“Even if we don’t know how to read the evidence,” Estelle said with considerable acid in her voice.
“Even if.” I turned to Torrez. “Did Holman see this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“
Va a arruinar esta investigación
,” Estelle muttered and I held up a hand.
“Stop that.”
“I said he’s going to make a mess out of this case, sir. He’s so damn eager to pin this murder on an old man.”
“I don’t think that’s it. But he wants something. He’s got a lot of people breathing down his neck on this one. Torkelson was as close to being a town father as anyone can get. We can’t afford to sit around, waiting for something to break.”
“We’re not going to do that, sir,” Estelle said with a finality that I had long ago learned to accept as damn close to marching orders.
“What do you suggest?”
“We’re going to talk with my great-uncle.”
“That may not be possible.”
“It’s going to have to be, sir.”
Reuben Fuentes was waiting for his grandniece. That’s the only way I could describe it. We reached the hospital and entered through a side service door. We had to pass the main nurses’ station to reach the old man’s room, and Evelyn Bistoff cast a glance our way, nodded brightly at me, and then ignored us.
The door of Room 118 was ajar. I could see Reuben from the hallway. His usually tousled, snow-white hair was neatly combed, almost a halo, and his head was turned so he could see out into the hall.
The expression on his face said that he’d been expecting us. I had expected to see Francis Guzman in attendance, but the young physician wasn’t there.
Over the years, both Estelle Reyes-Guzman and I had endured our share of death-bed scenes where the victim gave a final statement of affairs as his fading brain understood them. The statements usually weren’t allowed in court, but that didn’t stop the process. Sometimes valuable information was uncovered, sometimes not. Most often, it was just an experience that left everyone with a little more of an ache, feeling a little more mortal, than before.
I had considered suggesting that Deputy Torrez accompany us. We could rely on him as a neutral third party. He could run the tape recorder and even ask the tough questions that make us all flinch.
But I didn’t do that. I decided this time to follow the lead of Estelle’s intuitions.
She walked to the side of the bed and took one of Reuben’s skeletal hands in hers.
“
¿ Como estás ahora, mi tío?
”
Reuben didn’t let Estelle’s hand go, but he waved the other hand in my direction. His eyes were bright and amused.
“That old gringo there doesn’t speak Mexican, Estelita,” he said. His voice was husky and soft, but he spoke with a clarity that startled me.
“
Que lástima
,” Estelle said, and we both laughed. Reuben even managed a weak smile, showing the brown tips of his three remaining teeth.
“Your husband was just here,” he said. “He said to tell you that he would be right back.”
“That’s fine, tío. You’re feeling better?”
The old man shrugged by just moving his eyebrows. He didn’t release her hand. “They will blame me, is that it?” Reuben said without preamble. I stepped closer to the bed. I had no idea how long his lucidity would last and wanted to make the most of it.
“We don’t have anything to go on, Reuben,” I said. “Nothing. We need information.”
“Yes.”
Estelle sat on the edge of the bed. “Tío, when the dogs were poisoned…did you see or hear anything?”
Reuben shook his head. “The one dog, Lucy. She came back to the house, Estelita. I heard her. I went to look and found her under the truck.”
“And that’s all?”
“Yes.”
“And the night of the shooting? You didn’t go down to the field?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t feel so good, Estelita. I thought about it. And then I decided…well,” and he picked at the hem of the sheet with his free hand. “I have no cattle any more, so if it was hunters after the deer—” he shrugged again. “What could I do?”
“So the first you knew of the shooting was when I came to visit after the body was found?” I asked.
“Yes.” He smiled faintly. “And I wasn’t feeling so good, señor sheriff. I wasn’t feeling so good.”
“Tío, yesterday when we went out to the field, you said something about the dogs’ grave.”
“I did?” Reuben looked puzzled, and he watched as Estelle dug into her black purse and retrieved a small brown notebook. It was one of those with graph paper pages and the word
Ideas
on the cover, favored by Forest Service types. She’d been in the mountains too long.
