Scavengers (4 page)
Estelle awoke with a start, nearly dumping her youngest son on the floor. She didn’t remember hearing the soft ring of the telephone, but became aware of Irma’s voice out in the kitchen in one-sided conversation.
“
Hijo
, we almost had a crash,” Estelle laughed, and Carlos smiled up at her. They were sitting in the tall-backed rocker in the living room, a rocker that was all hard spindles and unforgiving maple armrests—and inexplicably, the little boy’s favorite piece of furniture. She pulled him back up on her lap and wrapped the knitted shawl over his head so that he looked like a miniature Bedouin.
“You stopped reading,” the three year-old said from underneath the shawl. It was just a droll reminder, a bookmark of a comment. Estelle leaned over to retrieve the little boy’s literary passion that particular month.
Los Tres Pequeños Jabalíes
lay on the floor behind the rocker, just out of reach. She remembered reading the page that included the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign over the two sleeping Javelinas, comfortable in their house constructed of saguaro cactus ribs. Apparently the suggestion of the pigs’ comfortable snoozing had been effective. She had no recollection of turning the page after that.
She looked at her watch and saw that it was eight-thirty. A half an hour had disappeared somehow.
“That’s because it’s time for bed,
querido
,” she said.
“Abuela can read.”
Estelle leaned forward and let Carlos slide to the floor, shawl dragging between his feet. “Abuela’s asleep,
hijo
.” She collected the book, straightened a bent page, and held it out to the boy. “Take it to bed with you.”
Irma giggled and then she appeared in the doorway, the phone mouthpiece covered with her hand.
“It’s Jackie Taber. Are you home?”
Estelle nodded. “You bet.” She ushered Carlos and his book toward the hallway, taking the phone from Irma at the same time. “I think he’s feeling better,” she said as Irma turned to follow the small moving shawl toward his bedroom. “Jackie, what’s up?”
“But are
you
feeling better?” Deputy Jackie Taber’s voice was soft. “Gayle said you went home lookin’ kind of punk.”
“Sure. A passing moment,” Estelle replied. “It’s been an interesting week around this place.” In the background, she could hear the distorted, metallic conversations of the police radio.
“Hold on just a sec,” the deputy said. “They’re yackin’ at me.” Estelle made her way back to the rocker and sat down. “Three oh six, go to the phone,” Jackie said, and then to Estelle she added, “Pasquale is trying to reach me. Can I buzz you back in about five minutes?”
“Sure. I’ll be here,” Estelle said, and switched off. She rested her head back against the warm wood of the chair and closed her eyes. Nothing ached, nothing twinged, nothing pounded, but there wasn’t much motivation to move, either. Sitting still felt just fine. In a moment, she could hear the muffled voice of Irma Sedillos in the boys’ bedroom, continuing the harrowing tale of the three
jabalíes
and their continuing struggle with southwestern building codes and threats from the mangy coyote. Because there were no pleas to start the story all over again, she knew that Francisco was sound asleep. Were her oldest son awake, there would be argument and discussion about every move the
jabalíes
made.
In less than five minutes, the phone chirped again. Estelle put it to her ear without opening her eyes.
“Guzman.”
“Estelle,” Jackie said, “did Linda find you yet? She had some photos that she wanted to show you.”
“She hasn’t been by. The last I heard was this afternoon, when you two were going back out to see what you could find. Did Dennis talk to the MacInerny brothers, by the way?”
“That’s part of what I wanted to tell you. Dale was home, and we drew a blank there. He doesn’t remember anything out of the ordinary during the past weeks. But Collins caught up with Perry MacInerny at their parents’ home in Lordsburg. Perry remembers hearing shots, but he says that someone is always shooting out that way, someplace. But what stuck in his memory is that a week or two ago, he heard shots in the evening. After dark. That’s unusual enough that he took notice.”
“Was he able to come closer with a date?”
“He told Collins that he
thinks
that it was a Friday night, two weeks ago. He says he couldn’t swear to it, but he thinks that’s when it was.”
“Did he say why?”
