Bitter Recoil

Chapter 7

The sun rolled down the edge of Chuparrosa Mesa west of San Estevan, and the wash of evening light blushed the sandstone layers below the rimrock into a dozen hues. The ceramic chimes beside the Guzmans’ front door hung motionless.

I exhaled and watched the plume of smoke curl through the chimes, to fan out and then disappear into the savinos, the peeled and smooth juniper poles that lay diagonally across the vigas to form the small porch roof. I closed the file folder and tipped my chair back until I could lean against the adobe wall.

“Robert Arajanian,” I said and tapped my index finger on the cover of the folder. “And you say that the guy who owns the trading post-Orlando Garcia-he knows him?”

Estelle Reyes-Guzman returned from the kitchen and handed me a mug of coffee. “Yes, he knew him by name. He’d had the opportunity to cash a couple of checks for the kid.”

“What kind of checks?”

“The only one he remembered for sure was one made out to Cecilia Burgess. It was her tax refund check. For just a few dollars, as far as Garcia remembers. Burgess had signed it over to Arajanian. Orlando Garcia didn’t seem to approve much. I got the impression that he thought Cecilia Burgess was wasting her time with both Arajanian and Finn.”

I opened the folder once more. “That seems to be a generally held view around here. Odd that she signed the check to the kid instead of her boyfriend Finn. Maybe the trio shares everything.” I read the file. “And Arajanian has quite a record.”

The folder had been delivered from Albuquerque earlier that afternoon by a deputy. It had been on Estelle’s desk when we returned from the hot springs, and it made interesting reading.

Robert Arajanian had experimented with the law when he was just fourteen…an assault charge filed by the parents of another high school student. I noticed the other youngster involved had been seventeen-either he’d been small for his age or a complete wimp. Or young Robert had been spectacularly aggressive. Less than a year later a charge of vehicular homicide had landed Robert Arajanian in a youth detention home for two years.

“Interesting that he wasn’t drunk for the vehicular charge…or at least there’s no mention here that he was,” I said. “The implication is that he used the damn car as a weapon.”

“He was drag racing and bumped the competition into a grove of pine trees.”

“Where’s it say that?”

“It doesn’t. I called Albuquerque while you were in the shower.”

“You don’t waste a second, do you?” I looked at the file again. “So he gets just two years for what is essentially murder.”

Estelle moved her Kennedy rocker so that she could put her feet up on a big planter that supported one sorry-looking beaver-tail cactus. She shrugged at my comment. Under New Mexico law two years was the most detention any kid got, no matter what the crime, as long as he wasn’t tried as an adult. I grunted with disgust. Murder could come pretty cheap.

After his release from the detention home, Robert Arajanian had remained clear of the law for four years. Two days before his nineteenth birthday, and eight months previous to his playing lookout on the hot springs rock, the kid had been charged with misdemeanor possession of marijuana and attempted burglary of an apartment in the Northeast Heights of Albuquerque. He’d pulled six months probation for the marijuana. The attempted burglary charge never went to court.

“Well, that’s neat,” I said. “He must be a slick talker, too, when the spirit moves him. The burglary complaint was withdrawn. His first chance at a good, solid felony as an adult and someone wimps out. So now he can possess a firearm legally. Otherwise, as a felon, he’d be in violation.”

“There probably wasn’t enough evidence to make the burglary charge stick. Who knows?”

“So,” I said. “All very interesting, but nothing yet on H. T. Finn.”

“Albuquerque didn’t have anything on him. It’s going to take a while to track him down, I suspect.” Estelle sounded disappointed-as always, hating unanswered questions.

“What do you think the odds are that either Arajanian or Finn or both pitched Cecilia Burgess over the embankment?”

Estelle grimaced impatiently. “Zero.”

“Really? Finn didn’t seem awash in grief at the news of the accident. In fact, he seemed to assume that she was already dead.”

She shrugged. “And he didn’t say anything about going into the city to visit her either, but what does that prove?”

“That he doesn’t like talking to strangers, especially the law, or that he doesn’t have a car.”

“He could hitchhike. The Indians do it all the time. Do you need more coffee?”

“No, thanks.” I sat silently as she got up and went inside. I heard the coffeepot clank against the stove burner, and she started talking before she was out of the kitchen.

“I don’t know why we’re even worrying about Finn and Arajanian anyway. What we need-” She was interrupted by the telephone. I heard her monosyllabic side of the conversation but what I heard was enough. When she hung up and returned to the porch, her face was sober.

“She died?”

Estelle nodded. “At six-sixteen p.m.” She glanced at her watch. “Twenty-two minutes ago.”

“What’s your next step then?”

She sat down in the rocker and gazed off toward Chuparrosa Mesa. “Someone must have seen her shortly before she was struck. Did someone pick her up in the village? Was she walking up to the hot springs?”

“Late at night?”

“Who knows. And we don’t know what time she was hit either. She could have been lying there for some time. It had to have taken her some time to crawl up to the highway.”

“It’s hard to imagine, the way she was hurt.”

“Sheriff Tate said that they’re still in the process of running a complete background on her. He’ll let me know.” She made a face of frustration and leaned forward in the chair. “Not a single piece of evidence to tie in a vehicle of any kind, Tate said. No paint chips, no nothing. And…”

“And what?”

