Holman returned to the office a few minutes later, after I told our dispatcher to bring him in. Hell, he’d been out tramping around that field long enough. I didn’t want him dreaming up any more complications. He stood in the doorway of my office, his hands in his coat pockets, Stetson pulled low over his forehead like a real goddamned lawman.
“I don’t think you’re right in this,” he said, sounding like some goddamned counselor.
“Yes, I am,” I said. I was blunt, but sometimes that was the only kind of instrument that worked on Holman.
“And if we wait to arrest the old man, what are you planning?”
“Look,” I said, exasperated. A fleeting memory surfaced of a former sheriff, Eduardo Salcido. Salcido had had the good sense to hire me, twenty-three years before. I’d learned his habit of telling people things once and letting it go at that. Martin Holman liked to hear the same song half a dozen times, maybe hoping that the words would change.
I moved my empty coffee cup two inches to the right, as if it were in my way. “Look, sheriff. We’ve got a uniformed deputy parked at the entrance to Reuben’s property, with the county road sealed off beginning at the intersection with the state highway.” I held up my hands. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s a waste. I mean, the damn road was open all night, when we were measuring and popping flashbulbs. Nobody’s going out there. Nobody’s going to touch anything. And most important, Reuben Fuentes isn’t going to slip out from under our noses and slide into Mexico.”
“I don’t see why you have to have Estelle Reyes-Guzman on hand before you do anything. She doesn’t work for us.”
“I know that.” I paused to take a deep breath, my patience running thin. “Reuben Fuentes speaks English about as well as you and I talk Spanish. I need someone he trusts to talk with him. Estelle is nearby, and obviously he trusts her. It just makes sense. I want him to understand what’s happening to him.”
Holman nodded slightly and straightened his Stetson. “I was thinking of signing up for beginning Spanish at the community college this spring.”
I stared at him for a moment in disbelief. I didn’t know what to say, but Holman saved me the trouble.
“So…the minute Reyes-Guzman arrives, we go out,” the sheriff said.
“You’re not planning a cavalcade, I hope?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” I said, “that just Estelle and I go out and bring the old man in. That’s more than enough. Anything beyond that is just plain silly.”
Holman eyed me askance, his eyes carrying that practiced hard glint that television actors adopt when they’re playing the crusty lawman. “You know, it is possible that the old man did it,” he said quietly. “And if he did, then certain security measures are called for. Completely called for.”
“I suppose so. But he didn’t do it.”
“We’ll see.”
Holman left my office, headed who knows where—maybe to smear more prints out at Anna Hocking’s. And I waited, poring over what information the medical examiner had already sent to our office. It wasn’t much. And now that the long night had worn the first flush of excitement from the chase, Martin Holman and I seemed to be the only ones still worried.
Deputies Paul Encinos and Tony Abeyta went back to the highway, looking for speeders—and no doubt flashing their spotlight into every damn field and yard, hoping for some more action.
Eddie Mitchell, an officer who was even less excitable than Bob Torrez, volunteered to sit out in Fuentes’s driveway until we oldsters finally decided to do whatever it was that we were going to do.
I got the distinct impression that everyone in the department thought I was several cards short. Hell, I suppose the evidence agreed. We’d found a man blown to pieces in a field owned by a known crazy…and I was the one who was refusing to arrest our solitary suspect.
I saw Bob Torrez pass down the hallway and shouted at him.
“Estelle is on her way up, Roberto.” I suppose I wanted at least one person on the staff to agree with me.
“I heard, sir.”
The tall deputy stood in the doorway, a manila envelope under his arm.
“What are you working on?” I asked. I leaned back in the chair and hooked my hands behind my head. He lifted the envelope and gazed at it as if this were the first time he’d seen it.
“The arson investigator from Albuquerque sent back the second set of pictures I took of Sheriff Holman’s house after the cleanup,” he said. “I was going to go through them and see what he said.”
I grimaced. The odds of us ever finding out who flipped the match were slim to none. I had given the case to Torrez because I knew he’d keep plugging. The case wouldn’t end up at the back of a file drawer somewhere, covered with cobwebs.
“That and a million other things,” I said. I took a deep breath and glanced out the doorway toward the dispatch room. “We may need your help this morning.”
“Sure.”
“Estelle and I will go out to talk with the old man. I don’t want a damn contingent following us out there.”
Torrez nodded and I added, “Maybe you can think of something to keep Holman busy if he shows up here in the office again. I really don’t want him out there. Or the press either, for that matter. You may want to run out to the Hocking place again with him…it wouldn’t hurt to look around again. See if we missed anything.”
