“ASY four-el-three four dash six nine…and then it’s broken off. Below that, hecho en Mexico. ”
“That’s the part number,” Florek said. “And if I remember right, the number after the first letters is the year. So four, is two thousand four.”
“Not ninety-four?”
“Nope. They used a different series back then. And before that, I don’t know if they used a separate number or not.”
“So two thousand four. You’re sure of that.”
“Yep.” He turned back to the wreck. “You know, unless someone replaced the lamp with another one of a different year. That’s unlikely. And if you look down in there, you’ll see some overspray that the fire didn’t touch. Just a second.” He walked up to the cab of the truck, rummaged in the door pocket, and returned with a flashlight. “Look here.” Estelle stepped close and looked inside the bent and folded carcass.
“Black.”
“That’s right.”
“What we have here is a black, 2004 Ford crew cab, with a diesel engine.”
“At one time,” Florek said. “At one time, that’s probably what she was.”
“Shit,” Bill Gastner said quietly.
Estelle turned to him and lowered her voice. “We can’t be sure it was his, Padrino. ”
“How big a coincidence are you looking for?” He waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Evidence. Thank God for evidence, right?”
“Look, we need that unit,” Torrez said to Florek. “If you’d unload the others, I’ll get the county to pick this one up. Hour or so, maybe.”
Florek sighed hugely. “You’re the boss, sheriff.” He backed up a few steps so he could see around the rig’s cab. “I’ll pull up right there, in that open spot past the fence. I think we’ll only need to take off the front six, unless they’re all tangled.” He looked at first the sheriff, then Estelle, and finally at Bill Gastner. “You folks ready to tell me what’s going on?”
“Nope,” Torrez replied, and Florek laughed.
“How’d Gus happen by this carcass?”
“Good question,” the sheriff said, and his glare was impressively black. “And by the way…if he happens to call you, or you him, you didn’t see any of this. You’re headin’ down to Cruces just like always.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
All that they knew for sure, Estelle thought ruefully, was that the crushed truck had come from Gus Prescott’s collection. That was all. The questionable recollection of another rancher had offered that Eddie Johns had driven a black, three-quarter ton Ford diesel crew cab. She could imagine the bemused expression of District Attorney Dan Schroeder.
The undersheriff was tempted simply to confront Gus Prescott with the question, but knew the risks of that. Tipping one’s hand prematurely was a dangerous poker move…and even more so here.
She forced herself to remain patient as Cameron Florek took his time with his mammoth fork lift, shifting the carcasses of the crushed vehicles from trailer to ground. An hour later, the burned pancake of a late-model pickup was transferred to Florek’s smaller flatbed car carrier and delivered to the Quonset hut behind the barbed wire fence in the county boneyard.
Then, using wrecking bars, an assist from the fire department’s Jaws of Life, and considerable sweat and cursing, the officers unfolded the truck’s corpse one bend at a time.
Sheriff Robert Torrez glared at the heap that leaked driblets of oil and other bodily fluids on the floor of the impound building. “No engine. No tranny. No wheels, no brake rotors or calipers. Hell, this thing’s been stripped like a derelict in downtown Juarez.”
“You know what puzzles me?” Bill Gastner said. “This crate was burned, but only sort of, you know what I mean? Look here.” He rested his hands gingerly on one crushed front fender, and pointed at the firewall. “Windshield is gone, of course, and that’s where the VIN impression used to be. That’s all ripped to hell and gone. But all this shit?” He leaned farther in and pointed at some of the firewall connections. “The fire didn’t reach there. In fact, just not much at all in here.” He straightened and backed a step or two away. “In fact, it’s sort of a surface burn…a scorch.”
“Somebody got there quick with an extinguisher,” Tom Pasquale offered.
“Yes, but. Look at it…the whole thing is nicely toasted, know what I mean? On the outside. ”
“Front seats are gone, so they didn’t melt. But they left the back bench in.”
“And that’s an odd combination to me,” Gastner said. He turned and looked at Estelle, who, along with Linda Real, was saving images with a variety of cameras. “This was burned long enough ago that the sheet metal has had time to patina pretty nicely. It’s hard as hell to tell what color the thing was, at least from a distance. You dig around inside, and you can see that it was black, but it takes some work.”
The sheriff had been kneeling at the back of the wreck, and he stood slowly, beckoning Tom Pasquale. “Need to unfold that,” he said cryptically. The that was the tailgate of the truck, now crushed forward into the bed, the side bed panels folded inward to lock it in place. The tailgate itself had folded in a ragged line, collapsing in on itself. The sheriff beckoned to Estelle. “See in there?” He held his flashlight for her. By looking into the tunnel formed by the folded tailgate, she could see the remains of an emblem.
“Part of it left, anyways,” Torrez said. “Be careful with that,” he added as Tom Pasquale brought the jaws close. “If that’s a dealer emblem, I don’t want it wrecked.”
For nearly half an hour, they worked, the metal screeching and groaning as it was peeled back layer by layer. With a come-along looped to a building support at one end and hooked to the fender with the other, they spread the crushed bed apart, freeing the tailgate a bit at a time.
“Sure as hell be easier if they’d left the license plate on it,” Torrez grunted at one point. “But this is gonna be almost as good.”
As the envelope of crushed tailgate was pried open, they could see a fragment of burned pot metal lying askew. The adhesive that had affixed the name plate to the tailgate’s surface had been tough enough that the plate had broken in two places.
Torrez waited patiently as Linda Real moved in close with her macro lens, and when she finished, pushed the two pieces of name plate together. “Borderland Fo,” he recited. “Paso, Texas.”
He looked up at Estelle. “We need to get Mears over there ASAP. Borderland Ford will have records. Then there’s no question. He…” The sheriff was interrupted by the jarring buzz of the building alarm, and then a tentative rap on the metal door.
Abeyta shot the bolt and opened the door a couple inches. “Good morning sir,” he said, and turned to the others. “Herb Torrance?”
“Ah,” Estelle said. “I asked him if he’d stop by. Bill and I will be right out.”
“Bill and I?” Gastner grunted. “I’m getting too damn deep in this.”
“Your impressions are always welcome,” Estelle said. “After all, you’re the reason we’re here at the moment.”
Herb Torrance, owner of the H-Bar-T ranch, had retreated away from the door, and now leaned his forearms on the hood of his truck, hands clasped together as he watched the performance on the other side of the boneyard as two county employees worked with a hoist to sling a repaired back tire onto a county road grader.
“Hey,” he said as Estelle and Gastner appeared from the Quonset. At a distance he could be confused with someone from one of the utility companies, dressed entirely in a brown double pocket work shirt and brown trousers. A grubby baseball cap with the bill folded just so rested on the back of his head.
“I saw this comin’,” he said. “I figured you were going to show up on my doorstep sooner or later.” He shook hands with both of them, then relaxed back against his truck again.