Bitter Recoil

Chapter 13

“They heard a cough?” Sheriff Pat Tate frowned at Paul Garcia. The Girl Scouts had been chauffeured off the mesa and their camp director told to keep all the youngsters on camp property until our investigation was finished.

Deputy Garcia consulted the notes he’d made during an hour spent with the youngsters. “Yes, sir. That’s what the counselor said. They were on a night hike, right up the watercourse. They’d been singing to chase away the bears, she said.”

“Jesus,” Tate muttered. He stood by the tailgate of the pickup truck, trying to make sense of the surrealistic scene. Off to one side a gasoline generator he’d heisted from the highway department chugged away, and the big flood-lamps washed the mesa side in white light.

“Girl Scouts do things like that,” Estelle said.

“So what’s with the cough?”

Garcia continued, “They heard the noise, and one or two of them turned their lights up the hill. That’s when they saw the truck. One of them said she could see a wisp of steam coming from it.”

“So they went up to investigate?”

“Yes, sir. The counselor said they could hear the engine pinging, like it was cooling. And then they saw Waquie’s body. They took one look and lit out to camp.”

“I bet they did,” Tate said. “So it could have been Grider, still alive.”

“I don’t think so,” Estelle said. “The scouts climbed right up here after they saw the truck. I don’t think Grider would have coughed after his neck was broken…I think they heard the killer.”

Tate thrust his hands in his pockets and said to Francis, “I told downtown that I want the preliminary autopsy report on Grider sent up by courier just as soon as they have something. But you think it was murder?”

“Yes.”

Tate nodded absently. “No other possibility?”

Francis had been in the middle of a yawn, but he stifled it and shook his head. “None that I can think of.” We were all too tired to be creative. Old Doc Bailey had been the only smart one, going back to town with the ambulance and the two corpses.

“Stranger things have happened,” Tate said. He looked across at me as I lit a cigarette. “Gimme one of those.” I handed him one, and he took his time. “Hell, textbooks are full of incidents when a soldier suffered some hellacious wound that was bound to kill him, but he kept right on…maybe hundreds of yards.”

“Anything except a broken neck,” Francis said. “If the spinal cord is torn, no amount of desire or wishful thinking is going to make it possible to crawl anywhere.”

“So assuming all that’s true, how did the killer get up here, and how did he get away without being seen by the scouts?”

“We don’t know,” Estelle said.

“And what the hell’s the motive? Hell, these two were nothing but a couple wild-hare kids. Who’d kill them?”

“We don’t know that either.”

Tate crushed out the cigarette in exasperation. “But you think this is the same truck involved in the girl’s death last night?”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned and regarded the truck. “Then the connection is there somewhere. Somewhere. Make sure you don’t miss one square inch on that thing. We want prints, and we want good ones. If there was a third person up here, maybe he touched something. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

The deputies didn’t miss. Five of us swarmed over that truck and used enough print dust to powder a thousand faces. I worked as long as I could, but after a while my eyes refused to focus.

I sat on a rock off to the side and watched. Francis Guzman had stayed with us, and as the clock ticked toward three in the morning he finally lost his patience. I saw him escort Estelle away from the truck, and for several minutes the two were in animated conversation. I didn’t want to eavesdrop, but I found myself watching like some damn Peeping Tom.

Estelle stared at the ground as Francis talked, and at one point she looked up at him and shook her head. That set off another long session of lecture, and finally she nodded. Francis didn’t look pleased. Their faces were only inches apart, and after a minute Francis put one hand under her chin, lifted her head, and kissed her lightly.

The young physician started up the hill, and Estelle walked slowly over to join me.

“Francis is going back to town if you want a ride,” she said.

“No. I may go up and grab the backseat of your car for a few minutes after a bit. But how about yourself? You’re pushing pretty hard.”

That earned me a raised eyebrow, and I guessed that Francis had said much the same thing. Estelle changed the subject.

“Tell me what Parris said.” She sat down beside my rock.

“Cecilia Burgess’s little girl is his daughter.”

Estelle’s mouth opened slightly, her lips forming a silent whistle. “He said that?”

“Yes.” I told her about Parris’s friendship with Richard Burgess and the priest’s sorry affair with the girl after Richard’s death.

She looked back over at the truck, lost in thought. “Maybe he’ll try for custody now.” She turned back to me. “He’s got to understand that Daisy is ultimately his responsibility. He can’t just give her away. He can’t just leave her out in the woods with Finn. Not with her mother dead.”

“The kid’s the least of your worries right now,” I said. “She’s happy chasing toads and beetles.” I gestured at the truck. “You need a motive. And my first question is simple. If this is the truck involved in Cecilia Burgess’s death, what’s the connection to this mess? Neither Parris nor Finn had the time or motivation to act out of revenge…assuming that somehow either of them knew who drove the truck.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No, I don’t. Finn didn’t appear to give a shit, one way or another. I don’t know what his trip is, but he didn’t seem too concerned when we talked to him. His focus seemed to be the little girl.”

“That’s what worries me,” Estelle muttered.

“Trust the child’s judgment, Estelle. You saw the way she clung to him.” She wasn’t convinced, but I continued, “And Parris is a marshmallow. It takes a special kind of monster to break a hurt kid’s neck in cold blood. Nolan Parris certainly isn’t the one.” I realized how silly that sounded as soon as I said it. The history of crime was full of innocuous-looking little schmoes who turned butcher.

“We need time to process the prints,” Estelle said. “There’s got to be an answer here.” She stood up. “And I still think you’re wrong about Daisy, sir. She doesn’t belong in a tent out in the middle of the woods with a couple of Jesus freaks who probably aren’t even related to her.”

The vehemence of her remark took me by surprise.