“And that’s not what really bothers me.”

“What does, then?”

“Daisy bothers me, sir.”

I said nothing and watched Estelle’s face as her agile brain sifted the facts.

She shook her head after a minute. “I hate to think of her up there with those two creeps.”

“We don’t know anything about Finn, Estelle. He says he’s the girl’s uncle. If he really is, the Department of Social Services will never give you a court order unless you can prove abuse or neglect or something like that. And if Finn’s lying to us, it’ll still take a while for a court order. And there’s one other possibility, too.”

“What’s that?”

“We don’t know for certain that the child is Cecilia Burgess’s daughter. We’re making an assumption just because her name is Daisy.”

“Come on, sir,” Estelle said in a rare display of contention. “Who else would she be? Coincidence is one thing, but that would be ridiculous. She even looks like Cecilia.”

I held up my hands in surrender. “I couldn’t tell you. And little kids all look alike to me. I’m just tossing it out as another possibility, that’s all. Farfetched, but a possibility. And maybe Finn is telling the truth. But trust Tate to dig it out. He’s a ferret.” I sighed deeply and stretched. “I’m glad it’s not my worry.”

Estelle looked at me over the top of her coffee cup. “Give me another dozen hours, and you’ll be so tied up in this case you won’t be able to sleep at night, let alone go home.” She grinned. “Como dos y dos son quatro, as mi madre would say. And besides, I need your help.”

“Yeah,” I laughed. “Another hike like today’s and you’ll be attending my funeral. You’ve got Deputy Garcia. Walk his young legs off.”

“Exactly,” Estelle said. “We’re going to find an eyewitness if we have to talk with every soul in this valley. Everybody. I asked Paul to talk with as many folks as he could, to see if anyone remembers catching a glimpse of a vehicle late last night. Especially a pickup.”

“There’s thousands of pickups around here.”

“We have to start somewhere.”

I nodded and listened to a long, plaintive growl from my stomach. “And when do we eat?”

“As soon as Francis comes home.”

I groaned. “My God! We have to wait on a country doctor? It’s apt to be midnight. I’ll be dead by then.”

Estelle laughed. “I’ll get you a beer, some chips, and salsa. That’ll tide you over. Really, he won’t be long.”

She got up and said over her shoulder as she disappeared into the house, “And I need to ask you a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Just a second.” After a bit she returned and set the promised snacks on the porch floor beside my chair. She handed me the beer. “I need you to talk with somebody for me.”

“Who?”

“Father Nolan Parris. At the retreat house.”

I regarded Estelle with interest. “He’s the monk or friar or whatever you call ’em who was hanging out with Cecilia?”

“According to rumor.”

“He might know something. I wonder if he drives a truck.”

“A priest? No, I don’t think so.”

“Well,” I sighed, “it’s a place to start.”

Estelle grinned. “It’ll give you something to do.”

I shrugged, convinced for about thirty seconds that the reason Estelle Reyes-Guzman was asking me to talk with Parris was because of the vast years of experience I had under my belt. And then, looking across the porch in the failing light and seeing the last bits of summer sunshine play around the planes of her face, I realized Estelle’s request was astute. If she arrived at the Catholic retreat complex in uniform, there’d be talk. If she strolled in to visit in civvies, there’d be even more talk, all of the wrong kind. What could be more innocent than one old man visiting another?

“It’ll cost you several beers,” I said. I expected jocular agreement, but Estelle shook her head.

“We need to talk with Parris tonight.” She pulled a small photograph from her blouse pocket. It was a picture of Cecilia Burgess, the posed kind with the misty background that college yearbooks favor. “Make sure he looks at this.” She handed the picture to me. “See if you can get him to hold it just the way you are right now.”

I frowned. “Where’d you get this?”

“She lived in one of the small back rooms at the trading post when she wasn’t up at the springs with Finn. Garcia let me in. There wasn’t much there. Just some clothes and things. The picture was being used as a page marker in a children’s book.”

“And you want Parris’s prints?”

“I want a thumbprint.”

“Parris doesn’t have any kind of record where his prints were taken? Passport, anything like that?”

Estelle shook her head. “Not that we can find.”

“And what good will his prints do, anyway?”

“Remember the guardrail? The bloody prints, top and bottom? We assumed Cecilia Burgess somehow pulled herself over or under the rail.”

“You’re telling me the prints we saw aren’t hers…she had help?”

“That’s right. The prints aren’t hers. That’s what Sheriff Tate told me over the phone when he called to tell me Burgess died.”

“What about that guy who stopped and called on the CB radio? Maybe he tried to help her.”

“He said he didn’t. And he’s a state employee. Works in the Department of Revenue and Taxation. His prints were easy to doublecheck. He’s clean.”

“And no luck on what’s his name, with the Forest Service? He was there before you were.”

“Les Cook? He’s a cop. Not a chance.”

“Then someone else was there and split,” I said. Estelle nodded. “Might have been the driver of the vehicle, maybe someone else.” I cleaned off the photo with my handkerchief and carefully slid it in my pocket. “I’ll get Parris’s prints for you. And I suppose this means we’re going to have to walk all the way back up to the hot springs, too.”

“The prints don’t match Arajanian’s. Tate already checked for me. We don’t know about Finn. So yes, we need to go back.” I groaned at the thought of this exercise business becoming a habit.