“I got up and ran into the orchard there and made it over toward the river. That’s when it started to hurt. It hurt so bad and I was scared. I thought that maybe with all the brush he couldn’t follow me. There’s a hundred places to hide. After a few minutes I thought I heard him running up the highway. I’m not sure.”
The attendants moved into position and Estelle held up a hand, gaining a few seconds.
“Do you know why he shot you, Kyle?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I was in the truck when the girl was killed, just like them.” He closed his eyes tightly and bit his already bloody lip. “That’s why I was coming to see you. The other four, they got murdered. I heard about Kenny and Cecil…I got so scared.”
Estelle’s eyes locked on mine, and I could see the triumph on her face. “Arajanian,” she said and headed for the door. I should have shared her excitement, but it was dread that twisted my gut. I knew Estelle, and I already knew exactly what mistake she was going to make.
Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s first move couldn’t have been more logical. If Kyle Osuna survived, and Dr. Guzman assured us that he would, then he would be charged either with the murder of Cecilia Burgess or as an accessory to murder, depending on how his story developed. Either felony would go a long way toward making Osuna’s convalescence painful.
Estelle used the telephone in the clinic to call her county dispatch and made sure that two deputies would meet the ambulance when it arrived in Albuquerque.
We’d been caught unaware, but Tate wouldn’t be. In Albuquerque, the deputies would have a file photo of Arajanian. If Osuna was lucid before he went to surgery, they’d make sure he saw the photograph.
If
. I knew the odds of that were small, with his system battered by shock and painkillers.
Estelle wasn’t willing to wait. Her mind was made up, set in concrete.
By the time we pulled into the driveway of the house, I was ready to yell at her as if she were a wayward teenager.
I parked the Blazer and she sat in the passenger seat, making no move toward the door handle.
“In the first place,” she said, “no judge is going to give me an arrest warrant for Robert Arajanian unless Osuna I.D.’s him from a photo. Not on the evidence we have.” She ticked off on her fingers the meager points. “One, we suspect him. Two, Kyle Osuna says his assailant had blond hair and was skinny. That could be Arajanian, or it could just as easily be someone else.”
“Yeah, there are dozens of blondies in this valley,” I said with heavy sarcasm. “Whole tribes of ’em.”
She ignored that and plunged on. “We know Arajanian has a gun but not what kind. And we don’t know what caliber weapon was used to shoot Osuna.”
“It wasn’t a .22.”
“No, it obviously wasn’t.” She opened the door of the Blazer and stepped out. “The only way we’re going to get anywhere is to go up there and confront Arajanian. And Finn. You can bet that he’s behind it…that Arajanian does just what Finn tells him to.”
I slammed the steering wheel with the base of my hand. “Damn it, Estelle. What’s wrong with you? If we left right now, it’d be two in the morning before we could get there.”
“That’s what I mean. The darkness would be to our advantage. They’d never expect it.”
“For Christ’s sake,” I muttered and got out. I followed her into the house. “Think a little. Think about this: If Finn and Arajanian are guilty—and I say
if
—look at their track record. They managed to lure two healthy young toughs over the edge of Quebrada Mesa. We don’t know how the hell they did that, but it’s a fact. And then, cool as a snake, one or both break Grider’s neck. That’s cold-blooded and they did it under cover of darkness.”
Estelle raised an eyebrow as if to say, “So what?”
“And then, if they’re the guilty parties, they somehow managed to bushwhack the Lucero brothers…and neither one of those boys looked like your basic wimp. We don’t know when that happened, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it happened at night. And notice that seven shots were placed in a saucer-sized target at more than twenty yards…so fast that the victim didn’t have time to twist and vary the wound paths.
“And then, finally,” I held up a hand to stave off her rejoinder, “if he’s guilty, like you’re sure he is, Arajanian shot Kyle Osuna in the middle of San Estevan…at night, with a silencer-equipped handgun. Hit him pretty solidly, too. But no one can bat a thousand all the time. So the killer screws up just a tad. The bullet is an inch too low and wide. He doesn’t get a chance for another because Kyle Osuna is spooked into being jackrabbit-fast on his feet.”
“If we wait until dawn,” Estelle said with great patience, “then both you and I know that they’ll be gone. And Daisy will be gone right along with them.”
“We don’t know that. And I share your concern for the kid. But you’re letting your emotions rule. There’s nothing to be gained by rushing in half-cocked.”
“Sir,” she said as if I’d added two and two and gotten five. All the time I had been talking, Estelle had been buttoning on her bullet-proof vest.
