"And he kept his word?"
"Yes. Until the day my mother died, three months ago. There was really nothing for him to go back to.
His brothers and sisters had scattered. The ranch was lost. The village abandoned."
"Did she share his theory that Don Luis was murdered?"
"I don't think she cared, one way or the other."
"So he returned with your son to uncover a murderer," Kerney proposed.
"Real or imagined," Cornelia agreed testily, her voice rising.
"My father is gravely ill. Possibly he will never get better. And do you know how I feel, Senor Kerney? Right now, I am angry with him. To the depths of my soul, I am angry. My son is dead because of an old man's obsession with the past. It is senseless."
"I am truly sorry for your loss, senora," Kerney said.
Cornelia Marquez did not hear him. She buried her head in her hands and sobbed.
Kerney stayed with her until she stopped crying.
When he left he took with him Senora Marquez's written permission to visit Jose Padilla in the hospital.
The house Jim Stiles lived in, a hundred-year-old adobe with a high-pitched tin roof and buttresses at the corners to hold the adobe walls in place, sat in the valley exactly halfway between Reserve and the old Spanish settlement known as Lower San Francisco Plaza.
With his feet propped on a chair, Jim lounged at the kitchen table with the back door open, reading the documents found in Padilla's travel trailer.
Omar Gatewood had given him permission to sign out the evidence and take it home.
The day had turned hot, but the thick walls kept the house cool. A slight breeze pulsed through the doorway, bringing with it the sound of the river gurgling over the rocky streambed two hundred yards away.
Stiles finished a document and turned it upside down on the stack he'd already read. The papers and letters were all written in Spanish, and while Stiles spoke the language pretty well, he was much less proficient at translating the written word. What he could make out was damn interesting stuff, although it didn't seem to have a bit of relevance to the murder of Hector Padilla.
Among the papers were the last will and testament of Don Luis Padilla and a plat of the village of Mangas that had been filed with the territorial government over a hundred years ago. There were a lot of personal letters to Don Luis from important New Mexicans of the day.
Solomon Luna and Thomas B. Catron, two political heavyweights during the first years of statehood, had written to Don Luis about investing in something called the American Valley Company, whatever the hell that was.
Until Stiles could find someone to do an adequate translation of the material, all he'd be able to tell Kerney was that Jose and Hector Padilla were descendants of the same clan that had settled the Mangas Valley, and that the government had challenged Padilla's title to his land holdings back in the early thirties.
The phone rang just as Stiles started in on another letter. He grabbed the receiver from the wallmounted telephone, hoping it was Kerney.
"Hombre," Amador Ortiz said.
"I hear you've changed jobs."
"What are you talking about, Amador?" "The Silver City newspaper. Jimmy.
It says you and Kerney are working for the sheriff and the district attorney."
"Shit! That story was supposed to be killed."
Amador chuckled.
"You know you can't keep a secret around here. So is it true?"
"It's a temporary thing. I'm still with Game and Fish. What's up?"
"I've been thinking about Kerney wanting to know if I saw anything suspicious around Mangas Mountain."
"What have you got?" Stiles tried to hold back the excitement from his voice.
"Maybe nothing. You know that old mine at the upper end of Padilla Canyon, north of the lookout tower? Last week I was with my crew barricading the road to the mine to keep hikers out of the canyon. I saw some tire tracks."
"What kind of tire tracks?"
"Looked like an ATV to me. T1-; morning I got to thinking you can get to the meadows from the upper canyon, pretty easy. At least you could before we blocked the road. A game trail runs from the mine to the meadows. Elk use it a lot. I thought maybe you'd want to pass that on to Kerney." "Hell yes. Thanks, mano," Stiles said.
"De nada, primo. You owe me a beer at Cattleman's if you find something."
"You got it," Stiles responded.
He hung up the phone, went quickly into a small second bedroom that served as his study, and pawed through the quadrangle maps on the desk.
If he remembered correctly, it was maybe a two-hour hike from the mouth of Padilla Canyon to the mine.
Stiles found the map and studied the contours. It was a no-sweat walk in the woods. With the map in his back pocket, he returned to the kitchen, gathered up Padilla's papers, and stuffed them into a manila envelope. He whistled to himself as he left the house and fired up the truck. He switched the radio frequency to the sheriffs department, and called in to report he was operational.
When the dispatcher responded, he gave his destination and ETA, and left a message for Kerney to meet him at Padilla Canyon. He thought about waiting for Kerney or asking for backup, and dismissed the idea. It would only slow him down.
Besides, ifAmador was right, he might have the first break in the case.
That would make Kerney sit up and take notice.
Damn! Nobody had thought to look north of the meadows in Padilla Canyon. The search had been concentrated south into the foothills and valley.
He'd buy Amador a case of beer if the tip panned out.
Stiles reached down and hit the switch to the emergency lights. He'd run with lights flashing all the way to the mouth of Padilla Canyon. It would save him a good thirty minutes.
Unexpectedly summoned to a meeting, Carol Cassidy sat in the small conference room at the Glenwood District Office with the forest supervisor from Silver City, the regional forester from Albuquerque, and Charlie Perry. Samuel Ellsworth Aldrich, the acting regional forester, a heavy-boned man with a double chin and thick lips, presided over the meeting. He had his suit jacket off, shirt sleeves rolled up, and tie loosened. He was smiling pleasantly at Carol.
Charlie and the regional forester were across the table. Perry whispered something to Aldrich, who nodded automatically back at Charlie. Jack Wyman, the forest supervisor and Carol's boss, a contemporary she had worked with for a number of years, avoided looking at her. It was not going to be a cordial meeting.
Aldrich concluded his opening remarks, which consisted of bitching about being unable to get out into the field as often as he would like. He spread his hands palms down on the table and gave Carol a patronizing smile.
"Thanks for coming down on such short notice, Carol," he said, nodding in Wyman's direction.
"Jack and I have some concerns we'd like to discuss with you."
"I'd like to hear them, Sam," Carol replied, wondering what in the hell was brewing. Her annual operational review by the regional office was months away. There had to be a special reason Aldrich wanted to see her.
"I got a telephone call this morning from an Associated Press reporter,"
Aldrich went on.
"She wanted to know if the Catron County sheriff and the ADA had usurped the state police investigation in the Elderman Meadows murder case. I told her I didn't have a clue what she was talking about. So she faxed me a copy of an article from the Silver City newspaper. She told me Gatewood gave the story to the newspaper. Have you seen it?"
"Yes."
"Is it accurate?"
"It is. Sheriff Gatewood called me after the fact to tell me about the appointments. I had no prior knowledge."
"I'll accept that." Aldrich stopped to clear his throat.
You damn well better, Carol thought to herself.
"To make a long story short, I called Jack for a briefing on the situation and he didn't know anything about it either. Charlie Perry filled me in. He was meeting with Jack when I called."