Steven Havill - Bitter Recoil

“Thank you for your time,” Estelle said pleasantly. Finn reached down and took the little girl’s hand, turning to go back toward the tent.

Before the child could turn, Estelle knelt down so she was looking at her squarely in the eye. “What’s your name, honey?” Estelle asked quietly.

The tyke hesitated, then responded to Estelle’s warm smile. “Daisy,” she said with a faint lisp.

“That’s a pretty name,” Estelle said. She tousled the child’s hair and stood up. She smiled at Finn. He frowned, then nodded curtly and led the child back uphill toward the big tent.

“Sweetheart, isn’t she?” I said as we strolled down toward the rock. “Finn says her name is Ruth, and she says it’s Daisy. And you know something you’re not telling me.”

“She is a sweetheart,” Estelle said. “And I’ll bet you twenty bucks that she’s Burgess’s child. Orlando Garcia knew Cecilia had a child…he’d seen her many times. The child used to play in the back room of the store when Cecilia worked there.”

“And her name was Daisy,” I said. Estelle nodded, and I continued, “So Daisy is her nickname. And maybe Finn’s lying, and maybe he’s not. How is it your husband never had occasion to meet the child? Here we are wondering about Burgess’s other kid and she’s right under our noses.”

“She was never sick maybe? I don’t know.”

“You just found about her today? When you talked with Garcia?”

“Yes.”

“Then I feel a little better.”

“We still have a problem though,” Estelle said, then dropped the subject as we approached the rock. Robert had started to move when we were fifty yards away. He pulled on a T-shirt, gathered up the book, and dropped off the backside of the rock as agile as a cat.

“Robert,” Estelle said as he appeared on the uphill side of the boulder, “did you either witness yourself, or talk to anyone who did, the accident last night down on the state highway?”

“No.”

“You just heard about it in town this morning?”

Robert hesitated for just a fraction of a second. “Yes.”

Estelle nodded and glanced at me. “Thanks,” she said, and Robert almost said another word but thought better of it. “I think we’re finished here,” she told me, more for Robert’s benefit than mine.

When we were out of earshot, she added, “Blabby kid, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

Estelle grinned at my imitation. “I’d be willing to bet another twenty bucks he knows lots more than he lets on.”

“He’d have to. And did you happen to notice what else was interesting?”

Estelle frowned, and I felt an unprofessional twinge of pride that I had seen something she hadn’t. “What do you mean?”

I stopped and looked back up the trail. “He was wearing a gun.”

“Oh, that. Yes, I saw the bulge under his T-shirt when he came around the rock.” She twisted around and put a hand on the small of her back, where the gun had been.

“When you asked him if he’d seen the accident, he turned a little to face you. That’s when I saw it,” I said.

Estelle shrugged. “Probably half the people in New Mexico carry guns.” She looked back up the trail. “That’s kind of interesting, though. A gun in one hand, a Bible in the other.”

“Is that what the book was?”

“Uh huh.”

“Couldn’t read the title,” I said lamely. I concentrated on where I put my feet. It was easier going downhill, but I was top-heavy and needed to watch my step.

“If the child is Cecilia’s daughter, it’s going to be a mess trying to work through the social services department to get that kid out of the woods,” Estelle said. “Paul Garcia is working on finding Burgess’s relatives, if there are any. He should have turned something up by the time we get back.”

“And if there aren’t any?”

“Then we’ll have to work a court order of some sort.”

I nodded. “You’re running on a lot of assumptions.”

Estelle held a branch so it wouldn’t whip me in the face. “You think she should be living up here? Without her mother?”

“She didn’t seem to mind.”

“No, maybe not. I do though.” She stopped and stood for a minute with her hands on her hips, staring off into space. “Do you think that either Finn or Robert knows who tossed Cecilia Burgess?”

“No, I don’t. They would have said something if they did.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“And by the way,” I said, “I hate to tell you your job, but you didn’t I.D. Robert of the Rock. It might have been handy to know who the hell he is.”

“I know who he is,” Estelle replied and started off on the trail once more. I had to puff a little to catch up.

The sun rolled down the edge of Chuparrosa Mesa west of San Estevan, and the wash of evening light blushed the sandstone layers below the rimrock into a dozen hues. The ceramic chimes beside the Guzmans’ front door hung motionless.

I exhaled and watched the plume of smoke curl through the chimes, to fan out and then disappear into the savinos , the peeled and smooth juniper poles that lay diagonally across the vigas to form the small porch roof. I closed the file folder and tipped my chair back until I could lean against the adobe wall.

“Robert Arajanian,” I said and tapped my index finger on the cover of the folder. “And you say that the guy who owns the trading post-Orlando Garcia-he knows him?”

Estelle Reyes-Guzman returned from the kitchen and handed me a mug of coffee. “Yes, he knew him by name. He’d had the opportunity to cash a couple of checks for the kid.”

“What kind of checks?”

“The only one he remembered for sure was one made out to Cecilia Burgess. It was her tax refund check. For just a few dollars, as far as Garcia remembers. Burgess had signed it over to Arajanian. Orlando Garcia didn’t seem to approve much. I got the impression that he thought Cecilia Burgess was wasting her time with both Arajanian and Finn.”

I opened the folder once more. “That seems to be a generally held view around here. Odd that she signed the check to the kid instead of her boyfriend Finn. Maybe the trio shares everything.” I read the file. “And Arajanian has quite a record.”

The folder had been delivered from Albuquerque earlier that afternoon by a deputy. It had been on Estelle’s desk when we returned from the hot springs, and it made interesting reading.

Robert Arajanian had experimented with the law when he was just fourteen…an assault charge filed by the parents of another high school student. I noticed the other youngster involved had been seventeen-either he’d been small for his age or a complete wimp. Or young Robert had been spectacularly aggressive. Less than a year later a charge of vehicular homicide had landed Robert Arajanian in a youth detention home for two years.

“Interesting that he wasn’t drunk for the vehicular charge…or at least there’s no mention here that he was,” I said. “The implication is that he used the damn car as a weapon.”

“He was drag racing and bumped the competition into a grove of pine trees.”

“Where’s it say that?”

“It doesn’t. I called Albuquerque while you were in the shower.”

“You don’t waste a second, do you?” I looked at the file again. “So he gets just two years for what is essentially murder.”

Estelle moved her Kennedy rocker so that she could put her feet up on a big planter that supported one sorry-looking beaver-tail cactus. She shrugged at my comment. Under New Mexico law two years was the most detention any kid got, no matter what the crime, as long as he wasn’t tried as an adult. I grunted with disgust. Murder could come pretty cheap.