Steven Havill - Double Prey

“You all right?”

“Sure, I’m fine.” She wasn’t fine, and that there was nothing she could do to make things right just added to it. She paused and took a deep breath, surveying the open country. “Freddy was ten when they moved into their house on Twelfth,” she said. “Butch was six.” She let it go at that, knowing that Padrino understood her anguish perfectly.

“Well, this is what he did,” Gastner said. He turned and pointed back up the road, toward the rise that had catapulted the ATV to disaster. Just ahead of where they stood, a wide and deep quagmire, more than just a routine pothole, took up most of what had been the two-track. Fresh tracks had been cut on the side farthest from the arroyo edge. The sink collected runoff and became a rutted and slimy trap in the wet, and when dry, as it was now, presented a deep, jarring axle breaker.

Gastner turned and swept his arm in an arc. “He had a good run through here-flat and straight. He takes the route around it on the left going in, and retraces his route coming out. If he’d been going slower, he might have bounced right through the middle of it just for the hell of it, but not rippin’ the way he was.” Gastner walked across to the arroyo lip. “If he tries to skirt this sink on this side, he’s running too damn close to the edge. Now…” and he interrupted himself and walked across the sink, standing perpendicular to the road and facing Estelle and the arroyo. He held up both arms, pointing in each direction. “Look how narrow that two-track is when it crests that rise, sweetheart. All the rocks and brush, there isn’t much room. And there sure as hell isn’t any room for error. Freddy comes through here, and he’s intending to jump the hill. I mean, he came in that way, didn’t he?” He swept his arms again in an arc. “He comes through here, but he doesn’t want to end up in those rocks and trees there, on the uphill side of the trail, so after this pothole, he’s got to swing back pretty hard.”

“Show me the rock,” Estelle said.

“Sure enough.” She followed Gastner as he plodded up the slight grade. The ATV’s tracks were clear. Both coming and going, Freddy Romero had chosen the same route over this particular rise. At the crest of the hill, there were no ATV tracks. He’d felt comfortable enough that he’d used the little hill as a ramp, both coming and going.

“I think that he just overcooked it,” Gastner said. “He comes up here and ramps off, maybe a little crosswise after skidding around that sinkhole. If he does that, if he’s not absolutely goddamn straight, then he’s heading toward the left side of the trail. And pow. Right there.”

Two dozen feet from the crest of the rise, just after the ATV had slammed down, a shower of gravel and broken rock marked the first contact. A sharp-edged limestone rock the size of a wide-screen television had been dislodged from the ridge. Gastner bent over and pointed at the bright aluminum traces, and the black scuff of rubber. “Pow,” he said again. “My guess is that with this catching the left front tire, he just loses it.” He straightened up. “I mean, what’s he got here between the trail and the arroyo?”

“Maybe four feet.”

“Exactly. And with an exploded tire, the rig doesn’t turn like it should. He doesn’t even have the time to grab the brakes.”

“So tell me something,” Estelle said. “Why was he over here? Why on Bender’s Canyon Trail?”

“Because.” Gastner shrugged.

“Just because?”

“That’s what Freddy Romero does,” he said. “Or did.”

“Why park on the Borracho Springs road, and then ride all the way over here?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

“He found the cat skeleton earlier this week, in a cave up in the mountains somewhere. I’d think he’d be attracted back there. Maybe that’s what he planned originally when he parked where he did. For some reason, he changed his mind.”

“That’s not four-wheeler country,” Gastner observed. “Not that I spend a lot of time trying to haul my fat carcass up that trail, but from what I remember, the only way you’d get a mountain bike up there, let alone a four-wheeler, would be to hang it from your shoulder while you hike.”

“Bobby will be here before long,” Estelle said. “It’ll be interesting to hear his take on all this.”

“Anyway, it was Freddy, remember,” Gastner said. “He drives out somewhere and parks, off-loads the damn ATV, and goes raring and tearing around the countryside. Who knows where or why.”

Estelle lifted the camera and peered through its tiny viewfinder at the trail that swept down off the little rise to cross the dry mud flat. “Nothing will show,” she said to herself.

“What’s to show?”

“Well, there isn’t a lot of traffic on Bender’s Canyon Trail. A rancher now and then.”

“You’d be surprised. Herb Torrance gets this way regularly and Miles Waddell, off and on. Maybe Gus Prescott, although why I wouldn’t know. His property is to the east of here. Then there’s the hunters, the bird watchers, and people who just don’t know where the hell they are…”

“Who turned around back at the homestead?”

“Can’t tell you. And those turn-around tracks could be days old. Even weeks. We haven’t had any rain now in at least that long.”

“Which is longer?” she asked. “To turn around and go back out to 14 that way, or continue on the trail, loop around this mesa, and come out on the State 17 farther north?”

“Six of one. If I remember right, the north end of the trail, where it loops around the backside of the mesa behind Waddell’s ranch, is actually in more open country. It’d be smoother, I’d think. Except in rainy weather, maybe.”

“Huh.” Estelle shook her head in frustration. “What puzzles me is why Freddy didn’t just drive his pickup down the state highway for another two miles to the intersection with County 14, and park there to off-load his four-wheeler. If he’d done that, we probably would have run into each other. Park there, then go exploring. Why park at Borracho, two miles in from the highway, then have to drive the ATV along the highway to the saloon, then…on and on, Padrino . I just don’t understand what he was doing.”

“For one thing, he probably caught sight of the cop car, and figured he’d get a ticket for driving on the highway. So off he scoots, where you couldn’t follow even if you wanted to. Other than that, I don’t have any idea. When you crack the teenage mind, a Nobel is yours, sweetheart.”

“He never moved,” Dr. Alan Perrone said. The medical examiner had taken his time at the site, as if he had nowhere else to be than this desolate arroyo bottom, now starting to shimmer in the harsh sun. He glanced up at Linda Real. Her cameras had been busy. “You have what you need so far?”

“Sure do.”

“Let’s roll him over then.” He looked up at Estelle, at the same time pointing at Freddy Romero’s neck just under the ear. “If he was wearing the helmet, it wasn’t buckled on,” he said. He made a flipping motion with his hand, and Estelle helped him turn the body over. “I don’t think we’re going to have any surprises, but you never know.” Understanding the need for comprehensive documentation, Perrone worked patiently with Linda at each stage of the process, as if he were her assistant, never rushing, never demanding.

The ATV framework had smashed into the back of Freddy’s head. Had he been wearing the helmet, the wreckage would have caught him below its margin with the full weight of the four-wheeler behind the blow. Fancy paint job or not, the helmet would have done Freddy little good.