Prolonged Exposure (8 page)

“Well, it doesn’t appeal to me. I mean, there’s no protection for her grave from possible future development, no care, no maintenance. And from what the sheriff told me earlier, it’s not even Florencio’s property. It’s yours.”

“True enough.”

“And we haven’t settled a more important issue, anyway.”

“What’s that?”

“I think he killed her.”

“That’s hard to imagine,” I said, trying to keep the grin out of my voice.

“Well, it’s perfect,” Willit said. “She’s very elderly, so no one suspects because of that. He prepares her grave all by himself, like some innocent, half-senile old fart, and even carves a crude cross for special effects. People look at it and say, ‘Isn’t that sweet,’ and he’s home free.”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Willit.” But I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Words similar to Willit’s prediction had been spoken as Camille and I visited the grave the day before.

“Why not? Two, three years, who’s going to know the difference? Especially if she’s just wrapped up in an old bedsheet or something like that. The body will be decomposed before long. That’s why I’m going to Posadas this week. Tomorrow, if I can make arrangements. I want a court order signed. It’ll make things a lot easier if you’d sign a statement saying that you don’t want her buried on your property.”

“I really don’t care one way or another, Mr. Willit, but a court order for what?”

“Exhumation. I want to find out what killed my mother.”

Chapter14

“We’re ready, sir,” Estelle Reyes-Guzman said, and I damn near jumped out of my chair. I had swiveled it sideways and was gazing out the window, lost in thought somewhere. She frowned. “What’s wrong, sir?”

I got out of my chair with a grunt and waved a hand at the telephone. “Nothing.” I didn’t have a clue how long I’d been wool-gathering. On the chance that it hadn’t been too long, I added, “I just got off the phone with Gloria Apodaca’s stepson.”

“That’s the Willit person that’s been calling?”

I nodded. “He wants a court order to exhume the body. He thinks that Florencio Apodaca did her in.”

I thought Estelle might laugh, or maybe chuckle, or even smile—just a little maybe. But the corners of her mouth didn’t twitch and the little lines around her eyes didn’t deepen. She stepped into my office and closed the door behind her. “What did you tell him?”

“Well, I didn’t give him a definite answer. He’s flying in from California sometime in the next day or two.” I thrust my hands in my pockets and looked down at the old wooden flooring. “I guess it’s something that’s got to be settled one way or another. If I refuse, then Willit will take old man Apodaca to court, and we’ll be tied up that way until he finds enough evidence to convince a judge. And I’m sure he’ll find some excuse. I was thinking of going over to talk with the old guy. Maybe I can convince him that Gloria needs to be buried properly, out of the way of future water lines. That way, Stanley Willit can have his look-see, and the old lady can rest in peace.” I shrugged. “It won’t hurt to talk to him. See what he says. You want to go along?”

“Sure.” She frowned and shook her head. “I’ve seen Gloria Apodaca in church a few times.”

She didn’t continue, so I prompted her. “And then?”

“Being practicing Catholics, being buried in unconsecrated ground would raise all sorts of clamor with relatives.”

“Maybe she was and he isn’t,” I said.

“And that would make all the more reason to agree with Mr. Willit, sir. I think you should talk with Florencio. Maybe tomorrow, if nothing else breaks.”

I nodded and she stepped aside to let me out into the modern world of tile, fluorescent lights, and electric doors. “Let’s see what Mrs. Cole and her boyfriend have to say.”

Had the young couple been interested in their surroundings just then, they would have been impressed with Sheriff Martin Holman’s office. He had every computer gadget on the planet stuffed into a single piece of furniture that looked like an oversized entertainment center. The snarl of wires and cables lead down to a power source beside his steel desk that looked adequate to drain Posadas Rural Electric Co-op bone-dry.

Tiffany Cole had recovered from her head-thumping faint, but she was a wreck in every other respect. Andy Browers sat beside her, his large brown hand covering both of hers.

The sheriff indicated that I sit in his chair behind the desk, and I took him up on the offer. He perched on the edge of the desk, hands clasped in his lap, composed as hell and looking as if he was about to say, “Now, what will it take for you to drive home that new car today?”

“We’re not getting anywhere,” he said by way of preamble, and I was surprised at his honesty. “You’ve spent the same hours up on that mesa that we have, and other than the jacket, we haven’t turned up a thing.” That pronouncement didn’t do a lot to make Tiffany Cole and Andy Browers any more cheerful.

“I think it’s time to face the fact that the youngster is not on the mesa,” the sheriff continued. He saw the quiver of Tiffany Cole’s lower lip and added quickly, “That doesn’t mean that we’re not going to continue the ground and air search.” He clapped his hands once, softly. “Even enlarge the sweep of the search to the west, north, and east.”

