“Yes, it is,” Archer said. “You know, when I first saw it, my reaction was a bit negative. For one thing, I’ve seen the picture before, only in different form. There’s a picture that I’ve seen several times in some of those aviation junk-mail catalogs—the crop duster pulling up sharply to miss the barn? This is the same perspective. He’s changed the barn into a house, changed the Stearman, I think it is in the original, into a Grumman Ag Cat. But technically, he’s really got the touch, doesn’t he?”
“Hector Ocate,” Estelle read from the label, and her stomach felt as if it were full of lead.
Chapter Sixteen
“I didn’t say this back in the classroom, but I need to now, before we go any further with this.” Glen Archer spoke with his eyes locked on the painting. “I guess nothing surprises me anymore in this crazy world, but what you’re telling me…I don’t know what to think.” He fell silent for a moment, still lost in the painting.
“I want to be sure that Mr. Grider has nothing to do with any of this,” Archer said. “I sensed some hostility in his attitude toward you folks, and that’s unacceptable. We’re here to cooperate.”
“He’s just protective,” Estelle said. She glanced at Bob Torrez, who had played the role of silent stone-face to perfection. That in itself had been enough to make Grider nervous.
“Well, maybe,” the superintendent said. “I’d like to think that.”
“We appreciate your concern, sir. But a lot of folks don’t care to have us snooping into their lives,” Estelle said. “That doesn’t mean they have anything to hide.”
“I would hope not,” the superintendent said. “But I want to be sure. Mr. Grider does a good job with a difficult program, but we don’t always see eye to eye on things—especially money matters. We just don’t have any extra funding, and Mr. Grider takes any cut or refusal personally, I think. You may remember some of his letters to the editor in the Register.” He made a face of impatience. “But that’s his right, and that’s not why you’re here, is it? This youngster,” and he touched the matting of the picture, “is an incredible talent. He’s an exchange student, as you may already know. Just a wonderful boy. He’s in Mr. Grider’s welding class—I know that for sure. I would hope that he isn’t into something. I can’t even imagine something like you describe. Do you really think that a youngster took that airplane? And murder? That just doesn’t…You really think he did?”
“I think so,” Estelle said. “I’m not one hundred percent sure. But I think so. We need to remember that a teenager isn’t just a kid anymore.”
“Oh, I know, I know,” Archer said. “They’ll do anything an adult will.”
“Or more,” Torrez interjected.
“Or more,” she agreed. “I know this young man a little bit. I spoke with the senior American history class last month. He was in it.” She could picture Hector Ocate, sitting about halfway back in the room, quietly listening to both her presentation and the questions and answers that followed. After the presentation, she had talked with a handful of students for another fifteen minutes, and Hector had finally worked up his confidence to ask her several questions about her own experiences as a child growing up in northern Mexico.
If first impressions counted for anything, Hector would be far, far down her list of suspects in the theft of an airplane—and certainly the murders that followed. Of average height, a bit chubby, he had seemed innocent, bright, and eager, and obviously had been adopted already by a considerable circle of friends.
“He’s living with Pam and Gordon Urioste and the two kids,” Archer said. “Martin and Lorietta. But still—a boy is interested in airplanes. How is that enough of a connection to put him in…” He groped for words. “To put him in the epicenter of something like this?”
Estelle nodded. “It doesn’t, necessarily.”
“Someone gets themselves run over by a drunk driver, you look for drunks,” Torrez said.
Archer waited, expecting more explanation, but the sheriff apparently didn’t feel his analogy needed clarification.
If one were to judge by Hector’s host family, the boy’s involvement seemed all the more unlikely. Gordon Urioste worked as a maintenance man and custodian for the Baptist church, and his wife, Pam, had been with Posadas Insurance Agency for as long as Estelle could remember.
The undersheriff moved closer to the painting and examined the details. “Remarkable,” she said. “No matter how he did it, it’s remarkable.”
“In this particular case, I know that it’s entirely original—I mean, other than the obvious borrowing of the basic idea. On several occasions, I’ve strolled through his art class. He’s been working on this and a couple others right in class—he doesn’t paint at home. He told me he has too many other things to do.”
