Steven Havill - Bitter Recoil

“With that bad ankle?”

“Yes. And I drove north until I came to the accident site. I saw all the red lights, the ambulance…I saw that they were just loading the gurney. I’m ashamed to say that I rationalized myself out of it at that point.”

“Meaning what?” I asked.

“Meaning that I should have stopped. I saw her face, knew it was her. I should have talked with you on the spot. But I decided that I couldn’t help Cecilia any more just then. She was in good hands. There was nothing I could do. So I drove back to the retreat, and when I learned she’d been transferred to the city, I drove to Albuquerque.”

“And you were at the hospital when she died?”

“Yes. The rest of my story, as I told you yesterday, is the truth.”

“Did you ever have your ankle looked at by a physician?”

“No.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“It’s just a bad sprain. There’s nothing a doctor could do for it that I can’t.”

“Did anyone else here at the retreat look at it?”

Parris frowned at my question. “Well, yes. Father Sandoval examined it shortly after I returned home. I had planned to ask him to look at it in the morning, but apparently he’d been awakened by the station wagon pulling into the driveway. He said he looked out the window and saw me limp to the front steps.” Parris turned and gestured at the door. “He met me in the entranceway and insisted that he look at the ankle then and there.”

“Is this Father Sandoval here now?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“We’ll need to talk to him.”

Parris looked at his watch. “It’s quite late. Can’t it wait?”

“No, it can’t,” Estelle said, her tone flat.

Parris turned from her to me, his eyes searching my face. “There’s something you don’t believe?”

I didn’t see any point in sugarcoating it. “You lied to me once, Father. We have no way of knowing if you’re lying now. If we talk with Father Sandoval and he confirms when he treated your ankle, that gives us something to go on.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“Perhaps. Is Sandoval here?”

Parris fell silent for a minute, then said as he stood up, “This is going to be a very public case after a while, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean it will all come out in the end…about Cecilia and me, about Daisy…all of it.”

“I suppose it will,” I said. I wasn’t feeling kindly at the moment. It didn’t bother me much that Parris might have to wallow for a while in his own mess. “I’ll go with you to fetch Father Sandoval.” Parris didn’t argue.

We left Estelle in the front room and went upstairs. It was obvious that Parris’s ankle really did hurt. Father Sandoval must have been waiting at his door because he answered Parris’s light knock immediately.

Sandoval was the same priest who had greeted me on my first visit. He joined us downstairs and we made it brief. The older priest verified Parris’s story, and my instincts told me that Father Mateo Sandoval was telling the absolute truth.

After Sandoval left the room, Parris looked relieved. Estelle snapped her notebook closed and stood up. “There’s one more thing,” she said. “Finn has no legitimate custody claim on Daisy.”

“No, I suppose he doesn’t,” Parris said. I grimaced, because his tone said clearly to me, “I wish he did.” Estelle read the same message on his face. She didn’t raise her voice, but the words came out clipped and hard.

“Father Parris, I want Daisy out of the woods. And I want her out tomorrow.”

The priest started to waffle. “I was going to talk with you about that,” he said.

“I’m listening.”

The man didn’t know what to say. Maybe he couldn’t face H. T. Finn eye to eye…or maybe he was still unwilling to admit that his uncomplicated life at the retreat was over. I didn’t know what the Catholic Church did to one of its priests who became a parent…and right then, that wasn’t our concern.

“You’re her father,” Estelle said. “You can go up there with us tomorrow morning and take custody of the child. It’s that simple. You are her father.”

“I wish it were that simple,” Parris said, and Estelle locked him with an icy glare.

“It is that simple,” she said. “And between now and seven tomorrow morning when we pick you up, you might give some thought to the form your child support is going to take.” She stood up and turned to me. “I have all I need.”

As I stepped by him, I patted Parris on the shoulder. It was the sort of fatherly pat I might have given one of my sons after an ultimatum he didn’t like. “Seven o’clock, Father,” I said.

On the drive back home Estelle didn’t say a word until we turned into the lane to the adobe. And then, so quietly I almost didn’t hear, she said, “The fifth one.”

“In the truck, you mean?”

She nodded. “If we find the fifth kid who was riding in that pickup truck, maybe we’ll find the answers.”

“Paul Garcia’s been talking with Lucy Grider. Maybe he turned up something.”

“I hope so. Otherwise, unless number five comes forward, we’re going to have to sift through this community one person at a time.”

“That won’t be the first time we’ve done that.” I glanced over at Estelle. She was chewing the corner of her lower lip, her forehead wrinkled in thought. I could have counted on one hand the number of times I’d heard Estelle express doubts when she’d been working on a case. She had an excuse this time. We hadn’t enjoyed an extra minute to think things through or hunt for answers.

But this evening, as it turned out, the doubts weren’t necessary. We didn’t have to hunt. Kyle Osuna came to us.

The light was on over the front door at eleven that night. The good doc was working late, called to the clinic to set a broken arm. The arm belonged to one of the Girl Scouts over at Camp Tracy, who’d done nothing more spectacular than fall off the top bunk during a pillow fight.

Francis promised that he wouldn’t take long-a quick cast, a handful of aspirin, and the little girl would be back in business. In a couple days she’d feel good enough to use the heavy cast as a weapon and inflict some real damage.

Estelle turned the light on after Francis left. I was reading the Albuquerque afternoon paper and Estelle was poring through her notes. She had talked for almost a half hour with Sheriff Tate on the telephone, and Tate was just as frustrated as we were. He told Estelle that all she had to do was say the word and she’d have reinforcements, but she nixed the idea. In fact, leaving men up on Quebrada Mesa was a waste of time. She was sure that what had happened there was finished. Tate didn’t argue. If you put an army in the field, it costs lots of bucks.

“All you can do is keep scratchin’,” Tate had said.

“We’re close,” Estelle had told him. Close to what, I wondered. The wave of murders was three-pronged…Cecilia Burgess pitched out of the truck, Waquie and Grider crushed in that same truck, with a neck snapped for good measure, and now the Lucero brothers.

Estelle was the only one who doubted that Cecil Lucero had pulled the trigger on his brother. I thought she was fishing and told her so. True, the entire scenario was based on assumptions. It was even an assumption-a grand one-that the Luceros had been in the truck with Waquie and Grider. Who the hell knew.

“You don’t think Cecil Lucero is the key?” I asked, laying down the newspaper. Estelle shook her head. “You don’t think he killed his brother?”

“No. It doesn’t make sense, sir. The shots were fired from the lip of the arroyo, approximately twenty yards from where we found Kenneth Lucero’s body. That’s where Paul found the shell casings. Now why would Kenneth Lucero be walking or running up the arroyo bed?”