She flipped it open, searched briefly, and then read aloud, “You asked Señor Gastner, ‘Why did you dig so deep?’”
Reuben’s eyes shifted from the notebook to Estelle’s face. “You write down what I say?”
“Sometimes, tío.”
He digested that for a long minute, then asked, “Then what did I say?”
For a moment I thought he was joking, but the confusion in his eyes told me differently.
“You said that it took you two hours to scratch a hole for the dogs, and that we dug a cavern.”
“I don’t remember. But the soil was hard, no?” He looked at me. “Why did you take the dogs, señor?”
“To find out what killed them, Reuben.”
“Somebody poisoned them. Did you know that?”
“Yes.”
“Who was it, tío?”
“Who was it?”
“Yes. Who murdered your dogs?”
He frowned and patted the back of Estelle’s hand. “It was a sad thing, you know.” He smiled brightly and I could see the signals fading, the long moment of lucidity coming to a close. “How is the
niña
, Estelita?”
“Fine, tío. The
niño
is fine. It’s a boy.” The kid still rode in style, facing backward.
“That’s good.” He closed his eyes and Estelle and I watched silently as his body composed itself for another long session with limbo. Estelle finally put his hand down on the stark white sheet and moved away from the bed. She nodded toward the hall.
With the hospital room door closed behind her, she let out a long sigh. “I thought for a little while there that I was going to get my uncle back, sir.”
I put an arm around her shoulders and gave both her and the papoose a squeeze. “I don’t think it’s in the cards,” I said. “You want to stay here with him? So you’re here when he wakes up again?”
She looked down at the floor. “I’m the only relative he has,” she said. “He must feel terribly alone here.”
“He’s lived alone for years, Estelle.”
“Out at the cabin. That’s different. Not here.” She looked up and down the sterile corridor. “I’m not even sure he knows where he is.”
We heard footsteps on the polished tile and Sheriff Martin Holman turned the corner down by the nurse’s station. He had Eddie Mitchell in tow, and the deputy looked embarrassed.
Holman was dressed in solid tan—the kind of cotton work pants and shirt the telephone company linemen like—with a denim jacket and a goddamned brown baseball cap with the Posadas County sheriff’s department logo above the bill.
It was out of keeping with his usual neat business suit. Maybe he’d taken up coaching little league to improve his public image. A folded newspaper was tucked under one arm.
“Um,” Estelle said, but kept it at that.
“Ms. Reyes-Guzman, good to see you again,” Holman said. He smiled with some sincerity and extended a hand.
“Good to see you, sir.”
“And is this the newest Guzman?” he said, stepping around so he could see Francis Carlos. The child had the good sense to be asleep again. “What a handsome child.” Duty done, the sheriff turned to me. “So what’s the deal?”
I held up a hand. “Reuben’s in and out. We just talked with him for a few minutes. He doesn’t know who poisoned his dogs, and he didn’t do anything or see anyone when he heard the two shots. He wasn’t feeling well.”
“Ah,” Holman said, nodding. I half expected him to pull a pen out of his pocket and begin sucking on it like Peter Sellers. “I thought it would be a good idea to have one of the deputies stay here.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“Well, security and all.”
“Martin,” I said, trying to keep my thinning patience intact, “Reuben Fuentes is not going anywhere. If he does regain consciousness again, he doesn’t have the strength to turn over in bed, much less sprint for the door and grab a Greyhound for Juarez.”
Holman smiled and winked at Estelle. “He’s still as cranky as ever, isn’t he? Bill, Mr. Fuentes heading for Mexico is not what worries me, Bill. The press is starting to flock.”
I ignored his repetition of my name like an unctuous preacher. “What do you mean?”
“There’s a newspaper reporter from Albuquerque and a tele-vision crew from Las Cruces down in the hospital waiting room right now. In addition to the locals. They’d be up here in a minute if we’d let them.”
“We won’t let them,” I said flatly.
