Privileged to Kill

11

Maria Elena Ibarra had lived inside the old truck for an indeterminate period of time. That’s what an hour of meticulous searching told us. We didn’t know exactly when she’d last been there, or for how long she’d been a full-time resident of one of the village’s more dismal corners.

After Estelle took hair samples from the bedding, she bagged the quilt and blanket. The material wasn’t fresh from the cleaners, but it was tolerable.

“She’d have to curl up like a cocker spaniel to fit on that bedding,” I muttered, but Estelle looked almost relieved.

“At least she wasn’t sharing the cot with the drunk,” she said. “Better to curl up in any corner than to put up with that.”

“Let’s hope so,” I said, realizing as I said it that Maria was long past caring.

Where the girl had attended to the other of life’s functions that most of us performed with some privacy was another question to which there were no obvious answers.

Hung from the aluminum frame of the driver’s-side window were changes of clothing, kid-sized. The two wire clothes hangers seemed like an unexpected luxury. None of the clothing was freshly laundered, but it would pass casual inspection. “She favored blue,” I said and unhooked the hangers and handed two blouses to Estelle. “What’s the label say?”

Estelle ruffled the collar and cocked her head. “One is from Price World, and that could be anywhere in the Southwest.” She opened the other collar. “This one was made in Mexico. What about the slacks?” I unhooked the single pair of dark blue slacks from the window track and handed them to Estelle. “Mexican,” she said after a glance.

“And that’s it,” I said. Estelle handed the sacked collection to me to hold and then bent over and retrieved a small plastic bag that had been shoved down beside the driver’s seat. She opened it and scanned the contents.

“Not quite all. There are maybe three pairs of socks and a change or two of underwear here.”

I added that to the collection while Estelle contorted herself downward in the door well so she could see under the driver’s seat. “Here we are,” she said with interest, and then added, “huh.”

“Do you want another evidence bag?”

“Yes.” After a minute she turned slightly to one side so she could swing her arm free. I held out the clean evidence bag and into it she dropped a chunk of fried cherry pie, the kind sold in any convenience store anywhere in the country. The wrapper was neatly folded over the open end.

“I don’t know of a teenager alive who only eats half of something like that and stashes the rest for later,” I said.

“Maybe she didn’t know for sure when her next meal was coming,” Estelle said quietly. “And maybe no one told her she could get a free lunch at school.”

“The only food Orosco believed in was alcohol,” I said.

She nodded and pointed at the piece of pie with her lips, like an Indian. “The date on the wrapper is current. Maybe somebody will remember her buying it.” She shifted position and grunted. “This was her private spot.” She handed me a twenty-four-count bottle of aspirin with less than a dozen tablets remaining.

“Pie and aspirin?” I said.

“Ah, there’s some more stuff here.” And one by one, the contents of Maria Ibarra’s stash went into the evidence bag. One nail file, nearly new. Half a card of bobby pins. One small tube of toothpaste, hardly squeezed. That made sense, since we didn’t find a toothbrush. A plastic cup showed traces in the bottom of what might have been cola. The price bar-code label was still on the underside.

“I think that’s it, sir,” Estelle said, and she took another minute to probe under the broken seat’s springs with her flashlight. I leaned back against the bulkhead and shook my head.

“A talented little girl,” I said.

“Sir?”

“To survive like this, even for a couple weeks. What kept her from just running?”

“Nowhere to run to.” Estelle pushed herself upright and looked askance at me. I made no effort to move, and she held out a hand for the bag. “Are you all right, sir?”

“Yes,” I said. I stepped past her, down to the sliding door. “Just disgusted. Hell, this is not much more than a good shout from my place across the way.” I waved a hand toward the south. “I’ve got more room in my smallest closet than there was in this kid’s master bedroom.”

She reached out a hand and touched me on the arm, one of those feather-light grace notes that Estelle used instead of speech. “I’ll get my camera,” she said, and she walked back toward the patrol car. I grunted and followed, head down.

“I’ll sit in the car and try to get my thoughts together while you finish up,” I said. But, by the time Estelle had made Kodak happy with her last roll of film, I hadn’t made much progress adding anything up.

