Prolonged Exposure pс-6

by Steven F Havill

  “I did. Erma Sedillos wouldn’t let me talk with her.”

  I chuckled again. “I guess I could have predicted that. And by the way-not that it’s any of my business-what are you planning to do with the pictures you took of my daughter and the youngster? Is that front-page stuff?”

  “Frank wants to use it.”

  “Well, then, far be it from me to suggest to you and Frank how to do your jobs.” I kept my tone gentle and even jocular, but an uneasy feeling settled somewhere in the pit of my stomach.

  Gayle Sedillos appeared in my doorway and held up two fingers, and I nodded. I covered the receiver with my hand and mouthed, “Go home!” She waved a hand in agreement.

  “Marjorie,” I said into the phone, “Estelle will be here in about half an hour. I need to take another call, so why don’t you either ring back or, better yet, come on down in person. We’ll figure something out.”

  “Do you think she’ll talk with me?”

  “I don’t know, Marjorie. I gave up trying to read Detective Reyes-Guzman’s mind a long time ago.” That wasn’t strictly true, of course.

  I punched the button for line two and prepared myself for Stanley Willit. But in the past two minutes, he’d become a new man.

  “Undersheriff Gastner, Stanley Willit. Listen, sorry to cut you off like that, but in this crazy country, you just never know.” He waited a heartbeat or two for me to agree, but I let the line hang silent, and he continued. “I don’t know if you remember me or not, but Gloria Apodaca-that’s Florencio Apodaca’s wife-is my stepmother.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “So I understand.” Sgt. Robert Torrez’s lineage chart for Posadas relationships maintained its reputation for accuracy.

  “Gloria Apodaca’s second husband was Howard Willit. He owned a big furniture store in Las Cruces for years and years. Howard Willit was my father. His wife, my real mother, died when I was born, and just a short time after that-oh, I suppose I was two or three years old-he married Gloria.”

  “I see.”

  “Then about 1945, my dad was killed in a car crash up in Alamogordo. About a year after that, Gloria sold the store and all of my father’s holdings and moved to Organ. You know that tiny little village just east of Cruces? Up in the hills?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s where she met Florencio Apodaca, and they got married sometime in 1948. I don’t remember exactly just what the date was. I was about twelve years old, I suppose.”

  “And then your family moved to Posadas?”

  “No, no. We lived in Organ for, gosh, close to fifteen more years. Florencio had a business where he made old-fashioned-style Mexican furniture. You know, that adobe hacienda casa stuff. He had himself quite a business going, when he wasn’t drinking himself unconscious. Then we moved to Deming, and then when I went off to the military, they moved a couple more times. They finally settled in Posadas around 1970 or so.”

  “Mr. Willit, all this is fascinating, but just what is it I can help you with?”

  “Well, see, that’s just it. My mother-that is, my stepmother, although she was always like a real mother to me-Gloria had a good deal of money in her own name. From the sale of the store and all. She always kept that aside-for her old age, she used to say.”

  “They were elderly,” I said, remembering the two of them hobbling down Escondido Lane on warm evenings, usually arguing with each other.

  “Well, she finally gave in here a year or so ago, and she transferred her account to their joint bank account. I don’t know who convinced her to do it, but she shouldn’t have.” I heard a rustle of papers. “I’ve got a whole slew of documents here, letters from mother. After she made that initial transfer, the first thing Florencio did was go out and buy a new pickup truck.”

  “That was a long time ago,” I said. “He’s been driving the same old truck for years.”

  “That was just the beginning,” Willit said, and for the next ten minutes I sat patiently and listened to a litany of purchases, most petty, all paid for with old Howard Willit’s furniture-store money.

  “And so,” I said to cut Stanley Willit short, “what can I do for you? There’s nothing wrong with a man spending his wife’s money, especially if it’s in a joint account.”

  “That’s my point,” Willit said. “Last year, she told me that Florencio had started buying land around Posadas.”

  “That’s a thought,” I said, Posadas had never made any of the “fastest-growing communities” lists.

