Naranjo’s eyebrows drifted up. “Ah. What does Mr. Saenz have to say?”
“I wish I knew. He denied any information of the rifle, but that was before we had evidence that he was lying. Unfortunately, we had nothing solid enough to hold him on. Early this morning, Eurelio Saenz fled to this country in the company of two men. His mother witnessed the incident, and said that some coercion was involved. She also thinks the two men could have been the Madrid brothers.”
“Could have been?”
“That’s correct. She wasn’t sure.”
“And Mr. Saenz hasn’t been seen since, I’m willing to wager.”
“That’s also correct.”
Naranjo studied Estelle for a long time, but there was none of the suave, gentle Don Juan in his expression this time. “It seems to me that another trip to Asunción is in order,” Naranjo said. He looked at his watch. “You have a previous commitment at five, I understand.” He almost smiled when he said that, and quickly added, “And your mother is tired and needs to go home, I’m sure. Let me look into this. Perhaps there are some simple answers after all.” He reached out a courtly hand for Estelle’s elbow. “I’ll pay my respects to Don Roman, gather my purchases, and be on my way. Expect to hear from me this evening. Will that be satisfactory?”
Estelle nodded. She let herself be escorted back into the house. Fifteen minutes later, with the dust from Tomás Naranjo’s Toyota long dispersed, Estelle walked her mother out to the car for their return to Posadas.
As they drove out the lane, around the high adobe wall that marked the Diaz hacienda’s grounds, Teresa sighed. “This is a nice little village,” she said. “But you know…” She waved a hand, leaving the sentence unfinished.
“I hope we didn’t pull you away from visiting your place too soon,” Estelle said.
“No, no. I saw what I needed to see.” She turned slightly in her seat, arranging first the pleats of her skirt and then the coils of oxygen hose. “You gave information to the captain that was of interest to him. I could see it on his face when he left.”
“He has a case that’s related to one of ours, I think,” Estelle said.
Teresa nodded. “He left in a hurry. You, too.”
Estelle eased the car up out of the arroyo, and turned on the single lane dirt road that lead north to the border crossing at Regál. “We both have five o’clock meetings, Mamá.”
“Oh, okay,” Teresa said. She covered her mouth with two arthritic fingers to stifle the smile.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The leisurely drive back to Posadas included a brief stop at the small mission in Regál. Estelle had been surprised at the request, since her mother had shown no interest in visiting the church in Tres Santos. The original mission in Tres Santos had burned in 1960, and had been replaced with a conservative frame building, its sharply peaked, metal roof somehow incongruous in a village of flat-roofed adobes. Perhaps it was that design that offended Teresa.
In Regál, it took Teresa Reyes more time to get out of the van and walk up the three steps to the mission’s cool interior than she spent inside. Once inside, what brief conversation she had with the various saints was a concise and private one.
La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora was without electricity or plumbing. The thick, immaculately white walls rose uncluttered to the heavy beamed ceiling, and the twelve stations of the cross were represented in small nichos around the perimeter. Other than the soft, distant knocks and pings of the roof as it cooled in late afternoon, the hush of la Iglesia was powerful.
Estelle stood just behind the last pew, watching her mother commune with the spirits. When after three or four minutes Teresa began the process of lifting herself from her knees, Estelle stepped forward to offer assistance.
“This is a good church,” Teresa said. She didn’t clarify whether it was the building that was stout and true, or whether she meant that the saints harbored in its cool silence were especially receptive.
“Yes, it is,” Estelle said, and her mother nodded with approval that her daughter understood.
Back in the car, Teresa sighed with contentment and readjusted the oxygen tube without reminder. As they pulled back onto the asphalt of the state highway, she turned to her daughter to relate the decision after her consultation with the higher powers.
“What you’re doing is a good thing.”
Estelle glanced across at her mother. “Which thing that I’m doing is good, Mamá? ”
“You know, I’m eighty-two years old. In all that time, you’re the only policewoman I’ve ever known.”
