“I’ll turn the spotlight on for you,” Abeyta said, but Perrone held up his hand again.
“Nothing in there that I need to see.” He twisted around and looked at Torrez. “Someone shot him and then stuffed the body in here? That’s what you’re saying?”
“Don’t know what happened. What we’re thinkin’ now is that he crawled in here somehow, and then got himself shot.” He pointed at the remains of the packrat palace. “Found a shell casing in here.”
“Just one? Casing, I mean?”
“Yup.”
“But the rat could have found it just about anywhere within an acre. Recover a bullet yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Suicide is possible, you know,” Perrone said, pushing himself to his feet. “I mean, it’s unlikely, but it’s possible.” He reached around with his right hand, easily putting his index finger against the back of his own skull, and letting his thumb mimic the hammer fall.
“It’s possible,” Torrez agreed. “But it ain’t likely.”
“Well,” Perrone added, “I agree with that. It ain’t likely.” Torrez ignored the little jab at his grammar.
“Can you estimate TOD for us?” he asked, and Perrone laughed.
“Ah, no. A long time ago, Bobby. That’s my best take. You’re not talking weeks or months with this. You’re talking years. And in part, it’s going to be deceptive, since the critters have been so active. Every beetle and his cousin has been and gone, and then the guys who like to chew just to pass the time? Well, they’ve had a field day, too. When we get all this packed up, I’ll be in touch with Leslie Toler, up at the university. She works with the state lab, and she’s the best osteologist we’ve got. There’s so little here…it’s going to be a real puzzle.” He waggled his eyebrows. “You’ve got one advantage. Inside that boot? Some of the remaining bones? You’re going to have a lot of available DNA. And you’ve got dental evidence, no doubt.”
“Got to be since 1989 or ’90,” the sheriff said, more to himself than anyone else. Perrone frowned at him.
“Because?”
“That’s when the forty Smith was developed.” Torrez shrugged, looking a little uncomfortable at having to sound as if he knew something the others didn’t.
“Well, that’s interesting, and I wouldn’t be surprised.” The physician took a deep breath, stretching tall, looking out across the prairie. “Folks find such interesting spots, don’t they.” He turned back and looked first at Torrez and then at Estelle. “And let me know where you find the other boot,” he said. “That’s interesting. No coat, either? No gloves.” He stepped back to the tarp and considered the scattering. After a bit, he bent down and with the eraser of his pencil lifted a small patch of fabric away from one of the vertebrae. “Shirt fabric, no undershirt. At least nothing that looks like the remains of one.”
“The cotton would rot quickly,” Estelle offered.
“Maybe so. Just damn odd. Between a good source of DNA and dental records, I don’t think finding out who this guy is will be a big deal. Our list of missing persons is pretty short.”
“Like none,” Torrez said.
“Exactly.” Perrone nodded at the holster. “No weapon found?”
“That’s what Freddy Romero had with him on his ATV.”
“Reeeeeally. ” The physician twisted around to look back at the cave. “So that’s why he was in such a fatal hurry.”
“We think so. An excited kid.”
“Well, then. No problem. With any luck at all, the gun will take you there. Where do you suppose he found the gun? The holster doesn’t look disturbed.”
“We have no idea,” Estelle said, and a sweep of the hand included the entire hillside.
“Fractured femur and radius, and two crushed cervical vertebrae, by the way,” Perrone said. “That’s what the preliminary on the Romero boy shows. Toxicology won’t be back for a while, but there’s no reason to believe anything will turn up. Some cuts and bruises, but no other significant injuries-certainly nothing that I wouldn’t expect from a twelve foot free-flight into the arroyo.”
He nodded once more at the artifacts spread on the tarp. “You guys be careful in there. Is that one of the fire department’s respirators?”
Estelle touched the device, still hanging around her neck, and nodded.
“Well, make sure you use it,” Perrone said. He nodded at everyone once more and set off down the hill.
