Scavengers

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

When Estelle walked out of the ICU, Paulita Saenz pulled the cigarette back out of her purse as if she intended to use it as a weapon. She held it by the filter and jabbed it in Estelle’s direction. “When was the last time I saw you?” A large-boned, angular woman, she stood a head taller than the undersheriff. She would make a formidable bartender.

Estelle remembered Paulita’s husband, Monroy, as a short, stumpy man who had driven a dump truck for the county. A combination of alcohol and diabetes had killed him, leaving Paulita with a young son to raise. The lean, darkly handsome Eurelio apparently enjoyed the best genes from each parent.

Estelle extended her hand and waited while Paulita regarded it. Finally the woman shifted her grip on the cigarette to accept the greeting. “I think I was in the Taberna Azul with my Uncle Reuben ten or fifteen years ago, Mrs. Saenz,” Estelle said. Paulita’s eyes narrowed as she ran through her own mental calculations.

“And not since then,” Paulita said with just a hint of recrimination.

“No. Not since then.”

“Reuben’s been gone for five years now.”

Surprised that the woman should have Reuben Fuentes’ memory on such fresh recall, Estelle wondered what the relationship between the old man and the Saenz family might have been. She remembered the tavern as a dark, musty, cool place, and could visualize little more. Over the years, sheriff’s deputies had responded to the inevitable bar fights at the taberna, but Estelle had never had occasion to go. In fact, it had been fully twenty-one years before when, as an eighteen-year-old, Estelle Reyes had stepped into the tavern and searched the dark corners until she had found Reuben. She had no recollection of the purpose of the errand, or what had happened after that.

Whatever Reuben’s relationship to the Saenz family had been, beyond that of a casual customer at the bar, no doubt it was as evanescent as Estelle’s own relationship with the ancient Reuben Fuentes, a man who was actually her mother’s uncle…and thus her own adoptive great-uncle.

“Yes, ma’am. Reuben passed away in 1996,” Estelle said.

“And your mother, she’s living with you now, isn’t she?” Paulita asked with just a light shade of triumph. The tendrils of information from her bartender’s grapevine were impressive.

“Yes, she is.”

“He’s a good-looking man.” The non sequitur caught Estelle by surprise until she turned and saw that Paulita was looking through the glass partitions of the ICU. Dr. Francis was shaking his head while Sadie McC appeared to be questioning something from the clipboard chart. Paulita didn’t wait for confirmation. Instead she turned abruptly and walked to the waiting room, saying over her shoulder, “I heard that you’re the sheriff now. That’s what they were telling me.”

Estelle followed her into the room and chose one of the corner chairs. “Bob Torrez is sheriff, Mrs. Saenz.” She saw the furrow on the woman’s forehead deepen, perhaps perplexed to learn that her source of information was faulty. To the general public, the distinction between sheriff and deputy was often fuzzy at best. “Do you feel comfortable talking here, or would you like to go somewhere else?”

“It doesn’t matter where we talk,” Mrs. Saenz said, and her tone took an edge. “I want to know why my son is in jail. And I want to know why he didn’t call me.” She rummaged in her purse, found a lighter, and despite the numerous signs throughout the hospital admonishing to the contrary, lit the cigarette.

“Have you been to the Sheriff’s Office yet, Mrs. Saenz?”

“They told me you might be down here.”

“They didn’t allow you to see Eurelio?”

Paulita rolled the cigarette this way and that, watching the embers burn and shed. When she spoke, her voice sank to a whisper. “He didn’t want to see me.”

“There may have been a misunderstanding, Mrs. Saenz. With the fire at the Pope place, we’re terribly shorthanded at the moment. If the dispatch deputy was by himself, he wouldn’t have had the time to arrange a meeting with your son for you.”

“My son didn’t call me,” Paulita said, in no mood to discuss fires or someone else’s misfortune. “His girlfriend came and told me.”

“That would be Ms. Benevidez?”

Paulita nodded. “And she didn’t know why Eurelio had been taken off to jail. She said it didn’t make any sense at all. They were drinking a few beers, that’s all. Having a nice drive in that old truck…”

Estelle indicated one of the vinyl-covered chairs, and Paulita Saenz sat down. She reached out, folded down the corner of the cover of one of the news magazines on the coffee table in front of her, and ripped it off. With practiced skill, she folded the slip of paper into a small dish. She tapped the ash off her cigarette and placed the makeshift receptacle on the table. “So maybe you can tell me.”

Estelle settled back against the hard plastic of the chair. Even at a perfectly temperate seventy degrees, the air of the hospital felt close and warm. It would have been welcome just to let her eyes close and rest her head back against the wall. “Paulita, I’m sure you’re aware that we’re investigating an incident involving the death of two men. Their bodies were found out on the prairie, north of Maria.”

“Everybody’s heard about that. Eurelio had nothing to do with that.”

“I hope not.”

Paulita frowned again, looking hard at the undersheriff. She prided herself on reading the faces of her customers at the Taberna Azul but this young woman sat quietly, hands folded in her lap, so calm, so serene, so controlled. Estelle Reyes-Guzman could have been sitting at the table in the back of the taberna, those same hands holding four aces with a mounded pot, and she would have given away nothing.

Paulita opened her mouth to say something but stopped at the sound of footsteps in the hallway. They weren’t the almost inaudible padding of a nurse’s soft shoes, or the shuffle of a custodian guiding a dust mop, but were heavy and rapid.

