“If Felix had gotten into some kind of trouble and was able to call you-he had your number, after all, and only your number-what would you have been able to do?” Estelle held up a hand. “Actually, I should say, what were you prepared to do for him?”
When Betty didn’t answer, Estelle added, “If Ricardo Ynostroza had known that his partner, Felix, had your phone number, if he’d known you lived here, would he have stopped here instead of walking on to Joe’s?”
Betty leaned against the counter, looking genuinely distressed. “Estelle, how can I tell you these things?”
The undersheriff regarded her for a time, then said, “Because you know the answers?” She waited, and the silence grew heavy between them. “There are too many unanswered questions, Betty. I don’t want to involve Immigration, and I don’t think that you do, either.”
“Well, I won’t be bullied,” Betty said.
“No one is bullying you,” Estelle said.
“You obviously don’t know the feds, then,” she said. “What we live with every single day around here.”
“I’ve heard the complaints, believe me. I’m not a fed, and I can tell you that as of now, I don’t plan to call them in on any of this. So let me ask you this flat out…do you trust me, then?”
“Yes, I do,” Betty responded without hesitation. “I’ve known you since you were a little tyke,” and she held a hand at waist level. “I watched you go through school. Now, I never had you in class, but Serafina did, and she used to sing your praises-oh, how much she thought of you. We all still do. You and that husband of yours…” Her face softened as she gazed at Estelle. “So yes…I trust you. Sometimes,” and she grinned broadly and waggled a teacherly finger, “you aren’t the most forthcoming person I know, but I suppose the job does that to you. A few minutes ago, I asked you who that was that you had riding with you, but you didn’t answer me. I thought that was odd.”
Estelle cocked her head in puzzlement. “You didn’t ask. You made a statement that I had company riding with me. I agreed that I did.”
The woman smiled and shook her head in wonder. “You are a wonder. Bill Gastner had a favorite expression for you, but I can’t recall it at the moment.”
“No doubt he called me a lot of things,” Estelle laughed.
“Always complimentary, always,” Betty said. “So, who’s your passenger?”
“She’s a writer for a national magazine.”
“Ah. Would I know the one?”
“A Woman’s World.”
Betty’s eyes grew large. “You’re joking. She’s doing an article on you?”
“On the department.”
“Well, what do you know. That deserves a tip of the hat. Why didn’t you bring her in with you?”
“Because I needed to talk to you privately, Betty. And that’s where we left off. I asked if you trusted me because I think you’re reluctant to tell me what you know.”
“And what’s that? What am I supposed to know?”
“My question is simple enough, Betty. I need to know not if-because I’m sure you do-but how you happen to know Ricardo Ynostroza. And how you happen to know Felix Otero.”
“Have you talked with Father Bert?”
“Yes.”
Betty waited a moment for the undersheriff to elaborate and, when no elaboration was forthcoming, said, “Let me ask him to call you.” She nodded as if that would solve the matter. “He should talk to you.”
“Why him and not yourself?”
“Just…just because. I think he should. Can we leave it at that for now?”
Estelle looked at the older woman in silence for a long moment. “All right. For now. You have my number, Betty. Any time, day or night. So does Father Anselmo.”
“How about taking some banana bread with you?” Betty said brightly, the conversation finished, at least in her mind. “It’s marvelous. Your writer person might like some. What’s her name?”
“Madelyn Bolles. And I’m sure she’d love some.”
That was all the opening Betty Contreras needed to turn her attention from things unpleasant, and in moments Estelle was settling back in the car with a loaf of fragrant banana bread wrapped in foil. “Madelyn, this is Betty Contreras,” the undersheriff said as Betty leaned on the county car’s passenger windowsill.
“So nice to meet you,” Madelyn said, and offered her hand. “I’m Madelyn Bolles.”
Betty eyed the laptop, impressed. “I read your magazine, every single issue. I think it’s just wonderful,” Betty gushed, then wagged a finger. “You do a good job with that article, now. We all know this young lady, and we’ll all be reading between the lines.”
