The Cinco de Mayo Murder (6 page)

“That's in the file,” I said. “It was a local couple, people who lived in Tucson.”

“Then maybe we can find them. I think it would be instructive to hear what they say.”

“Don't know if they're still around after twenty years,” Warren said, “but you can give it a try. I can't think of a better place to live than Tucson myself. Lots of folks feel that way.”

I smiled. Then I took a last look around. I asked Warren if I might take a picture of him, just as a memento. He gave me a grin and stood up straight while I pointed and shot. I promised to send him a copy.

“I think so,” I said.

“Get any answers?”

“Just a few more questions.” “Well, in my business, that's considered progress. Let's head back down before we melt.”

We said our good-byes in the parking lot. I promised Warren I would be in touch with him if I learned anything new. He said it had been a pleasure taking us up the trail.

We got back on the interstate and continued toward Tucson. The traffic picked up as we drove and the speed limit dropped. We exited at Broadway and Congress, two parallel streets, each one-way in the opposite direction. Our hotel was close to the highway; we were soon registered and in our room.

We had talked about the case all the way down from Picacho Peak. It was the scratches on Heinz's hands that concerned us both. Had instinct overcome his conscious desire to kill himself, or had he fallen and attempted to stop himself all the way down to the stand of trees?

We decided to try to find the couple who had discovered the body. In the hotel room I located their name, which was in the file, and found them in the telephone directory, although the address was different from the one they had given twenty years before. I made the call and spoke to a girl who said she was their daughter. Her parents would not be home before five thirty. I promised to call back.

Meanwhile, we were very hungry, so we went downstairs and ate some lunch. By the time we finished, it was late afternoon. We found out we were quite close to the Museum of Art and Old Town, two places on our visiting list. The museum closed at four, so that was out of the question, but we walked across a footbridge that spanned the two streets, finding ourselves in a large plaza with a fountain in the center and a beautiful old courthouse with a mosaic dome at the far end. We continued across the plaza till we came to a street, crossed it, and found Old Town. It was a low historic building filled with shops selling pottery, jewelry, and art objects from the Southwest.

We walked around until we both agreed that our climb earlier in the day had made us ache too much to continue, so we returned to the hotel. I had brought The New York Times along from Phoenix and we shared it as we rested. A little before six, I called the number listed for Bradley Tower, the husband who had found the backpack.

Mrs. Tower answered. I explained who I was and why I was calling.

“You mean that poor fellow who fell down the mountainside? That must have been twenty years ago.”

“That's the one. I wonder if we could get together and talk, Mrs. Tower. Your husband, too. I know that young man's mother and I'm trying to get as much information about his death as I can.”

She left the phone and had a long conversation with her husband. “We could come down to your hotel tomorrow,” she said. “How would ten o'clock in the morning be?”

“That would be great. We'll be downstairs in the lobby. My companion is a nun, so you'll recognize her right away.”

We left it at that. I called home and had a quick chat
with Jack. Eddie was sleeping and all was well. When I was off the phone, I found I was so tired that all I wanted was to get some sleep myself. I got no complaints from Joseph. She was already getting her nightshirt out of the drawer.

We returned to the hotel before ten the next morning and took chairs facing an entrance. The Towers arrived punctually, Mrs. Tower's face lighting up when she spotted Joseph.

I brought them over to the arrangement of chairs and a sofa around a table and we introduced ourselves.

“Before we begin,” Bradley Tower said, “I'd like to know how you found us.”

I explained that I had the file of Heinz Gruner's accident, and their names and old address were in it.

He looked troubled. “You can just put your hands on a criminal file anytime you want to?”

“It's not a criminal file,” I said. “It's a police file of the accidental death of a boy I went to high school with. You and your wife reported it. As a matter of fact, I didn't get the file myself. My husband is a lieutenant in the New York Police Department. But nothing in that file is sealed.”

“I see.”

“Is there a problem?”

He and his wife exchanged a glance. I suspected they'd had some conversation about this.

“I think we're OK,” he said. “What did you want to know?”

“Anything you can remember about finding the body. Were you going uphill or downhill when you spotted it?”

“Downhill,” Mary Ann Tower said. “We came around the bend and I looked down the slope and there it was.”

“She was pretty upset,” her husband said. “Not that I wasn't. But she kind of got faint and I had to steady her.”

“Did you go down to the body?” I asked.

“Mary Ann wouldn't hear of it. I wanted to, in case the poor guy was still alive.”

“You could tell he wasn't,” Mary Ann said. “Even from that distance, you could see the animals had gotten to him. It was awful.”

“So we knew it hadn't just happened.”

“What did you do? Did you have a cell phone?”

He laughed. “That was twenty years ago. There weren't any cell phones then. We hiked down the mountain and went to the tollbooth and reported it. The gal there called a ranger and the police, and a deputy came awhile later. We hiked back up with him to be sure he went to the right place. The ranger led the way.”

“A lot of hiking for one day,” I said.

“You bet. But we were in good shape then, right, Mary Ann?”

She smiled. “Those were the days.”

“I understand there was a backpack on the trail.”

“Right. I didn't open it. I figured it was his.”

“Funny that no one found it before you did.”

“There aren't always a lot of people on that trail. What time of year did that happen?” he asked his wife.

“May.”

“Right. May seventh. They figured he'd fallen a couple of days earlier, Cinco de Mayo, fifth of May. I remember it was real hot, too hot to climb, but we'd been planning that for a while.”

“Was there anything that you saw that struck you as strange?”

