“Oh, she’s uneasy, all right,” Estelle said, and swung the car around.
“She is?”
“Sure. But what can she say? What can she do? If she says anything to her daughter, she’d probably be beaten even worse.”
“Whoa,” I said, puzzled. “Beaten worse than how?”
Estelle shot a quick glance my way, and when she accelerated out onto Escondido, the back tires chirped. “You didn’t notice the bruises?” she asked.
I frowned. “No. I couldn’t see her well enough.”
“Especially around her left eye. A nice shiner.”
I hadn’t noticed that, and I began to wonder what else I wasn’t seeing. For a couple of blocks I just sat, staring out the side window at nothing. “Christ,” I said finally. “Remember when it used to be simple? Somebody would rob a store, and we’d chase ’em. Remember that? Or they’d have too much to drink and crash into a tree? Nice simple stuff like that.”
“It hasn’t been like that for a long time, sir.”
“A very long time. Too long.” I shook my head. “A horse, gun, and badge, just like Crocker said.”
“Sir?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Do you want to go back to the office now?”
“Sure. Why not.” What I really wanted to do was go home and go to bed. I picked up the microphone and rapped it against the dashboard, beating out a soft cadence of frustration. “So you think the girl beats her own mother?”
“Nothing would surprise me, sir. That’s the simplest explanation.”
“And the most depressing. What other explanations have we got, other than that maybe the mother makes a habit of walking into doorjambs?”
“A boyfriend, maybe.”
“At her age?”
“Sir…” Estelle said in the tone that she reserved for the times when my Stone Age heritage was showing. “Sir, boyfriends are possible at any age. But bet on the girl.”
“She’s big enough,” I said.
“Yes, she is. And Mrs. Davila doesn’t look like she’s capable of putting up much resistance.”
I keyed the mike. “PCS, 310 is ten-eight, ten-nineteen.”
Ernie Wheeler acknowledged, and I wondered if Sheriff Martin Holman was still standing behind him, waiting. It wasn’t like Holman to stay up during the night shift unless he absolutely had to. He preferred to meet the public refreshed and well rested, like any good salesman. I didn’t have any news to make him sleep any easier.
20
Holman wasn’t pacing around the dispatch desk. He wasn’t pacing anywhere, as far as I could tell. The dispatcher, Ernie Wheeler, looked up from his paperback novel as Estelle and I walked into the building. The world might have been ending outside, but it seemed to me that all good dispatchers acted as if they lived completely insulated from the ruckus.
“Where’s his nibs?” I asked, checking my mailbox at the same time. It was empty, with no pink slip from the sheriff.
“He took 307 and said he was going to make himself visible.”
I stopped short and turned to stare at Ernie. He was a tall, gangly kid, maybe a year or two past thirty, who would have been cast in the lead role of Ichabod Crane had they been filming the remake in Posadas. He bobbed his head as if I were about to lop it off.
“He did what?”
“He took 307, sir.”
“Well, he can do that. He’s the sheriff.” Wheeler wasn’t stupid, and he knew I didn’t believe a word I said. Holman was sheriff, all right, duly elected. But he wasn’t a cop-never had been and probably never would be, no matter how many rinky-dink two-week FBI seminars he attended. Driving around in his personal, unmarked brown Buick was one thing. People could ignore him.
“Where did you say he went?”
“He said he was going to make himself visible, sir. That’s all he said.”
I gestured at the radio. “Ask him where the hell he is.” I glanced up at Estelle. “Goddamn elections.”
Wheeler swung his chair around and keyed the mike. “Three-oh-seven, PCS.”
After a moment, during which time he no doubt had been groping for the microphone, the sheriff replied much too loudly, “Ah, PCS, this is three oh seven.”
“Three-oh-seven, ten-twenty.”
There was a pause while Sheriff Holman mulled that over. Perhaps he was looking at the ten-code card on the back of the visor to find out what “twenty” stood for. Or maybe he didn’t know where the hell he was.
“Ah, PCS, I’m at mile marker one eight one.”
I heard a little chuckle from Ernie but kept my eyes glued to the microphone in front of us just in case Holman should materialize there. “Ten-four, three oh seven. What highway is that?” Wheeler asked. He grinned with delight, but kept the grin out of his voice.
“Ah, roger, PCS. I’m on State seventy eight.”
“Ten-four, three oh seven. PCS clear.”
Wheeler turned to me, and I shook my head. Estelle said helpfully, “Isn’t mile marker 181 a little bit east of the Posadas County line?”
“Yes, it is. And now I know what he means by making himself visible. The school bus carrying the team comes home that way…and so do all the revelers. Actually, except that it’s not our county, it’s a good spot.” I stepped over to the big wall map. “If he’s parked about here, just this side of San Pasquale, then traffic will see him before they start down through the breaks. That’s dangerous stretch of road.” I stepped back from the map. “Maybe they’ll think we’re out in force and behave themselves.” I shrugged. “What the hell.”
“What do you want to do about Vanessa Davila?” Estelle asked. “Put somebody on her place?”
I nodded. “Who’s on tonight…other than the self-appointed Martin?” I looked at the roster and grimaced. “Shit. Eddie Mitchell and Howard Bishop are on until midnight, then Tommy Mears alone midnight to eight. With Tom Pasquale at the hospital, the only one working the village will be the chief, which means there’s no one working the village.” I glanced at Wheeler. “You didn’t hear me say that, son.” He looked appropriately blank.
I looked at my watch. “I don’t have anything cooking at the moment. I’ll take 310 and go sit in the shadows. If Vanessa doesn’t show up by two-thirty or so, then it’s a safe bet that she’s camped out elsewhere for the night. I don’t have a clue where, unless it’s with her aunt.”
“I’ll check there,” Estelle said. “And she hangs around downtown a lot. She might be spending the night with friends.” She opened the yearbook and showed Vanessa Davila’s photograph to Wheeler. “This is the young lady we want to chat with. Vanessa Davila. She’s a ninth-grader, and her mother thinks she went to the game with somebody. We don’t know who. Tell Eddie Mitchell and Tom Mears to stay central and keep an eye open for her. I’ll make copies of her picture from the yearbook. They need to come in and pick those up.”
“Do you want this girl taken into custody if they see her?”
“Yes,” Estelle said. “We do. Tell them to bring her in for questioning. Call me the instant that they do that.”
“Me as well,” I said. I didn’t want to be caught painting windows again.
***
I parked 310 under a dense grove of elm saplings with the Ranchero Mobile Home Park fifty yards to my right. Escondido Lane was a narrow ribbon of hard-packed dirt, a faint tan strip in the moonlight. The browning leaves of the elms dappled the light from the moon and the park’s sodium vapor enough that the car was invisible.
With a deep sigh, I buzzed the window down an inch and then settled back to wait and listen. It would have been a perfect moment for a cup of coffee and a cigarette. I didn’t have either one. I tried to will my mind blank, but in a very few minutes, I found myself fretting about Martin Holman.
I didn’t care what the voters said-this particular sheriff was a civilian by training and more important, by inclination. Hell, he didn’t even wear a sidearm, not that he needed one for most of the county commissioner meetings that he attended. The patrol car he’d heisted included a 12-gauge shotgun in the dashboard rack, but I wasn’t sure he knew how to pop the lock.