Suicide Season

by Rex Burns

  Apparently, things worked out for the original owners only enough to justify a peaked roof over the basement and a porch lined with rusty metal chairs in the shape of seashells. Close to the house, a blue pickup truck sat in the shade of one of the trees, and as I watched, a large German shepherd plodded listlessly toward the house and disappeared under the porch. Beneath another tree were the shadows of motorcycles, possibly four or five. From this distance, they looked heavy and fast and had the bulk of Harleys. On a rise beyond the broken-down corral, the wide dish of a satellite receiver aimed into the hot sky. Surrounding the little island of trees and roofs, the dry prairie stretched bare and vacant. It was a lousy place to live if you wanted rich, green fields and neighbors close enough to visit. But it was fine if you were afraid someone might want to sneak up on you. And a hard one for surveillance if you were the sneakee. I shot half a dozen pictures with the telephoto just to prove to myself I’d been here, and then crept back over the ridge and down to my car.

  Driving the dirt section roads that carved the county into large squares, I circled the farm looking for alternate approaches. To the north, a tall radio tower flashed its warning strobes every few seconds to fend off low-flying airplanes, and farther east—too distant to be heard—I glimpsed the rectangles of semi trucks gliding up a rise on I-25. After a while, I swung that way and joined the river of traffic back toward Denver, mulling over the problem of surveillance.

  I reached the office after lunch. Bunch was in the small cubicle that served as workshop and storage room for his electronic equipment, and he told me he was sketching out a closed-circuit loop system for the Hally Corporation. “That’s what they decided on, so what the hell. It’s their loss.”

  It was what we were afraid of—quick work and low profit. “How big’s the plant?”

  “Just one building. I’ll draw up some options, show them the different degrees of protection. But don’t be too cut up if they stick with the cheapie.” He finished rolling a spool of sensor tape. “What’s with the new insurance job?”

  I told him about Taylor and the farm, and he nodded glumly. “More squat-and-peek work.” Then he perked up. “But, hey, what do you say we try a night gig? That way we can check out the infrared gear. From what you say, it’ll be harder than hell to eyeball the place during the day, anyway.”

  It was as good a plan as any, and it was nice to see him finally eager to do some insurance work. I handed him the list of Taylor’s known associates. “See what you can find out from Dave Miller on these people. My guess is some of them have local records.”

  Bunch glanced over the names and grunted. Dave Miller, of DPD’s vice and narcotics section, was Bunch’s contact in the police by virtue of being his ex-partner. Miller would do favors for me, but not as readily as he did for Bunch.

  “Did you talk to Nestor’s co-workers?”

  Bunch nodded; he’d been busy while I was up in Erie. “They didn’t tell me much more than we already knew. He showed up on Tuesday, worked all day, didn’t show up Wednesday.”

  “He was seen leaving the plant?”

  “At four thirty-seven.”

  “Somebody timed him?”

  “No.” Bunch glanced at his small notebook. “One Arnold Castillo was getting on his bus and saw Nestor. The bus usually makes its pickup there at four thirty-seven, and the driver swears she was on time that day. Of course, they always say that.”

  “Nestor rode the bus?”

  “He walked. Told people it was for his health, but they think it was to save a few bucks. Poor bastard.”

  “Did you go over the route?”

  “A little under two miles from the plant to his apartment house. At most a forty-five-minute walk each way.”

  “Anyone along the way notice him?”

  “Haven’t checked that out yet. I figure I could use a little help.”

  Why not? I’d spent the morning wandering around the prairie; might as well spend the afternoon wandering around Denver. Detectives walked a lot. “We ought to make another visit to missing persons, too, for Serafina Frentanes,” I said.

  Bunch paused as I locked the office door. “Oh yeah? Listen, Dev, you got to start cutting back on the charity cases. We won’t have time for anything else if you keep that up.”

  Surveying Nestor’s probable route home used what little was left of the afternoon. It didn’t take long for folks to look at a photograph and shake their heads no. And much of the route was past the mesh and board fences of light industry or down streets busy with commercial truck and car traffic, so that residents closed the fronts of their small houses against the noise and did most of their living at the back. Bunch and I parked in the shade of the elevated freeway near the apartment building and compared notes.