“He may want to see these photos,” Torrez said, clearly thinking that the Hocking case was closed tight. I could imagine him methodically explaining each photograph to Martin Holman. The sheriff would love it, even if the photos showed next to nothing.
“That’ll be fine. And by the way, I talked with Mrs. Sloan yesterday afternoon. I forgot to tell you.”
Torrez looked uncomfortable. “I had some things I was going to do on that case today, but we sort of got…ah, busy.”
“Well, I can save you some legwork, then. She said the main man went to live with his father in Florida.”
“Todd Sloan? He went to Florida?”
“That’s what she said.”
Torrez frowned.
“What’s the matter? As the old joke goes, his leaving raises the average IQ of both places.”
Torrez almost grinned. “That means she and Kenny Trujillo are the only ones living in that trailer, then.”
“I suppose so. Kenny was still at work when I talked with Miriam. She’d just come back from a trip to Albuquerque.”
“Huh,” Torrez said, still frowning. “Well, maybe.”
“Well maybe what?”
“Well, I stopped by the discount store and talked with a couple people. One of the salesladies remembers Todd and three of his friends in the store during the earlier part of the week. She thought one of them was shoplifting, but she didn’t say anything because she wasn’t sure. Anyway, she says Todd Sloan bought a pair of tennis shoes.”
“The same kind as in your photograph?”
“The same kind. Same size. Same everything. And the lack of wear on the ones in the photo would compare with some only a week old.”
“Thin, Robert. Thin.”
Torrez smiled. “But maybe enough to get him to talk.”
“Except he’s in Florida now. And I don’t think you’re going to win an extradition for tennis shoes.”
Torrez took a step nearer the desk. “But I think she’s lying for him again,” he said. “You said that she claims he moved a couple weeks ago? This was Monday, when he was in the store. So he didn’t move…at least not until just a few days ago.”
“Mothers of teenagers are easily confused,” I said. “But it would be convenient to move right after the burglary.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Well, keep thinking. Go out to the junkyard and talk with Kenny Trujillo. Maybe he needed a new engine hoist, so Todd obliged. You might ask Kenny when Todd moved to Florida. It might be interesting to compare his date with Miriam’s. You’ll get your chance to nail the little bastard. I’m sure that after a week or so, the juvenile authorities in Florida will be more than glad to send him back.” Torrez almost grinned.
Unlike Bob, I didn’t have a myriad of little details from other cases to look after—or at least none that I cared to bother with at the moment. By the time fifteen more minutes had passed, I had reached the limit of my patience. My hand kept straying to my shirt pocket, hoping to find an orphaned cigarette.
Finally I gave up. I walked out to the dispatcher’s room and Randy Ames, one of our part-timers, swiveled his chair around at my approach.
“Morning, sir.”
“I suppose. You got a cigarette?”
“No, sir. I sure don’t. I don’t smoke.”
“Good. Don’t start.” A convenience store was kitty-corner from the department parking lot, across the street. I headed for that, and almost made it. Just as I was about to step off the curb, the only vehicle on Bustos Avenue turned from the eastbound lane and pointed its flat nose at me.
I recognized the blue Isuzu Trooper. I grinned widely when I saw that Estelle Reyes-Guzman had brought her entire family with her. Dr. Francis Guzman swung into the parking lot with the easy familiarity of an old-time employee. He pulled into a space marked Reserved for Sheriff.
On those rare occasions of a Gastner family reunion, my eldest daughter Camille was expert at those all-encompassing bear hugs that squeezed out what little breath I had. Camille was twice this slip of a girl’s weight, but Estelle always managed to surprise me. She hugged me so hard one of the ballpoint pens in my shirt pocket cracked. And she did it while holding my godson in one arm.
“I was just headed over to the store,” I said.
She pushed away and looked me up and down. “We’ll walk over with you.”
“That’s okay. It wasn’t important. God, it’s good to see you.” Francis ambled around the front of the Trooper, a wide grin on his handsome, swarthy face.
“Hey,
Padrino
,” he said, and we shook hands. “You’re lookin’ good.”
Estelle grinned and wrinkled her nose. “You’re still not smoking.” She saw the expression on my face and added, “But if we’d had been ten minutes later, you would have started again, right?”
“Five,” I said. “It’s been one of those days.” I reached out and moved the blue knitted shawl away from the baby’s head. He was sound asleep. “You know this is the first time this kid and I have met?”
