Steven Havill: Prolonged Exposure

“I assume so. She’s a wreck, so it’s hard to get any kind of answer out of her. Bob, you talked with her some.”

“Just those three,” Torrez said, his voice almost a whisper.

Camille looked puzzled. “It’s hard to imagine a three-year-old covering enough distance to get himself lost.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “But he doesn’t have to travel far, as the sad experience we had about ten years ago with the Culpepper boy proved to us. That youngster was eleven years old when he walked away from a hunting camp over by Regal, and they found his bones six months later. He’d curled up under a rock snag less than two hundred yards from the camp.” I shrugged. “Now he was eleven, and two hundred yards is close enough, on a still night, to hear normal voices.”

“It wasn’t a still night, though,” Martin said.

“No, it wasn’t. It was a goddamn blizzard, and the youngster apparently fell and fractured his skull. And it was so cold that he probably froze to death the first night, if the injury didn’t kill him first.” I put down my fork and pushed back. “And that’s that. If this little tyke is only three, and this is his second night out, with the possibility of freezing rain, then he’s had it. And a little body is just terribly easy to miss, even if you’ve got a thousand troops combing the place.”

Holman sighed.

“And that’s probably exactly what’s bothering Estelle, Sheriff,” I said. “Remember that her oldest boy just turned three himself. So this is up close and personal.”

“You’ll talk with her, though?”

“Sure.”

Holman put his palms on the table and pushed himself to his feet. “Did you happen to talk with old man Apodaca about the grave in your backyard, by the way?”

I grinned. “No. Camille and I walked out there this afternoon. Damnedest thing I ever saw. I keep thinking that I’m just going to tell the village to put an oxbow in their goddamn water line and leave her bones in peace. I’ll deed him the land, if that makes it easier.”

“Whatever you want to do,” Holman said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “Let me know what Estelle says,” he added.

“I’m sure Estelle will let you know herself,” I said, and Holman looked heavenward.

“Nice seeing you again, Camille,” he said. “How long are you staying?”

My daughter mumbled something noncommittal that I didn’t catch, and Holman said something about having dinner with him and his wife if we got the chance.

As they started to move away from the table, Sergeant Torrez said, in his usual half whisper, “I’ll be heading back up to the mesa after awhile, if you need anything.”

I lifted a hand in acknowledgment, realizing that Bob expected me to reply that I’d be joining him.

That evening after we returned from dinner, I made a mental note to call the Posadas village office the next day to see what their updated water-line aspirations were. With that information in hand, it would be time to stroll over and talk to old man Apodaca. I didn’t really relish that idea, but it had to be done.

I suspected that Florencio Apodaca was an intensely private man, and now he had to be intensely lonely, as well. I didn’t see a whole parking lot of relatives’ cars over at his place.

What I really wanted was to hear from Estelle Reyes-Guzman, but the evening wore on and that didn’t happen. I started to dial Erma Sedillos shortly before nine to see if Estelle and Francis had made it back from Mexico. I punched the first four digits and then thought better of it. Erma didn’t need an extra phone call jangling the two sleeping terrors awake.

I walked a circle around the kitchen, stopping in front of the pillbox with all its stupid little compartments. They reminded me of just how useless I was. I turned, walked to the kitchen door, and looked outside. Gusts of wind rocked the cottonwood limbs, and the sky was starless. The thermometer tacked to the window casing read thirty-four degrees. Raw, nasty, and cold.

If anyone needed help, it was the kid lost on the mountain, and I knew damn well that I was useless up there, where the added altitude would make me wheeze, and my bifocaled night vision wouldn’t be able to distinguish between a grove of trees and a battalion of National Guard troops.

That left the puzzling burglary of my home, and my mood brightened some when I discovered that when books were jammed back on the shelves, the living room looked about like it always had, minus the VCR-and that was a dust-catcher anyway. There was no telling what evidence Estelle had gathered when she and the other deputies combed the house after the break-in was discovered. I was anxious to talk with her about that, too, but I knew that a two-bit residential burglary was a long way down the list of priorities just then.

I held out until ten o’clock, then pushed myself out of my leather recliner with a grunt.

“Bed,” I said to Camille, who was curled up on the couch, engrossed in the prime minister’s life. She glanced up at me, her right index finger drifting down to mark her place in the book. “And I may take a run on down to the office later if I wake up.” My daughter didn’t look surprised.

Over the years, I’d come to first adapt to, and then to cherish my own special brand of insomnia. Posadas County was a wonderful, dark, quiet place at three in the morning, and there was no point in lying horizontal, staring at the ceiling, when I could be in a snug car, idling the back roads with the headlights and the radio off, windows down, listening to the quiet musings of the New Mexican prairie.

Camille knew my habits, and she didn’t argue, but I saw her eyes flick toward the kitchen. I knew exactly what was on her mind, and before she could say anything, I added, “And I took my pills, all sixty-five of them.”

I damn near set my alarm for 2:30 A.M., then decided against it, knowing my system wouldn’t fail me.

Because it was my habit to grab a short snooze whenever the spirit moved, whether it be ten in the morning or five in the afternoon, my bedroom was the absolute dark of a room with two-foot-thick adobe walls and one thoroughly shuttered, curtained window.

I had about three sighs’ worth of time to appreciate the comforting smell of the fresh pillowcase before I fell hard asleep. But in what seemed like just minutes, I awoke with a start, Don Juan de Onate’s coffee and green chili already beginning to work their magic. I got up to go to the bathroom and stopped short when I heard faint voices.

Puzzled, I opened the bedroom door and was hit smack in the face by a shaft of bright light that bounced down the hall from the living room. The sun was pounding the east side of the house, but I knew it couldn’t be morning, since there was no smell of coffee. I retreated into the bedroom to find some clothes.

I put on my glasses and saw that it was a quarter after eight.

“Christ,” I muttered, and quickly got dressed.

A couple of minutes later, I strode into the kitchen as if I’d been somewhere important. Camille was dressed and appeared to be fussing with things that looked like vegetables. The coffeemaker was silent, its one red eye blank, its pot empty.

“Good morning, sir,” Estelle Reyes-Guzman said. She was leaning against the counter by the sink. I stopped short and glared at her.

“When did you get here?”

She smiled, but fatigue lined her dark features. “Just a few minutes ago. Camille said the smell of a green-chili omelette would wake you up.” She pushed herself away from the counter, crossed the room, and hugged me so hard, I almost lost my balance.

“She’s right,” I said, and then stepped back, keeping my left hand on Estelle’s shoulder. “You look beat, sweetheart.”