Scavengers (20 page)
Estelle hung up the phone, turned, and took two steps toward the living room. She could hear the two boys in earnest conversation with their grandmother, and then the shrill ringing of the telephone stopped her in her tracks. Even as she lifted the receiver out of the cradle, she could hear the radio traffic in the background.
According to the story that Paulita Saenz recounted, she never would have looked south that morning had the sink in the women’s bathroom not clogged. Paulita had run enough water to soak a sponge, and then saw the ugly puddle of soap scum, hair, and who knows what else as the sink refused to drain.
Unscrewing the big plastic lock rings of the sink trap was a simple job requiring no special tools and no particular knowledge of sophisticated plumbing. Paulita knew the trap, long neglected, was choked. With a sigh, she slid a pan under the trap, grunted loose the lock rings above and below the trap, and grimaced at the smell of the trapped, stagnant water as it cascaded into the pan. Long tendrils of hair nearly held the plumbing together, but eventually, Paulita managed to pull out the offending plug, her face screwed up in a puckered
eeewww
of disgust. She dug at the curtains of residue that hung from the now-exposed sink drain stub and wiped the elbow joints clean.
Reassembly took seconds, and she had closed her eyes and grunted with a dry rag wrapped around the lock rings, snugging them so they wouldn’t leak. With a sigh, she had pushed herself up off the floor, holding a pan containing a quart of bluish-brown water and a large, ugly, fragrant glob of
caca asquerosa
. The logical place to dispose of the cargo was out the side door that led to the courtyard between house and saloon.
From there, Paulita turned right, unlatching the garden gate. As the rough, weathered board gate swung open, Paulita was treated to a view south, the early morning sun lancing across the desert. She paused, bowl of watery gunk in hand, riveted by what she saw. Then she dropped the bowl, ran inside and called the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department.
***
Deputy Jackie Taber, off-duty when dispatch went on the air to locate an officer, had been methodically scouring the prairie around the grave site north of Maria, hoping to find a deformed bullet or another shell casing that might have hidden under a chamisa or cholla—something that had been missed in earlier searches. Sgt. Howard Bishop had just turned into the airport parking lot northwest of Posadas. Taber took the call, her Bronco airborne as often as not as she hurtled down the power line access road. She beat the undersheriff to the
taberna
by eight minutes.
“Stay here,” Estelle Reyes-Guzman said, and Paulita Saenz stepped onto the flagstones of her patio and stood with her arms crossed, hugging herself like a small child waiting for a bus. Estelle followed Jackie Taber’s boot prints where the deputy had walked the hundred yards from the back of the Taberna Azul to the border fence, four strands of barbed wire that had seen better days. Stepping directly on the deputy’s prints, Estelle approached until she stood immediately behind Taber.
“No sign of anything?”
“Nothing,” Jackie said, and lowered the binoculars. She offered them to Estelle, who shook her head. “This is a good bet where they crossed,” she added. “Lots of boot prints, and you can see the scuffing in the dirt where they climbed over…or through.”
The border security separating New Mexico and Texas from old Mexico ran the gamut from nothing—where the Rio Grande provided a natural barrier of sorts—to impressive chain link with barbed wire topping in urban centers. Out in the country, however, where tourists didn’t need to be reminded which part of the desert belonged to whom, an aging barbed wire fence frequently served the purpose. At one time, a narrow dirt lane had been bladed along the border fence from one side of New Mexico to the other, but the lane served little purpose: no one drove east–west. It was north–south that interested most folks.
At formal ports of entry, the fence was bolstered by imposing block houses that protected American and Mexican customs officials from sunstroke. At the smaller crossings, like Columbus to Palomas or Regál to Tres Santos, traffic inched through a single lane, lined up for inspection.
The tiny village of Maria had never been lucky enough to warrant a crossing of its own. For one thing, the state highway that passed through Maria headed out of the village east toward Las Cruces, roughly paralleling the border rather than crossing it. In the other direction, State 61 veered north to Posadas.
Columbus, New Mexico, was matched on the Mexican side by Palomas, and westward, at the other end of the rumpled San Cristóbals, folks in Regál could see the lights of Tres Santos if they stood on the hill behind the water tank. Maria had no such sister village across the border.
The nearest pocket of population, Asunción, was tucked in a wonderfully shady little canyon some sixteen miles south of the border. Roads from Asunción led still farther south to Janos, east to Juarez, and even west to Agua Prieta. But south of Maria in Posadas County and the stretch of barbed wire that marked the border, the Chihuahuan desert stretched rumpled and desolate, marked only occasionally by a rough lane or two-track.
