The deputy unsnapped the little mike from his shoulder epaulette. “PCS, three-oh-two.”
“Go ahead, three-oh-two.”
“Expedite ten-fifty-five this location. One male, age nineteen, severe head injuries, significant blood loss. Pulse is weak, respiration light and ragged. Victim is unresponsive.”
“Ten-four.”
“And notify three-ten and three-oh-eight that we’ll be inbound with the subject of their earlier complaint.”
“Ten-four.”
Pasquale tucked the radio back into his belt. “It’s going to seem like a long, long wait,” he said.
Indeed it was. Mercifully, Pat Gabaldon was unconscious for most of the forty-five minutes. A groan or two, a spasmodic twitch or jerk, and that was it. The deputy and I kept a running stream of comfort and attention, making sure that if the young man did swim back to the surface, he wasn’t greeted by dismal silence.
Eventually-it seemed like hours rather than minutes-we heard the approach of the heavy diesel emergency unit as it turned onto the county two-track.
“Three-oh-two, Rescue One is just leaving the highway. You’re at the campground?”
“That’s affirmative. Pull beyond my unit. We’re all the way in the back.”
“Ten-four.”
With Patrick Gabaldon’s future entirely out of my hands, I stepped away, making room for the two EMTs and the bulky gurney. Matty Finnegan, half-way down the arroyo slope with her bulk of equipment, paused to look hard at me.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“I’m fine,” I said, and then added to the deputy, “I’ll be at my truck.”
Neither Bobby Torrez nor Estelle would call me while I was in the middle of this mess, but they’d be waiting for an update. Sure enough, Estelle answered her phone after the first ring. She listened without interruption until I was finished.
“Why there, I wonder.”
“Maybe they’d been there before,” I said. “Maybe they saw the campground sign and figured it was their last chance before the border. I don’t know.”
“Patrick wasn’t able to speak?”
“No. We have a long, long list of unanswered questions, sweetheart.” Tom Pasquale and the two EMTs appeared at the lip of the arroyo, maneuvering the gurney to the ambulance. “They’re about to pull out. I’ll be inbound with ’em as soon as Tom and I secure the radio.”
“That’s good. Bobby and I are here at the hospital, if you’ll meet us there,” Estelle said. “Some interesting developments.”
“I’m not sure I can stand any more interesting things.” I switched off and waited for the ambulance to leave. Pasquale approached, an aluminum clipboard in hand.
“The phone, sir?”
“We need your camera and tape first,” I said.
“The Sheriff wants to keep an eye on this until we have the chance to sweep the area,” he said, not looking altogether enchanted with that thought. “I’ll just secure the road right at the highway. Taber comes on at midnight.”
“I know it’s a mess,” I said, “but if there’s a shoe or boot print to be had, we’ll want it.”
Holding the idiot end of the tape measure, I made my way back to the piñon on the slope.
“Ninety-seven feet, four inches,” Tom shouted.
“Not a bad toss.” I waited as he rewound the tape, and in a moment he appeared at my side. I turned the light on the tree, illuminating the little phone.
“Well, hell,” he said. “This is amazing. How’d you do this stunt?”
“I dialed his number,” I replied. “No rocket science involved.”
“Jeez.”
“I want photos of it in place, and then put it in an evidence bag without touching it. I’ll take it with me. The sooner we can process prints, the better.”
“You’re shitting me,” Thomas said, still in wonder. “How’d you find it, did you say?”
“I could hear the ring tone.”
“Well, damn. That’s pretty neat, sir.” Shaking his head, he retraced his steps to his unit and fetched the bag. A good deal taller than I, Pasquale had no trouble tipping the phone into the bag using the end of his ball-point pen.
“Why would they throw it?” the deputy asked. He handed me the sealed bag.
“That’s one of the interesting questions.”
The dust from the ambulance still hung in the night as I bumped my way out of the canyon back to the state highway. I ambled along in my best think mode, arm out the window, slouched against the door, letting my mind roam. There was certainly no hurry, now that Patrick was in good hands. But that forty-five minutes of deep thought during the drive back to Posadas produced no epiphanies-just more fuming and fretting.
Part of my uneasiness was worrying about Patrick’s injuries. Part of it was wondering what Herb Torrance was going to do, working into the fall months without the only two ranch hands he had. I’d call him from the hospital after I’d talked with Estelle and Robert. But the dark of that night kept reminding me that we didn’t know what kind of cold-blooded freak we were dealing with.
It was seeing the undersheriff’s Crown Victoria parked outside of the hospital’s emergency room’s double doors that added another round of bleak thoughts to my mood. It seemed a year rather than eighteen hours since I’d stood in George Payton’s kitchen, looking down at the end of a life and the loss of an old friend. Estelle had promised “interesting developments” in that case, and I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to hear them.
I parked behind Estelle’s car, making sure I was clear of the ambulance lane. Ignoring all the instructional signs that guarded the staff only emergency room entrance, I went inside, grimacing at the strong wall of artificially cooled and perfumed air and the bright lights that had no regard for the natural time of day.
Chapter Nineteen
The emergency room waiting area was empty, only the television entertaining itself. Just beyond the emergency room itself, before the radiology suite, the doorway of an office marked administration was open, and I headed for that. The room was a private lounge of sorts where medical staff could duck inside for a few private moments of consultation or snoozing. Four uncomfortable stainless steel chairs lined each wall, all upholstered in institutional orange. A small table with telephone and coffee maker graced one corner. Other than a painting that hung above the phone table, a pastel of an improbable barn located in a rolling green place like Wisconsin, the room was sterile and naked.
Sheriff Bobby Torrez sat in two of the chairs, his big frame skewed sideways so that he could prop his boots up and rest his head against the wall. He appeared to be dozing, but I knew better.
Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman sat beside a pudgy young man who appeared unreasonably neat and well-scrubbed for the hour. Louis Herrera was the hospital’s staff pharmacist, and I knew that Estelle’s husband had already head-hunted him away for the new clinic.
“Ah, sir,” Estelle said when she saw me. She smoothed the pages of the hefty volume that she supported in her lap and then handed the tome to Herrera. “Tomás tells us that you worked a miracle.”
Torrez’s eyes opened. “Hey,” he said, and let it go at that.
“You found Patrick by finding his phone,” Estelle said. “That’s impressive, sir.”
“Well, you put a call through, and the damn thing rings.” I handed the evidence bag to the sheriff. He regarded the small phone critically. “Might be some interesting prints on that.”
“Patrick got lucky,” the sheriff murmured.
“He’s not my definition of lucky.” I glanced at the wall clock and saw that it was coming up on 11:30. “He was out there a good long time.”
“Could still be without this,” Torrez said.
“So,” I said. “You mentioned some developments?”
Estelle raised a small vial and extended it toward me.
“And this is…” The vial was small, heavily tinted, about the size of an old-fashioned ink bottle. I knew better than to open it and sniff a deep breath, but I did unscrew the top gingerly and regarded the fine white crystals inside, as unremarkable in appearance, to me at least, as sugar, salt, or cocaine. The label was beyond the powers of even my trifocals, but I squinted at it anyway.