Sunset was around seven-thirty.
Oliver said, “Do you think we can dig this up in two and a half hours?”
“Depends what’s in there. If we find something, it’s a crime scene. Then who knows?” Marge took out her cell. “I think I’ll put in an order for lighting, just in case.”
Wynona walked over to them. She had taken off her sun hat, and her short blond hair was wet and matted. She took out a tube of sunscreen and started rubbing it into her cheeks. “How many people do you think you’ll need for the dig?”
“I could use maybe eight. Why? What do you need?”
“I still have a sector and a half left to comb. I probably won’t finish the last one, but if I get going now, I can finish the rest of sector four before twilight.”
“If I take six from your gang, how many would you have left?”
“Twelve with me. I can manage with that, but I’d like a few to be police officers.”
“How many cops do you have?”
“Eight.”
Marge said, “You take four, I’ll take four.”
“Sounds good.” Wynona stowed her sunscreen back in her cargo pants. After making the assignments, she said, “I’ll get started. Call me if you find something.” She tooted her whistle and her group stood up, wiping dust and dirt from their bottoms.
Just as the shovels and buckets arrived, Marge’s cell phone sprung to life. The boss was on the other end. He asked what was going on and after she explained the situation, Decker said he was coming down.
He said, “Take plenty of pictures of the area before you put spade to ground.”
“Already done,” Marge said. “Do you want to us to hold the digging until you get here?”
“No, start while you’ve got daylight. I’ve got to finish up something at the station house and it’s taking a while. But I’ll make it over.”
His voice sounded tense. Marge said, “Is Steel Strapp giving you a hard time?”
“I wish.”
“Yowzer, Pete! It must be bad. What’s going on?”
“I’ll fill you in later. It’s not bad, but it is complicated.”
Marge checked her watch. “It’s getting close to Sabbath, Pete. If we don’t find anything, it’s not worth missing Friday night dinner. I’ll call if I need you.”
“Thanks for the offer, but this case is too big for me to take time off. Maybe God could rest after six days, but we mere mortals just aren’t that talented.”
MARGE’S CALL COULDN’T have happened at a worse time.
Although Decker disliked being late for Friday night dinner, usually when it happened, Rina insisted on waiting for him. But tonight Rina had invited several couples, so Decker gave her the go-ahead-without-me speech, knowing in his heart of hearts that the Coyote Ranch dig was going to last into the night.
But the dig wasn’t the only thing on his mind.
His mother always told him that it was impolite to stare, but in this case, it didn’t make a difference.
So Decker studied the man sitting across his desk, taking in his well-manicured appearance.
Brett Harriman was nicely appointed. He wore an unstructured natural linen jacket over a blue button-down and designer jeans. His sandals showed off his manicured toes, which matched his manicured hands. His hair was dark and shaggy, his face long and lean. He wore dark shades that not only covered his eyes but most of his eyebrows. The only giveaway to his visual impairment was a slight swinging of his head that helped his ears zero in on sound stereoscopically.
Decker tapped his pen on his desktop. “First of all, Mr. Harriman, I want to thank you for coming in and sharing your information with me.”
“It’s Brett and no thanks are necessary. It’s my obligation. If people didn’t do jury duty, I wouldn’t have a job.” A few seconds ticked by. “Well, that’s not true. When you’re fluent in as many languages as I am, there’s always work.”
“How many languages would that be?”
“A lot. Mostly the romance and Anglo-Saxon languages.”
“How’d you learn them?”
Harriman shrugged. “Some I studied, some I picked up on tapes. Finnish and Hungarian I learned with intense tutoring. Also I travel a lot. The only way to really learn a language is to hear and speak it.” Another pause. “Are you asking me these questions to size me up, to get rapport, or because you’re interested in me as a person?”
“Probably all three,” Decker said.
“I’m not a nutcase. I’ve been with the courts for almost five years.”
“How’d you come to work for the courts?”
“Another personal question?” Harriman gave Decker a white-toothed smile as he tilted his head to the right. “Aren’t you trying to solve a murder?”
“Murders, actually. How’d you come to work for the courts?”
“A friend of mine who works downtown told me that the courts were hiring witness translators. Mostly for Spanish but other languages, too. I applied and that was that.”
“They weren’t bothered by your blindness?”
Harriman grinned. “I wore tinted glasses. I don’t think they knew until later. Besides, they would never fire me. I help their federally mandated numbers in hiring the handicapped. I’m also damn good at my job!”
“Where were you working before the courts?”
“I was a patient translator for six different hospitals. The job was getting a little monotonous. How many times can you translate ‘take two of these pills for regular bowel movements’?” The pause was awkward. “It was more than that. It was hard day after day delivering bad news.”
“That’s miserable.”
“Depressing as hell. Lucky for me I never had to look at the eyes of a patient who just got the news. I sure as hell heard it in the voice. And it didn’t take me long to learn if the doctor was feeding bullshit, letting the patient or the families cling to hope when I could tell by the nuances in his voice that Tia Anabel was a goner.”
Decker said, “There’s a police detective in the Netherlands. He’s blind. They use him to decipher accents and voices-like terrorists. He can tell the origin of the speaker even if he or she is speaking fluent and unaccented Dutch.”
“Nobody speaks unaccented anything.” Harriman rocked his head to the other side “There are always giveaways if you know what to listen for.”
“Could you ever see?”
“I still can see. You see with your brain, not with your eyes. But there was a time I was sighted. I was five when I lost my sight from a rhabdomyosarcoma-bilateral tumors.” He tapped his foot on the floor. “Are you interested in what I told you or do you still think that it’s worthless?”
“You’re confusing worthlessness with a healthy dose of skepticism. I’m very interested in what you’ve told me, Mr. Harriman. If you don’t mind, let’s go over it again.”
The blind man gave an exasperated sigh. “It’s Brett, and I told you everything I know. The story’s not going to change.”
“But maybe my perception will. Please?”
He waited a few moments, then he said, “I was standing around the waiting area of the courtrooms eating a power bar. Two Hispanic guys were talking about the Coyote Ranch murders. One of the guys was from Mexico, the other from El Salvador. They kept on calling the victim Mr. Café because Kaffey is coffee in Spanish. Then they segued into talking about a guy named José Pinon who had gone missing and that the boss was looking for him in Mexico. Are you writing this down again? I can hear your pen scratching.”
Decker said. “Just squaring what I wrote the first time against what you’re saying now. You said then that the Mexican was doing most of the talking.”