Scavengers

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The telephone caught Estelle in midstride between refrigerator and cooler. For just a moment, she looked at the instrument as if she could make it vanish before it triggered the answering machine on the fifth ring. She set the bottles of chilled juice down on the counter and picked up the receiver.

“Guzman.”

“Estelle, Tony Abeyta.” The deputy sounded as if he were holding his breath when he talked.

“What’s up, Tony?”

“On December twenty-seventh of last year, Mountain Trails Sporting Goods in Las Cruces sold a forty-four magnum Marlin Model eighteen ninety-four lever action rifle to Eurelio Saenz.”

The silence on the line hung heavy for a few heartbeats. The deputy anticipated Estelle’s question. “The salesman remembers mounting the scope and bore-sighting the rifle for Saenz at the time. He remembers that Eurelio had an old scope with him, but that it was much too big for the rifle. He ended up buying another one that he liked better…the whole package. Rifle, scope, rings, and mounts.”

“Uh,” Estelle groaned. “I was hoping that wouldn’t be the case.” She sighed. “Have you passed word to Jackie yet?”

“No, ma’am. I just got off the phone with Cruces. Jackie’s out on the prairie somewhere, sifting sand.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d get in contact with her first thing. She needs to know what you’ve found out. You have a record of the serial number and such?”

“Mountain Trails faxed me a copy of the ATF form. It’s interesting, though. The salesman I talked to this morning remembers Saenz. He was absolutely sure it wasn’t a straw sale.”

“How would he know?”

“He says that Saenz came in by himself, and looked at several rifles before he decided on the Marlin. In fact, he came close to buying another weapon entirely. The salesman said that Saenz spent more than two hours making up his mind and then selecting the right scope and all. It wasn’t as if he was buying the stuff for someone else. He made some interesting choices.”

Estelle leaned against the kitchen counter. “In what way?”

“The salesman remembers Saenz talking a lot about hunting javelina in rugged country. He didn’t want a high-powered scope. What he was looking for was something with relatively low magnification, but a wide field of view.”

“And he found it?”

“Apparently so.” She heard Abeyta shuffling papers. “He bought a little two-and-a-half power jobbie with a reticule that shotgun shooters like. It’s got kind of a circle thing in the middle with crosshairs that lets you swing on a moving target.”

“A man running for his life across the open prairie certainly qualifies as that,” Estelle said.

“I guess it would,” the deputy said. “And by the way, the salesman didn’t remember one way or the other if the hammer extender was attached or not. He did say that if the store mounts the scope for the customer, they put the extender on as a matter of course.”

“But he doesn’t remember for sure in this case?”

“No, ma’am. He wouldn’t swear to it. He says ‘probably’ is as close as he can come.”

“Did he happen to remember if Eurelio purchased ammunition at the same time?”

“He didn’t buy any. The salesman threw in a twenty-round box as part of the deal. Winchester Western, two forty grain jacketed hollow points. Sarge says that’s the most common round.”

“That doesn’t give us much,” Estelle said. “He would have shot that up in the first five minutes when he went out to try the rifle.”

“His prints weren’t on the shell casing from the truck, by the way,” Abeyta said.

“I’m not surprised. Those were a different brand, as well.”

“Sergeant Mears got a start on the prints before he was called away to the fire, but he’s pretty sure. He was going to get back on it later today.”

“You’re at the office now?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Have Gayle put out a bulletin for Eurelio Saenz. You heard he skipped to Mexico?”

“With interesting circumstances is what I’m told.”

“That’s right. And you might as well add Isidro and Benny Madrid’s names to that, too. They’re in on this somehow. Their little heads just show up too often. Anyway, make sure she gets that out ASAP. And then get ahold of Jackie. She needs to know what you found out, and she needs to get a search warrant from Judge Hobart. I’ll be back from Mexico later this afternoon, and we’ll see what we can find. If there’s anyone we can spring free to keep an eye on the taberna in the meantime, we need to do that. You might pull Collins for that. Tell him that he’s just to keep surveillance…nothing else. No confrontations, no nothing. I don’t want him walking into the middle of something.”

“No problem. On the bulletin for Saenz, you want A and D?”

Estelle sighed. “My intuition tells me that Eurelio is neither armed nor dangerous, but I wouldn’t bet on the folks he might be with. So yes…I guess he’s earned it,” she said.

“That’s what the sheriff said. And by the way, he’s already requested the warrant. He wants to watch the place in the meantime, so we can use Collins for something else.”

“That’ll work. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Estelle said.

“No problem,” Abeyta said again. Estelle disconnected and stood in the kitchen with the phone in her hand, the lighted buttons inviting use. After a minute, she took a deep breath and hung up. Irma Sedillos had taken the two boys on an expedition up the arroyo behind Twelfth Street, and the house was quiet. Her mother had traded her rocker for the living room sofa, and she napped peacefully, curled under the old afghan, the oxygen tubes trailing down to the canister on the floor.

Estelle retreated gratefully to the bedroom. Despite the earlier shower, she could still smell the various aromas of the long night. For what seemed like an hour she stood in the shower, the hot spray pounding the aches out of her body and the steam clearing her sinuses.

She stepped out of the bathroom, wrapped in a large white towel, to find her husband stretched out on the bed, eyes closed.

“Your mother’s got the right idea,” he said. “Smartest one in the bunch.”

“I didn’t hear you come in, querido.”

He opened one eye. “Any good news?”

“Depends on the definition of good, oso,” Estelle replied.

Francis lifted a hand toward her, and Estelle moved to the edge of the bed. “No new corpses would be a start,” he said. He slipped his hand through the folds of the towel and rested his hand on the flat of her belly.

She turned slightly toward his hand and sat down on the edge of the bed as Francis made room. “We’re pretty worried about Eurelio Saenz,” she said. “He’s skipped across the border with a couple of men, probably the Madrid brothers-and maybe not voluntarily, either.”

“That could be the last you’ll see of him.”

Estelle didn’t reply, but she knew that Francis was probably right. He reached up and ran a finger under a tangle of damp hair, frowning.

“I wish there was more we could have done for Eleanor Pope,” he said. “But her system just decided that enough was enough. Not twenty minutes after you and your mother left.”

Estelle stretched out beside her husband. She put both hands over her face, her palms muffling her words. “Do you happen to know what kind of insurance she had?”

Francis laughed. “Ah, no.” He lifted up one of her hands and looked deeply into her right eye. “That’s an official-type question, isn’t it?”

“Sure.”

“One of the hospital bookies can tell you,” he said. “I didn’t give it a thought.”

“Um.”

“But you don’t need to do that right this minute,” he added. “It can wait.”

“And you need a shower,” she said.

“You were in there about a week. Did you leave some hot water?”

“Probably not. You should have come in.” She rolled over to snuggle against him. “We could warm some up, couldn’t we?”

He grinned. “That would be nice.”