“And at work, too,” Francis said with a laugh. “What a start.”
“He’s a good-looking boy.” I frowned. “Were you planning to—” I waved a hand. “I mean, do you want to take him over to my house now, or what?”
“He’s fine. Really. He’ll be just fine. We really do need to talk, sir.”
“Then let’s head out to Reuben’s. I’ll fill you in on the way.” I immediately felt like a louse. I hadn’t seen Estelle since the previous August. And now, she’d been out of her truck for two minutes and I had her working for Posadas County again.
“And let’s take your truck,” I said, starting toward her Isuzu.
“I don’t have this county frequency on my radio,” Estelle said, but I didn’t need reminding.
“I’ve got the handheld,” I said, knowing damn well that it wouldn’t receive out in the rumpled country west of town. That was all right. There were only three people in the world I wanted to talk with just then—and two of them were the parents of my godson. I had been surprised, at first, to see Francis. I guess I had been expecting Estelle to arrive alone.
That was foolish. Estelle wasn’t about to leave her infant son in Mexico in someone else’s care. And circumstances being what they were, Dr. Francis Guzman’s presence might prove useful, since the third person I wanted to talk with was a cranky ninety-year-old Mexican who didn’t know his world was about to shatter into a million pieces.
I had absolute faith that Reuben Fuentes would not be able to hide anything from his grandniece. She would coax the story out of him, one version or another. And if he was guilty, she’d tell me that, too. It was one of those times when I found myself wishing that Estelle Reyes-Guzman wasn’t so damn unflinchingly honest.
I had to admit to a little impatience. When two cops get together, it’s easy for them to jump in a patrol car and blast off in a cloud of exhaust and tire smoke. But not so when the entire family is involved.
Estelle took her time making sure the tiny, slumbering Francis Carlos Guzman was securely belted into his form-fitting, high-tech, plastic/Velcro/fiberglass infant car seat. The kid sure didn’t care. He’d obviously inherited his father’s easygoing pace.
Dr. Guzman took the wheel with me riding shotgun and Estelle in back with the baby. I twisted around in my seat and grinned at my sleeping godson. He had a round, fat face framed with fine, black hair. “A good-lookin’ kid,” I said again. Estelle smiled her inscrutable smile and let the sleeping child grip her little finger in his miniature fist.
Outside, the day was glowering, the sky still leaden and the wind raw and piercing. Snow in southwestern New Mexico was a rarity. When it came, it seldom lasted more than a few hours. But when I looked out of the Trooper, Minnesota would have been a good guess…or even Cleveland, where my youngest daughter lived.
New Mexico was supposed to be blank blue skies, so achingly clear that five minutes outside would start the skin cancer blooms for sure. The sun on a December high noon should be frying the retinas. But no. It was bleak and gray. The front was settling in with no significant weather predicted. Just mush. Depressing, gray mush.
“Have you talked with Reuben since they found the body?” Francis asked.
“Yes,” I said. “As I told Estelle, the old man says he heard a couple of shots, but didn’t go investigate.”
“Then he’s sure not feeling up to snuff,” the physician said. He glanced at Estelle in the rearview mirror. “Ten years ago, he would have been out the door, shooting.”
“He’s not that bad,” Estelle said.
“And no ideas who might have done it?”
I shook my head and Francis sighed. “This is going to be hard on him.”
We rode in silence the rest of the way. During the jouncing ride up Reuben’s two-track, the baby released his grip on Estelle’s finger, turned his head toward the window, sighed deeply, and continued blowing Z’s. He was as calm as they come. Hell, if all babies could be like that, I might not have settled for just four.
Francis parked the Isuzu within a dozen feet of the cabin. “Why don’t I stay out here with the baby. Holler if you need me,” he said. Estelle hesitated, then nodded.
I followed her toward the front door of Reuben Fuentes’s dismal shack, one shoulder hunched against the wind.
The old man didn’t answer the first knock, or the second.
“Is it locked?” I asked, and Estelle tried the latch. The door swung in with a protest.
“Reuben?” Estelle called. Her voice was musical, a wonderful contralto that could charm even old men who didn’t care any more.
A small voice responded from somewhere inside. Estelle pushed the door fully open and I followed her in. Reuben Fuentes was sitting in his rocking chair in the corner, the same tiny bulb in the table lamp trying its best. He didn’t rise.
