Double Prey

Chapter Fifteen

The teenager didn’t rise as the sheriff’s department vehicle approached, but the horse sidestepped nervously. Estelle stopped twenty yards from the tank and palmed the mike.

“PCS, three ten.”

“Three ten, go ahead.”

“Three ten will be ten-six at Lewis Wells.”

Dispatcher Ernie Wheeler managed to sound completely disinterested. “Ten four, three ten.”

Estelle shut off the engine. Casey might have been watching her, but the wide-brimmed straw hat shaded her face. The horse shifted again, uttering one of those heavy, deep-in-the-throat huh, huh, huh mutters that said she was thinking hard but hadn’t reached any decisions.

As the undersheriff swung out of the SUV, Casey pushed herself upright. With her lithe figure in boots, blue jeans, and a flowery blouse and her strawberry blonde hair braided into a long pony-tail flowing from under her white straw hat, the teenager looked ready for an appearance as a rodeo queen. But her face belied any festive mood. Her flawless complexion was puffy from crying, her green eyes bloodshot, her nose reddened.

“Hi.” She let it go at that. Almost absent-mindedly, she reached out and stroked the mare’s broad, flat forehead.

“I’m sorry to intrude,” Estelle said quietly.

“That’s okay. Am I in trouble?” A logical question, Estelle thought. Cops didn’t drive out across miles of prairie simply to offer condolences.

“Hardly. Your mom said you might be out this way.” The girl nodded but said nothing. “Casey, I am so sorry about all of this. I wish there was something I could say that would make it easier for you.” The girl shrugged helplessly and turned toward the horse, butting her head gently against the horse’s neck in agonized frustration. “Will you try and answer some questions for me?” Casey managed a small nod. “Did Freddy tell you what he was looking for out in the canyon?”

Casey turned away from the mare and slumped against the tank, her elbow resting on the rim. The horse’s ears twitched at the sudden motion. She thought about the question for a long time before answering. “He wanted to find the rest of the skeleton. The jaguar skeleton.” Her voice was small and distant.

“In the canyon?” Estelle asked.

Casey nodded.

“He told Mr. Underwood that he found the skull above Borracho Springs,” the undersheriff added. “Up on the mountain. That’s what the newspaper article quoted him as saying. That’s not what happened?”

Casey brought both hands up and squeezed her cheeks, digging the tips of her fingers into her eyelids. “He didn’t want them to know,” she said. “He didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Know what?” Estelle asked gently.

“He said that there was more stuff in the cave. But he needed…he needed to move a couple of rocks. It was going to take a little time.” The girl took a deep breath. “I told him that he shouldn’t. Like, for one thing, it isn’t on his property. But Freddy didn’t really understand the concept of trespass.” She ground a palm into her right eye.

“You two were out there on Sunday?”

Casey dug out a handkerchief and blew her nose loudly. “Yes.” The tears wouldn’t stop, and she gave up trying. “Yes. I wouldn’t go in the cave with him.” She managed a ghost of a smile. “Caves are gross.”

“But Freddy had no problems with the spelunking?” Estelle asked. That news about her neighbor didn’t surprise Estelle.

“Oh, no, he sure didn’t. Once he found the cat’s skull…or maybe there’s more skeleton there too…he was so excited. He thought it had to be a mountain lion, and then Mr. Underwood said for sure it was a jaguar. That’s really something, I guess. Everyone got even more excited.”

“And Freddy wanted to go back.”

“I’m sure he did go back, Sheriff.”

“Did anyone see you two out there on Sunday?”

Casey nodded. “Herb came by. Mr. Torrance? Freddy was up in the rocks on the mesa, and I was waiting for him down by the four-wheeler. Mr. Torrance has a little herd out that way, and he said he’d just dropped off a couple nutrient blocks.”

“That’s all he said?”

“That I should be careful of snakes. Like, I needed to hear that. But Freddy wasn’t the least bit afraid.”

“Did he know that Freddy was with you? Did he see him?”

Casey hesitated. “Well, no…I guess not. I mean, I couldn’t see him from where I was standing by the four-wheeler, so Mr. T couldn’t either, I guess.”

“Did you mention to him that Freddy was up in the rocks? That you’d found a cave?”

Casey shook her head. “He probably knows about it, though.”

“Maybe he does. Herb didn’t see the skull?”

“No. He was kinda in a hurry. He had some problem with a calf and he was going out to get some medication. He asked how my mom and dad were doing, and then he left.” Tears seeped from her eyes again, and she turned to the mare, wrapping an arm over the animal’s neck and burying her face in the brown pillow.

Had the horse not been there, Estelle would have enveloped the girl in a long hug, but the mare served the purpose. “Did Freddy show you anything else that he found in the cave?”

“No. I don’t know what else he found, if anything. Or what else he thought was there. He didn’t tell me. Maybe it was nothing. But he was excited about the skull. He wanted to make sure that he carried it back without breaking it up any more than it already was.”

“Did he actually say that he wanted to return to the site?”

“No. He didn’t say. But I figured out that he would. I mean, why else would he make up that story about Borracho Springs? That’s what I decided. There was something there, and he didn’t want anyone else knowing.”