“Damn right,” Holman agreed. “The old man’s got little enough privacy as it is without the vultures at his doorstep.” He pulled out the newspaper that he had had tucked under his arm and handed it to me. “Did you get a chance to see this yet?”
I unfolded the paper enough to see it was that day’s edition of the
Posadas Register
. “What am I supposed to see?” The top stories were county legislature messes, sewer authority meetings, and a new roof for the middle school out at Crosby’s Acres.
One more fold turned and there I was, fat belly, gray hair, and all. The picture had been taken at Anna Hocking’s. The camera had caught me pointing with one hand while the other hand was on Deputy Tony Abeyta’s shoulder. Were it not for the uniform and hardware, I would have looked like an aging football coach giving a pep talk to my star running back.
The headline, across all six columns, said, Serve and Protect More than Words.
“Read it. Take it with you and read it. Good stuff.” Holman was grinning. “Makes you a hero, Bill. Won’t hurt our budget one damn bit either.” He turned to Mitchell. “You won’t mind parking here for a little bit. Maybe just a couple hours? We’ll have one of the part-timers relieve you as soon as we can.”
“Yes, sir.” The reply was crisp and professional, but I could see that Mitchell did mind.
“Bob Torrez was going to come, but he said he had a lead he needed to chase down. Sounds like he’s going to nail the little bastard who burned down my house last summer.”
It sounded to me like Torrez had been faster on the excuse draw than Mitchell. But whatever the motivation, the protection of old Reuben’s privacy was a good move. I had to give Holman some credit.
“So what’s next?” Holman said. He took me by the elbow and started escorting me down the damn hallway toward the nurses’ station as if I were an aging, ambulatory patient heading for an enema session.
“We wait for the rest of the lab results to come back, I suppose,” I said.
“That’s it?” Holman had the grace to say it as a simple query, without any accusations.
“We’re short on physical evidence, Marty. We’re going to have to be very lucky. Whoever shot Stuart Torkelson didn’t leave many tracks. No casings. No prints. No tire tracks…none that we can separate out, anyway. Clean job.”
“What do we do, then…I mean, in a case like this?”
“We keep sifting. We hope something breaks.”
Holman looked down at the polished tile floor for a minute and when he looked up, his mouth was pursed and his brow furrowed. He raised his right hand and slowly folded down his fingers until just the index was pointing heavenward. “Do we have a single, solitary bit of evidence that says the killer
wasn’t
Reuben Fuentes?”
I wished that he hadn’t asked me that. I took a long moment to frame my reply. “Just that common sense tells us Reuben isn’t capable of that kind of violent, high-activity crime.”
“I hope you’re right,” Holman said.
Estelle Reyes-Guzman touched my arm. “Sir, I’d like to visit with a couple people while I’m here. Maybe we could slip away now for a few minutes while Uncle Reuben’s resting. If he needs anything, Francis is here. We could come back this afternoon.”
I couldn’t read in the dark depths of Estelle’s eyes what she had in mind, but it wasn’t visiting old friends. Holman let us escape any more questions from either him or the press, and when we were out in the parking lot, I grinned at Estelle.
“Visiting?” We climbed into my Blazer and I waited while she performed the ceremony of lashing in the papoose.
“Well, sort of,” Estelle said. She glanced back toward the hospital. “I don’t think we have a lot of time.”
“No.”
“Would you ask Bob Torrez to meet us back out at Uncle Reuben’s?”
“Sure. What are you thinking?”
“Just something nagging.” She turned around and looked in the back of the Blazer, then nodded.
“Estelle—”
“Sir?”
“You can talk to me. What’s on your mind? What do you want to talk with Bob about?”
“I don’t need to talk with him, sir. I need his expertise with a shovel.”
Whatever it was that she was after, Estelle Reyes-Guzman didn’t want to make it a production. She wanted just the three of us—four if I counted Francis Carlos. His forensic training was starting early, but he seemed plainly bored with the whole process.
She couldn’t resist glancing at the newspaper article as we drove out to Reuben’s. “Do you want to know what it says?” Estelle asked, and before I could answer she read the first paragraphs under Linda Rael’s by-line.
