Steven Havill - Prolonged Exposure

“So what are the other choices?”

Estelle rested her head in her hands. “I don’t know.”

“Do you think someone picked him up?”

“I’d hate to think that, but it’s a possibility. And I guess that’s why I wanted you to go with me this morning. I’ve got some things I want to show you.”

“Sure,” I said again. “I don’t know what I can tell you that your instincts haven’t already covered.”

“You never know,” Estelle said. She frowned. “Do you mind if Francis goes with us?”

“If he can get away from the hospital, of course not.”

Estelle smiled again. “No. I mean the kid .” She used the nickname I’d adopted when the child was born. As Francis junior’s padrino , I figured I was entitled. It was a name that was easy to remember.

“That country’s no place for a child,” I said, “especially in this weather.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Estelle murmured. She looked at Camille. “Can I talk you into going up with us?”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” my daughter said.

The sunshine that morning had been a false promise, a tantalizing little blast of morning light squeezed through a thin rent in the clouds just above the horizon. The rest of the sky was dull lead, with the bottoms of the clouds torn and fragmented by winds aloft. It was going to be a cold, miserable day, the kind that duck hunters love, where the targets show up nice and black against the uniform background of the sky, with no sunshine in the shooters’ eyes.

We took my Blazer so that Estelle could use a child’s seat for Francis. Camille cheerfully sat in back with the kid, no doubt thankful that she didn’t have to stare out through a cop car’s backseat security grill.

Radio traffic was intense by Posadas County standards, and dispatcher Gayle Sedillos was handling the various agencies effortlessly. Search and Rescue operations were generally a mess anyway, since no one except the National Guard got enough practice, and everyone wanted to be lead dog. In this particular SAR episode, Sheriff Martin Holman was the commander-his first stab at that kind of interagency organization.

Just before the landfill north of town, Estelle turned west on State Highway 78. A mile farther and the chain-link fence along the airport property grew out of the red sandstone. Enough junk plastered itself to the fencing that it could be mistaken for the landfill.

A Huey chopper in sober New Mexico National Guard colors waited at the end of the runway. The Huey was probably older than the kid who was flying it, but the young pilot was having a good time despite the seriousness of his mission. He held the aging helicopter in a hover a foot off the ground, rock-steady, its wide blades thumping the air so hard, it shook the Blazer.

A second Huey whumped out from the apron in front of one of the hangars, nose slightly down as it followed the taxiway toward its waiting buddy.

“The heavy guns,” I said, pointing. Just in front of the hangar, a third chopper crouched, its blades just beginning to spool into motion. A couple of generations separated it from the two fat old Hueys. I didn’t recognize the model, but it had enough gear hanging off and poking out to make it as menacing as anything out of Hollywood.

“Lookit,” a small voice said, and I turned, to see young Francis straining against his belts, eyes huge as he stared at the show of airpower. I glanced over at Estelle and wondered if she was thinking the same thing. If I were three years old, lost and scared, and that thing arrived over the trees, blowing down a rain of dead leaves, sticks, nuts, even squirrels, I sure as hell would dig a hole and stick my head in, hoping that such a nasty monster would go away.

With the airport safely tucked behind us, we had a thousand yards of peace and quiet. And then Estelle said, “Here comes Robert.” She was looking in the rearview mirror, and even as I twisted in my seat, one of the Posadas County patrol cars shot past us so fast, I could feel its wake.

I recognized the hulk of Sgt. Robert Torrez’s shoulders, and our radio barked twice as he keyed the mike.

“Three oh eight,” the small voice behind me said soberly.

“How do you know that?” Camille asked. She was sitting skewed sideways, her hand resting lightly on the kid’s left shoulder. I wondered the same thing. The three-inch squad car numbers were displayed high on the back fenders. If Torrez had been parked and I’d had a pair of binoculars, I could have read them, too.

“’Cause,” Francis said. “ Ese es quien es .”

“In English, hijo ,” Estelle said, but in English or Spanish, that was all the kid wanted to say on the subject. “He knows the car numbers of all the deputies,” Estelle added. “Valuable information every three-year-old needs to know.”

In another two miles, we turned north on Forest Road 26, a road that was wide, smooth crushed stone for the first hundred yards and then narrowed to ruts, rocks, and dust for its climb up into Oria National Forest.

There wasn’t much forest in the Oria. Why the U.S. Forest Service wanted the acreage, I had never figured out. A sparse fringe of trees softened the jagged prow of Cat Mesa north of Posadas, mostly junipers and slow-growing pinons. There wasn’t a tree worth either managing or cutting for anything other than firewood within a hundred miles.

I didn’t know any rancher foolish enough to want that country for his livestock, although once in a while cattle did wander up into the jagged escarpments that locals called “the Pipes.”

With a commanding view of prairie, mesas, and dry riverbeds all the way south to Mexico, the rim of Cat Mesa was a favorite camping spot, despite the twenty miles of kidney abuse it took to get there. We took our share of that abuse as the road snaked up the face of the mesa, then turned sharply west, cutting through a meadow with several abandoned water-catchment structures. As we started to turn toward the edge of the mesa, we heard helicopters in the distance, and our radio came to life.

“Three ten, three oh eight.”

I reached forward with a grunt and pulled the mike off the dashboard clip. “Three ten.”

“ETA, three ten?”

I glanced at my watch. “About four minutes.”

“Three oh one requests that you meet him at the cattle guard.”

I acknowledged, and almost as soon as I slid the mike back in the clip, I caught a glimpse of white through the trees. Sheriff Holman was parked just off the road, next to the fence. Estelle idled the Blazer to a halt without pulling off the road, just over the steel rails of the cattle guard.

Holman stepped out of the county unit and leaned on my door. “Brought the whole family, eh?” he said, and nodded at Camille. “He’s got you running around already?”

My daughter shrugged good-naturedly and remained silent. He looked at Francis and then at Estelle. “I kinda wondered what was up when Torrez said you were bringing your son out here.”

Estelle nodded, but she didn’t offer an explanation. Holman raised an eyebrow. “Nasty weather and a nasty place,” he said, and I half-expected him to add, with an official rap of his class ring on the door, “Keep the kid in the car.”

If the good sheriff had spent the early hours of the morning in the nasty weather combing every cranny of the nasty place, he hadn’t collected any scuff marks. Holman was dressed in his mail-order outdoorsman’s clothes, with neat waffle-soled boots, expensive chino trousers, and a down vest over a conservative wool shirt.

“Any news?” I asked.

“Nah.” Holman wrinkled his face in disgust and pushed the brim of his Stetson up off the bridge of his nose. “The Guard has a high-tech unit in this morning that’s shooting with infrared. They claim that if there’s anything living on the hill, they’ll find it. Or anything that hasn’t been dead more than a day or so.”