“He said that he stayed late at the pit, working on some piece of cranky equipment. It was getting dark, and he says for a change the wind wasn’t blowing. It was real still. Whatever job he had to do involved lots of oil, and I guess he was eager to take the opportunity to work without blowing sand. He remembers hearing the shots, and he told Dennis that his first thought was that it was probably jack-lighters over east somewhere.”
“Did he count the shots, by any chance?”
“We should be so lucky,” Jackie said. “More than one, he said. He thought it was hunters. That’s about as descriptive as he was willing to get.”
“That’s interesting,” Estelle said. “If it was dark, how could Perry see what he was working on?”
“He told Collins that he’s got a light that he strings from his pickup truck. Plugs into the cigarette lighter.”
“I’m impressed,” Estelle said.
“What…that he’s got a light?”
“No,” she chuckled. “That Collins thought to ask in the first place. There’s hope, maybe.”
“Maybe.”
“Dennis had to drive to Lordsburg to talk with him, though?”
“Apparently so. He said he didn’t want to do it over the phone, and didn’t want to wait until Perry came back late tonight. Deputy Collins brought back a signed deposition, on top of that.”
“I’m doubly impressed,” Estelle said, amused when her remark brought no comment from the other end of the line. That Jackie Taber didn’t hold Dennis Collins in particularly high regard was no secret, but they rarely crossed paths. Jackie preferred the dark times and solitude. Dennis liked the political visibility of daylight.
Jackie’s voice dropped another decibel, barely more than a whisper. Estelle shifted the phone so that she could hear. “But here’s the deal,” and she hadn’t finished the sentence when the police radio blared in the background. “Just a sec,” Jackie said, and her voice drifted away as mike replaced phone. “Three oh one is ten-seven, just coming up on Pershing Park.” The park was in the middle of the village, two good stone throws from the Public Safety Building and dispatch.
“Ten-four, three oh one.”
“Let me turn this radio down so I can hear,” Jackie said. “There’s two points of good news, actually. Perry MacInerny said that the day after he worked on the rock crusher, or whatever it was, he had to buy a couple parts for it. He says he’s got the invoice in the office at the gravel pit, and it would have the date on it. Collins was going to check with him and get a copy. If his memory is accurate, that date will give us something.”
“That’s good. What else?”
“The photos that the woman took from the airplane show a double set of tracks, Estelle. They’re pretty clear. They come in from the east, and one photo shows them clearly enough that we were able to establish the point of origin from a roadway.”
Estelle frowned, eyes still closed, picturing the empty sweep of eastern Posadas County. “What roadway, though?”
“There’s a power company service road that follows the main transmission lines north-south. That’s about, what, two miles east of the gravel pit, give or take? That’s where the tracks lead. Linda and I went down to Maria to catch the service road where it leaves the state highway. We followed it north to see if we could find where the tracks join up, if they do. And sure enough the sand is soft along there, and they’re pretty clear. Linda took shots using a flash, but she’s almost certain that won’t show much of anything. We need the strong morning light.” Jackie took a deep breath, as if she’d caught herself being uncharacteristically blabby and needed to decide whether to confide more information. “And in one or two spots,” she added, “the tracks in the sand are clear enough that we might make a casting work.”
“You’re sure it’s the same tracks that extend all the way west to the body?” Estelle asked.
“We can overlay the photo on a map, and extend the tracks to see if they intersect with the road. I’m pretty sure that they will. That’s what Linda’s working on now, I think. She was going to print the photo so that its scale matches a map she ran off the computer’s topo program. A more or less match, anyway. Then she’ll burn a transparency on the copier.”
“When you say a double set of tracks, what are you talking about? Two vehicles, or one coming and going?”
“Well, the photograph just shows traces, you know. Unless we find something at the west end—maybe evidence of a turnaround—we might not be able to tell. Two cars? One car? I just don’t know. Another thing that’s interesting is that one set goes in a pretty straight line. The other wanders a bit more. Maybe dodging terrain, or maybe one of the drivers was a little stoned. But they both sure enough go from somewhere over by the power lines to about fifty yards from where we found the body. They end just over a slight rise from that spot. If we had walked a bit farther east, I think we would have seen them.”
“You said that Linda was able to take pictures of the tracks, though?”