“Did you contact Mexican authorities?” Estelle asked.
“I did, but there’s a problem.” Jackie turned and nodded toward the saloon, and Paulita Saenz. “She saw a car, but doesn’t know what kind it is—not the year, not even the make. She thinks it was an older model station wagon. And at the distance, she didn’t recognize the two men who were with Eurelio.”
“Could it have been the Madrid brothers?”
“She just couldn’t tell. Apparently she didn’t have on her distance glasses,” Jackie said. “She was busy with the plumbing.” She shrugged. “I talked with a Mexican officer named Bernardo. Luis Bernardo? He’s a corporal in Asunción. Anyway, I told him that we’d be interested in anything he could do for us. I gave him a description of Eurelio.”
“It’s a place to start,” Estelle said. She turned and regarded the saloon.
Had there been a window in the back storage room of the Taberna Azul, Paulita Saenz could have peered out and seen the sun glinting off the barbed wire border fence. But a window would have been an attractive nuisance. The back, southern-facing wall of the saloon was solid, secure adobe from ground to vigas.
The west wall of the
taberna
once had sported a window with a beautiful, deep sill. The view of the San Cristóbal mountains had been breathtaking when the dawn washed them in rose and purple. Three break-ins through that window had prompted Monroy Saenz to block up the window and plaster it over to match the rest of the wall. On the inside of the patched wall, he’d painted a window with shutters thrown open to reveal a colorful garden beyond, complete with a vineyard and improbably huge purple grapes glistening in latex splendor. It was a cheerful, secure view that never changed, the grapes hanging forever ripe.
Estelle could remember, during a visit to the
taberna
with her great-uncle when she’d sat quietly, waiting for Reuben to finish his business. She had watched the grapes, trying to imagine the movement of the leaves in the breeze.
The single front window of the saloon, protected by a heavy wrought-iron grill, looked out on the front parking lot, State 61, and across the way, Wally Madrid’s gas station.
The Taberna Azul was a comfortable fortress. It was a place to sit in quiet darkness while the New Mexico sun baked the world outside, or the wind scoured it, or ambitious people blew themselves up trying to make a profit from it.
“She said her son went willingly, though…at least at the beginning,” Estelle said.
“Until the very last, apparently,” Jackie replied. “Then it turned into a tussle.”
Estelle nodded. “Let me talk to her again.”
Paulita Saenz was weeping and trying to hide the fact by wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse. She turned back toward the patio as Estelle approached, and the undersheriff heard a loud, heartfelt sigh from Paulita.
“Paulita, it’s one thing if Eurelio just jumped the fence and took off with friends—he probably does that all the time. That’s not what happened this morning?”
The woman wiped her eyes again with her sleeve and shook her head. She turned and tried to meet Estelle’s gaze, but couldn’t. “I saw them go over the fence,” she said. “Their car was parked just beyond, on the Mexican side, on that little cow path there.”
“I understand that. But what did you see, exactly? I really need to know.”
“Eurelio was walking ahead of them, and they were all talking. I could see their hands moving, you know? I guess they must have come across and walked to the back of the house to find my son. I was busy in the
taberna
. I didn’t hear them. I didn’t see them.”
And maybe it’s just as well that you didn’t
, Estelle thought. “And then what happened?”
“I saw them hop the fence. And then they went to the car, and then I could hear their voices. Eurelio opened the passenger door in front and just as he turned to get in, one of the men hit him in the back of the head. I saw him do that.” Paulita’s voice quavered.
“With his fist, or did he have something in his hand?”
“I couldn’t tell for sure.” Paulita held out her right hand, palm spread with her fingers pointing up. She patted the heel of her hand. “It looked like this.” And she punched sharply forward with her hand. “That’s what I think. Eurelio, he turned then, and they struggled. Then he went down inside the car.”
“Did your son fall?”
“I couldn’t tell if he fell, or what,” Paulita said.
“But it looked to you that he’d changed his mind about getting in the car?”
She nodded. “And the one man slammed the door on him. Then one of them got in to drive and the other got in the back.”
“And you never saw any weapons?”
Paulita shook her head.
“Did they ever look back and see you?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“And show me again what direction they went.” Paulita pointed toward the southwest. “Toward Asunción, then?”
“Maybe. Maybe anywhere.”
“It was a four-door sedan?”
“It was one of those huge old station wagons,” Paulita said. “The kind with the roof rack on top.”
“Deputy Taber said that you didn’t see what model it was.”
“Well, I remembered some. That’s what it was. Just about the same color as the dust.”
“Sort of a yellowish tan?”
