“What time did everyone turn in?”
Herb shrugged. “Probably close to midnight.”
“And you didn’t hear anything after that?”
“No, not that I paid attention to. It’s a county road, after all. Fair amount of traffic, especially with the bar down at the main road there.”
I turned and grinned. Estelle and Francis were walking back on either side of their son, each holding one of his hands. He was refusing to walk, but he bounced off the ground every second step or so. I could hear his little high-pitched voice jabbering away in Spanish. My blood pressure drifted down a couple notches when I saw that he wasn’t wearing pajamas.
“¡Padrino!” the child bellowed when he was a dozen yards away. If I had been Estelle or Francis, I’m not sure I’d have been able to let him go. But they did, and he charged forward. I bent down to scoop him up. His jeans and cotton jacket were grimy and damp, and his hair smelled like one of the little sheepdogs over at Herb’s house.
“These aren’t mine,” he said, getting right to the important stuff first. One arm was around my neck, and he reached down with the other to touch the toe of one of his fancy blue-and-white sneakers.
His face was dirty and tear-streaked. “Whose are they, kid?” I asked, taking his tiny hand in mind.
“They’re Cody’s,” he said soberly.
I looked at Estelle. I’d never seen tears in her eyes before. “Were you with Cody?” I asked. The child twisted in my arms and looked over my shoulder toward Herb Torrance and the big pickup. I could feel his grip around my neck tighten. “That’s okay,” I said. “He’s a friend.” The grip didn’t loosen.
“He’s in the bus,” the child said.
“Who else was in the bus, hijo?” Estelle said. He dug a knee into my belly as he twisted and reached out with both arms to his mother. I handed him to her and he flung both arms around her neck.
He didn’t answer immediately, and Estelle brushed the hair out of his eyes. “Were Cody’s mommy and daddy in the bus?”
The child nodded. “A man chased me up there,” Francis said. “But he fell and hurt his leg.” I smiled at the satisfaction in the child’s voice. “Then they went away.” He pointed at Rory Torrance’s black Jeep. “That truck right there.”
“You’re safe now,” I said. “This is Mr. Torrance and his son Rory. They’re friends of ours. This is their ranch.” Francis nodded and I saw his eyes shift to Rory, skeptical. “Why didn’t you stay on the bus?”
“’Cause,” he said, as if that was all the answer necessary.
“Did Cody’s mommy and daddy make you get off the bus?” I asked, then repeated, “Cody’s mommy and daddy?” He nodded. “Where did they stop to make you get off?”
He turned and pointed over Estelle’s shoulder. “Right there,” he said. “But I runned away.”
The “right there” was indicated by a tiny index finger pointing generally off to the west.
“Why did you run away, hijo?” Estelle asked softly. Dr. Guzman was holding the door of the truck for us, no doubt hoping the cops in the group would stop their goddamn interrogation and let him take the kid somewhere warm and dry.
Little Francis abandoned English, and most of what he said was whimpered in rapid-fire Spanish into the hollow of Estelle’s neck. She cooed something back to him, holding the back of his head tightly as she carried him to the truck.
She sat in the back, with the child in her lap, her arms wrapped around him. Her husband slid in beside her.
“You all want to go back to the house?” Herb Torrance said.
“Please,” I said. I twisted in the seat and saw that Estelle was looking hard at me. “What?” I asked.
“He said that Cody’s mommy and daddy told him that if he didn’t behave, they’d put him in the hole, too.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered. The little boy’s head came up as we hit the county road, and his enormous dark eyes, still filled with tears, watched as we passed the abandoned adobe barn. “In the hole. That’s what he called it in Spanish? A hole?”
Estelle put her hand on the top of the child’s head. “He doesn’t know the word grave yet.”
“That’s where they put that man,” little Francis Guzman said, his spine ramrod-stiff. He almost poked a finger in his father’s eye in his eagerness to point out the window. He twisted his head and looked at me. “Cody has two daddies. And that’s where they put him.”
