book on Joshua Chamberlain that I had purchased not more than a year before.

“Let me do this, Dad,” Camille said. Perhaps she had heard the grunt, or noticed that I concentrated on one title at a time. At that rate, the pickup would take a year. I handed her the book and she waved toward one of the leather chairs. “Sit and talk to me.”

“I’d like to go out to the grave before it gets any wetter,” I said, doing as she instructed. She stopped with her hand still on the shelved book and turned to look at me.

“The grave? You mean out back?”

I nodded.

“What on earth for?” She turned and held up a book. “This doesn’t belong with the Spanish-American War stuff on this shelf. Where do you want it?” She examined the spine critically. “It’s
Baumgarner’s Guide to Injectable Drugs
. Charming title.” She looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

I waved a hand. “Two shelves down, with the other cop stuff.”

“Cop stuff,” she said, stooping. “You don’t have very much of that.”

“Too much,” I said. “And if someone buried his wife on your property, wouldn’t you be interested?”

“I suppose so,” Camille said. “In our backyard, it would be an all-star attraction.” She glanced at another book spine. “Did Estelle say there was evidence that kids did this?”

“There might be.”

She looked over at me and grinned. “He said, evasively.”

“I’m not being evasive. It’s just that you can never be sure. It looks like Estelle was able to lift one good shoe print in the den—where one of the little bastards stepped up on the desk to reach the rifle.”

“How much did that filing cabinet that they took weigh?”

“Probably a hundred pounds. Maybe more. It was one of those fireproof things. A couple of stout kids could have moved it easily enough.”

I watched her for a few more minutes, then got up. “I need to move around,” I said. “I get stiff just sitting. And I miss my wheelchair.”

Camille put up a last armful of books and brushed off her blouse. “I bet. Come on, I’ll walk out back with you.”

It might have been easier to walk around my lot, taking Guadalupe Terrace north to Escondido Lane and then east, but instead we wound our way right through the grove of wild and snarled trees, a collection of stunted piñon, juniper, elm, sumac, and several massive cottonwoods.

It was anyone’s guess where the undergrowth was sucking water from. Posadas County was dry as bleached bone most of the time, and I sure as hell didn’t do any watering. If something wanted to thrive in my yard, it had to have the proper attitude. Maybe the roots had all bored northward, invading the village water lines.

After several minutes crisscrossing the northeastern quadrant of my property, we located the grave site. If someone from the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department had actually been here, they’d left no trace. They certainly hadn’t stretched any yellow tape, and that was just as well. There wasn’t much to protect, and the yellow would be an attractive nuisance for neighborhood busybodies and kids.

Before we saw the grave, we saw the work of the industrious youngsters who’d reported Florencio Apodaca’s clandestine work. They had nailed a series of short, mostly rotten boards up the wide flank of a cottonwood tree as a crude ladder. Using that, they’d carried more lumber up into the spreading limbs, managing to create a mess even a pair of ravens would have been ashamed of.

I could understand the attraction. From the tree platform, Escondido Lane was just a stone’s throw away, literally.

Sometime in their work, the little contractors had looked down into the brush. A sharp pair of eyes had caught sight of the fresh earth and the carved cross.

The grave itself was a neat mound of the loose reddish sand, gravel, and clay mix that told geologists that most of Posadas had once been the bottom of a prehistoric lake or wandering streambed.

Standing at the foot of the grave, I could look through a screen of elm saplings, past a utility pole, and see Florencio Apodaca’s front door.

“Nice spot,” Camille said. She stood by a runty juniper that had lost half of its trunk fork to an ax, and not long ago. She shoved her hands in the pockets of her baggy chinos.

“Elegant,” I said. “He could find the place by lining up with that utility pole.”

The marker was a crude but sturdy cross made from two pieces of juniper, and the shavings and chips still littered the ground. The crosspiece, notched tightly into the upright, was further secured with a leather thong.

The wooden cross wasn’t plunged into the ground quite straight, but tipped artistically, looking as if it’d been there for generations. He’d made the vertical piece about three feet tall, and I bent down to read what he’d carved into the crosspiece.

The wood was a rich reddish brown, and Florencio had taken some time to rub off the bark and polish the natural sheen of the juniper.

“‘Gloria Espinosa Baker Apodaca,’” I read.

“No dates?”

“No date. Just the name. I wonder who Baker was.”

“Florencio would know,” Camille said helpfully.

