Steven Havill - Scavengers

“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.”

Estelle hung up the phone, turned, and took two steps toward the living room. She could hear the two boys in earnest conversation with their grandmother, and then the shrill ringing of the telephone stopped her in her tracks. Even as she lifted the receiver out of the cradle, she could hear the radio traffic in the background.

According to the story that Paulita Saenz recounted, she never would have looked south that morning had the sink in the women’s bathroom not clogged. Paulita had run enough water to soak a sponge, and then saw the ugly puddle of soap scum, hair, and who knows what else as the sink refused to drain.

Unscrewing the big plastic lock rings of the sink trap was a simple job requiring no special tools and no particular knowledge of sophisticated plumbing. Paulita knew the trap, long neglected, was choked. With a sigh, she slid a pan under the trap, grunted loose the lock rings above and below the trap, and grimaced at the smell of the trapped, stagnant water as it cascaded into the pan. Long tendrils of hair nearly held the plumbing together, but eventually, Paulita managed to pull out the offending plug, her face screwed up in a puckered eeewww of disgust. She dug at the curtains of residue that hung from the now-exposed sink drain stub and wiped the elbow joints clean.

Reassembly took seconds, and she had closed her eyes and grunted with a dry rag wrapped around the lock rings, snugging them so they wouldn’t leak. With a sigh, she had pushed herself up off the floor, holding a pan containing a quart of bluish-brown water and a large, ugly, fragrant glob of caca asquerosa . The logical place to dispose of the cargo was out the side door that led to the courtyard between house and saloon.

From there, Paulita turned right, unlatching the garden gate. As the rough, weathered board gate swung open, Paulita was treated to a view south, the early morning sun lancing across the desert. She paused, bowl of watery gunk in hand, riveted by what she saw. Then she dropped the bowl, ran inside and called the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department.

***

Deputy Jackie Taber, off-duty when dispatch went on the air to locate an officer, had been methodically scouring the prairie around the grave site north of Maria, hoping to find a deformed bullet or another shell casing that might have hidden under a chamisa or cholla-something that had been missed in earlier searches. Sgt. Howard Bishop had just turned into the airport parking lot northwest of Posadas. Taber took the call, her Bronco airborne as often as not as she hurtled down the power line access road. She beat the undersheriff to the taberna by eight minutes.

“Stay here,” Estelle Reyes-Guzman said, and Paulita Saenz stepped onto the flagstones of her patio and stood with her arms crossed, hugging herself like a small child waiting for a bus. Estelle followed Jackie Taber’s boot prints where the deputy had walked the hundred yards from the back of the Taberna Azul to the border fence, four strands of barbed wire that had seen better days. Stepping directly on the deputy’s prints, Estelle approached until she stood immediately behind Taber.

“No sign of anything?”

“Nothing,” Jackie said, and lowered the binoculars. She offered them to Estelle, who shook her head. “This is a good bet where they crossed,” she added. “Lots of boot prints, and you can see the scuffing in the dirt where they climbed over…or through.”

The border security separating New Mexico and Texas from old Mexico ran the gamut from nothing-where the Rio Grande provided a natural barrier of sorts-to impressive chain link with barbed wire topping in urban centers. Out in the country, however, where tourists didn’t need to be reminded which part of the desert belonged to whom, an aging barbed wire fence frequently served the purpose. At one time, a narrow dirt lane had been bladed along the border fence from one side of New Mexico to the other, but the lane served little purpose: no one drove east-west. It was north-south that interested most folks.

At formal ports of entry, the fence was bolstered by imposing block houses that protected American and Mexican customs officials from sunstroke. At the smaller crossings, like Columbus to Palomas or Regál to Tres Santos, traffic inched through a single lane, lined up for inspection.

The tiny village of Maria had never been lucky enough to warrant a crossing of its own. For one thing, the state highway that passed through Maria headed out of the village east toward Las Cruces, roughly paralleling the border rather than crossing it. In the other direction, State 61 veered north to Posadas.

Columbus, New Mexico, was matched on the Mexican side by Palomas, and westward, at the other end of the rumpled San Cristóbals, folks in Regál could see the lights of Tres Santos if they stood on the hill behind the water tank. Maria had no such sister village across the border.