“That’s right. And big.”
“And a station wagon.”
“That’s right.”
“Did you ever have a chance to see the front of the car?”
“Yes, I saw the front. It was parked sort of angled toward the fence, you know. Yes, I could see the front.”
“Would you recognize the front of it if we showed you a picture?”
“I think I might,” Paulita said. “I remember the hood, you know. It was really long. A big old boat. The front fenders were really sharp. Creased on the top. They looked like cheeks.”
Estelle glanced at Paulita with amusement. The woman had progressed from knowing nothing to a pretty comprehensive description. Jackie Taber approached, and Estelle turned to her. “I’d like you to run Mrs. Saenz up to the office and have her look through the Motor Manuals to identify the car that she’s talking about. It sounds like one of those ‘seventies model Ford wagons—those beasts with the hood about a football field long. See if that’s the one.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But what about my son?” Paulita Saenz said.
“We have the Mexican authorities looking for him,” Estelle said. “We’re limited on what we can do on this end, Paulita. Until we have some word from them.” She saw the look of desolation on the woman’s face. “They don’t have much of a head start.”
“In that country you don’t
need
much of a head start,” Paulita said.
“We’ll add the vehicle description to what we’ve already told them. If they have an officer in the area, they might be able to do some good.” The words were hollow, and Estelle knew it. With a state policeman for every thousand square miles, capture in Mexico was more often the result of betrayal and ambush rather than simple pursuit.
Paulita’s gaze traveled out to the fence and beyond, into the bleak reaches of the Chihuahuan desert.
“What sort of trouble is he in?” Estelle asked.
“I wish I could tell you.”
“It wasn’t the Madrids? Benny and Isidro?”
“It could have been. And it could have been somebody else. They had heavy coats on, and with the hats and everything, it was hard to tell. It might have been, though. One of them…I thought he moved kind of like Benny when they were going over the fence.”
“Was that the one who hit Eurelio, or was it the other one?”
“The other one.”
Estelle turned and looked toward Mexico. Eurelio had been turned loose by Judge Hobart early that morning. He obviously hadn’t gone home and cleaned up for another workday with Posadas Electric Cooperative.
“Somebody knew your son was home, Mrs. Saenz. Less than three hours after he was released from our custody, you saw him bailing over the fence. Did you talk with him this morning? After he got home?”
Paulita shook her head. “He just said that he didn’t want to discuss anything about it. He gets mad, you know. And then I can’t talk to him.”
“Somebody’s talkin’ to him now,” Jackie Taber said, and Estelle saw Paulita Saenz flinch.
When Eurelio Saenz jumped the border fence—whether he’d been forced to or not—he had managed to throw up a considerable road-block. Had the young man lit out for Phoenix, Denver, or even Cleveland, the long arm of American law enforcement could have kept pace with him at the speed of a computer’s neuron. By going to Mexico, the rules changed.
Estelle Reyes-Guzman knew that Capt. Tomás Naranjo would help all he could. There had been numerous incidents in the past when the Mexican officer had simply ignored international boundaries—without trumpeting the fact to his superiors, of course. A rarity among his colleagues, Naranjo sliced and diced paperwork and protocol with an efficiency that sometimes left his counterparts north of the border in the dust.
But with a vast, rural jurisdiction and few men to police it, Naranjo’s
Judiciales
worked at a disadvantage under the best of circumstances. Estelle didn’t hold much hope that the Mexican troopers would catch sight of the faded station wagon and its three passengers. The country was full of old cars that sagged down the dirt roads, battered and smoking. Had the trio stolen a
new
car, it would have stood out like a beacon.
The young Mexican officer with whom Jackie Taber had made initial contact had sounded eager, the deputy said. Maybe they would get lucky. Maybe Eurelio would get lucky. Maybe he’d finish his deal in one piece, whatever it might be, and sneak back over the border after dark. Maybe his mother would see him again.
Estelle continued to mull her options as she returned to the Public Safety Building in Posadas. She drove into the parking lot as if on automatic pilot and pulled the unmarked unit into a space without conscious guidance. For several minutes, she sat behind the wheel after the engine died, fingers tapping a featureless beat on the steering wheel. At last she got out, collected her briefcase, and entered the building. Gayle Torrez was standing in the door of her husband’s office when Estelle walked in, and the dispatcher raised a hand. “Here she is,” Gayle said, and then hesitated.
“What?” Estelle asked.
“It’s just that you were frowning so hard,” Gayle said. “I didn’t want to interrupt you if you had to go write something down before you forgot it.”
“I wish I
had
something to write down,” Estelle replied. “What’s going on?”
