Prolonged Exposure

Chapter 38

At two minutes after six on Thursday morning, I was dozing in my old leather office chair, my boots up on the desk, hands folded on my belly, and my head slumped on my chest. I’m sure that with two days’ growth of beard, I looked like some old hobo off the road.

A few minutes earlier, I had elected not to go home, despite Camille’s entreaties. For sure, I knew that her “Dad, you’re not doing anyone any good staying here” was probably true. But I felt closer to where something might happen, and that was important to me.

Dr. Francis Guzman appeared in the doorway of my office, moving noiselessly. I don’t know how long he’d been standing there, but I jarred awake and looked up.

“How are you doing?” he asked, his voice husky.

“You making morning rounds?” I said, trying for some humor on a humorless morning. I glanced at my watch.

“I’m on the way,” he said. “Estelle went back over to the hospital for a little while to be with her mother. Then she said she’s coming here.”

I nodded. “You haven’t gotten much rest, either,” I said.

He sauntered over to my desk, hands trust in his pockets.

“Nothing?”

“No word, Francis. We made a little bit of progress a couple of hours ago.” I tried another smile. “There’s nothing like the middle of the night to put the screws on people. A Bernalillo detective who’s been working with us talked to Paul Cole’s new wife. She’s co-operating.” I leaned back and hooked my hands behind my head. My arms felt like lead.

“She and Paul Cole are so far in debt that she’s petrified. They had an argument last week when he broke the news to her about his so-called hunting trip to Wyoming. She says they can’t afford gas to drive to the grocery store, let alone something like that. They’ve paid their mortgage payment with a credit card the past several months. She really believed that Wyoming was where he was going.”

While I was talking, Francis Guzman pulled a blood-pressure cuff out of the pocket of his lab coat and advanced on my left arm.

He prompted me when I stopped talking. “And then?”

“She works at an animal clinic, and of course he’s a teacher and head coach, so their combined incomes are pretty solid. But she admitted to detectives that they’ve been living on their credit cards, just paying the interest. And now she’s afraid Cole’s going to get himself in hot water with the school and lose his job.” I pushed up my left sleeve and held it while Francis positioned the cuff. “The most interesting thing she told detectives is that for as long as she’s known Paul Cole, his ex-wife has been pestering him to take custody of little Cody.”

He looked sharply at me. “No kidding?” He patted the Velcro and pumped the bulb, slipping the earpieces of the stethoscope into his ears. I waited until he had finished.

“You need some rest,” he said. “Meds?”

“Meds are home, where they belong,” I said.

He grinned and shook his head. “A couple of them are important,” he said. “We need to keep your pressure somewhere below the boiling point. Are you still taking the heparin?”

“I have no idea what’s what,” I said. “I took a couple of aspirin earlier. I know what they are.”

Francis Guzman listened to my heart and other places where blood still gurgled, then raised one eyebrow at me.

“You ought to be home,” he repeated. “Was the aspirin for pain, or discomfort?”

“I’ve been catnapping here. And the coffeepot was empty, so I had a couple of aspirin instead.” Francis shook his head, but I waved off another complaint. “There are more important things to do just now than worry about my shitload of medications, Francis.”

He wrapped up the cuff and slid it back in his pocket. “I’ll give Camille a call and tell her which ones to express deliver to you, padrino.” He stared down at my telephone for a moment, as if expecting it to ring. “So Tiffany Cole wanted her ex-husband to take custody of their child. That’s interesting.”

“According to wife number two, or three, or whatever she is, Tiffany Cole has her own share of troubles. She blames them all on the child. And after looking at her house earlier, I can well agree. There’s not a lot of love evident there.”

“Do you believe what the FBI agent said earlier? About this being part of a deal to-what, sell children?”

I saw no point in beating around the bush with the young physician. “I think it’s simpler than that. If it was some kind of ring, or cult, there’d be more children involved. We’d have heard of more cases. I think someone was willing to pay for a child as a quick means of adoption. South of the border, it would never be traced, or if it did arouse official interest, a little money under the table would take care of it. I think Tiffany Cole, screw loose or not, changed her mind at the last minute. There was a slipup somehow, and she ended up with too much time to think about what she was doing.”

“And tried to substitute my son.”

“Yep.”

“What if that’s not what happened?”

I got up and faced Francis Guzman. I reached up and put a hand on each one of the good doctor’s shoulders. “Francis, we’re all guessing. You know that. Until something breaks, all we can do is dig, dig, dig. Every time we open a little channel of information, we make some progress. We don’t know for sure what happened, but we’re starting to get a little glimmer of the ‘why.’ And that’s a plus on our side.”

“The weather’s getting worse.”

“Yes, I know it is.” We stood and looked at each other helplessly.

“I’ll be at the hospital if you…” Whatever Francis was going to say trailed off as Ernie Wheeler, dark circles under his eyes, thrust open the door.

“Sir, telephone for you on two. It’s Herb Torrance.”

“It’s who?”

“Herb Torrance? Out on Fourteen.”

“Tell him I’ll call him back,” I said. I knew the old rancher well, having bailed his wild-haired son out of more than one jam.

Wheeler persisted. “Sir, he says he’s got Francis.”

I spun around and grabbed the phone. The damn thing slipped out of my grasp and crashed to the desk.

“Herb, you there?” I bellowed when I managed to fumble the receiver to my ear.

“Sheriff, I need me some help out here.” My heart nearly sailed out of my chest. “My son found this little boy.”

“Is he all right?”

“No, he’s busted up pretty bad. He was tryin’ to catch him, see, and he slipped and fell.”

“Who fell? Your son or the boy?” Francis’s face went pale. “Herb, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“I’m sayin’ my son found that little boy we was all lookin’ for up on the mesa.”

“Cody Cole, you mean.”

“I guess so, ’cept I thought the Cole youngster was a…white kid, you know. I thought I read he was blond. My son says this one looks like maybe some wetbacks lost track of him.”

“Oh shit,” I muttered. “Is the boy all right?”

“I guess he’s fine. My son ain’t. I took him over to the house. We’re going to have to take him to town.”

“Where’s the boy?”

“He’s out there on the side of the ledge, up behind our west stock tank. That’s where my son seen him. He was trying to get him down, and the boy wouldn’t pay him no attention. I told the boy just to leave him be. I didn’t want someone blamin’ us if he got hurt.”

“We’ll be right there.”

“Just come to the front gate. I’ll take you back there.”

I hung up. “What?” Francis said, his eyes wide.

“It sounds like they found your son,” I said, and then grinned. “They can’t catch him.”