Steven Havill - Double Prey

“His dad says he wasn’t home last night-at least he didn’t answer his phone. He didn’t call Casey, either. His truck wasn’t in the driveway last night or this morning.”

“Now the worried mom comes out,” Gastner laughed.

She pulled the gear shift back into drive and swung the car around, leaving the restaurant to re-enter the street eastbound.

“So near and yet so far,” Gastner said wistfully. “What now?”

The Expedition used by Deputy Dennis Collins during the day shift still smelled new, everything meticulously in place, the four water jugs that were stored in the back full and sealed. Collins had even added a large cardboard box full of military MRE’s to his stash. After her sedan, the big SUV felt like a behemoth.

They pulled out onto Bustos, and Estelle drove west. In less than two minutes, she turned onto Twelfth Street and then pulled in to the curb in front of her home. Two doors down, the Romero house was silent, the driveway empty.

“A moment,” she said. “Need anything?”

“Not a thing,” Gastner replied. “Give my greetings to your mother.”

Inside the house, Estelle found the three volumes she sought in the bookcase by the living room fireplace. Her mother, comfortable in her rocker, was working through an enormous volume of Spanish history, perhaps motivated by Irma’s interests. She tucked a crooked finger in her place as she watched her daughter.

“What’s Reubén done now?” she asked, eyes twinkling. The old man, her uncle, had died eight years before, independent and feisty to the last.

“ Padrino recalled that Reubén used to talk about seeing a jaguar, mamá . If he did, he would have mentioned it in his journal.”

“Not the same one you were talking about yesterday. That’s not possible.”

“No. But Padrino was wondering about the date.”

“Don’t lose those. The first one is all before the war anyway. You don’t need that one.”

“Mother, please,” Estelle laughed. “I won’t lose them. And neither will Padrino . ” She kissed the old woman on the forehead.

“Irma is coming over for lunch,” Teresa said. “What are we going to do without her?” She raised an admonishing finger. “But she needs to go, you know. She has her own life.”

“That’s right, mamá . ”

“But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Teresa Reyes smiled. “You be careful out there. That’s not your car you’re driving. What are you two up to?”

“I don’t think we know. I’ll stop by for lunch if I can.”

“You do that. Bring Padrino .”

Back out in the SUV, Estelle passed the three volumes to Gastner. Bound in red and black imitation leather with raised welts on the spines, the books were designed to look like old world masterworks. He opened the first volume.

“January 7, 1916 to…” and he gently fingered to the last page. “June 1, 1936.” He glanced across at Estelle. “He moved here from Mexico in 1940, so that’s in volume two.” The second volume opened with an entry for June 11, 1936. “This is where to start, then.” Estelle heard the excitement in Gastner’s voice.

“He wrote each evening, I remember,” Estelle said. “He always had to have just the right black pen.” Gastner leafed through the pages, shaking his head slowly. The handwriting was angular, bold, easy to read, so uniform that it almost appeared to have been printed.

“You’ve read through these?”

“Skimmed,” Estelle said. “That’s a project I keep promising myself.”

He chuckled. “No more promises for me. I’m going to indulge myself now.”

As she drove south on Grande toward the intersection with State 56, she could see that Gastner was already hooked.

“I knew you had these, but I never looked at ’em,” he murmured. “Not a single entry in English.”

“Reubén used to say that English was not the proper language for written records. He used to talk about all the records that exist in Spain for the various voyages back in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, about how he would like to go to Spain and spend a year, just reading.”

“Who wouldn’t.”

“I guess lots of people don’t share an enthusiasm for the past.”

“Unfathomable.” He closed the volume and selected another. “Might as well start at the end and work backward. His last entry was September 12, 1996. It’s hard to read.”

“By then, he was so arthritic that he could hardly hold a pen.” Estelle let the big SUV creep up to seventy on the state highway. She scanned the vast, tawny prairie, watching for the plume of dust that would mark passage of a truck or ATV.

“I knew Reubén as a stonemason,” Gastner mused. “You need a fireplace, Reubén was the one to call. A fancy fence, facing on a house, whatever. I don’t recall that he spent much time hiking and exploring. That about right?”

“He wasn’t a hiker,” Estelle said. “I lived with him for almost four years, and I don’t remember anything beyond a walk to the shed or to the truck. He was fascinated by the night sky, and once in a while we’d go outside with binoculars and see how many constellations we could name. The nearest night light was miles away, and the sky could be so black . And meteor showers-when those happened, it turned him into a little child again.”

“So…he didn’t spend a lot of time hiking in the mountains.”

“No. To him, the San Cristóbals were something to create the weather. He watched them, watched the clouds form, enjoyed the winds. A couple of times, Bobby tried to get him to go hunting with him. He’d just laugh.”

“Then the odds that he saw the big cat over in the Cristóbals are pretty slim.”

“I would think so.”

“Huh.”

Estelle glanced over at Gastner. He was frowning not at the diary on his lap, but into the distance, his heavy features set in that characteristic bull-dog expression that said he was shuffling puzzle pieces about, looking for a fit. After a moment, he returned his attention to the diaries, running a finger along each line of each entry, looking for the magic word that he would find floating in the sea of elegant Spanish.

Twenty minutes later, Estelle slowed and turned the SUV onto a rough two-track where Forest Service signs announced Borracho Springs Canyon . As soon as the truck hit the rough county road, Gastner closed the diary and put it on the floor with the other two volumes. The trail was a welter of tracks, including the periodic knobby prints of a four-wheeler.

In two miles, the road forked, joining Forest Road 122. Bullet-ripped signs announced both the Borracho Springs Campground and the hiking trail that wound up the mountain to join the ridge trail to Regál Pass…a twelve-mile hike through the most rugged country in Posadas County.

As they approached the fork, Estelle saw a flash of metal through the runty junipers and piñons. Just beyond the intersection, an older model Dodge pickup was parked off the two-track. Its tailgate was missing, but two oil-soaked planks with wooden traction cleats ramped into the bed. Tire prints ripped into the dry, dusty prairie behind the truck.

“Freddy’s.” Estelle felt a pang of apprehension. If the boy’s truck had been here all night, something was very wrong. For a moment, both she and Gastner sat in the Expedition, surveying the site.

“He isn’t going up there on an ATV.” Gastner nodded at the vast slab of mountain rising ahead of them. “The road only goes as far as the campground. So why unload here?”

“I don’t know.” Estelle slid out of the SUV, careful where she put her feet. It didn’t take an expert tracker to see where Freddy Romero had driven the ATV. He’d driven it out of the Dodge and then headed back toward the state highway. No tracks led back toward Borracho Springs.