“And no Willit,” I muttered. I shook my head.

“And who’s Willit?”

“Some character who’s pestering our good sheriff. Marty passed him along to me.”

“You don’t need to talk to them, do you?”

“I suppose not,” I said. Camille stepped closer and inspected the cross. “That’s really very nice,” she said. She reached out and rubbed the smooth wood. “Kinda sad, in a way. Two old folks so close that when the end comes, he can’t bear to have her somewhere else.”

I chuckled. “But she is somewhere else, my dear. This is my property, not the Apodacas’.” I sighed and straightened up. “I could deed them a few dozen square feet, and we could put an old iron fence around this, and it’d be just fine.”

Camille hooked her arm through mine and bumped my shoulder with her head. “That’s sweet,” she said. She pointed off to the west where an orange tag fluttered from one of the tree limbs. A metal stake was driven into the ground below it, with another tag, this one blue and white. “Except for the utilities,” she added.

I grimaced. “I suppose.” I turned and looked off to the east, searching for another tag. “It wouldn’t kill ’em to put a little bend in the line, though.”

“You think they’d do that?”

“Probably not.” I shrugged. “The village attorney will make a fuss. And the housing-development lawyer will fuss.”

“Let ’em fuss,” Camille said, frowning. She bent so that she could see through the bushes to the house across the street. “How could he think this was his property, though?” Camille asked.

“Easy enough. He’s lived across the way for a long time. That neighborhood was there before the interstate went through on the property behind them. Even the street here—Escondido Lane—was just a dirt two-track as recently as 1972, when we moved here.

“And Apodaca lived in that old house long before that. He stepped off his front porch, and what’s he see? This property over here, just across the dirt lane. It was never developed, and then he got old and confused like the rest of us, and he just decided that the property was probably his.” I shrugged.

“Who the hell knows. Maybe at one time, he actually did own the lot. Maybe he’s forgotten that he sold it off. I don’t much care, and when I bought this place in 1971, I didn’t bother to do a title search beyond what the real estate deal required.”

Camille looked sad. “And now I suppose the village is going to want her moved?”

“I don’t know that,” I said. “I really don’t know what the law is for burials. It’s not something that the department deals with every day.” The cool, damp air was beginning to seep through my jacket and I shivered. “Let’s walk back on the road.” As we strolled along the broken macadam of Escondido, I kept looking toward the south. In only one spot was the vegetation thin enough that I could see, a hundred yards or more away, the dark hulk of my house.

Camille stifled a yawn, and it was contagious. I realized I was more tired than I cared to admit.

“Well, we’ve toured a trashed house and waded through the jungles to tour a grave site. Those are the highlights of current Posadas County attractions,” I said. Camille laughed, but I got the impression that she probably agreed. “Mind if I take a few minutes and stop by the office?”

I felt her arm tighten in mine. “As a matter of fact, I do mind,” she said. “You promised. And what I want to do most is go home and have a nice long, hot bath. I’ve been stuffed in a supersonic tin can, chauffeured on the interstate by a kid who thinks he’s the next Unser, sorted dusty old books, and hiked through the mud.” She managed a grin. “I’m tired and hungry, and that means you’re ten times that. Let the office wait, Dad.”

I shrugged. “I was just eager to find out from Estelle what’s going on.” That sounded about as flimsy as excuses come, and Camille waved it aside.

“She’s probably still up on the mountain, and when she comes down, she’ll be more wet and cold than we are. She’ll call when she gets a chance.”

I knew that, but patience wasn’t one of my virtues. Still, Camille was tougher than I was, and I had promised. I reached over and patted her hand just as we walked into my driveway. “Commercial jets aren’t supersonic, by the way,” I said. “And you mentioned hunger. How’s the Don Juan de Oñate sound after we get cleaned up?”

“Sounds fine,” Camille said without hesitation, and that surprised the hell out of me.

We went into the house. The damn telephone was ringing.

Chapter 5

I would have ignored the damn thing had Camille not been first in the house. She slipped out of soggy running shoes, disappeared down the hall, and picked up the receiver in the kitchen after no more than five or six rings.

“We just got in,” I heard her say. “Give him a minute.”

“It’s going to take more than that,” I said, thumping down on the bench just inside the door. I was no acrobat, and if I tried my daughter’s trick, I’d break an ankle before the first ten pounds of Wellington boots and mud came off.

“It’s Gayle Sedillos.”

