I retrieved my cup before she had removed it out of my reach. She clasped her hands together and leaned forward. “If her pulse was racing, strong and racing, why would there be insufficient blood supply?”
I looked askance and sipped the coffee. It wasn’t bad for hospital brew.
“How do you know her pulse was strong and racing?” I asked.
“For one thing, I saw it. The way her head was turned, I could see the artery in the side of her neck…”
“The carotid,” I said expertly.
“Right. For another thing, Deputy Pasquale took her pulse right away, and if you recall, he said, “Her pulse is strong. Just get her head down.”
“I don’t recall him saying that, but I’ll take your word for it. So she had a strong pulse.”
“She wasn’t sweaty or pale.”
“She looked pretty awful to me.”
“Sure, because she’d been spending a lot of time doing the same thing as all the rest of us. Combing every square inch of that mesa for her son.” Estelle leaned forward farther and lowered her voice to a harsh whisper. “But she wasn’t sick-type pale. She wasn’t shocky pale.”
“I wasn’t looking that closely,” I admitted. “So what did Francis say, exactly?”
“He said that syncope in an otherwise-healthy person could be caused by fatigue, shock, severe mental distress-almost anything that lowers the blood pressure suddenly.”
“The vessels dilate,” I said. “Okay. And any of the reasons you’ve listed would qualify. She was so tired, she could hardly see straight, and all of a sudden there’s her son’s coat, all sliced to ribbons. That’s shock and distress in spades.”
“So she faints.”
“She faints. She didn’t faint when she first picked up the jacket.”
“No.”
“And she didn’t faint while you, Dale, and Browers looked at the Forest Service map. She just knelt there, hugging the coat.”
“True.”
“She fainted when you knelt beside her and asked her about the tears in the fabric.”
“I guess so. I don’t have that good a memory, but I’ll take your word for it. If that’s the way it happened, it sounds like a ‘last straw’ thing to me. She’s lost her son, finding his jacket takes away most of her hope, and then she sees ugly tears in the fabric, which can mean only awful things.” I drained the rest of the coffee. “It’s perfectly logical to me. It all built up to a head and, bingo, she faints.”
“With you right there to catch her.”
I laughed. “Estelle, come on. I can’t remember the last time I grabbed a fainting maiden. Sure as hell I’d miss if I tried now.”
“She didn’t know that.” Her dark, finely boned face was expres-sionless, the way she became when she’d turned inward and was perfectly sure of herself. She would have made a terrible cheerleader. Every time the home team scored, the stands in her section would be dead silent, nothing but dark, bottomless eyes watching the game.
“Let’s consider something,” I said finally. I leaned back in the white plastic thing and felt it flex with my weight. Afraid that it might dump me on the floor, I relaxed forward again. “Let’s assume that you are one hundred percent correct with this notion. Let’s assume that Tiffany Cole was faking.” I held my hands up, framing an imaginary marquee. “The Academy Award for best screen faint goes to Tiffany Cole. Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“But you can guess.”
Estelle Reyes-Guzman nodded. “I think that she knows more about her son’s disappearance than she’s letting on.”
I rested my head in my hands and gazed at the remarkable woman sitting across the table from me. She was either so far ahead of me that we were working different cases or she was completely, dreadfully wrong.
“Well,” I said, “Is that the direction you’re going to go with it?”
“Yes.” There wasn’t a instant’s hesitation in her response.
I sighed and stood up. “And now, I’m tired,” I said.
“I’m glad you got your wife’s picture back,” Estelle said.
I tossed my cup in the trash and turned to look at her, puzzled. “How did you know that?”
“Camille called here earlier. About an hour ago.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“That’s what daughters are for,” Estelle said.
“She doesn’t need to worry,” I said.
“That’s what I told her. I said that your working all night was a sign that you were all better. All back to normal.” She grinned and patted my arm as she held the door open for me.
I stopped and looked at Estelle for a long moment. “I hope that you’ll be very sure of your evidence before you initiate anything against Tiffany Cole.”
“Yes, sir. I just wanted you to know what I was thinking.”
I smiled widely. “That’s always a treat, Estelle.”
Chapter 25
The light of day on Wednesday brought two unpleasant surprises. The first was the Posadas Register.
Marjorie Davis had done more than her share to fill the front page. I paused with a fork halfway from plate to mouth. The elegant breakfast of fake eggs mixed with green chili was Camille’s way of making up for being a surreptitious nag the night before. She wasn’t about to give up, though. A small paper cup of pills rested beside my coffee cup-decaf coffee.
Across the top of the paper was a screamer headline, usually reserved by editor/publisher Frank Dayan for the end of the world. SEARCH ENTERS FIFTH DAY it bellowed in letters an inch high. Under the headline and covering the top quarter of the page, little Cody Cole’s face beamed out at the world.
He was a fetching youngster, that was for sure. At the time the shutter was clicked for that picture, he’d been a genuinely happy little kid, with wide grin, sparkling eyes, dimples, the whole works. The tiny white cowpoke hat sat rakishly on his head, holding down a thatch of golden locks.
I sighed and flipped the paper over. Balancing the picture of Cody was another photo, this one positioned down in the lower-left quadrant. It was wonderfully composed, and I nodded in admiration at Marjorie’s skill. The sunlight streamed through the trees and brush, and just off center rested the tangle of a shattered helicopter.
Ms. Davis had waited for just the right moment of drama. A Guardsman on the left was gesticulating to someone off-camera, his mouth caught in full shout. On the right, framed by a grove of trees and the wreck in the background, was a New Mexico State Police Officer and a National Guardsman, both kneeling in front of another soldier, who was holding a bandage to his forehead.
“No metro paper is going to compete with this,” I murmured.
“Look at page four,” Camille said, and I put down my fork and did so.
“Jesus,” I said. In addition to various illustrated sidebars about the boy’s parents, quotations from every agency involved, and pleas for information, another large picture at the top of page four riveted my attention.
I read the caption aloud. EVERYTHING POSSIBLE, the lead-in said. “In an effort to duplicate the possible behavior of the missing child, Detective Estelle Reyes-Guzman brought her own son to the mesa early Monday. Despite all efforts, the only trace of the missing youngster is the discovery of a blue jacket thought to belong to the boy.”
“I’ll be damned,” I said.
The photo was one that Marjorie had taken when she saw little Francis and Camille waiting by the Blazer. The photo was cropped so that Francis appeared to be walking, head thoughtfully down, an adult’s hand resting on his shoulder.
“Incredible,” I said. At the bottom of the page was a large display advertisement promising a thousand-dollar reward for information on Cody Cole’s whereabouts. The telephone number was that of the Posadas Register.
“Anything that helps,” Camille said.
“I suppose,” I replied. “But I hope Marjorie actually talked to Estelle before running that caption.”
“The child was there,” Camille said. “Francis, I mean.”