The undersheriff watched Paulita Saenz work that over in her mind for a few seconds.
“He knows something about the two dead men, Paulita.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The corridor door yawned open, and Paulita Saenz walked through with the small, hesitant steps that most civilians used when they first entered the cell area. By correctional standards, the detainment facility in the Posadas County Public Safety Building was miniature, with three small cells downstairs and two units upstairs for juveniles.
During the county building’s remodeling and upgrading five years before, the architect had chosen a spiffy, off-white gloss finish for the brightly lighted cells and the metalwork that enclosed them. An improvement over the previous deck-gray finish, the cellblock still managed to look exactly like what it was: a jail.
Eurelio Saenz reclined across his cot in the center cell on the right, feet flat on the floor, the back of his head, neck, and shoulders against the smooth wall. His hands were shoved up to the second knuckle in his jeans pockets. A copy of Field and Stream rested on the blanket beside him, a not-so-subtle reminder that, were circumstances different, he could be other places, doing other things.
For ten minutes, Estelle knew, the young man had been sitting there, waiting for something to happen. The clanging as the corridor door slid open ten minutes before would have echoed through his cell. Had he been looking that way, he would have seen the bars gliding open. He would have sat there, expecting to hear footsteps on the polished concrete, waiting for the electric bolts of his door to rack open.
Eventually, he did hear footsteps. He looked up, saw his mother, and turned his head away, disgusted. Still moving as if she were walking on small stepping stones laid across a deep scummy pond, Paulita advanced to a point directly in front of the cell door. Eurelio pushed himself away from the wall, shrugging himself to an upright sitting position on the edge of the bed, hands still scrunched in his pockets.
Paulita regarded him silently for a moment. “You remember Rafael and his friend,” she said.
Eurelio’s gaze flicked first to her, and then to Estelle. “What are you talking about?”
“They found them. Those men that were killed, out there on the prairie? That was Rafael, the one with all the jokes and tricks. He and his brother.”
“So?”
“So? That’s all you have to say, is so?”
“What do you want me to say, Mamá? ” Eurelio snapped. “I don’t know anything about that. Me and Tori were just out having a beer. That’s all.”
“I don’t mean tonight,” Paulita said. “And you know we don’t mean tonight, hijo.”
Estelle moved close to the bars. “Come here a minute, Eurelio,” she said. The young man remained on the cot. “Come here,” she repeated. “I want you to see something.” He turned his head side-ways as he rose off the cot, his expression plainly saying that this was going to be the extent of his cooperation. Estelle held up a plastic evidence bag so that he could see it. “This is the shell casing we found on the floor of the truck, Eurelio. It’s a forty-four magnum. It’s fresh.”
“I don’t know nothing about that.”
“So you said earlier.” She held a second bag up for him to see, smoothing the plastic so that the hammer extender was plainly visible. “This was behind the seat of your truck, Eurelio. You see what it is, don’t you?”
“How am I supposed to know what that is?” His eyes said otherwise.
“With a lever action rifle like a Marlin forty-four it’s hard to cock with a scope, isn’t it?” He frowned. “So this little gadget attaches to the hammer, and makes it easy. But sometime not too long ago, this little gadget fell off that rifle. Maybe while it was resting in the rifle rack behind the seat of your truck. Maybe while you were using it.”
Eurelio grunted a derisive little puff of breath.
“Or maybe someone else was using that rifle, Eurelio. Maybe that could be it. Maybe when they borrowed your truck.”
“No one’s borrowed that truck,” he said.
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. That’s right.”
“Did Isidro or Benny Madrid borrow it, maybe?”
“Why would they?”
Estelle looked at him for a long minute. He couldn’t meet her gaze, and he avoided looking at his mother as well. When the cell was so quiet they could hear the tick of water in the pipes, Estelle said, “I thought maybe they might have used it last month when they put the new roof on their father’s place across the street.”