“I bet,” Torrez said laconically. “Where’s the kid from?”
“Near Acapulco, I think. Or at least that general area. He told me once, but the name of the actual town? It’s about twenty syllables long, and I couldn’t even come close—assuming I could remember it in the first place.”
“Cuajinicuilapa? I think that’s what he told me.”
“I just don’t know, Estelle.”
“We’ll talk with him. But being able to paint a realistic airplane doesn’t mean he knows how to fly them,” Estelle said.
“Nope,” Torrez said. “But he’s a kid, and kids talk. Could be he has an idea who went on our little jaunt. And he’s from Mexico.”
“Acapulco is more than a thousand miles south, as the Cessna flies,” Estelle said. “We’re dealing with eleven hours unaccounted for. Those hours would get you one way to Acapulco, maybe a little more.”
“You think Turner keeps accurate track?” Torrez asked. “He don’t seem the type to care much one way or another.”
“True enough. But Jim Bergin keeps meticulous records, and he’s the one who services Turner’s airplane.”
“Well, Jerry certainly wouldn’t do a thing like that,” Archer said. “Heavens, at least I hope not. I have lunch with him every Tuesday in Rotary.”
Estelle thought about the refueling process, of someone lifting the awkward cans up onto the wings of the Cessna. “No…Mr. Turner wouldn’t. Has Hector been in school every day the past couple of weeks?”
“Good heavens, I couldn’t tell you that. We’d have to check in the office.”
“Can we do that now?”
Archer glanced at his watch and smiled bleakly. “What the heck,” he said. “This is going to be one of those nights anyway.”
“Already is,” Torrez said. “We might as well check this through, but it’s way too easy.”
“Too easy?” Estelle asked.
The sheriff jerked his chin toward the painting. “You think a kid flew the plane? Well, maybe. Now we got a kid with art talent who likes airplanes. About half of them do. Now we hear that he’s from Mexico. Ain’t that convenient. Just way too easy, is all I’m sayin’.”
“Well, I surely hope so,” Archer said fervently. He fumbled a large set of keys from his pocket. “Let’s see what the computer tells us about Master Hector’s attendance. Do you have any idea of the time frame we’re looking at?”
“No,” Estelle said. “Just the past few days. Probably not yesterday, maybe not the day before.”
“Good heavens,” Archer muttered, and shrugged with resignation. “Let’s check.”
They followed Archer down the hall to the office complex, and he waved them to chairs by the secretary’s desk. “Sit, sit. This is going to take a minute while we boot up.”
“Sorry to put you through this,” Estelle said.
“No problem,” Archer said. “You’re doing what you do, Estelle. I have to admit that the timing of all this brings back memories of your previous boss. As I recall, Bill Gastner used to work right through the night about half the time.” He glanced at Estelle. “Have you run any of this past him, by the way? He knows everybody there is to know—and their parents, and grandparen
ts, back to the dawn of time.” He glanced up and grinned. “Not quite, maybe, but you know what I mean.”
“Yes, sir. But we haven’t had the chance. We’ve been on a dead run since we were called out of the recital.”
“Ah,” Archer said. “And that was a delightful performance, I must say. Most impressive. Most impressive. And here we are. Almost.” He hunched over the keyboard, staring into the bright screen as he scrolled down through the data. The cursor stopped and the superintendent highlighted a line. “The only time Hector was absent this week was for three morning classes on Wednesday. The code says that the absence was excused.”
“What for, do you know?”
“The code is for family medical. That’s all it tells me. Claudia could fill us in, I’m sure.” Archer didn’t offer to ring the principal’s office secretary in the predawn hours of a treasured weekend.
“Thanks, sir. This has been a help.”
“You’re going to talk with Hector about this? I’m sure that he had nothing to do with stealing an airplane. Let alone—”
Estelle nodded. “We’ll just have to see, sir.”
“I guess we really never know, do we? I should just say I hope he had nothing to do with it. If there’s anything else I can do, you just let me know, all right?”