“You’ve lived a sheltered life, Mamá. That’s why the word policía is feminine.”
“That’s true. That’s true. But I’ve decided it’s a good thing-what you do.”
“Sometimes I’m not so sure,” Estelle replied.
“The farmer says that, too, when it doesn’t rain as often as he likes.”
“I suppose.”
“The devil knows more because he’s old than because he’s the devil, you know. And I’ve been around for a long, long time now.” She gazed out the side window as the van wound its way up through Regál pass. “I’m glad we didn’t wait until summer to visit the house. Do you remember how hot it would get in July and August?”
“For sure. We spent most of our time in the water holes,” Estelle replied.
“Maybe you should take the boys down. This summer, I mean. Roman and Marta would like to see them-if you have the time.”
“We’ll make time, Mamá. Francis would enjoy that too. By then, he’s going to need a break.”
“Sometimes it seems like it’s a hundred miles away, doesn’t it?”
“Or more.” As if it had been waiting patiently for them to clear the rise of Regál Pass, the cellular phone interrupted. Estelle thumbed it open.
“Guzman.”
“Ma’am, this is Collins,” the deputy said. “Are you back in the country?”
Estelle smiled and glanced at her mother. “We’re just coming down off the pass, Dennis. We’ll be back in town in about twenty minutes.”
“Oh, good. Look, I talked with George Enriquez of National Mutual Insurance. His agency is the one who held Eleanor Pope’s auto insurance. I got the insurance card from the glove box of her car? And her son’s, too, what’s left of it. I figured that maybe she’d have all her insurance with the same place. But Enriquez says that Mrs. Pope didn’t have home owner’s, at least not with NMI.”
“Maybe with another company, then.”
“He doesn’t think so. He said that he’d tried to talk her into home owner’s before, but that she didn’t want it. He said that he tried pretty hard to convince her that she should have it.”
“She didn’t have a mortgage on the place, then.”
“Why is that?”
“A lender would require insurance, Dennis. They’ve lived on that property forever, though. I suppose it was paid off long ago. Did you happen to ask about a life insurance policy?”
“No dice,” Collins said. “She didn’t have that either.”
“At least not with NMI.”
“Right. But Enriquez said he’d talked to her about that, too, on more than one occasion. She never mentioned that she had coverage with someone else. She just told him that she wasn’t interested in more insurance.”
“So, no life insurance, and no home owner’s insurance,” Estelle said, more to herself than Collins. “Unless she had it with another company. That’s interesting.”
“Kind of makes you wonder what old Denton had in mind when he decided to blow things up,” Collins said. “Maybe it was just his way of winning the award for the most complicated suicide of the decade.”
“Stranger things have happened. Did you happen to locate Mrs. Pope’s checkbook, by the way? That’s sometimes a good record of payments.”
“I think Taber was going to go that route. And the Popes also had a safety deposit box at Posadas National Bank. Taber was going to see about getting a cour
t order from Judge Hobart to have a look-see. Maybe there’ll be something of interest hidden away, but I don’t know if she did that yet or not. She might still be out in no-man’s land, for all I know.”
“That very well could be.” She didn’t bother to add for the high-octane Collins’ benefit that persistent, dogged diligence sometimes uncovered things missed in the first, quick pass. “Who else did you talk to?”
“Ah, nobody, yet. I was kinda going on what Enriquez said.”
“That’s okay, but you need to make a quick run down the list of agents in Posadas, Lordsburg, and Deming,” Estelle said. “Find out if Eleanor Pope was a customer. She might have been doing business with somebody else, and just didn’t want to have to explain to Enriquez. And when you find out what bank she used, have a chat with them, too.”
“All right.”
“And then get together with Jackie to see about payments. Not very many people pay things like their monthly bills with cash. She would have been writing checks if she had insurance.”