For another hour, they scoured and sifted the shelf under the overhang, and by the time they finished, the packrat had lost every scrap of his home and collection. But they had found nothing more of particular interest.
“I want to sift what’s left in the cave,” Estelle said, and she knew exactly why that prompted a frown of distaste from the sheriff.
“You can’t do that in there,” he said.
“No, but I can bring it out, ” she said. “We have a generator, and we have a shop vac.”
“Take a couple hours to bring it all out here,” Torrez said, but he beckoned Tony Abeyta and recited the list to him.
“Add a piece of fine screen to that,” Estelle said. “Like black nylon window screen. We’ll want to sift the vacuum contents when we’re finished. While we’re waiting, we need to figure out how we want all this collection marked and stored.”
That in itself turned out to be a significant challenge, but eventually, every scrap of recovered material from the cave and the packrat’s nest was carefully labeled, referenced to the photographs and the grid, and stored in a large cooler.
Torrez looked at his watch, grimaced, and then dispatched Tom Pasquale and Linda Real to raid Victor Sanchez’s Broken Spur Saloon for food. “And ask Bill what he wants,” he added. “He’s part of this gang. If Victor won’t take your county card, tell him I’ll be down after a bit to settle up with him. Go out the canyon road and take care of Taber at the same time.”
When the deputies had left on their various errands, Torrez found the semblance of a soft spot and relaxed back. He regarded Estelle with amusement.
“You look a wreck,” he said.
“Neat and tidy, that’s us,” Estelle replied.
“You’re lookin’ for the bullet?”
“Yes. I’m not going to sweep up the dust and small stuff in there. In two minutes, we wouldn’t be able to see a thing. I think the vacuum will work.”
“And you think the bullet’s there?”
“It might be. If our guy was shot when he was in the cave, or when he was about to crawl in, and if the path of the bullet entered right rear and exited out left front, then it could be in there.”
“Rat might have got it.”
“Maybe…but it wasn’t in the nest.”
“Go through his skull, then ricochet around in there? That’s just about impossible to figure out.”
“But,” Estelle said, and she leaned her back against the boulder, stretching her spine. “That’s a relatively low velocity bullet, no? The forty?”
“Thousand feet per second or so. For a handgun, it’s hot enough.”
“But after blowing through the full volume of a human’s skull?”
“Once it busts out through the bone in front, it wouldn’t have much poop left. I see what you’re sayin’.” He fell silent, his heavy black eyebrows raised in consideration. “We got the one from the cat.”
“That’s right. If we can find the one that killed the man, that’s a link we have to have.”
He nodded and raised an index finger to point down hill. Estelle pushed away from the rock to see Bill Gastner taking his time on the rocky slope. Herb Torrance had climbed back in his truck, but Miles Waddell appeared content to continue residence on the tailgate of his truck.
“Thanks for sending the troops for food,” Gastner said when he was within easy earshot. “I was about to give up hope and hit up your MREs.”
“Glad to do it.”
“What’s next? Tony said he was headed after a vacuum?”
“We need t
he bullet, sir. That’s the only way I can think to do a thorough search. I hope you’ve been thinking hard.”
Gastner looked surprised. “Who, me? You’re kidding.”
She toed the large cooler. “We need to know who this is, sir.”
“I’ve been working on that. It’s kind of tricky to do with an audience, though. Old Herb, he gets wound up, and he’s hard to turn him off. I’ve spent the last two hours listening to a litany of every rancher’s woe from both him and Miles. But I’ve got some ideas.”
“I was hoping that you would, sir.”
“Well, don’t hold your breath, sweetheart. I have ideas, all right. Now the trick is to remember what the hell they were.” He stood with his hands on his hips. “The first thing I’m thinking, and I don’t like it one bit, is that this is empty country. A guy could kill a friend out here, and the odds of there being any witnesses are slim and none, other than the ravens and such, and they’re not talking. Accidental discovery is the rule, not the exception. Someone got clever with all this, and it worked out just fine until Freddy Romero stuck his nose in this cave. I just hate to think who that someone might be. There aren’t that many choices out here, and most of ’em are good friends of mine. Old friends.”
