Double Prey

Chapter Twenty-one

The remains of a leather belt passed through the holster. In the glare of the lights, Estelle Reyes-Guzman could see that rodents, or skunks, or bored coyotes had chewed the leather, and insects had then enjoyed the moist remains. Perhaps the taste of gun oil had been a deterrent, since the holster was nearly untouched.

“Oh, joy,” Linda Real whispered.

“How are you going to do this?” Estelle answered. They were huddled close together in the confines of the overhang, the flow of cool air coming from deep within the mesa through the small slit in the rocks. A few more rocks had been removed, marginally enlarging access.

“I’ll try everything,” the photographer said. “This might be time for the old tissue trick.” The camera’s flash, even set on the manufacturer’s optimistic “auto” setting, was simply too powerful for the tight spaces. The bolt of light washed out the image’s detail. To block it, Linda doubled a small square of clean tissue and held it over the flash, experimenting with several efforts until she had defused and muted the light to her satisfaction. She fired off a dozen photos, and each time Estelle looked away, taking the milliseconds of opportunity to survey the rest of the cave as it was illuminated by the muted flash.

In places, a coyote could walk upright once he’d squeezed through the entrance. The floor of the passage was studded with rocks, and more hung precariously from the ceiling. Great fissures extended off in all directions, but there appeared to be a central crack, a central vent, from which the air flowed.

“Okay. This is interesting.” Linda reached back and moved one of the spot lights that was supported by a squat tripod no more than ten inches high. “Here I was worried about H1N1. Now I can set my sights on something more interesting, like hantavirus or rabies. Maybe a touch of distemper.” She adjusted her cotton face mask and then pulled down her baseball cap a little tighter.

“Hold still a minute,” Estelle said, and she could feel Linda’s body tense as if she’d announced a spider or worse. The undersheriff reached out with a pencil and touched a portion of the belt. “What’s that?”

“Oh, gross,” Linda replied cheerfully. “That, my friend, is a belt loop from a pair of pants. Or what’s left of it. And this…” She reached out and pointed, the tip of her finger within a millimeter of a scrap of something… “looks like fabric, like some more of the trousers.”

The camera blasted several more times. “You up for this?” Linda asked.

“Sure. Why not.” Estelle could think of a hundred reasons why not. Her breath in the face mask kicked back hot and moist, fogging her safety glasses. Most of the bats had left in protest, but they hadn’t found any other creatures who objected to their presence other than a spider or two and one energetic stink beetle. What lay deeper in the crevices, watching their progress, was anyone’s guess.

“Oh, double gross,” Linda said. “You see that?”

“Yes.” The remains of the belt terminated in a buckle, a large brass utility buckle. Estelle could see where the end of the belt with the adjustment holes passed through the buckle, still securely attached. She touched a dust-covered hump, flicking a bit of bat or lizard guano to one side. “That would be a vertebrae.”

“Oh, joy.”

“Bobby?” Estelle called.

“Yep.” The sheriff had settled down directly in front of the packrat’s nest, and he reached out and tapped the bottom of Estelle’s boot.

“I need a soft brush. There’s one in my briefcase out by the entrance.”

“Ten four.” In a moment she felt the tap again and she reached back and secured the soft-bristled artist’s brush.

“Deep in the Egyptian tomb,” Linda said, her voice a bass imitation of the voice-overs for movie previews, “lay a secret covered by the dust of the ages. ” She then provided a couple bars of appropriate theme music.

With deft strokes, Estelle gently ushered layers of dust off the belt and the bones it encircled. Just beyond her hand, the floor of the crevice fell away, with stones blocking her view. “I can’t really see what’s what,” she said, loud enough for Torrez to hear. “We have bones. The belt is still around a portion of vertebrae, but I don’t know about the rest. There are some rocks in the way. If I can move a couple of them…”

“Negative that,” Torrez snapped. “I’m not diggin’ you out after everything collapses.”

“It’s not about to,” Estelle replied, and she heard Linda whisper something to herself. “Push the light so it shines over this way a bit,” she added, and the photographer did so. “I think this is as far as Freddy managed. I don’t see any fresh scuffing where he would have had to have crawled. But this…” and she thumped a rock the size of a microwave oven with the heel of her hand. “Is right in the way, unless I pretend I’m a coyote.”

“That rock hasn’t been there for eons,” Linda observed, and any tone of levity had disappeared. “Look up.”

And sure enough, a football-sized rock hung above them, prevented from falling by a couple of tiny projections that had jammed against neighbors. The microwave oven had lost its grip, but the space where it had been suspended until some time recently…by geologic standards anyway…shown pale.

“Let me try something,” Linda said. “Back up a little.”

“You can’t slide in there.” The photographer was young and agile, but far from sylph-like.