  “He’s got at least three sons from a previous marriage of his who are all starting to come out of the woodwork. So I guess he figures to set them up. Anyway, my mother said she was going to pull her money-what there was left of it-out of the bank and put it somewhere safe. She said that’s all she and Florencio argued about anymore. Money, money, money.”

  I almost said, “But she isn’t your mother,” but I caught myself in time. “She was well into her eighties, wasn’t she?”

  “Eighty-four. Florencio is two years younger, I think.”

  “But then she died,” I prompted. “And by New Mexico’s law, right of survivorship gives her estate to her husband, unless she directs otherwise in her will, and as long as they were legally married. Did she leave a will?”

  “That’s one reason I’m calling. I don’t know. She said she was going to write one. I don’t know if she ever got around to it.”

  “The elderly often don’t, Mr. Willit. Have you asked Florencio?”

  “He won’t talk to me.”

  “Ah. By law, I don’t suppose he has to, either, sir. Under ‘joint tenants,’ he’s free to do as he likes.”

  “Maybe so, but I want you to listen to this last letter. Wait a minute.” More shuffling followed. “Here we go. It’s dated September twentieth of this year. I won’t bore you with all the chitchat, but right here, it says, ‘It’s very sad what he said he might do. I don’t care, old as we are. There’s still a little more,’ and right here I can’t read what she wrote, but I guess she’s talking about her money.”

  “Did you hear from her after that?”

  “No. That’s the last letter I got.”

  “Did she normally write to you regularly?”

  “Oh, once or twice a year, I suppose. Maybe four times, counting Christmas cards and so on.”

  “Did Florencio write to you, or contact you in any way, when your mother died? When Gloria died?”

  “I didn’t know she had died until last week. I telephoned, hoping to talk with her, and Florencio said that she’d passed away. He told me that she hadn’t wanted a funeral service of any kind.”

  “I see. Have you talked to him since then?”

  “No. He won’t talk to me. But listen. It doesn’t make any sense that he’d bury my mother just across the street in some vacant lot like that. Good God. And she was a devout Catholic. She’d have wanted services of some kind, I’m sure.”

  “Well, sir, it’s hard to tell what he was thinking. The very elderly sometimes get a few screws loose, and what seems simple and logical to them is pretty bizarre to the rest of us. Actually, it’s not a vacant lot, if you remember correctly. It’s a quiet, shaded spot, almost like a park.” I thought of the jumble of low shrubs and realized my description was a bit optimistic. “There’s no law that says he had to use the cemetery, and with all you’ve mentioned about his ways with money, maybe the whole idea appealed to him.”

  “Well, it doesn’t appeal to me. I mean, there’s no protection for her grave from possible future development, no care, no maintenance. And from what the sheriff told me earlier, it’s not even Florencio’s property. It’s yours.”

  “True enough.”

  “And we haven’t settled a more important issue, anyway.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I think he killed her.”

  “That’s hard to imagine,” I said, trying to keep the grin out of my voice.

  “Well, it’s perfect,” Willit said. “She’s very elderly, so no
one suspects because of that. He prepares her grave all by himself, like some innocent, half-senile old fart, and even carves a crude cross for special effects. People look at it and say, ‘Isn’t that sweet,’ and he’s home free.”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. Willit.” But I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Words similar to Willit’s prediction had been spoken as Camille and I visited the grave the day before.

  “Why not? Two, three years, who’s going to know the difference? Especially if she’s just wrapped up in an old bedsheet or something like that. The body will be decomposed before long. That’s why I’m going to Posadas this week. Tomorrow, if I can make arrangements. I want a court order signed. It’ll make things a lot easier if you’d sign a statement saying that you don’t want her buried on your property.”

  “I really don’t care one way or another, Mr. Willit, but a court order for what?”

  “Exhumation. I want to find out what killed my mother.”

  Chapter14

  “We’re ready, sir,” Estelle Reyes-Guzman said, and I damn near jumped out of my chair. I had swiveled it sideways and was gazing out the window, lost in thought somewhere. She frowned. “What’s wrong, sir?”

