Bitter Recoil

by Steven F Havill

  “A blue and white truck?” Estelle asked.

  “Yes. I’ve seen it in the neighborhood on a number of occasions.”

  “How many occupants?”

  “There were at least four. Maybe five.” He hesitated. “Let me think.” After a moment he said, “Five. Two in the bed and three up in the cab. I knew from their behavior that they had been drinking.”

  “What did they do?”

  “They were loud and when the two in the back stood up to see why the truck had stopped, they could hardly keep their balance. The passenger on the window side held out a can toward Cecilia.”

  “And she accepted a ride from them,” Estelle said, and I could see that she had finished the story for herself.

  “I tried to prevent it; I really did. Cecilia stepped up on the back bumper, then over the tailgate, before I could reach her. She almost lost her balance, but one of the drunks helped her to the front of the truck bed. I reached the side of the truck and grabbed ahold, pleading with her to show some sense. The driver stepped on the gas hard just as one of them pushed me away. I thought for a moment I was going to be hit by the rear tire.”

  “That’s when you sprained your ankle?” I asked, but Parris shook his head.

  “No. They drove off, and I could see the truck weave this way and that. I was furious with myself and petrified for Cecilia. I pictured every tragedy that might happen except the one that did.

  “I pictured the truck weaving off the highway and into the river. Or crashing head-on into someone else. The more I thought about it the worse I felt.

  “Finally the obvious solution was the easiest one. I took the retreat’s station wagon and drove up the highway. I reached the campground and stopped. If they had let Cecilia off there, she would be walking up the trail to Finn’s campsite. So I parked and tried to find the trail. My flashlight wasn’t very good, but eventually I found the path and the Forest Service signs.”

  I reflected that while Parris was stumbling around among the ponderosas, I had been snoring away in the Blazer, right there in the parking lot. He would have had to walk within a dozen paces of me. That was another reason to give up on the damn exercise routine. If I hadn’t taken the hike earlier, I would probably have been lying in the Blazer, eyes open like a lemur, insomnia in control. I’d missed a chance.

  “I found the camp,” Parris said. “And Cecilia wasn’t there. Both Finn and the boy who stays with him were. Finn told me that Daisy was asleep in the tent. I told him what had happened.”

  “What was his reaction?” Estelle asked.

  “I’m not sure. It was dark and other than the camp fire and my flashlight, there wasn’t much light to see by. He told me that she probably was up the canyon, maybe at one of the other campgrounds, partying…that she’d be all right…that she could take care of herself.”

  “Did you give Finn a description of the truck?”

  Parris frowned. “Not a description. Not like you would. But I told him who I thought it was.”

  “Who do you think owns the truck?” I asked.

  “I don’t know who owns it. But I’ve seen one of the Waquie boys driving it on occasion. And his father. The family are parish members.”

  “And you mentioned the name to Finn?” Estelle asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then what?”

  “Finn offered me a cup of coffee. He had a pot on the fire.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t discuss Daisy with him?” I asked.

  “No. I have to admit, Sheriff, that Finn makes me uneasy. Cecilia had mentioned at one time that Finn was a minister of some sort. I’ve only met him twice—that night was the second time. Both times, he looked at me…and my Roman collar…as if I were something of a joke.” Parris managed a wan smile. “I know I’ve got an active imagination. But that’s the impression I got.”

  He looked up at the ceiling, using a dramatic pause like a good storyteller does when he’s organizing his thoughts.

  “But I found myself thinking that if I accepted a cup of coffee, that might somehow bring the two of us—Finn and me—a little closer, and I’d be able to talk with him.”

  “But that wasn’t the case,” I said.

  “No. In fact, he handed me the cup and then went into the tent. So did the boy. Without a word. I stayed by the fire a few minutes, and when it was obvious that our conversation was over I left. Just a moment or two after the boy did.”

  “Arajanian left?”

  “Is that his name? Yes. He and Finn talked a little when they came out of the tent, and then the boy left. He went down the hill. Finn went back in the tent.”

