She scrambled down into the arroyo, staying near the north side of the cut, the width of the dry wash between her and the body. She saw the wiggly tracks that might have been left by Butch Romero’s motorcycle. It looked as if he had blasted into the corner, cutting too close to the bank and the junked cars in his path.
“Linda?” Estelle called, and the photographer looked up. “Come down the same way we did. And I need these tracks. Especially where they come close to the front of the car.”
“You got it.”
“The kid on the motorbike says that he hit the victim’s arm when he slid by on his bike. I’m not sure that he did, but we’ll see.”
“I walked straight along the bank,” Deputy Abeyta offered, pointing at the other side of the arroyo. “Right along the very edge under all those tree roots. I’m thinking that it’s not likely anyone else would stay so close to the bank.”
“Good man.” Estelle crossed the arroyo toward the corpse slightly upstream of the site, stepping carefully like a cat sneaking up on an unsuspecting finch. She saw, when she stepped gingerly over Butch Romero’s fresh bike tracks, that the body wasn’t actually under the car. Rather, it had slid down along the side of the inverted Oldsmobile, then tumbled into a narrow cave formed by the bashed-in roof of a late ’40s vintage sedan.
“I stepped right across there,” Abeyta said, and Estelle could see the loose indentations of his boots in the sandy gravel. “I bent down to see what I could, checked to make sure that she was dead, and then backed out. Nobody’s been here in between.”
Estelle stood quietly, surveying the tangle. She counted the remains of at least a dozen vehicles, including several from the 1940s, the peak of the rounded fender era. The Oldsmobile appeared to be the most recent addition, perhaps toppled into the arroyo within the decade.
With one hand for balance on the projecting frame member of the Olds, Estelle knelt down. She reached out and touched the woman’s wrist. The flesh was cool and soft, and Estelle’s pulse accelerated. She slid her index finger carefully under the victim’s and lifted gently. The hand was completely limp, with no rigor.
“Tony?”
“Right behind you,” Abeyta said.
“Make sure that Perrone is en route,” she said. “If he can’t break away, then we’re going to need someone else ASAP. Dr. Francis should be flying in, and maybe we can speed things up. Okay?”
“Got it.”
She let her body sink down, releasing her grasp on the Oldsmobile and repositioning her support hand on the yawning hole where the headlamp had once been.
The marks in the sand were clear. Unless the body had been moved since Butch Romero’s motorcycle roared around the corner, the bike’s tires hadn’t actually touched the woman’s hand or arm. Close enough, but no contact. The skin was unblemished. But at one point, the fingers had flexed, drawing short, vague lines in the sand-nothing desperate or repeated, but instead a single spasm, a single gentle raking as the last breath of life escaped.
“Linda, this is going to be tricky,” Estelle said. She didn’t look up, but sensed the photographer’s presence nearby. “These marks-” she used a pencil to point toward the ends of the victim’s fingers “-not much to see, but I think she was still alive when she was dumped here.”
“I can do that,” Linda said.
Estelle remained on her haunches for a long time, looking at the slender, white hand, the silky blond hair on the forearm, the delicate bend of the elbow. By ducking her head, she could see the cuff of the woman’s short-sleeved blouse. A single dot of blood marked the yellow fabric near the right shoulder.
Again with a hand on the Oldsmobile for support, she skirted the projecting front fender. The car rested nose-down, its massive body at a 45-degree angle to the arroyo, crushed on top of a portion of an old sedan underneath. It looked as if a hard wrench with a crowbar could topple the Oldsmobile’s carcass. Gingerly, she rocked the Olds to make sure that it was secure, then bent down, letting her back slide down the flat of the other, older sedan’s crumpled door. She took her time, mindful of sharp metal.
“No way,” she muttered.
“You okay?” Linda’s shadow appeared off to her right.
“I’m okay,” Estelle said. “But this whole thing is a long, long way from okay. There’s no way.”
“No way what?”
