I watched Senor Esquibel disappear into his house. I didn’t know him, but I was willing to bet he’d been born within a hundred yards of where he now labored to stoke his wood-burning stove.
Parked next to the garage was his wood supply, a stock trailer a quarter filled with split pinon and juniper.
I spent another fifteen minutes in Regal. I didn’t drive over to the border crossing gate less than a mile away. Deputy Howard Bishop had already talked to the officers there, with little success. It was a day crossing area only, with the gates locked at night and no officers on duty after six. The border patrol had the same details on our case as anyone else. They’d be watchful and even helpful when they could.
Easing 310 back out on the paved road, I glanced at the dash clock. Jim Bergin’s Beech Baron would be approaching Gillette, and in another four and a half hours Patrick Torrance would be back in Posadas. Then we’d start constructing a face.
Chapter 33
Deputy Bishop winked the lights of his patrol car at me as we passed on Bustos Avenue. I turned into the small parking lot of Kenny Pace’s Western Wear and waited while Bishop swung around and pulled in behind me.
Howard Bishop was one of those big, sleepy-eyed characters, loose-jointed and tending toward flab. The two major loves of his life were his wife, Aggie, and collegiate football. He’d married Aggie right after the two of them had graduated from Posadas High School. The closest he’d ever come to collegiate football was watching it on television.
“Howard may look like he’s slow, but he’s got a mind like a banana slug,” Sheriff Holman had once said in a rare moment of amused pique. That description was both unkind and untrue. Bishop had an exasperating allergy to paperwork, but generally was an intelligent, honest, fair cop.
He adjusted his Stetson and folded his dark glasses into his shirt pocket before getting out of the car. I walked back and leaned against the front fender of 307.
“Sir, I talked to twelve different people about Tammy Woodruff.”
“Anything of interest?”
Bishop laid his clipboard on the hood of the car and ran his finger down a neatly printed list of names. “These here are the people I talked to. Neighbors, mostly. Seems like Tammy didn’t have too many close friends. Except whatever cowpoke she was going out with at the moment.”
“Who are the boyfriends?”
“Torrance and Prescott most recently. But Jane Ross-Tammy’s boss when she was working at Ross Realty? — Mrs. Ross says that Tammy talked a lot about some guy she’d met down in Cruces during the half year she spent at the university.”
“That’s not surprising. And she was in Cruces more than two years ago.” I knew that Tammy Woodruff’s work and school record had been as checkered as her romance list. She’d briefly tried a dozen or more occupations before evidently deciding that the best career for her was living off her father’s incomprehensibly soft heart-at least until a suitable, deep-walleted boyfriend could be found. “Who were Tammy’s girlfriends?”
Deputy Bishop looked puzzled. “She was spending all her time chasin’ the boys, sir.”
“She has to have a girl friend, Howard. Someone for girl talk. We know that wasn’t her mother. And the odds are good that if she does have a best friend-girl friend-then there’s a well of information there.”
“I don’t know,” he said dubiously.
“Start with the high school yearbook for the year they graduated. Look at the pictures in the activity section. Maybe rodeo club. Who the hell knows. Talk to Glen Archer. He’s been at the school ten years or more, so he was principal the year Tammy graduated. See who her girl pals were. And then see if she was still hanging out with one or more of ’em.”
I silently cursed the bad luck that had put Estelle Reyes-Guzman in a wheelchair. She could talk information out of a stone, and in a tenth of the time it would take the other deputies. As I watched Howard Bishop ease his county car back out onto Bustos Avenue, I wondered if I had been focusing on the right set of tracks. I sat in 310 with the door open for a few minutes, watching the light traffic of Posadas.
Sheriff Martin Holman had talked to the Woodruffs the night of Tammy’s transfer from crushed truck to ambulance to helicopter, as had Sergeant Torrez. The couple had been hit hard by their daughter’s death, and since those terrible moments had been holed up in their Posadas Heights home.
A scant twelve hours had passed since the first rap on their front door by Martin Holman. Twelve hours wasn’t enough time to think about the healing process-that would take months, even years. But Karl and Bea Woodruff might be able to think again, if someone with a light touch talked to them.
I closed the door of 310 and headed for the hospital. When I arrived, Estelle Reyes-Guzman was helping Linda Real deal with the reporter’s bizarre mother. Mrs. Real had decided it was an appropriate time to visit and complain. She glared balefully at me, but didn’t repeat her earlier litigious threats.
Estelle agreed with my suggestion, and Robert Bales, the hospital administrator, suggested we use his office. I went home, showered, shaved, and donned a fresh uniform. And then I drove across town to Karl Woodruff’s home.
I hadn’t seen Woodruff since the two of us had talked in his drugstore Monday. When he opened the door, he looked like his own father. Dark circles under red eyes, drawn cheeks, blotchy, pale complexion-even his hair looked more heavily streaked with gray.
“Bill,” he said, and held open the storm door.
“Can you give me a few minutes, Karl?”
“Of course.” He beckoned me inside.
After he had shut the door, I put my hand on his shoulder. “Karl, is Bea here?”
“She’s resting.”
“It’s really important that we talk with you both, Karl.”
His brow furrowed and he looked at his watch. “We’re expecting some relatives from out of town before long.” He managed a smile. “You picked the one time when the place hasn’t been full of neighbors. I had to shag everyone out so Bea could have some peace and quiet.”
“I understand. And I know it’s not a good time for me to be here, either. I wouldn’t be bothering you folks if I didn’t think this was important. What we really need is to talk with both you and Bea. Detective Reyes-Guzman and I.”
“Oh,” Karl said, and it came out as more of a groan, the kind of noise he might have made as he pulled out a really deep sliver.
“We have an office we can use at the hospital, if you would.”
“The hospital?”
“The detective was injured last night. She’s in a wheelchair and can’t travel yet.”
Woodruff frowned and looked at the floor. After a moment, he shook his head and half turned away. “Give me a few minutes,” he said, and walked across the living room toward the hallway.
Five minutes turned into ten, and just about the time I was looking about for a comfortable chair, Woodruff reappeared.
“Can we meet you there in twenty minutes?”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll be happy to drive you down there and back.”
He smiled faintly. “That won’t be necessary.”
The couple had their own private sense of time, because it was more than an hour later when Karl and Bea Woodruff settled into the leather chairs in Robert Bales’s office. Estelle Reyes-Guzman had drawn her wheelchair up near one of the large brown hassocks and propped her leg cast up. That and having a checkered afghan loaned by the hospital auxiliary draped around her shoulders made her look frail and vulnerable.
Bea Woodruff winced as she looked at Estelle’s plasterwork, arm sling, and forehead stitchery. “You should be home in bed,” she said. I saw her back straighten a little as she focused on someone else’s troubles.
Estelle smiled and reached out a hand, taking Bea Woodruff’s in hers. “I’m fine,” she said. “Really.” She leaned forward in the wheelchair, still holding Bea’s hand. “Mr. and Mrs. Woodruff, we have reason to believe that your daughter’s death was not accidental.” The room fell silent and Karl and Bea’s eyes were locked on Estelle. Tears flowed down Bea’s cheeks, but she ignored them, letting them drip off to make tiny dark blotches on her blue linen dress.