During the investigation into the death of an elderly Posadas County resident Friday night, Sheriff’s Department personnel demonstrated that theirs is a job that goes far beyond the lifting of fingerprints, sifting of clues, or filing volumes of paperwork.
“The victim has the right to privacy,” says Under-sheriff William G. Gastner. And his staff’s protection of Mrs. Anna Hocking’s property—and privacy—were evident that night.
Estelle looked over at me and grinned. “I thought your middle initial was K,” she said.
“It is.” She read the rest, the sort of thin stuff that small town papers like to print as their nod to public service. What it amounted to was a dozen column inches that explained why we hadn’t allowed Miss Rael inside the Hocking house. No wonder Holman was pleased.
“You’ll want to keep this for your scrapbook,” she said when she finished.
“I don’t have a scrapbook,” I said. “And I can’t wait for the second installment. I wonder how she’s going to sanitize three dead dogs exhumed in the middle of the night after a prominent citizen and newspaper advertiser gets himself murdered. That ought to be a real challenge.”
Deputy Robert Torrez was waiting for us when we reached Reuben’s driveway. He took the shovel I handed him from the back of the Blazer.
“What are we looking for?” he asked. The shovel handle looked like a match stick in his big hands.
“I don’t know,” I said. We slipped through the fence. “What time did Holman call in Tom Mears?” The deputy’s car was no longer parked in Reuben’s lane.
“I heard him on the radio,” Torrez said. “I think it was about two o’clock.”
“The sheriff is confident,” I said. We followed Estelle and Francis Carlos across the field.
“She takes him everywhere?” Torrez asked with the naive puzzlement of a true bachelor. Estelle pretended not to hear.
“Everywhere,” I said.
The hole where the dogs had been buried was undisturbed. It was roughly three feet on a side, slightly rhomboid-shaped because of an outcropping of limestone that intruded a sharp corner into the grave.
“So, oh inscrutable one,” I said, standing at the edge of the hole. “What are we looking for?”
Estelle got down on her knees and leaned as far down as she could without the papoose sliding over her head. She was looking closely at the dirt.
She pointed along the smooth vertical cut of one side. “I was looking at this earlier,” she said. “You can see that the first six inches or so is really black on this side. Rich humus from recent accumulation of leaves. And then, as we go down,” and she bent further and pointed, “the soil color changes considerably until by about fourteen inches down, it’s much lighter brown…almost a dark golden color.”
“Doesn’t soil always do that?” I asked. “Get lighter and more leached out as you go down?”
“I would guess so. If we dug much deeper, we’d see other zones, maybe, and start getting into more rock. Maybe even pockets of sand.”
“And so—”
“And so that’s what I’d like to do.” She knelt back on her haunches and brushed off her hands. She twisted, looking for something. She stretched to her right and grabbed a dead piece of juniper limb wood and used it like a chalkboard pointer.
“You see the dirt in the bottom of the grave, sir.”
“Yes.” I saw the dirt all right, but wasn’t following her logic.
“It’s very dark…like surface soil.”
I frowned and stared into the shallow pit. The soil on the bottom was indeed the same dark, rich humus as the first several inches.
“So maybe that was the first dirt thrown back in the hole after the dogs were buried,” I said. Robert Torrez said nothing. He leaned on the shovel, one black boot on the tool’s shoulder. Over the years, he’d heard Estelle and me supposing many times before. He was patient.
“No, for two reasons. First, if you dig a hole, the first dirt out is the last dirt back in, unless you make a conscious effort to line the dirt up so you can reach the—”
I interrupted her by holding up a hand. “All right. All right. I see that.”
“And second, even if the person did that, the bodies of the dogs would separate the fill-in layer from the undisturbed soil underneath—the lighter colored soil.”
“Estelle,” I said. “Get a grip. When most people dig a hole, they toss dirt first one way and then another. One arm gets sore, they switch to the other. The dirt goes every which way, too.”