“Herb, stop the truck,” I said.
“Bill, please,” Dr. Guzman said.
“Just stop, Herb. Let me out, and then take these folks back to the house. Estelle, use the radio to call Torrez and Mitchell out here. Or whomever you can reach. I’ll be waiting for ’em.”
The truck crunched to a stop. “You sure about this?” Herb said. I looked behind us. The black Jeep idled, waiting.
“Yep. I’ll keep Rory with me for company.” Just before I slammed the door, I turned to Estelle. “While you’re talking to him,” I said, indicating little Francis, “we need to know what direction that bus went when they took off. And if he heard them say anything about where they were going.”
I stepped away from the truck and beckoned to Rory Torrance.
Chapter 40
“Do you have a shovel with you?” I asked the blond-haired youngster behind the wheel of the Jeep. He looked like a forty-year-younger version of his father, Herb—thin, blue-eyed, big-knuckled, angular features.
“Yes, sir,” Rory Torrance said. He watched, maybe expecting a pratfall as I slipped into the Jeep. I’d put in close to a million miles in the damn things during my twenty years in the Marine Corps, back before Humvees took over the world, and despite the modern chrome, fiberglass top, and the CD player wedged up under the dash, the Jeeps hadn’t changed much.
“I’d like you to park right in the middle of the road over there,” I said, indicating a spot in front of the crumbling building. “There’s not going to be much traffic.” He backed up not more than a hundred feet.
“Here?”
“Just fine,” I said.
“What are we looking for? Were those the kid’s parents who went home with Dad?”
“Yes,” I said. I got out of the Jeep. A blind man could have seen the deep impressions made by the RV’s dual back wheels. Who ever had been driving knew New Mexico’s treacherous secondary roads. He hadn’t pulled off far, not far enough to risk the slick mud of the shoulders.
Despite the spitting rain of the past few hours, the marks were clear. Someone had dragged a heavy burden over toward the old building. One of the daddies, as little Francisco had said.
“Bring your shovel,” I said, “And walk right behind me.”
I waited for Rory to dig the tool out of the back, and I noticed that he was wearing boots and short spurs. “You looking forward to Thanksgiving holiday?” I said.
He grinned. “Sure.” He glanced at his watch.
“Do you drive in or take the bus to school?”
He looked askance at me. “Don’t take no bus,” he said. I wondered if he clanked into first-period class with his spurs on.
I walked carefully, staying parallel with the footprints and drag marks. They led us just where I thought they might, over behind the old building, out of sight of the road. It wasn’t a spot frequented by bird-watchers, or neckers, or campers. Cattle ambled around the building, rubbing on the crumbling walls and leaving their trademark piles of manure.
“No one’s lived here for a while,” I said as I moved to the far southwest corner of the structure, the farthest point away from the county road.
“No, sir,” Rory offered, and that covered that.
“Do you know who used to live here?” I asked, leaning one hand against the rough stone and adobe, looking down at the fresh grave in front of me. Some of the wall had been kicked loose and pulled down to cover a fair portion of the freshly dug soil. I guessed it was a hurried attempt to keep the coyotes a
way from the grave for a day or two.
“No, sir.”
“Long time ago, huh?”
“Yes, sir.” I held out my hand for the shovel, and Rory Torrance gave it to me without hesitation. He was looking down at the dirt. “Somebody steal something?” he asked.
“Yeah, Rory, as a matter of fact, somebody did,” I said.
“Why would they bury it way out here?”
I bent down and scuffed at the dirt with the shovel, not bothering to answer. I moved a couple of rocks, and, almost immediately, denim showed. I handed the shovel to Rory and squatted, pushing more of the rocks away. It wasn’t difficult. Old Florencio Apodaca knew how to dig a proper grave, if not where. But this one had been finished up in a hurry.
With a gentle tug, the arm came out of the dirt.
“Oh, gross,” Rory Torrance said, and backed up a step, suddenly sounding more like a teenager and a whole lot less like a tough leather-slappin’ cowboy.
