Scavengers (19 page)
An exuberantly cheerful officer—and Estelle couldn’t tell if the voice was male or female—informed her that Capt. Tomás Naranjo was not in his office. Somehow the dispatcher managed to sound triumphant, as if the good capitán had been locked in the district office of the Judiciales for weeks or even months and finally had managed to break out into the light of day, the dust cloud from his escaping truck rolling across the Chihuahuan countryside.
On the off chance that Naranjo might check with his office or that his infuriatingly vague office might initiate contact with him, Estelle left word that she would be in Tres Santos that afternoon and if the
capitán
’s dust cloud could drift over that way sometime between one and three, it would be appreciated. The dispatcher said that he—or she—would see what could be done.
By the time Estelle had returned to the hospital shortly after eight that morning, her mother’s status had been upgraded from patient to guest, and a few minutes later, she sat comfortably in one of the hospital’s wheelchairs, ready for the short trip out the front door to the parking lot. A warm blanket had been draped over her lap, and another one wrapped around her tiny shoulders.
Francis hung the oxygen canister over one of the chair’s push handles.
“Is it nasty outside?” Teresa asked as they rolled down the polished hallway floor toward the double doors. “Earlier, it was nice. I know that.”
“It’s like spring,” Francis said.
“That means windy,” Teresa said, and pulled at the blankets.
“No wind,” Francis assured her. “For a change, no wind. And it’s going to be warm, too. Just perfect.”
The doors slid open and he maneuvered the chair across the rubber entry mat. The county car was parked directly in front of the sidewalk and as her son-in-law rolled her wheelchair toward the dark blue sedan, Teresa Reyes grimaced with displeasure.
“I don’t want to ride in that thing,” she said, just loud enough to be heard but not vocal enough to make it a serious refusal.
“I guess we could always walk home, Teresa,” Francis said cheerfully.
“You can take me in your car,” she said, and leaned back in the chair as the physician pulled it to a stop at the Ford’s front door.
“Just ten blocks,
Mamá
,” Estelle said as she came around the front fender of the car. “It won’t hurt a bit.”
“They’ll think I’ve been arrested,” Teresa grumbled.
“A desperado,” Francis said as he maneuvered the chair close to the curb and locked the wheels. With surprising agility, Teresa stood up, her daughter assisting at her elbow. She stretched out a hand to the car’s roof for support, and Francis and Estelle eased her down into the seat.
“You’d think I was made of glass,” Teresa muttered, and hauled her other leg into the car. “There. Close the door.”
Estelle did so, and grinned at Francis. He slid the oxygen bottle into the back seat, along with the aluminum walker.
“Still Mexico this afternoon?” he asked in English.
“If we’re up to it,” Estelle said.
“Oh,
she’s
up to it,” Francis replied. “Just take things real slow. And encourage her to stay close to the oxygen bottle.”
“We’ll only be gone a couple of hours. I think while I’m down there, I’m going to see if I can talk to Naranjo. He’s usually pretty cooperative. Is there anything new from Alan?”
Francis shook his head. “Not that we didn’t already know. Except maybe the alcohol blood level. That came back moderate on both men. They’d had a few. The rest of the tox tests are going to take a while.”
“I’m not expecting anything there,” Estelle said. She stretched up and kissed Francis and then stood with her left hand hooked around his neck. “You’ll be home in a bit?”
“Yep.”
As Estelle slipped behind the wheel, her mother watched with a scowl. Teresa reached out with her left hand and with the back of her fingers flicked at the barrel of the shotgun that rested in its vertical bracket beside the radio stack as if it were an annoying insect. “This is nice,” she said.
“It goes with the car,
Mamá
.”
Teresa Reyes sniffed and turned to study the world out the side window as Estelle pulled away from the curb.
“Do you remember Paulita Saenz,
Mamá
? ” For a moment she didn’t think that Teresa had heard her, and she glanced across at the tiny woman. Her mother sat with her right elbow on the door’s armrest, index finger lying pensively across her lips.
“Is that what this is all about?”
Taking that as a
yes
, Estelle added, “Her son’s in trouble. Do you remember Eurelio?”
