“You don’t think Cecil Lucero is the key?” I asked, laying down the newspaper. Estelle shook her head. “You don’t think he killed his brother?”
“No. It doesn’t make sense, sir. The shots were fired from the lip of the arroyo, approximately twenty yards from where we found Kenneth Lucero’s body. That’s where Paul found the shell casings. Now why would Kenneth Lucero be walking or running up the arroyo bed?”
“He was being chased.”
“By his brother? If his brother took him out there with the intention of killing him, what ruse did he use? That they would go hunting? If that was the case, why didn’t Kenneth have a gun of his own?”
“Maybe he forced him out there.”
“Come on, sir. Cecil would have had to make Kenneth drive and hold a rifle on him in the car. That’s difficult to do. Why didn’t Kenneth try to get away before they got out that far?” She stopped for breath. “You see? It’s got so many holes…”
“Do you think the Luceros were involved in Waquie’s and Grider’s deaths then?”
“Maybe. I don’t see someone who’d push a truck over a cliff, then snap a neck for good measure, using a rifle the next day.”
“That’s what we’re missing,” I said. “There’s no pattern to any of this. You think someone aced the Lucero brothers. All right. Suppose that’s true. If that same person was the one who killed the two in the truck, he was a creative son of a bitch…and he didn’t leave much of a trail. If the incidents are unrelated, it makes even less sense.” As I saw it, our problem was time. Cops like to work methodically, but we’d been chasing one fire after another, without a moment to sit and reflect.
Earlier in the evening, Deputy Paul Garcia had stopped by and summarized his interview with Lucy Grider. The girl had given him a list of a dozen people who might have been hanging out with Robert Waquie or the Lucero brothers that night, assuming that they all had been together in the first place. None of the names stood off the page for Estelle.
“Talk to each one of them,” I had said. The idea of overtime didn’t bother either Garcia or Al Martinez, and Estelle had sent them off together.
From out of the blue Estelle announced, “Finn had all the information.” I put down the newspaper. She was staring into the open briefcase, not focusing on any of the papers. “Parris told him about Cecilia Burgess in the truck. He even told Finn that the truck belonged to Robert Waquie. How much work would it be to find out who was involved?”
“Not much, I suppose,” I said. “Although we seem to be having problems.”
“Just suppose Finn is involved,” Estelle persisted. “Just suppose. The priest goes to his camp that night, and Finn learns about the truck. Now, he’s got all the next day…we’re working the case without Parris’s information. Finn finds out that it’s Waquie’s truck. When he catches up with them, Waquie and Grider are together. And maybe he finds out from the two of them who the others were.”
“Maybe, maybe, maybe. Come on, Estelle. You saw Finn. He couldn’t care less.”
“It could have happened that way.”
“He’d have to be one fast worker, Estelle. In the first place, we were up at his camp on Saturday, right after the accident with Cecilia Burgess.”
“He may have found Waquie that morning…or later in the afternoon.”
“He would have had to. And then you’re suggesting he finds the Lucero brothers and murders them. Nice theory but no evidence.”
“And he’s got Arajanian to help him.”
“Sure. You don’t have a scrap of evidence to support that.”
“No, but there’s possible motive,” she said doggedly. “And that’s enough for a start.” I was about to question that when we heard the thumping at the back door.
I said, “You got a dog that wants in?”
“Sure don’t.” She got up and went into the kitchen. She pulled the curtain back a little and looked out. There was no outside light over that door, and she couldn’t have seen a train if it had been parked on the step. She pulled the door open and I heard her suck in breath with surprise.
“Sir,” she called and I sprang to my feet, dumping the newspaper on the floor.
A hunched figure was sitting on the single wooden step. He leaned sideways against the screen door, head down. He whimpered a little, then lifted his head and said, “Please.”
My first thought had been that we’d collected a wandering drunk, but there was no inebriation in that voice…just hurt. “Now what the hell.” I pushed past Estelle and tried to open the door, but he was blocking it. From the hunch of his shoulders and the hang of his head, he wasn’t up to moving.
“Let me go around front,” Estelle said, and she darted off, grabbing her flashlight from the kitchen counter. In seconds she appeared in the darkness. When the beam of the flashlight hit him in the face, the man cringed against the door. “No,” he murmured.
“It’s all right,” Estelle said. “We’re here.” She saw the blood at the same time I did. A puddle was forming on the gray wood of the step.
“Move him away from the door so we can get him inside,” I said. I slapped on the overhead kitchen light.
Estelle put her arm around the man’s shoulder and tried to scrunch him sideways to the edge of the step. His head tipped back, and I saw that he was biting his lower lip so hard that he’d drawn blood.
With a grunt of agony he pushed himself to his feet, supported by Estelle on one side and stiff-arming the side of the house with his free hand. I held open the door, and the two of them careened into the kitchen. He dropped to his knees, taking Estelle with him, and then slumped over to curl on the floor in a fetal position.
“The door,” he whispered. “Close the door.” I did so. Now that he was in the light, I could see that he wasn’t more than a kid, maybe twenty at the most. And he was wearing the universal kid’s summer uniform-running shoes, faded blue jeans, and T-shirt. And if he bled much more, he wouldn’t live to be older than a kid. His left side was soaked with blood from lower ribs to knee. And what wasn’t bloody was dripping wet, caked here and there with fresh mud.
I knelt down. “You hold the flashlight,” I said. The overhead light fixture held one of those useless sixty-watt bulbs that threw just enough light so you didn’t bark your shins on the table and chairs.
The kid lay with his head on the cool linoleum, eyes closed, breath rapid and shallow. I pulled up the blood-soaked T-shirt. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “Hold the light over here.” I pried his right hand loose from where it was clamped to his side.
He was leaking from two places. The entry would was a pencil-sized, punched hole a hand’s width from his spine, right on the second floating rib from the bottom.
The projectile had blown right through him, exiting by taking out the front end of the same rib. The exit wound wasn’t neat and was as big as a quarter. It bled copiously, and I guessed the bullet had nicked either the kid’s stomach or kidney or both. I yanked a dish towel off the side rack by the sink and made a large pad.
“Make sure Francis is still at the clinic,” I said, but Estelle was already moving. “Can you hold that in place?” I asked, and the kid nodded slightly. His hand drifted back and rested on the towel. “I’ll be right back,” I added. He wasn’t going anywhere, but the last thing someone wants who’s hurt badly is to go solo.
On the way out through the living room, I jerked the old army blanket off the sofa. It only took a minute to arrange the back of the Blazer so he’d have a place to lie, and by the time I trotted back into the house, Estelle was back in the kitchen, kneeling by the kid. She looked up and said, “He’s there.”
“There’s no time to wait for an ambulance. We’ll take mine. There’s some room in the back.” Estelle helped me pick him up and I carried him out to the Blazer, ducking sideways so I didn’t whack his skull on the doorjambs. It was a good thing for him and me both that he was slightly built.
Estelle rode in the back with him, keeping the pressure on the dressing. In less than three minutes we were swinging into the parking lot of the clinic. I saw Mary Vallo’s old pickup truck and murmured thanks. I wasn’t much of a nurse.