Steven Havill - Prolonged Exposure

She nodded. “It’s been a long night.”

“How’s your mother?”

“She’s a worse patient than you ever thought of being, sir,” Estelle said. Estelle and I had known each other for more than a decade, and I could count on one hand the times that she had called me anything but “sir.” Her physician husband had been able to break the habit now and then, and what it was that their two boys screeched as a name for me, I had no idea most of the time.

“She’s here now, though? In Posadas?”

“Against her will.”

“I can imagine that. What happened, exactly?”

Estelle took a deep breath and shook her head. “She went outside to toss a pan of water into the garden. She thinks she just planted a foot crooked when she went down that little step behind the kitchen. She busted her hip into a million pieces. Francis has her lined up for hip-replacement surgery on Monday morning.”

I grimaced. “They’re going to do it here?”

Estelle nodded. “Francis thinks it will go just fine. She’s really in pretty good health, all things considered.”

“And then afterward?”

Estelle ducked her head and gazed off in the general direction of the green chili that Camille was slicing on the counter. “I don’t know, sir. We’ll have to take it one step at a time.”

I grunted and plugged in the coffeemaker. To my surprise, Camille didn’t squawk. Instead, she pointed at the cupboard with her knife. “Coffee’s in there,” she said. “Toward the back.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” I muttered, and she glanced at me quizzically. “Tomorrow, no coffee. Maybe,” I said. “One step at a time.”

And in a few minutes, I felt better than I had in weeks. The green chili in the omelette was real, even if the eggs weren’t. And the coffee even made the battalion of pills easier to swallow. I popped the last capsule and frowned at Estelle. “I need to ask your husband how many of these things are really necessary,” I said. I poured a final cup of coffee, set the pot back on the machine, and added, “So tell me what’s going on up on the mountain.”

“You saw Sheriff Holman last night.” It wasn’t a question, and I just nodded. “He’s pretty sure we’re doing everything that can be done.”

“But you’re not so sure,” I said. “Martin says you’re being your Oriental self again.”

Estelle smiled at the departmental joke. “Is there any chance you can come up sometime this morning?”

“Sure. What are you thinking?”

Estelle frowned, gazing down into the coffee. She cradled the cup in both hands. “I don’t think he’s up there, sir.”

“Who, the youngster?” She nodded and fixed me with those bottomless black eyes of hers. “What makes you think that?” I asked.

She took a deep breath and held up her hands, tapping one index finger against the other. “For one thing, the search hasn’t turned up anything except rumors. That happens when there aren’t any traces, anything to provide a lead. Not even a scent for the dogs.”

“What rumors?” Camille asked.

“For instance, yesterday someone said that they’d found a child’s shoe print about two miles farther down the road.”

“Two miles? We’re talking about a three-year-old, aren’t we?” I said.

Estelle nodded. “When that report came in, a whole sea of people flocked down that way. It wasn’t a child’s print at all. In fact, Bob Torrez said that the print was made by a woman’s shoe, about size five or five and a half.”

“It could have been someone on the search team, stopping for a break,” I said, “or a hundred other possibilities.”

“Sure. What is true is that the print was not that of a child-at least not this particular child. And then things begin to get even more bizarre. About two o’clock yesterday afternoon, just before I came down, we got a call that someone had seen the child riding in a white Ford van, heading down the mountain toward town.”

“And let me guess,” Camille said. “A white van with out-of-state plates on it.”

I looked at her in surprise, and she shrugged. “It’s always got to have out-of-state plates,” she said. “If you watch all the crappy television docudramas, that’s a staple. What good does it do if the van belongs to weird Uncle Louis down the street? That’s too easily traced.”

Estelle smiled, and that expression lifted half a ton of worry from her pretty olive-skinned face. Except for the aristocratic aquiline nose and narrow jaw, she might have been a younger sister to Camille. “No one actually saw a van. We checked on the rumor, and it was just that. And sir, that’s what I mean. All these shapeless rumors,” and she rocked her hands back and forth, “the sort of things that surface when the search is getting desperate and there just isn’t a break of any kind.”

“And you still haven’t said why you think he isn’t up there.”

“He’s too little, sir. I listen to all the theories-”

“Everyone’s got one of those, or two.”

“Yes, sir. But they talk about a three-year-old as if he’s going to trek off across rugged country, maybe covering miles and miles, sleeping under logs, and all that sort of nonsense.”

“Stranger things have happened, Estelle.”

“Not to three-year-olds, sir. Now, an older child would walk, maybe even run. But a three-year-old? His legs are what, about this long?” She held her hands, one above the other, about two feet apart. “At most? That means a tiny little stride, if you can say that a three-year-old strides at all. And he’s got no balance, not like an older child. He just can’t manage rough terrain at any speed.”

“How did he get separated from the camp in the first place?” Camille asked. “Three-year-olds don’t go off on solo strolls at night.”

“His mother says that he was playing beside the camp trailer. He was digging in the dirt with a stick, perfectly content, just on the edge of the light from the campfire. She said she and her boyfriend had been fussing with the fire, trying to arrange some baking potatoes in the coals. Then her boyfriend went into the camper to get his guitar. The mother says that it was getting late, and she wanted little Cody by the fire, sitting in her lap while her boyfriend sang.”

“And she looked around and the child was gone,” I said.

Estelle nodded.

“Just like that.”

She nodded again.

“He never cried out?” Camille said. “A child’s voice would carry at night like a ringing telephone.”

“It was blustery, and the campfire was roaring,” I said. “And somebody was tuning a guitar.”

“No,” Camille said, and shook her head.

“No what?”

“Just no,” she repeated. “From the time she last noticed the kid playing in the dirt to the time she realized he wasn’t there, how many minutes could it have been? Two, three? Maybe ten at the most if mommy was really numb? I mean, isn’t that a rule of three-year-old ownership, that you have to pay attention every second?”

“Sure enough,” I said, “So the choices are limited. Either the tyke wandered a few yards and fell among the rocks or he wandered where the walking was easiest for his tiny legs, on the road. How far could he go?”

“Not could . It’s how far he would go, Dad. Remember, it was dark. How many brave three-year-olds do you know?”

I grinned, then reached over and patted Estelle on the forearm, thinking of her oldest, my godson. “One,” I said. “The kid would walk from here to Cleveland if there was a reason.”

“Maybe not,” Estelle said. “Francis is beginning to think that there are monsters in the dark now.” I found it hard to imagine Francis Guzman, Jr., three years old, as darkly handsome and intelligent as both his parents, afraid of anything.