Steven Havill: Twice Buried

Upstairs, Torrez and I found what we needed on the first pass. The elderly woman’s address book was in the top drawer of an old desk in the living room.

“I’ll make a few calls,” I said, slipping the book into my shirt pocket. “And by the way, you were out here just last week, weren’t you?”

Torrez nodded. “She was hearing noises again, just like before.” Anna Hocking’s behavior in the past year had drifted toward the irrational as often as not. I had visited her a couple of times myself. All she had wanted was to talk, and when a deputy arrived, she’d have a few minutes of his time.

“I got raspberry that time.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Torrez shrugged. “The bribe for coming out for a couple minutes. She gave me a jar of raspberry jam.”

I looked at Torrez with amusement. He didn’t smile much, but should have. He was one of Posadas County’s most eligible bachelors-movie star handsome but so goddamned sober it was funny. I’d once asked him to ride the county float in the Fourth of July parade, pitching penny candy to the kids along the route. He’d been so straitlaced and forbidding that the kids almost wouldn’t run out for the goodies.

“Did she give you something every time you came out?”

Torrez’s voice was almost inaudible. “Yes, sir.”

“She did this with other deputies too?”

“Yes, sir.”

My eyes narrowed. “How come I never got anything?”

“I don’t know, sir. There’s plenty downstairs, though. I’m sure nobody would miss any.”

“Spare me,” I said. “The Berry Lady,” I added. “From now on, buy your own goddamned jam.” Torrez almost smiled. “And by the way, I haven’t signed the permission letter for Linda Rael to ride with you, so don’t get into any trouble before I get back to the office.”

“No, sir.”

We checked the rest of the house, turning off lights and making sure doors and windows were locked. I put the orange juice back in the refrigerator and for a minute stood there with the door open. The excitement had gone out of Anna Hocking’s diet, that was for sure. If I were ever sentenced to live on cottage cheese and fruit juices, I’d probably shoot myself. I shut the refrigerator door.

“Why did she leave the orange juice out?” I asked the deputy. He looked startled, as if he should have an answer.

“Maybe she just forgot it.”

“Most likely.” We went out on the back porch.

Torrez watched me lock the back door. He didn’t ask how I’d gotten in. “Are you making any progress out at Wayne’s?”

“I’ve got a match on one of the footprints,” Torrez said. I heard a little pride creep into his voice. Posadas was in the middle of an extended string of penny ante burglaries-all but one of them businesses. The latest hit had been Wayne Farm Supply, three miles southwest of the village on Route 56.

Sheriff Martin Holman had never let us forget where the last residential heist had been. In midsummer his house had burned to the ground. The thieves had thought that a dose of gasoline near the main fuse box would fool the arson investigators. For about five seconds, maybe. The messy fire had disguised the burglary until investigators had really started sifting the ashes. I’d been out of town and missed the show. But I heard about it for weeks when I returned.

Maybe the burglars weren’t so dumb. We hadn’t caught them yet. I nodded at Torrez. “Super. Show me when we get back.”

By the time I walked into my office, it was almost 1:00 A.M. Because it was a quiet winter night, only one deputy was scheduled for the early morning hours. Torrez and I didn’t get the chance for any more chitchat. A woman blubbering into the telephone prompted dispatcher Gayle Sedillos to send him out on the family dispute south of town in the Ranchero Trailer Park.

Why a family would dispute at one in the morning was one of life’s continuing mysteries. I supposed, knowing the family involved, that hubby had come home when the bars closed, his machismo buoyed by booze. There was no two-hour delay this time. Torrez was on the road while Gayle talked to the woman. Linda Rael rode with the deputy.

I put my feet up on my desk and leafed through Anna Hocking’s address book. Her writing, always in black ink, was fine and neat. I found an entry for Frank M. Hocking, 1127 Ventura Place, Bakersfield, California. There was a telephone number, and Mrs. Hocking’s son answered on the fifth ring.

I identified myself and broke the news of his mother’s death. He was not surprised and sounded more resigned than anything else. He asked for the name and number of a funeral home and I gave him a choice of two. He picked Teddy Salazar’s Family Mortuary. All in all, Frank and I wrapped up the remains of Anna Hocking’s long life efficiently and politely.

At 1:17 A.M., I left the office for home with a reminder for Gayle that I wanted to be called if anything serious cropped up. Torrez’s being the only cop on the road didn’t bother me. The reporter in the passenger seat did.

When I stretched out in bed, my eyelids felt like lead. Maybe I’d be able to catch some regular sleep after all. I sighed and rolled over, my thoughts drifting south of the border.

I had seven days before I left for the tiny village of Tres Santos in Mexico where my godson was to be christened. Estelle Reyes-Guzman and her husband Francis had named me padrino for the little wrinkled kid, an honor I couldn’t take lightly. Estelle had been my best deputy-and then she’d moved north when Francis took a position with the Public Health Service.

We kept in close touch-I was practically as much family to them as Estelle’s aging mother in Tres Santos or her infamous great-uncle Reuben in Posadas. I was looking forward to their visit south for the ceremony in old Mexico.

The pleasant mental excursion away from the terminal disease of law enforcement didn’t last long. Some stupid synapse deep in my brain triggered itself. My eyes snapped open. Like a video playing in my mind, I saw the staircase down into Anna Hocking’s fruit cellar and the cobwebs floating in the musty air currents.

I turned over and stared at the ceiling. That was no better. I pulled myself out of bed and in ten minutes was backing the county car out of my driveway. I almost radioed Bob Torrez but then thought better of it. As I drove through the village there was no traffic. The Christmas decorations in the plaza and along Bustos Avenue were sparse. The lighted candy canes didn’t do much to make Posadas look less desolate.

It was a hell of a time to go calling, but Anna Hocking’s ghost wouldn’t care.

Anna Hocking’s little adobe house on County Road 19 was waiting for me…at least that’s the way it seemed. I drove out Bustos Avenue, now dark except for the sea of lights that illuminated the new car lot around Chavez Chevrolet-Olds. Across the road, Hamburger Heaven had been out of business now for almost two years, and just beyond the joint’s remains I turned onto County Road 19. Inside the village, the street was called Camino del Sol. At the county line, it lost that pretension.

The macadam turned to dirt with gravel kicked to the shoulders, roller-coastering through a series of dips and tight curves as it avoided the worst of Arroyo del Cerdo. When a summer flood in 1952 had turned the arroyo into a raging, crashing torrent, the brown tide took away most of Ellis Pacheco’s pig farm, carrying the squealers right into town where their bloated corpses decorated the town square.

If nothing else, the storm produced a name for the arroyo. And Ellis didn’t learn. He rebuilt his pens within a few feet of the newly cut arroyo edge.

At the top of a rise, I drove quietly past Valerio’s Mobile Home Park. When Consolidated Mining decided Posadas wasn’t worth another stick of dynamite, they shut down their copper pit without warning, putting 460 miners on the dole. Within a month, most of the miners had left for richer ore bodies. Trailers left parks like water through a busted dam. Valerio’s was down to the last three residents. A single sodium vapor light glared harshly at the entrance. Despite the December chill, I buzzed the window down. The place was dark and silent.