“I’m trying to imagine how she got here,” Estelle said. “This doesn’t make sense.” She twisted and looked back up the side of the arroyo, through the tangle of junk. Drag a body to the edge and pitch it over, and it would tumble and flop, maybe catch on the Oldsmobile’s chassis, maybe thud into the pocket of the older sedan’s roof.
“Oh, man,” Linda said, a perfectly natural reaction. Estelle didn’t look at her, but sensed her presence as she drew closer.
“Oh, man is right,” Estelle said. “I need to work my way in there a little.”
She glanced at Linda and saw that the photographer’s round, olive-toned face was uncharacteristically pale. “You okay?”
“Maybe,” Linda said, and busied herself changing lenses on her bulky camera.
Estelle scrunched down as far as she could. The small cavern formed by the two crumpled cars was large enough for only one body. She saw that the victim was wearing a pair of designer blue jeans and a yellow blouse, with short white socks and expensive running shoes. From this new angle, Estelle could see that blood soaked the blouse over the woman’s left shoulder, and her sandy blond hair was a matted mess of blood and dirt. Without moving the corpse, or without moving the car, there was no way to see the victim’s face. If she had moved at all, the woman had managed to crawl forward somehow, into the cavity formed by the crushed firewall of the inverted Olds and the battered hindquarters of the old sedan. Then, with nowhere else to go, she had extended her right arm through the small hollow formed by the crumpled fender and the arroyo bottom-whether by unconscious spasm or the intent of a fading consciousness, it was impossible to tell.
Linda made a little noise, a faint hissed intake of breath, as if she’d stepped on a goathead, and Estelle crunched down so that she could turn to look at her.
“Not good,” the undersheriff said.
“Estelle,” Linda whispered, and her breath caught again.
“What?”
“That’s Janet.”
“What do you mean?”
“I recognize the blouse and jeans,” Linda said. “That’s what Janet was wearing this afternoon when she stopped by the office.” When Estelle didn’t respond, Linda added, “Mike’s Janet.”
Chapter Twelve
Estelle couldn’t move. Now that a name had been supplied, she recognized Janet Tripp, and for a long moment, the undersheriff simply froze, poleaxed by the turn of events. She didn’t know Tripp well-only that she seemed like a sober, almost dour person with a sudden, rare sweet smile who’d stolen Deputy Mike Sisneros’s heart a few months ago.
Janet Tripp hadn’t hung around the Public Safety Building. She hadn’t been a Here’s a box of cookies and platter of fudge for the deputies person. She hadn’t written supportive letters to the editor of the Posadas Register. She hadn’t picked up Mike when his shift ended.
Estelle had seen Janet only rarely, and now that she thought about it, could count on one hand the times she had actually spoken to the young woman. She knew that Mike and Janet had planned to be married sometime later in the spring, but the couple had kept their plans to themselves, trying their best to avoid a department gala. Only because of relaying a phone call a month ago did she know that Janet was employed at A amp; H Welding and Supply in Posadas.
Other than that, Estelle knew nothing of the victim, and certainly not how Janet Tripp had come to lie dead under an old car on Christmas afternoon. But the implications that included Deputy Mike Sisneros were immediate and sickening.
For a time before Dr. Alan Perrone arrived, Estelle sat on her haunches, back against the cool metal of the old sedan, looking at the woman. She
was satisfied that she’d seen everything there was to see under the Oldsmobile, down its flanks, and in scuff marks across the top of the old sedan. As if sensing that the undersheriff wanted moments to herself, Linda Real had finished several rolls of film and several yards of videotape, then retreated back up to the parking lot, where Tony Abeyta put her to work. He had isolated seven different tire prints that were worth both photos and plaster casts. Anything that might have been shoe or boot prints were no more than worthless bruises in the dirt, without definition or distinctive shape.
Perrone arrived at 5:43 that afternoon, the light already failing enough to make work difficult. Estelle didn’t hear his car, and turned with a start when his shoes crunched the gravel of the arroyo to her left.
“Hey,” the physician said. “This is about the sorriest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen.” He frowned at Estelle’s expression. “You all right?”