Gastner gazed down the hill, and Estelle let him think without interruption. “This is Waddell’s land,” he said finally. “That’s the obvious place to start.” He flashed a quick smile at first Estelle and then Bobby Torrez. “But you guys have figured that out already.”
Chapter Twenty-six
The food-enormous, sloppy burgers, heaps of French fries, six-packs of soda, all carefully packed in an ice chest-arrived and was consumed long before Deputy Tony Abeyta returned with the vacuum. It didn’t take Estelle long to make a mental note to include a letter of commendation in Abeyta’s personnel folder. The lawn-mower chatter of the small generator was one thing, but the howl of the rotund shop vacuum in the close confines of the cave was mindnumbing. The young deputy had thought the whole process through and brought a hose extension, along with all the various brushes and wands. He’d cleaned the vacuum itself so that it looked brand new and put in a fresh filter. He’d remembered two white, light-weight hard hats.
But most important were the comfortable electronic ear phones he’d borrowed from the range cabinet in Sheriff Robert Torrez’s office.
Abeyta had eagerly volunteered for the final vacuum job in the cave, but the logic of Estelle’s argument was unassailable. She was the smallest person on the site, with the most room to maneuver.
For a half hour, she worked the vacuum, edging farther and farther into the narrow confines, using first the tapered wand and then the brush, covering every surface. She twisted on her side and gently brushed the ceiling, always working to one side of her position in case even the brush’s light touch dislodge rocks. Fragments rattled down the hose and fine detritus whooshed through into the vacuum’s collection chamber.
Eventually she waved a hand and the sound of the vacuum died.
“The bats now have the absolutely cleanest quarters in the entire southwest,” she said.
“You think they’ll appreciate it?” Linda’s voice sounded oddly metallic through the earphone’s electronic boosters.
“I doubt it. It’s just not as homey as it was.” Estelle lay quietly for a moment, letting the ache subside in her shoulders. “Would you ask Bobby for his Kel-lite? I want to check one more thing.” In a moment the large, black flashlight tapped her leg lightly. With the light, and moving with exquisite care, she wormed her way forward.
“How far are you going to go?” A note of worry crept into Linda’s voice. She rested a hand on the back of Estelle’s right boot.
“Just a bit.” Her target was the vent, the chimney, toward the back of the little cave. The opening was a body-length from the rise where she had earlier balanced the laptop and the spotlight. To reach the vent and be able to peer into it, to face the rush of air from somewhere deep in the earth, meant she would have to squirm all the way in, heading slightly downward. And there was no room to turn around, even if she rolled onto her side and hunched herself into the smallest ball possible. She would have to edge in on her elbows and toes, and back out the same way.
“This is not a good idea,” Linda whispered, and Estelle laughed in spite of her absurd position. Linda was right, of course. But short of systematically dismantling the mesa ton by ton, she could think of no other way to convince herself that she’d probed whatever secrets this little spot guarded.
“What a calendar shot, eh, hermana? ” Estelle said.
“Oh, you betcha,” the photographer said. Her calendars had become treasured possessions each year, with one of the department staff featured each month. The portraits were always wonderfully comical or a pull on the heartstrings, taken during the year when opportunity presented itself.
“Just give me some warning when you’re going to pop that thing. I don’t want to crack my head against mother rock.” As Estelle crawled forward, her breath coming loudly in the respirator, she discovered that the downslope was uncomfortably angled. What had first appeared as an insignificant grade now registered on the muscles of her forearms. The slope wasn’t enough for her to slide forward, but it was going to be a difficult squirm to climb back out. She paused, her belly resting on the entry hump of rock.
