Twice Buried

2

Dr. Emerson Clark looked at the stairway and stopped, one hand on each side of the door jamb.

“Oh boy,” he muttered. Both Deputy Robert Torrez and I reached out a hand to steady him but he waved us off. “I’m not that goddamned old,” he said. He was, but we didn’t argue. He went down the stairs one at a time, both hands on the rough wood of the floor joists. I followed. Bob Torrez waited at the head of the stairs, probing through the cobwebs with his flashlight.

“She used this place all these years and never had a damn lightbulb installed,” Clark said. He reached the bottom and regarded the tiny, almost doll-like remains of Anna Hocking. “What time did you get here?”

“Shortly after eleven.”

Clark used one hand against the dirt cellar wall for support as he lowered himself to his knees. He felt for a pulse, waited several seconds, then took one of Anna Hocking’s hands in his. He gently flexed the fingers, then just knelt quietly for a minute.

“She called you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Was she hearing spooks again?”

“I never asked Gayle. I assumed so.”

“What time did she call…not that it’s any of my business.”

“Shortly after nine.”

Clark lifted an eyebrow but otherwise said nothing. He reached out and stroked the thin wisps of hair away from Anna Hocking’s neck. His examination was brief. His own fingers were arthritic and beginning to hook, but they were still strong and sure. I’d had confidence in him nineteen years before when he’d taken my oldest son’s knee apart and put it back together, and I had no doubts now.

“I’d break into a million pieces too if I were 86 years old and took a tumble like that,” he said. “She probably hooked a toe on something. Or maybe a stroke. Autopsy will show.”

“There’s a loose corner of linoleum right here by the first step,” Deputy Torrez said. He still hadn’t come down into the basement.

“Well, maybe that’s it,” Clark said. “I can imagine her hitting the wall there with her head on the way down. That would account for the little scrape on her forehead.” He looked at me, expectant.

I held out a hand and this time Clark accepted the help. He came to his feet with a grunt. He turned his own light this way and that, looking around the cellar. “I can think of more comforting places to check out,” he said.

“By the time she got down here, it probably didn’t matter much,” I said.

“There’s that,” Clark said. He looked down at the corpse again. “I’ve known her for close to thirty years, Bill. Remember when she broke her hip at school that night?” I nodded. “Bruce Wayland and I worked on her for almost four hours. Hell of a hip job.”

He shuffled to the stairway and looked up at Bob Torrez. “You afraid of the dark, son?”

“No, sir,” Torrez said. “And sheriff, Linda Rael wants to know if she can come in.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said and Clark laughed a dry, short cackle. “She’s outside?”

Torrez looked just a trifle uncomfortable. “She rode down with me. She was in the office when you called.”

“Then let her sit in the car. This is a private home, for God’s sake. Tell the ambulance crew we’ll be ready for them as soon as we take a set of pictures.” I followed Clark up the stairs and then went outside to fetch the camera kit from the trunk of the car. I glanced down the driveway and saw Linda Rael’s dark figure in Torrez’s car. The dome light was on. Who knew what she was reading. Probably the deputy’s patrol log.

It wasn’t until Torrez had mentioned her name that I remembered the letter of permission our county attorney had drawn up so that the young reporter could ride with the deputies on patrol.

None of us knew what Linda and her boss Jim Maestas were after, if anything. She could ride with us until we all retired for all I cared. Sheriff Martin Holman had different ideas, of course. He broke out in goosebumps at the very mention of the media sniffing for anything but the best public relations pieces…those bland, awful things that most county sheriffs released around the holidays.

As undersheriff, I was supposed to sign the letter of permission as well. I hadn’t yet, and as far as I knew the document was still buried under mounds of likewise worthless trash on my desk. It was probably right under the newest edition of the department budget-Holman wanted me to read that, too. I would rather have dropped a rock on my foot.

Linda saw me and didn’t waste time. It had been thirty years since I could have got out of a car that fast. The ambulance had parked behind Torrez’s car and its lights pulsed and bounced off the side of the house.

