Prolonged Exposure

Chapter 2

The plane touched down in El Paso to two surprises. The first was the weather. During the flight from Flint, Michigan, I had eagerly anticipated seeing the vast, sun-swept panorama of the Southwest. Despite her best efforts, the month that I had spent recuperating at my daughter’s home seemed a lifetime, to a point where I was sure that I had grown mold cultures under my armpits. At least once during that sojourn in Michigan, the thought had crossed my mind that I might not be returning anywhere, ever.

As the jet entered Texas airspace, I could see a low, thick cloud layer that spread northward from the Gulf of Mexico, blanketing El Paso and muting the wonderful dichotomy between earth and sky to a solid, dismal gray. There was no break in the cloud layer to the west over New Mexico, either, and I sighed.

The jet sank into the stuff and I turned to glance at Camille to see if she had noticed the meteorological insult outside the plane. She was reading a book about the former prime minister of England. If she had any interest at all about her upcoming visit to Posadas, the little bleached New Mexican village where she’d grown up, that interest hadn’t bubbled to the surface yet. Without missing a syllable in her reading, she lifted a hand and patted my arm in consolation.

“Wonderful,” I muttered just as the airliner touched down. The tires threw up great clouds of spray, and I watched through the scratched plexiglas as rain pounded the jet’s aluminum skin and ran back to fountain off the trailing edges of the flaps.

Of course the Southwest needed rain. It always did. That didn’t mean I appreciated a homecoming greeted by a frog strangler, with no edges of the cloud on the horizon.

Camille closed the book, twisted slightly in her seat, and squinted out the window. “Isn’t that a wonderful sight,” she said, sounding as if she meant it. “Maybe you’ll get some real snow this winter if this moisture continues.”

I started to say that I couldn’t think of a single reason why I would want to see snow, real or otherwise, but instead, I just grunted something that could have been mistaken for agreement. The airliner lumbered in toward the terminal, and I found myself looking for familiar faces behind the concourse’s tinted glass.

The walk into the building was welcome exercise after three hours sitting in a seat far too small for my frame. The rain was loud on the thin skin of the concourse’s accordion walkway, and I noticed that Camille and I were hardly setting the pace as passengers deplaned and hustled into the terminal. People flowed around us like water rolling by a rock caught in the middle of a stream. I would never have suspected that so many souls had an interest in reaching El Paso on a bleak Sunday in mid-November.

“Now if our luggage didn’t go to Terre Haute, we’ll be all set,” I said. “And someone’s supposed to be here to meet us.” I had expected to see Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s face in the crowd. That was my excuse for not immediately recognizing Posadas County sheriff’s deputy Tom Pasquale’s husky six-foot-two-inch frame.

“Welcome back, sir,” he said. I stopped in my tracks. He thrust out a hand, and, knowing what was coming, I tried not to flinch as the crushing handshake threatened to dust my arthritic knuckles. “I’m your ride,” he added.

I nodded and glanced over his shoulder, thinking that perhaps he hadn’t traveled from Posadas to El Paso alone. He had. “Thanks,” I said. “This is my daughter Camille.” She favored the darkly handsome Pasquale with a radiant smile.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said, making the comment sound like an innocent compliment. She then had the good sense to drop the discussion of personal resumes right there. During my stay in Michigan, our conversations had occasionally touched on some of the Sheriff’s Department personnel. I’d told her some of the high points of Pasquale’s career, beginning first when he was a part-timer with the village’s three-man department.

He’d caused more than his share of messes, but young Pasquale had determination, I gave him that. He had tried for three years to get on with the Sheriff’s Department, and the road had been a rough one-made so as much by me as by anyone.

He’d finally made it-he’d graduated from the state law-enforcement academy and had been with our department for four months as a full-time officer. He still operated at a high state of eagerness. He hadn’t yet been lulled into the bored stupor that made rural law enforcement so dangerous.

Despite his drive and ambition, he had no interest in working for a larger metropolitan department. Posadas had been his home since birth, and I had no doubt that he would work there until he was old and doddering.

“Estelle didn’t come?” I asked, ansd started to trudge down the corridor toward the baggage-claim area.

Pasquale shook his head. “They’ve got a manhunt going on right now, and she couldn’t break away.” He said it almost as an afterthought. He was trying not to walk sideways, looking at Camille and me-mostly at Camille. I don’t know what he had expected. Perhaps he had thought my eldest daughter would be a small, feminine version of me. That would have been a scary vision.

I stopped in the middle of the corridor and looked up at him. “A manhunt? For whom?”