“She thinks that she got something, but we were running out of light. She wants to be out here first thing in the morning, when the angle of the sun is real low. She thinks that she can pick up some contrast that way.”
“Okay. She’s not still out there, is she?”
“No, no. She wanted to work on the photo blowups. I go back on for graveyard, and wanted to catch some sleep before the shift starts. I wanted to ask if we could have Tom Pasquale sit the spot for a while between now and then, just to make sure nothing is disturbed.”
“Of course. Mears is on tonight to cover, isn’t he?”
“Yes, ma’am. And it’s been quiet.”
“Who’s on graveyard with you? Sutherland?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That’ll be fine, then. Make sure that he knows when you go out there, Jackie.”
“And there’s always the possibility that the tracks don’t have anything to do with John Doe, either,” Jackie said. “We haven’t hiked along the tracks from the power line road to where we found Mr. Doe. They might not even connect.”
“There’s always that,” Estelle replied, knowing that it was a distant possibility at best. “You guys be careful.”
She switched off the phone and sat quietly for a moment, her mind out on the empty prairie. The various scenarios were intriguing, including something as simple as Perry MacInerny lying to Deputy Collins. But if John Doe had run afoul of one or both of the MacInerny brothers, why would they bother to lug the corpse—or march the still living John Doe at gunpoint—a thousand yards from the yawning gravel pit, when the pit itself offered ample and permanent burial space? One dip of the MacInernys’ enormous power shovel would scoop out a grave big and deep enough for a dozen John Does, and no one would be the wiser.
Estelle closed her eyes. The very spot chosen for the victim’s disposal was interesting. If the tracks that the deputies had discovered were in fact related to John Doe’s death and final resting place on the open prairie, the likelihood was great that the killer was no stranger to Posadas County. A killer didn’t stumble onto a spot like that just by passing through.
The transmission line ran into the county from the east, passing just north of the tiny village of Maria. Maria itself was basically on the road to nowhere, snuggled up against the U.S.–Mexico border fence without a crossing station. From Maria, the line swept northward until, after twenty miles, it crossed the interstate and shed a few watts in the direction of the village of Posadas before angling out through the northwest corner of the county. Anyone living in Maria would know how to access the service road that followed the power line—a road in name only. And anyone who had bumped along that path would know that the transmission line passed through the most desolate acreage in the county.
Estelle could visualize the massive two-legged giants lugging their copper cables across the prairie, wind singing through the latticework of steel braces, just the hint of a road brushing their legs where once or twice a year a power company truck would jounce past.
She opened her eyes and smiled. On the short list of people who might know that country, two names came to mind. One was Sheriff Robert Torrez, who hunted every square inch of the county on a regular basis. The open reaches of eastern Posadas would be home to a few wandering antelope, certainly, and maybe even
los jabalíes
. It wouldn’t have surprised Estelle if, at some time or other, Bob Torrez had walked across the very piece of prairie that had become John Doe’s final resting place. But the Sheriff wasn’t going to be of any help. Sworn into office less than a month before, he was stewing in Virginia.
She turned the phone over, switched it on, and dialed. It rang six times before the
former
sheriff of Posadas County picked it up.
“Gastner…goddamn it…” A clatter followed, along with another curse. Estelle waited until the ruckus died down. “Gastner,” he said again.
“Good evening, sir.”
“Well, it was. Now I’ve got pieces of coffee cup and spilled coffee all over my kitchen floor.”
“Sorry about that.”
“It’s not your fault, sweetheart. Normal folks can manage a goddamn telephone and a cup of coffee at the same time. That’s why we have two hands. But something about that skill escapes me.” William Gastner chuckled. “Ah, well. I was about to go out to eat. I got stiffed today on a dinner invitation, and I’m starving. What are you doing?”
“I’m sitting in a rocking chair, thinking.”
“That sounds productive. How’s your mother?”
“Better, I think. And Carlos is having a bedtime story finished up for him by Irma, so he’s feeling better, too.”
“He still into the three javelinas?”
“Same story.”
“Christ, he ought to know it by heart by now. I read it to the two of them last week, myself. And I know they’ve heard it fifty times before that.”
