Scavengers

CHAPTER NINE

Estelle looked at the vast mess in the middle of the kitchen linoleum with satisfaction. The original four colors of the modeling clay bricks were fused into one amorphous brown hue through long sessions of mangling, and were now sculpted, carved, and twisted into shapes that would have made Dalí’s head spin.

Five-year-old Francisco built upward, squishing the clay into columns that supported odd creatures who lurked atop their pedestals. Carlos let his creations fan outward, preferring the horizontal line. The clay smashed into roadways along which strange vehicles gouged their way toward destinations unknown. The two youngsters chattered constantly to their father as they built. Francis presided over the vast conglomeration, lying on his side on the floor, his pager mercifully silent.

In her favorite spot in the north corner of the living room, engulfed by the wings of the overstuffed chair, Estelle’s mother dozed, her hands folded in her lap. To the right of her chair within easy reach, her incongruously high-tech aluminum walker waited. On the end table to her left was a small brown thing Francisco had fashioned from the clay. Looking like a prairie dog who had tried to stand up on his hind legs to whistle and then had begun to melt in the sun, the creature’s two eyes guarded the old woman while she slept.

Irma Sedillos, convinced that each member of the family was finally on the mend, had gone home after dinner, first to tend to her cats and then to spend time with her patient boyfriend, Manny Garcia. Manny, a math teacher and three-sport middle and high school coach, could count the number of his free evenings each week on one finger-and Monday was it.

Estelle sat at the kitchen table with a yellow legal pad in front of her. Over her right shoulder on the wall behind her were the three ancient retablos of los Tres Santos from whom the tiny village had taken its name, and that Estelle’s mother had refused to leave unattended in Mexico. Los Santos Mateo, Ignacio, and Patricio, each carved in cottonwood that had cracked and polished over the decades, watched in silence as Estelle sketched on the pad.

As if the two sips of awful tea at Lucy’s had destroyed the last vestiges of pathogens in her system, she felt a deep sense of contentment and well-being. Part of that contentment was being able to glance up and see every member of her inner universe at once-the boys and her husband playing on the kitchen floor, her mother napping peacefully across the living room. Her contentment, she knew, also was familiar to people addicted to jigsaw puzzles when they first broke the cellophane wrapping from around a new challenge and dumped the pieces out on the table.

The first five pieces of the undersheriff’s puzzle lay in front of her. In neat black ink, she had drawn the transmission line support tower, the service two-track, Juan Doe’s grave, the shovel, and far to the left edge of the paper, the site where the first victim, John Doe, had been found. In a tiny bracket, she had written the measured distance between the two victims-1,740 yards, give or take a detour or two around bushes and cacti. John Doe had managed to race just shy of a mile across the dark prairie before his pursuer had caught him.

Jackie Taber, Tom Pasquale, and Linda Real had walked along the faint trail across the prairie that afternoon. Jackie had taken the walking wheel, clicking off an accurate measurement. Other than the yardage, their hike had revealed nothing. But it was more than assumption that linked the two victims, and Estelle frowned, staring at the schematic diagram. One set of smudged prints from the shovel handle had presented three points of positive comparison with those taken from John Doe, enough to establish reasonable suspicion. A defense attorney would laugh five points out of court, but it was a start.

Perrone had said that it was likely that the two men had died at roughly the same time. Likely. Roughly. How long did it take to run a mile across the prairie, driven by panic?

The two men were dressed in casual clothing, equally innocuous in style. They were more or less the same age, although each lacked any form of identification.

Despite a lack of firm ballistic evidence, it was a logical assumption that somehow the two men had also shared a similar fate. It was easy to assume that they had, for a brief terrifying moment, both stared down the same gun barrel.

Estelle drew a neat compass rose in the upper right-hand corner of the diagram, and Francis happened to glance up at her in time to see the faint trace of a smile touch her lips.

“You making progress?” he asked.

“No.”

“Too much distraction?”

“No, that’s not it,” she said, and sighed. “I just have movement problems, that’s all.” She rested the pen on the pad. “Jackie walked up the service road along the transmission line to the north, well beyond the grave site. There’s no indication whether the vehicle-the vehicle we think had to be there-came in from the south or the north.”

“I didn’t think you had hard evidence of a vehicle in the first place,” Francis said. “Other than the tracks on the prairie, and there’s no way to tell about those.”

