“Vanessa,” Estelle said, “we know you’ve been upset since your friend died. Since Maria died.” She brought her other hand over and held Vanessa’s. “And you have every reason to be. But you can’t try to settle things by yourself.”
Vanessa sniffed and Estelle handed her a tissue. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” Vanessa nodded. “Was it Denny Wilton, Vanessa? Was that who you were going to go after?”
Vanessa nodded again, and the relief of knowing at least one small answer swept over me.
“Vanessa, were Ryan House and Denny Wilton with Maria the night she died?” Vanessa had experienced good luck with the nod, and she stuck with it. “Were you with them?” This time she shook her head. “Did you see them together?”
“Yes,” Vanessa said. “I saw them drive in to where Maria stayed.”
“How did you happen to see them?”
Vanessa shrugged. “I was walking over to see if Maria wanted to go downtown for a while.”
“And did they see you?”
“No.” Vanessa heaved a great breath and sat up a little straighter, shrugging off some of her mother’s weight. “I don’t think so.”
“Was it Denny Wilton’s truck that you saw? The dark blue one?”
Vanessa nodded.
“Did you see them again that evening? Thursday night?”
She shook her head.
“When did you hear about Maria?”
Vanessa took another shuddering breath. “Next morning at school.”
“You didn’t try to see her again that night? Thursday night?”
“No.” This time the reply was small and faint, as if Vanessa realized she’d made a mistake by letting her friend go off with the two boys that night.
“Why didn’t you come forward and tell someone, Vanessa?”
The girl shrugged and her lower lip thrust out. “’Cause.”
“Were you afraid?”
Vanessa shook her head. She didn’t look like the type who was afraid of much.
“You left school on Friday, didn’t you? Right after homeroom, when you heard the news? When you saw all the commotion?”
Vanessa nodded.
“Where did you go?”
“Home.”
“She was here all day,” her mother barked helpfully, apparently forgetting our earlier visits.
“Did you go to the football game Friday night?” I asked, and Vanessa leveled expressionless eyes at me and didn’t respond.
“Did you?” Estelle prompted.
“No.”
“Where did you go? You weren’t home most of the day, and certainly not that evening. We stopped by and talked with your mother a couple of times. You didn’t come home at all Friday night.”
“I was sitting up by the highway, watching cars.”
“By the interstate, you mean?” I asked, and she nodded. “All day and most of the night?”
She nodded again. “Until I walked uptown. When I thought everybody would be coming back from the game.”
“Were you trying to decide what to do, Vanessa?” Estelle asked, and on the surface it sounded like a monumentally dumb question…a rarity for Estelle Reyes-Guzman. Why else would a fourteen-year-old sit hidden in a bunch of elm brush, I thought, watching others travel on with their lives? Vanessa nodded, and Estelle patted her hand. “And when did you decide to go after Denny Wilton?”
“After I heard about him killing Ryan.”
“Who gave you the idea that he killed Ryan, Vanessa? It was a truck crash. They had just passed a school bus. The bus driver thinks that Denny fell asleep.”
“He killed him. I know he did.” She said it with simple finality.
“Who told you about the crash, Vanessa?” I asked.
“They were talking about it at Portillo’s.”
“The convenience store, you mean. You went there?”
“For a little while.”
“Why would Denny want to kill Ryan House, Vanessa?” Estelle pressed gently. “Why would he want to do that?”
“’Cause Ryan woulda told on them sometime about Maria. He couldn’t keep quiet very long. And somebody was saying how he’d heard that somebody had killed that old bum that was in town…the one that got arrested when they found Maria.”
The grapevine was a marvel of efficiency if not accuracy, I marveled.
“And you think that Denny Wilton killed Ryan House because he was afraid that Ryan would tell someone about Maria, and about the old bum, is that right?”
Vanessa nodded with absolute certainty.
“But Vanessa, Maria choked to death. She wasn’t killed by anyone. The boys may have panicked and run, but they didn’t kill her. And the old man wasn’t hurt badly. Don’t you think Denny Wilton might have known all that? Is that a reason for him to kill his best friend?”
Vanessa choked back a sob. “He don’t have best friends,” she said, and the venom fairly dripped.
“Do you think he would risk crippling or killing himself, just to get at Ryan? Why would he do that? They were friends.”
“He started hangin’ out with Ryan House this year ’cause Ryan broke up with Julie Hayes. That’s all. And…” She hesitated, as if she was afraid to give away too much. “Even last year, he and Ryan got into a fight right during class. So they weren’t no best friends.”
I heaved a sigh myself, not ready to try analyzing the why of teenage relationships. And from my own experience with my two sons and their friends, I knew that kids could be sworn enemies on Monday and best buds on Tuesday.
“Why do you think Ryan and Denny Wilton wanted to go out with Maria, Vanessa?” Estelle asked.
“’Cause.”
“Because why?”
“Her and Ryan were in Spanish together.”
“That’s all? They shared a class?”
“She had this crush on him. One day her and me were in the hall, and she tried to say something to him. She talked Spanish at him, and Denny Wilton was there and called her ‘the truck girl.’ He was real mean.”
“And yet they all went out together,” I said.
“A bet, maybe,” Estelle said quietly. “That and the fact that Ryan House didn’t have a car. Vanessa, do you know anything else about that night? The night Maria Ibarra died?”
She shook her head.
“And you still think Denny Wilton killed his best friend? You don’t think that the crash was an accident?”
Vanessa nodded. “I know he did.”
“How do you know, Vanessa? He could just as easily have been crippled or killed as well.” Estelle didn’t bother to mention the functioning air bag and seatbelt-shoulder harness.
“’Cause he killed my brother, too. And he didn’t never get caught either.”
36
By the time we had pried the story out of Vanessa-and tried and failed to pry corroboration from her mother-it was after seven that Saturday night.
Estelle argued vehemently against charging the girl. I didn’t think that formal charges would be such a bad idea, but I certainly balked at the idea of jailing an emotional basket case like Vanessa in our crude, outdated lockup, and Judge Hobart balked with me. After a brief preliminary hearing, both the girl’s mother and the old judge agreed that we could transfer Vanessa to the juvenile facility in Las Cruces, where she’d be properly cared for.
With that compromise, I agreed with Estelle. If Vanessa’s story held water, there was no point in pressing any kind of charges for burglary…and Toby Romero didn’t care, as long as he got his gun back and his window fixed. He and his girlfriend came home from a day trip to Albuquerque to find a yellow crime scene ribbon tacked across the window and a deputy parked out front. Deputy Tom Mears said Romero shrugged when he heard the story and said, “Whatever you want to do, I mean, you know.”
It was the part about the girl’s story holding water that bothered both Estelle and me.
Back at the office, we spread out every scrap of paper that we could dig from the files that was remotely related to the death four years before of Rudy Davila, Vanessa’s brother. The event had occurred during a brief period when Estelle Reyes-Guzman had been working for a sheriff’s department in the northern part of the state…a period I preferred to forget.