  “You didn’t go with him?”

  Parris shook his head. “No. And I could never have kept up with him anyway. He ran.” Parris shook his head. “Like a ghost. He didn’t even use a light.”

  I could feel Estelle looking at me and when I glanced at her, I could see that her face was set like stone.

  When she spoke, her voice was so low I could hardly hear her. “When you left, Finn was still in camp?”

  Parris nodded.

  “And then you walked back to your station wagon in the campground.”

  “Yes. It took me nearly an hour. I fell hard, just above the fork in the trail. I thought I had broken my ankle.” He rubbed his sock. “But it’s just a bad sprain.”

  “And then you drove back here,” Estelle asked. “What did you do between that time and when you heard about Cecilia?”

  “Prayed, I suppose,” Parris said. He looked at me thoughtfully. “I lied to you earlier, Sheriff. I told you I found out about Cecilia the next morning at Garcia’s Trading Post. That’s not the case.”

  He turned to Estelle as if he wanted to make sure she got it right in her notes. “I heard all the sirens. I’m sure everyone in the valley did. I knew right away that whatever it was, the emergency somehow involved Cecilia. I knew it in my heart. I got up, got dressed, and took the station wagon.”

  “With that bad ankle?”

  “Yes. And I drove north until I came to the accident site. I saw all the red lights, the ambulance…I saw that they were just loading the gurney. I’m ashamed to say that I rationalized myself out of it at that point.”

  “Meaning what?” I asked.

  “Meaning that I should have stopped. I saw her face, knew it was her. I should have talked with you on the spot. But I decided that I couldn’t help Cecilia any more just then. She was in good hands. There was nothing I could do. So I drove back to the retreat, and when I learned she’d been transferred to the city, I drove to Albuquerque.”

  “And you were at the hospital when she died?”

  “Yes. The rest of my story, as I told you yesterday, is the truth.”

  “Did you ever have your ankle looked at by a physician?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “It’s just a bad sprain. There’s nothing a doctor could do for it that I can’t.”

  “Did anyone else here at the retreat look at it?”

  Parris frowned at my question. “Well, yes. Father Sandoval examined it shortly after I returned home. I had planned to ask him to look at it in the morning, but apparently he’d been awakened by the station wagon pulling into the driveway. He said he looked out the window and saw me limp to the front steps.” Parris turned and gestured at the door. “He met me in the entranceway and insisted that he look at the ankle then and there.”

  “Is this Father Sandoval here now?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “We’ll need to talk to him.”

  Parris looked at his watch. “It’s quite late. Can’t it wait?”

  “No, it can’t,” Estelle said, her tone flat.

  Parris turned from her to me, his eyes searching my face. “There’s something you don’t believe?”

  I didn’t see any point in sugarcoating it. “You lied to me once, Father. We have no way of knowing if you�
��re lying now. If we talk with Father Sandoval and he confirms when he treated your ankle, that gives us something to go on.”

  “I’m telling you the truth.”

  “Perhaps. Is Sandoval here?”

  Parris fell silent for a minute, then said as he stood up, “This is going to be a very public case after a while, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean it will all come out in the end…about Cecilia and me, about Daisy…all of it.”

  “I suppose it will,” I said. I wasn’t feeling kindly at the moment. It didn’t bother me much that Parris might have to wallow for a while in his own mess. “I’ll go with you to fetch Father Sandoval.” Parris didn’t argue.

  We left Estelle in the front room and went upstairs. It was obvious that Parris’s ankle really did hurt. Father Sandoval must have been waiting at his door because he answered Parris’s light knock immediately.

  Sandoval was the same priest who had greeted me on my first visit. He joined us downstairs and we made it brief. The older priest verified Parris’s story, and my instincts told me that Father Mateo Sandoval was telling the absolute truth.

  After Sandoval left the room, Parris looked relieved. Estelle snapped her notebook closed and stood up. “There’s one more thing,” she said. “Finn has no legitimate custody claim on Daisy.”

