“Just another day’s work in paradise,” Doyle cracked as they boarded the vehicle. “Talk to you later, sheriff. Odds are good that he’ll be flyin’ out to University. We have antivenom at the hospital to start with, but your hubby isn’t going to want to mess with that eye. Butch’s mom at home?”
“I’ll find her,” Estelle said. “I’ll bring her to the hospital.”
“You got it.”
Estelle reached out a hand for her son’s bony shoulder and gave it a little shake, keeping her hold until the heavy ambulance had maneuvered away. “Thank you,” she said, taking the shovel from him.
The diamondback was a full sixty inches long, its compliment of rattles showing that it had endured a good many seasons before running into an incomprehensible enemy. With a deft, sharp whack of the spade, Estelle cut off the mangled head, setting off a renewed thrashing as the powerful body tried to tie itself into knots. Francisco watched with eyes wide.
She handed him the spade and pointed. “We’ll bury him right there. Dig a good hole.” He set to work without question, and Estelle walked back to the car. She selected one of the heavy clear plastic evidence bags from her briefcase, along with a brown paper bag. By the time she returned to the site, Francisco had excavated an impressive hole.
The undersheriff used the edge of the shovel to flip the remains of the snake’s head into the plastic bag. The trimmer’s high speed spinning nylon string had been an effective weapon, macerating and then tearing out much of the rattler’s mouth tissue. One fang was still in place, but the other had been torn free…and apparently was pegged in Butch Romero’s eye. She slipped the evidence bag inside the brown sack. The snake’s now limp body slid into the hole, and Estelle spaded the dirt back in to cover it.
“Butch said his dad grills ’em,” Francisco offered.
“Not this one, hijo. The snakes don’t know that coming into town is the most dangerous place for them.”
“What do you do with the head?” he asked.
“In case the doctors need it, hijo. ” She nodded at the string trimmer. “You fetch that so you can give it back to Butch’s mom. We need to go talk to her now.” The little boy nodded soberly.
“I’m sorry, mamá. ”
“So am I.” She followed him back toward the car, watching the grace of his movements, the dark intensity of him. It would be so much easier if children could be cocooned until they reached twenty-one, she thought.
Chapter Two
Francisco watched his mother complete the entry in her patrol log. His hands were clasped between his knees, and he remained silent, trying to stay out of the way. The log entry she wrote didn’t reflect the alarm in Carla Champlin’s voice when she had called.
“Estelle, I’m so sorry to bother you.” Carla, the retired Posadas postmistress, had picked up a quaver in her voice as age chased her, but she had still managed to sound authoritative. Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman pictured the elderly woman, scarecrow-thin, standing in her kitchen with the receiver of the old-fashioned black wall phone pressed to her ear, face pursed with disapproval. Carla disapproved of most things.
“Carla, how are you?” Estelle pulled the county car into gear. “Are you calling from home?” If Estelle had stood on the top front step of her own home on Twelfth Street back in Posadas, she would have been able to see the white roof of Carla’s neat little bungalow across the open patch of undisturbed prairie beyond Christman’s arroyo. As it was, when Carla called the undersheriff’s car had been parked on the shoulder of New Mexico State 78, seven miles from the village. The passenger seat was covered with file folders as Estelle found a quiet afternoon to peruse job applications and make calls to references. The sun was warm, and to keep herself awake, she’d changed locations from time to time, from one end of the small county to another, watching the traffic, the ranch kids on four wheelers, the patrons of the rural saloons as they took an afternoon brew break.
Carla had tracked her down, preferring a direct call to going through Sheriff’s Department dispatch.
“Well, I’m just fine,” Carla had said. “And of course I’m home. But listen. I’m watching a couple of hoodlums out beyond the arroyo, and I don’t like what I’m seeing.”
“What are you seeing, Mrs. Champlin?” She knew that hoodlums was a favorite Carla-ism for children. If children were seen or heard doing anything more disruptive than stamp collecting, they were hoodlums.
“Listen,” the woman said again, as if Estelle might not be, “at first I couldn’t see what they were doing, but I found my binoculars, and I just don’t like this at all. They’re over by the arroyo, and they’re playing with a snake, for heaven’s sakes. And it’s a big snake. My gosh.”
It’s not illegal for boys to play with snakes, Estelle almost said.
“Now, one of them has one of those whacker things…one of those Weed Whackers? That’s what they’re using, for heaven’s sake.”
Estelle turned onto the highway. She accelerated eastbound, at the same time trying to conjure a mental image of what Carla might be watching.
“It’s Butch Romero,” Carla reported.
“Ah, Butch.” Estelle’s amusement turned into apprehension. The skinny kid with enough imp in him for ten hoodlums lived just two doors west of the Guzmans on Twelfth Street. He out-Tom Sawyered Tom Sawyer by a quantum leap.
“Your little angel is with him.”
“Francisco, you mean?”
“That’s exactly who I mean. And oh, now they’ve gone down into the arroyo. I can’t see what they’re doing. But this can’t be good. I really think you should…oh, here they are again. You know, they’re right at the edge. ”
Christman’s arroyo was no more than twelve feet deep at its most precipitous, but the edge could crumble, depositing the hoodlums at the gravel bottom under half a ton of desert sand.
Estelle took a deep breath. Kids played along arroyos all the time. Not a single rain cloud graced the southwest at the moment, so there was no danger of a fast-moving headwall of water sweeping them away. Kids played with snakes all the time, too-hopefully learning early on which were the dangerous species. If Butch had elected to go hunting with a trimmer, its nylon string flailing, then he wasn’t after garter snakes. Estelle could imagine a dozen ways that such an absurd expedition might turn tragic.
“I’ll swing by, Carla. I’m about five miles out, so it’ll be a few minutes.”
“Come right down Eighth Street,” the post mistress commanded. “That’s the closest. Oh, my, there he goes…”
“Stay on the line, Carla,” Estelle said, and palmed the mike. “PCS, three ten.”
Dispatcher Ernie Wheeler responded instantly. “Go ahead, three ten.”
“I’ll be ten-six at Eighth and Christman’s Arroyo with a juvenile complaint,” Estelle said. Two minutes later, she took the curve that joined County Road 43 with the State Highway, inbound on what would turn into Bustos Avenue. “Carla, are you still there?”
Yes, she had been, watching the two boys lure trouble. From the arroyo to Carla Champlins’ was a mere hundred yards. Close enough for her to become alarmed and call, a call that brought Estelle to the scene and kept bad from being even worse.
Estelle closed her log book, and then keyed the mike.
“PCS, three-ten will be ten-six at 402 South Twelfth Street.” Confirmation came immediately, and she racked the mike and looked across at her son. “So. Hunting snakes with a Weed Whacker. Butch does that a lot, hijo? ” She started the car and backed out to the two-track, careful to avoid the larger clumps of cacti.
The little boy hunched his thin shoulders against the shoulder harness. “He said it was fun.”