Prolonged Exposure

Chapter 8

The sunshine that morning had been a false promise, a tantalizing little blast of morning light squeezed through a thin rent in the clouds just above the horizon. The rest of the sky was dull lead, with the bottoms of the clouds torn and fragmented by winds aloft. It was going to be a cold, miserable day, the kind that duck hunters love, where the targets show up nice and black against the uniform background of the sky, with no sunshine in the shooters’ eyes.

We took my Blazer so that Estelle could use a child’s seat for Francis. Camille cheerfully sat in back with the kid, no doubt thankful that she didn’t have to stare out through a cop car’s backseat security grill.

Radio traffic was intense by Posadas County standards, and dispatcher Gayle Sedillos was handling the various agencies effortlessly. Search and Rescue operations were generally a mess anyway, since no one except the National Guard got enough practice, and everyone wanted to be lead dog. In this particular SAR episode, Sheriff Martin Holman was the commander-his first stab at that kind of interagency organization.

Just before the landfill north of town, Estelle turned west on State Highway 78. A mile farther and the chain-link fence along the airport property grew out of the red sandstone. Enough junk plastered itself to the fencing that it could be mistaken for the landfill.

A Huey chopper in sober New Mexico National Guard colors waited at the end of the runway. The Huey was probably older than the kid who was flying it, but the young pilot was having a good time despite the seriousness of his mission. He held the aging helicopter in a hover a foot off the ground, rock-steady, its wide blades thumping the air so hard, it shook the Blazer.

A second Huey whumped out from the apron in front of one of the hangars, nose slightly down as it followed the taxiway toward its waiting buddy.

“The heavy guns,” I said, pointing. Just in front of the hangar, a third chopper crouched, its blades just beginning to spool into motion. A couple of generations separated it from the two fat old Hueys. I didn’t recognize the model, but it had enough gear hanging off and poking out to make it as menacing as anything out of Hollywood.

“Lookit,” a small voice said, and I turned, to see young Francis straining against his belts, eyes huge as he stared at the show of airpower. I glanced over at Estelle and wondered if she was thinking the same thing. If I were three years old, lost and scared, and that thing arrived over the trees, blowing down a rain of dead leaves, sticks, nuts, even squirrels, I sure as hell would dig a hole and stick my head in, hoping that such a nasty monster would go away.

With the airport safely tucked behind us, we had a thousand yards of peace and quiet. And then Estelle said, “Here comes Robert.” She was looking in the rearview mirror, and even as I twisted in my seat, one of the Posadas County patrol cars shot past us so fast, I could feel its wake.

I recognized the hulk of Sgt. Robert Torrez’s shoulders, and our radio barked twice as he keyed the mike.

“Three oh eight,” the small voice behind me said soberly.

“How do you know that?” Camille asked. She was sitting skewed sideways, her hand resting lightly on the kid’s left shoulder. I wondered the same thing. The three-inch squad car numbers were displayed high on the back fenders. If Torrez had been parked and I’d had a pair of binoculars, I could have read them, too.

“’Cause,” Francis said. “Ese es quien es.”

“In English, hijo,” Estelle said, but in English or Spanish, that was all the kid wanted to say on the subject. “He knows the car numbers of all the deputies,” Estelle added. “Valuable information every three-year-old needs to know.”

In another two miles, we turned north on Forest Road 26, a road that was wide, smooth crushed stone for the first hundred yards and then narrowed to ruts, rocks, and dust for its climb up into Oria National Forest.

There wasn’t much forest in the Oria. Why the U.S. Forest Service wanted the acreage, I had never figured out. A sparse fringe of trees softened the jagged prow of Cat Mesa north of Posadas, mostly junipers and slow-growing pinons. There wasn’t a tree worth either managing or cutting for anything other than firewood within a hundred miles.

I didn’t know any rancher foolish enough to want that country for his livestock, although once in a while cattle did wander up into the jagged escarpments that locals called “the Pipes.”

With a commanding view of prairie, mesas, and dry riverbeds all the way south to Mexico, the rim of Cat Mesa was a favorite camping spot, despite the twenty miles of kidney abuse it took to get there. We took our share of that abuse as the road snaked up the face of the mesa, then turned sharply west, cutting through a meadow with several abandoned water-catchment structures. As we started to turn toward the edge of the mesa, we heard helicopters in the distance, and our radio came to life.

“Three ten, three oh eight.”

I reached forward with a grunt and pulled the mike off the dashboard clip. “Three ten.”

“ETA, three ten?”

I glanced at my watch. “About four minutes.”

“Three oh one requests that you meet him at the cattle guard.”

I acknowledged, and almost as soon as I slid the mike back in the clip, I caught a glimpse of white through the trees. Sheriff Holman was parked just off the road, next to the fence. Estelle idled the Blazer to a halt without pulling off the road, just over the steel rails of the cattle guard.

Holman stepped out of the county unit and leaned on my door. “Brought the whole family, eh?” he said, and nodded at Camille. “He’s got you running around already?”