Collins grunted something Estelle didn’t catch, then added, “I don’t know about that…Tom Pasquale sure does. Cash or money orders.”
Estelle laughed. “But that’s Tom,” she said. “If the whole world operated the way he does, the global financial system would be in chaos. You need to check with the other agencies.”
“Will do. Everybody’s closed now, though, so I’ll get on it first thing in the morning.”
“There’s always…” Estelle stopped herself, the memory of a casual comment flooding back into her mind. “Have you talked to Linda Real about this?”
“Why her?” Collins asked.
“She mentioned that she’d talked to Eleanor Pope while they were sitting in the insurance office. Maybe she said something in that conversation that would be useful to us.”
“I think she went home for a while.”
She had been about to remind Collins that even after hours, there were home phones to contact, but she thought better of it. She knew that several of the deputies-herself included-didn’t bother documenting overtime. Others-Dennis Collins included-turned in every minute over the standard forty hours, perhaps on the not uncommon assumption that they had a life, and the county’s intrusion into that life was going to be a commensurate cost to taxpayers. She made a mental note to talk with Linda herself as soon as she had the chance.
“We’ll see what develops,” she said instead. “Keep me posted.”
“Will do,” Collins replied.
She switched off the phone and glanced at her mother.
“You know, my mother remembered Pancho Villa,” Teresa said. “She met him once, less than a week before he was killed.”
“I would have liked to have been there.”
“Just another bandito, my mother said. Nothing more.”
“History has given him some stature, then,” Estelle said.
Teresa nodded. “These men you chase,” she said. “The ones who left the two boys out on the desert to die. No such stature in them, is there.”
Estelle looked back at her mother with surprise. It was easy to assume that an elderly woman, dozing in a rocking chair, wouldn’t hear the conversations around her, or if she did, might not understand them or ruminate on them. “What do you think about it all, Mamá? Why would they do such a thing?”
“Because they have nothing else,” Teresa said. “Tomorrow holds nothing for them. It is only what they can gain today that counts. Nothing else. And they are young, and that makes them dangerous. No wisdom.” She grimaced and shook her head. “They are young devils, Estelita. They don’t know anything about tomorrow. And that makes them dangerous.” She took a deep breath through her nose, drawing in the oxygen. “As long as they don’t know that you’re coming up behind them, you’ll be okay,” she said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The new telephone line ran through the tree limbs along the river, then looped over one of the Villa stump’s broken stubs before stretching across the open space to the house. The Diaz family waited outside in a neat queue along with a dozen strangers, all eager to go in the house and try Teresa Reyes’ new telephone. Despite the hot sun, everyone waited patiently for the district telephone people to find the correct adapter to mate Mexican wiring to the telephone Teresa had brought with her from Posadas.
“Who was it?”
Estelle heard her husband’s quiet voice, and Tres Santos sunshine gave way to the confusion of darkness. She didn’t reply for a moment, letting the faint trickle of illumination from the hallway nightlight outline first the doorway and then, as her eyes adjusted and consciousness took over from sleep, the other familiar objects in the room.
“Who was what?” she said, and only as she started to turn toward Francis did she notice that the small telephone was lying beside her pillow.
“On the phone,” Francis prompted.
Estelle levered herself up onto her elbows and stretched across to turn on the bedside light. “The phone rang, and you answered it,” Francis said. He lay on his back, arm thrown across his eyes.
Estelle turned and looked at him, brows furrowed, phone in hand. “And what did I say?”
“‘Uh-huh. Okay. Uh-uh. Right.’” He lifted his arm and squinted at her. “Those were your exact words. A deep, meaningful conversation if there ever was one. What time is it, anyway?” He lifted his head, looked at the clock, and expelled a loud sigh as the digits clicked over to 4:12 AM.
“Tell me that didn’t really happen.”
“All right. It didn’t happen.” He reached and gently disengaged the phone from her hand. “If we’re going to start having conversations in our sleep, we need one of those phones with caller ID and all that fancy stuff.”