Estelle and Bob Torrez left the school through the front door, walking back along the sidewalk toward the vocational wing. “I’ll check back with Collins and Grider and wind up this end,” the sheriff said. He nodded toward the compact car that was parked behind Estelle’s. “Anything specific you want from Linda that you don’t already have?”
“Just her perspective,” Estelle said. No one needed to explain to Linda Real how to photograph a crime scene—her talent seemed innate.
“Are you going to roust the kid?” Torrez asked.
“I’ll give the family an hour or two.”
“Why?”
Estelle hesitated. “Because, that’s all. We don’t have a single thing that actually links Hector Ocate with this. Just an interest in airplanes…just a painting. And some evidence that gasoline was taken from behind his school. That doesn’t mean that he took it. That’s just circumstance. A couple of hours gives Tom Mears a chance to process the two gas cans in the shed for prints. He was going to go over the plane once more, and see if there wasn’t something there—a print on the throttle, or on the flap handle…something.”
“Naranjo? You still holdin’ your breath on him?”
“If we’re lucky, he might have something for us. Odds are long.”
“Yeah, well,” Torrez said. He took a deep breath. “It’s gonna be tight. We got to be able to spring a few people free for the race, too. Unless we just want to cancel it.”
“We can’t do that, Bobby.” She groaned. “Ay. El tiempo pasa inexorablemente, as my mother is fond of saying. I hadn’t even given the race a thought.” She looked at her watch again. “The first rider is off at nine o’clock this morning. That’s in six hours.”
“You better tell Pasquale there ain’t no point in trying to squeeze into his spandex. We’re gonna need him.”
“We’ll find a way to cover, Bobby. I don’t want to pull him out of the race at this late hour. He’s trained for months, he helped organize it, and he deserves the time.”
“He also ain’t had no sleep,” Torrez said. “We’ll probably find him lyin’ under some piñon up on the mesa, blowin’ z’s.”
“Well, he might need that, too. I’m going back to the office for a few minutes to make sure that our coverage schedule for the race still works. I need to stop by the house when the kids are getting up. Then I’ll swing over and talk with Hector.”
“Good enough. We’ll finish up here.”
By the time Estelle reached the Public Safety Building, the dawn of Sunday was only an hour off. She could see streaks near the eastern horizon, wide bands of thin clouds. By race time at nine o’clock, the clouds would burn off and race competitors would face the rigors of Cat Mesa in sunshine so hot that the stunted piñons and junipers would perfume the thin air, rich and sweet.
As her hand touched the door handle, Estelle’s phone chirped as if her touch had triggered the mechanism.
“Hey,” Sheriff Torrez said. “Abeyta just called me. He’s got a time.”
“A time for…” Estelle opened the door and stepped inside. Looking down the narrow hall past the offices, she could see that dispatcher Brent Sutherland was also on the telephone. Deputy Tony Abeyta wasn’t scheduled to be working at this hour, but he’d been caught up like everyone else.
“One of the kitchen help saw the airplane.”
“Really.” It took a few seconds for her to catch up with Torrez’s habitual shorthand.
“Yep. Corrie Velasquez? She stepped out back to toss some leftovers to the coyotes. Or some shit like that. Anyway, she claims that she saw the plane. It attracted her attention because it was just sort of whistling in, no lights, engine idling.”
“Huh.” Estelle pictured Corrie standing by the back door of the Broken Spur. She would be facing north, toward the arroyo behind the saloon. The aircraft would have passed within a quarter mile of where Corrie stood if it was landing from east to west, low on final approach to the gas company’s runway. “Does she remember when?”
“She thinks Tuesday night. She knows it was after midnight, but the saloon closes at one, so it wasn’t much later than that. Two at the most.”
“That would make it Wednesday morning, then.” The growing pall of fatigue lifted a bit, and Estelle walked into her office, closing the door behind her. And Hector was absent from school Wednesday morning, she thought. “How does Corrie remember that it was Tuesday, and not some other night?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Abeyta asked her that, but he didn’t tell me. He’s inbound, if you want to talk to him. He was lookin’ for a couple hours’ sleep before he pulls race duty.”