Madelyn smiled broadly. “That’s the kind of readers we like, Mrs. Contreras. I’ll do my best. And your bread smells scrumptious.”
“Come back for more.”
“I may just do that.”
As Estelle backed the car out of the driveway, Madelyn Bolles once more folded up her portable office. She patted the top of the bread loaf.
“Bribery, eh?”
“Absolutely,” Estelle replied. “And I hope you didn’t mind being introduced. I allowed myself to be trapped.”
“That’s hard to believe. Was it a productive chat?”
Estelle sighed. “Maybe. Maybe it was.”
Chapter Twenty-five
“No,” Sheriff Torrez said, with a curt shake of the head. Madelyn Bolles held up both hands in surrender. She had followed Estelle down the hallway behind Dispatch, toward Sheriff Robert Torrez’s office, but the sheriff would have none of it. He let the one word suffice, offering no explanation.
“I’ll be out in Dispatch,” Madelyn said.
“You can wait in my office,” Estelle said. “I shouldn’t be long.”
The reporter shook her head. “I don’t want to intrude. I’ll be outside.”
In the sheriff’s minimal office, Ricardo Ynostroza sat on one of the metal folding chairs, his back against the filing cabinet. His hands were still handcuffed behind his back, and he leaned forward uncomfortably. He looked from Estelle to Bob Torrez and then to Deputy Jackie Taber, who had eschewed the hard folding chairs and instead stood with her back against the windowsill, two steps from the young man. As Estelle closed the door, the deputy stepped forward and unlocked the handcuffs, and the young man rubbed his wrists gratefully.
“So,” Estelle said, and opened her notebook. “Señor Ynostroza. We’re a little confused by your behavior today.”
He sat motionless and silent. Deputy Taber had reported that Ynostroza hadn’t said a word on the ride from Regál to Posadas. “The authorities in Buenaventura tell us that you had a little trouble last week,” Estelle said. He didn’t answer but shifted a bit in his chair. “They say that they’d like to talk to you about the theft of a 1987 Chevrolet Caprice,” she said. Jackie Taber’s notes said that the car had been targeted by the car thief less than a week after its purchase.
“I gave it back,” Ynostroza said.
“Well, that’s okay, then,” Torrez said.
“Not entirely in one piece, however,” Estelle added, and Ynostroza hunched his shoulders with contrition. “So, talk to us.” She handed him the photograph of his woodcutter companion, and he promptly dropped it as he bent sharply forward, face buried in his hands. “Tell us what happened that day,” she said. “This past Thursday.”
“That is how I left him,” the young man whimpered. “I could do nothing.”
“Tell us how it happened.”
“We were cutting the wood,” he said. “Up the tree, so…,” and he straightened up enough to swing his hands back and forth, mimicking the motions of nicking the limbs off the trunk. “It…,” and English failed him. He slipped into Spanish, the words a torrent. Estelle let him wind down.
“The saw kicked back,” she said for the benefit of the others. “And then he lost his balance when it was still running. He couldn’t get away from the chain.” She knew that Jackie Taber didn’t speak
Spanish and Bob Torrez’s facility had grown rusty over the years. “Where were you when it kicked back?” she asked.
“I went…I had went…to the truck for the gasoline. He said he was nearly ready. Then I hear his cry. He…he is tambaleándose?”
“He staggered?”
“Yes…he hold himself, but the blood…madre de Dios.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran to him and tried…I ran to him and he is this stagger, and I help him away. Nothing he does can hold the blood, agente,” he said, looking beseechingly at Estelle. “I want to go to the truck, but he is crying, presa del pánico. It is like he is trying to escape? He is trying to escape from this thing. He is all white, and fights like the madman. Finally I am able to make him sit down, and I see what the saw has done.”
He bent forward once more, both hands clamped on his mouth.
