“That’s hard to imagine,” I said, trying to keep the grin out of my voice.
“Well, it’s perfect,” Willit said. “She’s very elderly, so no one suspects because of that. He prepares her grave all by himself, like some innocent, half-senile old fart, and even carves a crude cross for special effects. People look at it and say, ‘Isn’t that sweet,’ and he’s home free.”
“I don’t think so, Mr. Willit.” But I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Words similar to Willit’s prediction had been spoken as Camille and I visited the grave the day before.
“Why not? Two, three years, who’s going to know the difference? Especially if she’s just wrapped up in an old bedsheet or something like that. The body will be decomposed before long. That’s why I’m going to Posadas this week. Tomorrow, if I can make arrangements. I want a court order signed. It’ll make things a lot easier if you’d sign a statement saying that you don’t want her buried on your property.”
“I really don’t care one way or another, Mr. Willit, but a court order for what?”
“Exhumation. I want to find out what killed my mother.”
Chapter14
“We’re ready, sir,” Estelle Reyes-Guzman said, and I damn near jumped out of my chair. I had swiveled it sideways and was gazing out the window, lost in thought somewhere. She frowned. “What’s wrong, sir?”
I got out of my chair with a grunt and waved a hand at the telephone. “Nothing.” I didn’t have a clue how long I’d been wool-gathering. On the chance that it hadn’t been too long, I added, “I just got off the phone with Gloria Apodaca’s stepson.”
“That’s the Willit person that’s been calling?”
I nodded. “He wants a court order to exhume the body. He thinks that Florencio Apodaca did her in.”
I thought Estelle might laugh, or maybe chuckle, or even smile-just a little maybe. But the corners of her mouth didn’t twitch and the little lines around her eyes didn’t deepen. She stepped into my office and closed the door behind her. “What did you tell him?”
“Well, I didn’t give him a definite answer. He’s flying in from California sometime in the next day or two.” I thrust my hands in my pockets and looked down at the old wooden flooring. “I guess it’s something that’s got to be settled one way or another. If I refuse, then Willit will take old man Apodaca to court, and we’ll be tied up that way until he finds enough evidence to convince a judge. And I’m sure he’ll find some excuse. I was thinking of going over to talk with the old guy. Maybe I can convince him that Gloria needs to be buried properly, out of the way of future water lines. That way, Stanley Willit can have his look-see, and the old lady can rest in peace.” I shrugged. “It won’t hurt to talk to him. See what he says. You want to go along?”
“Sure.” She frowned and shook her head. “I’ve seen Gloria Apodaca in church a few times.”
She didn’t continue, so I prompted her. “And then?”
“Being practicing Catholics, being buried in unconsecrated ground would raise all sorts of clamor with relatives.”
“Maybe she was and he isn’t,” I said.
“And that would make all the more reason to agree with Mr. Willit, sir. I think you should talk with Florencio. Maybe tomorrow, if nothing else breaks.”
I nodded and she stepped aside to let me out into the modern world of tile, fluorescent lights, and electric doors. “Let’s see what Mrs. Cole and her boyfriend have to say.”
Had the young couple been interested in their surroundings just then, they would have been impressed with Sheriff Martin Holman’s office. He had every computer gadget on the planet stuffed into a single piece of furniture that looked like an oversized entertainment center. The snarl of wires and cables lead down to a power source beside his steel desk that looked adequate to drain Posadas Rural Electric Co-op bone-dry.
Tiffany Cole had recovered from her head-thumping faint, but she was a wreck in every other respect. Andy Browers sat beside her, his large brown hand covering both of hers.
The sheriff indicated that I sit in his chair behind the desk, and I took him up on the offer. He perched on the edge of the desk, hands clasped in his lap, composed as hell and looking as if he was about to say, “Now, what will it take for you to drive home that new car today?”
“We’re not getting anywhere,” he said by way of preamble, and I was surprised at his honesty. “You’ve spent the same hours up on that mesa that we have, and other than the jacket, we haven’t turned up a thing.” That pronouncement didn’t do a lot to make Tiffany Cole and Andy Browers any more cheerful.
“I think it’s time to face the fact that the youngster is not on the mesa,” the sheriff continued. He saw the quiver of Tiffany Cole’s lower lip and added quickly, “That doesn’t mean that we’re not going to continue the ground and air search.” He clapped his hands once, softly. “Even enlarge the sweep of the search to the west, north, and east.”
Browers’s voice was husky. “What do you really think, Sheriff?”
Holman hesitated and glanced at me, then at Estelle. “We think,” he said slowly, “that the child was abducted.”
Tiffany let out a little strangled cry and stuck her left fist in her mouth. Her eyes brimmed. I hoped that she wasn’t going to go backward out of the chair.
Holman took a deep breath and plunged on. “You have to consider some main features of that country. It’s rugged, and we just don’t think that the child would walk very far. That means he’d hear voices, and he’d probably holler for help. He didn’t do any of those things. But in addition to all that, there are several access roads to the general area where you folks were camping. It would be easy enough for someone to drive a truck up there, maybe even fairly close. It would also be fairly easy to slip through the trees to where you people were camping and, when it was clear that the youngster was by himself, pick him up.”
“You don’t really believe that,” Browers said. If his hand clamped Tiffany’s any harder, we would have heard bones starting to crack. “What about his jacket?”
Sheriff Holman spread his hands. “Detective Reyes-Guzman and I spent quite a bit of time this afternoon going over the possibilities, including the problems presented by the jacket,” he said. He got up and walked toward the window, his hands on the small of his back. True to form, he wasn’t wearing a gun-at least not one that was visible. “And let me tell you what doesn’t make any sense. What doesn’t make sense is that the child is still on the mesa. We’ve used dogs, helicopters, infrared heat-seeking equipment. Enough manpower to comb an area ten times that size. I’m sorry. I don’t think he’s up there.”
The sheriff nodded at Estelle. “Do you agree?”
“Yes, sir.” That’s all she said, and Holman returned to the desk perch. “Let’s take it apart. You provided articles of the boy’s clothing so the dogs could pick up a strong scent. They followed the scent just a few feet from where your truck was parked and then lost it. They didn’t follow it toward the area where the jacket was discovered.” Holman spread his hands again, and Browers took the opportunity to speak.
“It’s been raining, though. That screws up the scent for the dogs.”
“It hasn’t been raining that much,” Holman said. “And the dogs are proven in dozens of searches, some in far worse weather than this.”
“What if he’s fallen over the edge somehow? Hurt real bad, maybe even…maybe even so bad, he can’t cry out?”
“The search teams covered every square inch of that mesa face, folks. And I mean covered it. So did you. I spent four hours in the area immediately below where you were camped, in an area no bigger than a football field. The child isn’t there. And the National Guard’s infrared equipment agrees with us. He isn’t there.”
“But who?” Tiffany Cole said, and it was the first time I’d actually heard her voice.
“That’s the primary reason we wanted to talk with you folks today,” the sheriff said.
I cleared my throat. “Mrs. Cole,” I said, “who knew that you and your family were going camping this weekend?”