Double Prey

Chapter Twenty-five

Making his only concession to the remote location, Dr. Alan Perrone loosened the top button of his white shirt, pulling his tie down a bit. He talked briefly with Bill Gastner before heading up the hill, and Estelle noticed that he didn’t bother with a medical bag.

He stopped halfway up to chat with Mark Adams as the two state police officers made their way back down. When he reached the little plateau behind the boulder, he stopped and held up both hands in mock impatience. “You couldn’t have found a spot a little farther out from anywhere? Here I was complaining yesterday about the canyon.”

“We try, sir,” Estelle said. “We try.”

“Well, this guy sure as hell is dead.” The medical examiner thrust his hands in his pockets, his gaze flicking from one end of the tarp to another. “And that’s the extent of my expertise.” He knelt and reached out with his right index finger, stopping just short of one of the long bones. “Critters have been helpful.” He looked up, toward the crevice in the rocks. “How deep?” He pushed himself to his feet, and as he approached the disturbed nest, the sheriff and deputy Abeyta shifted to make room. He held up a hand. “I’m not going in.” He knelt again, peering into the depths of the overhang, then looked toward the cave entrance.

“I’ll turn the spotlight on for you,” Abeyta said, but Perrone held up his hand again.

“Nothing in there that I need to see.” He twisted around and looked at Torrez. “Someone shot him and then stuffed the body in here? That’s what you’re saying?”

“Don’t know what happened. What we’re thinkin’ now is that he crawled in here somehow, and then got himself shot.” He pointed at the remains of the packrat palace. “Found a shell casing in here.”

“Just one? Casing, I mean?”

“Yup.”

“But the rat could have found it just about anywhere within an acre. Recover a bullet yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Suicide is possible, you know,” Perrone said, pushing himself to his feet. “I mean, it’s unlikely, but it’s possible.” He reached around with his right hand, easily putting his index finger against the back of his own skull, and letting his thumb mimic the hammer fall.

“It’s possible,” Torrez agreed. “But it ain’t likely.”

“Well,” Perrone added, “I agree with that. It ain’t likely.” Torrez ignored the little jab at his grammar.

“Can you estimate TOD for us?” he asked, and Perrone laughed.

“Ah, no. A long time ago, Bobby. That’s my best take. You’re not talking weeks or months with this. You’re talking years. And in part, it’s going to be deceptive, since the critters have been so active. Every beetle and his cousin has been and gone, and then the guys who like to chew just to pass the time? Well, they’ve had a field day, too. When we get all this packed up, I’ll be in touch with Leslie Toler, up at the university. She works with the state lab, and she’s the best osteologist we’ve got. There’s so little here…it’s going to be a real puzzle.” He waggled his eyebrows. “You’ve got one advantage. Inside that boot? Some of the remaining bones? You’re going to have a lot of available DNA. And you’ve got dental evidence, no doubt.”

“Got to be since 1989 or ’90,” the sheriff said, more to himself than anyone else. Perrone frowned at him.

“Because?”

“That’s when the forty Smith was developed.” Torrez shrugged, looking a little uncomfortable at having to sound as if he knew something the others didn’t.

“Well, that’s interesting, and I wouldn’t be surprised.” The physician took a deep breath, stretching tall, looking out across the prairie. “Folks find such interesting spots, don’t they.” He turned back and looked first at Torrez and then at Estelle. “And let me know where you find the other boot,” he said. “That’s interesting. No coat, either? No gloves.” He stepped back to the tarp and considered the scattering. After a bit, he bent down and with the eraser of his pencil lifted a small patch of fabric away from one of the vertebrae. “Shirt fabric, no undershirt. At least nothing that looks like the remains of one.”

“The cotton would rot quickly,” Estelle offered.

“Maybe so. Just damn odd. Between a good source of DNA and dental records, I don’t think finding out who this guy is will be a big deal. Our list of missing persons is pretty short.”

“Like none,” Torrez said.

“Exactly.” Perrone nodded at the holster. “No weapon found?”

“That’s what Freddy Romero had with him on his ATV.”

“Reeeeeally. ” The physician twisted around to look back at the cave. “So that’s why he was in such a fatal hurry.”

“We think so. An excited kid.”

“Well, then. No problem. With any luck at all, the gun will take you there. Where do you suppose he found the gun? The holster doesn’t look disturbed.”

“We have no idea,” Estelle said, and a sweep of the hand included the entire hillside.

“Fractured femur and radius, and two crushed cervical vertebrae, by the way,” Perrone said. “That’s what the preliminary on the Romero boy shows. Toxicology won’t be back for a while, but there’s no reason to believe anything will turn up. Some cuts and bruises, but no other significant injuries-certainly nothing that I wouldn’t expect from a twelve foot free-flight into the arroyo.”