My daughter shrugged good-naturedly and remained silent. He looked at Francis and then at Estelle. “I kinda wondered what was up when Torrez said you were bringing your son out here.”

Estelle nodded, but she didn’t offer an explanation. Holman raised an eyebrow. “Nasty weather and a nasty place,” he said, and I half-expected him to add, with an official rap of his class ring on the door, “Keep the kid in the car.”

If the good sheriff had spent the early hours of the morning in the nasty weather combing every cranny of the nasty place, he hadn’t collected any scuff marks. Holman was dressed in his mail-order outdoorsman’s clothes, with neat waffle-soled boots, expensive chino trousers, and a down vest over a conservative wool shirt.

“Any news?” I asked.

“Nah.” Holman wrinkled his face in disgust and pushed the brim of his Stetson up off the bridge of his nose. “The Guard has a high-tech unit in this morning that’s shooting with infrared. They claim that if there’s anything living on the hill, they’ll find it. Or anything that hasn’t been dead more than a day or so.”

“Really. It would have been nice if they’d brought that up the first day.”

Holman glanced at me, skeptical. “I guess we have to get desperate first. And maybe the thing works like they say it does. One of the troopers was telling me that they can trace anything that’s been dead as much as a week, but I don’t believe that.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Technology is amazing. But I’d rather find him alive on the first day than be impressed that we could find him dead a week later.”

“It’s not for lack of trying, Bill.” Holman waved a hand in the general direction of the mesa edge. “Bernie Tafoya has his dogs up there, but they haven’t found anything. In fact, we’ve had dogs since day one, and not a trace.”

“How many troops are searching the area?”

“About two hundred, give or take. All the vehicles are parked just down the road a little bit, off in one of the pastures.” He leaned down and looked across at Estelle. “We’ve been pretty successful at keeping people out of the original campsite. It’s cordoned off, and I’ve got somebody from the auxiliary there all the time.”

“What about the youngster’s family?” Estelle asked.

“That’s what I wanted to talk with you about, off the air,” Holman said, and I nodded with satisfaction. During his first years as sheriff, he was so enamored with the damn radio that he forgot that half of the county was listening at any given time. Now he’d swung the other way, so tongue-tied that he preferred to relay messages in person whenever he got the chance.

“Both the mother and her boyfriend are up at the site. The mother-”

“That’s Tiffany Cole?” I asked.

Holman nodded. “And her boyfriend is a guy named Andy Browers. I don’t know him, but Torrez says he works for the electric company. And I gotta tell you, Ms. Cole is a basketcase. I don’t think she’s gotten any sleep in the last forty-eight hours. One of the nurses who works with Search and Rescue is trying to keep her quiet, so maybe she’ll drift off for a while.”

“And the boyfriend?”

“He’s about to drop himself, but he wants to be out there, looking under every rock. I put Deputy Pasquale with him. That should keep him busy.”

“What about the boy’s real father? Have we heard from him?”

Holman shook his head. “We know the father’s name is Paul Cole. He and the mother have been divorced for almost three years-since shortly after the child was born.”

“And where is he?”

“He’s a coach up in the northern part of the state somewhere. Bernalillo, I think. Or maybe southern Colorado. I’m not sure.” He ducked his head and looked across the truck at Estelle. “You checked him out, didn’t you?”

Estelle nodded. “He coaches in Bernalillo.”

“Have you talked with him?” I asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Holman said. “You think we should?”

I shrugged. “Depends on what happens in the next day or so, I guess. Someone should have called him in any case.”

“I guess I assumed Tiffany Cole would take care of that,” Holman said.

“She might,” I said. “When she can think straight.”

“Well, anyway, Sergeant Torrez said you were headed up this way, and that he thought you had Francisco with you.” He nodded toward the sober-faced Francis. Holman’s accent made the little boy’s name sound like someone from Cleveland running the California city’s name through his nose. “I wanted to intercept you before you wheeled in. If mama catches sight of him, she’s going to go ballistic.”

“Then do us a favor,” Estelle said. “Take Mrs. Cole down to the SAR headquarters and get her involved looking at maps or something. Or sleeping. We’ll be at the campsite for about fifteen minutes.”

“Doing what?” Holman frowned.

“I’m not quite sure yet,” Estelle replied.

“Not a return of Tom Sawyer, I hope,” the sheriff said, and when he saw the puzzled look on my face, he added, “Remember the missing marble? Wasn’t that what it was? A marble? A cat’s-eye?”

I looked askance at Holman, who pushed himself away from the Blazer’s door and straightened up. “See, now you should read some of the classics, Bill. Tom Sawyer and his buddies lose a marble, and Tom’s heard this old wives’ tale about how they should throw another one after it, saying, ‘Brother, go find your brother.’ The idea is that the second one will land next to the first, and you’ll find ’em both.”

“Did it work in the book?” I asked.

“I don’t remember,” Holman said.

“It took three tries,” Camille said quietly from the back.

“We’re not sending Francis out to look for another three-year-old, Sheriff,” I said, and he nodded. He still glanced at Estelle again, ever hopeful that she’d tell him what was on her mind.