Estelle pushed herself to her feet. “How’s the chief?” she asked.
“Unchanged,” he said. He bent over to examine what he could see of the hand and forearm. “Actually, I’m more inclined to say ‘failing.’ I get the impression that his system is just kind of caving in on itself, a little bit at a time. The family’s with him, and that’s good.” He nodded at the victim. “How the hell do folks do it?” he said, more to himself than actually expecting an answer. “Do we know who this is?”
“We think it’s Janet Tripp,” Estelle said. She looked up to see both Captain Eddie Mitchell and Deputy Jackie Taber in quiet, intense conversation with Tony Abeyta. Mitchell caught Estelle’s glance and raised a hand in salute, then broke away from the others and strode toward the cow trail down the bank.
“Janet Tripp,” Perrone mused. “Do I know Janet Tripp? I think I do.”
“Mike Sisneros’s fiancée,” Estelle said.
Perrone grimaced and his shoulders slumped. “Oh, you’re kidding. That’s ugly.” He waited a moment, but when Estelle didn’t say anything, added, “Let’s have a look.”
Short and wiry, Perrone maneuvered himself and his medical bag under the old car. “Okay,” Estelle heard him say, and knew he was talking into a small tape recorder. “We’ve got a white female, maybe thirty-five years old.” He droned on as he made the awkward examination, then said, “Estelle?”
“Sir?”
“What time was the body discovered?”
She had already done the mental calculations, estimating the time it had taken Butch Romero to roar first up and then back down the arroyo. “About 4:05,” she said. “That’s when I talked to dispatch after the neighborhood kid reported the body to me.”
“About,” Perrone mumbled. “Who found her? A kid, you say?”
“One of the neighborhood youngsters. Butch Romero? He was riding his bike up the arroyo.”
“Ah, he of the broken arm,” Estelle heard Perrone say to himself. The doctor had his own way of remembering patients. “Was he by himself?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“This young lady hasn’t been here very long, you know,” Perrone said.
“That was my impression,” Estelle said. She rested her hand on the old sedan, keeping out of the way.
“I’m guessing, but I’d say one shot to the back of the head. Right through the mastoid behind the ear. And small caliber. I don’t think we have an exit wound, but I’m going to have to wait for that to be sure. It’s kind of awkward trying to do an examination here.”
He shifted position with a middle-aged grunt. “Beyond that, I don’t know. I don’t think there’s much more that I can tell you at the moment. I don’t see any other injuries other than some scuffing that the fall down here might account for.”
“Could she have survived for any length of time after being shot?”
A long silence followed, and then Perrone backed out from underneath the Oldsmobile. “Estelle, I can’t answer that,” the physician said. He nodded at Eddie Mitchell, who stood quietly to one side, looking down at Janet Tripp’s hand. “All I can tell you is that a shot like that usually drops the victim like a sack of bricks. Remember RFK?” He tapped his own skull behind his left ear, touching the mastoid tuberosity. “No, you don’t. But that’s where he was hit. Down he went, boom. Didn’t move a step or two past the point where he was shot. At least that’s what all the famous pictures show. But he lived for several hours…what, almost a day, or something like that?”
He carefully adjusted a strand of blond hair that had fallen across his forehead. “You can imagine any wound you want, and there will be case studies where the victim lived for a while…seconds, minutes, hours, or long enough to heal and have a happy life. It all depends on how fast the blood pressure drops to zero, and how long it stays there without intervention.” He shrugged.
“It looks as if she raked the sand with her fingers, Alan.”
“She might have. Maybe just some reflex. Or maybe all the way to the other end of the spectrum. Conscious and looking for a way out. You’re going to bag those hands carefully, I’m sure. But a reflex movement is certainly not beyond what we might expect.” He regarded his rubber gloves. Blood smeared the one on his right hand. “Much of the blood in her hair is comparatively fresh, Estelle. However this happened, it hasn’t been long.”
The undersheriff calculated backward. “Janet Tripp was seen alive early this afternoon,” she said. “In our office.”
