Double Prey

Chapter Eighteen

Estelle squirmed backward from the cave. Her tan trousers and white blouse shed billows of dust and debris as she brushed herself off. She took the jacket from Casey and spread it on a nearby rock, along with the radio.

“This is where we have to change strategies a little bit,” she said, and watched the puzzled expression on Casey’s face. “Freddy never said anything about any artifact other than the cat skeleton. Is that right?”

“Not to me. I don’t know what he told Mr. Underwood.”

“There was no mention in the newspaper article, either.” Estelle stepped closer to the girl, locking eyes. “Freddy had a handgun with him when we found him,” she said. “Its condition leads me to believe that he might have found it in this cave. He had it wrapped carefully in a cloth in his carrier. It wasn’t packed as if it was just something he habitually carried with him.”

“I…I don’t know about that. He had that little rifle, that’s all I know.”

“You didn’t see him bring it out of the cave on Sunday…along with the skull?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“And later in the week sometime…he didn’t mention the handgun to you? Or that he’d found one?”

“No, ma’am. He didn’t. Who would it belong to?”

“That’s a question, isn’t it.” Estelle looked first at her watch, and then the sky. Going on three o’clock, the sun was well past the edge of the mesa, and the shade around them was cool. “I need to get you home, Casey, but it’s going to take a few minutes.”

“Oh, there’s no hurry.”

“That’s good. First, I need you to call your mom and dad and let them know that you’re still with me, and that it’ll be at least an hour or two. I don’t want them to worry. As soon as I can round up a deputy to sit this site, I’ll drive you home. But we can’t leave it unprotected.” Casey didn’t question that, and they made their way down to the SUV, where Estelle waited while Casey called her mother. The conversation didn’t last long, and after a quiet conversation and then three or four “yes, ma’ams,” Casey closed the telephone.

“My sister Christine just got home from Cruces,” she said. “She hopes you’ll have time to stop by.”

“I look forward to seeing her,” Estelle said. She thumbed several digits into her own phone and Deputy Tom Pasquale answered promptly.

“Tomás, where are you now?”

“Workin’ my way up the canyon road. Sheriff told me to park it by the old homestead, and I think I’m just about there.”

“Stay on the west side of that,” she said. “There are tracks near the cabin foundation that I don’t want disturbed.”

“Ten four. I’m there now and there’s nothin’ going on. Well wait, I got one coyote across the arroyo, about six hundred yards out. And he doesn’t look too interested.”

Estelle laughed. “I need you right where you are. I don’t want anybody disturbing that scene. Not the canyon road or the arroyo. And there’s some evidence down this way that needs to be protected until morning.” Her curiosity about the cave was a powerful attraction, and the dark depths of that formation were independent of the day and night above ground. A generator and lights would be necessary in the cave, but whatever was there to be discovered had been lying there in the dust and bat guano for years-it could all wait until morning, when logistics became exponentially easier.

“Tony’s lookin’ for something to do. He was at the office earlier,” Pasquale said.

“I’ll tell him you suggested it.” As Estelle redialed the phone, she watched Casey Prescott. The young woman paced head down in front of the Expedition, hands in the back pockets of her jeans, idly kicking a pebble out of the ruts. Circuits clicked and then Dispatcher Ernie Wheeler responded. Estelle requested a deputy at the cave location, and suggested Tony Abeyta.

“He’s workin’ graveyard tonight, remember,” Wheeler said. Estelle could hear a voice in the background. “Jackie has the night off, but she says she can work if there’s a problem.”

“Ay, ” the undersheriff said, trying to visualize the personnel assignment board that hung on the wall behind the dispatch island. “Well, Tony gets to work graveyard out here in the middle of peace and quiet,” she said. “Check with him and find out for me. I need to know his ETA this location.”

In less than a minute, the dispatcher came back on line. “He’s on the way. He said he wants to stop by the house and change clothes. Just a few minutes.”

“Ten four. Thanks, Ernie. I’ll be coming in as soon as he arrives.”

She folded the phone thoughtfully as she approached Casey Prescott. So much time, Estelle thought. From the moments on Monday when Freddy had showed the skull to the teacher until his death sometime on Thursday, the young man had had ample time to return to the cave. Perhaps more than one trip. There was no reason to take the four-wheeler each time, except that the machine was obviously fast and fun to ride-and much cheaper to operate than the old, jouncing pickup truck.

Estelle looked down the empty, silent two-track. At what point had Freddy Romero decided that there was enough interest in the cave to try to protect it with the cover story about Borracho Springs? Had he actually seen the handgun on his first visit, he would have recovered it. There was no way he’d leave it behind. Unless he was concerned that Casey would object, complicating his life with suggestions about what to do with the find.

“And no one else came by while you two were here, other than Herb Torrance’s brief stop earlier?”

“No, ma’am.”

Estelle shook her head slowly. “When you had the skull all wrapped and stashed on the ATV, did Freddy say that he was planning to come back? That he was planning to make another trip?”

“No. Earlier, he had mentioned getting some of his dad’s shop lights. Or even just a decent flashlight. But no, he didn’t mention it again.” She gazed back up the slope. So rocky and boulder-strewn was the mesa flank that their passing had left no tracks, nothing to indicate the cave’s location. And because of the lip of rock that overhung the work of the packrats, only the exhaling of cool air from the bowels of the earth would hint at the cave’s location.

Such odd circumstances had tangled in this lonely place, Estelle thought-and long before Freddy Romero first felt that gush of subterranean air.