“These are tracks,” Carlos said, and used his fingernail to trace two lines in a section of clay that swerved around a smooth depression reminiscent of a dry cattle tank.

Estelle laughed. “What do your children do?” she said, mimicking an invisible audience. “Oh, they mold crime scenes out of clay.” She pushed her chair back and reached for the telephone that had rested all evening, uncharacteristically silent. As her hand touched the instrument, it rang-and Estelle jerked back as if stung.

“A little stressed, are we?” Francis chuckled. He handed her the pen that had launched from the table at the same time as she lifted the receiver. “And I’m not home.”

“Guzman residence,” she said.

“Estelle, this is Jackie. I’m sorry to bother you, but I thought you’d want to know.”

“It’s no bother,” Estelle replied. “What do I want to know?”

“Dr. Perrone did some preliminary tests for us on the shovel before we packed it up. The blood is human, and doesn’t match either victim.” Estelle’s eyes widened as she stared at the diagram in front of her. “Estelle?” Jackie said after a moment.

“I’m here.”

“John Doe was AB negative. The victim in the grave was O positive.”

“And the blood on the shovel?”

“AB positive.”

“Perrone is sure?” Estelle knew the question was unnecessary.

“I think so. He’s going to let the lab double-check his results. But he’s willing to bet.”

“And the hair?”

“Human. No match with either victim, although he’s less sure about that. Eyeballed through a microscope, it’s easy to make a mistake. He did a DNA quickie with markers, and didn’t get a match. It’s dark brown, almost black. And curly. No record of any treatment for a head injury at any of the area hospitals, though.”

“We should be so lucky. Any other injuries on either victim other than the obvious? Did Perrone say?”

“Nothing at all. Not a bruise, not a cut.”

“Are you at the office now?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did Linda take a facial of Juan?”

“She’s printing it now. I’ll run copies soon as I can.”

“Good. We might get lucky. I’ll be down in a couple of minutes,” Estelle said. “Good work.”

She hung up, letting the phone settle gently, eyes already back in the diagram, her mind out on the prairie.

“What did they find?” Francis asked. His wife didn’t answer, and he pushed himself to a sitting position, careful not to kick any of the creations spreading around him. He rose and leaned on the table. “Something unexpected?”

Estelle looked up quickly, as if surprised to see him. With a little sigh of apology, her hand strayed to cover his. “Sorry. I was off in orbit somewhere.”

“What did they find?”

“The blood and hair on the shovel are both human. And don’t match either victim.” She stood up. “Some interesting possibilities with that.”

“That supports what you were thinking earlier, then. You have a third party walking around somewhere, holding a bandage to his head.”

“Maybe.”

“And now you have a set of tentative prints that link-which one is it? John Doe to the shovel? Maybe it’s just like you said. He dug, he swung, he ran.”

“And he died,” Estelle murmured.

“So was it just the three of them, or was there somebody else who just stood around with his thumb in his ear, watching all this go down?”

“That’s an interesting image, querido,” Estelle said. She drew a small, neat question mark on the diagram halfway between the shovel and the grave. “We don’t know.” She looked up at her husband. “At least not yet.”

A series of muffled thumps came from the living room, and Estelle’s mother appeared, maneuvering the walker. She stopped, blinked at them, and then poked Carlos in the rump with one of the aluminum walker legs.

“Hace rato que deberías estar durmiendo, chinches,” she said. Her voice was small and raspy, but still carried the melody of her native tongue. “Y yo también.”

“Abuela is right, bedbugs,” Francis said in English. “Past bedtime, past time to get this mess cleaned up.” He watched with the assessing eye of an attending physician as the tiny woman started down the hall, gnarled knuckles wrapped around the cushions of the walker.

“Good night, Mamá,” Estelle called.

“Debes cuidarte más, mija,” she added without looking back. “Manaña, voy a ir a casa. Puedes ser que vaga.” She didn’t wait for an answer, didn’t offer any explanation of how she was going to go to her home in Mexico the next day if Estelle didn’t accept the invitation to go along as chauffeur.

Taking a day to relax and stroll the property in Tres Santos, a day to spend with her mother without interruptions or nagging puzzles, was appealing…and impossible.

“I don’t think tomorrow’s the day to go back to Mexico, Mamá,” Estelle said more to herself than anyone. She stood, staring at the sheet of paper. Her finger traced an invisible line southward. No other direction made sense.