“Arajanian knows the boy got away,” she said. “Now maybe he’s stupid enough to think Kyle Osuna crawled off into the bushes and died, but I don’t think so. It’s logical to assume that someone who is fit enough to jump up after being knocked flat by a bullet can maybe make it to help. It’s a good chance. Would you just sit up there in the woods, waiting for us to come and arrest you?”
“I might. If I knew there was no direct evidence against me, I might think that it was better to wait and keep my eyes and ears open for movement of the troops.”
“And all this time Daisy is up there. You know who she’s with, don’t you? She’s with two freaks who have managed to kill five people. I’m not about to wait a minute longer than I have to. If I’m wrong, then I’ll be the first to apologize to Finn and Arajanian, face to face.”
“No, Estelle. If you’re wrong, you’ll probably get us both killed. And maybe Daisy, too.” I snapped my lighter, touched the flame to the cigarette, and promptly coughed so hard my eyes swam with tears.
Estelle waited until the spasm passed before saying, “I’m not asking you to go up there with me, sir.”
“I’m charmed,” I managed to say, and when I caught my breath I held up a hand. “Will you at least grant me a condition or two?”
That stubborn eyebrow went up, saying, “Let me hear it first.”
“First, let’s be a little smart and have some backup. Call Garcia and Martinez. Leave Martinez with the vehicles in the campground so we’ve got radio communication with dispatch if we need it. We can reach Martinez with the hand-held.”
Estelle nodded. “And?”
“Listen to an old marine, Estelle. If Finn and Arajanian have done what we think they have, we’re going against two cold hands. Unless we can take them completely by surprise, it won’t work. Remember that ridge that runs along the creek, up above the campsite on the west side?”
“Sure.”
“All right. If we follow that instead of the creek bed, we’ll have some protection and the opportunity to see the camp before we approach it. We’re going to want to make damn sure that we know what’s what before we go in there.”
Estelle frowned. “That’s all?”
“All?” I said. “No.…Most important, we aren’t going there at all until dawn, with about thirty-five state police and deputies behind us…and maybe a helicopter or two.”
“The more people are involved, the more chance there is for Daisy to get hurt. Remember when we busted the gold diggers down in Posadas?”
I remembered that well. We’d been part of a grand night-time embarrassment that included, among other things, a customs agent holding a cocked magnum on his spread-eagled prisoner…and then finding out when someone swung a flashlight around that he was guarding nothing but an empty down jacket, crumpled around the base of a cactus. Everybody had been so nervous that if a trigger had been pulled, twenty lawmen would have been plugged by their own compadres.
“We can slip in and out and use the darkness as a cover,” Estelle said. “It’s safer at night with just a few of us.” She added, “I’ve got another vest at the office you can use.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “I suppose the other alternative is to handcuff you to the bedpost,” I said, and Estelle gave me that fetching smile that lighted her face.
“You could try, sir.” She could melt ice at absolute zero.
“You and your unborn child…who by the way has nothing to gain from any of this.” As I said that, Estelle’s smile faded and she regarded me evenly.
“I’m not helpless, sir.”
“I know you’re not. And sometimes I wish you goddamn were, that’s all.”
That earned me a fleeting grin, but she was determined. I could call Pat Tate and have him try to order some sense into her head, but her car would be kicking dust before the call was completed.
I took a deep breath. “That vest had better be size triple X,” I said. Hell, I couldn’t let her go alone. Paul Garcia was a rookie. Martinez had a wife, two kids, and another baby on the way, so he’d stay with the car…at least I could make damn sure of that.
We walked out to the patrol car. I made sure that the plastic ammo wallet I carried in my hip pocket had all eighteen rounds and that the magnum held its six. I got in, muttering all the while.
“What did you say, sir?”
“I said I don’t even work for this county. This is ridiculous.”
“Yes, sir.” Estelle backed out of the driveway and I tried one last card.
“If Francis hadn’t gone to Albuquerque with the ambulance, would he have let you do this?”
“Probably not, sir.”
“But you would have done it anyway.”
“Yes, sir.” Her jaw had that stubborn, resolute set. I knew that she intended to rescue little Daisy, just like in the fairy tales. I didn’t like the only ending I could imagine.
The moon was huge and bright. It shone into Steamboat Rock Canyon like a gigantic spotlight. When I stepped out of Estelle’s patrol car in the campground parking lot, I could see my shadow. Garcia and Martinez waited.
The moon-washed air was dead. I hitched my gun a little higher under the overhang of my gut. Not a stir through the pine needles, not a whisper down the halls of the canyon. Nothing. I sighed.
“They better be sound sleepers,” I muttered and watched Paul Garcia thumb five fat cartridges into his shotgun. He was nervous and that would keep him alert. Martinez fidgeted. He didn’t much like staying behind.
