“That’s correct.”
“Now, on the surface, what happened to your crew and what happened to Mr. Estivar’s crew appeared to be similar. There was, however, an important difference, was there not?”
“Yes. My men were located by noon the next day. A grower near Chula Vista had simply convinced them they could do better at his place, so they left. But the men from the Osborne ranch were never found. Chances are they crossed the border before the police even knew a crime had been committed.”
“When did you learn that a crime had been committed, Mr. Bishop?”
“I was awakened about one-thirty in the morning by a deputy from the sheriff”s department. He said Robert Osborne was missing and the surrounding ranches were being searched for traces of him.”
“What did you do then?”
“I got dressed and joined the search. At least I tried to. The deputy in charge sent me back in the house.”
“What was his name?”
“Valenzuela.”
“Why did he refuse your offer of assistance?”
“He said a lot of searches had been messed up by amateurs and this wasn’t going to be one of them if he could help it.”
“All right, thank you, Mr. Bishop. You are excused.”
Ford waited until Leo returned to his place in the spectators’ section, then asked the clerk to call Carla Lopez to the stand.
Carla rose and walked slowly to the front of the room. In the hot dry air her pink and yellow nylon shift clung to her moist body like a magnet. If she was embarrassed or nervous she managed to conceal the fact. Her voice was bored when she took the oath, and the huge round sunglasses gave her an Orphan Annie look of complete blankness.
“State your name, please,” Ford said.
“Carla Dolores Lopez.”
“Miss or Mrs.?”
“Miss. I’m getting a divorce, so I took back my maiden name.”
“Where do you live, Miss Lopez?”
“431 Catalpa Street, San Diego, Apartment Nine.”
“Are you employed?”
“I quit my job last week. I’m looking for something better.”
“Did you know Robert Osborne, Miss Lopez?”
“Yes.”
“A few minutes ago Mr. Bishop testified that he saw Mr. Osborne on the morning of October thirteen talking to a young woman outside a café in Boca de Rio. Were you that young woman?”
“Yes.”
“Who initiated the conversation?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Who started talking first?”
“He did. I was just walking along the street by myself when he pulled up to the curb beside me and asked if he could speak to me for a minute. I had nothing better to do, so I said yes.”
“What did Mr. Osborne talk to you about, Miss Lopez?”
“My brothers,” Carla said. “They used to work for him, my two older brothers, and Mr. Osborne wanted to know if they might want to come and work for him again.”
“Did he give any reason?”
“He said the last crew Estivar had hired was no good, they had no experience, and he needed someone like my brothers to show them how things were done. I told him my brothers wouldn’t be caught dead doing that kind of labor no more. They didn’t have to squat and stoop like monkeys, they had respectable stand-up jobs in a gas station.”
“Did Mr. Osborne make any further remarks about the crew he had working for him?”
“No.”
“He gave no indication, for instance, that he suspected they might have entered the country without papers?”
“No.”
“Did he use the terms wetback, mojado or alambre?”
“Not that I remember. The rest of the talk was personal — you know, like between he and I.”
The girl’s long silver-painted fingernails scratched at her throat as if they were trying to ease an itch deep inside and out of reach. It was her first sign of nervousness.
“Was there anything in the conversation,” Ford said, “which might have bearing on the present hearing?”
“I don’t think so. He asked me about my baby — I wasn’t showing yet but the whole town knew about it, it being that kind of town — and he said his wife was having a baby too. He seemed kind of jumpy about it. Could be he was scared it would turn out like him.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, there was a lot of gossip about him when Mrs. Bishop drowned. Maybe some of it was true. Or maybe he just had a jinx like me. I’m an expert on jinxes. I’ve had one ever since I was born.”
“Indeed.”
“For instance, if I did a rain dance there’d probably be a year’s drought or even a snowstorm.”
“The court must deal in facts, Miss Lopez, not jinxes and rain dances.”
“You have your facts,” the girl said. “I have mine.”
Chapter Seven
The exodus from the courtroom for lunch was faster and more complete than it had been for the morning recess. Devon waited until only the bailiff remained.
He glanced at her curiously. “This room is locked up during the noon hour, ma’am.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
“If you’re not feeling well, there’s a ladies’ lounge in the basement where you can get coffee and things like that.”
“I’m all right.”
Agnes Osborne had driven back to her apartment to rest, suffering more from weariness than from hunger. With her out of the way Devon thought Leo might be waiting for her in the corridor and they would have lunch together. But there was no sign of him. The corridor was deserted except for a pair of tourists taking pictures out of one of the barred windows and, in an alcove beyond a row of telephone booths, the ex-policeman, Valenzuela, talking to a short stout Mexican woman who was holding a baby on her left arm. The child was sucking on a pacifier and regarding Valenzuela with mild interest.
Valenzuela, so dapper earlier in the day, had begun to show the effects of the increasing heat and tension. He’d taken off his coat and tie and under each arm of his striped shirt there was a dark semicircle like a stain of secret guilt. When Devon approached he looked at her with disapproval, as though she were someone from a remote corner of his past and had no right to be popping up in the present without warning or permission.
As she walked by she nodded but didn’t speak. Everything had been said between them: “I’ve done what I could, Mrs. Osborne. Searched the fields, dragged the reservoir, walked up and down the riverbed. But there are a hundred more fields, a dozen more reservoirs, miles and miles of riverbed.” “You must try again, try harder.” “It’s no use. I think they took him into Mexico.” The following spring Valenzuela phoned Devon and told her he’d quit his job in the sheriff’s office and was now selling insurance. He asked her if she wanted to buy any and she said no, very politely...
A few blocks from the courthouse she found a small hamburger stand. She sat at a table hardly bigger than a handkerchief and ordered a burger with French fries. The odor of stale grease, the ketchup bottle with its darkening dribble, the thin round patty of meat identical to ones she’d eaten in Philadelphia, New Haven, Boston — they were all so normal and familiar, they made her feel like an ordinary girl who ate lunch at hamburger stands and had no business with bailiffs or judges. She ate slowly, prolonging her stay in the little place, her role of ordinary girl.
After lunch she began her reluctant return to the courthouse, pausing now and then to stare out at the sea. “I think they took him into Mexico,” Valenzuela had said. “Or maybe dumped him in the sea and a high tide will bring him in.” A hundred high tides came and went before Devon stopped hoping; Mrs. Osborne had never stopped. Devon knew she still carried a tide table in her purse, still walked for miles along the beaches every week, her eye on specks in the water that turned out to be buoys or harbor seals, pelagic birds or pieces of floating lumber. “In salt water this cold it would take a week or two for gases to form in the tissues and bring a body to the surface.” The first week passed, and the second, and fifty more. “Not everything that goes into the sea comes out again, Mrs. Osborne.” With each tide things floated into shore and were stranded on the beach — driftwood, jellyfish, shark eggs, oil-soaked grebes and cormorants and scoters, lobster traps, plastic bottles, odd shoes and other pieces of clothing. Every scrap of the clothing was collected and taken to a room in the basement of the sheriff’s department to be dried out and examined. None of it belonged to Robert.