  “Some people remembered seeing him now and then, but nobody could say anything about last Tuesday,” he said.

  That was the sum of my information, too. “Back to homicide?”

  “Might as well start there.”

  The sergeant who cleared us through the flimsy security gate of the lobby remembered Bunch. “You making a fortune rattling doorknobs now, Bunchcroft?”

  “We’re helping the citizens of our fair community, Baker. Supporting law and order, protecting the Constitution, safeguarding the flag.”

  “Yeah. And ripping off people who don’t want to show their faces around a police station, right?”

  “Helping people in distress, and—believe it or not—doing it for no money.”

  “Right. I sure believe that.”

  We went up the oversized elevators to the crimes against persons office. “I never did like that bastard when we worked the same precinct. Always had a smart mouth and nothing to back it up.”

  “He’s making more money than we are.”

  “A lot of people are doing that, Dev. It doesn’t mean they’re not bastards.”

  That was true and left little to argue. The elevator doors slid open to an empty hallway, and we followed it down to the CAP office. The civilian receptionist who handled the evening shift made us wait for Detective Sergeant Kiefer, a stocky man whose horn-rimmed glasses and sweater made him seem more like a college student than a cop. “You say it’s a Hispanic female, Dev?”

  We knew each other, and that saved a lot of time. Many cops—maybe most—have little affection for private detectives, even those who might bring the answer to a missing persons case or an unidentified corpse. “Serafina Frentanes.” I described her and showed Kiefer the photograph. “She’s an illegal.”

  “You check with immigration? Maybe they grabbed her and hustled her back across the border before she dropped the kid.”

  “Yeah,” I lied. “We looked into that. They don’t have anything on her.” But they would if we brought her to their attention. And on Felix as well.

  “Ah. Well, I don’t remember a stiff like that. Seven months pregnant—I’d remember something like that.”

  From what I knew of the man, he remembered every corpse he investigated, and the paper record bore out his statement. Bunch and I rode in silence down the elevator and paused outside Police Administration to look over the surging traffic.

  “You think the disappearances are related, Dev?”

  “I don’t think Nestor and Serafina went off together, if that’s what you mean. Nestor would have needed every cent he could grab. Besides, she disappeared before he did.”

  “Yeah. It doesn’t make sense. But it is a coincidence.”

  And coincidences were suspicious. “Did you ask his employer about the hospital visit?”

  “Cut himself on the line. Happens a lot, I guess. All anybody knew, he went back to work that afternoon so he wouldn’t lose any hourly. Come on, I’m starved. We’ll swing by Warner and then grab something to eat.”

  The records office clerk at Warner Memorial Hospital was polite but firm: no access to files without authorization by the patient or his designated representative, which in most cases meant either the employer’
s personnel officer or a representative of the insurance company responsible for verifying treatment and costs.

  “Honey, the man’s missing. He could be hurt bad or in trouble. We’re trying to find him.”

  “He was properly discharged from this hospital, mister, and don’t you call me ‘honey.’ I don’t have to put up with that from you or anybody else!”

  “Crap, they’re getting touchy.” Bunch turned his Bronco onto Colfax Avenue and headed toward Bannock Street and a medium-cheap restaurant we both liked.

  “I don’t think ‘touchy’ is the word you want.”

  “No touch-ee no feel-ee, that’s for sure. Damn women’s lib.”

  “Suave is in, Bunch. Neanderthal is out. You should wear your hair long and blow-dried and be sensitive. Glasses would help too.”

  “Yeah? Next you’ll be telling me to take a bath.”

  “This is September, isn’t it?”

  “Come on—you know I take one every other Saturday.” He led the way into the restaurant. “Change my socks, too, every New Year’s.”

  One of the virtues of the restaurant was its food: another was its prices. But speed of service was something else, even this early in the dinner hour. We managed to get back to the office in time for me to make the last pickup with a special delivery letter to the business office of Warner Memorial Hospital from Kirk and Associates’ Medical Underwriters. The ornate letterhead looked satisfyingly impressive—one of an arsenal of Kirk and Associates’ supposed endeavors—and the message requested verification of charges and services on one Nestor Calamaro, whose claim was submitted on … case number … dates of service, etc. I even thoughtfully included a prestamped return envelope for their convenience.