“Jackie, get a towel. I don’t want him pukin’ on my floor,” Torrez said.
Estelle retrieved the photo of the dead woodcutter as the deputy stepped around her. “And that’s where he died, leaning against the tree?”
“Yes.” The voice from behind the hands was small and hopeless.
“Why did you run away, Ricardo?” she asked.
“How can I stay? We have no papers. If I stay, when they come, they will ask. And I know that I can do nothing.”
“You had no phone, I suppose? No way to call for help.”
“No, agente.”
“Why didn’t you take the truck for help?” Torrez asked.
“I have no papers, and it is not my truck,” the young man said again. “I knew there could be trouble.”
“We don’t mean steal the truck, Ricardo. But you could have driven for help.”
“But I see Felix is unconscious in just a minute or two. I see…there is nothing that I can do that will help him. Even if the help come that very moment, there would be no time. The hospital is so very far away.…I see that it is hopeless. And I cannot move him to the truck by myself. He cannot walk.”
Deputy Taber returned and handed Ynostroza a white towel. He wiped his eyes and then clutched the wadded towel in his lap. “If I take the truck, they will look for me. If I just go…” And he held out a thumb. “Then they won’t look.”
“So you walked out to the highway and caught a ride?”
“Yes. That is what I did.”
“You didn’t tell anyone about Felix? That he was lying out there all by himself, bleeding to death?”
Ynostroza flinched as if Estelle had slapped him. “Señor Zamora had says that he was going to stop by, maybe five o’clock?”
“What time did the accident happen?”
“Maybe thirty minutes after four? I am not certain. It was late in the afternoon. We were both tired. Señor Zamora had taken out two full loads with the big truck that day, one just then. We were to fill the pickup, and that would be the end. We had work since Monday afternoon.”
“And this was Thursday afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you go, Ricardo? When you left Felix, where did you go?”
“No one came right away. Then I think I hear the sirens, and I went down to the river. I walk along it until dark.”
“Which river is this?” Torrez asked.
“I don’t know what it is called.”
The sheriff reached to the small metal bookcase to the right of his desk, and pulled out a battered paperbound state atlas. In a moment, he spun the open book around on his desk and beckoned Ynostroza to look. “This is Reserve,” he said, tapping the map. “You were somewhere in here?”
Ynostroza frowned, bending awkwardly over the desk. “Yes. Now I see what I did.” He pointed to a spot on the map.
“So you walked down along the Tularosa,” Torrez said. “That ain’t easy.”
“It was very hard,” Ynostroza said fervently, as if his efforts to follow the winding little creek were somehow heroic.
“If you’d stayed along the river, you’d still be up there,” the sheriff said. “Where’d you go?”
“I knew where the road was, agente, far to the west. So just before dark, I walk to the highway, and then through the town. A woman offered me a ride south, but she was going to Mogollon. I did not want to go there.”
“I would guess not,” Torrez said. Mogollon nestled high in the Gila, on the way to nowhere.
“She drove me to another town. I don’t remember the name.”
“Glenwood?”
“That may be it. I slept that night in an abandoned house. I knew that no one would find me there.”
“Let’s cut this travelogue short,” Torrez said. “Why did you come back to Regál?”
“I knew that I could go home to Buenaventura from here,” he said, and Torrez scoffed.
“Horseshit. You weren’t headed to Buenaventura, bud.”
“But I was.…”
“Then all you had to do was ride across the border with one of the burros. He gave you a ride that far. Why did you change your mind?”
Ynostroza fell silent and Estelle watched him closely. Calculation was replacing the earlier trepidation, remorse, and guilt, but he wasn’t particularly good at it.
“You have nowhere to go,” she said, and Ynostroza’s eyes flicked her way. “Immigration will turn you over to the policia in Buenaventura,” she said. “You are finished here.”
“If…” And he stopped, biting his lip.
“Would padre Anselmo help you, do you think? Is that what you are hoping?”