Teresa’s eyebrows went up a little. “I don’t think I ever met him, you know,” she said. “The last time I saw that girl Paulita was…” She hesitated, lower lip projected in thought. “Maybe twenty years ago. Maybe that long.” She leaned her head on her hand. “What’s her boy done?”
“We’re not sure. We think he’s involved somehow in the death of a couple of Mexican nationals.”
“Ah.”
“Do you remember the Madrids? Lucy and Wally?”
“They live down in Maria.”
“Yes.”
“No, I don’t recall them.”
Estelle smiled at the contradiction, the standard tactic to steer away from disagreeable topics of conversation. “They have two sons we need to talk to as well.”
“
Los hijos…
” Teresa murmured.
“I think Reuben knew them, didn’t he? Lucy and Wally, I mean?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Your great-uncle knew everybody.”
With a pang of nostalgia, Estelle remembered her great-uncle as she had seen him last—eighty-nine years old, unable to attend to even the most basic bodily functions. One by one, those functions had switched off until he lay in the hospital bed an empty shell. “I wish I had known him better when I was younger,” Estelle said.
“No, you don’t,” Teresa replied, and the starch in her reply surprised Estelle. She could remember the man’s quick, white-toothed smile and his mane of hair that had turned gray before he was thirty. Of the man himself, Estelle could remember little beyond those final impressions. “He cut a swath on both sides of the border,” Teresa said. “I always thought some jealous husband was going to shoot him.”
“I guess they never caught up with him,” Estelle laughed. They turned south from Bustos onto Twelfth Street. “I need to go down to Maria for a few minutes this morning,
Mamá
. Then after lunch you and I will go to Tres Santos.”
Teresa nodded. “That’s good.” Her arthritic fingers were already fumbling for the door handle as the patrol car pulled into the driveway.
Estelle switched off the car and got out.
“Hi, gang!”
She turned and saw Irma Sedillos standing on the small porch, holding the storm door open. Irma stepped outside and let the door close behind her.
“Captain Naranjo is on the phone, Estelle. From Mexico.”
Estelle stopped, her mother’s door half open. “Right now, you mean?”
“I told him you had just driven up, and he said he’d wait.”
“You go ahead,” Teresa Reyes said. She had both feet out of the car and one hand on the door, preparing for the effort to stand upright.
“Would you tell him I’ll call him right back? Just have him leave the number where he’s at. I’ll be about five minutes.”
Irma nodded and retreated inside.
Estelle bent down, wrapped her left arm around her mother’s shoulders and with her right hand on the older woman’s elbow, lifted her out of the car and to her feet.
“You’re pretty strong,
hija
,” Teresa said. “You always surprise me.”
Estelle got the walker out of the back seat and handed it to her mother. “Do you want the chair?”
“No, this is fine,” Teresa said. She settled some of her weight tentatively on the aluminum walker as if afraid it might collapse. “It might take me a while.”
“We have all day,
Mamá
. ”
Teresa flashed a smile, her strong teeth good for another eighty years. “Wouldn’t that be nice,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be nice.” She looked toward the front door, fixing that in her mind as the destination, and then navigated around the car door so that Estelle could close it.
Five-year-old Francisco appeared in the doorway. “Where did you go?” he said to his grandmother.
Teresa stopped and rested both hands on the walker handle. “
Andando a la caza de pinacates, hijo.
”
Francisco’s black eyebrows knit together as his forehead puckered in a frown. “No you weren’t,” he said cautiously and looked around at Irma for confirmation. Surely
Abuela
had not been out hunting the first stinkbugs of the season without telling him.
“Here’s one right here,” Teresa said, and moved the walker delicately. Sure enough, one of the comical black beetles had decided that the heat bouncing off the concrete of the sidewalk and the house’s foundation had moved spring ahead of the actual calendar. He was posed by the sidewalk, tail up in the air. “He walked all this way, just like me.”
Francisco ducked his head, giggled, and bolted back into the house. “
Abuela
’s back!” they heard him shout to Carlos, but the younger boy was not so easily dislodged from whatever engrossed him at the moment.
