Double Prey

Chapter Twenty-six

The food-enormous, sloppy burgers, heaps of French fries, six-packs of soda, all carefully packed in an ice chest-arrived and was consumed long before Deputy Tony Abeyta returned with the vacuum. It didn’t take Estelle long to make a mental note to include a letter of commendation in Abeyta’s personnel folder. The lawn-mower chatter of the small generator was one thing, but the howl of the rotund shop vacuum in the close confines of the cave was mindnumbing. The young deputy had thought the whole process through and brought a hose extension, along with all the various brushes and wands. He’d cleaned the vacuum itself so that it looked brand new and put in a fresh filter. He’d remembered two white, light-weight hard hats.

But most important were the comfortable electronic ear phones he’d borrowed from the range cabinet in Sheriff Robert Torrez’s office.

Abeyta had eagerly volunteered for the final vacuum job in the cave, but the logic of Estelle’s argument was unassailable. She was the smallest person on the site, with the most room to maneuver.

For a half hour, she worked the vacuum, edging farther and farther into the narrow confines, using first the tapered wand and then the brush, covering every surface. She twisted on her side and gently brushed the ceiling, always working to one side of her position in case even the brush’s light touch dislodge rocks. Fragments rattled down the hose and fine detritus whooshed through into the vacuum’s collection chamber.

Eventually she waved a hand and the sound of the vacuum died.

“The bats now have the absolutely cleanest quarters in the entire southwest,” she said.

“You think they’ll appreciate it?” Linda’s voice sounded oddly metallic through the earphone’s electronic boosters.

“I doubt it. It’s just not as homey as it was.” Estelle lay quietly for a moment, letting the ache subside in her shoulders. “Would you ask Bobby for his Kel-lite? I want to check one more thing.” In a moment the large, black flashlight tapped her leg lightly. With the light, and moving with exquisite care, she wormed her way forward.

“How far are you going to go?” A note of worry crept into Linda’s voice. She rested a hand on the back of Estelle’s right boot.

“Just a bit.” Her target was the vent, the chimney, toward the back of the little cave. The opening was a body-length from the rise where she had earlier balanced the laptop and the spotlight. To reach the vent and be able to peer into it, to face the rush of air from somewhere deep in the earth, meant she would have to squirm all the way in, heading slightly downward. And there was no room to turn around, even if she rolled onto her side and hunched herself into the smallest ball possible. She would have to edge in on her elbows and toes, and back out the same way.

“This is not a good idea,” Linda whispered, and Estelle laughed in spite of her absurd position. Linda was right, of course. But short of systematically dismantling the mesa ton by ton, she could think of no other way to convince herself that she’d probed whatever secrets this little spot guarded.

“What a calendar shot, eh, hermana? ” Estelle said.

“Oh, you betcha,” the photographer said. Her calendars had become treasured possessions each year, with one of the department staff featured each month. The portraits were always wonderfully comical or a pull on the heartstrings, taken during the year when opportunity presented itself.

“Just give me some warning when you’re going to pop that thing. I don’t want to crack my head against mother rock.” As Estelle crawled forward, her breath coming loudly in the respirator, she discovered that the downslope was uncomfortably angled. What had first appeared as an insignificant grade now registered on the muscles of her forearms. The slope wasn’t enough for her to slide forward, but it was going to be a difficult squirm to climb back out. She paused, her belly resting on the entry hump of rock.

“You know, if a body was lying here,” she said, “it wouldn’t be real hard to push it the rest of the way in.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Linda replied.

“That’s about as far as you need to go,” Bob Torrez said, his voice boosted by her electronic headphones.

“Almost.” By the time her thighs rested on the entry, she could almost touch the rim of the vent with her fingers. The flow of air was a constant wash, cool enough that it felt wonderful against her sweat-tickled forehead. She edged the flashlight forward and switched it on, amplifying the unfocused illumination from the spotlight. The vent, really little more than a yawning crack in the limestone, narrowed quickly to just inches, a little passageway of sharp edges not much wider than a the wingspread of a small bat.

The top of her hardhat touched the rocks, and she flattened a bit more, spreading the bipod of her arms, wincing as the rocks dug into her elbows and forearms. The sheriff mumbled something, but Estelle ignored him. In another eighteen inches, she’d squirmed in as far as she could, the roof sloping down to block her passage. Her face was within a foot of the vent, and she reminded herself that any bats snoozing in that protected spot might burst out past her in an explosion of little leathery wings. She had no room to startle without cracking into the rock.

The flashlight beam showed nothing except limestone, the minerals in the rock twinkling through eons of dust. The vent angled down out of sight.

“Turn on the vacuum,” she said, and in a moment Linda did so, the hose jerking with the suction. Estelle worked it forward, shoving the nozzle as far into the vent as she could, feeling for the trickle of particles as they shot down the hose.

She moved slightly, repositioning the hose. Covering the stone surface a centimeter at a time, she toured with the flashlight beam, looking into each small cranny. It was the wink of bright brass that attracted her attention. Wedged into a tiny crevice to the left of the vent, its position hidden by a projection of rock but announced by a tiny swatch of gray splashed on the limestone, the mangled piece of metal had come to rest.

Pulse now pounding, she signaled that the vaccum be switched off.

“Go ahead and pull out the hose,” she said, and as it snaked past, she forced herself to breathe slowly, methodically. “Linda, you there?”

“Sure.”

“I need your camera.”

“If you come out, I can get in there.”

“No need. Just set it on auto and macro. And I’ll need the tissue for the flash.”

“You got it. Hang on just a second.” Linda’s hand didn’t leave her boot. “You all right?”

“Perfecto, ” Estelle said.

“What did you find?”

“The puzzle piece,” the undersheriff said.