“Something prompted this?” She paused at the door of her car as Gastner walked around to the other side. “Not that it’s a bad thing, sir.”
“Ah.” He waved a hand with impatience. “You know, just too much nonsense. I got a notice here a day or two ago discussing electronic tagging, and everything else we’re going to have to do to accommodate that. Jesus, it’s just a goddamn cow, for Christ’s sakes. It seems to me that we ought to be able to manage a goddamn cow without a digital infrastructure.” He said the last two words with considerable distain.
“One would think so.”
“You know, it’s just because they can. No reason other than that. So I told ’em to hell with it. Next they’ll think about implanting a GPS chip in each little calf ear. Nah, they can have it. I got things to do.”
They settled in the car, and Estelle took a moment to clear with dispatch and make her log notations. “What’s your next project?”
“I don’t know why I’m so damned interested in history, but I am, so there it is. Did Irma pass on my message to you, by the way?”
Estelle nodded. “She mentioned your interest in the jaguar. And then I got side-tracked when I saw the wedding invitation. I should have called you, but I didn’t.”
He waved a hand in dismissal. “I wouldn’t have answered anyway. I was out roaming. Did you see it?”
“It?”
“The jaguar skull.”
“Not yet.”
“I stopped by yesterday afternoon and what’s-his-name, the teacher, showed it to me, along with all the measurements that they took. He and his class, I mean.”
“Nathan Underwood.”
“Yup. He says that they did a quickie class project with it, right there on the spot. Pictures, measurements, the whole nine yards. They’re sending all the information to the Fish and Wildlife Service, and over to the university.”
“They’re going to need permission from the feds to keep it, no?”
“Underwood knows all about that. He’s pretty sharp, I gotta say. Anyway, that got me thinking. Those cats haven’t ever been common around here…just way too dry. They don’t have agua in their name for nothing. And then I remember your great uncle talking about seeing one. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he’d been in the sauce again. But if he says he saw one, then that’s it. He saw one.”
“Nothing about Reubén would surprise me,” Estelle agreed.
“You still have his journal, I would hope?”
“Sin duda. ”
“I’d like to look through that and find a date. I can’t imagine him seeing a cat like that and not mentioning it in his diary.”
“I’m sure he would. It’s all in Spanish, you know.”
“Ah, but I have access to a most accomplished translator,” Gastner said. “All I’m after is the date, and that should be easy enough.”
“Odd place for a big cat to show up,” Estelle mused. “The Cristóbals aren’t the most hospitable place in the best of times.”
“For us. For an old kitty being chased, maybe just fine.”
“You think chased?”
“I do. And caught. I’m no forensic specialist, but I know a bullet hole when I see it. The old guy’s last moments weren’t the most peaceful, I’d guess. Some bastard put a bullet in him.” Bill Gastner touched his head just behind his right eye. “Didn’t detonate the whole skull, so it wasn’t a hi-powered rifle. Thirty-eight caliber or a little bigger.”
Estelle looked across at her old friend.
“Interesting, eh?” Gastner said.
“Most,” she replied. “Most people go through an entire lifetime and never see a big cat in the wild, much less up close and personal. And a jaguar? That’s not even once in a lifetime.”
“As far as I know, springs are few and far between up there, not that I’ve trekked it all. But Bobby has, and he’s going to be interested in all this, I would think. He’s going to want to know exactly where the Romero kid found it. I was going to ask the boy the same thing, but I got over there after school let out. Didn’t catch him.”
“You’re not the only one,” Estelle said, and briefly related the details of her afternoon.
“A fang in the eye. That’s a new one on me. Freddy’s probably cattin’ about, no doubt. The fair Casey didn’t know where he was?”
“She says not.” That Bill Gastner knew the relationship between Casey Prescott and Freddy Romero didn’t surprise Estelle. The former sheriff and short-time livestock inspector had known the Prescott family for decades. More a walking, breathing gazetteer than a busy-body, Gastner collected information and filed it away. As he cheerfully admitted, accessing those files in a time of need was the challenge.
“Well, maybe he’s back out in the boonies,” Gastner said, and reached out to rest a hand on the dash for support as they jounced over the first speed bump in the parking lot of the Don Juan de Oñate restaurant. “You make a find like that, and the site is an attraction. Pays to scout it out, see if you missed any thing.”
Estelle pulled the car to an abrupt halt in the middle of the small parking lot, and Gastner looked across at her, puzzled.
“Yesterday, I saw a four-wheeler down at the Broken Spur,” Estelle said. “Way, way in the distance. I had just pulled out on 56 from 14, and saw him swing off the shoulder of the highway, into the saloon’s parking lot, then scoot out back, probably across the arroyo.” She reached over and picked up the aluminum clipboard that contained her log. “Two-twenty, yesterday afternoon. I had stopped to make some notes after talking to some references, then saw the four-wheeler just after I pulled back out onto the highway.”
“Could have been anybody,” Gastner said.
“Could have been.” She closed her eyes, trying to coax her mind to replay the bit of memory. She hadn’t watched the four-wheeler because there had been no reason to. Now the incident was an amorphous blur, the details lost. “Ranchers don’t ride like a wild teenager,” she said. “I saw him and assumed it was a kid.”
“If it was Freddy, then his pickup was somewhere down there, too,” Gastner said. “He hauls that ATV around in the back of his truck, then bops out when he’s got something to explore or terrorize.”
“His dad says he wasn’t home last night-at least he didn’t answer his phone. He didn’t call Casey, either. His truck wasn’t in the driveway last night or this morning.”
“Now the worried mom comes out,” Gastner laughed.
She pulled the gear shift back into drive and swung the car around, leaving the restaurant to re-enter the street eastbound.
“So near and yet so far,” Gastner said wistfully. “What now?”
Chapter Six
The Expedition used by Deputy Dennis Collins during the day shift still smelled new, everything meticulously in place, the four water jugs that were stored in the back full and sealed. Collins had even added a large cardboard box full of military MRE’s to his stash. After her sedan, the big SUV felt like a behemoth.
They pulled out onto Bustos, and Estelle drove west. In less than two minutes, she turned onto Twelfth Street and then pulled in to the curb in front of her home. Two doors down, the Romero house was silent, the driveway empty.
“A moment,” she said. “Need anything?”
“Not a thing,” Gastner replied. “Give my greetings to your mother.”
Inside the house, Estelle found the three volumes she sought in the bookcase by the living room fireplace. Her mother, comfortable in her rocker, was working through an enormous volume of Spanish history, perhaps motivated by Irma’s interests. She tucked a crooked finger in her place as she watched her daughter.
“What’s Reubén done now?” she asked, eyes twinkling. The old man, her uncle, had died eight years before, independent and feisty to the last.