“Sir?” I realized that Estelle was looking at me, and when she had my attention, she beckoned.
“Sir,” she said quietly, “doesn’t this look like a knife slice?”
I put one hand on her shoulder and lowered myself to a kneel. She lifted the jacket with the pencil. From the top of the right shoulder, down across the back yoke for perhaps five inches was a deep slice, deep enough that the quilted insulation was seeping out. The deep slice was the second in a series of four cuts, all the others shallower and shorter.
“A little more,” I said, and she lifted the jacket. I peered down, then moved the fabric to one side with a careful finger. “It goes all the way through, but only for an inch or so.”
“And no blood,” Estelle said.
“Right. No blood. And the other cuts don’t even go through.”
She dropped the jacket and tapped her lips with the pencil, then turned and gazed at me. Her voice was so soft that I had trouble hearing, and I bent close.
“Are we supposed to think that this looks like a series of tears from a bear claw, sir?”
I looked at her in surprise, then down at the jacket. The cuts were roughly parallel. And they were clearly blade cuts, not the sort of thing inflicted by a bear claw, no matter how sharp. “Maybe the jacket was torn before. We need to talk with mama.”
Estelle nodded. “Maybe. But these aren’t tears. They’re cuts.”
I held out my hand, and she handed me the pencil. I moved the jacket just enough that I could see the front half, which was on the ground. A single long rent tore the fabric from just inside the left armpit diagonally across toward the zipper, stopping just to the left of center. A portion of that tear penetrated the coat for a distance of an inch and a half, but again, there was no blood.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Under a microscope, you can tell for sure if the fibers are cut or torn.”
“They’re cut,” Estelle said, more to herself than to me.
I pushed myself to my feet with a grunt and twisted at the waist to look at the others. I shrugged and said to Sergeant Torrez, “She’ll want photos of the jacket in place. And after that, we need a shoulder-to-shoulder line to sweep this area. First time through, put the oak grove right in the center of the sweep. See what you can pick up.”
Behind me, I heard Estelle Reyes-Guzman mutter, “They won’t find a thing.” I agreed with her, but at least the maneuver gave the troops something to do. She took photos of the jacket, and Marjorie Davis took photos of her. When it became clear that the searchers weren’t going to turn up anything else, Marjorie walked back toward the vehicles, no doubt with deadlines to meet.
Estelle completed her series of close-up photos, then backed away from the grove and took several more, finally moving so far away that the jacket would be just a tiny touch of blue in the middle of the negative. She stopped at the sound of voices, and we turned, to see Deputy Pasquale walking through the trees toward us, in company with two civilians.
“Great timing,” Estelle said.
Chapter 11
The woman walked with the exaggerated stability of the practiced drunk, her boots hitting the ground flat-footed and graceless. Small wonder, I thought as she drew closer. Her eyes were puffy and red, and despite what her clothing said, she was no more at home in the boonies than I was.
One of the state troopers materialized out of the trees to her left, and the woman startled, almost losing what little balance she had.
I had never seen her before, but I knew her escort. Andy Browers walked at her right elbow, his lean face haggard and pale. He still wore his Posadas Rural Electric Co-op work clothes, now soiled and wrinkled from his long hours on the mesa. Deputy Pasquale, looking fit and eager, rested a hand lightly on the woman’s left shoulder. He steered her over to where I was standing.
“Undersheriff,” Deputy Pasquale said, “this is Mrs. Cole.” I nodded and extended my hand.
“Ma’am,” I said. She wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were locked on the yellow tape a few yards ahead of us.
“Andy Browers,” the lean man said, and shook my hand. Up close, the bags under his eyes could have been used to transport his belongings. I nodded.
“The deputy said that you’ve found something,” he said, his voice was deep, smooth, and pleasing, with just a hint of the Deep South. He gestured toward the yellow tape. “Is that it over there?”
“We’ll need an identification,” I said, and reached out a hand to take Tiffany Cole by the elbow. Her blond hair was dirty and her clothes smelled of wood smoke. “We think that we’ve found the boy’s jacket.”
Mrs. Cole whimpered something unintelligible, and Browers and I walked her toward the oak grove. “And ma’am, you need to understand that we don’t know what this all means,” I said, but she didn’t care. Her eyes were locked on the jacket, and when she reached it, she sank to her knees, picked it up, and hugged it as if the child were still inside.
“Jesus,” Andy Browers said. He pivoted at the waist and looked off toward the southeast. “This is a good half mile from the campsite, at least. I don’t understand what the hell…”
“We don’t either, sir,” I said. I glanced across at Estelle. She and the others seemed perfectly content to let me do all the talking. I didn’t blame them. They’d been on that damn mesa for forty hours or more and had probably fielded hundreds of useless questions. “Is that your son’s jacket?”
I suppose that was a stupid question, considering Tiffany Cole’s agony right there in front of me. In her condition, it wouldn’t have taken much to open the floodgates-any piece of child’s clothing, her son’s or not, might have done the trick.
“I don’t understand,” Browers repeated. “Why would Cody take off his jacket on a cold night?”
“I don’t know.”
“And why would he wander way in there? Jesus.”
“We don’t know,” I said. “At least it gives us something of a lead. A general direction anyway.” I motioned with my hand toward the northwest.
“I don’t see why we didn’t see this before,” Browers said. “There must have been searchers going by here before this.” I didn’t have an answer to that, and Browers added, “What’s down that way?” He stood at his girlfriend’s side, one hand resting on her shoulder. He didn’t try to help her up, didn’t try to pry the jacket loose.
“Well,” I said, and turned to find Dale Kenyon. He was walking toward us through the trees, a black plastic folder under his arm. “Let’s check a map.”
“I can’t believe we’re still looking at maps,” Browers said.
He had every reason to be snappy, and I could imagine just how frustrated he felt. “Maps keep us organized,” I said pleasantly. “If we knew exactly where a lost three-year-old would go, then the boy wouldn’t still be lost, would he?” Cole’s forehead furrowed, and I saw a flash of color that was more than exertion. “All of these folks have damn near lived up here for the past two days, same as you. I’m the newcomer on the block, and I need a map. Leave me alone up here for two minutes, and you’ll be looking for me, too.”
“Here’s a topo map of the area,” Kenyon said, and he spread the plastic-coated map out on a level spot. “Here’s where we are, right in from the rim.” His finger followed the contours where they bunched together, indicating the steep country. “You can see that in another quarter mile or so, the country opens up some.”
“What’s this?” Browers asked, and when he knelt, his knees cracked like an old man’s.
“Turkey Springs,” Kenyon said. “It’s an old water-catchment system that’s been abandoned for years. The permittee on that section drilled a well farther east.”
“That’s Boyd?” I asked, and Kenyon nodded.
“Johnny Boyd. Right.”
I cracked off an oak twig and used it as a pointer so I wouldn’t have to kneel. “His place is about three miles north and west. Right there.”