“Exactly, sir.”
“Are you following this, Robert?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s good. Otherwise I’d be worried.”
“Sir, it’s simple. When Uncle Reuben dug a hole for the dogs, he would stop when he thought the hole was deep enough. Right?”
“Yes. Or when he was exhausted.”
“Of course. And when he stopped digging, what did he do?”
“He laid the dead dogs in the hole.”
“Right. Regardless of how a person shovels dirt, or how his arms get tired, why would Uncle Reuben take the time to line the bottom of the hole with fresh topsoil?”
“He wouldn’t.” I looked into the hole again, uneasy. The bottom of the hole was certainly darker soil. It wouldn’t take long to find out. “Robert, the shovel.”
Torrez stepped into the hole gingerly, as if he were afraid that the floor was going to cave in. The first shovelful of dirt came out easily, but on the second probe, the clank of metal against rocks was loud.
The deputy grunted, dislodging several rocks. He worked for perhaps ten minutes, clearing out a corner so that he could stand away from a new area. He paused to take a breath and glanced at me.
Estelle stood on the opposite side of the hole from me, expressionless, arms across her chest. When Torrez paused, she said quietly, “See how those rocks aren’t seated?”
“What do you mean?”
“If rocks have been in the ground for thousands—millions—of years, they take some persuasion to bust loose. And the dirt around them is compacted hard. Those rocks Bob just took out were part of the fill.”
“Damn soil scientist now,” I muttered, but I could see her logic was just common sense.
In another thirty minutes, Torrez had deepened the hole another foot and a half. And then his shovel hit serious rock. No matter where he drove the point, it met with the bright, sharp sound of Precambrian resistance.
“What do you think?” he said.
“Can you clean around one of the stones? One of the big ones?”
“They’re all big,” Torrez observed dryly. He choose a spot in the middle of the hole and cleaned the dirt away from a boulder that was nearly two feet long and a foot and a half wide. It was anyone’s guess how thick the rock was.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked Estelle.
“I’m sure. Wait a minute.” She turned and started across the field, then stopped. She looked at me, surprised. And then she grinned ruefully. “Sir, I was going to the car for my camera gear—”
***
I laughed. “You forgot what county you’re in, my dear. My camera bag is behind the passenger seat in the Blazer. I’ll go get it. You’re welcome to use it.”
“I’ll do it, sir.” I tossed her the keys and she said to Torrez, “Don’t go any deeper.”
She set off toward the Blazer at a fast jog, the kid riding shotgun enjoying the hell out of police work. I think she’d forgotten Francis Carlos was there.
Torrez stepped up and out of the hole and once more leaned on the shovel. “She’s betting that someone dug up the dogs, buried something underneath, and then reburied them,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“The old man would never do a thing like that.”
“No indeed.”
“Do you think she’s right?”
I shrugged. “We’ll see.”
Estelle returned with the camera bag and fished out my Pentax. She frowned at the numbers, turning the camera this way and that. I knew what she was looking for. I never remembered to put the end of the film box in the little bracket on the camera back.
“It’s ASA four hundred,” I said. Francis Carlos made a little whimpering sound and I added, “Let me hold Squirt.”
“That would help,” she said, and shrugged out of her backpack. I turned my back to the breeze, held the swaddled infant and made faces at him. His eyes got big, then narrowed, and finally he settled for a gurgle and a toothless smile.
Estelle adjusted the camera settings and shot half a dozen photographs of the grave from several angles. Then she said, “Bob, would you put the tip of the shovel right at the corner of that big rock. I need something for reference.”
Torrez did so, posing the handsome shovel until Estelle was satisfied. “All right,” she announced. “Go ahead and take out that stone.”
“Says you,” Torrez jibed. He was good-humored for someone that close to a shovel.
“No, it’ll move easily,” Estelle said. “Someone put those rocks in there. If they could move them and drop them in the hole, you can move them too. Probably easier.”