She shifted her weight to one elbow and reached for the phone again. “Let me call the SO. It was probably them.”
“Or-” Francis was interrupted as the telephone once more came to life, its ring startlingly loud. “Whoever it was didn’t believe you,” he added.
“Guzman,” Estelle said into the phone.
“Uh-huh, okay, uh-huh, right,” Francis mimicked softly, and Estelle kneed him.
“This is Sutherland, ma’am,” the voice on the telephone said. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but did you copy that message a minute ago?”
“No, I didn’t,” Estelle replied. She sat up on the side of the bed. “Thanks for calling back.”
“No problem,” Brent Sutherland said. “I didn’t think you sounded awake.”
“What’s up?”
“We received a report of an unidentified male subject with unspecified injuries down on State 61, about three miles east of Maria. A trucker called in after stopping to render assistance. Deputy Taber is headed down that way and she wanted me to give you a call.”
“Do you have an ambulance en route?”
“One is on standby. They haven’t rolled yet. I was waiting until we had something a little more concrete to go on.”
“No, no, don’t do that. Go ahead and have them respond. Truckers aren’t wrong very often. This isn’t an MVA?”
“Apparently not. Unless it’s a pedestrian involved with a hit-and-run.”
“The trucker is still on the scene?”
“He said that he’d stand by until someone got there.”
“The victim is alive?”
“The trucker thinks so, but he’s kinda shook. He didn’t sound like he was too sure about anything…kind of panicky.”
“Where’s Jackie now?”
Sutherland hesitated, and Estelle could picture him turning to look at the patrol log. “Ah, she was just taking a swing through Regál when I got ahold of her.”
“How long ago did the trucker call in?”
“It’s been about three minutes now.”
“Okay. I’m en route. Are you still in contact with the trucker?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve got him on line three.”
“Good. Tell him we’re on the way. And you might
give State Police dispatch a buzz and see if they have a man closer. Or the Border Patrol. Either one.”
“I’ve done that. The closest trooper is in Lordsburg at the moment. The Border Patrol has a unit headed out east from Deming, but that’s going to take a while.”
“Okay, I’m on my way. And be sure that ambulance is rolling.”
Estelle swung up and out of bed, tossing the phone to Francis.
“Alive or dead?” he asked.
“Don’t know. But it’s down by Maria, and we haven’t been having much luck down that way recently.”
Francis grimaced. “How many?”
“One.”
“So far,” he added, but he was already talking to Estelle’s back.
In less than five minutes, Estelle was out of the house and swinging the unmarked patrol car eastbound on Bustos Avenue. She turned the radio up and dropped the mike in her lap as she powered through the intersection with Grande and headed south. Jackie Taber was driving one of the older Broncos, and even flailing the old thing for all it was worth, she would still be the better part of ten miles out on State 56. Because of the bulwark of the San Cristóbal mountains, the deputy would essentially have to drive all the way back to Posadas to reach the intersection with State 61 toward Maria.
Estelle keyed the mike. “PCS, this is three ten.”
“Go ahead, three ten.”
“What’s the trucker’s twenty?”
“He says that he can see mile marker one-oh-six just to the east of where he’s parked. And the ambulance is en route.”
“Ten-four. I see it.” Ahead, the winking lights of the ambulance grew out of the darkness, and she snapped on her own grill lights as she overtook the slower unit. Ahead lay sixteen miles of empty road. As she accelerated, Estelle turned on the spotlight, letting the pencil beam lance out along the side of the road, giving her a small edge over the desert creatures that might be ambling out onto the tarmac.
Finally, she could see the sodium vapor light in the distance that hung in front of Wally Madrid’s gas station, a single beacon in the otherwise blank, black canvas. As she slowed for the village of Maria, she heard Jackie Taber announce that the deputy was turning southbound on 61, sixteen miles behind her.
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