“Ah,” I said, taking a deep breath before bending down to pull on a boot again. A slimy dollop of forest floor came off on my hand. “Tell her I’ll call back in five or ten minutes.” I cursed to myself and wiped my hand on a recent copy of the
Posadas Register
that lay on the bench.

In stocking feet, I padded across Saltillo tile toward the kitchen. “Did she say what she wanted?” I asked, but I knew the answer before the words were out of my mouth. Gayle had worked as chief dispatcher for the department for five years, and in varying capacities for another five before that. Perhaps, in those ten years, she had wasted that many words.

“No, she didn’t,” Camille called, already disappearing into the dark quiet of the house to find herself a hot bath.

I punched in the number and Gayle Sedillos answered in the space between the first ring and the second. Her voice was husky and clipped.

“Sheriff’s Department, Sedillos.”

“Gayle, what’s up?” I had asked her that same question a thousand times over the years, and it seemed a good way to start off after having been held hostage in Flint, Michigan, for a month.

“Sir, welcome back.”

“Thank you.” I knew she hadn’t called for conversation, so I added quickly, “It’s good to be back. What’s going on?”

“Sir, I need to relay a message to Estelle, but apparently she’s on her way down from the search area and either she’s in a dead spot or she’s got her radio turned off.”

“That’s happened before,” I said. An automobile was a good place to mull things over if the interruptions could be eliminated. I’d made it a point to teach Estelle that over the years.

“I thought she might be stopping by your place before she checked in here.”

“That’s entirely possible. What can I tell her?”

“Dr. Guzman went to Tres Santos to check on Estelle’s mother. Apparently Mrs. Reyes fell.”

“Ouch. Is she all right?”

“We’re not sure, sir.”

“Is Erma with the children?”

“Yes, sir.” Gayle’s younger sister, Erma, had been working as
nana
for the two children in the Guzman homestead for several years. And work it was, too, with Dr. Guzman matching his own brand of strange hours as a vascular surgeon against Estelle’s.

“Well, then, everything should be fine. If I see Estelle, I’ll tell her. Did the good doctor happen to mention how seriously Estelle’s mother had been hurt? What she broke?”

“I think her hip, he said.”

“Oh my.” Mrs. Reyes was one of my favorite people, even though I could barely understand a word she said when, on rare occasions, she chose to speak her own brand of fractured English. Ancient, tiny, independent, she lived in the same adobe cottage in Tres Santos, Mexico, where she had been born in 1910—and where Estelle had spent the first sixteen years of her life after the old woman had adopted her. The village was just twenty miles south of the border and an hour’s drive from Posadas.

“When did Francis leave? Do you know?”

“He called here at sixteen twenty-one, so I imagine shortly after that. Erma told me that one of Mrs. Reyes’s neighbors called her, and she called Dr. Guzman.”

There had been occasions, as Mrs. Reyes became more and more frail, when I’d heard the Guzmans discuss medical care in Tres Santos, and the discussion never lasted long. Francis had mentioned the one resident physician by name, along with the words
snake oil
in the same breath. The forty miles wasn’t a problem drive—most of it could be dusted off at a hundred miles an hour if need be. But the border crossing at Regal was closed at night. If there was an international emergency, it needed to happen between 6:00 A.M. and 6:00 P.M.

I assured Gayle that I would pass on the message, told her to keep trying the radio to contact Estelle, and then hung up. What I wanted more than anything else was a potful of strong coffee, but I knew I could have my fill at the restaurant in just a few minutes.

I dialed the Guzmans’ and when Erma picked up the telephone, I could hear in the background the kind of organized bedlam that she loved best.

“Just a minute now. Don’t hit me with that,” she said, and I heard a giggle.
“Hijo,”
she said, and the warning was stern. “Guzman residence,” she said to me.

“What’s he going to hit you with, Erma?” I asked.

“Just a pillow. Is this Mr. Gastner?”

“Yep. Did Estelle get the message about her mother?”

“Oh yes,” Erma said, the “yes” lilting with her heavy Mexican accent. “She came in the door about five minutes ago, and she left right away. I think they sent an ambulance to Tres Santos to bring her mother up here.”

“That would make sense. Look, if they need anything, will you let me know?”

“I sure will. But I think everything will be all right.”

As all right as being eighty-eight with a busted hip in a foreign country can be, I thought.

“Don’t let the kids wear you down,” I said, and Erma giggled.

