Double Prey

Chapter Twenty-seven

Sheriff Robert Torrez held the plastic evidence bag so that full sun caught it, his eyebrows knit with concentration as he turned the bag this way and that.

“We don’t know if this is the bullet that passed through the victim’s skull,” he said.

“No, we don’t.” Estelle hunched her shoulders. “But it’s consistent. ” To even consider that it might not be the projectile in question was unthinkable, but she forced herself to remain patient and explore doubts.

“We need more’n that,” Torrez said.

“Yes, we do. But it’s a start.”

“Let’s assume it is the one,” Bill Gastner agreed. He took the bag handed to him by the sheriff and then knelt beside the tarp. He held the little bag close to the frontal bone of the skull. “It had just enough energy to do that, because that exit hole isn’t very big.”

“You’re right about that,” Torrez said. “It ain’t like a magnum shockwave blew off his face. The exit is about the size of a nickel.”

Gastner held the bag up for the gathered officers to see. “The hollow point is mushroomed pretty thoroughly, but it isn’t broken up.”

“So it wasn’t movin’ too fast by the time it busted out of his head.

“So…that’s consistent. ” Torrez observed. “And for it to end up where it did, he would have had to be in the process of entering that little cave. At least lying on the slope of rock so he could see in.”

“Why would he have been doing that?” Torrez asked. “What’s he lookin’ at? The dyin’ cat?”

“I don’t know. That, or curiosity at the air flow, maybe.”

“If the same gun killed both the cat and this guy,” Bill Gastner mused, “that’s an interesting scenario. Really interesting.”

“Damn confusing, is what it is,” the sheriff muttered. “Cat ended up over by the packrat nest, not in that cave.”

“That’s where it ended up,” Estelle offered. “But it could have crawled into the deepest corner of the cave and died. Our victim went in after it, maybe. When he was convinced that it was dead, he hauled it out. Or somebody did.”

“Would you do that, Madame Spelunker?” Gastner asked. “Intrepid explorer of the earth’s bowels?”

“No, I wouldn’t. But a hunter would, right?” She looked at Torrez.

“Sure,” he said. “No big deal. Jaguar’s a hell of a trophy. He sure as hell wouldn’t just leave it.”

“But he’d sure have to be convinced that it was dead, dead, dead,” Gastner said. “Imagine being trapped in that tiny space with 180 pounds of wounded cat?”

“Freddy would have done it if he’d thought that the cat was dead.”

“Sure.”

“Except when that cat died, Freddy Romero was about ten years old,” Gastner laughed.

“Someone like Freddy, I mean,” Estelle added. “An intrepid explorer, an avid hunter. Lots of folks would.” She reached out for the evidence bag. “We need a ballistics match. And if there’s some DNA to be had from this, we need that, too. Brain or bone tissue. Something. With the bullet wedged up into the rocks, it’s unlikely that the rodents got to it.”

Torrez stood up, took a deep breath, and hitched up his belt. “All right, listen. We got a whole shitload of stuff that needs to be packed up and taken to the state lab.” He pointed at Tony Abeyta. “You head that up, all right? You’re due a little vacation time.”

Abeyta nodded with resignation, perhaps not seeing fourteen hours on the highway as his vacation of choice.

“While we’re packing that up,” Estelle said, holding up the bagged bullet that Torrez handed to her, “I want Mears to do a comparison with the other slug. That won’t disturb any residue that might be on it. We might get lucky.”

“That’s right. Look,” Torrez said, “there’s sure as hell enough dental work here that we might get a match. There’s for sure enough DNA. But match to who? That’s where we’re stuck.” He twisted at the waist, slowly and with care, as if something might snap. He looked down the mesa slope at Miles Waddell. “It’s his property. That’s where we start.”

“He wants to know as badly as we do,” Gastner said. “He hasn’t budged from there all day. And his cell phone batteries must be busted flat by now.”

Miles Waddell’s body language gave no clue as to what he wanted. Estelle saw that the rancher still sat on the tailgate, boots swinging inches off the ground, bracing himself with his hands locked on the edge of the tailgate, arms stiff and shoulders hunched, studying the sparse grass and dirt below his feet.

“Let me talk with him,” the undersheriff said. “Join me, sir?” Bill Gastner nodded and drained the last bit of coffee from his Styrofoam cup.

“Sure, why not. I’ve had about all the fun I can stand.”

Waddell turned his head without changing position on the tailgate, watching them approach. His eyes narrowed as if his patience was running thin.

“Yup,” he said.

Estelle looked at him quizzically, but Gastner beat her to the question.

“’Yup’ what?” the older man asked.

“This sure as hell isn’t how I’d planned to spend my day,” Waddell said, “I was going to go out and pop some prairie dogs, but I got distracted by this convention.” Estelle leaned against the truck, arms resting on the edge of the bed liner. She looked at the older model rifle in the rear window rifle rack, a light caliber gun with powerful scope. It had ridden in pickup trucks for so many years that she could see the wear polished into the wooden fore-end and butt stock.

“That’s how it happens,” Gastner said. “We get distracted.”

“You guys about to wrap things up?”

“A long, long way from it,” Gastner said. “And that’s how that goes, too.”

“Sir,” Estelle said, “when did you actually acquire this property?”

“Up there on the mesa side, you mean? Hell, it’s been…what, Bill? Five years or so? Maybe six.” He looked down at the ground. “I bought it from Herb, you know. He got it from George Payton…well, George’s estate, anyway. You remember how that mess went.”

“Did you know about that little cave?”

“Nope. Like I told you earlier, I don’t go hikin’ much. If I do much of that, somebody’s going to find my carcass out in the boonies. If I can’t drive there, I don’t go there. That’s about as simple as I can make it. And no, young lady…number one, if I’d known there was a cave up there, and number two, if I’d known there was a corpse, I would have called you folks myself. Trust me on that.”

“Are you going to be able to help us with this?” Gastner asked.

“What’s that mean, Bill?”

“Well,” the livestock inspector shrugged. “We find a pile of bones, we’re kinda curious about who they belong to.”

“I can make a pretty good guess about who they belong to,” Waddell said, and if his response surprised Bill Gastner, the older man’s face didn’t show it. Estelle had the thought that Padrino had been careful to keep his own counsel while the site recovery was in progress, since he had voiced no theories, offered no creative opinions.

“And who might that be?” Gastner asked.

“Look,” and Waddell eased himself down off the tailgate and wiped off the seat of his jeans. “The minute I saw that belt and holster…” He picked up the cell phone that had been lying on the tailgate. “Is this going to get me in Dutch?”

“Couldn’t tell you,” Gastner said easily, nodding at the phone. “If you want to call a lawyer, that’s your right. It might not be a bad idea. This is your property, and right now, it’s your corpse.” He smiled engagingly.

“Sir, if you have information that is important to this investigation, we need to know it,” Estelle said.

Waddell ducked his head and held up both hands in resignation. “You remember Eddie Johns?”

Again, Bill Gastner’s poker face didn’t register any surprise. “Sure enough,” he said. The revelation meant considerably less to Estelle, who vaguely remembered a short, powerfully built man, a former cop, real estate entrepreneur of questionable talent, and a one-time associate of the rancher who now sat on the tailgate, looking uncomfortable.

“Bet you dollars to donuts that’s who you got up there,” Waddell said.

“Well, now. I haven’t seen him around in a long time,” Gastner said, and Waddell barked a short laugh.

“Maybe now you know why.”