Estelle pushed her jacket cuff back and held up her watch. “Show padrino how fast you can run down to the fence and back.”
Francis straightened up and turned to look at me, his dark eyes big and round, as if I’d made the strange request, or at least as if it was my fault. “Better him than me,” I muttered, and Francis heard me.
He held out a tiny hand, as if his thirty-five pounds could hoist my two hundred-plus to my feet. I grinned, seeing the same gesture mirrored that his mother had used with him earlier.
“You go,” I said. “You’ll be there and back before I even get up.” He didn’t buy that one. I turned my head to see what Camille was doing. She was reloading the camera, forehead furrowed in concentration. “Camille, take a picture of Francis.”
That was a miscalculation. Showing off his track-and-field skills wasn’t on the youngster’s agenda, especially in front of a camera. He said something in Spanish and collapsed against his mother’s knees, head down behind, out of sight. Estelle rubbed his back. I found it hard to believe that this was the same perpetual-motion machine whose standard speed setting at home was set at “Cyclone.”
“I don’t think so, sir.” She craned her neck, looking up at the canopy of contorted branches. “Especially in the dark. I can’t imagine him straying away from the campfire, especially if there was something going on, like music. Fire attracts. Children can’t ignore it. I’m sure you’ve seen the looks on kids’ faces when they’re staring into a bonfire. Every spark is a fascination.”
Francis pushed himself up and leaned against her knees. He regarded me soberly; then I saw his eyes shift. He giggled and ducked his head a fraction of a second before I heard the click of Camille’s camera.
“Estelle’s right, Dad,” she said.
“I’m not arguing,” I said. “It’s just that we don’t know everything that went on that night. For instance, if the fire had been burning for a couple of hours, the youngster might have just gotten bored and wandered off.”
“At that time of day? Wandered into the dark? I don’t think so. He’d have just gone to sleep,” Camille said.
“Maybe.” I turned and looked at Estelle. “What are you thinking?”
She frowned. “The easiest thing that could have happened is that someone picked him up.”
“How is that easy? It would be impossible not to hear another vehicle.”
“Unless they parked down out of the trees, maybe even down by the cattle guard where Sheriff Holman was.”
“All right, suppose they did that,” I said. “They sneak through the trees, or up the two-track, trip over the Cole youngster in the dark-he’s playing fifteen feet from his mom. He’s not going to utter a word?”
“Sneak?” Camille said. She stood in front of us, camera in one hand, other hand on her hip. She surveyed the stunted, gnarled caricatures of trees-little trolls compared with the towering hickories, oaks, maples, fir, and spruce of Michigan. “Cloudy as it’s been, it would have been black as pitch up here at night. And the moon’s just past quarter now anyway, even if the clouds did break. How is anyone going to sneak?”
“It’s not hard.” I looked at Estelle. Both she and I had spent more than our share of time picking our way one cautious step after another over country far rougher than this. “They could even use a light here. With the family sitting by a fire, with their backs to the camper, and the intruder’s approach behind the vehicle, they wouldn’t notice a flashlight anyway, especially if the beam was kept low.”
“I don’t think so, Dad. Someone coming to take the child just doesn’t make sense. In the first place, there’s a larger question, even if you allow that someone wanted the child badly enough to risk kidnapping. How did they know the family was camping here?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t know, don’t know.”
Camille crouched down beside me, balancing herself with one hand on my shoulder. “I think it’s something simple.”
“Like what?”
She stood up and pointed. “I think he’s somewhere close. Where’s the edge? The mesa edge?”
“About fifty yards straight ahead,” I said. “Or even less.”
“I’d be willing to bet that he’s somewhere within a hundred-yard radius of this campsite.”
I rolled to my hands and knees, then pushed myself to my feet. Francis grabbed me around my left knee and I damn near lost my balance.
“Hijo…” his mother said, holding out a hand.
“He’s all right,” I said, and clamped my left hand on his head, using him like a small squirming cane.
“They’ve combed every square foot of the mesa face, Camille,” Estelle said. “Dozens of times.”
“What was the child wearing?”
“His mother says he was dressed in jeans, T-shirt, and a bright blue down jacket. And sneakers.”
Camille frowned, gazing off through the trees. “I admit, it’s hard to see how they could miss a bright blue coat.”
“Let’s walk out to the edge,” Estelle said, and I glanced down with more than a little apprehension at Francis.
“You stay close,” I said, and he grabbed my hand.
Matching our pace to the boy’s, we wound our way through the trees. That pace was just dandy with me. The air changed as we approached the rim, and I could hear the sweep of wind and, in the distance, the rhythmic thumping of a helicopter.
The view was extraordinary. The overcast was ragged and multilayered, with small rainsqualls breaking loose from the higher clouds and pummeling the prairie to the south. I could see the steep saddle of the San Cristobal Mountains, and the pass where State Highway 56 snaked through the mountains and then shot down to the tiny border village of Regal.
“Whoa,” I said, and pulled Francis to a halt. Directly in front of us was a jumble of sandstone rimrocks, each smooth as an elephant’s back, rounded and forming the cap of the mesa. Over the centuries, great chunks had broken loose and tumbled down, forming a jagged slope where only a few lucky junipers managed to find something to dig their roots into.
I scooped up the youngster, grunting at the unexpected weight. He hooked an arm around my neck, and we stood quietly, looking out at the valley below.
“Would you like to climb down those rocks?” I asked as I turned and looked off to the west.
“You go, too,” Francis said, and I chuckled.
“Not a chance, kid,” I said.
Estelle and Camille stood altogether too close to the edge, with that sure balance enjoyed by the young. Estelle knelt down and pointed. “The first thing they did was grid this whole area.” She held her hands to form a box. “That way, they were certain that they hand-searched every square meter. There were more than two hundred searchers on this rimrock, all day yesterday, and most of the night.”
Camille climbed down into a small crevice and stood with her hands on the broad flank of two enormous boulders.
“Slow work, I can imagine,” she said. She turned and looked at me and Francis. “I have to agree with Estelle, Dad. I don’t see how a three-year-old could even climb down here. And if he fell, he’d either holler out or they’d find him when they combed the place.” She scrambled back up. “We used to party up here when I was in high school.”
“Here and the lake,” Estelle said. “The two favored spots.”
In the distance, I could hear one of the choppers, and it sounded like he was working well in from the treacherous rim.
“Not favored by three-year-olds,” I said, and I was about to add something else when we heard a loud dull thud from the northwest. It was several seconds before I realized that I was no longer hearing the rhythmic thudding of the helicopter’s blades.
“Oh no,” Estelle said, and she turned away from the edge and dashed back through the woods toward the Blazer.
Camille stricken face told me she’d been listening, too. “Let’s go,” I said.
“Let me take Francis,” she said, and neither the boy nor I argued.