Except for the three vehicles and Al Martinez, the campground was deserted as we started up the trail through the silent forest. We reached the fork of the trail, and then we veered even farther to the north, cutting away from the trail and following the granite spine of the ridge that paralleled the creek. I tried to breathe quietly, but after a few yards I was rasping like an old steam engine. Estelle slowed some, and when we reached a rock outcropping fifty yards above the trail fork she stopped.
I sat down on one of the ledges with a grunt. My pulse slammed in my ears, and out of habit I counted it for a minute.
“This is crazy,” I whispered.
“We’ll take it easy,” Estelle murmured.
“It’s still crazy.” I took a deep breath. The banging in my ears receded a little. The smells were rich, floating up from where our boots crushed the pine needles, grasses, and herbs. “When we reach the top of this ridge, it’s going to be rough. If one of us kicks a single pebble, the sound’s going to carry.”
Estelle nodded and repeated herself. “We’ll take it easy.”
I stood up and looked ahead. “I’m ready.” We faced perhaps a hundred yards of open rock slide and then the timber capped the granite ridge.
One rock at a time was my pace. I made sure of my footing before trusting my weight to wobbly ankles.
I reached the trees, and both Estelle and Paul made motions as if they were ready to move on. I held up a hand. Tour guides were all alike. They rushed ahead to the next attraction and waited for the old tourists who were poking along behind. When everyone caught up, it was time to be off again. The guys bringing up the rear, gasping because of bad hearts or recent hernias, never got to stop and rest. “We should have called for a helicopter,” I said.
“Are you all right?” Estelle asked, and I waved a hand.
“Just fine. I love hiking, don’t you? Especially in the middle of the goddamn night when I can’t see where to put my goddamn feet.” I turned and surveyed the hillside. The terrain swept up steadily, curving off slightly toward the east.
Estelle whispered, “If we just stay on the highest line, we should be just right.”
“Let me lead,” I said. I was under no illusions that I was the most competent woodsman of the group or even that I had the best nose for direction. But I hated being there more than the other two did, and because of that I might make fewer mistakes.
Hell, Estelle had time to take up knitting lessons while she waited for me to select steps. But we made progress. I passed a big, mistletoe-twisted ponderosa and saw rocks jutting out to the right toward the canyon.
I turned and held a finger over my lips. Both Estelle and Paul stopped. I made my way in slow motion out on the outcropping. I could see, off to the south, where the two canyons joined down by the creek. If my distance judgment was correct, the hot springs were less than a quarter mile away.
I remembered…it seemed a year now rather than a day…seeing Finn and little Daisy walk down through the timber. The slope hadn’t been extreme. That was the route we should take, coming in from the north behind the tent site.
I grunted up from my squatting position and waved for Estelle and Paul to follow. As we drew away from the terminus of the ridge and worked toward its root where it joined the mesa top, the pines were widely spaced, a park stand that would have been lovely to a Forest Service timber cruiser.
The ridge’s spine curved to the right, and I knew it circled behind the campsites below. I stopped. Estelle stepped so close I could smell the faint aroma of the shampoo she’d used.
“We’ll come in right behind them,” I whispered. She nodded. I motioned to Paul Garcia and laid a hand on his shoulder. “We don’t want to go down the hill as a group. Spread out and watch your footing. You on the left, Paul, with Estelle over on the right. Don’t get ahead of me. Don’t rush.”
His head bobbed with excitement, but I didn’t release my grip on his shoulder. “When we’re about a hundred feet from the camp, I want to stop and listen. You watch for my signal. And we’ll stay there for a while, so don’t get in a hurry.”
The footing was easy. I kept the inchworm pace, giving each boot toe plenty of time to find twigs or sticks that waited to let out rifle-shot cracks. Like three ghosts, we moved down through the timber.
The moonlight was broken into soft patches by the forest canopy, but before long I could make out Finn’s tent. The black rectangle was a geometry out of place in the tapestry of irregular shapes.
I held up a hand and stopped. To my right, I could see Estelle. She stood at the base of a ponderosa that was thick enough to hide three of her. With the authority of her uniform stripped away by the night, her figure was almost that of a child. The outline of her Stetson reminded me of the flat brim of an Easter bonnet worn by a girl a century ago.
I twisted at the waist and for a moment Paul Garcia remained invisible. Almost all the images in the nighttime forest were vertical…everything else disappeared.
My eyes clicked from tree to tree until I found him. He was leaning against a pine as if he were taking a breather during a Sunday afternoon stroll. He must have taken off his Stetson, because I could see the curved outline of the top of his head.
He pushed away from the tree and took a half step forward. I stopped breathing as I saw the moonlight touch the blond hair that swept down to his shoulders.