“Of course you would,” I said. Willit shot a glance at me, but I kept a straight face. Holman was smirking. “Where are you staying?”
“The Posadas Inn, room twenty-nine.”
I ushered Willit to the door. I patted his shoulder and he cringed. “I’ll call you as soon as the action starts.”
“What do you suppose he does for a living?” Holman said when the door of his office was safely shut.
“Sells Persian rugs,” I said.
“Or real estate. That’s my guess.”
An hour later, Judge Hobart flourished his silver ballpoint pen on the appropriate form and then glanced up at me. “How do you get yourself into these messes, Bill?”
“I made the mistake of leaving town for a little while,” I said.
“That’ll do it every time.”
Things moved quickly, at least by Posadas standards. By two o’clock that afternoon, Chris Lucero’s big yellow Case backhoe came belching into my driveway. Willit had telephoned three times from the motel, and it was with considerable relief that I called him back and told him the exhumation was about to begin.
Because Florencio Apodaca wasn’t going to be happy, I had copies of the exhumation order and the court order for the autopsy delivered to him personally by a uniformed deputy-in this case, Tony Abeyta, who spoke fluent Spanish.
The autopsy had postponed the need for Gene Salazar’s mortuary services. So, with the exception of the Posadas EMS ambulance standing by, as well as two units from the sheriff’s office, we could have been mistaken for a city crew digging up a water line as we gathered out back. Sheriff Holman looked like the foreman who would never let the wood of a shovel handle touch his hands.
“You know how deep?” Chris Lucero shouted over the clattering idle of his machine.
I shook my head. “The old man wouldn’t say. Just take your time.”
“Is there a casket or anything?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged and Chris looked heavenward as he climbed back on the backhoe. Deputy Abeyta had tried to talk Florencio into coming outside to supervise, but the old man just took the papers and waved him away.
Abeyta and I carefully uprooted the juniper cross.
“You think he’s going to want to keep that?” Holman asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “We just keep it out of harm’s way for now.”
Chris idled the machine into position and the massive out-riggers crunched into the soil. As delicately as a child digging with a fork, he swept the teeth of the bucket the length of the grave site, raking no more than an inch into the soil.
When he had what he thought were the grave’s dimensions marked, he began excavating in earnest. With the first scoopful, I had a mental picture of the eighteen-inch-wide bucket coming up out of the earth with half of the old lady dangling from its teeth. I glanced over at Stanley Willit. He had on a really nice camel hair coat over his dark suit-he could have been the mortician. His face was impassive.
The soil was easy digging-especially since someone had been there first the hard way, with a pick and shovel.
Chris hadn’t dug deeply enough to sink the bucket when he stopped the machine with a lurch. “Wood,” he shouted. I stepped forward and at the same time felt a hand at my elbow. I turned, to see both Camille and Estelle Reyes-Guzman.
Estelle stepped close and spoke just loudly enough that I could hear her over the machine. “Where’s the old man?”
“He wouldn’t come out of the house,” I said.
“Do you want me to talk to him?”
“It wouldn’t hurt. Tony Abeyta was over there to serve the papers. He tried, but the old man just waved him off.”
“I’ll go see.”
I nodded. “Take Tony with you.”
Chris waited patiently while I walked to the edge of the hole and peered down. Eighteen inches wasn’t much for a grave, but it had probably seemed a mile to Florencio Apodaca.
Martin Holman walked to within a yard of the grave and frowned.
“Why don’t you see what that is,” I said to him. “See if it’s the top of the casket or just an old board, or root or something.”
“Here, let me,” Camille said. “I’ve got grubbies on.”
Holman didn’t pretend to protest. His gleaming shoes had been saved from soil for another day. Camille stepped into the shallow pit, then crouched down, gently swishing dirt away.
“It’s a flat board. Maybe the top. I’m not sure.”
Chris tapped the throttle of the Case for attention and indicated that he’d clean out a little more. Camille scrambled out of the way. As slick as can be, he shaved the dirt from the top of what looked like an old narrow door.
He took one more partial bucket, swung the boom out of the way, and settled it to the ground, shutting off the machine as he did so.
The little wooded area was suddenly still.
“I got a shovel in the truck,” he said.
“This reminds me of when we had to dig up Todd Sloan out on the old Fuentes place,” Holman muttered. “You remember that?”
“Indeed,” I said. “I think the circumstances are a little different, though.” Sloan had been a teenager who’d been murdered by his mother’s boyfriend-and then had been buried out in the country where no one would ever find him. Except that we had, much to the killer’s disappointment. “That was a December ceremony. This is only November.” And we hadn’t had a backhoe, and Holman hadn’t done any of the digging.
Holman grunted something and backed up a step while Chris Lucero jumped down in the hole and swept the remains of the dirt from the wooden door.
He put the point of the shovel underneath and it lifted easily. “I don’t think it’s attached to anything,” he said. “You want me to lift it up?” He sounded as if he really wanted me to say no.
“Sure.” It was a door, an old weather-beaten Z-braced door barely eighteen inches wide and five feet long, the sort of door that would grace an old-fashioned woodshed. Chris lifted it and Camille took it by one edge, laying it down on the ground next to the hole.
“Hmmm,” Chris said, and stepped up out. I didn’t know if he was reacting to the fragrance or just the idea of an occupied grave. “He didn’t dig too deep, did he?”
I heard twigs snapping and looked up, to see Estelle and Tony Abeyta working their way back through the underbrush.
“Ladrones de tumbas,” she said. “That’s what he called us-grave robbers.” She walked to the edge of the grave and knelt. The corpse was wrapped in a dark blue blanket, head facing the street. The blanket had been wrapped so neatly that I could see the outlines of the hands, folded together, no doubt clutching a rosary.
“That’s one way to do it,” Chris Lucero observed, “Just like in the old days. He didn’t have enough wood to make the whole casket, so he just used the cover.”
“Probably couldn’t bring himself to shovel dirt on her face,” I said. “Let’s get her moved.”
“Let me take photos first,” Estelle said. “It’ll only take a minute.” While she did that, I waved at the two paramedics who had been lounging near the chrome back bumper of their immaculate red-and-white unit. Lugging the stout gurney, they followed the crude path the backhoe had made trampling down the underbrush.
Estelle took more photos than I thought necessary, but her motto was that film was cheap. Most of the time, she was right.
One paramedic grasped the body by the shoulders and the other took the feet. Working in perfect unison, they lifted the mortal remains of Gloria Apodaca up and out of the shallow grave.
“Whoa,” Estelle said when it looked as if they were going to strap the body on the gurney.
She stepped close and knelt, hugging the camera with one hand. “Sir,” she said, and I stepped around the grave. As soon as I bent over, I could see what concerned Estelle.
“If she died of natural causes, I don’t think the blanket would be soaked with blood,” she said quietly.
And sure enough, the blue blanket at the back of Gloria Apodaca’s skull was the deep rich brown of dried blood.