“Maybe they did. I don’t know.” This time, Eurelio shot a quick glance at his mother.
Contemplating the brass shell casing, Estelle said, “It’s a beautiful finish for fingerprints.” She looked at Eurelio. “You know what’s going to happen if we process the prints on this and find a match to you, don’t you?”
“You process all you want,” Eurelio said. “That ain’t mine.”
Estelle slipped the two small evidence bags back into the folder she’d been carrying. “When Rafael was in the taberna with his companion back in early January, did you have a chance to talk with him much?”
“Who’s Rafael?”
“Eurelio!” Paulita Saenz snapped, and braced her hands on her hips, elbows forward, chin pugnacious. “What is wrong with you, hijo? You don’t even know what kind of trouble you’re really in, and you play like this wise guy…” She glared at her son. Estelle watched them, wondering if the expression on Eurelio’s face would crack if the cell door opened. The polished, sanitary bars provided a convenient bulwark between the young man and his mother’s temper.
Paulita reached out and rapped her knuckle against a crossbar on the door. “You tell the sheriff what she needs to know, before you get into trouble that’s over your head.”
“Rafael and his companion stopped at the taberna one night in January, Eurelio,” Estelle prompted. “Apparently Rafael was something of an entertainer. He won a few bets, showed some sleight of hand feats, had everybody-including you-laughing.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So you remember now?”
“Sure, I remember.”
“Do you remember the other one’s name? Rafael’s companion?”
Eurelio’s eyebrows twitched. “Juan,” he said, and smirked. He returned Estelle’s impassive gaze for a moment, then looked away.
“It really was Juan.”
“Rafael and Juan. Surname?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were they brothers?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
“Did they ever say where they were from?”
“Not that I remember.”
“And you didn’t ask…”
Eurelio shrugged and said nothing.
“Were the Madrid brothers there that night?”
“They might have been. I don’t know. They’re around often enough. They could have been.”
“You don’t remember for sure?”
He shook his head, avoiding his mother’s glare.
“I remember they were there,” Paulita said. “And if an old lady like me can remember, then you can, too.”
Eurelio ignored his mother and said to Estelle, “I don’t remember for sure whether they were there or not. They might have been.”
“Do you remember Rafael and Juan mentioning where they were headed after they left Maria?”
“Somewheres up north to cut wood for a couple weeks. I don’t know where.”
“They were headed to Mule Creek,” Paulita prompted.
“If you say so,” Eurelio shrugged.
“Eurelio, when’s the last time you saw the Madrid brothers?”
“What, you mean in Maria?”
“Anywhere.”
“I guess I saw them last week. In Asunción. That’s where they’re workin’.”
Estelle tried to picture the tiny Mexican village, but too many years had slipped by. “What do they do there?”
“They were reb
uilding the fountain in the square,” Eurelio said. “And now there’s a whole bunch of new shops going in there. They got a job working on those.”
“Were Rafael and Juan from Asunción, too?”
“I don’t know. I already said that.”
“What were you doing down in Asunción hijo? ” his mother asked. He studiously ignored her.
“I guess maybe we’ll have a chat with Isidro and Benny. It’d be interesting to see what they remember,” Estelle said. She held the folder with both hands and took a deep breath. “The deputy will be around before long to schedule your arraignment with Judge Hobart, Eurelio. The judge may want to see you right away this morning, or it may be a day or two. I’m going to recommend that you be released on your own recognizance until that time.” She smiled faintly. “Of course, Judge Hobart may have different ideas.” She started to turn away. “If you should remember anything else that you think I should know, don’t hesitate.”
Paulita stood rooted, even as her son returned to the cot. “Your father would have been so ashamed by all this,” she said.
“What, that I had a beer while I was driving his old truck?”
Anxious that the final conversation didn’t degenerate into a shouting match, Estelle touched Paulita’s elbow, ushering her back up the corridor. Brent Sutherland had been paying attention. As soon as the two women had stepped through the passageway, the heavy door slid shut behind them. Estelle held the solid hallway door for Paulita.
