Steven Havill - Prolonged Exposure

“Really. It would have been nice if they’d brought that up the first day.”

Holman glanced at me, skeptical. “I guess we have to get desperate first. And maybe the thing works like they say it does. One of the troopers was telling me that they can trace anything that’s been dead as much as a week, but I don’t believe that.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Technology is amazing. But I’d rather find him alive on the first day than be impressed that we could find him dead a week later.”

“It’s not for lack of trying, Bill.” Holman waved a hand in the general direction of the mesa edge. “Bernie Tafoya has his dogs up there, but they haven’t found anything. In fact, we’ve had dogs since day one, and not a trace.”

“How many troops are searching the area?”

“About two hundred, give or take. All the vehicles are parked just down the road a little bit, off in one of the pastures.” He leaned down and looked across at Estelle. “We’ve been pretty successful at keeping people out of the original campsite. It’s cordoned off, and I’ve got somebody from the auxiliary there all the time.”

“What about the youngster’s family?” Estelle asked.

“That’s what I wanted to talk with you about, off the air,” Holman said, and I nodded with satisfaction. During his first years as sheriff, he was so enamored with the damn radio that he forgot that half of the county was listening at any given time. Now he’d swung the other way, so tongue-tied that he preferred to relay messages in person whenever he got the chance.

“Both the mother and her boyfriend are up at the site. The mother-”

“That’s Tiffany Cole?” I asked.

Holman nodded. “And her boyfriend is a guy named Andy Browers. I don’t know him, but Torrez says he works for the electric company. And I gotta tell you, Ms. Cole is a basketcase. I don’t think she’s gotten any sleep in the last forty-eight hours. One of the nurses who works with Search and Rescue is trying to keep her quiet, so maybe she’ll drift off for a while.”

“And the boyfriend?”

“He’s about to drop himself, but he wants to be out there, looking under every rock. I put Deputy Pasquale with him. That should keep him busy.”

“What about the boy’s real father? Have we heard from him?”

Holman shook his head. “We know the father’s name is Paul Cole. He and the mother have been divorced for almost three years-since shortly after the child was born.”

“And where is he?”

“He’s a coach up in the northern part of the state somewhere. Bernalillo, I think. Or maybe southern Colorado. I’m not sure.” He ducked his head and looked across the truck at Estelle. “You checked him out, didn’t you?”

Estelle nodded. “He coaches in Bernalillo.”

“Have you talked with him?” I asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Holman said. “You think we should?”

I shrugged. “Depends on what happens in the next day or so, I guess. Someone should have called him in any case.”

“I guess I assumed Tiffany Cole would take care of that,” Holman said.

“She might,” I said. “When she can think straight.”

“Well, anyway, Sergeant Torrez said you were headed up this way, and that he thought you had Francisco with you.” He nodded toward the sober-faced Francis. Holman’s accent made the little boy’s name sound like someone from Cleveland running the California city’s name through his nose. “I wanted to intercept you before you wheeled in. If mama catches sight of him, she’s going to go ballistic.”

“Then do us a favor,” Estelle said. “Take Mrs. Cole down to the SAR headquarters and get her involved looking at maps or something. Or sleeping. We’ll be at the campsite for about fifteen minutes.”

“Doing what?” Holman frowned.

“I’m not quite sure yet,” Estelle replied.

“Not a return of Tom Sawyer , I hope,” the sheriff said, and when he saw the puzzled look on my face, he added, “Remember the missing marble? Wasn’t that what it was? A marble? A cat’s-eye?”

I looked askance at Holman, who pushed himself away from the Blazer’s door and straightened up. “See, now you should read some of the classics, Bill. Tom Sawyer and his buddies lose a marble, and Tom’s heard this old wives’ tale about how they should throw another one after it, saying, ‘Brother, go find your brother.’ The idea is that the second one will land next to the first, and you’ll find ’em both.”

“Did it work in the book?” I asked.

“I don’t remember,” Holman said.

“It took three tries,” Camille said quietly from the back.

“We’re not sending Francis out to look for another three-year-old, Sheriff,” I said, and he nodded. He still glanced at Estelle again, ever hopeful that she’d tell him what was on her mind.

Yellow marker tape was grotesquely attractive mingled with the deep browns and greens of evergreen trees, with the plastic snarled in the mistletoe-stunted limb wood and looping from trunk to trunk.

The camper had long since been moved, but one of the deputies had strung the plastic tape so that the area where their truck had been parked was included within the boundaries. If the auxiliary officer Holman had mentioned was on duty, he was invisible.

Estelle stopped the Blazer on the two-track road and leaned forward on the steering wheel, hands clasped together, frowning out through the windshield. If we didn’t turn and look out the rear window, where we could catch glimpses of half an acre of parked vehicles two hundred yards down the road, we could have imagined that we were alone on the mesa.

“What are you thinking?”

She grimaced. “Beautiful spot, isn’t it?”

“No,” I said. The ground was strewn with trash, from yellow plastic oil jugs to the ubiquitous beer cans to part of an old sofa that was nestled between two pinons. Several scrap pieces of lumber had been nailed between two other trees close by, forming a crude shelf. I could picture myself trying to shave while standing in front of that shelf on an icy morning, dipping my frosted razor into a blue enamel pan water was beginning to sport a frozen skim on the soapy surface. “I haven’t seen too many hunting camps that were things of beauty.”

Estelle climbed out and walked around to my side to unleash the kid from the backseat. I grunted my way out and leaned against the Blazer.

“Smells good, though,” I said. And it did. The juniper was rich, especially where the truck had brushed against the limbs. Through the trees, I could hear dogs and voices where the searchers combed the Pipes just to the north. Farther away, a dull thudding marked where one of the Huey helicopters worked the edge of the mesa.

“Do you need your jacket, Dad?” Camille asked.

I don’t know why that irritated me, but it did. She sounded like she was taking care of some old man who was convalescing and fragile, sure to come down with a fatal something if an errant breeze tickled him the wrong way. That was unfair, of course, since she’d been pretty good so far-a quiet traveling companion and not too pushy about my habits.

She held out the jacket, and I shook my head.

“This is where they were camped,” Estelle said. She had unbuckled the kid, and they stood hand in hand, Francis looking tiny and helpless framed by those ancient gnarled trees. Estelle walked forward a few steps and knelt by the ring of campfire stones. “Just far enough in from the rim that they had some protection from the wind.”

I walked up and stood beside Francis. He was exactly the right height for me to rest my hand on the top of his head without bending down. When I did that, he shifted his weight so that he leaned against my leg, and I grinned.