Deputy Tom Pasquale appeared in the doorway. “Hey,” he said by way of greeting and rested his hand on the doorjamb. He’d shed his firefighting gear and slipped into jeans and a T-shirt, incongruous with the black Sheriff’s Department coat. “Mrs. Saenz, how are you?” Paulita let a nod suffice. Estelle saw the deputy’s eyes quickly inventory the woman, from the lit cigarette to the outlines of things in the pockets of her own bulky coat. “Did you need me for anything?” the deputy asked, and Estelle realized that she was so tired she didn’t really know the answer. The clock across the hall had ticked to 4:01 AM.

“I don’t think so, Tom. We’re going to have to regroup after everybody gets some rest. The sheriff will be back, and we can see where we stand.”

Pasquale nodded, still regarding Paulita Saenz.

“I appreciate your checking,” Estelle said. “I think Mrs. Saenz and I are going to go on over to the county building and see her son for a few minutes.”

“You’re the one who arrested him,” Paulita said to Pasquale, not bothering to add the “and it’s all your fault” that her tone so clearly implied.

“Yes, ma’am,” Tom Pasquale said.

“He had nothing to do with those two men.”

Pasquale nodded, but said nothing.

“Do you know why he doesn’t want to talk to me?”

“Not a clue,” the deputy said. “Maybe he’s afraid you’re going to whup on him some.” He smiled engagingly, but Paulita was in no mood to share the humor. Her lips pressed into a thin line.

“Maybe that’s what I ought to do,” she said.

“Mrs. Saenz, let’s go over to the office,” Estelle said. “Maybe we can straighten out a few things with Eurelio.”

“Jackie’s on the road,” Tom Pasquale said as Estelle pushed herself to her feet. Jackie Taber was one of the few deputies who didn’t have a volunteer firefighter’s rig hanging at the fire house. “She said she’d stay sort of central until everything quiets down.”

“That’s fine.” She turned to Paulita Saenz. “Let me poke my head in and check on mi mamá one more time before I leave. I’ll meet you right at the office by the dispatcher’s desk in just a few minutes. Then we’ll talk to Eurelio.”

Paulita crushed out the cigarette. She gathered the makeshift ashtray and crumpling it carefully into a tight ball. “Now you-” She started to say, and stopped. Her face softened and she extended her free hand toward Estelle. “Teresa…she’s in here?” She motioned with her head toward the ICU beyond the wall of the waiting room. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“She’ll be fine,” Estelle said. That wasn’t the informative answer that Paulita obviously expected. Estelle touched the woman’s waiting hand. “I’ll just be a few minutes.”

Tom Pasquale stepped out of the doorway to let her pass, and she squeezed his arm quickly. “Thank you.” Her lips formed the silent words, and Tom nodded. “Did you get a chance to look at the information that the sheriff sent?”

“Haven’t had a chance,” Tom said. “I was thinkin’ of doing that right now. How’s Mrs. Pope, by the way?”

Estelle shook her head. “One in a million, maybe.” The deputy grimaced. He watched Paulita Saenz as the woman made her way down the polished tile of the hallway.

“You’re all right with her?”

“She’s fine,” Estelle replied.

“Apparently she was rip-roaring when she came into the office. Brent made the mistake of telling her where you might be. I chewed his ass for that.”

“That’s all right. She’s a mom, you know. Moms go off the deep end now and then.”

Tom Pasquale waved a hand in salute as Francis Guzman opened the door to the ICU and held it, obviously waiting for Estelle. “She’s going to be all right?” the deputy asked. “I didn’t know your mother was here.”

“She’ll be fine,” Estelle said. “I’ll be at the office in a few minutes. You might hold Paulita’s hand for a while until I get there so she doesn’t have the chance to work herself up again.”

“She’ll pass out from the smell,” Pasquale said, looking down at himself. “I need a shower.”

“Not just you,” Estelle laughed.

Other than the soft tick and hiss of machinery that ministered to Eleanor Pope, the ICU was silent. Standing at the foot of the hospital bed where Teresa Reyes slept peacefully, Estelle slipped her arm around her husband’s waist and leaned her head against the heavy muscle of his upper arm.

“I’m not ready for this,” Estelle whispered.

“Don’t get yourself all worked up. She’s doing a lot better,” Francis said. “She really is. I want to make a change or two in her meds, and that’s going to make a difference. She’ll be back to her old self in a day or two.”

Estelle sighed. “She’s going to just keep getting older, isn’t she?”

Francis laughed, quick to bite off the sound. He squeezed the base of Estelle’s neck affectionately. “Good thing we aren’t, huh.”

“I feel about a hundred and six,” Estelle said.

“But you’re not going straight home to bed, are you?”

She ducked her head in resignation. “Sort of straight.”

“Circuitously straight,” Francis said, and swept the privacy curtain closed as they stepped away from the bed.

“And you don’t think there’s a chance that we’ll be able to talk to Mrs. Pope later today?”

Francis paused with his hand on the door to the hallway. “Unlikely, querida. Unlikely today. Or any day. That would be my bet. Her system just isn’t tough enough to take that kind of insult.” He shrugged. “Of course, she may surprise us all. There’s always that.”

“I’m too tired for surprises,” Estelle said. “But I’ll take that one.”