“Mr. Gastner,” Linda Rael called. I set the camera case on the trunk lid and waited. She was a cute kid-maybe twenty-four with a round, dark face framed by one of those old-fashioned pageboy haircuts. I’d read her articles in the Posadas Register during the past year or so and she was a competent writer. I’d never noticed her opinions creeping into the stories, even when she was covering one of the deadly county commission meetings. Anyone who could keep a straight face reporting on that nonsense had to have iron will.

“Good evening, Ms. Rael.”

“I was going to ask you if I could come inside.”

“What changed your mind?” I asked and she looked briefly confused, then smiled.

“I mean, can I come inside?”

I hefted the camera bag. “I don’t think so.”

“Is the woman dead?”

“Yes.” I started toward the back porch door.

“Sir,” Linda Rael persisted, and I stopped and turned to face her.

“Look, Linda. Mrs. Hocking was an old woman who lived alone because she chose to do so. She tripped and fell down a flight of stairs. Maybe she had a stroke. But there’s no foul play, no crime. It’s just an unattended death. The only dignity she has remaining is what we preserve. The public has no rights in there. And we haven’t notified any next of kin, so I’d rather that no one was in that house who doesn’t need to be.”

She didn’t argue after that sermon, bless her. Instead she nodded once and said, “I’ll wait in the car.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said, still surprised to be off the hook so easily. “Were you at the game earlier this evening, by the way?”

She nodded and opened the door of the patrol car. “I got some good shots…some of them were even of basketball.” She grinned. Glenn Archer would be at least as nervous as Sheriff Holman. The two of them were a matched pair-public relations paranoids of the first order.

Inside, the two EMT’s waited in the living room. “Give us five minutes,” I said and went back down in the cellar. I make no claim to be an ace photographer but I burned enough film to make sure I had what I wanted.

Bob Torrez held a flashlight for me while I focused each frame. A full roll of film later, I was satisfied.

In another five minutes the ambulance had left with Anna Hocking’s remains.

Upstairs, Torrez and I found what we needed on the first pass. The elderly woman’s address book was in the top drawer of an old desk in the living room.

“I’ll make a few calls,” I said, slipping the book into my shirt pocket. “And by the way, you were out here just last week, weren’t you?”

Torrez nodded. “She was hearing noises again, just like before.” Anna Hocking’s behavior in the past year had drifted toward the irrational as often as not. I had visited her a couple of times myself. All she had wanted was to talk, and when a deputy arrived, she’d have a few minutes of his time.

“I got raspberry that time.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Torrez shrugged. “The bribe for coming out for a couple minutes. She gave me a jar of raspberry jam.”

I looked at Torrez with amusement. He didn’t smile much, but should have. He was one of Posadas County’s most eligible bachelors-movie star handsome but so goddamned sober it was funny. I’d once asked him to ride the county float in the Fourth of July parade, pitching penny candy to the kids along the route. He’d been so straitlaced and forbidding that the kids almost wouldn’t run out for the goodies.

“Did she give you something every time you came out?”

Torrez’s voice was almost inaudible. “Yes, sir.”

“She did this with other deputies too?”

“Yes, sir.”

My eyes narrowed. “How come I never got anything?”

“I don’t know, sir. There’s plenty downstairs, though. I’m sure nobody would miss any.”

“Spare me,” I said. “The Berry Lady,” I added. “From now on, buy your own goddamned jam.” Torrez almost smiled. “And by the way, I haven’t signed the permission letter for Linda Rael to ride with you, so don’t get into any trouble before I get back to the office.”

“No, sir.”

We checked the rest of the house, turning off lights and making sure doors and windows were locked. I put the orange juice back in the refrigerator and for a minute stood there with the door open. The excitement had gone out of Anna Hocking’s diet, that was for sure. If I were ever sentenced to live on cottage cheese and fruit juices, I’d probably shoot myself. I shut the refrigerator door.