  I got out of my chair with a grunt and waved a hand at the telephone. “Nothing.” I didn’t have a clue how long I’d been wool-gathering. On the chance that it hadn’t been too long, I added, “I just got off the phone with Gloria Apodaca’s stepson.”

  “That’s the Willit person that’s been calling?”

  I nodded. “He wants a court order to exhume the body. He thinks that Florencio Apodaca did her in.”

  I thought Estelle might laugh, or maybe chuckle, or even smile-just a little maybe. But the corners of her mouth didn’t twitch and the little lines around her eyes didn’t deepen. She stepped into my office and closed the door behind her. “What did you tell him?”

  “Well, I didn’t give him a definite answer. He’s flying in from California sometime in the next day or two.” I thrust my hands in my pockets and looked down at the old wooden flooring. “I guess it’s something that’s got to be settled one way or another. If I refuse, then Willit will take old man Apodaca to court, and we’ll be tied up that way until he finds enough evidence to convince a judge. And I’m sure he’ll find some excuse. I was thinking of going over to talk with the old guy. Maybe I can convince him that Gloria needs to be buried properly, out of the way of future water lines. That way, Stanley Willit can have his look-see, and the old lady can rest in peace.” I shrugged. “It won’t hurt to talk to him. See what he says. You want to go along?”

  “Sure.” She frowned and shook her head. “I’ve seen Gloria Apodaca in church a few times.”

  She didn’t continue, so I prompted her. “And then?”

  “Being practicing Catholics, being buried in unconsecrated ground would raise all sorts of clamor with relatives.”

  “Maybe she was and he isn’t,” I said.

  “And that would make all the more reason to agree with Mr. Willit, sir. I think you should talk with Florencio. Maybe tomorrow, if nothing else breaks.”

  I nodded and she stepped aside to let me out into the modern world of tile, fluorescent lights, and electric doors. “Let’s see what Mrs. Cole and her boyfriend have to say.”

  Had the young couple been interested in their surroundings just then, they would have been impressed with Sheriff Martin Holman’s office. He had every computer gadget on the planet stuffed into a single piece of furniture that looked like an oversized entertainment center. The snarl of wires and cables lead down to a power source beside his steel desk that looked adequate to drain Posadas Rural Electric Co-op bone-dry.

  Tiffany Cole had recovered from her head-thumping faint, but she was a wreck in every other respect. Andy Browers sat beside her, his large brown hand covering both of hers.

  The sheriff indicated that I sit in his chair behind the desk, and I took him up on the offer. He perched on the edge of the desk, hands clasped in his lap, composed as hell and looking as if he was about to say, “Now, what will it take for you to drive home that new car today?”

  “We’re not getting anywhere,” he said by way of preamble, and I was surprised at his honesty. “You’ve spent the same hours up on that mesa that we have, and other than the jacket, we haven’t turned up a thing.” That pronouncement didn’t do a lot to make Tiffany Cole and Andy Browers any more cheerful.

  “I think it’s time to face the fact that the youngster is not on the mesa,” the sheriff continued. He saw the quiver of Tiffany Cole’s lower lip and added quickly, “That doesn’t mean that we’re not going to continue the ground and air search.” He clapped his hands once, softly. “Even enlarge the sweep of the search to the west, north, and east.”

  Browers’s voice was husky. “What do you really think, Sheriff?”

  Holman hesitated and glanced at me, then at Estelle. “We think,” he said slowly, “that the child was abducted.”

  Tiffany let out a little strangled cry and stuck her left fist in her mouth. Her eyes brimmed. I hoped that she wasn’t going to go backward out of the chair.

  Holman took a deep breath and plunged on. “You have to consider some main features of that country. It’s rugged, and we just don’t think that the child would walk very far. That means he’d hear voices, and he’d probably holler for help. He didn’t do any of those things. But in addition to all that, there are several access roads to the general area where you folks were camping. It would be easy enough for someone to drive a truck up there, maybe even fairly close. It would also be fairly easy to slip through the trees to where you people were camping and, when it was clear that the youngster was by himself, pick him up.”

