“Naranjo? You still holdin’ your breath on him?”
“If we’re lucky, he might have something for us. Odds are long.”
“Yeah, well,” Torrez said. He took a deep breath. “It’s gonna be tight. We got to be able to spring a few people free for the race, too. Unless we just want to cancel it.”
“We can’t do that, Bobby.” She groaned. “Ay. El tiempo pasa inexorablemente, as my mother is fond of saying. I hadn’t even given the race a thought.” She looked at her watch again. “The first rider is off at nine o’clock this morning. That’s in six hours.”
“You better tell Pasquale there ain’t no point in trying to squeeze into his spandex. We’re gonna need him.”
“We’ll find a way to cover, Bobby. I don’t want to pull him out of the race at this late hour. He’s trained for months, he helped organize it, and he deserves the time.”
“He also ain’t had no sleep,” Torrez said. “We’ll probably find him lyin’ under some piñon up on the mesa, blowin’ z’s.”
“Well, he might need that, too. I’m going back to the office for a few minutes to make sure that our coverage schedule for the race still works. I need to stop by the house when the kids are getting up. Then I’ll swing over and talk with Hector.”
“Good enough. We’ll finish up here.”
By the time Estelle reached the Public Safety Building, the dawn of Sunday was only an hour off. She could see streaks near the eastern horizon, wide bands of thin clouds. By race time at nine o’clock, the clouds would burn off and race competitors would face the rigors of Cat Mesa in sunshine so hot that the stunted piñons and junipers would perfume the thin air, rich and sweet.
As her hand touched the door handle, Estelle’s phone chirped as if her touch had triggered the mechanism.
“Hey,” Sheriff Torrez said. “Abeyta just called me. He’s got a time.”
“A time for…” Estelle opened the door and stepped inside. Looking down the narrow hall past the offices, she could see that dispatcher Brent Sutherland was also on the telephone. Deputy Tony Abeyta wasn’t scheduled to be working at this hour, but he’d been caught up like everyone else.
“One of the kitchen help saw the airplane.”
“Really.” It took a few seconds for her to catch up with Torrez’s habitual shorthand.
“Yep. Corrie Velasquez? She stepped out back to toss some leftovers to the coyotes. Or some shit like that. Anyway, she claims that she saw the plane. It attracted her attention because it was just sort of whistling in, no lights, engine idling.”
“Huh.” Estelle pictured Corrie standing by the back door of the Broken Spur. She would be facing north, toward the arroyo behind the saloon. The aircraft would have passed within a quarter mile of where Corrie stood if it was landing from east to west, low on final approach to the gas company’s runway. “Does she remember when?”
“She thinks Tuesday night. She knows it was after midnight, but the saloon closes at one, so it wasn’t much later than that. Two at the most.”
“That would make it Wednesday morning, then.” The growing pall of fatigue lifted a bit, and Estelle walked into her office, closing the door behind her. And Hector was absent from school Wednesday morning, she thought. “How does Corrie remember that it was Tuesday, and not some other night?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Abeyta asked her that, but he didn’t tell me. He’s inbound, if you want to talk to him. He was lookin’ for a couple hours’ sleep before he pulls race duty.”
“Some sleep sounds good.”
“You still going to talk with the kid?”
“Yes,” she said. “He’s not going anywhere.”
“We best hope not,” Torrez grunted. “If he gets wind that we’re snoopin’ around, the border ain’t very far away.”
Chapter Seventeen
An hour’s wolf nap wasn’t enough, especially with the rest of the household enjoying the quiet of early Sunday morning slumbering. It would have been too easy to roll over, snuggle up against her husband, and doze off again. She sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, trying to focus. She had folded into bed at three fifteen. In a blink, the clock had leaped to 4:30 a.m.
“What’s the deal this morning?” Francis asked, his voice muffled by the pillow.
Estelle rubbed her face and double-checked the time. “I need to talk with a kid who might have taken the plane,” she said. “There’s a chance. Slim, but a chance. I need to follow up on it.”
“You be careful. You’re tired.”
“I know. I’ll try to be back in time for the race. If it looks like I can’t make it, I’ll call.” She turned and patted his hip. “Can you take the boys up on the mesa if I’m not back?”
“Chances are,” he replied. A finger appeared from under the pillow and wagged at her. “Don’t you be sending more work our way.”
“I’ll try my best, querido.” After a long shower, she dressed quickly and forced down a small microwaved breakfast burrito and a cup of tea. By five thirty, she was parking in front of a nondescript double-wide mobile home on the southwestern outskirts of Posadas. She paused by her car, noticing two things. First, she could see the end of the vocational wing of the high school, no more than a quarter of a mile distant, across a scrubby field and a single arroyo. Second, her arrival had not gone unnoticed.
Two pit bulls watched her with interest. They were tethered with their light chains running up to a wire clothesline, allowing them to course back and forth in front of the home, in an area lighted by an irritatingly bright streetlight. Both dogs could reach the path to the front door with ease.
By the time she had gotten out of the car and walked around the front fender, both dogs were wagging so hard it appeared their backbones were in jeopardy, their voices sounding like two frantic children. If they thought that a stranger approaching their house in the wee hours of the morning was unusual or cause for alarm, they didn’t show it.
“My long lost pals,” Estelle said aloud. As she approached, one of the dogs, a butterscotch female splotched liberally with white, stood on her hind legs, balancing against the pull of the leash. The other, a brindle female, took the low road and flopped on her back, presenting a white belly that had nursed its share of puppies.
“They’re harmless,” a man’s voice said, and Estelle glanced up to see Gordon Urioste standing at the front door of the double-wide. “As long as you don’t mind the slobber.”
“Good morning, sir,” Estelle said.
“Get down, Squeak,” Urioste said sharply, and the dancing female dropped to all fours instantly, stubby tail still flailing. “How are you this morning, Ms. Guzman?” he added. “You’re out bright and early.”
“I’m okay,” she said, pushing past the two wet, snuffling muzzles that blotched her previously spotless tan pantsuit. The two dogs couldn’t reach the front step, and both of them sat down at the full stretch of their chains, butts wiggling. Urioste stepped the rest of the way past the storm door and closed it behind him. A short, burly man, his heavy-featured face was one of wary good humor.
“What can I do for you? You want a cup of coffee? The wife’s got it going.”
“No thanks, sir.” She turned, surveying the neighborhood, a hodgepodge of older trailers and double-wides situated on irregular two-acre lots. The neighborhood had started its sprawl during the last heydays of the copper mine on Cat Mesa, and now struggled with vacant lots left when the trailers pulled out, leaving behind the stubs of plumbing pipes and chopped-off electrical wiring. Fences were choked with tumbleweeds, and the dirt streets were dismal. The two dwellings on either side of Urioste’s were vacant-on one side, a single trailer whose carport was sagging over a vast pile of trash, and on the other, a ten-year-old double-wide bordered by a rickety cedar fence, the place recently abandoned when the elderly owner had died.
“Going to be a beautiful day, I think,” Urioste offered, a polite way of asking, What do you want at five thirty in the morning?