“
Hijos,
” Teresa Reyes said as if that proved the thesis of some earlier conversation.
With her mother inside and tucked in her favorite chair with the oxygen tubes looped around her head like a high-tech necklace, Estelle paused for a moment in the middle of the small living room to slow the whirlwind that was her elder son. She clamped him in a bearhug as she said to Irma, “Did Naranjo leave his number?”
“He’s still holding,” Irma replied, and then lowered her voice. “He sounds like a movie star or something.”
Estelle laughed and aimed Francisco toward Irma. “He doesn’t need to hear that,” she said, and went to the phone in the kitchen. During her various dealings with the Mexican policeman over the years, it had always been abundantly clear that Naranjo remained a bachelor at heart, despite his long and apparently happy marriage. His prowl had extended for decades.
“
Capitán, buenos días. Lo siento la tardanza,
” she said in Spanish.
“Ah,” Naranjo said. “It’s good to hear from you,
Señora
Guzman.” His English was flawless and elegantly accented, as if he were trying to imitate Ricardo Montalban. “My office told me that you called, and I knew it must be important.” He chuckled. “Or at least, I hoped it would be. How is your mother, by the way?”
“She’s fine. Just tired. I just brought her home.”
“A remarkable woman. I hope you will give her my very best wishes.”
“I’ll do that,” Estelle said, at the same time wondering when her mother and Tomás Naranjo had crossed paths. In his early fifties and having served in the
Judiciales
for nearly thirty years, Naranjo had become something of an institution in his district. “I was hoping that I could ask your assistance with a case we’re working at the moment.”
“Nothing would please me more.”
“We have two homicide victims whom I believe are Mexican nationals, captain. They were apparently working up here for a month, cutting firewood on a large ranch near the community of Mule Creek, up in Grant County.”
“With all the appropriate papers, of course,” Naranjo interjected.
“Oh, of course. Actually, we really don’t know. When we found the bodies, there was no identification…no wallets, no cards, no nothing.”
“And no money, I’m sure.”
“Certainly not that.”
“Shot?”
“Yes. Large caliber, no casings left behind, no bullets or bullet fragments. One victim was buried, the other apparently was able to break away. His body was discovered a thousand yards west. Out on the prairie.”
“I see.”
“At any rate, some witnesses have placed the two men here in Posadas County earlier this winter—when they were on the way to their job. They stopped at the saloon in Maria.”
“La Taberna Azul.”
“That’s correct. And they were seen by several people.”
“What is it that I can help you with?”
“First of all, did you have a chance to see the photos that we faxed to your office yesterday?”
“No, as a matter of fact. But then, I haven’t been
in
my office for most of the week, so that is not surprising.” He made a sound as if he were trying to hum a tune. “Did you address them directly to me?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well,” Naranjo said. “That’s the problem then. I wasn’t in the office, and no one else looked at them. I’m sure that they’re lying on my desk at this very moment.”
“I see.”
“But the message I received was that you would be in Tres Santos this afternoon? Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir. My mother would like to visit her home for a little while, and we thought that today would be good.”
“May I meet you there?”
“I was hoping that you could. I’ll bring copies of the photos with me. If you could be of assistance in identifying the two men, that would be a great help.”
“Most certainly. We will do everything that we can.” He cleared his throat. “Did you have a particular time in mind?”
“Would two o’clock be convenient?”
“I will make it so,” Naranjo said. “And perhaps afterward, there is a small place in Asunción we might visit for dinner. It is a short drive, after all. I would enjoy the opportunity to visit with your mother once again.”
“We’ll have to see,” Estelle said. “My mother tires easily. Even the short drive from here to Tres Santos is going to be a major undertaking for her.”
“I understand completely. I must confess, I had—what do you call them—ulterior motives. We are currently investigating a nasty little incident at Asunción. I was going to lay it out for you, so to speak…to see what you have to say.”
“I’d be interested,” Estelle said, her pulse quickening.
“Then I think it will be a profitable afternoon,” Naranjo said. “I will plan to arrive at your mother’s house at two. Is that settled?”
“Thank you, sir. You know where it is?”
“Indeed I do. Until then.”
