When he’s forty-five, Estelle thought. Thirty-nine more years. What a career that might be. And in thirty-nine years, she’d be seventy-seven. Her mother would be long gone-Sofía, too. Estelle glanced at her husband’s aunt with affection. Then again, maybe not. Sofía, a mere seventy-one, was the same age as Bill Gastner. Estelle could picture the boys’ Padrino and Sofía at age 108, trading barbs. She shook her head, derailing that train of thought.
The yowl of the motorcycle drifted back to them, and out of habit, Estelle glanced up to make sure that Francisco wasn’t standing in the middle of the arroyo bottom, blithely waiting for Butch Romero and his dirt bike to crash into him. After a moment, Estelle stopped and turned, cocking her head to listen. On his trip north, the teenager had obviously finished his familiarization run with the new bike. Now, he was flogging it for all it was worth, the pitch of the two-stroke strained and angry.
He appeared suddenly a thousand yards away, vaulting the bright yellow bike up and out of the arroyo as he followed a cattle trail, one that would bring him to the same rim path along which Estelle, Sofía, and the two boys walked. The arroyo curved in a long loop toward the east, and the bike hurtled along the trail toward them, dodging clumps of acacia and cholla.
Fifty yards away, he backed off and headed directly toward them, and Estelle stepped off the trail, Carlos now content to have his hand locked in hers. Butch rolled the bike to a stop, balancing on his right foot, and killed the engine.
“That’s quite a bike,” Estelle said. “Merry Christmas, Butch.”
Romero pushed up his face shield, then tore at the helmet’s chin strap. He pulled the helmet off, his hair caked from sweat, his narrow face flushed. It wasn’t exhilaration on his face, though.
“Sheriff-” he turned and pointed north “-there’s somebody back up there.” He almost lost his balance, and twisted the handlebars sharply to catch himself. “I hit her, I think.” Romero was breathing so hard it looked as if he might pass out.
Estelle stepped forward and rested a steadying hand on the boy’s left forearm. “A person hurt, you mean?”
Butch Romero nodded and blinked rapidly. “She’s dead, I think.”
“Tell me exactly where.”
The teenager turned and looked back up the arroyo. “See that grove of trees way up there?”
“I see the desert-willow clump right on the rim,” Estelle said. “Where you came up out of the arroyo. Beyond that?”
“Way beyond. Go to them, then turn and follow the arroyo,” Romero said. “You can just see the tops of them.”
“Where the section fence turns east?”
“Beyond that. Maybe half a mile.” He turned back to Estelle. “There’s a spot where Highland Drive comes out and ends? It’s paved for a ways and then it’s all like dirt and stuff? And there’s all those big old trees right there along the arroyo.”
“She’s down in the arroyo?”
“Yeah…there’s some brush there, and a couple junk cars? You want me to take you up there and show you? Or you can take my bike.”
“Ah, no, as a matter of fact. Thanks anyway. We’ll get someone up there.” She glanced at her watch and saw that it was five minutes after four. Ernie Wheeler would have taken over in dispatch, with Eddie Mitchell and Tony Abeyta on the road, hoping to finish off a quiet Christmas Day. Estelle walked several steps away, her back turned to her family and the teenager as she opened her cell phone.
Wheeler picked up the phone after two rings.
“Ernie, this is Estelle. We have a report of a possible body in the arroyo at the north end of Highland Drive. Who’s central, Tony?”
“Yes, ma’am. Captain Mitchell is down in Regál with a minor MVA. Tony’s standing right here, wishing he had something to do.”
“Well, he’s got it,” Estelle said. “I’m on foot out behind Twelfth with my family and Butch Romero. He’s the one who made the report, but we’re a ways downstream. I need to walk the kids back home, and then I’ll be up there as soon as I can. Tony needs to lock things up for me, and as soon as Eddie’s clear, give him the heads-up, all right?”
“Ten four. Ambulance?”
“Go ahead and alert.”
“Ten four. Just a second.” She heard mumbled voices and then Wheeler came back on the line. “Tony’s on the way. Tom Pasquale came off shift, but he’s still here. He’s in the conference room with Linda and Bill Gastner.”
“Thanks. I’m on my way in.”
She snapped the phone shut and turned to Butch.
“You want me to ride back up there?” he asked.
Estelle shook her head. “We’ll go back home first.” Sofía had Carlos in hand on the left, and Francisco on the right, and she had already started back down the trail toward home. “Butch, we may need to talk with you again. You’ll be home later this evening?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay. I need to hustle,” she said, and reached out to shake Butch by the shoulder.
“I can go back up there and kinda keep an eye out until the cops get there, if you want,” Butch offered.
“No…I don’t want you to do that, Butch. One of the deputies will be there in just a minute. He’ll be there quicker than you can make it back up the arroyo. You’re sure it wasn’t a manikin or something like that?”
Butch shook his head vehemently. “No, ma’am. No manikin.” As if having second thoughts about being caught out on the darkening prairie with a corpse, he said quickly, “I’ll go back with you guys, then.” Estelle couldn’t tell if he felt genuinely protective, or if he was spooked. A fourteen-year-old wasn’t a necessary chaperone, but the two boys would enjoy it as he orbited them with his bike, making the quarter-mile hike back home an unexpected treat.
“Thanks, Butch. I appreciate that.” She turned away as he kicked the bike into life. Sofía had a short head start, and Estelle jogged after her aunt and the two little boys.
“Sorry about this,” she said as she fell into step with the group.
Sofía shrugged. “That’s the way these things go…but how sad for someone.”
Estelle nodded and looked hard at Francisco, who had broken away from his great-aunt’s grip and was zigzagging through the bushes, watching Butch and the motorcycle blast across the prairie, the scout out ahead of the pioneers. “You don’t go cruising, hijo,” she said. “Stay with us.” By the time they reached the arroyo crossing and were trekking through the Parkmans’ backyard toward their own house, Butch had peeled away with a wave. Estelle scooped Carlos up as the little boy lagged, the fast thousand-yard walk taking its toll on his short legs.
Francisco reached the house first, and he burst inside with enough breath left to bellow to his grandmother, “Butch has a new bike, Abuela!”
“I’m so pleased to hear that,” Teresa Reyes laughed.
Estelle hung Carlos upside down, lowering him headfirst to the foyer floor. “I need to go, Mamá.”
“Ah, a bad day for someone else,” the old woman said, settling back into her chair. “Is that what I’ve been hearing?”
Sure enough, her mother’s hearing was keen. Far in the distance, Estelle heard the thin, high warble of a siren.
“Sorry, Mamá,” Estelle said.
“Such a Christmas,” her mother said.
Chapter Eleven
Escudero Arroyo originated at the base of Cat Mesa north of the village. During rare cloudbursts several generations before, rain had channeled and excavated a scar across the prairie that dodged this way and that, the trickle of water deflected by a cholla here or a greasewood bush there until the arroyo wandered like an old drunk.
In places where several tributary arroyos had joined forces, the gash was deep, a dozen feet down through sand and gravel to the original bedrock. One such deep cut swerved due west near the end of Highland Drive, a street that, despite its pretentious name, became nothing more than a rough, washboarded dirt two-track before dead-ending at the arroyo. Several retired concrete highway barriers had been dropped haphazardly on the arroyo lip to prevent preoccupied motorists from nosing over into the sandy depths.