Michael McGarity - Mexican Hat

"I believe that can be arranged. I know a customs agent who could be very helpful." Kerney held out the thousand dollars. The money disappeared into Juan's shirt pocket.

"Call me in two hours," Juan said, giving Kerney a phone number.

"Senor Posada will be resting. We can exchange information then."

Kerney's contact in the El Paso U.S. Customs office was very interested in Juan as a potential longterm informant. After advising Juan on how to get in touch with the agent, Kerney wrote down Juan's information and hung up. He had a short list of three smugglers: two in El Paso and one in Deming, New Mexico, a small city thirty miles from the Mexican border. According to Juan, the market was highly specialized and controlled by only a few people operating in the States.

The motels in Silver City, mostly mom-and-pop businesses mixed in with a few budget franchise operations, were concentrated along the state highway that ran north from Deming. Cornelia Marquez was registered at a motel on the main drag fairly close to downtown. The establishment boasted a restaurant that looked out on the highway and featured a daily radio talk show aired by a local station.

Kerney stopped in for a light meal. His stomach was grumpy-the norm rather than the exception with half of his gut shot away-and he had to eat judiciously in order to keep it functioning properly.

The talk-show host, at a table with a microphone and two telephones, sat by the large plate-glass window taking calls about a small group of environmentalists who had used the courts to stop timber sales in the Gila. Loudspeakers let the customers listen in on the conversations.

One caller phoned in to say that the members of the group had better stay the hell out of Catron County, since they were nothing but a gang of radicals who didn't know a damn thing about the west or its people.

The customers, mostly working men in for a coffee break, applauded in agreement.

Kerney finished his meal as the subject of repealing the Endangered Species Act was introduced by the host. The first caller to respond wondered why the government thought spotted owls were more valuable than people. It kicked off a diatribe against Washington politicians.

Cornelia Marquez opened the motel-room door immediately after Kerney knocked. A matron in her fifties, of average height with a thickening body, she wore a plain tan dress and a pair of sensible flats.

Her eyes were puffy and red and her mouth was drawn in a tight, sad line.

Kerney identified himself and showed the lady his badge.

"Nurse Perez said that you found my father," Cornelia said, sniffling.

She stepped aside to let Kerney enter.

"I am most grateful."

"It was nothing," Kerney replied. Something about her made him take a formal tone.

"Would you rather I came to see you some other time?"

"No." Cornelia's smile was thin-lipped.

"I would welcome some distraction. My husband cannot join me until this evening. He was in Argentina on business and is flying in from Buenos Aires."

She sat at the small table in front of the window and asked Kerney to join her. The room was a standard motel box with a queen-size bed, television, and dresser. A mirror and several silk-screen prints of desert flowers were securely fastened to the walls.

"Have you found who killed my son?" she asked.

"Not yet. If I knew why your son and father came here it might be helpful."

"How would that be helpful? The state police investigator who spoke to me at the hospital said that Hector was shot by a stranger. A poacher."

"That is probably true," Kerney allowed.

"But other possibilities cannot be ignored. Yesterday, I spoke to an older gentleman who said that he might have known your father many years ago. His name is Edgar Cox."

"The name is not familiar to me."

"Is there some reason for him to believe he knows your father?"

"It's possible. My father was born here. In the Mangas Valley. His ancestors settled the area. But he has lived in Mexico most of his life. Ever since he was a young man in medical school."

"Dr. Padilla seemed to have had a specific destination in mind. Do you have any idea why he went to Elderman Meadows?"

"I never heard of Elderman Meadows until today."

"How about a place called Mexican Hat?"

Cornelia frowned.

"I have heard him speak of such a place."

"In what context?" Kerney asked.

She toyed with the band of her diamond wedding ring and wet her lips before answering.

"My father has an obsession. He believes his father was murdered at Mexican Hat."

"What gave him that idea?" Kerney inquired.

"When my aunt died last year, he was the executor other estate. She had many of the old family papers.

Among them he found official letters from the American government to his father questioning the legal title to the land."

"What suspicions did those letters raise?"

"I'm not sure. He was very secretive about it."

"Why?"

"Because it opened an old wound between my parents. Long before I was born, my grandfather died and my parents traveled to New Mexico to attend the funeral. An argument developed between them. My father wished to drop out of medical school and remain in Mangas. Mother threatened to leave him if he did. They were newly married.

She was also a medical student, and they had planned to go into practice together. But she hated New Mexico. It was not her world. It was too isolated and unsophisticated. She was a city girl.

She made my father promise never to take her there again."

"And he kept his word?"

"Yes. Until the day my mother died, three months ago. There was really nothing for him to go back to.

His brothers and sisters had scattered. The ranch was lost. The village abandoned."

"Did she share his theory that Don Luis was murdered?"

"I don't think she cared, one way or the other."

"So he returned with your son to uncover a murderer," Kerney proposed.

"Real or imagined," Cornelia agreed testily, her voice rising.

"My father is gravely ill. Possibly he will never get better. And do you know how I feel, Senor Kerney? Right now, I am angry with him. To the depths of my soul, I am angry. My son is dead because of an old man's obsession with the past. It is senseless."

"I am truly sorry for your loss, senora," Kerney said.

Cornelia Marquez did not hear him. She buried her head in her hands and sobbed.

Kerney stayed with her until she stopped crying.

When he left he took with him Senora Marquez's written permission to visit Jose Padilla in the hospital.

The house Jim Stiles lived in, a hundred-year-old adobe with a high-pitched tin roof and buttresses at the corners to hold the adobe walls in place, sat in the valley exactly halfway between Reserve and the old Spanish settlement known as Lower San Francisco Plaza.

With his feet propped on a chair, Jim lounged at the kitchen table with the back door open, reading the documents found in Padilla's travel trailer.

Omar Gatewood had given him permission to sign out the evidence and take it home.

The day had turned hot, but the thick walls kept the house cool. A slight breeze pulsed through the doorway, bringing with it the sound of the river gurgling over the rocky streambed two hundred yards away.

Stiles finished a document and turned it upside down on the stack he'd already read. The papers and letters were all written in Spanish, and while Stiles spoke the language pretty well, he was much less proficient at translating the written word. What he could make out was damn interesting stuff, although it didn't seem to have a bit of relevance to the murder of Hector Padilla.

Among the papers were the last will and testament of Don Luis Padilla and a plat of the village of Mangas that had been filed with the territorial government over a hundred years ago. There were a lot of personal letters to Don Luis from important New Mexicans of the day.