  While I did the work, Bunch took time for a jog along the Cherry Creek bike path on his more or less daily run of four or five miles. In my mind’s eye, I could see the winding concrete ribbon that meandered along the creek’s banks, sheltered by occasional small trees and by the high retaining walls that channeled the course away from the boulevard straddling it and provided mural space for graffiti artists. I should have gone with him; I needed to flush out my system with a good sweat. But instead, I made an appointment to visit Mrs. Chiquichano, owner of the barracks that had housed the two missing people.

  She lived in the Bonnie Brae area, a settled neighborhood of formerly medium-priced houses, some of which were now in the several-hundred-thousand-dollar range. Her address was a Tudor cottage with sharply pitched roofs, windows peeking from shaded gables, stucco walls bearing trellises of ivy, and bay windows that reached out to gather in sunshine. A yard full of mature trees brought shade and foliage up to the eaves, and a brick walk wound from the street past a large blue spruce to the front door. It looked like something photographed for The American Home, and the house, like the manicured lawn, showed the care of someone with a lot of time to work it or a lot of money to have it done right. Even as I parked and stood a moment looking, a dark-haired woman was finishing up the Cadillac parked in the drive, wiping a chamois across the gleaming black of the long hood and bending to scrub at a speck of something on the chrome hub.

  “Mrs. Chiquichano?”

  Wordless, she bobbed her head toward the house and silently watched me cross the spongy lawn, go up the walk, and rap with the iron knocker. Another Latin woman finally opened the door. This one, too, was short and had rounded Indian features. “Yes?”

  “I’m Devlin Kirk. I called for an appointment to see Mrs. Chiquichano.”

  “Please to come in. This way, please.” The woman led me into the entry and gestured at a living room that was overcrowded with deeply stuffed armchairs, end tables crowded with doodads, lamps shaded with brocades and tassels, heavy, patterned curtains across the windows, a variety of rugs, paintings with florid gilded frames, and even—where space allowed—potted plants that struggled for light in the gloom. The rhythmic, sleepy tick of a large clock echoed sinuously from behind a bamboo chair whose intricate back spread like a peacock tail. “Please to sit down. I will call the madam.”

  It seemed safer to stay mobile; I stood. A few minutes later, the sound of heels clacked on the occasional strip of wood floor that peeked out at the edges of carpets.

  “Mr. Kirk? You said you had important business with me?”

  She, too, was short and with her wide face and high cheekbones could have been an older sister of the other women. Older and more responsible and in better command of her English. Hers was a bearing of authority, and she verged on careless scorn when she dismissed the maid who had let me in.

  With a quick gesture, she ordered me to a chair. Her hair was pulled back into a knot and held by a pair of long needles. It showed streaks of gray that swept past her ears.

  “I’m looking for Nestor Calamaro, and I wonder if you might be able to tell me anything about him.” I handed her a business card with its little logo for Kirk and Associates, Industrial Security and Private Investigations.

  She wasn’t impressed. “About him?”

  “If he had any friends—what he did in his spare time. Anything that might give me an idea where he could be.”

  “What is your interest in this one?”

  “His aunt is worried about him. She hired me to look for him.” I smiled. “I understand you come from the same village in El Salvador?”

  The black eyes stared back without warmth. But beneath the hardness was caution. “Not the same village—the same region. My home was a farm, not a village.”

  “I understand, too, that Nestor was an illegal immigrant.”

  She set the card on the gleaming corner of an end table that held a large potted fern, a sparkling ashtray of cut glass, an oval picture frame with what looked like an old sepia wedding photograph, and a ceramic miniature of a shepherd girl with blond hair and a blue frock. “I don’t know about that. I rent rooms. I don’t have to ask for the documentation to rent rooms.”

  I nodded at the woman servant, who was pushing a noisy vacuum cleaner down the strip of carpet that led from the front door through the entry. Apparently my shoes had tracked in some dust. “Does she work for you?”