  “You don’t really believe that,” Browers said. If his hand clamped Tiffany’s any harder, we would have heard bones starting to crack. “What about his jacket?”

  Sheriff Holman spread his hands. “Detective Reyes-Guzman and I spent quite a bit of time this afternoon going over the possibilities, including the problems presented by the jacket,” he said. He got up and walked toward the window, his hands on the small of his back. True to form, he wasn’t wearing a gun-at least not one that was visible. “And let me tell you what doesn’t make any sense. What doesn’t make sense is that the child is still on the mesa. We’ve used dogs, helicopters, infrared heat-seeking equipment. Enough manpower to comb an area ten times that size. I’m sorry. I don’t think he’s up there.”

  The sheriff nodded at Estelle. “Do you agree?”

  “Yes, sir.” That’s all she said, and Holman returned to the desk perch. “Let’s take it apart. You provided articles of the boy’s clothing so the dogs could pick up a strong scent. They followed the scent just a few feet from where your truck was parked and then lost it. They didn’t follow it toward the area where the jacket was discovered.” Holman spread his hands again, and Browers took the opportunity to speak.

  “It’s been raining, though. That screws up the scent for the dogs.”

  “It hasn’t been raining that much,” Holman said. “And the dogs are proven in dozens of searches, some in far worse weather than this.”

  “What if he’s fallen over the edge somehow? Hurt real bad, maybe even…maybe even so bad, he can’t cry out?”

  “The search teams covered every square inch of that mesa face, folks. And I mean covered it. So did you. I spent four hours in the area immediately below where you were camped, in an area no bigger than a football field. The child isn’t there. And the National Guard’s infrared equipment agrees with us. He isn’t there.”

  “But who?” Tiffany Cole said, and it was the first time I’d actually heard her voice.

  “That’s the primary reason we wanted to talk with you folks today,” the sheriff said.

  I cleared my throat. “Mrs. Cole,” I said, “who knew that you and your family were going camping this weekend?”

  She looked puzzled. “I don’t know who we told,” she said. “All kinds of people
, I suppose. I mean,” she added, and her voice took on a petulant edge, “it wasn’t some kind of secret.”

  “Of course it wouldn’t be,” I said. “Let’s try to narrow it down. When did you decide to go? Was it a spur-of-the-moment thing, or something you’d been planning?”

  She looked at Browers and he shrugged. “We’d been wanting to go camping for a while, but we never seemed to get around to it. Cody was having so much fun this summer camping out in the backyard with some neighborhood friends.” She looked up quickly. “Not overnight. He’s too little for that. But they played with the tent and stuff like that. He’s even got a little sleeping bag, and he’s so proud of it.” She sniffed. “Earlier in the week, we just decided that we ought to go out at least once, before the weather turned really bad.”

  “And with your camper, this kind of weather is no big deal,” I said. “Kind of fun, I suppose.”

  They nodded.

  “Were you hunting?”

  Browers shook his head. “I don’t even know what’s in season right now, if anything. We just wanted a big fire, cook hot dogs and marshmallows, and have a good time.”

  “So it was a spur-of-the-moment sort of decision,” I said.

  “Exactly. None of this seems possible,” Browers said. He leaned forward. “And what about the jacket?” When he said that, Tiffany Cole winced.

  “The tears in the jacket are consistent with knife cuts,” Estelle Reyes-Guzman said. Tiffany Cole’s hand drifted back toward her mouth. “There was no blood on the fabric around the cuts, even though at least two of the cuts penetrated all the way through the garment. If the child had been wearing the jacket at the time the cuts were made, he would have been injured.” Perhaps Tiffany Cole wouldn’t have blanched quite so much if Estelle hadn’t sounded like a bored coroner talking into a tape recorder.

  “I don’t understand,” Browers said. “Are you saying that someone cut up the boy’s jacket just for kicks?”

  “No,” Estelle said. “I don’t know why the coat was left behind, or why it was cut.”

  “We were told that animals probably tore it.”