“How about the kids?”
He shook his head. “Three youngest were in school all day. Benny went over to Deming with a load of hay. Ain’t seen Patrick since yesterday.” He didn’t sound pleased about the latter, and he carefully shut the door, as if he didn’t want our words to filter into the house for the wife and kids to hear.
“What the hell happened down south, there, Bill. Where that young cop got shot.”
“We don’t know yet, Herb. That’s why the detective wanted to talk with Patrick. He was at the Broken Spur Sunday night.”
“The officers already talked to him,” Torrance said. “Every which way. He’s so tore up he don’t know what to think.”
“And I’m sure we’ll have to talk with him again, Herb.”
“You think it was just somebody passin’ through?”
“We just don’t know, Herb. Sometimes folks remember things, you know. Little things that they didn’t think of right off. That’s what the detective was hoping was the case with your son. That he’d remember something more. Maybe just some little thing.”
“Well,” Herb said, “I guess.”
“But you say she hasn’t been by.”
“Not that I know of, no.”
“Well, then I’ll leave you in peace.” I started down the steps and stopped halfway. “By the way, when Patrick goes down to the Broken Spur, does he go by himself, or with somebody, usually?”
“Oh, it just depends,” Herb said, and he joined me as I walked back toward the patrol car. “But he sure goes there too much,” he added with chagrin. “Kind of concerns his mother and me. He’s got an older brother and an uncle both who can’t stay away from the stuff. And Patrick’s been awful moody of late.”
“Moody?”
Herb waved a hand in dismissal. “Ah, you know how these young ones get.” He looked at me and grinned. “I think he’s got woman trouble. Mind you, the wife and I don’t pry.” He groped a cigarette out of his pocket and turned his back to the breeze while he lit it.
“Who’s he been squiring around?” I asked pleasantly, as if it were just a passing thought.
“You name it,” Herb said. “Anything with tits, at his age.” He held the door of 310 while I settled into the seat. “The one he’s really moonin’ after at the moment is that little gal from town. The one who used to be hitched up real tight with Gus Prescott’s boy?”
“Tammy Woodruff?”
“Sure,” Herb said. “I guess Brett cut her loose, and now Patrick’s givin’ it a turn.” He smiled again and patted the door of 310. “Or tryin’ to. He tried once before, seems to me. Sure as hell glad I don’t have to go through none of that anymore.”
“Amen,” I said, and pulled 310 into reverse. “But you haven’t seen him today?”
Torrance ducked his head. “No. He sometimes stays with a friend, or somethin’ like that. Him and Benny used to light out to Juarez once in a while, but if that’s where he went, then he went by himself.”
I grinned. “These kids are kind of hard to keep track of, aren’t they.”
“You got that right. But hell, he’s on his own now. I don’t pry. Long as the work gets done when he’s livin’ at home.”
I took my foot off the brake, and 310 started to drift backward. Torrance straightened up. “If the detective does stop by later this evening, tell her to call the office, will you?” I said.
“You bet.”
“’Preciate it. You take care.”
I idled the car slowly out the Torrance driveway, and as I left the circle of light from the house, the blackness was formidable. In the distance, over the mesa to the east, was the dull glow of Posadas, just enough to be noticed out of the corner of the eye. A single light flickered in the west, over where Francisco Pena and his family lived.
I drove south on County Road 14 for two miles until I reached the intersection with County Road 27, another rough gravel byway that cut through the heart of the lava flow. I continued south, idling along 14 as it zigzagged down through first one arroyo and then another.
After five miles I started up the incline of San Patricio Mesa. The road was narrow and rock-strewn, steep enough that the patrol car kicked gravel noisily, lurching now and then as the back tires scrabbled for traction. If the county had ever brought a road grader out here, it hadn’t been in the past six months.
I reached the top of the mesa, and if there had been moonlight, I could have seen the graceful C-curve sweep as the road paralleled the lip of the mesa, to descend on the other side to the flat brush country that was cut by State 56.
I stopped for a moment, looking out into the blackness. If Patrick Torrance cared enough about booze that he took this road frequently to the Broken Spur, then his father had every reason to be concerned.
“Three ten, three oh two.”
I damn near banged the top of my head against the roof.
“Jesus,” I said, and reached for the mike. “Three oh two, go ahead.”
“Are you on top of the mesa?” Estelle’s voice was quiet, but I recognized the scratchy, thin quality of a handheld radio. Her broadcast wouldn’t carry two miles before it would be bounced to death in the myriad canyons that cut the mesa side.
“Ten-four. Where the hell are you?”
“Sir, drive around the rim until you see my car. It’s pulled way in, behind a grove of pinon. I’m down the hill from that.”
“What are you doing?”
There was a moment’s hesitation. “I’ve got a little problem, sir.”
Chapter 24
No lights flickered down in the black hole formed by the curve of the mesa rim. In several places the road skirted the very edge. When the road had been made in the 1930s, the dozer operators must have had fun watching the cottage-sized rocks plunge down the hill, smashing pinon and juniper, shedding chunks, and finally shattering into a million pieces.
Now and then through openings in the trees I could see two lights flickering out on the prairie, far in the distance. One was the Broken Spur to the southeast. The other was so far away I could only catch the flicker out of the corner of my eye-maybe Gus Prescott’s place north of Moore.
I slowed 310 to an idle and buzzed down both front windows. The winter air was dry and cold, the wind strong and steady from the northwest.
“My car’s just ahead of you, in that pinon grove to your right.”
I switched my radio to the car-to-car channel so I wouldn’t blast my side of our curious conversation all over the county.
“And where are you?” I asked.
“Down the hillside about a hundred yards.”
“Shine your flashlight.”
Silence for about six heartbeats followed, and then Estelle said, “I don’t have it with me, sir.”
A moonlit walk would be one thing, but the night was moon-feeble at best. With my heart driven up into my throat by apprehension, I drove 310 as close to the edge as I could and swiveled the spotlight around so the beam stabbed into the darkness. The rock slope plunged down at sixty degrees or better, a long slide of granite and steel-gray tree fragments. Fifty yards down from the road cut a spine of rock outcropping jutted from the talus slope, its form softened by a stand of ponderosa pine and scrub.
“A little to the south, sir,” Estelle said. “By the trees.” I drifted the beam across the slope and into the pines, then worked up toward where the spine first erupted from the slope. I saw motion at the same time that Estelle said, “Right here.”
In the wash of light from the spotlight, I could make out a tiny figure. She waved a hand. I jammed the gear lever into park, stamped down the parking brake, and got out of the car for a better view. The place was enough to give me the willies in broad daylight, much less on a February night with the wind beginning to moan up through the trees.
“What have you found down there?” I asked.
“Nothing right here, sir,” she said.
“Are you all right?”