  “No, I suppose he doesn’t,” Parris said. I grimaced, because his tone said clearly to me, “I wish he did.” Estelle read the same message on his face. She didn’t raise her voice, but the words came out clipped and hard.

  “Father Parris, I want Daisy out of the woods. And I want her out tomorrow.”

  The priest started to waffle. “I was going to talk with you about that,” he said.

  “I’m listening.”

  The man didn’t know what to say. Maybe he couldn’t face H. T. Finn eye to eye…or maybe he was still unwilling to admit that his uncomplicated life at the retreat was over. I didn’t know what the Catholic Church did to one of its priests who became a parent…and right then, that wasn’t our concern.

  “You’re her father,” Estelle said. “You can go up there with us tomorrow morning and take custody of the child. It’s that simple. You are her father.”

  “I wish it were that simple,” Parris said, and Estelle locked him with an icy glare.

  “It is that simple,” she said. “And between now and seven tomorrow morning when we pick you up, you might give some thought to the form your child support is going to take.” She stood up and turned to me. “I have all I need.”

  As I stepped by him, I patted Parris on the shoulder. It was the sort of fatherly pat I might have given one of my sons after an ultimatum he didn’t like. “Seven o’clock, Father,” I said.

  On the drive back home Estelle didn’t say a word until we turned into the lane to the adobe. And then, so quietly I almost didn’t hear, she said, “The fifth one.”

  “In the truck, you mean?”

  She nodded. “If we find the fifth kid who was riding in that pickup truck, maybe we’ll find the answers.”

  “Paul Garcia’s been talking with Lucy Grider. Maybe he turned up something.”

  “I hope so. Otherwise, unless number five comes forward, we’re going to have to sift through this community one person at a time.”

  “That won’t be the first time we’ve done that.” I glanced over at Estelle. She was chewing the corner of her lower lip, her forehead wrinkled in thought. I could have counted on one hand the number of times I’d heard Estelle express doubts when she’d been working on a case. She had an excuse this time. We hadn’t enjoyed an extra minute to think things through or hunt for answers.

  But this evening, as it turned out, the doubts weren’t necessary. We didn’t have to hunt. Kyle Osuna came to us.

  Chapter 20

  The light was on over the front door at eleven that night. The good doc was working late, called to the clinic to set a broken arm. The arm belonged to one of the Girl Scouts over at Camp Tracy, who’d done nothing more spectacular than fall off the top bunk during a pillow fight.

  Francis promised that he wouldn’t take long—a quick cast, a handful of aspirin, and the little girl would be back in business. In a couple days she’d feel good enough to use the heavy cast as a weapon and inflict some real damage.

  Estelle turned the light on after Francis left. I was reading the Albuquerque afternoon paper and Estelle was poring through her notes. She had talked for almost a half hour with Sheriff Tate on the telephone, and Tate was just as frustrated as we were. He told Estelle that all she had to do was say the word and she’d have reinforcements, but she nixed the idea. In fact, leaving men up on Quebrada Mesa was a waste of time. She was sure that what had happened there was finished. Tate didn’t argue. If you put an army in the field, it costs lots of bucks.

  “All you can do is keep scratchin’,” Tate had said.

  “We’re close,” Estelle had told him. Close to what, I wondered. The wave of murders was three-pronged…Cecilia Burgess pitched out of the truck, Waquie and Grider crushed in that same truck, with a neck snapped for good measure, and now the Lucero brothers.

  Estelle was the only one who doubted that Cecil Lucero had pulled the trigger on his brother. I thought she was fishing and told her so. True, the entire scenario was based on assumptions. It was even an assumption—a grand one—that the Luceros had been in the truck with Waquie and Grider. Who the hell knew.

  “You don’t think Cecil Lucero is the key?” I asked, laying down the newspaper. Estelle shook her head. “You don’t think he killed his brother?”

  “No. It doesn’t make sense, sir. The shots were fired from the lip of the arroyo, approximately twenty yards from where we found Kenneth Lucero’s body. That’s where Paul found the shell casings. Now why would Kenneth Lucero be walking or running up the arroyo bed?”