“The whole thing was strange. I'd never seen a dead body
before in my life. I see how he could've fallen, but he shouldn't have. He didn't have his backpack on, so he wasn't weighed down. I couldn't figure what made him fall.”

“He was from the East,” I said. “He may have gotten dehydrated. You said yourself it was hot.”

“That's what I said,” Mary Ann declared. “The heat got to him, he felt dizzy, and he fell.”

“You mean he put his backpack down nice and neat by the side of the trail and then toppled over?” Brad sounded scornful. “I could almost believe it if he had the backpack on. It could've unbalanced him.”

“Well, we'll never know,” his wife said dismissively.

“Did you go up that same trail that you came down?”

“Sure,” Brad said.

Sister Joseph leaned forward. “Didn't you come upon the backpack on your way up?”

The couple looked at each other. “I didn't see it,” Mary Ann said.

“Neither did I.”

“Could you have missed it?”

Brad shook his head. “I don't think so. That's not a wide trail. Even if we weren't looking, one of us would've been sure to kick it as we went by.”

“Are you suggesting that the backpack wasn't there when we went up and someone put it there while we were coming down?” Mary Ann looked deeply concerned.

“It's a possibility,” Joseph said. “Did the police ask you which way you were walking when you spotted the body?”

“I don't remember,” Brad said, looking at Mary Ann.

“I was awfully upset. I didn't go back up with them when the deputy came. I wasn't thinking too clearly. It was such an awful sight.”

“So you may not have been asked,” Joseph said thoughtfully.

“What are you getting at?” Brad asked. “They said it was an accident. It looked like an accident. You think it was something else?” He seemed reluctant to use the word that we were probably all thinking.

“We can't say at this moment. Chris and I both read the file and neither of us noticed whether you were asked which direction you were hiking when you found the body. Maybe it didn't occur to the deputy to ask. It was twenty years ago; he was young and less experienced. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the first time he'd encountered a body.”

“But what you're saying is important,” Brad said. “Everyone assumed this guy died by accident. You're saying it could have been murder.”

“I'm not saying that. There are several possibilities. Perhaps some hiker reached the backpack before you and took it off the trail to a secluded place to see what was in it. Maybe he was interested in finding the owner.”

“Or stealing what was in it,” Mary Ann said.

“We can't exclude that. I just wanted to point out that the disappearance and reappearance of the backpack doesn't necessarily add up to murder.”

“Sorry I jumped the gun,” Brad said. “I wish someone had thought of this twenty years ago. It's kind of late in the game to be discovering new facts.”

“It's not too late,” I said. “This young man's mother wants to know what happened. If we can find out, we'll be doing her a service.”

Brad looked at his watch. “Honey, we really have to go.” He turned to Joseph and me. “Will you let us know what happens? I mean, if you find out that there was some kind of foul play, we'd really like to know.”

“I have your name and number,” I said. “You'll hear from me. It may be awhile.”

“Hey, after twenty years, what's another couple of weeks?”

We all shook hands, and they left. Joseph and I decided to have some lunch in the hotel as we were driving down to the San Xavier Mission that afternoon. Sitting at the table after we had ordered, we talked about this disquieting new piece of information.

“Obviously,” Joseph said, “the original questioning of the Towers was deficient. It's interesting that neither of them thought anything was unusual about not seeing the backpack on the way up and finding it on the way down.”

“They were upset. I'm sure they weren't thinking clearly. And no one had reason to suspect anything besides an accident.” I drank half a glass of ice water. “I wonder if Heinz had a car with him. The rangers must check the parking lots in the evening. If a car is left—”

“It puts up a red flag. That didn't happen.”

“He might have thumbed a ride from his starting point.”

“That must have been the case.”

I pulled my notebookout and made a note. If Heinz had rented a car, the company would have had Heinz's home address and would have contacted the Gruners when he didn't return it. Or the sheriff's department would have intervened. Thinking about it, I barely noticed when the food arrived.

“It doesn't make sense that he drove,” I said, putting the notebook on the table. “Are you convinced that someone took the backpack and returned it, Joseph?”

“I am. It's possible that the backpack was taken as early as May fifth and was returned on the seventh after the Towers passed the spot going up.”

“Why would someone take it? Why would they return it?” “They took it to see if something in it was worth stealing. They returned it to identify the body.”

“Which means the Towers weren't the first ones to see the body or the backpack.”

“It still doesn't add up to murder, Chris, if that's what you're thinking.”

“It is what I'm thinking even if I'm taking giant leaps here. In fact—” I put my fork down as ideas flooded my mind. “What if Heinz drove to Picacho Peak with someone else in the other person's car?”

“That would answer some questions we've just asked.”

“Like what became of the car.”

“Then it could have been a murder that developed from hitchhiking,” Joseph said.

“How awful. But you're right. That would make it a crime of opportunity.”

“And no way to trace whoever drove the car and pushed Heinz off the edge of the path.”

She was right. Two men drive into the park, pay the entrance fee, park at the base of a trail, and start up together. They have just met, perhaps an hour or two earlier. They are talking, enjoying each other's company. They walk the trail, come to the fateful spot, and something happens.

“But once again,” Joseph said, “even if we insert this additional person into the mix, the man driving the car, it could still have been an accident. The other person felt he wasn't able to scale the slope to help him. He panics, grabs the backpack, and goes back down. A day or two later, he returns with the backpack. Do you have the file with you, Chris?”

“Right here.” I took it out of the canvas tote bag.

“I'm sure I remember seeing a list of the contents of the backpack. What was in it?”