“He’ll be all right,” she said. “He has to figure all this out for himself first.” She glanced at the wall clock. “The deputy will process him in a few minutes. That will give him a little while to be alone with his thoughts.”
“He’s been such a good kid,” Paulita said. “He’s never been involved in anything before.”
“He’s still a good kid,” Estelle said. “He just needs some time to realize that he is.”
Paulita Saenz paused in the foyer. “What should I do?”
“You should go home and get some sleep, Mrs. Saenz. This will all sort itself out.”
“And your mother?”
The question caught Estelle off guard, but there was something in Paulita Saenz’s face-perhaps the understanding of a perfect bartender-that prompted her to reply as she did. “My mother wants to visit her home in Mexico one more time.”
Paulita reached out and touched Estelle on the wrist. “And you’re going to do that for her?”
“Yes.”
Paulita nodded vehemently. “Good,” she said with finality. “Don’t you be putting that off.”
“No, ma’am,” Estelle said. “I’m not going to put it off.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The hand on her shoulder was gentle but insistent. Estelle pressed her eyes tightly shut, blocking out the artificial daylight from the hallway. “Your mother would like to talk with you,” the voice said. “Are you awake?” Estelle cracked one eye and saw the blurry form bending over her.
“What time is it?”
“Six-thirty,” the voice said.
Estelle groaned and burrowed her face in the folded jacket that had served as a pillow. “I’ll be there in a minute,” she said. “Thanks.” The hard vinyl couch in the hospital’s ICU waiting room hadn’t been the most comfortable bed in the world, but it had been efficient. Her cellular phone and radio rested on the small end table, on top of a pile of months-old Family Circle magazines. The radio was turned off, and the phone had been mercifully silent for the past two hours.
Estelle swung her feet down and sat upright, rocking her head to relieve the crick in her neck. Her husband had been right, of course. Her own bed in her own home would have been a marvelous luxury, a tonic. She might have been able to sleep the morning away as Irma Sedillos, the ever skillful nana, guided the ruckus of the two small boys away from their mother’s bedroom.
She sighed and reached across for the phone and radio. A small yellow note was pasted to the radio’s leather holster. She peeled it off and held it to the light from the hallway, immediately recognizing Tom Pasquale’s scrawl. “ES ROR’d 5:15,” the note read. “Mears wants to talk to you whenever.”
“Whenever,” Estelle said, and shook her head to clear the cobwebs. One of the nurses must have whispered in to leave the note. Had Tom Pasquale delivered it in person, he would have braked to an embarrassed halt in the waiting room doorway and said, loudly enough to awaken her, “Oh…are you asleep?”
She stood up and shrugged her clothes straight. She’d apparently slept like a stone, since neither her jeans nor the sweatshirt were wrinkled beyond what one would expect after catnapping on the ICU couch. Earlier, she had slipped home for a wonderful fifteen minutes under the shower, trying to rinse the acrid fire residue out of her hair. It would have been so easy to doze off right there, among the clouds of steam. But she had returned to the hospital, stretched out on the couch for just a moment, and fallen asleep. She shook out her jacket, clipped both radio and phone to her belt, and then paused at the small mirror by the door.
“We’ve never met,” she said to her image, and ran her fingers through thick, tangled black hair until the stuff sat on her head roughly the way it was supposed to. She turned away with a sigh.
The night shift ICU supervisor looked up and smiled brightly as Estelle entered the unit. “Sleep some?”
“Too much,” Estelle said, recognizing the voice that awakened her. “Thanks for coming to get me, Julie.”
“You probably could have used another twelve hours or so,” Julie Castañon said. “Your mother’s been awake since about five, raring to go.”
“Is Francis still here?”
“Been, gone, returned. He’s down in the ER right now. Something about a two-year old, a vacuum cleaner, and a broken toe.”
