Steven Havill: Scavengers

“That’s right,” Collins said, a light suddenly dawning. “There aren’t any tracks out here from the gravel pit, are there?”

Estelle Reyes-Guzman glanced at her watch, ignoring Collins’ revelation. “Jackie, I’m going to run home for a few minutes, and then go down to the airport. I’d like to talk to the pilot before she flies off into the sunset.”

“Huh,” Alan Perrone said suddenly, and he reached out toward Estelle as if to hold her in place. “No, forget it,” he said with a shake of his head. “Let me talk to you later, all right? We’ll do a preliminary and see what it turns up.” He nodded at the two EMTs. “You can go ahead and pack him up,” he said. “I’ve seen all I’m going to be able to until we take him apart.”

“I keep thinking that we’re missing something,” Jackie said.

“You are,” Perrone agreed. “A whole lot of somethings. Find the weapon that bashed in his face. That’s a good place to start.” The physician grinned without much humor. “And the one that blew his skull to pieces. And while you’re at it, a current driver’s license would be nice.”

Estelle shouldered her camera bag. “You’ll give me a call?” she said to Jackie, and the deputy nodded.

“I wanted to look around a bit more,” Taber said. “Then I’ll be in.”

“Look for a fist-sized chunk of rock with blood and tooth fragments,” Perrone said holding his hand as if cradling the weapon. “It takes more than one blow to cause that kind of skull damage. You’re talking about repeated blows to the face. Half a dozen or more.” He nodded at Estelle. “I’ll walk back with you.”

“You think there’s a chance he was killed somewhere else and dumped?” Collins asked. “What about the tracks, then?”

Perrone shrugged. “I’m glad all I have to do is tell you what killed him.” He reached out and patted Deputy Collins on the arm. “Have at it.”

Irma Sedillos, known simply as Nana to little Carlos and his five-year-old brother Francisco, had arrived at the Guzmans’ at seven that Sunday morning, ready to cope. It was the third day of the siege. Under normal conditions, the usual frenetic schedule imposed on the household would have been sufficient challenge, with a surgeon father, an undersheriff mother, and an elderly grandmother whose English was fluent on those rare occasions when she chose to stray from her native tongue.

With illness settling like a gloomy blanket on the Guzman clan, Irma set out to brighten the house on Twelfth Street in Posadas, beginning in the kitchen, where she excelled. Irma was not the least concerned that she might catch one of the rampant flu bugs herself. If she thought of the possibility at all, it would be dismissed with a sunny shrug. She saw herself simply as a sixth member of the Guzman clan.

When the family had moved to Minnesota the previous spring, Irma had been encouraged to go along-but hadn’t. For months after the family left Posadas, she had felt that some portion of her insides had been torn away. In early December, just in time for the Christmas holidays, the Guzmans had moved back to New Mexico. Francis and Alan Perrone began plans for a new clinic, and newly-elected Sheriff Robert Torrez named Estelle as undersheriff of the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department. Irma glowed. Things were as they should be. A little illness went with the turf.

“Carlos is messy,” Francisco announced loudly when Estelle returned home shortly before ten that morning. “ Corriendo de las dos puntas. ”

“But he’s asleep now, so be quiet, niño ,” Irma called from the kitchen.

After being awake most of the night “running from both ends,” as his older brother had been pleased to announce, three-year-old Carlos Guzman had finally fallen into a fitful sleep, sprawled across his bed like a little, fragrant beanbag-a sorry little sacito , as Irma Sedillos was fond of saying. Estelle touched his forehead lightly and then rearranged the feather-light blanket to cover the back of the little boy’s neck.

In her own bedroom down the hall, the boy’s favorite companion in conversation, Estelle’s frail, tiny eighty-two-year-old mother, had also spent a long night, racked by aching joints and a dry, painful cough. She too now slept, curled on her side.

Dr. Francis Guzman appeared in the kitchen door, a cup of coffee in hand. He had decided years before that blue hospital scrubs were the ideal Sunday morning lounge-around-the-house garments. He regarded Estelle over the top of the cup as she gently closed her mother’s bedroom door.

“How did it go?” he said.

“Bizarre,” Estelle replied. “Adult male, no ID, no nada . Misadventure out in the middle of nowhere.” She shrugged. “ Mamá seems a little more at ease.”

Francis nodded. “She finally let me give her something to calm things down so she could get some sleep. I told her it was either that or the hospital where none of the nurses would listen to her.” He extended the cup toward her. “Something hot?”

Estelle sighed. “When I come back, maybe. I need to stop out at the airport for a little bit.”

“Someone else can’t do that?”

Estelle reached up and traced two fingers down her husband’s cheek, across the silky hair of his beard. The dark circles under his own eyes were pronounced, the reward for working with the designing architects for the new clinic, his own practice, and the demands of being on the lowest rung of the hospital’s primitive on-call system. “It’ll just be for a few minutes. If Mamá is resting, I don’t want to disturb her. I really need to talk to the young lady who first spotted the body. Then I’ll let Jackie take it from there. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

Her eldest son bolted into the kitchen and latched onto his father’s hand.

“I’m going for a hike,” Francisco announced. His father refused to budge away from his comfortable leaning spot against the kitchen doorjamb.

“You’re going to eat some breakfast before you do anything,” Irma said over her shoulder. “Come help me.”

“Big help,” his father said, and thumped Francisco gently on top of the head with a closed fist. “And by the way,” he said, turning back to Estelle, “Bob Torrez called a little while ago from Virginia. I told him that as far as I knew, things were going fine, and that you were out in the boonies, collecting bones. He’d like you to call him later this evening when you get the chance. The number’s by the phone.”

Estelle knew that Sheriff Robert Torrez had been loath to spend two weeks in Virginia at the FBI’s seminar for newly elected county sheriffs. Torrez considered anything east of the Pecos River to be one big housing development full of people with strange accents. His sojourn in Virginia hadn’t coincided with any of that state’s big game seasons, either-a screwup that he contended the Federal Bureau of Investigation could have avoided if they’d used half a brain when putting their seminar calendar together.

Estelle glanced at her watch. “I’ll be back by lunch,” she said. “Irma, do you need anything?”

“No, ma’am,” Irma said. “Did you remember to tell Padrino not to come for lunch today?”

Estelle groaned. “No. I didn’t. And that’s all he needs, to be exposed to this crew.” She smiled ruefully at her husband. “Would you give him a call, when you get a minute?”

“Sure.” Dr. Guzman scooped up Francisco, holding him upside down. “We’ll walk you out to the car.” He carried the boy outside, draped over one arm like a sack of potatoes. The wind had stopped, and the high February sun had pushed the temperature above sixty. Despite Irma’s ministrations inside, Estelle welcomed the clean, fresh winter air with a comfortable sigh. She settled behind the wheel and pulled the door of the Expedition closed.