Prolonged Exposure

Chapter 37

Most of that night, Jim Bergin’s Piper Archer moaned in high, lazy circles over Posadas County, spotting headlights. State police took care of the interstate-the interchange at Posadas was blocked, and any vehicle coming on or going off was searched.

We concentrated on two possibilities. First was the notion that they might have ditched the mammoth RV for a more sensible vehicle. If that was the case, then officers manning roadblocks needed to check every vehicle-and they did, with mind-numbing regularity.

The second option was that they might keep the RV, knowing its intrinsic worth on the black market if they ever successfully reached Mexico-or, for that matter, a dozen different chop shops scattered across the Southwest that might specialize in such monsters.

“See, the problem is,” Martin Holman said, “the average person just doesn’t look very closely.” We were trying to do just that, me driving and Martin looking closely. “Remember that Ditch Witch that the telephone company had stolen right off a job site last year? Machine, trailer, the whole works. Never found it.” He turned to find the large handheld spotlight. “You see some guys working out in the field with a backhoe, or Ditch Witch, or jackhammer, whatever, you don’t stop and walk out and ask for proof of ownership.”

“How true,” I murmured.

“We assume that the people using the equipment own the equipment. It’s that simple. Besides, we can assume they had a choice.”

“A choice of what?”

“They could have taken Browers’s truck in the first place and left the RV behind. That they didn’t do that indicates to me that they want that RV. It’s worth a lot of money in the right places. His old pickup truck isn’t.”

I idled 310 up to the fence of the Consolidated Mining boneyard. High up on the mesa side overlooking the village, the abandoned mine and equipment yard rivaled the landfill for Posadas County’s shot of ugly. The gate was heavy steel and chain link, with barbed wire on top. The lock was a length of inch chain with a massive lock inside a plate-steel lock cover. Everything was in place.

Nevertheless, Holman buzzed down his window and swung the beam of the portable spotlight across the vast acreage of mining detritus. Nothing that could have been a disguised RV stood out.

“Turn down the dump road so we can check that tin building,” he said. “My bet is that they just drove out of the county and went on their way. They had darn near two hours head start, with no blocks, nothing. By the time we knew something was up, they could have been halfway to the crossing at Douglas-Nogales.”

He switched off the light and glanced at the dashboard clock. “And from the time the boy first went missing to when we knew the RV was involved was almost three hours, and that is enough time to get across.”

“We’re just going to have to trust that the federales got word to Naranjo and he has his side locked up,” I said. “There are far fewer roads down there than up here.”

“Unless you count the dirt two-tracks. Stop.”

I did so, and Holman scanned the tin storage building. One end was open, and we could see the jumble of fifty-five-gallon drums.

We turned around and headed back to County Road 43 and the winding macadam that led up to the abandoned quarry. I had no expectations of seeing a thirty-foot-long buslike RV parked under the pinons. Hell, there were few pinons tall enough for it to slip under in the first place. But our only hope was to leave no spot in the county unaccounted for, and to that end, every available car and person was working through the night. With the airplane overhead in constant communication, if someone moved with headlights on, we’d know it.

And with that came the nagging realization that Andy Browers, with his experience working for the Electric Co-op, knew every small nook and cranny in the county.

Shortly before midnight, Deputy Tom Pasquale had put together the blood-evidence profile, and it fit Agent Costace’s theory. None of the blood in the motel room, except for a small amount immediately associated with the body, belonged to Roberto Madrid.

The blood around the rest of the room, in the bathroom, on the curtain, outside in the parking lot-all the blood evidence at the motel-matched the blood found in the back of Andy Browers’s truck and in the bedroom of his home.

Costace and Pasquale-and young Pasquale was in seventh heaven just associating with the taciturn FBI agent-shagged an Electric Co-op official out of a comfortable evening at home and rifled through records. Andy Browers’s blood type was listed there as O-negative. The blood evidence in the motel room, his truck, and his bedroom was AB-positive.

Francis Guzman, Jr.’s blood type was A-negative, and that afforded a temporary shot of relief.

Detective Richard Steinberg routed a Bernalillo school official out of his comfortable evening at home and they rifled through school records. Coach Cole’s blood type, on file with the school nurse after a recent school-sponsored blood drive, was AB-positive.

Two of the missing party had no blood type on file. We had no record of Tiffany Cole’s type, nor of little Cody’s. But AB-positive was common enough. Millions of people shared that blood type. A DNA comparison would establish that the blood specimen either did or did not belong to Paul Cole, the only one of the three whose type was on file. But a DNA check wasn’t going to happen in the middle of the night, or even by the next day.

I had decided that, based on the evidence of the fight in the motel room, it was Paul Cole’s blood. That made sense to me. A distant second choice was Tiffany’s. It made no sense that the injury would have been suffered by Cody, either from the placement of the blood splatters or from the amount.

The gravel turnout that led to the shore of the quarry pond was empty. There was no place to hide an RV there, no matter how the driver tried to nestle the thing under the trees.

As I turned around, I saw moisture on the windshield. “No,” I said. “We don’t need this now.” The clouds were glowering, and if the vagaries of New Mexico’s weather held true to form, we could expect anything-rain, snow, wind, and mud, the works.

The cellular phone between us chirped, and Holman snatched it up.

“Holman.” For the next few seconds, he just listened, and then he shrugged. “Whatever he thinks is best. He’s the boss. Check back with me when you’re on the ground.”

He switched off and sighed. “Bergin says the weather is worse in the southwestern corner of the county, and it’s moving this way.”

“He’s landing?”

“Right. They’ve seen absolutely nothing in the past half hour except lights on the interstate, and once in awhile a local vehicle.”

I parked 310 facing downhill. We could see the lights of Posadas below us, and beyond that, a dark inky void that stretched to the San Cristobal Mountains and, beyond that, Mexico.

For a long minute, I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. “We’ve got enough people out that every major road is covered in or out. There’s no two-track or cattle path that goes anywhere without surfacing eventually on one of the main roads. The border’s closed. I don’t know what else we can do.”

“I think they’re long gone,” Holman said.

“We don’t know that,” I said. “No matter who’s calling the shots, whether it’s Browers or Cole, he doesn’t know how much of a head start he had. We’ve stayed off the radios as much as possible. They can’t know for sure what we’re doing. That’s our only advantage right now.”

Holman sniffed. “I’m not sure we know, either. There’s got to be something other than sitting and waiting.”

“We keep looking,” I said, and pulled the car into gear.