Deputy Eddie Mitchell arrived less than a minute after we called him, and he and I strung a yellow crime scene ribbon around the pathetic truck and the immediate grounds. When we were ready to leave, Estelle started toward the passenger side of the patrol car. I waved her away. I didn’t want to drive. That would mean I would have to pay attention to the world. I plopped down on the passenger seat and gazed out the windshield.

We drove out of the mobile home park, and my eyes shifted to the right-side rearview mirror. By tipping my head a bit, I could see the tangle of trees behind us and glimpse a faint hint of yellow here and there.

“Sir?”

I realized with a start that Estelle had been talking to me. She turned the patrol car onto Grande Avenue and we headed toward downtown Posadas.

“Do you have any ideas?” she said again and I pulled myself out of whatever reverie I’d been in.

“No.” I knew that I sounded curt, but that was it. I had nothing. “I’ve got lots of questions, that’s all.”

“It should be simple enough finding out how the girl came to be linked up with Orosco. Maybe he really is her uncle. When he dries out a little, we’ll get some answers.”

“Stranger things have happened,” I said, and Estelle shot a quick glance at me.

“No, I’m serious, sir,” she said. “There’s a possibility that her family in Mexico just sent her up to live with him, maybe assuming that he was well-off or some such.”

“Or some such,” I said. “You think they just packed her in the back of a truck under a load of watermelons and told the driver to dump her off when he got to the Posadas overpass?”

“Remember last year?”

“Yes, I do remember last year. I remember it very well.” And anyone would have who’d smelled the stench when the young state police officer and I had pried the back door open on a van that he’d stopped just across from the motel on the east edge of town. I’d been sitting in the motel’s café at the time, drinking iced tea. I saw the stop and knew damn well what was coming, even if the rookie trooper didn’t.

By the time the van was unloaded, there had been nineteen confused, sweating, frightened aliens lined up on the shoulder of the interstate awaiting the friendly escort of the U.S. Border Patrol. Three more inside the van awaited the coroner, because heatstroke had killed them deader than desert sand.

Estelle turned onto the street in front of Posadas General, and as she guided the car into a slot in staff parking, I saw Sheriff Martin Holman’s brown Buick parked in one of the doctors’ spots.

I turned in the seat and rested a hand on the dashboard. “Tell you what,” I said, and then stopped. With one eyebrow cocked, Estelle waited for me to finish the thought. “Why don’t you drop me off at home.”

“Sir?”

“At home. There are a couple of things I’d like to take care of, and sure as hell Manny Orosco is going to wait. Even if your husband pumps him dry, he’s not going to be coherent for quite a while.” I looked across at the Buick. “And I don’t feel like talking to Marty right now. I’m not ready to answer stupid questions.” I turned and grinned at Estelle. “I feel too stupid myself at the moment.”

She pulled the patrol car in reverse without a word, and in five minutes we turned onto Guadalupe Terrace.

My five acres were overgrown with gigantic cottonwoods and brush, shielding my sprawling adobe house from neighbors and noise. I had always thought of the place as a perfect hideaway for an old insomniac like myself. I did my best thinking either there or in a patrol car, and this time the patrol car wasn’t working.

Estelle stopped the car in my driveway. “Is there anything in particular you want me to do beyond…?”

“Beyond what you’re already going to do? No. I’ll get in touch with you after lunch. By then Francis should have something definite for us about what killed the girl. Maybe we can ream some sense out of all this.” Estelle didn’t argue with me and she didn’t pry. I got out and she backed the patrol car out of the driveway. I couldn’t help noticing that she waited until I’d stepped through the front door before driving away.

I closed the heavy, carved wooden door behind me and let the silence and coolness seep in. Diving back in the burrow was all I could manage at the moment. I couldn’t remember ever being so angry that I couldn’t think straight.

I took off my Stetson, closed my eyes, and rubbed a hand on the stubby bristle of gray hair on the top of my head. Against one foyer wall, its legs resting on elegant Mexican tile, was an old hand-carved wooden bench that had been made years before by Estelle’s great-uncle. Folded neatly on one end was an inexpensive Zapotec rug. I used the rug as a place to sit when I pulled on my boots by the door and from time to time in the winter as a seat cover in my Blazer.

As I tossed my hat on the bench beside it, I reflected that the rug was about twice as big as Maria Ibarra’s sleeping pad.