After I hung up, I looked outside at the glowering sky. Slate gray and jagged-edged, the clouds scudded in from the northwest. It wasn’t going to be a pretty night for a three-year-old to be stuck out on a New Mexican mountainside.

I cleaned myself up, and by the time I walked back out into the kitchen, I felt almost human again. Camille was busy at the kitchen counter, fussing with a long plastic box. She glanced up at me and smiled.

“Would you like me to fix a nice salad here instead of us going outside again?” she asked.

“I need green chili,” I said. “And there’s nothing in the house anyway.” I pointed at the box. “What’s that thing for?”

She straightened up and tilted the gadget toward me and I squinted through my bifocals. I grunted with indifference when I saw that it was one of those compartmented pillboxes where the drugs can be arranged by the day, plenty of little cubicles to serve the needs of even the most spaced-out, helpless patient.

“Put the meds in here and it’s easier to remember what’s what,” she said. “Just do it by the week.”

“Oh, gee,” I said. “Are you ready to go?”

She filled the last two compartments with a rainbow, then handed me a bottle of long blue-and-white concoctions. “You’re supposed to take these with dinner,” she said.

“Absolutely,” I said, and tucked the bottle into my jacket pocket. We made it out of the kitchen, down the hallway, and across the foyer. I ushered Camille outside, and I was just closing the front door behind us when the telephone rang again.

“Do you want me to get that?” Camille asked.

“No,” I said. “Estelle and Francis went down to Mexico, and Erma has everything under control. Five gets you ten it’s just the sheriff. He has this mistaken impression that I want to be useful again.” I turned the lock. “Let’s eat.”

The Don Juan de Oñate restaurant was across town, on Twelfth Street. It had been a favored haunt of mine for the better part of twenty-five years, still owned by Rosie and Fernando Aragon, their son Miguel, and his pudgy wife, Arleen.

Exactly what connection Don Juan had had in the early seventeenth century to the dust and sagebrush that would eventually become modern Posadas County was a puzzle to even the most ardent historians. Perhaps the explorer had walked through the place on his way north. Perhaps it was just because Rosie and Fernando liked the sound of his name. I didn’t care.

We settled into a fake leather-upholstered booth, and with a perverse comfort I noticed that they hadn’t fixed the broken springs in the seat. I rested my elbows on the table and my chin in my hands.

“Tired?” Camille asked.

“Just really glad to be home.”

“I bet.”

A waitress arrived whom I didn’t know, and I tilted my head back so I could focus on her name tag. “JanaLynn,” I said. “When did you join the Aragon forces?”

“Sir?”

She looked puzzled and I smiled, taking the menu she offered but leaving it closed. “How long have you worked here?”

“Oh,” she said, and ducked her head. “I started last week.”

“Well, welcome aboard.” I folded my hands on top of the red menu with Don Juan and his skinny horse on the padded cover. “I’d like the burrito grande plate, smothered in green. And coffee.”

“Salad with that, sir?”

“No thanks.”

“A salad would be good for you, Dad,” Camille said, then grinned at the withering glance I shot at her. She continued the grin up to the waitress. “He forgot to tell you to hold the cheese,” she said.

A burrito without cheese is sort of like a chocolate ice cream soda without ice cream, but I didn’t have the energy to argue. Camille mused through the menu, finally ordering a respectable dinner herself.

When the chips and salsa and water arrived, we both sat back, me contented, Camille no doubt plotting. Outside, the parking lot was a black polished sheen of chilly moisture. Not a single star poked through the overcast. I shook my head and sighed. “A bad night,” I said.

“There’s not much anyone can do, is there? For the child, I mean.”

“Not at night, no. He’s too young to build a fire to attract attention. I don’t know. Maybe the National Guard helicopters could look for him after dark with spotlights if the weather was decent, but not in this soup. They’d be tangled in the trees in nothing flat. Search and Rescue might work the dogs all night. There’s that possibility.”

“I don’t see how such a little toddler can just wander off like that without being noticed,” Camille said.

I grunted and sipped the water. “The ‘without being noticed’ part happens all the time, sweetheart.” Movement caught my eye and I looked out the window again. A county car had pulled into the parking lot, and an instant later, it was joined by a dark brown Buick.

“Our peace and quiet is over,” I said. JanaLynn arrived with dinner, and I concentrated on inhaling at least a healthy sampler before the sheriff found us.