“Christ,” Schroeder said. “So he could just as easily have had a heart attack, or stroke, or something.”
“That’s possible,” Torrez said, and rose to his feet. “Dr. Perrone will tell us for sure. But I don’t think all that damage to the kitchen door is consistent with him having a heart attack.”
“Why not?” Schroeder said. “He panics, tries to go out the door. If he was off balance, he could ram his elbow through the glass as easy as not. Just his weight against that flimsy screen would do some damage.”
I looked at Torrez. His expression was skeptical. “What time did you arrive?” I asked.
He glanced at his watch. “A little after nine. Maybe a minute or two. The ladies were here at that time.”
I frowned. “The ladies? You mean Clorinda and…” My brain drew a blank. “The sisters? Your cousins?”
“Yes.”
“So when you arrived, and the women were already here, Josie and the girls were gone, and Sosimo was lying out here?”
“And who found the body?” Dan Schroeder asked before Torrez had a chance to answer.
“One of the neighbor kids, sir. She and her mother are sitting in the backseat of my car at the moment.”
I looked at Torrez incredulously. “How did that happen? And I glanced at your vehicle when we drove in. I didn’t see anybody.”
“I’m sure they’re making themselves very small, sir.”
Schroeder thrust his hands in his pockets and frowned with exasperation. “So what the hell do they say happened?”
The undersheriff took a deep breath and held it as he regarded the corpse of his dead uncle. “Josie and the girls left here about seven-thirty. The neighbor girl didn’t know that the girls were gone. She didn’t know about Matthew yet, or any of the events the night before.”
He turned and gestured off to the west. “She lives down this lane a ways, in that little stone house right below the water tank. She wouldn’t have heard anything if there was a ruckus. She says that she came over around eight, maybe eight-thirty, to play with the two Baca kids. She walked right in without knocking, which is what she usually does.”
“In a village like this,” Schroeder said, “she probably lives over here half the time anyway.”
Torrez nodded. “She said that no one appeared to be home-at least she didn’t hear anything. She came into the kitchen, happened to glance out the window by the sink, and then saw Sosimo’s body lying in the dirt outside. She ran home and told her mother. The mother’s first reaction was that Sosimo had blind-staggered drunk into something.”
“And the mother obviously didn’t call the police, since dispatch in Posadas didn’t know anything about all this when you responded,” Schroeder said.
“No, sir, she didn’t call the police. She called my aunt.”
“That would be Clorinda? Wonderful,” the district attorney said. “The village grapevine.” He grinned at me without much humor. “Or more like kudzu, maybe.” He stretched with both hands on the small of his back, grimacing. “You think he struggled with somebody?”
Torrez nodded. “Yes, I do. For a couple of reasons.”
“The damage to the door and what else?” I asked.
“The refrigerator.”
“Oh, please,” Schroeder muttered. “You could dent that thing a hundred times, and it’d just blend in with the custom finish.”
“That’s not what I mean, sir,” Torrez said. He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “The refrigerator door doesn’t close. It doesn’t stay closed. Let me show you.”
He turned and strode off toward the house with Schroeder and me following. At the back step, the district attorney glanced at his watch. “I need to get back to town. Do you have someone you can spring free to take me back?”
“Just take the car,” I said, and handed him the keys.
He nodded his thanks, and went inside.
“This,” Bob Torrez said, and indicated the battered old appliance. Sure enough, the door had drifted open two or three inches. With the corner of my handheld radio, I nudged the door shut. The latch didn’t click or catch, and when I released the pressure, the door opened again.
“Neat,” I said, and repeated the effort two or three times for Schoreder’s benefit.
“They propped one of the kitchen chairs against the door,” Torrez said. He took out his pen and indicated a faint horizontal scuff mark below the handle.
“Anything could make that mark,” Schroeder said.
“True enough. But when I was here at four this morning, I saw the chair in place. Father Anselmo, Uncle Sosimo, and me all sat around the table. One of the chairs was under the latch on the fridge.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Nope. That’s where it was. When I came in here after Clorinda’s call, all four chairs were in place. Neatly around the table, the way they are now.”
“And the fridge hanging open?” I asked.
“The fridge open.”
Schroeder took a few seconds to survey the little kitchen, turning a full circle with his head held high as if sniffing the scents from the four corners of the room.
“Keep me posted, Bill,” he said finally. “I’ve got to run back over to Deming for a while, but I’ll be back later this afternoon. We’ll see what we’ve got by then.” He reached out and shook hands with Bob Torrez. “And you be very, very careful,” he added.
Chapter Eleven
By late Saturday morning, the ogler gallery had reached some conclusions all by themselves, and most had retreated to their homes to leave us in peace. Whether the spectators’ theories about what had happened were right or wrong, even the most hard-core gossips had learned a few things.
Yes, Sosimo Baca was dead. The heart attack scenario was the path of least resistance. After all, the old drunk had been through a lot in the past hours, beginning with consumption of about a gallon of hard cider, and then progressing through the death of his son and the arrival of his estranged wife who snatched the two remaining children. In less than a day, fortune had taken Sosimo from bleary-eyed contentment to some seriously twanged heartstrings.
No, we weren’t going to let all of Regal gawk at the corpse or let friends and relatives into the house to rummage for souvenirs. No, we weren’t going to hold a question and answer session out front.
In addition, a stout southwest wind gradually built, driving the bite of chilly November air. Without a circulating hot coffee vendor, folks who hadn’t dressed for the occasion quickly wearied of leaning against cold trucks, waiting for us to attend them. A heart attack wasn’t that interesting, after all-even an incident as odd as this one appeared to be.
While Linda Real, Tom Mears, and Tom Pasquale worked to photograph and lift every square inch of the interior with special concentration on the Bacas’ kitchen, Sergeant Howard Bishop, Scott Gutierrez, and a pair of state troopers scoured the back and side yards of the tiny house. That alone accounted for some of the spectators lingering beyond their welcome, since it’s unusual when a heart attack attracts so much law enforcement attention. That added interesting fuel to the gossip fires.
Eventually the coroner, Dr. Alan Perrone, allowed the EMTs to remove Sosimo Baca’s corpse. Perrone’s examination at the scene was just enough to establish that someone hadn’t driven a blade under the victim’s ribs, or popped a.22 in Sosimo’s ear. “I would guess that it was his heart,” Perrone said quietly, and left. We agreed with him. Sure enough, Sosimo Baca’s heart had stopped. Exactly when and how was a puzzle.
Undersheriff Robert Torrez and I tackled the seemingly endless job of sorting out who had actually been in the house, and when and why they’d been there.
We didn’t know who had been the last person to see Sosimo Baca alive, so we started on the other end-we knew who had been the first to see him dead. Little Mandy Lucero had walked into the middle of things, took one look at the victim, and ran screaming home to her mother. Mandy adamantly maintained that she hadn’t touched anything in the house other than the front and back doorknobs. She remembered that both were closed when she arrived. An honest little kid, Mandy didn’t remember if she’d closed either when she ran out.