Estelle crossed through the hodgepodge of litter in a couple of long-legged steps and knelt beside her granduncle. I closed the door against the wind and waited. I understood basic Mexican, words like
sí
and
gracias
and
de nada
, when they were spoken slowly and clearly by gringos. What passed between Estelle and her uncle, most of it spoken in low, urgent tones, reminded me of what butterfly wing beats might sound like if our ears were sharp enough to hear.
My eyes adjusted to the light and I saw that Estelle was holding the old man’s hands in hers, but that the index and middle fingers of her right hand were touching the inside of his wrist.
She asked him a brief question with the word
médico
buried in it, and he shook his head wearily. That prompted her to lift a hand and run her fingers lightly down his wrinkled, leathery cheek. I heard the name
Francisco
, but that brought no response. I doubted if the old man knew who her husband was—maybe he didn’t even remember that she was married.
She tried every argument there was, but the old man was adamant. Whatever was bothering him, he wanted no part of
médico, Posadas
, or
enfermedad
anywhere but in his own diggings.
Eventually they reached a quiet impasse. Reuben Fuentes sat hunched like a small, withered gnome, his head turned slightly away and his face in the shadows. Estelle sat on the floor at his feet, her hands and his in Reuben’s lap.
I had no hint of how long this silent dialogue might continue but I had no intention of interrupting. My knees were beginning to protest standing so long. I pushed the old cat off one of the straight chairs and sat down. I could wait. I tried to survey the contents of the room, but the light was too dim.
The heat was almost oppressive as a great, gnarled piece of piñon smoldered in the fireplace. I unbuttoned my jacket, thinking that a blast of cold air through the door might feel good. After a few minutes of the warm silence, my eyes began to grow heavy-lidded, and I found myself wishing that Estelle would make up the old man’s mind just a tad faster.
As if he’d heard my thoughts, Reuben Fuentes straightened a little, sighed, and patted the back of Estelle’s hand. He said distinctly, “
Lo que paso, paso, Estelita
.”
“
No es necesario tío de mi abuela. Estoy aquí ahora
.” Her tone was tinged with impatience.
“
Está mejor…dejarme en paz, nina
.”
She placed a hand on his knee and used him as leverage to push herself to her feet. I thought I heard a joint crack and couldn’t imagine this girl old enough for such things. Maybe she’d pushed too hard on Reuben’s frail, razor-thin knee.
“
Bobo, bobo
,” she said softly, and she again took his hands in hers. I could see she was pulling him out of the chair, much the way a child, eager for play time, would tug at a recalcitrant adult. He gave in finally and pushed himself out of the chair.
It was as if ten years had passed since my last visit. The old man who hours before had been almost steady if not spry on his feet now stood wavering before his next step.
I got up, unsure of what either Estelle or Reuben intended.
“He’ll go into town to see a doctor if we’ll take him to the field first,” Estelle said.
“You’re ill, Reuben?” I asked. The answer was obvious, but I wanted the old man to talk to me, to recognize my presence.
“No, not so much,” the old man replied. His voice was husky and forced. “But my niece, here—” He shook his head. “Can’t leave an old man in peace.”
“Yes, he is ill, sir.” She tapped the center of her own chest with an index finger and shook her head.
“You want an ambulance to meet us at the county road?”
“No. He won’t do that. I think he’ll be all right if we just take it real slow. Francis has his medical bag in the car if we need it.”
She ushered Reuben toward the door, stopping for a moment to wrap his sheepskin coat tightly around him. He looked at me, the ghost of a smile wrinkling the corners of his eyes.
“Are you finished with my field?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Good. You know—” he drifted off for a second, then said, “my wife is buried down there, you know.”
“I didn’t know that.” In fact I did know that his wife had been laid to rest in All Saints’ Cemetery in Posadas a decade before, but who knew what ghosts had played in the old man’s mind since then.
“She is. She told me not to go down there. That’s why I didn’t come to answer your questions.”
“My questions?”
He lifted his bony shoulders in that slight, characteristic Mexican shrug of dismissal. “You and the others—”
“We need to get him out to the car,” Estelle said, and the two of us all but carried the fragile old man to the Isuzu.
“I’ll get in first, sir,” Estelle said, and climbed in so she was sitting between the sleeping baby and Reuben. Francis reached back and touched Reuben’s hand as the old man settled into the seat and I closed the door.
“
Don Reuben
,” he said. Reuben Fuentes looked at him as he might a friendly stranger and said nothing.
“He wants to see the field first,” I said. “There’s a turnoff just down the path a bit. It takes us right out to the pasture without having to walk in from the road.”
