He switched off the light and glanced at the dashboard clock. “And from the time the boy first went missing to when we knew the RV was involved was almost three hours, and that is enough time to get across.”
“We’re just going to have to trust that the federales got word to Naranjo and he has his side locked up,” I said. “There are far fewer roads down there than up here.”
“Unless you count the dirt two-tracks. Stop.”
I did so, and Holman scanned the tin storage building. One end was open, and we could see the jumble of fifty-five-gallon drums.
We turned around and headed back to County Road 43 and the winding macadam that led up to the abandoned quarry. I had no expectations of seeing a thirty-foot-long buslike RV parked under the pinons. Hell, there were few pinons tall enough for it to slip under in the first place. But our only hope was to leave no spot in the county unaccounted for, and to that end, every available car and person was working through the night. With the airplane overhead in constant communication, if someone moved with headlights on, we’d know it.
And with that came the nagging realization that Andy Browers, with his experience working for the Electric Co-op, knew every small nook and cranny in the county.
Shortly before midnight, Deputy Tom Pasquale had put together the blood-evidence profile, and it fit Agent Costace’s theory. None of the blood in the motel room, except for a small amount immediately associated with the body, belonged to Roberto Madrid.
The blood around the rest of the room, in the bathroom, on the curtain, outside in the parking lot-all the blood evidence at the motel-matched the blood found in the back of Andy Browers’s truck and in the bedroom of his home.
Costace and Pasquale-and young Pasquale was in seventh heaven just associating with the taciturn FBI agent-shagged an Electric Co-op official out of a comfortable evening at home and rifled through records. Andy Browers’s blood type was listed there as O-negative. The blood evidence in the motel room, his truck, and his bedroom was AB-positive.
Francis Guzman, Jr.’s blood type was A-negative, and that afforded a temporary shot of relief.
Detective Richard Steinberg routed a Bernalillo school official out of his comfortable evening at home and they rifled through school records. Coach Cole’s blood type, on file with the school nurse after a recent school-sponsored blood drive, was AB-positive.
Two of the missing party had no blood type on file. We had no record of Tiffany Cole’s type, nor of little Cody’s. But AB-positive was common enough. Millions of people shared that blood type. A DNA comparison would establish that the blood specimen either did or did not belong to Paul Cole, the only one of the three whose type was on file. But a DNA check wasn’t going to happen in the middle of the night, or even by the next day.
I had decided that, based on the evidence of the fight in the motel room, it was Paul Cole’s blood. That made sense to me. A distant second choice was Tiffany’s. It made no sense that the injury would have been suffered by Cody, either from the placement of the blood splatters or from the amount.
The gravel turnout that led to the shore of the quarry pond was empty. There was no place to hide an RV there, no matter how the driver tried to nestle the thing under the trees.
As I turned around, I saw moisture on the windshield. “No,” I said. “We don’t need this now.” The clouds were glowering, and if the vagaries of New Mexico’s weather held true to form, we could expect anything-rain, snow, wind, and mud, the works.
The cellular phone between us chirped, and Holman snatched it up.
“Holman.” For the next few seconds, he just listened, and then he shrugged. “Whatever he thinks is best. He’s the boss. Check back with me when you’re on the ground.”
He switched off and sighed. “Bergin says the weather is worse in the southwestern corner of the county, and it’s moving this way.”
“He’s landing?”
“Right. They’ve seen absolutely nothing in the past half hour except lights on the interstate, and once in awhile a local vehicle.”
I parked 310 facing downhill. We could see the lights of Posadas below us, and beyond that, a dark inky void that stretched to the San Cristobal Mountains and, beyond that, Mexico.
For a long minute, I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. “We’ve got enough people out that every major road is covered in or out. There’s no two-track or cattle path that goes anywhere without surfacing eventually on one of the main roads. The border’s closed. I don’t know what else we can do.”
“I think they’re long gone,” Holman said.
“We don’t know that,” I said. “No matter who’s calling the shots, whether it’s Browers or Cole, he doesn’t know how much of a head start he had. We’ve stayed off the radios as much as possible. They can’t know for sure what we’re doing. That’s our only advantage right now.”
Holman sniffed. “I’m not sure we know, either. There’s got to be something other than sitting and waiting.”
“We keep looking,” I said, and pulled the car into gear.
Chapter 38
At two minutes after six on Thursday morning, I was dozing in my old leather office chair, my boots up on the desk, hands folded on my belly, and my head slumped on my chest. I’m sure that with two days’ growth of beard, I looked like some old hobo off the road.
A few minutes earlier, I had elected not to go home, despite Camille’s entreaties. For sure, I knew that her “Dad, you’re not doing anyone any good staying here” was probably true. But I felt closer to where something might happen, and that was important to me.
Dr. Francis Guzman appeared in the doorway of my office, moving noiselessly. I don’t know how long he’d been standing there, but I jarred awake and looked up.
“How are you doing?” he asked, his voice husky.
“You making morning rounds?” I said, trying for some humor on a humorless morning. I glanced at my watch.
“I’m on the way,” he said. “Estelle went back over to the hospital for a little while to be with her mother. Then she said she’s coming here.”
I nodded. “You haven’t gotten much rest, either,” I said.
He sauntered over to my desk, hands trust in his pockets.
“Nothing?”
“No word, Francis. We made a little bit of progress a couple of hours ago.” I tried another smile. “There’s nothing like the middle of the night to put the screws on people. A Bernalillo detective who’s been working with us talked to Paul Cole’s new wife. She’s co-operating.” I leaned back and hooked my hands behind my head. My arms felt like lead.
“She and Paul Cole are so far in debt that she’s petrified. They had an argument last week when he broke the news to her about his so-called hunting trip to Wyoming. She says they can’t afford gas to drive to the grocery store, let alone something like that. They’ve paid their mortgage payment with a credit card the past several months. She really believed that Wyoming was where he was going.”
While I was talking, Francis Guzman pulled a blood-pressure cuff out of the pocket of his lab coat and advanced on my left arm.
He prompted me when I stopped talking. “And then?”
“She works at an animal clinic, and of course he’s a teacher and head coach, so their combined incomes are pretty solid. But she admitted to detectives that they’ve been living on their credit cards, just paying the interest. And now she’s afraid Cole’s going to get himself in hot water with the school and lose his job.” I pushed up my left sleeve and held it while Francis positioned the cuff. “The most interesting thing she told detectives is that for as long as she’s known Paul Cole, his ex-wife has been pestering him to take custody of little Cody.”