“All in the middle of the night,” Estelle said. “As an old friend of mine is fond of saying, ‘humans are interesting critters.’” She ran the fingers of both hands through her collar-length hair again and started around the nurses’ island.
“I think that Dr. Guzman planned to take your mother home just as soon as he was finished down in the ER,” Julie said. “He was going to let you sleep until he was finished.”
Estelle nodded her thanks. “And Mrs. Pope?”
The nurse’s face crumpled with sympathy. “She’s stable, but that’s the best I can say.”
The privacy curtains were drawn around Eleanor Pope’s bed, and Estelle slipped her hand around the end, lifting the white fabric just enough to slip through. The woman lay as before, jaw slack, eyes half-lidded, each breath coming as a major victory. Moving close to the bedside, Estelle took the older woman’s left hand in hers, letting it lie flat on top of her own.
Whatever other health problems had plagued the woman, Eleanor Pope had been blessed with a strong pair of hands. Her skin was rough from the demands of garden and livestock. Bright red polish decorated fingernails that were rough and broken.
Estelle gently rolled the woman’s hand palm up, seeing the calluses on each stubby finger. It wasn’t hard to imagine those hands wrenching a hay bale off the pile, clipping the wire, and prying off a flake for each waiting pet-or temporary tenant. The old, worn-out, oxygen-starved body behind the hands was the problem, and Estelle could imagine Eleanor Pope puffing for breath as she waddled from stall to stall. When simply opening a can of cat food was a chore, tending a single donkey would be a monumental task. Running a donkey motel would have been far beyond Eleanor Pope’s endurance. Denton “Woody” Pope must have helped with the daily chores.
“I wish you could talk to me,” Estelle whispered. She squeezed Eleanor’s hand gently. “But you’re somewhere else now, aren’t you?” The hand remained unresponsive. She felt a presence at her elbow and turned to see Julie Castañon. The nurse stretched over the bed and straightened an imaginary kink in the oxygen tube.
“Just a good rest,” she said softly. “That’s what she needs.” At the same time, she glanced first at Estelle
and then at the cardiac monitor, shaking her head. She patted Eleanor’s shoulder, standing for a moment at the bedside as her fingertips kneaded the woman’s ashen flesh with affection.
Once well away from the woman’s bedside, Julie lowered her voice so that Estelle almost had to read her lips. “Being alone must be the hardest part,” Julie said. “Maybe they can hear what we say to them, maybe not.” She smiled again. “It’s a challenge to stay optimistic, isn’t it?” She moved toward the other end of the ICU, toward Teresa Reyes’ bed. “I don’t know how you do it, sheriff,” she said.
“How I do what?”
“Stay optimistic. With all the things that you see.”
“Sometimes I don’t,” Estelle said, and let it go at that, feeling too disheveled and weary to wax philosophical.
When the curtain parted, the first thing she saw was her mother carefully coiling up the oxygen tube around knobby, arthritic fingers.
“Aquì,” her mother said to Julie Castañon, and she handed the tube to her. “Es una lata.” she added, and Julie looked at Estelle, not following the rapid Spanish.
“She says it’s a nuisance,” Estelle said, and then switched to Spanish. “You should wait to see what Francis says, Mamá. ”
“He’s a nuisance too, that oso,” Teresa replied. She pushed herself up on one elbow and swung tiny feet over the side of the bed, barely giving Julie enough time to release the side rail. With a grimace she sat up straight, the thin hospital gown hanging like a tent around her tiny body.
Julie started to say something, but Teresa waved her away. “I’m fine,” she said in English. “Leave me with my daughter.”
“Don’t you do too much, now,” Julie said, and then to Estelle, “Call if you need anything. I’ll check with Dr. Guzman to see how long he’s going to be.”
Teresa Reyes’ black eyes watched the nurse as she left, and Estelle saw the crows’ feet at their corners deepen. “She’s a good girl,” Teresa said, once more in Spanish. “She worries too much all the time, though.”
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