Browers’s voice was husky. “What do you really think, Sheriff?”

Holman hesitated and glanced at me, then at Estelle. “We think,” he said slowly, “that the child was abducted.”

Tiffany let out a little strangled cry and stuck her left fist in her mouth. Her eyes brimmed. I hoped that she wasn’t going to go backward out of the chair.

Holman took a deep breath and plunged on. “You have to consider some main features of that country. It’s rugged, and we just don’t think that the child would walk very far. That means he’d hear voices, and he’d probably holler for help. He didn’t do any of those things. But in addition to all that, there are several access roads to the general area where you folks were camping. It would be easy enough for someone to drive a truck up there, maybe even fairly close. It would also be fairly easy to slip through the trees to where you people were camping and, when it was clear that the youngster was by himself, pick him up.”

“You don’t really believe that,” Browers said. If his hand clamped Tiffany’s any harder, we would have heard bones starting to crack. “What about his jacket?”

Sheriff Holman spread his hands. “Detective Reyes-Guzman and I spent quite a bit of time this afternoon going over the possibilities, including the problems presented by the jacket,” he said. He got up and walked toward the window, his hands on the small of his back. True to form, he wasn’t wearing a gun—at least not one that was visible. “And let me tell you what doesn’t make any sense. What doesn’t make sense is that the child is still on the mesa. We’ve used dogs, helicopters, infrared heat-seeking equipment. Enough manpower to comb an area ten times that size. I’m sorry. I don’t think he’s up there.”

The sheriff nodded at Estelle. “Do you agree?”

“Yes, sir.” That’s all she said, and Holman returned to the desk perch. “Let’s take it apart. You provided articles of the boy’s clothing so the dogs could pick up a strong scent. They followed the scent just a few feet from where your truck was parked and then lost it. They didn’t follow it toward the area where the jacket was discovered.” Holman spread his hands again, and Browers took the opportunity to speak.

“It’s been raining, though. That screws up the scent for the dogs.”

“It hasn’t been raining that much,” Holman said. “And the dogs are proven in dozens of searches, some in far worse weather than this.”

“What if he’s fallen over the edge somehow? Hurt real bad, maybe even…maybe even so bad, he can’t cry out?”

“The search teams covered every square inch of that mesa face, folks. And I mean covered it. So did you. I spent four hours in the area immediately below where you were camped, in an area no bigger than a football field. The child isn’t there. And the National Guard’s infrared equipment agrees with us. He isn’t there.”

“But who?” Tiffany Cole said, and it was the first time I’d actually heard her voice.

“That’s the primary reason we wanted to talk with you folks today,” the sheriff said.

I cleared my throat. “Mrs. Cole,” I said, “who knew that you and your family were going camping this weekend?”

She looked puzzled. “I don’t know who we told,” she said. “All kinds of people, I suppose. I mean,” she added, and her voice took on a petulant edge, “it wasn’t some kind of secret.”

“Of course it wouldn’t be,” I said. “Let’s try to narrow it down. When did you decide to go? Was it a spur-of-the-moment thing, or something you’d been planning?”

She looked at Browers and he shrugged. “We’d been wanting to go camping for a while, but we never seemed to get around to it. Cody was having so much fun this summer camping out in the backyard with some neighborhood friends.” She looked up quickly. “Not overnight. He’s too little for that. But they played with the tent and stuff like that. He’s even got a little sleeping bag, and he’s so proud of it.” She sniffed. “Earlier in the week, we just decided that we ought to go out at least once, before the weather turned really bad.”

“And with your camper, this kind of weather is no big deal,” I said. “Kind of fun, I suppose.”

They nodded.

“Were you hunting?”

Browers shook his head. “I don’t even know what’s in season right now, if anything. We just wanted a big fire, cook hot dogs and marshmallows, and have a good time.”

“So it was a spur-of-the-moment sort of decision,” I said.

“Exactly. None of this seems possible,” Browers said. He leaned forward. “And what about the jacket?” When he said that, Tiffany Cole winced.

“The tears in the jacket are consistent with knife cuts,” Estelle Reyes-Guzman said. Tiffany Cole’s hand drifted back toward her mouth. “There was no blood on the fabric around the cuts, even though at least two of the cuts penetrated all the way through the garment. If the child had been wearing the jacket at the time the cuts were made, he would have been injured.” Perhaps Tiffany Cole wouldn’t have blanched quite so much if Estelle hadn’t sounded like a bored coroner talking into a tape recorder.

“I don’t understand,” Browers said. “Are you saying that someone cut up the boy’s jacket just for kicks?”