“No way, José, ” she replied cheerfully. “But the camera certainly can.” She slipped back into her promo voice. “Releasing an unspeakable evil trapped for centuries within the very bowels of the earth. ”

As Estelle waited for Linda to maneuver her arms forward, she looked back toward the comfortable wash of sunlight where a fair collection of people now waited. More than once, she’d heard Game and Fish officer Doug Posey’s characteristic bellow of laughter, and Bill Gastner’s quiet, quirky narrative, but another voice or two she couldn’t place.

“We’re going to need a tarp,” Estelle called. “When Linda’s done, I’ll pass out one item at a time, but it’s going to be a while. Once we move things, that’s it. The site is worthless after that.”

“Roger that. We got all day,” Torrez said.

Padrino called it just right, Estelle thought.

“Yowser,” Linda said. “Kinda interesting.”

“What’s the preview show?” Estelle asked.

“Just a sec.” Linda squirmed forward and Estelle reached out and slipped her fingers under the photographer’s belt. She tugged just enough to let the girl know she was there.

“That’s far enough.”

“Well, almost, it is.” Holding the bulky camera in one hand, Linda worked the spotlight and tripod a little farther, shrinking back as the heat of the bulb passed uncomfortably close to her face. For a long moment she lay quietly. Estelle could hear her measured breathing. Behind them, out in the morning sunshine, a voice rose a little and said, “Well, damn, ” followed by a string of hushed conversation she couldn’t understand.

“The air is coming from a hole that’s kinda down from me? This little cave kinda ends, except for that one hole. It’s about the size of a five-gallon bucket. The hole, I mean. Kinda like a chimney, so to speak. Cool beans. Wouldn’t I like to be a little lizard.” She laughed and added, “Not so much.”

“Can you see the floor of this chamber?”

“I can’t. It dives down a little, just enough to put it out of sight. If the camera’s auto focus works, it can see. Lemme show you what I got after I try something here.” The something here included another series of flashes, some cautious maneuvering, and a grunt or two. Estelle kept her hand locked around Linda’s belt.

“Okay. Let’s look.” She shrank back, and the two of them pushed away from the opening. Huddled in the shade of the rocks outside the entrance, Linda fussed with the camera’s controls. The Nikon’s preview screen was bright and clear. The spectrum of color ranged from light to dark grays, with a twinkle here and there from minerals imbedded in the rock. Linda had managed the muted flash just right.

“Time for big screen, huh,” Linda said as Estelle brought the camera closer to her face, straining to see details of the image. “Let’s chip it to your laptop.”

“Oh, sí. ” She turned the camera toward Linda so the photographer could see her own handiwork and pointed at the lower left area of the preview screen. “Can you shoot over here a bit more?”

“What’s the caucus?” The intrusion of Bobby Torrez’s voice was startling. “What do you have?”

“We have remains,” Estelle said. “It appears to be a partial skeleton. But it’s really hard to tell.”

“You going to need Perrone?”

Linda laughed loudly. “I pronounce this guy dead, dead, dead, Bobby. And if he isn’t, then we’re in deep, deep caca. ”

“Someone needs to alert him that remains are coming,” Estelle said. “The sooner we start the I.D. process, the better.”

“You’re talkin’ recent?”

“I would guess any time within the last…who knows how long.”

“I need to take a look.”

Linda laughed again. “Mr. Cork,” she whispered to Estelle.

“I ain’t no bigger than the both of you,” the sheriff said. “Back out of there.”

“In a bit,” Estelle said. “Let us take one more series.” She touched the screen again. “Right over here. If you can hold the camera right up against the ceiling, looking down.”

“I can do that,” Linda said cheerfully. After a dozen photos, she asked for the power pack and cord, and with that supply of juice, she continued one photo after another. At eighty-seven, Linda finally sighed with satisfaction.

“I don’t think there’s a grain of dust that isn’t recorded,” she said. “And you’re going to be interested in what’s over to the left, way behind the rocks.” She squirmed backward and presented the camera so that Estelle could see the preview screen. “Scroll backward. About number fifty or so, you’ll see it.”

Looking at negatives morphing out of the old-fashioned developing solution in the dark room trays was spooky enough, but for the most part that era was past. This time, the little screen’s effect was disturbing enough in the dark, musty confines of the cave. The round object that the camera had recorded could be nothing else. The skull rested in a crevice, eye sockets staring down at the dust.

For a few seconds, Estelle froze, and then let out a long, slow breath. “There he is…or she is.” The skull lay in no particular relationship to anything else in the cave. Some creature had found a bonanza here. The skeleton was scattered and pillaged, the remaining bones nothing more than little lumps of indistinct gray.

Estelle scrolled through all of the photos once more, and finished the series satisfied that Linda had documented every square centimeter of this dismal little grotto. “Freddy, what did you find,” she whispered.