  “And I do not have to answer no questions from you, Mr. Kirk.”

  “No. No, you don’t, Mrs. Chiquichano. That’s true. And I’m not trying to threaten you. I’m only trying to find a man who disappeared and whose family is worried about him.”

  “I do not know what happened to him.” She stood and I did too.

  “Did he owe you any rent when he disappeared?”

  For the first time she smiled a bit, a grim clench of cheek that stretched her lips across the unevenness of her teeth. “My boarders pay in advance.”

  “And you take care of the rest of their money too, is that right?”

  “I do not know what you mean.” Her hand pushed the air and me toward the door. “I work for my living. I work hard to make my living in this country. I do not know who you talked to, Mr. Kirk, but nobody can say not one evil word about me. I come to this country, I work hard, now I have my business. Many people who don’t do so good are jealous of me and they talk, but none of it is true.”

  “That’s fine, Mrs. Chiquichano. It’s always good to see the virtues of capitalism rewarded. But a man has disappeared—someone you are familiar with—and you don’t seem too curious about where he might have gone.”

  “It is not strange. Every now and then someone disappears. Especially if they are undocumented. Especially if immigration finds out about them.”

  “You think that’s what happened? Immigration got him?”

  “It happens all the time. I told you, I get my rent in advance.”

  “Have any other people recently disappeared from your apartment house?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “But I heard about a woman a month or so ago. I heard you were asking the neighbors about her.”

  Mrs. Chiquichano’s face hardened into something like a Mayan stone carving, and her eyes were equa
lly expressive. “I said no, Mr. Kirk. Good-bye.”

  “Do you think immigration got her, too?”

  The door closed firmly. The woman polishing the Cadillac stopped again to silently watch me walk back to my car. In the rearview mirror, I could see her stare after me as I drove away.

  Bunch steered the Bronco onto the shoulder of the dirt road and turned off the lights. We sat for a few minutes to let our eyes adjust to the black of empty fields, and gradually we could see that the blackness wasn’t quite so absolute. To the west, where Boulder lay against the foothills, a vague glow gave dim silhouette to the nearest rise of earth. Behind us, over Denver, the sky was even lighter. And to the north a string of strobe lights periodically made a tall exclamation point in the night.

  “How high you think that radio tower is?” Bunch asked.

  I squinted at the blue-white flash of lights. “Oh, just a rough guess: nine hundred ninety-eight feet, three and a quarter inches.”

  Bunch looked at me.

  “I read up on it when I was looking for surveillance sites—it’s some kind of experimental tower for the Bureau of Standards. Just under a thousand feet high.”

  “What kind of experiments?”

  “They bounce radio waves off it from Boulder, for one thing. And there’s a platform at the top to study air pollution patterns that come up the I-25 corridor.”

  “You wanted that for surveillance? Man, I definitely would not go to the top of that thing!”

  I hoisted the monopod for the telephoto and the battery pack for the night scanner. “They wouldn’t let us anyway. And it’s pretty secure at night—I checked it out. So we’re stuck on the ground.”

  “Good.” Bunch nodded. “A quick trip in, a few shots, a quiet sneak out. That’s the civilized way.”

  We had parked on a section road that, we estimated from the crisp new Geological Survey map, was directly behind the old Wilcox farm and about a mile distant. Bunch took our bearings from an engineer’s directional compass, and we crawled between strands of barbed wire and started across the weedy prairie. What had looked smoothly rolling during the day was uneven and rough in the dark, and despite the heavy leather of my hiking boots, I could feel the occasional jab of cactus spines against my ankles. A narrow but deep gully cut a black line at the base of the first hill, and we wandered along its lip in the dark searching for handholds to scale down the bank. Somewhere ahead a coyote gave a quavering bark, and off to the north beyond the flashing tower another answered, three quick yips and a long, dying howl. Once, we stumbled across some bird’s nest and the night exploded into startled screeches and a drumming of frantic wings. In the distance down the ravine, a rabbit squealed its life away as an owl or coyote or fox found its supper.