Steven Havill - Double Prey

The pickup was unlocked, not surprising since the right-hand wing window was held together by duct tape and didn’t lend itself to security. The driver’s door creaked on bent hinges as Estelle opened it. The cab smelled of motor oil, tobacco smoke, and beer. A small cooler rested on the floor on the passenger side, and Estelle reached across and tipped open the top, revealing a blue freezer pack and two cans of Corona. The cans and freezer pack were cool to the touch.

A cell phone in its nylon holster lay on the seat. Estelle slipped it out and touched the key pad. The small screen came alive promptly, then dissolved into a jumble.

“That’s why didn’t he take it along,” she mused aloud. Gastner moseyed up beside her and leaned on the truck’s door.

“So, where did he go? If that was Freddy that you saw yesterday…” He waved a hand off toward the north. “If that was him, he parked here , and then drove the ATV way the hell and gone over there . I gotta wonder why he did that.” He pushed himself away from the truck and walked a few feet on Forest Road 122. “And sure as hell he didn’t drive up this way.”

“Let’s hope his luck is better than his brother’s.” She knew there were dozens of ways to come to grief on an ATV-a moment’s inattention, a simple misjudgment, or a mechanical break-down miles from the nearest highway or ranch. With his cell phone left behind, Freddy Romero’s bad luck had only multiplied.

“Let’s see what comes of all this.” Back in the Expedition, she dialed dispatch and waited for half a dozen rings before Gayle Torrez answered.

“Posadas County Sheriff’s Department, Torrez.”

“Gayle, Bill Gastner and I are down at Borracho Springs. We’ve found Freddy Romero’s truck parked down here. It appears he unloaded his four-wheeler and took off somewhere. I don’t think he has his cell phone with him. Would you contact Mr. or Mrs. Romero up in Albuquerque and tell them we’ll be in touch as soon as we have some answers?”

“No Freddy though?”

“No Freddy. At least not yet. He left a pretty clear set of tracks, so we’re going to follow up on that. Has Bobby come in the office yet?”

“In and then out again. He’s back in Cruces, but says he’ll be home this afternoon.”

“Okay.” Estelle mentally riffled through the list of available staff. The county was still hers, and if there was a call in the village of Posadas, she was half an hour away.

“Jackie is having coffee with David Miller,” Gayle said. Estelle had noticed with some amusement that of late Deputy Jackie Taber, denizen of the graveyard shift, often managed to find a moment to converse with the young state policeman when their paths crossed-perhaps one or both of them helped managed their activities so that paths did cross. Estelle heard a voice in the background. “She says she’ll cover for you until you’re clear,” Gayle added.

“Good enough. And if Freddy has already contacted his parents, let me know.” She switched off and glanced at Gastner. “You want a job?”

The former sheriff laughed. “Not even a remote chance, sweetheart. Thirty years is long enough. Now I’m embarking on an in-depth study of life on the sidelines.” He shifted in his seat. “You’ll remember that I came along merely on the promise of some breakfast…which we still have ignored.”

“Have an MRE, sir.”

“You know, the brownies in those things are really pretty good. And the crackers and cheese aren’t bad. So don’t tempt me.”

They followed the ATV’s tracks back to the highway, and then southwest along State 56. A mile beyond, the saloon’s parking lot was heavily graveled, but the ATV’s tracks marked the grass perimeter, then actually passing close to the east wall of the building. Behind the saloon and the owner’s modest mobile home, behind a scattering of defunct cars and trucks some of which had slipped down into the arroyo, a two-track cut sharply down the bank. A brown pond of water marked one of the flats in the arroyo bottom, and tracks crisscrossed the gravel and sand.

“We can assume he went this way,” Gastner said. “Maybe.”

“I saw him turn into the saloon parking lot, and then disappear behind the building.” She urged the Expedition into four-wheel drive and turned into the arroyo. The decent was so steep that the rear bumper gouged gravel at the bottom. A ledge of rock half-way up the other side bucked the Expedition, and it kicked sand and gravel, with nothing but a view of the sky as they reared up and out on the far side.

“I haven’t been here in a long time.” Gastner lowered his window. “It’s going to get hot today.” The two-track meandered across the prairie, already beginning to shimmer in the heat. The lane headed toward the low mesas to the north. For the first half mile, the going was reasonably smooth, the dried vegetation between the tracks raking the underside of the SUV, the fragrance powerful. Sand and prairie scrub gave way to a vast, gentle dome of gravel and rocks where the tracks of the ATV vanished.

“Stop a second,” Gastner said at one point. He twisted in his seat and looked eastward, then reached across for the binoculars that rested in the center console. “It’d be a hell of a walk, no matter which way he went. Herb Torrance’s place is way the hell off to the west, and Prescotts’ is a long hike back to the east, off behind those little hills, there.” He searched the prairie for a moment and then shrugged. “The only thing that makes sense to me is that Freddy was headed to where this trail crosses Bender’s Canyon.”

“Maybe so.” She shut off the engine and they sat in silence, letting the breeze waft through the vehicle. In the distance, two ravens made sure everyone knew there were intruders.

“You don’t have a whole lot of choices,” Gastner said. “From here you can cut down this grade and end up T-boning into Bender’s Canyon Trail. Then you hang a left, and head back toward the county road. Or you can go right along the trail and go northeast, around the backside of Herb Torrance’s spread. You’ll swing around to the county road again…eventually…or continue on north to the state highway.” He patted the door sill as if marking time. “Or, we could get out and walk for a bit and make like trackers, trying to pick up the ATV’s footprint.” He squinted up at the blank blue of the sky.

Estelle popped her door, and Gastner grimaced. “That’s what I thought.”

“If Freddy had come home last night, I wouldn’t be concerned,” the undersheriff said. “But I’d hate to think that he might be lying out here somewhere with a broken leg…or worse. That would have made for a long, long night.”

Gastner touched his cap back and wiped his forehead. “No danger of hypothermia, though. You ought to have Bergin up flying if you want to search this country. You could hide a tank out here, you know.”

“That’s next, Padrino . ”

For less than five minutes, the two searched the balding top of the rise. The most logical route-straight ahead-turned results. The ATV’s knobbed tracks showed up on the north side of the slope, cutting across the rough terrain to join the two-track that came in from the west.

Estelle jogged back to the Expedition, and after thumping and bumping down off the slope, the relative smooth going on the two packed tracks of Bender’s Canyon Trail felt like a paved highway. The trail crossed the canyon bottom twice before settling down on the north side of the arroyo. The tracks were easy to follow where they cut into the softer ground. For another mile, the two-track wound almost due east, then swung wide around the buttress of a ragged mesa. Car-sized boulders had peeled off the mesa rim above them, and at one point the trail squeezed between a jumble of rocks that towered a dozen feet above the SUV’s roof.