“I did not go there,” he said quickly. “Maybe you would call him.…”
“The burro dropped you off at the parking lot of the iglesia. You could see that the good father’s car was not there. You know the padre?”
“Everyone knows the padre,” he said.
“Is that a fact?” Torrez said. “Why would that be?”
“It is known that he gives mass in Tres Santos. Ever since the old padre died there.”
“Why did Father Anselmo write down the telephone number of the American woman for Felix? The lady in Regál? We found the paper in his pocket.”
“I don’t-”
“Yeah, you do,” Torrez interrupted.
Ynostroza slumped in resignation. “If we needed someone,” he admitted. “That is all. We could use the name as the referencia.”
“A reference,” Estelle provided.
“Yes.”
“Why did you not go to that house, then?” she asked, taking care to avoid mentioning Betty Contreras by name. If Ricardo Ynostroza hadn’t known Betty before, he didn’t need to know her now. “If you have their telephone number, why not go there?”
“That is where I was going when you found me,” he replied.
“Not true,” she snapped. “Even if you didn’t know where your referencia lived, why wander through half the town? You could have stopped at any house, and asked, no?”
“Yes.”
“Emilio would help you, no?” She saw no puzzlement at the name, and made a further guess. “And you know that he is at the church most of the time.”
“Yes.”
Estelle felt a surge of relief at this first small opening. “Why did you not go there? Why did you not seek him out?” She waited while the silence grew, then took a leap into the dark. “Isn’t that who Father Anselmo told you to turn to if you needed help? Isn’t that why he wrote down Emilio’s telephone number for you?”
“Yes, that is true,” Ynostroza admitted, and he took a deep breath, holding it in as if he’d climbed a long, rugged slope.
“Why then were you going to the other house?” she asked. “We must know this, señor.”
“You are going to send me back?”
“Yes. Of course.”
That brought another look of defeat, an expression at which Ricardo Ynostroza was most adept, Estelle reflected. “There may be some discussion on how we choose to return you to Mexico,” she said. “If you are cooperative.”
&nbs
p; Ynostroza chewed on that for a moment, searching through her comment for a promise.
“How many of you were there?”
“What do you mean, agente?”
“Exactly that, señor.”
“It was Felix and myself, agente.”
“How did you learn about the work up north, by Reserve? How did you learn of the woodcutting with Señor Zamora?”
“Father-” And he bit it off. “There is work everywhere. This Señor Zamora, nos ha tenido trabajando todo el día.”
“I’m sure he did,” Estelle said. “How much did he agree to pay you?”
“He was to give forty dollars for the day,” Ynostroza said, and shrugged with resignation. “Is not so much, but…”
“The land of milk and honey,” Jackie Taber said, breaking her silence for the first time. “Is that forty for each, or twenty apiece?”
Ynostroza looked as if he’d been slapped. “Twenty, each,” he said.
“How did you learn of this job? Did Father Anselmo hook you up?” the sheriff asked.
“I don’t-”
“Did he know the Zamoras somehow?” Estelle asked.
“Yes, I think so.”
“When you first came to this country to speak with the father, when was that?”
“No. We talk with him in Tres Santos.”
“You, Felix, and who else?”
Ynostroza hesitated, obviously well aware of where he was about to step. “Six,” he said.
“¿No más?”
“No. Only six.”
Only, Estelle thought. “All from Buenaventura? Or that area?”
“This time, yes.”
“This time? You know of other times?”
“Of course.”
Estelle looked at Bob Torrez, and the sheriff’s face would have done justice to Rushmore, so devoid was it of expression. No wonder the good father was spooked, Estelle thought.
“Where are the others now?”
“I do not know that. I heard Albuquerque,” and the name rolled off his tongue with a rhythmic lilt.
“How did you get to Reserve?” she asked. “The truck you were using for wood hauling belonged to the Zamoras, did it not? You and Felix certainly didn’t walk from Regál to Reserve.”
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