Holman took a deep breath and jammed both hands in his coat pockets. The rain was still light, but the small drops were icy cold, driven by the wind out of the west.
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to talk to Reuben again. In the morning. And I’m going to call his grandniece as soon as I get back to the office. And I’m going to wait until the medical examiner has something concrete to go on before jumping to conclusions.”
“What’s it going to take before you figure you have enough to make an arrest?” Holman asked.
“You mean before I’ll take Reuben Fuentes into custody? A whole lot, Martin. A whole lot.”
He shook his head. “I think you’re too close to this one, Bill. I really do.” He stepped around me as if he was going to join the deputies at the hole. But he stopped, turned, and added, “If Reuben Fuentes wasn’t related to Estelle Reyes-Guzman, he’d be in the lockup right now. And you know it.”
Martin Holman’s sudden attack of spine surprised me. But he was dead wrong on all counts. Maybe he was just playing the hard-driving sheriff for Linda Rael’s benefit. That was all right, as long as he didn’t get in the way, or do something stupid on his own.
I touched Linda’s elbow. “I’m going back to the office. Want to come along?”
“Aren’t they going to rebury the dogs?” she asked. Her voice was small and she was shivering.
“No. They’ll take them for analysis. The old man didn’t press the issue, but as long as we’ve gone this far, we might as well find out what killed ’em. You never know.”
She saw the black plastic bags laid out on the ground and she turned away. “I’m ready,” she said.
We were nearly back to the village limits when she asked, “What happens now?”
I shrugged. “We wait for the medical examiner’s report on Torkelson’s corpse and any of the other physical evidence. A couple of the deputies will be working out there all day tomorrow, double-checking that we didn’t miss anything. We’ll interview the old man.” I shrugged again.
“Do you think he did it?”
“Don’t you start, now.”
She almost laughed. “Well, everyone’s heard the stories about him.”
I swung into the department parking lot and pulled up next to the gasoline pumps. “Linda, we can’t arrest a man based on what folks say they’ve heard…or what they haven’t heard. We’ll do what the evidence tells us to do.”
It was pellet snow, then, pinging off the windshield. I was loath to stand outside another minute, pumping gasoline into the county gas-guzzler. But I’d thrown enough fits in the direction of young deputies who’d put a half-empty patrol car away that I was trapped now. I shrugged my coat tighter and got out.
“Besides,” I said over the top of 310 as Linda prepared to make a break for the warmth and coffee of the office. “If Reuben Fuentes was guilty of murder, he wouldn’t have just sat up there in his little cabin, letting us dig the hell out of his field.”
She nodded and started to walk inside. But she stopped and turned around. “Do you call in other agencies?”
“What do you mean?”
“The state police, maybe. You know, for help.”
“If need be, of course. But our people are pretty good at what they do, Linda.” She pulled her coat tighter against the wind and walked inside.
While I waited for the nozzle to click off, I thought about the old Mexican in his tiny shack. At first I had thought that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to bring him into town for the night, for his own protection. But there were some pieces that didn’t fit.
Reuben Fuentes might be damn near senile, maybe half blind and almost stone deaf when he needed to be…but let someone sneeze near his land and he was out the door with pistol or rifle or shotgun in hand.
Hunters didn’t roam his property during deer season without challenge…and earlier Stuart Torkelson hadn’t read two numbers off his tape measure before the old man was at his backside. And now, the old man had allowed a revival-sized crowd of people to tramp one of his pastures, dig his earth, and disturb the eternal rest of his hounds. That wasn’t like him.
I screwed on the gas cap, snapped the door closed, and sat back inside the car to jot all the bookkeeping gibberish in the log. I’d committed some real boners in my twenty-three-year career in law enforcement, generally because I had assumed, with complete certainty, that I was right at the time. I knew that Reuben Fuentes hadn’t shot Stuart Torkelson. My unflinching certainty was making me nervous.
15
By eight-thirty that morning, we were handed one of the missing puzzle pieces, Martin Holman issued an order, and I couldn’t put off calling Estelle Reyes-Guzman any longer.
I closed my office door against interruptions and found the number I wanted on the roller file. The signals were traveling no more than thirty miles as the crow flies-probably less. But for efficiency, I might as well have been calling the moon.
Finally a small voice came on the other end.
“? Hola?”
“? Quien es?” I asked.
“Tinita,” the tiny voice said, well named.
“Tina,” I said, “is your father or mother home?”
A long pause followed my sudden excursion into English. “Tina?” I repeated.
“? Hola?”
I closed my eyes with frustration, trying to remember back forty-seven years to when I was a high school junior and Mrs. Hempsted had tried to twist my hopelessly Scotch-Irish tongue around Spanish I.
“Hija, quiero hablar with…con your madre or padre.”
That brought a response. The kid probably thought she was talking to a drunk. “Un momento,” she said primly. A couple loud clanks as the phone was dropped on the table were followed by a bellow of startling proportions from such young lungs.
“Hello?” a teenage voice said after a minute. “Who’s calling, please?”
I knew that Felicia Diaz was fourteen, and that sounded about right for this voice.
“Is this Felicia?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, good. Felicia, this is Undersheriff Bill Gastner up in Posadas.”
“Good morning, sir.”
She was so damn polite I wanted to bottle her manners and sell them to parents of American teenagers.
“How’s your family enjoying the holidays?”
“Fine, sir. Even Roberto is home for a week.” Roberto Diaz was twenty-two or so and studying to be a dentist. Where he found the money for that was a mystery to me. I heard a voice in the background and Felicia said, “One moment, please.” She did a good job of covering the speaker of the phone, but I managed to hear her say something that included policia in it.
“Sir, here is my father.”
“Thanks, Felicia. You have a good holiday. See you next week at the christening.”
Roman Diaz’s voice was hearty and heavily accented. “Senor Gastner. Good to hear from you!”
“The same, Don Roman. How’s the family?”
“Fine, sir. Fine. When are you coming down? And let me assume that you need to reach Estellita?”
“You read my mind. I sure do. Is there any way you could send someone down the lane?”
“Tinita is on the way,” he said. “Do you want me to have Estelle call you or-”
“I’ll hold on if I might.” I had a good connection and didn’t want to risk losing it. Roman Diaz and I exchanged pleasantries about the weather, family, and the upcoming christening of Estelle’s infant son.
In no more than five minutes, our conversation was interrupted by a shout from Tinita’s tiny lungs. When Estelle came on the line she was breathing hard.