“Maybe. No blood, but that doesn’t mean anything.” She stepped closer to the tangle of junk. “The scuff marks on the top of this car hint that the body slid down here, and then into that opening.”
“Odd to be stretched out the way she was if that’s what happened,” Mitchell said.
“I think she moved some, Eddie. I think she was still alive. I can’t picture the killer climbing down here and stuffing her farther in. Maybe that’s what he did, but I can’t picture it. I see him pushing her down into the junk, and when she slides into the gap between the cars, he’s going to figure that’s enough.”
“Maybe.”
“All he needs is some time to slip away.”
“Then he doesn’t care much if the body is found,” Mitchell said.
“That’s a little something that bothers me, Eddie. The body was bound to be found…maybe not in hours like it was, but certainly the odds were good, over time.”
“Son-of-a-bitch is confident or careless, one or the other.”
“That’s the scary part. Dr. Perrone said that she was popped once, behind the ear. Small caliber, execution style. That’s one thing. Then she’s dumped out here. If this were the swamps of New Jersey or the bay shore of Chicago, I’d say ‘gangland.’”
“Huh.”
“Cold confidence,” Estelle said. “Shoot and dump. That doesn’t leave us much.”
“That’s the whole point, I would guess,” Mitchell said. He twisted and looked up at the sky. “Clear tonight. You want some lights out here, or go over it again first thing in the morning?”
Estelle hesitated. “There’s nothing magic out here, Eddie. That’s what my first impressions tell me. Someone drove up, and we have tire tracks. Someone lifted Janet Tripp out of the trunk of a car, or the back of a pickup, and lugged her over to the edge. It’d be nice if we had a clear set of bootprints, but we don’t…and I don’t think a set is going to magically appear, either. Her body slid down here, and that’s that.” She shook her head. “We need to button this up, but I’m not sure we can afford to spend more time out here tonight. If we dillydally around, the trail’s going to grow cold. Jackie’s on shift, and there’s nobody better to sit the scene until morning. We won’t lose a thing. If you go to Lordsburg right now and bring Mike back, that’ll be good. We need to talk with him and connect the dots there. While you do that, I’ll sit down with Linda and really nail down what she remembers. And I’ll do the same with Bill Gastner. Then we’ll see where we are.”
Mitchell hunched his broad shoulders against the growing chill as the heavy twilight crept across the prairie. “And there’s that one nasty possibility, Eddie,” Estelle said. “From what I’ve heard, Mike and Janet were planning to drive to Lordsburg together. They didn’t. Mike went by himself. Janet ended up here.”
Mitchell nodded morosely. “That’s what I’ve been thinking.” He scuffed the loose sand of the arroyo bottom with the toe of a polished boot. “Are you going to call the sheriff?”
“That’s next on my list.”
“Make sure Gayle is right there when you do. Otherwise he’ll be out of bed, trying to find a taxi home.” Mitchell reached out and tapped Estelle at the base of her throat, on the hard plane of her sternum. “And put on your vest, Undersheriff.”
Chapter Thirteen
Sheriff Robert Torrez growled what might have passed for a greeting, and Estelle imagined him as embarrassed at having to talk on the telephone while lying half-naked and helpless in bed.
“I think they’re going to unplug me in the morning,” he said. “They aren’t sayin’ much except that I gotta stay overnight.” As if feeling that he’d already passed along more information than necessary, he changed the subject. “What’s up?”
“Bobby, Janet Tripp has been killed. Her body was found in the arroyo out on Highland Drive.” Silence greeted that announcement, and after a few seconds Estelle added, “One of the Romero boys found the body late this afternoon while riding his motorcycle.”
Torrez remained silent, and Estelle continued, assuming that the sheriff hadn’t simply passed into an unresponsive, drug-induced fog. “It looks like she was shot once in the head, but we don’t know anything more at the moment.”
“Where’s Mike?” Torrez asked, his voice husky. Estelle felt a twinge of relief. The sheriff wasn’t so under the weather that he failed to recognize the heart of the matter.
“Eddie went to Lordsburg to pick him up,” Estelle replied, and immediately realized that that was a poor choice of words. “We think he’s at his parents’ place. We wanted to break the news to him in person, and then make sure he gets back here safely. I don’t think any of us knows how he might react.”
Torrez grunted something incomprehensible, and it sounded like he was shifting in bed. Estelle heard Gayle’s voice in the background.
“Janet didn’t go over to Lordsburg with him?” Torrez asked. “Leave it alone,” he added, apparently talking to Gayle. “Who was the last one to see her alive?” Torrez asked, breaking off his exchange with his wife.
“We’re not sure yet, Bobby. Linda said that she, Bill, and Mike had been doing some preliminary organizational work this afternoon in the conference room. Linda says that Janet showed up for a few minutes around two or so.”
“Okay. And then?”
“She left right after that, apparently.”
“Mike went with her?”
“No. Linda says that he worked for a bit, then after a while left…. Linda assumes it was to go to Lordsburg to have Christmas dinner with his folks. That’s what he had been planning, anyway.”
“Huh. They have a fight or something?”
“We don’t know yet, Bobby. Mike doesn’t know anything about any of this yet.” The sheriff didn’t comment, and Estelle added, “At least we hope he doesn’t.”
“How long after Janet left the office was it before Mike went?”
“It couldn’t have been long,” Estelle said. “She was alive at two-and Butch Romero found her body at four or so. A lot can happen in two hours.”
“That’s for damn sure,” Torrez said. “Lemme know later tonight what you find out, all right? What weapon was used, by the way? Could you tell?”
“Perrone says a small-caliber gun. By what I could see, I’d guess a.22, held close.”
“Skull damage?”
“Entry, no exit, and not a whole lot of blood. Little or no back blast.”
“Could have been a.25, even.32,” Torrez said.
“Whatever it was, we think she was probably shot somewhere else, and then dumped. We’re looking for her car right now.”
“Huh. Did you talk with Bill yet?”
“No. Not yet. I’m headed that way.”
Torrez exhaled what may have been a melodious growl of irritation or a hum of deep thought. “Huh,” he said again. “So where was Janet headed when she left the office, if she wasn’t goin’ to Lordsburg with Mike?”
“We don’t know.”
“Linda doesn’t know anything? She’s always blabbin’ with somebody.”
“She wasn’t sure what Janet’s plans were…. It’s one of those things, Bobby. She wasn’t really paying attention to who was going where. But it seems to me that if Mike and Janet were planning to go to Lordsburg together, Mike would have gone looking for her when he was ready to go.”
“Maybe.”
“He wouldn’t have just driven off without her, Bobby.”
“And we don’t really know that, do we? Somebody sure as hell drove off without her.”
“Well”-Estelle hesitated-“we’d like to think that Mike wouldn’t.” Hard as it might be to start a nonexistent list of suspects with Mike Sisneros’s name, Estelle knew that the sheriff was right. Everyone, whether cop or not, whether friend or not-everyone had secrets stashed in the closet.
Something that sounded like a bedpan clanging against the side rail of the hospital bed was followed by Gayle’s voice, this time clear enough for Estelle to hear. “You’re not supposed to mess with that,” she said, and Estelle smiled.
“I’ll check back with you in a bit, Bobby,” she said. “We need to notify Janet’s relatives. Mike may have to help us with that. I don’t know her family.”