“It’s not an ‘it’ that got buried, it’s a who,” I said, and stood up.
Rory’s eyes were huge as he pointed at the arm. “Was that little kid with these people? He saw all that was goin’ on?” I nodded. “Sheeeit,” the boy said. “I woulda run, too.”
I put my hands in my pockets and gazed around me. The light was stronger, hinting at a thin cloud cover, but the sky made no promises one way or another. Off to the south, ragged clouds hung over the San Cristobal Mountains. To the far west and north, the sky was clear.
“You going to dig it up?” Rory asked.
“No, we need to wait for the detectives. We’ll need photographs, identification, all that stuff.” I glanced at my watch. “They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
It was less than a few. Rory and I started back toward the comfortable seats of the Jeep and hadn’t covered twenty feet when we heard an engine in a hurry. Seconds later, one of the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department’s four-wheel drives roared around the corner in a fair imitation of some fairgrounds dirt-track hot dog.
“That would be Deputy Pasquale,” I said. Pasquale slid to a stop in front of the Jeep. With him in the Bronco was Niel Costace, and I noticed that the FBI agent took his time getting out of the shoulder harness.
“Have you got your camera bag with you?” I called to Pasquale, and he stopped in his tracks and retreated to the Bronco. “And the heavy shovel,” I added. By the time Pasquale had the black bag out of the back, Costace had climbed down. He shut the door of the Bronco with exaggerated care.
“Sergeant Torrez is about ten miles out,” the agent said. “But I’m sure we would have gotten here first even if we’d started in Denver.” He shot a glance at Pasquale, but the young man either didn’t hear the remark or chose to ignore it.
“Over here,” I said. As we moved past the Jeep, I added, “And this is Rory Torrance. He’s one of the rancher’s sons who found Francis this morning.”
Costace reached out a hand and grasped Rory’s. “Niel Costace. Good work.”
“Sir,” Rory said to me, “do you want me to go now?”
“I think you probably can, son. We’ll be in touch with you for some of the details later in the day.” He nodded and looked at the shovel that Deputy Pasquale held. “Unless you want to stay. I’m sure you can be of help when we have to lift him out.”
“No thanks, sir,” he said quickly, and hustled back to the Jeep.
I led Costace and Pasquale around the building. “I’m guessing that it’s Paul Cole,” I said. “Just from what I can see of the arm. Browers has darker hair, and he isn’t as big.”
“You want me to clear away some of these rocks first?” Pasquale said.
“No,” I replied. “First, I want you to take a set of photos that shows the grave site just the way it is. Start back here, and make sure you include some of the landmarks in the first couple frames. Then move in closer, including a corner of the building. And then closer still, until you have just the grave in the frame.” I held my hands up in front of me and drew a funnel in the air. “Start general, then move to the specific. Just the way they taught you at the Academy.”
“Now that we’ve made it here alive, remember that film’s cheap,” Costace muttered.
When Pasquale was finished, we cleared away the rocks until the actual perimeter of the grave was obvious. “Photo time,” I prompted, then watched Pasquale finish a roll and reload.
It didn’t take long to expose the corpse. The man was buried under only inches of dirt, his legs bent back at the knees so that his feet were touching his rump. Despite the dirt, the heavy blood staining high on the right side of his flannel shirt was obvious.
He was blond, probably once ruddy of complexion, and tending to paunch. Well over six feet, he would have weighed 240 at least, perhaps a good deal more.
“Three ten, three oh eight.”
Pasquale reached down and pulled his portable radio out of its holster and handed it to me.
“Go ahead, three oh eight.”
“ETA about six minutes.”
“Ten-four. Robert, did Estelle say anything to you about notifying the coroner?”
“Ten-four. He’ll be a few minutes.”
I handed the radio back to Pasquale. He holstered it, then pulled out a small notebook and began jotting information about the photos he’d taken.
“What’s unclear, Niel,” I said, “is whether the child was able to run away on his own or whether they let him go. He told us that he ‘runned away.’ That could mean a lot of things.”
