“Well…”
“Yes, well. And you guys landed out there on the unlighted strip?”
“Yes. But it wasn’t just to see if it could be repeated.”
“Remind me to talk some sense into you when we have a spare hour or two.”
“It told us what we needed to know, sir.”
“I’m sure. What’s Bobby have to say about all this?”
“I didn’t ask first, padrino. But as I said, it told us what we needed to know. In point of fact, it led us straight to Hector.”
“And now you have some psycho riding around on a motorbike, who knows where, looking to do who knows what.” He held up a hand. “Don’t tell me-let me guess. Next you’re going to borrow a dirt bike…”
“No, sir. Next I’m going to let my brain rest for a little while. Out in the boonies where the air is clear.”
Gastner laughed again. “Last time you were out in the boonies, it seems to me you found a bunch of rotting bodies. But you suit yourself. I’d ride along, but Herb has fresh coffee and his wife said something about fresh pie.” He held up both hands in surrender. “I can be bribed, you see. If you want to get together later, let me know.” He opened the door of the truck. “If I get any brilliant ideas, I’ll give you a buzz. Enjoy the Tour de Spandex with Brunhilde, there. You’re braver’n me.”
Her cell phone buzzed, and she pulled it off her belt.
“Guzman.”
“They’re all on the track,” Sheriff Bob Torrez said without preamble or greeting. “Last rider went off a couple minutes ago. You do any good with the kid?”
“Some. I’m letting him sleep for a couple of hours. Leona and I are going up by Jackman’s Wells for a little bit. Clear out the cobwebs. Mears is following up with the family. We sent the Uriostes home.”
“Okay. You usin’ my vehicle?”
“That’s affirmative, unless you need it.”
“I got my own. Keep the windows open so that woman doesn’t stink up my truck.” The phone went silent.
“You’re up on the mesa now?” Estelle asked.
“Right about where that kid fell yesterday,” Torrez said.
Yesterday. Yesterday seemed a month ago. “No other incidents yet?”
“Nope. Not yet.” For an instant, the sheriff sounded almost wistful. “Pasquale went by a few minutes ago. He’s pretty quick on that thing.”
The sheriff was watching the riders from a spot less than an hour from the starting line. Ahead of them stretched five or six hours of tough, dangerous country.
“As soon as the last rider goes by, we’re pullin’ out of here,” Torrez added. “I was going to wander on down to Fourteen, right about where they’ll turn into Bender’s Canyon. That ain’t far from the airstrip, and I don’t want a bunch of ’em settin’ up a picnic there. I might take another look, see if we missed anything. Lemme know if you need something. Who’s at the office?”
“Tom Mears will be there for a while.”
“Okay. The county manager got any brilliant ideas?”
The question surprised Estelle, since Leona Spears was generally among the last people on Bob Torrez’s mind. It had taken him months to grudgingly accept that perhaps the county manager actually knew what she was doing, but he was months away from including Leona in any inner circle.
“We’ll see,” she said. “She’s familiar with PDC…That’s something.”
“Huh. Well, lemme know.” The phone went dead as the sheriff switched off. Estelle had walked back to the truck, and Leona looked at her expectantly.
“Bill’s not riding along?” she asked.
Estelle shook her head. “He’s got work to do.”
“You’re sure you don’t just want to go home and get some rest?”
The undersheriff laughed. “That’s exactly what I want to do,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-four
But instead of going home, Estelle sought the comfort of the high country north of Posadas, where Cat Mesa rose as a great, scarred buttress, its sawtooth rim running east-west for the better part of eleven miles. The mesa rim rose to nine thousand feet, and the sun-roasted scent of the earth and runty, parched vegetation would be a balm to tired nerves. Sharing the excitement of the bike race with her husband and the two little boys, who would screech like the jays when riders passed by, wasn’t practical.
The race itself stood in the way. After the start at the Posadas Inn on south Grande Avenue, the course took the riders north on County Road 43, up the east mesa flank until the pavement turned to gravel and then to powdery dirt and rocks. Somewhere on the east side of the mesa, her husband would be watching with the boys, where the riders would be bunched together. To reach them, she would have to either trail the final riders, arriving at her family’s vantage point when the race had passed by, or weave through race traffic with the large Expedition, more in the way than not.
The two boys didn’t often have the opportunity to enjoy a full day with their father, and Estelle decided Francis might well make productive use of the occasion-especially with Francisco, now experiencing his own seven-year-old version of woman trouble.
The undersheriff drove west on the state highway, eight miles beyond the municipal airport to where a cluster of race officials’ vehicles was parked at the intersection of the state highway and Forest Road 26. None of the riders had reached that checkpoint yet. When they finally hit the prairie after four or five hours on the mesa and in the backcountry, the remaining three hours into town would be a relief.
She slowed the Expedition to a stop as Howie Gutierrez, stopwatches hanging from his neck, rose from the tailgate of the pickup.
“Hey, sheriff,” he greeted, and flashed a smile at Leona. “All the top brass out today, huh. What’s goin’ on down at the gas company? I heard they found some bodies out there?”
“Apparently so,” Estelle said. Gutierrez worked as a salesman at Chavez Chevy-Olds, and once again, Estelle marveled at the efficiency of the grapevine. “How long will it be before we see the first rider down off the mesa?”
Gutierrez checked his board. “I would guess an hour, maybe? Once they’re down here, it’s pretty clear sailing. A spot or two on Fourteen headed south, but nothing like up there.” He glanced “up there” almost with reverence. “You headed up?”
“I thought I would. Maybe as far as the Wells.”
“Okay.” He pushed himself away from the truck and put on his official face, looking at his watch at the same time. “I think you have just about enough time to get to the Wells before race traffic does. But keep an eye out. Remember they’re going to be comin’ down fast, and you’ll be swimming upstream if you don’t get out of the way.”
“You bet. Thanks.”
“Leona, you enjoy yourself,” Gutierrez said, and Estelle wondered if the salesman was working on the county manager to replace her aging, colorful Volkswagen Vanagon with something that moved.
For the first mile, the forest road was smooth sand, but then the terrain angled up sharply. Leona grabbed for the panic handle as the Expedition lurched sharply, its fat tires walking over the rocky stairsteps that cut across the two-track.
“If you see any riders, let me know so we can pull off.”
“But he said we had an hour.”
“Unless a few of them are faster than everyone thinks.”
Another two miles on, they reached Jackman’s Wells, where not enough remained to qualify for ghost town status. A scatter of broken bricks, a few rusted pieces of metal roofing, a trash pile of busted bottles and corroded tin cans were all that marked Martin Jackman’s dream of wealth and seclusion near the spot where a spring had once bubbled out of the mesa flank. As if in retaliation to Jackman’s insulting clutter of trash, the spring had dried up. So had Martin Jackman’s life as a prospector.
Any semblance of a road vanished as the trail headed up the mesa, switchbacking through the rocks.
Estelle reflected that, if there needed to be one at all, the bike race was the perfect use for this battered mesa. Every scar, every blemish became a potential and treasured racetrack feature for what Sheriff Bobby Torrez was fond of referring to as the “spandex crowd.” It might be argued that, for a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs, the mesa portion of the race was far too difficult-too “technical,” as Tom Pasquale was fond of saying. The terrain was rough, and there weren’t enough spotters. The route was so rugged that even the motorcycle chase vehicles had to slow to an awkward pace no faster than a walk. But that was the lure of the challenge.