“You know, if a body was lying here,” she said, “it wouldn’t be real hard to push it the rest of the way in.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Linda replied.
“That’s about as far as you need to go,” Bob Torrez said, his voice boosted by her electronic headphones.
“Almost.” By the time her thighs rested on the entry, she could almost touch the rim of the vent with her fingers. The flow of air was a constant wash, cool enough that it felt wonderful against her sweat-tickled forehead. She edged the flashlight forward and switched it on, amplifying the unfocused illumination from the spotlight. The vent, really little more than a yawning crack in the limestone, narrowed quickly to just inches, a little passageway of sharp edges not much wider than a the wingspread of a small bat.
The top of her hardhat touched the rocks, and she flattened a bit more, spreading the bipod of her arms, wincing as the rocks dug into her elbows and forearms. The sheriff mumbled something, but Estelle ignored him. In another eighteen inches, she’d squirmed in as far as she could, the roof sloping down to block her passage. Her face was within a foot of the vent, and she reminded herself that any bats snoozing in that protected spot might burst out past her in an explosion of little leathery wings. She had no room to startle without cracking into the rock.
The flashlight beam showed nothing except limestone, the minerals in the rock twinkling through eons of dust. The vent angled down out of sight.
“Turn on the vacuum,” she said, and in a moment Linda did so, the hose jerking with the suction. Estelle worked it forward, shoving the nozzle as far into the vent as she could, feeling for the trickle of particles as they shot down the hose.
She moved slightly, repositioning the hose. Covering the stone surface a centimeter at a time, she toured with the flashlight beam, looking into each small cranny. It was the wink of bright brass that attracted her attention. Wedged into a tiny crevice to the left of the vent, its position hidden by a projection of rock but announced by a tiny swatch of gray splashed on the limestone, the mangled piece of metal had come to rest.
Pulse now pounding, she signaled that the vaccum be switched off.
“Go ahead and pull out the hose,” she said, and as it snaked past, she forced herself to breathe slowly, methodically. “Linda, you there?”
“Sure.”
“I need your camera.”
“If you come out, I can get in there.”
“No need. Just set it on auto and macro. And I’ll need the tissue for the flash.”
“You got it. Hang on just a second.” Linda’s hand didn’t leave her boot. “You all right?”
&nbs
p; “Perfecto, ” Estelle said.
“What did you find?”
“The puzzle piece,” the undersheriff said.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Sheriff Robert Torrez held the plastic evidence bag so that full sun caught it, his eyebrows knit with concentration as he turned the bag this way and that.
“We don’t know if this is the bullet that passed through the victim’s skull,” he said.
“No, we don’t.” Estelle hunched her shoulders. “But it’s consistent. ” To even consider that it might not be the projectile in question was unthinkable, but she forced herself to remain patient and explore doubts.
“We need more’n that,” Torrez said.
“Yes, we do. But it’s a start.”
“Let’s assume it is the one,” Bill Gastner agreed. He took the bag handed to him by the sheriff and then knelt beside the tarp. He held the little bag close to the frontal bone of the skull. “It had just enough energy to do that, because that exit hole isn’t very big.”
“You’re right about that,” Torrez said. “It ain’t like a magnum shockwave blew off his face. The exit is about the size of a nickel.”
Gastner held the bag up for the gathered officers to see. “The hollow point is mushroomed pretty thoroughly, but it isn’t broken up.”
“So it wasn’t movin’ too fast by the time it busted out of his head.
“So…that’s consistent. ” Torrez observed. “And for it to end up where it did, he would have had to be in the process of entering that little cave. At least lying on the slope of rock so he could see in.”
“Why would he have been doing that?” Torrez asked. “What’s he lookin’ at? The dyin’ cat?”
“I don’t know. That, or curiosity at the air flow, maybe.”
“If the same gun killed both the cat and this guy,” Bill Gastner mused, “that’s an interesting scenario. Really interesting.”
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