Francis didn’t argue or press the moment with Reuben. He turned around with a quick glance at me and a raised eyebrow, then started the truck. In a moment we were jouncing back out the two-track.
Just beyond the first wash a faint path bore off to the left. Following Reuben’s whispered directions, we turned off the worn path and nosed through brush and scrub.
Occasionally an oak twig would etch its way along the truck’s paint, and I glanced back at Estelle.
She and the old man were deep in another of their private, silent conversations.
In less than fifty yards the brush fell away and we entered the northeast corner of the big pasture, a field that sloped down to the county road almost a quarter of a mile distant.
I pointed toward the west. “We want to head right for that outcropping down there, Francis. Right where the grove of oaks is the thickest.” He threaded the truck between rocks and cactus, making way toward the west side of the pasture where the oak grove formed a necklace around the bottom of the limestone outcropping.
The jouncing finally awakened young Francis Carlos. He blinked awake, yawned mightily, said, “Ummmm,” and settled in again.
“This is the spot,” I said and Francis pulled to a stop a dozen paces from the gravesite. I glanced down toward the county road and saw that Eddie Mitchell’s county car was still parked in Reuben’s two-track. Since we had approached from the rear, the deputy obviously hadn’t seen us…he wouldn’t have recognized the Guzmans’ truck, and would certainly have been prompted to action by the sight of someone driving through the field of evidence.
“Yes,” Reuben said behind me. “I remember this spot.” As well he should, I thought, since he had buried his three dogs in this hole not a week before. “I want to get out.”
“You shouldn’t, Tio. Just tell us about it.”
“This is where I buried my dogs,” he said.
“I know, Tio.”
“They were poisoned.”
“Yes.”
“The man who did that…he was…
cobarde
. The dogs never hurt anybody.”
He leaned forward and I saw that he was looking through the windshield at the disturbed earth. The grave was still open, the mound of dirt just visible.
“We took the bodies for tests, Reuben,” I said. “We wanted to know what kind of poison killed the dogs. Maybe that way we can find who did it.”
“
Cobarde
,” he repeated.
I turned to Estelle. “Does he know who did it? Did he say?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why don’t you talk to me,” Reuben said. His voice was stronger, fueled with indignation that I considered him so infirm that I would speak as if he weren’t present.
“All right,” I said. “Who killed your dogs, Reuben?”
He mumbled something and looked off toward the east. I watched him, finding it difficult to believe that a week ago this frail old man had dug a hole nearly eighteen inches deep and a yard square.
“I buried them myself,” he said and I knew then that that would be the extent of his story. “I want to get out of the car.”
This time, Estelle didn’t protest, and Reuben moved as if he were tapping some last reserve of energy. He walked around the open door, putting a hand on the truck’s fender for support with Estelle at his other elbow. I knew we were humoring him, probably pointlessly so. But in his mental wanderings, some small kernel of information might surface, might be of use.
He stood in the wind and the cold at the edge of that sorry hole in the ground and looked down at the fresh earth.
“This is it,” he said.
“I don’t want you catching cold, Tio.” Estelle reached over and pulled his collar up higher.
“This is where I buried my dogs,” he repeated. “Right here.” He turned to look at me. “You could have just asked me.”
“I did ask, Reuben,” I said gently.
“If you had asked me, I would have told you the dogs were here.” I let that pass without comment. I trusted Estelle’s instinct about how much to push the old man’s memory.
“Why did you dig so deep?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
He gestured with considerable irritation. “So deep.
Por Dios
. It took me two hours to scratch the earth, and
mira
. You dig this
caverna
. What did you think you would find?”
I shrugged. “We removed the animals, that’s all. When the lab is finished, we’ll…we’ll put them back. We’ll rebury them.”
“Good.” His single word came out flat and final. He turned toward the truck. “
Tómame a casa, Estelita. Me canso del viento
.”
We did leave then, but it wasn’t to take Reuben home. Instead, we drove him to Posadas General Hospital. He spent the rest of the day with an oxygen tube in his nose and strange chemicals dripping into the blue vein of his left arm. Francis slipped into his world of medicine as effortlessly as if he were a resident.
We hadn’t been at the hospital for more than twenty minutes before Sheriff Martin Holman tracked us down and had me paged to the telephone. He kept his ranting to a minimum. It took me only five minutes to convince him that the drip tubes stuck in Reuben’s arm weren’t long enough to allow the old man to reach Mexico.