“Well, then,” Perrone said. “There you go.” He nodded at the Oldsmobile. “I’m clear, if you want the EMTs to remove the body now. Francis is headed home, by the way. Did he get ahold of you?”
“Yes. The Med-Evac is going to drop him off.”
“I chatted with him a few minutes ago-maybe half an hour before this call. He says that Bobby is feeling okay. Groggy, but okay. They’ve got him sedated and drugged and God knows what else. His blood will be as thin as distilled water right about now.” He turned and saw Linda, squatting on her haunches out in the center of the arroyo, camera in hand, waiting. “Puzzles,” he said cryptically. “I’m on my way, unless there’s anything else.”
“Thanks, Alan.” She turned to Mitchell, who hadn’t moved a centimeter since climbing down in the arroyo. He regarded her, his expression expectant.
“Merry Christmas,” he said.
“Sure enough.”
“Where’s Sisneros? Has someone talked with him yet?”
“No.” Estelle heard the shift, perhaps unconscious, in Mitchell’s tone. The informal “Mike” was replaced with the flat, professional reference to “Sisneros.” “Linda says that he went over to his folks’ place for dinner.”
“In Lordsburg.”
“Yes.”
“Without his fiancée.” Mitchell’s quiet, soft voice made it sound like a simple statement of fact, despite the obvious implications.
“Apparently.”
“How long?” He nodded at the victim.
“Linda saw her at the office in the early afternoon.”
“Found at?”
“Shortly after four. By a kid riding a motorcycle.”
Mitchell mulled that as he watched the three EMTs approach. He moved out of the way, giving them a parking place for the gurney. Matty Finnegan, who approached the front of the Oldsmobile warily as if it might be a den for rattlesnakes, hesitated and looked at Estelle.
“Okay to go?” she asked.
Estelle nodded. “There’s a lot of sharp metal there. Be careful.”
The three EMTs were careful, easing Janet Tripp’s corpse out of its tiny resting place. “Good thing she ain’t frozen up,” EMT Eric Sanchez remarked at one point, and the comment earned him an acidic glare from Matty.
“Where do you want to start?” Mitchell asked as the gurney began the final trip up and out of the arroyo.
“It’s just two hours,” Estelle said. “That’s in our favor. From the time Janet left the Sheriff’s Department until she ended up here, maybe two hours. I was going
to talk to Linda and get a closer estimate from her. But regardless, that’s not much of a time window.”
Mitchell looked at his watch. “And now it’s a four-hour head start for somebody,” he said.
“Or less.”
“Or less. Did you talk to Bill yet?”
Estelle shook her head. “That’s ahead. We need to know who was at the office, what time they left…anything that will help us narrow this down. How well did you know Janet?”
Mitchell shook his head. “Didn’t. She and Mike weren’t the most public couple in the world.” He heaved a deep breath. “You want me to go get him?”
“Either you or me. I don’t want him to find out about this from a phone call.”
“I’ll run over. You have enough on your plate.”
“Thanks.”
“This could be just some creep passing by, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, it could. I think we’re going to have some tire prints. We know that she was shot somewhere else and dumped here.”
“Maybe right up there,” Mitchell said, nodding at the rim of the arroyo.
“Maybe. No blood, but that doesn’t mean anything.” She stepped closer to the tangle of junk. “The scuff marks on the top of this car hint that the body slid down here, and then into that opening.”
“Odd to be stretched out the way she was if that’s what happened,” Mitchell said.
“I think she moved some, Eddie. I think she was still alive. I can’t picture the killer climbing down here and stuffing her farther in. Maybe that’s what he did, but I can’t picture it. I see him pushing her down into the junk, and when she slides into the gap between the cars, he’s going to figure that’s enough.”
“Maybe.”
“All he needs is some time to slip away.”
“Then he doesn’t care much if the body is found,” Mitchell said.
“That’s a little something that bothers me, Eddie. The body was bound to be found…maybe not in hours like it was, but certainly the odds were good, over time.”
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