“A three-year-old isn’t much of a witness,” Costace said.
“Well, this one might be. He’s as sharp as they come. He told his mother in Spanish that Tiffany Cole and Browers told him that if he didn’t behave, they’d put him in the hole, too.”
“Nice folks. He wasn’t clear who was who? Or does he know who Andy Browers is?”
“No. He made the comment that Cody Cole ‘has two daddies,’ and he added, ‘And that’s where they put him.’” I gestured at the grave. “That’s a pretty fair assessment of Cody’s situation, if you think about it. To Cody, both Browers and Paul Cole fill the daddy role. I’m assuming that this is Paul Cole. That leaves Andy Browers and Tiffany Cole, with her son.”
“So they let the Guzman boy go,” Costace mused. “Out here in the middle of nowhere. I wonder where they got that idea.”
“He said that he ran away.”
“Yeah, well,” Costace said skeptically, “it’s hard to imagine not being able to catch a three-year-old.” He shrugged. “Of course, in the middle of the night, who’s to know what happened, exactly. They probably figured he’d either die of exposure out here somewhere or be found come morning. Either way suits their purpose and gives them a good head start.” He paused and looked down at the remains of Paul Cole. “Head start to where?—that’s the next question.” He looked up at me. “Do you think that the youngster will be able to tell us what went on in that motel room?”
“Maybe. I’m not counting on it.”
He grunted with disgust, surveying the prairie and hills around us. “Where the hell do they think they’re going to go? They think they’re going to drive that behemoth through roadblocks without anyone noticing?”
“They have to know better than that,” I said. “But we’re close to the border. If they can get across and put just a few hours between us and them, the Mexican police aren’t going to give them much thought. A token search. That’s about it. Especially if they pay the right price.”
“Don’t be too sure.”
“Look at it this way. They got rid of this deadweight, and they got rid of one of the two youngsters—in this case, the one who would cause them the most trouble. They might have figured that a three-year-old wouldn’t make much sense of what went on out here. Now they’re running, just the three of them.”
“If they don’t get rid of the RV, they’re going to be caught. It’s that simple,” Costace said.
“Then that’s next,” I said. “If Paul Cole was using the borrowed RV as a sort of personal motel and base of operations, odds are good that he was planning to return it when the deal was done. He’d get his share of whatever Madrid was supposed to pay for the kid, and he’d be home free.”
“But then there’s the fracas at the motel,” Costace said. “One plan goes out the window. Our lovin’ parents know they’re in over their heads anyway now, so they take the RV and split.” Costace shook his head in disgust. “Hell, maybe they got some fool notion that they’d be able to return to the States after a spell, claimin’ that they were abducted. Who the hell knows what people like this really think?”
“If they’ve got half a brain between them,” I said, “they’ve been listening to the radio. Browers may even have a scanner. The border crossings slammed shut and roadblocks went up before they could slip away. That makes it tough. Now they know they made a mistake, and they’re going to be ditching it.”
“You got any ideas where?”
I shook my head. “I couldn’t guess, but I’ve got an idea for a place to start.”
Chapter 41
By the time I left Paul Cole’s final resting place, a fair convocation of folks had arrived, including Dr. Alan Perrone, the assistant county coroner. Deputy Pasquale didn’t like it much, but I commandeered his Bronco, leaving him to catch a ride with one of the other deputies.
Estelle had taken her husband and son back into Posadas in my car, and I needed to know what other information she had been able to pry gently out of little Francis. I didn’t want to infringe on her time or her privacy with her family, especially with her mother in intensive care. But there was still a whole mountain of information we badly needed.
I drove into Posadas at twenty minutes after eight that morning, feeling an odd combination of immense relief and apprehension. Paul Cole had been an unknown quantity—I had never met him, knew nothing about him. His notion of fooling both wife and school with the fake hunting trip spoke of a kind of brainless, lame bravado—make things too complicated, and then try and bull through. It hadn’t worked with Roberto Madrid, either.
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