He nodded once more at the artifacts spread on the tarp. “You guys be careful in there. Is that one of the fire department’s respirators?”

Estelle touched the device, still hanging around her neck, and nodded.

“Well, make sure you use it,” Perrone said. He nodded at everyone once more and set off down the hill.

For another hour, they scoured and sifted the shelf under the overhang, and by the time they finished, the packrat had lost every scrap of his home and collection. But they had found nothing more of particular interest.

“I want to sift what’s left in the cave,” Estelle said, and she knew exactly why that prompted a frown of distaste from the sheriff.

“You can’t do that in there,” he said.

“No, but I can bring it out, ” she said. “We have a generator, and we have a shop vac.”

“Take a couple hours to bring it all out here,” Torrez said, but he beckoned Tony Abeyta and recited the list to him.

“Add a piece of fine screen to that,” Estelle said. “Like black nylon window screen. We’ll want to sift the vacuum contents when we’re finished. While we’re waiting, we need to figure out how we want all this collection marked and stored.”

That in itself turned out to be a significant challenge, but eventually, every scrap of recovered material from the cave and the packrat’s nest was carefully labeled, referenced to the photographs and the grid, and stored in a large cooler.

Torrez looked at his watch, grimaced, and then dispatched Tom Pasquale and Linda Real to raid Victor Sanchez’s Broken Spur Saloon for food. “And ask Bill what he wants,” he added. “He’s part of this gang. If Victor won’t take your county card, tell him I’ll be down after a bit to settle up with him. Go out the canyon road and take care of Taber at the same time.”

When the deputies had left on their various errands, Torrez found the semblance of a soft spot and relaxed back. He regarded Estelle with amusement.

“You look a wreck,” he said.

“Neat and tidy, that’s us,” Estelle replied.

“You’re lookin’ for the bullet?”

“Yes. I’m not going to sweep up the dust and small stuff in there. In two minutes, we wouldn’t be able to see a thing. I think the vacuum will work.”

“And you think the bullet’s there?”

“It might be. If our guy was shot when he was in the cave, or when he was about to crawl in, and if the path of the bullet entered right rear and exited out left front, then it could be in there.”

“Rat might have got it.”

“Maybe…but it wasn’t in the nest.”

“Go through his skull, then ricochet around in there? That’s just about impossible to figure out.”

“But,” Estelle said, and she leaned her back against the boulder, stretching her spine. “That’s a relatively low velocity bullet, no? The forty?”

“Thousand feet per second or so. For a handgun, it’s hot enough.”

“But after blowing through the full volume of a human’s skull?”

“Once it busts out through the bone in front, it wouldn’t have much poop left. I see what you’re sayin’.” He fell silent, his heavy black eyebrows raised in consideration. “We got the one from the cat.”

“That’s right. If we can find the one that killed the man, that’s a link we have to have.”

He nodded and raised an index finger to point down hill. Estelle pushed away from the rock to see Bill Gastner taking his time on the rocky slope. Herb Torrance had climbed back in his truck, but Miles Waddell appeared content to continue residence on the tailgate of his truck.

“Thanks for sending the troops for food,” Gastner said when he was within easy earshot. “I was about to give up hope and hit up your MREs.”

“Glad to do it.”

“What’s next? Tony said he was headed after a vacuum?”

“We need the bullet, sir. That’s the only way I can think to do a thorough search. I hope you’ve been thinking hard.”

Gastner looked surprised. “Who, me? You’re kidding.”

She toed the large cooler. “We need to know who this is, sir.”

“I’ve been working on that. It’s kind of tricky to do with an audience, though. Old Herb, he gets wound up, and he’s hard to turn him off. I’ve spent the last two hours listening to a litany of every rancher’s woe from both him and Miles. But I’ve got some ideas.”

“I was hoping that you would, sir.”

“Well, don’t hold your breath, sweetheart. I have ideas, all right. Now the trick is to remember what the hell they were.” He stood with his hands on his hips. “The first thing I’m thinking, and I don’t like it one bit, is that this is empty country. A guy could kill a friend out here, and the odds of there being any witnesses are slim and none, other than the ravens and such, and they’re not talking. Accidental discovery is the rule, not the exception. Someone got clever with all this, and it worked out just fine until Freddy Romero stuck his nose in this cave. I just hate to think who that someone might be. There aren’t that many choices out here, and most of ’em are good friends of mine. Old friends.”

Gastner gazed down the hill, and Estelle let him think without interruption. “This is Waddell’s land,” he said finally. “That’s the obvious place to start.” He flashed a quick smile at first Estelle and then Bobby Torrez. “But you guys have figured that out already.”