“Ten-four, three ten.”
I sat back, waiting. Vanessa didn’t move, and I didn’t want her out of my sight. Sheriff Holman didn’t let moss grow under his tires. It seemed only a matter of seconds before 307 appeared southbound on Grande.
As he drove by, he said cryptically, “I see her.”
“Keep her in sight. I’m going topside. Wait for Deputy Bishop to get here before you approach her.”
“Ten-four.”
I pulled 310 into gear and drove out from under the concrete, keeping an eye on Vanessa. The on-ramp curved off to the right, and for half of its distance I could see the girl’s dark shape under the beams.
“She’s going to be out of my sight now, so keep me posted,” I said.
“She hasn’t moved,” Holman said. “You want me to go up and talk with her?”
“That’s negative. Wait for Deputy Bishop.” I had visions of Vanessa grabbing the sheriff in a bear hug and both of them toppling down the concrete slope to land in the broken glass and shredded tire treads, Holman no doubt on the bottom.
For fifteen minutes we sat in the darkness, Martin Holman below, me above being rocked by the wake of passing tractor trailers, and Vanessa Davila curled up in the middle.
At five minutes after two, another marked county car idled up behind me. I got out, thinking we had a fair-sized gathering to take one frightened teenage girl into custody. Sergeant Robert Torrez was in civilian clothes, and he came close to smiling.
“Isn’t this interesting,” he said.
Aggie Mendoza Bishop got out of the car and joined us. She walked carefully between the guardrail and the patrol car, looking over the side. “She’s down there? Under the bridge?”
“Yes. Watch your step. There’s broken glass and all kinds of pleasant things.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “And I have no idea what her reaction is going to be. She might come without a struggle, or she might bolt again.”
“She ain’t going too many places from here,” Sergeant Torrez muttered.
Aggie Bishop held up a hand. “You two stay well back,” she said. “Let me talk with her first. My God, she’s got to be frightened to death. Out here in the middle of the night like this. What’s her name?”
I told her, and she stepped over the guardrail with considerably more grace than I managed. The footing was treacherous, and when roadside weeds gave way to the steep polished concrete of the abutment, it was even worse. I was perfectly content to stay well back, clinging to one of the rebar bolts for support, my ankles protesting.
Aggie Bishop took her time, but what Robert Torrez had said was true: Vanessa Davila had nowhere to go. After what seemed like an hour, I saw the bright flash of Torrez’s light and heard him say, “Watch your step here, now.”
The three of them appeared as one huge dark shadow, and I clawed my way back the few steps to the guardrail. Vanessa Davila allowed herself to be steered toward the backseat of the county car without a whimper, and my spirits rose several notches. I still had no idea what the girl knew, but if there was any connection to be made with Maria Ibarra’s death, Vanessa Davila was as close to that connection as anyone.
We crossed the median and headed down the off-ramp. Bob Torrez, with Matron Bishop and Vanessa Davila in the backseat, headed for the office, with Sheriff Holman falling in behind. I drove back to the Ranchero trailer park to chauffeur Mrs. Davila down to be with her daughter. I figured, after she had seen Vanessa flee into the night, that she’d be sitting in the kitchen, wringing her hands and worrying herself into a swivet.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. Mrs. Davila wasn’t waiting for me or anyone else. After a third symphony of pounding and doorbell-ringing, she opened the door, her face puffy from sleep. She rubbed one eye and regarded me with the other as if she had never seen me before.
“Ma’am, we have your daughter in custody. She’s safe. I’d like you to come down to the office and be with her while we question her. One of the matrons is with her now.”
Mrs. Davila looked puzzled. “What?” she said. I took a long, deep breath. If I had had a bottle in my hand, it would have been a long, stiff drink.
23
“Did she do it?” Sheriff Martin Holman met me at the back door of the sheriff’s office, and he spoke in a hoarse whisper.
“Who? And do what?” I asked, pausing on the bottom steps.
“That girl, Vanessa Davila. Do you think she killed Maria Ibarra?”
I looked at Martin’s eager face and slowly shook my head. “Martin,” I said and stepped up so that I could put my hand on his shoulder. He was four inches taller than I was, and he probably hadn’t forgotten that it was his hand that signed my paycheck every month. But he still accepted the fatherly gesture and even leaned forward a little to hear my words of wisdom.
“Martin, every soul that we bring up these steps is not necessarily under suspicion of murder, even if a murder took place. And in this particular instance, to the best of our knowledge, the victim wasn’t murdered.” I patted his shoulder. “Dumped by some son of a bitch, but not murdered. Stop being so eager.”
I gave him a final pat and pushed past. He followed me down the narrow hallway to my office as if I actually had some answers. “She’s in the conference room with Torrez and Mrs. Bishop.” Just as I stepped into my office he added, “We’re waiting on Estelle.”
“She may be tied up most of the night out at the accident site,” I said, and headed for a chair.
“No, she radioed in that it wouldn’t be more than ten minutes. She was at the hospital.”
I nodded. “Fair enough. Let me tell you what we have.” I sat down heavily. “We have a girl who choked to death.”
“That part, I know,” Holman said testily. I waved a hand for him to be patient.
“She choked to death on a piece of pizza. Somewhere, we don’t know where. Someone, we don’t know who, dumped her body under the bleachers. A real good Samaritan that person was. We know where and with whom the victim was living sometime before the time of her death…but not necessarily at the time of her death.”
“But you don’t know what relationship Miguel Orosco is to Maria Ibarra,” Holman added quickly.
“Just so. We don’t. And you bring up a good point. What we don’t know makes a more impressive file than what we do know. In the first place, that girl”-and I pointed in the general direction of the upstairs conference room-“is the only person who was seen with Maria Ibarra outside of regular school hours during the past day or so. Apparently Vanessa Davila and Maria Ibarra might have been friends.”
“You don’t sound very positive,” Holman murmured.
“No, I’m not. It’s the word of one convenience store clerk, and not a very dependable clerk at that. Glen Archer doesn’t remember the two girls together, but then again he doesn’t really remember Maria Ibarra in the first place, alone or otherwise.”
“All right, so we don’t know who she was hanging out with, other than maybe this Davila girl.”
“Right. And before that, we don’t know how Maria got herself linked up with Orosco. There’s a Mexican connection there that we may never solve, unless we get just plain lucky. We don’t know who was in the two vehicles that Wes Crocker reports seeing behind the school. We don’t know what kind of vehicles they were. We don’t know just when they were there. Do you want the rest of the list?”
Holman shrugged, but it was a bleak shrug. “Sure.”
“We don’t know if the vehicles behind the school are related to Maria Ibarra’s misfortune. We’re not sure if she died near there, or somewhere else and was dumped. We received one anonymous telephone tip that reported the body, but other than that, not one word from anyone.”