“Sure.”
“Except when that cat died, Freddy Romero was about ten years old,” Gastner laughed.
“Someone like Freddy, I mean,” Estelle added. “An intrepid explorer, an avid hunter. Lots of folks would.” She reached out for the evidence bag. “We need a ballistics match. And if there’s some DNA to be had from this, we need that, too. Brain or bone tissue. Something. With the bullet wedged up into the rocks, it’s unlikely that the rodents got to it.”
Torrez stood up, took a deep breath, and hitched up his belt. “All right, listen. We got a whole shitload of stuff that needs to be packed up and taken to the state lab.” He pointed at Tony Abeyta. “You head that up, all right? You’re due a little vacation time.”
Abeyta nodded with resignation, perhaps not seeing fourteen hours on the highway as his vacation of choice.
“While we’re packing that up,” Estelle said, holding up the bagged bullet that Torrez handed to her, “I want Mears to do a comparison with the other slug. That won’t disturb any residue that might be on it. We might get lucky.”
“That’s right. Look,” Torrez said, “there’s sure as hell enough dental work here that we might get a match. There’s for sure enough DNA. But match to who? That’s where we’re stuck.” He twisted at the waist, slowly and with care, as if something might snap. He looked down the mesa slope at Miles Waddell. “It’s his property. That’s where we start.”
“He wants to know as badly as we do,” Gastner said. “He hasn’t budged from there all day. And his cell phone batteries must be busted flat by now.”
Miles Waddell’s body language gave no clue as to what he wanted. Estelle saw that the rancher still sat on the tailgate, boots swinging inches off the ground, bracing himself with his hands locked on the edge of the tailgate, arms stiff and shoulders hunched, studying the sparse grass and dirt below his feet.
“Let me talk with him,” the undersheriff said. “Join me, sir?” Bill Gastner nodded and drained the last bit of coffee from his Styrofoam cup.
“Sure, why not. I’ve had about all the fun I can stand.”
Waddell turned his head without changing position on the tailgate, watching them approach. His eyes narrowed as if his patience was running thin.
“Yup,” he said.
Estelle looked at him quizzically, but Gastner beat her to the question.
“’Yup’ what?” the older man asked.
“This sure as hell isn’t how I’d planned to spend my day,” Waddell said, “I was going to go out and pop some prairie dogs, but I got distracted by this convention.” Estelle leaned against the truck, arms resting on the edge of the bed liner. She looked at the older model rifle in the rear window rifle rack, a light caliber gun with powerful scope. It had ridden in pickup trucks for so many years that she could see the wear polished into the wooden fore-end and butt stock.
“That’s how it happens,” Gastner said. “We get distracted.”
“You guys about to wrap things up?”
“A long, long way from it,” Gastner said. “And that’s how that goes, too.”
“Sir,” Estelle said, “when did you actually acquire this property?”
“Up there on the mesa side, you mean? Hell, it’s been…what, Bill? Five years or so? Maybe six.” He looked down at the ground. “I bought it from Herb, you know. He got it from George Payton…well, George’s estate, anyway. You remember how that mess went.”
“Did you know about that little cave?”
“Nope. Like I told you earlier, I don’t go hikin’ much. If I do much of that, somebody’s going to find my carcass out in the boonies. If I can’t drive there, I don’t go there. That’s about as simple as I can make it. And no, young lady…number one, if I’d known there was a cave up there, and number two, if I’d known there was a corpse, I would have called you folks myself. Trust me on that.”
“Are you going to be able to help us with this?” Gastner asked.
“What’s that mean, Bill?”
“Well,” the livestock inspector shrugged. “We find a pile of bones, we’re kinda curious about who they belong to.”
“I can make a pretty good guess about who they belong to,” Waddell said, and if his response surprised Bill Gastner, the older man’s face didn’t show it. Estelle had the thought that Padrino had been careful to keep his own counsel while the site recovery was in progress, since he had voiced no theories, offered no creative opinions.
“And who might that be?” Gastner asked.
“Look,” and Waddell eased himself down off the tailgate and wiped off the seat of his jeans. “The minute I saw that belt and holster…” He picked up the cell phone that had been lying on the tailgate. “Is this going to get me in Dutch?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” Gastner said easily, nodding at the phone. “If you want to call a lawyer, that’s your right. It might not be a bad idea. This is your property, and right now, it’s your corpse.” He smiled engagingly.
“Sir, if you have information that is important to this investigation, we need to know it,” Estelle said.
Waddell ducked his head and held up both hands in resignation. “You remember Eddie Johns?”
Again, Bill Gastner’s poker face didn’t register any surprise. “Sure enough,” he said. The revelation meant considerably less to Estelle, who vaguely remembered a short, powerfully built man, a former cop, real estate entrepreneur of questionable talent, and a one-time associate of the rancher who now sat on the tailgate, looking uncomfortable.
“Bet you dollars to donuts that’s who you got up there,” Waddell said.
“Well, now. I haven’t seen him around in a long time,” Gastner said, and Waddell barked a short laugh.
“Maybe now you know why.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
“What leads you to believe that the bones are those of Eddie Johns?” Estelle asked as she leafed through her small notebook to a clean page, jotting down the date, the time, and the name.
“I remember that holster, for one thing,” the rancher said. “I saw that, and right away…” He took a deep breath. “Johns wore that 24/7, I think. Always wore that damn gun, everywhere he went. Always.” He looked at Gastner. “You probably remember that.”
“I do, as a matter of fact.”
Estelle reached to the back of her belt and slipped the small hand-held radio free, keying the transmit pad. “Sheriff, can you come down here for a minute?” She watched as Torrez straightened up from what he was doing and looked down the mesa side at her. “We have some information, sir.”
Torrez waved a hand, tapped the transmit pad once so his radio squelched a burst of static, and headed down the hill.
Bill Gastner’s left arm was cradled across his belly, giving support for his right. He rested his chin on the knuckles of his right hand, regarding Miles Waddell like an old Bassett hound waiting for the chase. The rancher started to say something, but Gastner held up his hand, then with a wonderful economy of motion, bent his right index finger to point toward the approaching sheriff.
“Sir,” Estelle said as Torrez drew within easy earshot, “Mr. Waddell tells us that the skeleton may be the remains of Eddie Johns. He has reason to believe it might be.”
“No shit,” Torrez said. Estelle kept her smile to herself. The sheriff was surprised by the announcement, since he took a few seconds to kick the toe of one well-worn Wellington boot against the sidewall of Miles Waddell’s back tire, dislodging some non-existent dirt from the waffle sole. “How do you know that?”
“For one thing, the holster rig,” Waddell said. “Like I was telling the young lady here, I’ve seen that often enough. Johns always had that damn gun on, all the time. Never saw him go anywhere without it. Even when we’d drop into the saloon for a beer, you know. He had it. Not supposed to carry in a place like that, I don’t think.”