Bitter Recoil

Chapter 12

Dr. Elliot Bailey was a man after my own heart. He stood on the edge of the mesa and looked down into the black void where flashlight beams zapped this way and that, punctuated periodically by the fireball of Estelle’s electronic strobe.

“If you think I’m going to jump down there, you’re nuts,” he said. Both he and Francis Guzman had arrived on the heels of the ambulance, and on the short hike to the mesa edge from where they’d parked Bailey complained to me about every stick and root underfoot. Maybe he figured none of the young pups would listen.

Guzman and Bailey were opposites. The older doctor was a little gnome of a man, not much more than five feet tall. He wore one of those canvas fishermen’s hats, and when he swept it off to rub his forehead, I saw that he was bald as an egg.

“What do you think, Francis? Go ahead and bring the bodies up?” He patted his belly, not eager to risk that investment on the sharp rocks below. That’s what ambulance attendants were paid for.

I interrupted before Francis could answer. “I think Estelle wanted one of you to answer some questions down there before they’re moved. Francis, I’ll show you the way if you want.”

“You sure you want to go back down there?”

“Hell, it’s easy going down,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

“If I break my neck, I’m going to sue the county for every penny it’s got,” Bailey said, but he followed us. The ambulance crew, four of them, lugged the body boards and other paraphernalia. They discussed using ropes but agreed finally that the darkness made the slope look worse than it was.

We skirted the rocks that formed the vertical drop-off.

“I don’t believe this,” Francis said. He spotted Estelle and shook his head. “You sure pick the spots, Officer.”

“I was afraid you’d still be busy at the pueblo.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.” He pointed his flashlight downhill and sucked in a breath. “Wow.”

“How’s the little boy?”

“Meningitis is the pits, that’s for sure. But he’ll be all right. What have we got here?” Francis knelt beside Robert Waquie’s corpse. “Did you I.D. this one?”

“Robert Waquie. From the pueblo.”

“I know his family,” Guzman said as he examined Waquie’s face. He pointed to a recent scar over Waquie’s left eyebrow. “He did that earlier this summer when he put his dad’s truck into a wash south of San Estevan.” He twisted and played his flashlight back up the rocks, then down the hill at the tangled pickup. “From what I can see, Estelle, his position is pretty consistent with this kind of incident.”

“He’s not the one that concerns me,” Estelle said quietly.

“Oh.” Francis let that pass and continued his examination. Bailey bent over and assisted, the two of them reeling off all the gruesome medical details of what the Ford had done to Waquie.

“So he would have died instantly,” Estelle said when they paused.

“Absolutely,” Bailey said. “He might as well have been lying in front of a steamroller. Same results.”

Francis Guzman motioned to the attendants, and while we started down to the truck, they prepared Waquie’s corpse for the rugged trip up to the ambulance.

Estelle let her husband and Bailey examine Kelly Grider’s remains without interruption for a few minutes, but I could see by the intent expression on her face that she was eager for them to reach the same conclusion she obviously had…whatever that was. They left the piece of Plexiglas in place for the M.E. Bailey lifted the corpse carefully at the hips when they rolled Grider over so the glass spear wouldn’t be damaged or moved.

Francis Guzman held the light close and examined the corpse’s upper extremities, working his way to the head. He checked the pupils, then moved the corpse’s skull carefully. “Huh,” Francis said finally. “Go ahead and put him down,” he told Bailey. He squatted back on his haunches and looked at the other doctor. “What do you think?”

“I think he was bleeding to death when he crawled out of the truck,” Bailey said. “He was about exsanguinated by the time he got here. What surprises me is that he made it this far.”

Estelle stepped closer. “I don’t understand why he crawled over here, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’d think someone hurt that badly might try to make it out of the vehicle, but why crawl off in a random direction? The only way there’s help is up the hill.”

Bailey frowned at her. “Come on. When a person’s hurt that bad, they don’t think. They’re crawling away from the pain, is all. Just motion. You ever see a dog get his legs busted by a car and then drag himself sideways? Where’s he going? Nowhere. Just away from the pain. And this kid didn’t crawl through the window. He was thrown out…or most of the way out, anyway.”

“His neck’s broken though,” Francis Guzman said. He touched the base of Grider’s skull with his index finger. “Feel right there.” Bailey frowned and placed his hands gently on either side of Grider’s neck as Guzman moved the skull.

“Son of a bitch,” Bailey said. “You’re right.” He looked up at Estelle. “Third or fourth cervical. The autopsy will tell us for sure. But if the fracture is as complete as it feels, then he didn’t crawl an inch after it happened.”

“Now wait a minute,” I said. “You’re saying an injury like that is instantly fatal?”

“No, I’m saying that it’s probably instantly and completely paralytic,” Bailey said.

“Then if it happened in the wreck, we should have found him immediately beside the truck.”

“Or half in and half out,” Estelle observed. “But the blood trail clearly shows he crawled over here. You can see the bloodstains on his clothing…the bleeding is spread all the way to his shoes, and to me that’s consistent with crawling and hemorrhaging.”

“You can’t crawl with a broken neck,” Bailey shrugged.

“If you want a best guess, I’d say someone caught up with him…just about here. And finished him off.” Francis Guzman hesitated before continuing. “There’s no other visible neck trauma associated with this fracture. It’s done neatly, like someone knelt on the victim’s shoulders, took his head in hand, and pop.” He stood up. “And that takes a lot of strength.”

“Is there any other way it could have happened?” Estelle asked.

Francis shook his head. “If there is, it’s beyond my imagination. It’s too bad this didn’t happen in the middle of a nice mud flat. Then you’d have some footprints to help out.” He looked first at Estelle and then at me. “But there was a third person around here. Bet on it.”

“You might want to be real thorough when you dust that truck for prints,” I said to Estelle. “If that Ford didn’t go over by accident, then something has to show up. It’s too heavy to push, but maybe on the gear knob or door handle. Something.”

Estelle took a deep breath. “It wasn’t an accident.” She examined her flashlight as if the answer were printed on the aluminum tube. “I want the autopsy report on these two the minute it’s finished.” She looked up at me. “And the doors are locked.”

“Locked?”

She motioned with her hands. “The lock buttons on the pickup are punched down.”

“I know what locked means, Estelle,” I snapped. “What I meant was so what?”

“Can you picture a couple drunks, out on a lark in the middle of the forest, being so safety conscious that they lock their doors? If they did that, they would have worn their seat belts, too…and that’s absurd. And doors don’t lock themselves.”

“You’re saying that someone didn’t want these two popping open a door when they started over…assuming they were sober enough to think of that. But those locks could have been punched down when those kids were flailing around inside, on the way down.”

“Maybe. Maybe. But I don’t think so. A warm summer night, no wind…why were the windows rolled up, too? Why would they do that?”

She had a point. “It wasn’t because of mosquitoes.” I looked up the hill and my fingers fumbled for a cigarette. I snapped my lighter and then a thought brewed in my mind that must have been a holdover from my Marine Corps days. I snapped the lighter shut, wondering if the son of a bitch was out there in the dark somewhere, standing behind a tree, watching us.