“Not even you.”

That brought a grimace and more tears, and Casey Prescott shrugged helplessly.

“Would you have gone back out there with him?”

Casey shook her head. She patted the mare’s neck. “He skips school. I won’t. And I didn’t want to ride on the four-wheeler any more. Not double, anyway. And that’s what Freddy was always pestering me to do.” The tears flooded out despite her best efforts. “I mean, I drive one all the time around here when we’re working, but I don’t like ’em much. And riding double is really uncomfortable. Freddy, I mean…he won’t…” Her face crumpled up again, and she fought for composure. “Always so fast. I mean, that’s fun sometimes, but not hanging on to the back.” She looked at Estelle. “I wanted Freddy to ride horseback with me, but he’s afraid of horses…can you believe that?”

“Hard to imagine.”

“Well, it’s true. Go figure.” Casey blew her nose on a bright blue handkerchief.

“Freddy liked horsepower, but more than one, maybe,” Estelle said. “My two little boys worshiped him. There were plenty of opportunities for Carlos or Francisco to ride double with him or his little brother on all manner of crazy machines, but their mean old mom wouldn’t let them.”

Casey bit her lip and wadded her handkerchief against her eyes. “Will Butch be all right?” Her lips quivered. “Mr. Romero said Butch was in a bad way, but he couldn’t talk about it on the phone.”

“It is bad. He’ll lose the eye, maybe with other complications. It’s a bad time for them.”

“I like Tata.”

“She’s a good person.”

“She doesn’t deserve any of this.”

“We don’t always get what we deserve.” She reached out and stroked the mare’s velvety nose. “Will you show me the cave, Casey?”

“If I have to.”

“I’m not asking you to go into it,” Estelle said. “Just where it is.” She glanced at her watch. “Would you take me there now?”

“We won’t see where Freddy… ”

“No. We won’t go that way.”

“Did Freddy do something wrong? I mean when he took the skull?”

“It just doesn’t matter, Casey. Technically, it’s like taking an eagle carcass that you might find, maybe so you could use the feathers. Or even picking up an elk skull with rack. But his retrieving the skull is not the issue.”

With the handkerchief crumpled into a ball and held over her nose, Casey regarded the undersheriff. “What is the issue? Did Freddy do something else?”

“Whenever there’s an accident, we try to find out all the answers,” Estelle said, and she could see that Casey caught the evasion. “Can I meet you back at the house, then?”

Casey nodded. “Flory doesn’t want to go up into all those rocks, do you, lady.” The horse muttered another huh, huh, huh. “She was bitten by a snake last year right here on her pastern.” She bent and stroked a hand down the mare’s left leg, stopping near a bald spot on the hide above the hoof. “She gets skittish sometimes.”

Estelle stepped back as the girl swung effortlessly into the saddle. “I take short cuts.” Casey managed a full smile. “I’ll let mom know.” With no apparent movement of the reins, the horse wheeled and charged off past the Expedition, following the two-track for only fifty yards or so before veering off through the scrub.

Back at the truck, Estelle thumbed the cell phone, and it rang half a dozen times before Sheriff Robert Torrez picked up.

“Bobby, I’m out here with Casey Prescott. It looks as if Freddy Romero made up the story about the cat’s skull. He didn’t find it above Borracho Springs at all.”

“Imagine that,” Torrez muttered. “I said there weren’t no caves up there.”

“Casey is taking me to the spot, but it’s over near the canyon, not far from where he crashed.”

“Pasquale’s out there now,” the sheriff said. “Does she know why Freddy lied?”

“No, she said she doesn’t, and I believe her. Other than that maybe there’s something more to the cave. That’s the logical assumption. She did say that Freddy was excited about bringing out the entire skeleton. He didn’t want anyone else to find his stash. That would be enough for him to play it clever.”

“You ask her about the gun?”

“No. I wanted to wait a bit on that. Until we found out a little more about what she knows.”

“Just as well. We’re still over at the garage. Got interesting stuff going on. Mears is dead-on sure that we have a bullet fragment.”

“A fragment…”

“In the tire. Left front. And there’s a little scuff on the fender panel. Looks like it lines up.”

“Ay, ” Estelle breathed. “The fragment was enough to make the tire go flat right away?”

“No way of tellin’.”

“So it might have been from some other time. Something that didn’t cause a flat, at least not right away. Maybe Freddy got careless with his own rifle.”

“Nope. Twenty-two slugs are lead. This is brass. Mears is goin’ over the tire inch by inch. We’ll see.”

So many possibilities, Estelle thought. A well-placed shot and a suddenly exploded tire, sending the four-wheeler into the rocks. A sudden startle by the rider, maybe when he saw someone or something in the two-track just as he crested the hill, sending the ATV slightly off course to graze the rocks. The way Freddy rode, pell-mell and airborne half the time, any slight distraction could lead to a disaster. And just as easily, the fragment might have been picked up by the tire in normal running-a scrap of something in the roadway, then carried for miles before the tire went flat.

“You be careful out there.” Torrez didn’t need to remind her that some possibilities were uglier than others.