I nodded and reached for the tape recorder, then hesitated. “Gail, did you know Maria Ibarra?”
“Who?”
“Maria Ibarra. She was a student from Mexico who just came to Posadas High a few weeks ago. She’s a freshman.”
“You mean the girl they found under the bleachers?” She scrunched her shoulders together, making herself as small and inconspicuous as possible. “I knew who she was, is all. A couple of times, I knew some of the kids were all talking about where she lived and stuff like that.”
“Where she lived?”
“They were just stories, I think. And they’re all, ‘She lives in an old truck out in the arroyo,’ but…” She scrunched a little more, as if she were trying to touch together the outboard ends of her young, pliable collarbones.
“But no more than that?”
“No.”
I stood up amid a cracking of joints and creaking of belt leather. “Mrs. Scutt, thanks. And Gail, you, too. You’ve been a big help. I shouldn’t have to bother you again.”
Gail Scutt was all too happy to head for her room, and Maryanne Scutt saw me to the door. I thanked her again, mostly because she had the good sense to let me leave without badgering me with questions that I wouldn’t be able to answer.
An hour later, I had three nearly identical copies of my interview with Gail Scutt. Her seat partner, Melissa Roark, confirmed what Gail had seen.
Sitting directly behind the driver had been a sleepy high school junior, Bryan Saenz. He’d seen the truck go by, had remembered a vague image of Ryan House snoozing, and then had been jarred into full wakefulness when the bus driver shouted and spiked the brakes.
Three rows behind Gail, Tiffany Ulibarri, a sober-faced senior, had seen the pickup glide by as well. She’d seen the somnolent Ryan House, even noticed a small patch of breath condensing on the side window by his slack mouth.
That was as far as I cared to go. I didn’t need sixty adolescent bus passengers to tell me that Ryan House certainly had been sound asleep when the truck passed the school bus and then pounded itself and him into the limestone.
32
I drove past the high school, saw the deputy’s car parked in front along with Glen Archer’s station wagon, and on impulse pulled into the circular driveway. I got out of the car. The gray sky was unusually bright even though the sun hadn’t been able to crack through the solid high overcast. The light breeze had died, leaving just the leaden, uncharacteristic sky like a pewter bowl inverted from horizon to horizon.
The sidewalk, a full sixteen feet wide, led from the curb to the quadruple glass doors under the lunging gold jaguar that was the school’s mascot. For a moment, as I started up the walk, I thought I was looking through my bifocals with one eye and through cloudy water with the other. The sidewalk’s neatly clipped margins appeared to converge.
Before I had time to pause and reflect on that odd visual aberration, a sudden and vicious pain lanced through my skull from back to front, traveling in an arc over my left ear. With a yelp, I staggered sideways, tripped over my own feet, and sprawled on my hands and knees, partially off the concrete.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered and remained frozen, waiting for my skull to crack into little pieces. But the pain subsided as quickly as it had come, and with a grunt of relief I pushed myself up to my knees. I reached up with an unsteady hand and wiped the tears out of my eyes.
Apparently no one had seen my swan dive, or if they had, they figured I could pick myself up. I did so, grimacing at the rip in my left trouser knee and the skin scrubbed off the heel of my left hand.
“Absolutely goddamned wonderful,” I said. I considered the mishap a sure sign that I wasn’t needed inside the school. Sergeant Torrez could search through lockers all day long without help from me. I turned and walked back to the car, still rubbing my bruised hand. I plopped down in the car and just sat still for a few minutes.
“Well, shit,” I said finally, not sure of my next step. That in itself was irritating. Usually dogged persistence, if nothing else, had always saved my day. Now I didn’t know what to doggedly pursue.
I swept my right hand up to pull the gear lever into drive and missed it by three inches, instead making a ridiculous motion with a clawed right hand like I was trying to catch flies.
The second attempt did the trick, and I pulled 310 out of the school’s driveway. Even without making any stops, it seemed an inordinately long distance back to the house. I parked the car, called dispatch and told them where I was, and went inside. I could see Wes Crocker still out cold in the living room, and that seemed about the right decision.
I headed for the dark, quiet confines of my bedroom, closed the door, and shed jacket, hardware, hat, and anything else with hard corners that might disturb me. I could play the waiting game as well as anyone. The bed felt cool and wonderful, and before I’d exhaled ten times, I was hard asleep.
As was usually the case, my brief sleep was a colorful parade of ridiculous dreams. This particular session was dominated by my youngest grandson, Kendall, who was trying to persuade me that yes, his old wooden toboggan had front-end steering. I looked down the slope at the thick forest of Douglas fir through which he proposed to slalom the thing and tried to convince him that his plan was idiocy.
I was irritated that he was right, all along. As soon as we started down the hill the trees disappeared, giving way to thick pasture grass that somehow hadn’t been bent by the snow burden.
When I awoke, we still hadn’t solved the riddle of the grass. I didn’t bother to look for my watch, but swung out of bed and plodded toward the bathroom.
I didn’t remember leaving the bathroom and returning to bed, but the dreams started up immediately, and even more ridiculous than before. Wesley Crocker’s face refused to come into focus, and he kept making suggestions that really had nothing to do with the problem at hand…whatever that was.
The light seemed harsh, and suddenly, as if something had tripped a switch far inside my skull, I could see the bottom of the bathroom sink, its porcelain slightly dimpled, with a strand of cobweb running from one side over to the center drain trap.
“What the hell’s this?” I said, because I’d never had a dream quite so stark and clear. Movement above the sink attracted my eyes, and there was Crocker again, his face more or less in focus.
“I’ll call someone,” he said, and this time I heard him clearly.
“What the hell?” I said, quite loudly. I was lying on the floor of the bathroom, my head under the sink pedestal, my feet by the commode. It wasn’t a resting spot I normally would have chosen, and the concern on Crocker’s face echoed that.
“I heard you fall,” Crocker said, and then repeated, “I’ll call someone.” He turned and started to hobble off.
“No, wait, damn it,” I said. Like most people, I had preferences about where strangers might find me and in what condition, and lying under a sink wasn’t a top choice. I twisted around until I could draw my knees up, flailing for purchase with my hands at the same time…no doubt looking a good deal like a beached whale.
“You probably oughtn’t to move,” Crocker said helpfully.
I grunted something rude and continued to flail. Crocker reached down a hand and I waved him off. I didn’t care for the vision of him slipping and falling on top of me, the two of us forever tangled on the floor in the bathroom of my master bedroom.
With enough effort to set my pulse hammering in my ears, I managed to roll the right direction and push myself to my hands and knees. I reached up and rested my left arm on the sink’s rim.
“I still think I ought to call someone,” Crocker said. “I was just thinkin’ about stretchin’ out for a few minutes, and I heard this God almighty crash, so I come on in.”