Torrez appeared in the door of his office, his huge frame filling the opening. “Rafael Smith and Lolo Duarte,” he said without preamble.
Estelle stopped in her tracks. “Smith?”
“Well,
Smeeeth
, then,” Torrez said. “At least that’s the name he went by up north.”
“They weren’t brothers, then.”
“Apparently not.”
“You talked to the rancher involved?”
“I did.
Smeeeth
and Duarte worked for a rancher named Travis Fox from January sixth through the first week in February. I faxed the photos up to the Grant County SO for them to look at, but Travis was sure that’s who the men were. His description was right on target. Apparently they’ve worked for him on other occasions.”
Bill Gastner appeared in the doorway behind Torrez, and Estelle smiled at the older man. “Good morning, sir.” The livestock inspector looked relaxed and alert, as if he’d spent the night sleeping like a normal person.
“Hey, there,” Gastner replied. “You’ve had a busy morning. Young Mr. Saenz gave you the slip?”
Estelle looked heavenward. “We’re going around in circles,” she replied. “I’m not even sure if that’s what Eurelio did. He ducked across the border with two other men—that much his mother is sure of. Whether or not there was some force or coercion involved is another question. Naranjo said that he’d do what he could.”
“Which may or may not amount to diddly,” Gastner said.
Estelle nodded agreement and then looked at Torrez. “So the two of them were on their way home to somewhere, pockets full of money after a month’s hard work.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“You show your money, you get robbed,” Gastner said. “About as simple as that. Damn near biblical.” He held an aluminum clipboard in one hand and used it to usher Torrez to one side so that he could slip through the office door. “I need more fuel,” he said. He held his cup up toward Estelle. “Want some? Gayle just made it. There’s some cinnamon buns in there, too.”
“No thanks,” Estelle replied. Her left eyebrow drifted up as she contemplated the floor. “That leaves us with a lot of questions, then,” she said.
“Travis Fox answered one of them for me,” Torrez said. “Smith and Duarte arrived in an older model Chevy pickup truck. Fox thinks that its about a seventy-two. The transmission blew a few days after they started work. They didn’t want to spend all their earnings to have it fixed, and they asked Fox if they could leave it there for a while until they could come and get it. It’s still parked out on his place.”
“So they hitchhiked back down this way?” Estelle said. “And if their route took them through Maria, should I make a bet about where they’re from originally?”
“Asunción,” Torrez said. “Fox said that he and his family enjoyed having the two boys around. A couple of jokers, is how he described them. Told them to come back any time. That he’d have work of some sort.”
She nodded. “If they’re from Asunción, it makes sense then that they would stop at the Taberna Azul in Maria. They knew people there, and maybe figured that they could find someone who would run them the rest of the way home. There’s no direct road across the border at that point. It would be a stout walk going cross-country.”
“That’s possible,” the sheriff said. “Somebody offered ’em a ride, all right.”
“Did Fox happen to say when the two of them finished their work up there?”
“They left his place on February second, midmorning.”
“And we found them February eighteenth. It makes sense that they stopped here late in the afternoon of the second. That’s the night that MacInerny heard the shots.”
Torrez nodded. “Or on the third. Or the fourth.” He held up his hands. “We’re guessing.”
“That’s something, then,” Estelle said. “If they stopped in Maria, then they were right in the middle of roofing season.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s when the two Madrid boys were in town, fixing their father’s roof. Paulita wouldn’t swear to it, but she thinks that the two men with Eurelio this morning might have been Isidro and Benny.”
“She doesn’t know them well enough to tell?” Torrez said skeptically.
“Distance,” Estelle said. “And maybe squirrelly light. And maybe a little denial thrown in.”
“I guess.” He sighed and put his hands on his hips. “With the kid split to Mexico, there’s not a whole lot we can do, other than asking Naranjo’s boys to make some inquiries for us.”
“And they’re doing that,” Estelle said.
“Good. Bill and I were just tackling the problem of the donkeys,” Torrez said. “And some bad news, by the way.”
“Bad news how?”
“Eleanor Pope didn’t make it.”
Estelle felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. She reached out a hand to the cool, smooth surface of the wall and stood silently for a long minute. The sheriff waited until she looked up.
“Francis called me just after nine this morning.”
“Ah,” Estelle said. By nine, her mother had decided that the new day held at least a few more promises. Eleanor Pope had given up on any she might have had left. “She took a lot of answers with her, then.”