  “He was being chased.”

  “By his brother? If his brother took him out there with the intention of killing him, what ruse did he use? That they would go hunting? If that was the case, why didn’t Kenneth have a gun of his own?”

  “Maybe he forced him out there.”

  “Come on, sir. Cecil would have had to make Kenneth drive and hold a rifle on him in the car. That’s difficult to do. Why didn’t Kenneth try to get away before they got out that far?” She stopped for breath. “You see? It’s got so many holes…”

  “Do you think the Luceros were involved in Waquie’s and Grider’s deaths then?”

  “Maybe. I don’t see someone who’d push a truck over a cliff, then snap a neck for good measure, using a rifle the next day.”

  “That’s what we’re missing,” I said. “There’s no pattern to any of this. You think someone aced the Lucero brothers. All right. Suppose that’s true. If that same person was the one who killed the two in the truck, he was a creative son of a bitch…and he didn’t leave much of a trail. If the incidents are unrelated, it makes even less sense.” As I saw it, our problem was time. Cops like to work methodically, but we’d been chasing one fire after another, without a moment to sit and reflect.

  Earlier in the evening, Deputy Paul Garcia had stopped by and summarized his interview with Lucy Grider. The girl had given him a list of a dozen people who might have been hanging out with Robert Waquie or the Lucero brothers that night, assuming that they all had been together in the first place. None of the names stood off the page for Estelle.

  “Talk to each one of them,” I had said. The idea of overtime didn’t bother either Garcia or Al Martinez, and Estelle had sent them off together.

  From out of the blue Estelle announced, “Finn had all the information.” I put down the newspaper. She was staring into the open briefcase, not focusing on any of the papers. “Parris told him about Cecilia Burgess in the truck. He even told Finn that the truck belonged to Robert Waquie. How much work would it be to find out who was involved?”

  “Not much, I suppose,” I said. “Although we seem t
o be having problems.”

  “Just suppose Finn is involved,” Estelle persisted. “Just suppose. The priest goes to his camp that night, and Finn learns about the truck. Now, he’s got all the next day…we’re working the case without Parris’s information. Finn finds out that it’s Waquie’s truck. When he catches up with them, Waquie and Grider are together. And maybe he finds out from the two of them who the others were.”

  “Maybe, maybe, maybe. Come on, Estelle. You saw Finn. He couldn’t care less.”

  “It could have happened that way.”

  “He’d have to be one fast worker, Estelle. In the first place, we were up at his camp on Saturday, right after the accident with Cecilia Burgess.”

  “He may have found Waquie that morning…or later in the afternoon.”

  “He would have had to. And then you’re suggesting he finds the Lucero brothers and murders them. Nice theory but no evidence.”

  “And he’s got Arajanian to help him.”

  “Sure. You don’t have a scrap of evidence to support that.”

  “No, but there’s possible motive,” she said doggedly. “And that’s enough for a start.” I was about to question that when we heard the thumping at the back door.

  I said, “You got a dog that wants in?”

  “Sure don’t.” She got up and went into the kitchen. She pulled the curtain back a little and looked out. There was no outside light over that door, and she couldn’t have seen a train if it had been parked on the step. She pulled the door open and I heard her suck in breath with surprise.

  “Sir,” she called and I sprang to my feet, dumping the newspaper on the floor.

  A hunched figure was sitting on the single wooden step. He leaned sideways against the screen door, head down. He whimpered a little, then lifted his head and said, “Please.”

  My first thought had been that we’d collected a wandering drunk, but there was no inebriation in that voice…just hurt. “Now what the hell.” I pushed past Estelle and tried to open the door, but he was blocking it. From the hunch of his shoulders and the hang of his head, he wasn’t up to moving.

  “Let me go around front,” Estelle said, and she darted off, grabbing her flashlight from the kitchen counter. In seconds she appeared in the darkness. When the beam of the flashlight hit him in the face, the man cringed against the door. “No,” he murmured.