Torrez took that as a compliment for his considerable strength. The tip of the shovel did indeed dislodge the rock. He pried one end up then kicked the shovel out of his way and bent down.
With a grunt he upended the stone.
“Oh, si,” Estelle said.
As skeptical as I might have been, even I could see what excited her. The bottom of the rock—that portion that should have been in soil-packed darkness for eons—was covered with loose dirt, as one might expect. But clinging to the stone’s surface was the multicolored lichen that dots most of New Mexico’s exposed rock surfaces.
“Well, son of a bitch,” I said and bent down. Francis Carlos let out a squeal and then a fretful monosyllable. I knew what that meant even before glancing down to see the puzzled look on his face.
“The lad committed an indiscretion,” I said.
“He’ll have to wait a minute,” Estelle said. “I want pictures. Don’t move it, Bob.”
That left Deputy Torrez in an uncomfortable crouch, balancing the rock on its end. Estelle burned more film.
The lichen still displayed its potpourri of colors, from bright yellows to murky browns and russets. It hadn’t been in the ground long.
“All right,” Estelle said. She moved to one side as Torrez heaved the rock up and out of the hole. “Trade?” she said, holding out the camera. I gladly passed over the infant.
The capital murder investigation came to a fragrant halt as Estelle unswathed, cleaned, and changed the baby. It had been many years. I’d managed to forget that part.
Refreshed and heavy-lidded with accomplishment, Francis Carlos was once more deposited in my arms.
Estelle shot photos as Torrez worked, his pace stepped up by anticipation. He cleared an area nearly the width of the hole and another ten inches deep, a layer of jumbled rocks that evidently had been tossed into the grave after being gathered from the nearby flank of the mesa.
“We can search under the oaks over there and find the impressions where all these came from,” Estelle said, but Torrez interrupted my reply.
“Something,” he said. He dropped the shovel and crouched down, brushing with his bare hands. “It’s plastic,” he said. He pulled at a corner and we could see the black plastic, still glossy. Estelle took more pictures.
“What do you think, sir?” Estelle asked.
“I think this is a hell of a time to hesitate.”
“Be careful, then,” Estelle said, and Torrez nodded. He worked around the plastic, using hands and shovel with care. After a couple minutes he paused.
“This may be a corner,” he said. “This is where part of the bag is tied off.” He knelt down and worked on a knot. “It’s more like a garden drop cloth,” he added. “At first I thought it was a garbage bag, but the plastic’s heavier.”
“Here,” I said, and extended my pocket knife toward him.
“No, I got it.” He parted a corner of the plastic and recoiled. “Uh,” he said with a grimace.
“Well, we know now someone didn’t bury money or drugs out here,” I said. Torrez was leaning away from the bag, holding the plastic at arm’s length.
“Close it up until we finish uncovering the whole thing,” I said. “Estelle, you want to go down to the car and call in? We’ll want the coroner out here.”
She looked at me quizzically and I realized I’d made the same natural mistake that she had.
“Forget it. I’ll do it.” I lateraled Francis Carlos over to his mother. By the time I returned, Bob had uncovered most of the bag. It appeared to be a piece of garden plastic about ten feet square. The plastic was tied around itself with no other ropes or twine visible. The body inside wasn’t large.
“We don’t want to move it yet,” Estelle said. She reloaded the camera and took portraits of black plastic from every conceivable angle.
“After the coroner finishes, we’ll lift it out,” I said.
“We’re covered. I’ve got plenty of shots.”
Estelle’s impatience was unusual, but I didn’t argue. I couldn’t recall a single case she had ever lost through faulty or incomplete evidence.
“All right. You ready, Roberto?”
“I guess.”
We each took one end of the bundle and lifted it out of the hole, a grave now almost three and a half feet deep. The plastic-wrapped corpse landed with an unceremonious thud on the hard surface.
“So,” I said. “Let’s find out who we’ve got.”
Robert Torrez drifted backward, away from the bundle. It was a moment when we could have used a stiff portion of New Mexico’s wind. But the afternoon was dead calm.