“Yes, she did,” Gastner said. He took a sip of the coffee and grimaced—whether from appreciation or revulsion, Estelle couldn’t tell. “Somebody made a deal with Billy White up in Belen,” Gastner said. “He was supposed to take a look at the wee beasties this morning, and if he liked what he saw, haul off the whole bunch.” Seeing the blank look on Estelle’s face, he added, “White’s a dealer. White and Sons Livestock. Actually, his specialty is draft horses.” He grinned. “One extreme to another, I supposed. The idea of horse-things about the size of cocker spaniels appealed to him.”
“Who called him?”
“He said that he took a call from Denton Pope earlier in the week. Pope offered the critters for sale.”
“But White didn’t talk with Eleanor?”
“Apparently not.”
“And this Billy White person…he just called you from out of the blue? Had he heard about the fire, or what?”
“No, nothing like that,” Gastner said. “There was a message on my answering machine.” He flashed a quick smile. “A day or two old, I might add. You know how diligent I am about checking that damn thing. Anyway, White had been trying to get in contact with me for a few days, but I’ve been in and out, and we’ve managed to miss each other.” Gastner took another swallow of coffee, and his right hand patted his shirt pocket as if there might be a cigarette there.
“White’s a legit dealer who plays by the rules,” he said. “Denton told him that he had all the paperwork, and I guess White asked him a question or two and didn’t get the answers that he thought he should. He called me to make sure the deal was on the level. To make sure the livestock were as advertised before he drove all the way down here from Belen.”
“Ah.”
“Ah, is right,” Gastner said.
“That’s interesting,” Estelle said, more to herself than to anyone else.
“Yes, it is,” Gastner agreed.
“Did Denton suggest when Billy White would come to inspect the animals?”
“Apparently he did. White said he was supposed to come to Posadas this afternoon.”
“And knowing that, Denton set the place on fire. After turning the animals loose.”
“A truly great mind at work,” Gastner said. “Makes it easy, number one, to tell me that the paperwork for the animals was destroyed in the fire.”
“But there are copies,” Estelle said.
“True enough.” Gastner smiled. “We can excuse a man who would poke holes in a propane line for missing a salient point like that. And number two, my guess would be that Eleanor had no intention of seeing her herd of pets auctioned off.
She
didn’t call Billy White, after all.”
“If Denton stood to collect on house insurance, his mother’s life insurance, and the sale of the animals, it would have been a clean sweep,” Estelle said.
“Yep. Then Denton could fly off to Tahiti or some such place. And probably never break open another bale of alfalfa in his life.”
“We don’t know about the insurance angle yet,” Torrez said.
“Collins is working on that,” Estelle said. “Just Eleanor’s medical bills alone would have been staggering, even assuming Medicare took care of most of it.” She turned to Gastner. “What
are
you going to do with the donkeys?”
“They’re sampling a piece of pasture over on Herb Torrance’s place,” Gastner said. “He’s got a paddock with the boards set close enough together that they won’t just slip under and wander off.”
“You have them all?”
Gastner grinned. “I doubt it. But we will. A couple of the neighborhood kids volunteered to play cowboy, helping Herb and his son with the roundup. They think it’s great fun.”
“Has anyone heard from the Fire Marshal’s office?” Estelle asked.
“Todd Paul showed up with a couple assistants,” Torrez said. He glanced at his watch. “I was going over there in a few minutes to see what they found out.”
“Are there relatives, by the way?”
“To the Popes, you mean? No, I don’t think so. At least no one close.”
“There’s a cousin,” Gastner interjected. “Well, her niece, his cousin. Something like that. One of the neighbors thinks that she lives in Denver, but doesn’t know her name. An older woman, they said.”
“We’ll find her,” Torrez said.
“Maybe she’ll want a few ducks for her backyard pool,” Gastner said, and waved his cup at the two officers. “I need to hit the road. If you think of anything else you need from me, just hesitate to ask.” He frowned at Estelle. “You still headed to Mexico this afternoon?”
“Yes. Naranjo agreed to meet with me in Tres Santos. We’ll compare notes.”
Gastner nodded, taking a long, slow breath. “You be careful.”
“Oh sure.”
“And give my best to your mother.”
“I’ll do that.”
Gayle Torrez reappeared, and gave Bill Gastner an affectionate pinch on the arm as he walked by. “Pam Gardiner on two, Bobby,” she said to the sheriff, and Torrez rolled his eyes. His method of dealing with the
Posadas Register
had so far not progressed beyond the stage of ignoring its presence.
“Why don’t you talk to her?” he said to Estelle.
Estelle smiled. “I’d rather go to Mexico,” she said. They both heard Gastner’s chuckle as he pushed open the outside door.