“Ah,” Pasquale said, shaking his head in dismissal. “A kid got himself lost up on Cat Mesa. Apparently he walked away from a hunting camp. They’ll find him.”

“How old is he?”

“I think they said he was three.”

“Three? You’re kidding. A local youngster?” I glanced outside at the glowering clouds. November in New Mexico could be lethal, even for experienced hikers who thought they were prepared.

I could feel pressure on my arm from Camille, doing her gentle best to shag me toward our bags. She was one of those rare people who could walk, talk, and even chew gum at the same time.

Pasquale nodded. “His mother’s a woman named Tiffany Cole.”

“That doesn’t ring a bell.”

“She moved here not too long ago, they were saying. Maybe a couple of years. Other than that, I don’t know anything about her, except I don’t see how she could just let a toddler go off like that.”

“We don’t know the circumstances,” I said. “Where were they camped?”

“Up on top, just north of the Pipes.” The Pipes were a series of jagged near-vertical rock outcroppings that stood in line like pieces of a giant limestone pipe organ. The local rock climbers liked to bruise themselves against the formations, struggling to the top, where there was room for two people to stand if they stayed really cozy.

I frowned. “A three year-old out there by himself is going to be tough.”

“Well, there’s no place for a kid to go up there in that country,” Pasquale said with easy confidence, and then added again, “We’ll find him.”

“And they were members of a hunting party?”

Pasquale nodded. “That’s probably what she was doing,” he said. “Although with her, it might be hard to tell. She was camped with her boyfriend. We’re not sure if anyone else was there or not.”

“You know this woman?”

Pasquale glanced at me, a little uneasy. “No. I just meant that she didn’t seem like the hunting type when I talked to her yesterday.”

“I see,” I said. “Maybe just more like a party, then.” I pointed ahead at the sign for the baggage claim. I had checked one battered old leather suitcase, as much a museum piece as practical. Camille didn’t believe in traveling light, and we waited until her mammoth blue garment bag and two hard-shell suitcases thumped onto the belt.

Pasquale picked up everything but the smallest suitcase as if they all were filled with helium. Camille took the remaining bag, and I followed along toward the rain, feeling useless.

He’d parked the county car in an “Official Use Only” slot, just a few steps outside the electric doors. I frowned again, and Camille caught the expression and assumed I was irritated at the weather. I didn’t bother to explain to her. No doubt Tom Pasquale was only doing what he’d been told. The unmarked sedan wouldn’t be much help in a mountain-terrain search, but Pasquale would be. With his long legs and stamina, he could cover acres of rugged ground without missing a beat.

Sheriff Martin Holman should have known better than to waste his manpower running a taxi service for me.

Interstate 10 was only minutes from the airport, and as soon as we were on the highway heading north toward New Mexico, Pasquale drove so fast in the left-hand lane that even the trucks looked as if they were crawling. I didn’t complain about the speed, and Camille had returned to life with the prime minister. If she heard my gentle sigh when we flashed into New Mexico, she didn’t comment. The ride west from Las Cruces was even quicker.

The village of Posadas was a mile off the interstate, and tourists didn’t stop often. There wasn’t much more to see standing still in the middle of town than there was thundering by on the highway at seventy-five miles an hour.

A mile before the single exit, a large billboard announced the Posadas Inn, American-owned, family rates, and travel association-approved. Beyond that, a single sign with small lettering and a tiny arrow pointed to the off-ramp. That wasn’t much of a greeting, but it was enough for me.

Deputy Pasquale braked hard for the tight curve of the ramp, and if I had twisted my neck, I could have seen the grove of trees that marked my property south of the highway. No doubt my house was a mess, thanks to the bastards who’d ransacked it.

At first, I had assumed that a gang of neighborhood kids had been responsible, tempted after they’d learned I was away from home. But Estelle Reyes-Guzman had said that my filing cabinet had been taken, and that didn’t sound like the work of children.

We pulled to a stop at the intersection below the interstate overpass, and Tom Pasquale started to turn left, toward Escondido Lane and Guadalupe Terrace. I held up a hand.

“Why don’t you swing by the office first for a few minutes,” I said, nodding off to the right.

For someone who didn’t appear to be paying attention, Camille had finely honed hearing. “He needs to go home before anything else, Officer,” my daughter said quietly, taking her self-appointed role as my nurse seriously.

I’d enjoyed a twenty-year career in the Marines Corps, retiring as a gunnery sergeant. After that, I’d been in civilian law enforcement for a quarter of a century, with fifteen years spent as undersheriff of Posadas County. I was as used to giving orders as most people were to breathing.

Tom Pasquale glanced over at me, hesitated for two heartbeats, and turned left.