Steven Havill - Bitter Recoil

“Might as well. I can’t help being a nosy old bastard. Who was the girl’s husband?”

“She was single.”

“Boyfriend, then?”

Guzman shrugged. “I didn’t know her that well. I didn’t ask, either. She worked some of the time in Garcia’s. That’s the trading post on the south end of the village. You probably saw it when you drove up.”

“The place with all the Indian drums and pottery in the window?” Guzman nodded. I patted myself on the back. Now I knew where I’d seen the girl before. Up on the mountain where Cecilia Burgess had been knocked over the guardrail, the light had been poor-just the spotlights and flashlights. And when the girl had been placed on the gurney, her profile had been visible to me only briefly. But it was enough to stir a memory.

Earlier in the day, before I’d started my outdoorsman’s hiking act, I’d stopped at Garcia’s Trading Post, thinking I might find a birthday present for my oldest daughter, Camile. Odds were good I’d find something that she hadn’t seen already in ten department stores near her home in Flint, Michigan.

The polite young lady who’d let me browse without interference through blankets, beads, and jewelry had been Cecilia Burgess. I was sure of it.

“What I mean is that she had the opportunity to see all sorts of people,” Guzman continued. “San Estevan is pretty small, but there’s still plenty of the young and willing. My nurse said she’d heard Burgess had been seeing a guy from on up the canyon.”

Guzman turned and called Mary Vallo, who’d gone back out front. When she appeared in the doorway, Guzman asked, “Who was that kid you said Cecilia Burgess was seeing up north?”

“I don’t know his name,” Mary Vallo said, keeping her voice and facial expression that wonderful stone neutral that serves Indians as such a perfect barrier when they don’t want their minds read.

“Yeah, but wasn’t he the one who was living up at the hot springs?”

“I heard that he was,” Mary said.

Guzman turned to me. “There’s a little group of leftover hippies who camp out about nine months of the year in the National Forest, up behind the hot springs. They drift in and out of town, work a little, panhandle a little, and generally make the tourists nervous. I heard Cecilia Burgess was hanging around with one of them. I never saw him.”

“He didn’t wash much,” Mary Vallo said evenly, and when I glanced up, surprised at her opinionating, all I saw was her back as she retreated back down the hall to the front office.

I chuckled. “Terrific. And hippies? I thought they were twenty years extinct.”

Guzman grinned. “Maybe that’s the wrong word. But whatever you want to call ’em, then. Squatters. My father used to call them greNudos hediondos , but then anyone who drove a van without being a plumber was suspect to him.”

“Is there a colony of them up there?”

“No,” Guzman said. “Not as far as I know. Just a few individuals, kids who like to spend the summer sacked out under the stars. Some of them live in tents…some just throw a bedroll under the overhang of a rock.” He spread his hands. “It’s just some place to stay where they aren’t harassed. The only time I’ve ever heard that the Forest Service forced anyone out of there was when the fire danger got too high.”

“Like now?” I asked, remembering the crunch of the needles under my feet.

“This is wet compared to six years ago, according to some of the locals. Ask Mary. I’ve heard that back then the state cops wouldn’t even let you park along the shoulder of the highway.”

I fell silent for a moment, deep in thought. “That’s quite a hike, from town up there.”

“About six miles,” Guzman said.

I shrugged. “If you’re young, I guess that isn’t so bad. Maybe that’s what she was doing…hoofing it on up there for a little midnight nookey. Did she hang around with anyone else?”

“No, but as I said, I don’t keep a census. You might find some other answers if you check with the Department of Social Services. The girl might have filed for child assistance. And I don’t know where the other child is or even if it is.”

“What other child?”

Guzman frowned and grimaced. “I keep forgetting.” He flipped open the manila folder on his desk, and I wondered what else he’d forgotten. After a minute he said, “This isn’t the first child she’s had.” He held up his hands. “I don’t know what the story is. Or even if the child, assuming it lived, is here in San Estevan.”

“But she did have one.”

“Yes, she did.”

“Could you tell how long ago? How old the child would be?”

Guzman shook his head. “I’d guess it wasn’t more than four years or so.”

I started to fiddle for another cigarette and then changed my mind. “So it’s possible there’s a little kid roaming around somewhere wondering what the hell’s happened to his life.”

“Possible,” Guzman said, and he held up his hands again in surrender. I was about to shoot another question at the tired young physician when I heard the front door open and then the sound of enough boots on the tiles to herald an invasion.

Estelle Reyes-Guzman appeared in the doorway, and behind her were two other uniformed deputies, a state trooper, the same Forest Service employee I’d seen up on the mountain, and one other man in plainclothes. It was that man who pushed his way past all the elbows and gun butts and crossed the office to pump my hand.

“Goddamn, look what crawled in!” Castillo County Sheriff Pat Tate bellowed, and I stood up, hand still locked in his beefy paw. I’d tipped more than a few brews with Pat at law confabs all over the state through the years. “Estelle said you was up this way. How the hell have you been?”

“Not bad,” I said.

“No, really,” Pat said, squinting at me like I was lying to him. “The heart and all? That’s fixed up now?”

“All fixed up. And you?”

“Fine, until I got jerked out of bed. Hell of a note. Let me introduce you, here.” He jerked a thumb at first one deputy and then the other. “Paul Garcia and Al Martinez. I think you know Al, don’t you?”

I nodded and shook hands. “It’s been a while,” I said, and Martinez grinned. About six years before, he and I had been involved in a particularly messy prisoner extradition and transfer from my county to Castillo. I was surprised Martinez could still smile when he saw me. As I remember, he’d ended up having to drive the prisoner home in a patrol car that reeked of vomit and it was a six-hour trip. And that was about the best part of the whole deal.

I didn’t know the state policeman, a hatchet-faced man of thirty-five or so with eyes like ice chips. The trooper, Bobby Padgett, shook my hand impassively, since Sheriff Tate hadn’t told him who I was yet. I didn’t figure him for the sort of man who shed any warmth until he had to.

“And you met Les Cook up on the mountain,” Tate said, and I shook hands with the pine tree warden. “Gentlemen, this is Bill Gastner, undersheriff of Posadas County, about a thousand miles south of here, down in the frijole district.”

Tate looked pleased with himself, stepped back, and put his hands on his hips. He was not a particularly big man, maybe five feet seven and 170 pounds. But he managed to look aggressive with his close-cropped and thinning hair, bulbous nose, and stout jaw. “So, you got this goddamned awful affair solved for us?”

I shook my head and sat down again. Estelle had been using her husband’s shoulder as a leaning post, but now she was no longer in the room. I assumed she had slipped out front, either for coffee or maybe to talk with nurse Mary Vallo.

Knowing Estelle, she had thoroughly briefed Sheriff Tate. But she’d still know ten times more than he did. As politic as she was, she’d let him lead the way because he was the boss. She’d done the same with me in previous years, making me and the department look good.