“Why did she leave the orange juice out?” I asked the deputy. He looked startled, as if he should have an answer.

“Maybe she just forgot it.”

“Most likely.” We went out on the back porch.

Torrez watched me lock the back door. He didn’t ask how I’d gotten in. “Are you making any progress out at Wayne’s?”

“I’ve got a match on one of the footprints,” Torrez said. I heard a little pride creep into his voice. Posadas was in the middle of an extended string of penny ante burglaries-all but one of them businesses. The latest hit had been Wayne Farm Supply, three miles southwest of the village on Route 56.

Sheriff Martin Holman had never let us forget where the last residential heist had been. In midsummer his house had burned to the ground. The thieves had thought that a dose of gasoline near the main fuse box would fool the arson investigators. For about five seconds, maybe. The messy fire had disguised the burglary until investigators had really started sifting the ashes. I’d been out of town and missed the show. But I heard about it for weeks when I returned.

Maybe the burglars weren’t so dumb. We hadn’t caught them yet. I nodded at Torrez. “Super. Show me when we get back.”

By the time I walked into my office, it was almost 1:00 A.M. Because it was a quiet winter night, only one deputy was scheduled for the early morning hours. Torrez and I didn’t get the chance for any more chitchat. A woman blubbering into the telephone prompted dispatcher Gayle Sedillos to send him out on the family dispute south of town in the Ranchero Trailer Park.

Why a family would dispute at one in the morning was one of life’s continuing mysteries. I supposed, knowing the family involved, that hubby had come home when the bars closed, his machismo buoyed by booze. There was no two-hour delay this time. Torrez was on the road while Gayle talked to the woman. Linda Rael rode with the deputy.

I put my feet up on my desk and leafed through Anna Hocking’s address book. Her writing, always in black ink, was fine and neat. I found an entry for Frank M. Hocking, 1127 Ventura Place, Bakersfield, California. There was a telephone number, and Mrs. Hocking’s son answered on the fifth ring.

I identified myself and broke the news of his mother’s death. He was not surprised and sounded more resigned than anything else. He asked for the name and number of a funeral home and I gave him a choice of two. He picked Teddy Salazar’s Family Mortuary. All in all, Frank and I wrapped up the remains of Anna Hocking’s long life efficiently and politely.

At 1:17 A.M., I left the office for home with a reminder for Gayle that I wanted to be called if anything serious cropped up. Torrez’s being the only cop on the road didn’t bother me. The reporter in the passenger seat did.

When I stretched out in bed, my eyelids felt like lead. Maybe I’d be able to catch some regular sleep after all. I sighed and rolled over, my thoughts drifting south of the border.

I had seven days before I left for the tiny village of Tres Santos in Mexico where my godson was to be christened. Estelle Reyes-Guzman and her husband Francis had named me padrino for the little wrinkled kid, an honor I couldn’t take lightly. Estelle had been my best deputy-and then she’d moved north when Francis took a position with the Public Health Service.

We kept in close touch-I was practically as much family to them as Estelle’s aging mother in Tres Santos or her infamous great-uncle Reuben in Posadas. I was looking forward to their visit south for the ceremony in old Mexico.

The pleasant mental excursion away from the terminal disease of law enforcement didn’t last long. Some stupid synapse deep in my brain triggered itself. My eyes snapped open. Like a video playing in my mind, I saw the staircase down into Anna Hocking’s fruit cellar and the cobwebs floating in the musty air currents.

I turned over and stared at the ceiling. That was no better. I pulled myself out of bed and in ten minutes was backing the county car out of my driveway. I almost radioed Bob Torrez but then thought better of it. As I drove through the village there was no traffic. The Christmas decorations in the plaza and along Bustos Avenue were sparse. The lighted candy canes didn’t do much to make Posadas look less desolate.

It was a hell of a time to go calling, but Anna Hocking’s ghost wouldn’t care.