“Some sleep sounds good.”
“You still going to talk with the kid?”
“Yes,” she said. “He’s not going anywhere.”
“We best hope not,” Torrez grunted. “If he gets wind that we’re snoopin’ around, the border ain’t very far away.”
Chapter Seventeen
An hour’s wolf nap wasn’t enough, especially with the rest of the household enjoying the quiet of early Sunday morning slumbering. It would have been too easy to roll over, snuggle up against her husband, and doze off again. She sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, trying to focus. She had folded into bed at three fifteen. In a blink, the clock had leaped to 4:30 a.m.
“What’s the deal this morning?” Francis asked, his voice muffled by the pillow.
Estelle rubbed her face and double-checked the time. “I need to talk with a kid who might have taken the plane,” she said. “There’s a chance. Slim, but a chance. I need to follow up on it.”
“You be careful. You’re tired.”
“I know. I’ll try to be back in time for the race. If it looks like I can’t make it, I’ll call.” She turned and patted his hip. “Can you take the boys up on the mesa if I’m not back?”
“Chances are,” he replied. A finger appeared from under the pillow and wagged at her. “Don’t you be sending more work our way.”
“I’ll try my best, querido.” After a long shower, she dressed quickly and forced down a small microwaved breakfast burrito and a cup of tea. By five thirty, she was parking in front of a nondescript double-wide mobile home on the southwestern outskirts of Posadas. She paused by her car, noticing two things. First, she could see the end of the vocational wing of the high school, no more than a quarter of a mile distant, across a scrubby field and a single arroyo. Second, her arrival had not gone unnoticed.
Two pit bulls watched her with interest. They were tethered with their light chains running up to a wire clothesline, allowing them to course back and forth in front of the home, in an area lighted by an irritatingly bright streetlight. Both dogs could reach the p
ath to the front door with ease.
By the time she had gotten out of the car and walked around the front fender, both dogs were wagging so hard it appeared their backbones were in jeopardy, their voices sounding like two frantic children. If they thought that a stranger approaching their house in the wee hours of the morning was unusual or cause for alarm, they didn’t show it.
“My long lost pals,” Estelle said aloud. As she approached, one of the dogs, a butterscotch female splotched liberally with white, stood on her hind legs, balancing against the pull of the leash. The other, a brindle female, took the low road and flopped on her back, presenting a white belly that had nursed its share of puppies.
“They’re harmless,” a man’s voice said, and Estelle glanced up to see Gordon Urioste standing at the front door of the double-wide. “As long as you don’t mind the slobber.”
“Good morning, sir,” Estelle said.
“Get down, Squeak,” Urioste said sharply, and the dancing female dropped to all fours instantly, stubby tail still flailing. “How are you this morning, Ms. Guzman?” he added. “You’re out bright and early.”
“I’m okay,” she said, pushing past the two wet, snuffling muzzles that blotched her previously spotless tan pantsuit. The two dogs couldn’t reach the front step, and both of them sat down at the full stretch of their chains, butts wiggling. Urioste stepped the rest of the way past the storm door and closed it behind him. A short, burly man, his heavy-featured face was one of wary good humor.
“What can I do for you? You want a cup of coffee? The wife’s got it going.”
“No thanks, sir.” She turned, surveying the neighborhood, a hodgepodge of older trailers and double-wides situated on irregular two-acre lots. The neighborhood had started its sprawl during the last heydays of the copper mine on Cat Mesa, and now struggled with vacant lots left when the trailers pulled out, leaving behind the stubs of plumbing pipes and chopped-off electrical wiring. Fences were choked with tumbleweeds, and the dirt streets were dismal. The two dwellings on either side of Urioste’s were vacant—on one side, a single trailer whose carport was sagging over a vast pile of trash, and on the other, a ten-year-old double-wide bordered by a rickety cedar fence, the place recently abandoned when the elderly owner had died.
Final Payment Page 12
