“Who, the youngster?” She nodded and fixed me with those bottomless black eyes of hers. “What makes you think that?” I asked.
She took a deep breath and held up her hands, tapping one index finger against the other. “For one thing, the search hasn’t turned up anything except rumors. That happens when there aren’t any traces, anything to provide a lead. Not even a scent for the dogs.”
“What rumors?” Camille asked.
“For instance, yesterday someone said that they’d found a child’s shoe print about two miles farther down the road.”
“Two miles? We’re talking about a three-year-old, aren’t we?” I said.
Estelle nodded. “When that report came in, a whole sea of people flocked down that way. It wasn’t a child’s print at all. In fact, Bob Torrez said that the print was made by a woman’s shoe, about size five or five and a half.”
“It could have been someone on the search team, stopping for a break,” I said, “or a hundred other possibilities.”
“Sure. What is true is that the print was not that of a child-at least not this particular child. And then things begin to get even more bizarre. About two o’clock yesterday afternoon, just before I came down, we got a call that someone had seen the child riding in a white Ford van, heading down the mountain toward town.”
“And let me guess,” Camille said. “A white van with out-of-state plates on it.”
I looked at her in surprise, and she shrugged. “It’s always got to have out-of-state plates,” she said. “If you watch all the crappy television docudramas, that’s a staple. What good does it do if the van belongs to weird Uncle Louis down the street? That’s too easily traced.”
Estelle smiled, and that expression lifted half a ton of worry from her pretty olive-skinned face. Except for the aristocratic aquiline nose and narrow jaw, she might have been a younger sister to Camille. “No one actually saw a van. We checked on the rumor, and it was just that. And sir, that’s what I mean. All these shapeless rumors,” and she rocked her hands back and forth, “the sort of things that surface when the search is getting desperate and there just isn’t a break of any kind.”
“And you still haven’t said why you think he isn’t up there.”
“He’s too little, sir. I listen to all the theories-”
“Everyone’s got one of those, or two.”
“Yes, sir. But they talk about a three-year-old as if he’s going to trek off across rugged country, maybe covering miles and miles, sleeping under logs, and all that sort of nonsense.”
“Stranger things have happened, Estelle.”
“Not to three-year-olds, sir. Now, an older child would walk, maybe even run. But a three-year-old? His legs are what, about this long?” She held her hands, one above the other, about two feet apart. “At most? That means a tiny little stride, if you can say that a three-year-old strides at all. And he’s got no balance, not like an older child. He just can’t manage rough terrain at any speed.”
“How did he get separated from the camp in the first place?” Camille asked. “Three-year-olds don’t go off on solo strolls at night.”
“His mother says that he was playing beside the camp trailer. He was digging in the dirt with a stick, perfectly content, just on the edge of the light from the campfire. She said she and her boyfriend had been fussing with the fire, trying to arrange some baking potatoes in the coals. Then her boyfriend went into the camper to get his guitar. The mother says that it was getting late, and she wanted little Cody by the fire, sitting in her lap while her boyfriend sang.”
“And she looked around and the child was gone,” I said.
Estelle nodded.
“Just like that.”
She nodded again.
“He never cried out?” Camille said. “A child’s voice would carry at night like a ringing telephone.”
“It was blustery, and the campfire was roaring,” I said. “And somebody was tuning a guitar.”
“No,” Camille said, and shook her head.
“No what?”
“Just no,” she repeated. “From the time she last noticed the kid playing in the dirt to the time she realized he wasn’t there, how many minutes could it have been? Two, three? Maybe ten at the most if mommy was really numb? I mean, isn’t that a rule of three-year-old ownership, that you have to pay attention every second?”
“Sure enough,” I said, “So the choices are limited. Either the tyke wandered a few yards and fell among the rocks or he wandered where the walking was easiest for his tiny legs, on the road. How far could he go?”
“Not could. It’s how far he would go, Dad. Remember, it was dark. How many brave three-year-olds do you know?”
I grinned, then reached over and patted Estelle on the forearm, thinking of her oldest, my godson. “One,” I said. “The kid would walk from here to Cleveland if there was a reason.”
“Maybe not,” Estelle said. “Francis is beginning to think that there are monsters in the dark now.” I found it hard to imagine Francis Guzman, Jr., three years old, as darkly handsome and intelligent as both his parents, afraid of anything.
“So what are the other choices?”
Estelle rested her head in her hands. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think someone picked him up?”
“I’d hate to think that, but it’s a possibility. And I guess that’s why I wanted you to go with me this morning. I’ve got some things I want to show you.”
“Sure,” I said again. “I don’t know what I can tell you that your instincts haven’t already covered.”
“You never know,” Estelle said. She frowned. “Do you mind if Francis goes with us?”
“If he can get away from the hospital, of course not.”
Estelle smiled again. “No. I mean the kid.” She used the nickname I’d adopted when the child was born. As Francis junior’s padrino, I figured I was entitled. It was a name that was easy to remember.
“That country’s no place for a child,” I said, “especially in this weather.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Estelle murmured. She looked at Camille. “Can I talk you into going up with us?”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” my daughter said.
Chapter 8
The sunshine that morning had been a false promise, a tantalizing little blast of morning light squeezed through a thin rent in the clouds just above the horizon. The rest of the sky was dull lead, with the bottoms of the clouds torn and fragmented by winds aloft. It was going to be a cold, miserable day, the kind that duck hunters love, where the targets show up nice and black against the uniform background of the sky, with no sunshine in the shooters’ eyes.
We took my Blazer so that Estelle could use a child’s seat for Francis. Camille cheerfully sat in back with the kid, no doubt thankful that she didn’t have to stare out through a cop car’s backseat security grill.
Radio traffic was intense by Posadas County standards, and dispatcher Gayle Sedillos was handling the various agencies effortlessly. Search and Rescue operations were generally a mess anyway, since no one except the National Guard got enough practice, and everyone wanted to be lead dog. In this particular SAR episode, Sheriff Martin Holman was the commander-his first stab at that kind of interagency organization.
Just before the landfill north of town, Estelle turned west on State Highway 78. A mile farther and the chain-link fence along the airport property grew out of the red sandstone. Enough junk plastered itself to the fencing that it could be mistaken for the landfill.
A Huey chopper in sober New Mexico National Guard colors waited at the end of the runway. The Huey was probably older than the kid who was flying it, but the young pilot was having a good time despite the seriousness of his mission. He held the aging helicopter in a hover a foot off the ground, rock-steady, its wide blades thumping the air so hard, it shook the Blazer.
A second Huey whumped out from the apron in front of one of the hangars, nose slightly down as it followed the taxiway toward its waiting buddy.