“No,” Estelle said. “I don’t know why the coat was left behind, or why it was cut.”

“We were told that animals probably tore it.”

“No,” Estelle said flatly. “The cuts weren’t tears from an animal’s claws, or from a raven’s beak, or from anything of that nature. I examined them under a microscope this afternoon, and it’s quite clear. The fabric was cut. Four slashes in the back,” and she made stabbing motions with her hand, which turned Tiffany Cole another shade paler, “and one cross the front.”

“But why?” Browers asked. His voice was a half choke.

“The only thing that makes sense is that someone wanted us to think that wild animals were involved. It’s not too hard to imagine. But wild animals were not involved, Mrs. Cole.” Her tone was soft and matter-of-fact. “There are only four animals in this country that would be physically capable of taking a child.”

It was clear that the parents didn’t want to hear what Estelle had to say, but she continued anyway. “Black bears could but wouldn’t. This isn’t the time of year for cubs, and that’s when people get crossways with sows. Mountain lions could, but you had a fire and were making lots of noise. The cats are shy and wouldn’t have been in the same area. That leaves coyotes, and if they’d been in the area, you’d have heard them. They can’t keep a secret.”

Browers wasn’t amused. “You said four. That’s only three.”

“There have been one or two reports of Mexican jaguars on this side of the border. I don’t know anything about their hunting habits. But it doesn’t matter. None of the animals I mentioned have knife blades instead of claws. It was a human animal that was responsible.”

“You’re sure?” Browers asked.

“Yes.” She nodded at Holman. “I think the sheriff is right. Someone saw your fire, approached, saw an opportunity, and took Cody.”

“But that couldn’t happen,” Tiffany said, and some strength had crept back into her voice. “We would have heard. He would have cried out.”

“Maybe,” I said. “If someone approached and clapped a hand over his mouth, he wouldn’t have had a chance. One hand over his mouth, one hand around his waist, and he’s gone. Just like that.”

“Or, it could have been someone he knew,” Sheriff Holman said. “If that was the case, he might not cry out.”

Browers looked at him in astonishment. “You’re really saying that someone abducted Cody? You’re serious?”

“I’m saying that’s the most logical explanation,” Holman said. “What about the boy’s father, for example?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Browers snapped. “He can have custody whenever he likes.” He shook his head. “It’s not logical at all. Who the hell would take a child from a campsite on a pitch-dark night? We didn’t hear any vehicle, or see any headlights. I don’t think it’s possible that someone could sneak up on us, unless they knew we were there all along and had planned it all out.”

The room fell silent. Finally, Andy Browers said, “But that’s what you think happened?”

Holman nodded. Browers looked across at Estelle, and she nodded.

I said, “That’s why we need to know every single person you’ve come in contact with during the past few days—from the time you first decided to go on this camping expedition. Everyone you can think of. We already have a bulletin issued, so every law enforcement agency in the Southwest has been alerted, and they all have Cody’s photograph.”

Tiffany Cole rose slowly to her feet, her eyes closed and her head shaking from side to side. “No,” she said as Andy Browers took her by the elbow. “I’m going back up. That’s where Cody is. I know that’s where he is.”

“Ma’am,” I said, but Mrs. Cole was headed out. Sheriff Holman beat her to the door, but it was Estelle’s voice that stopped her.

“Mrs. Cole,” Estelle said, “there are one or two more things I’d like to ask you before you leave.” Tiffany Cole turned and looked at her, one hand still reaching toward the doorknob. Estelle pointed at the chair. “Sit for a minute,” she said, and the woman did.

Estelle leaned forward, her face not more than a foot from the other woman’s, and when she spoke, it wasn’t much more than a whisper.

“When was the last time you saw your husband, Mrs. Cole?”

“My husband?”

“Paul Cole.”

The woman shook her head. “August. He had Cody for a weekend in August, just before school started.”

“He works in Bernalillo?”

Tiffany nodded. “That’s where he was.”

“But you have custody of the child?” I said.

“Yes. Of course.”

“How long ago was your divorce from Paul Cole?” Estelle asked.

“Almost three years,” Tiffany Cole said.

“And what kind of arrangements were worked out as part of that?”

“I have custody of Cody,” the woman said. “Paul can come see him whenever he wants, but he hardly ever does. Just that one weekend in August, and even then he called to cancel one day of Cody’s visit.”

“Is there any unusual bitterness between you and your former husband that you’re aware of?” I asked.

She shook her head. “But he just doesn’t care.” She looked up at me. “I called him the day all this happened. I called him because I thought he had the right to know. But I couldn’t get through to him. I left a message on the machine in the coaches’ office at the school, in case he stopped in there, and on his answering machine at his house. He never returned the call.”