Michael McGarrity - Hermit_s Peak

As far as Bernardo knew the place didn't have a name. It had been settled and abandoned several times since the nineteenth century and was now part of Arlin Fullerton's Box Z spread.

He leaned against the hood of Uncle Roque's truck and watched the cows slosh their way through the water toward a low soggy bottom where spring grasses had greened up. His rio had gone to a spring stock sale in Roswell and wouldn't be back until tomorrow. That left Bernardo with the truck and all the time he needed to meet with Orlando.

He hoped Orlando would show so he wouldn't have to go looking for him.

He heard the sound of tires on gravel, turned to see Orlando's car topping the low hill, and waved as the vehicle slowed to a stop.

Orlando got out and walked to him.

Bernardo gave him a friendly smile.

"Man, you'd better have a good story we can use," Orlando said.

"First, tell me what the cop asked you."

"He asked me if we went cruising together last year in Ojitos Frios. I told him no."

"What else?"

"He wanted to know if you knew Luiza. I told him I didn't know who you were dating."

"Did he say anything about her being missing?"

"No."

"Then he's just fishing."

"I think he knows who she is. My dad said Kerney has a possible ID on the victim." A thought flashed through Orlando's mind. He stared at Bernardo.

"What?" Bernardo asked.

"How did he put us in Ojitos Prios?"

"Somebody saw us in my grandfather's truck."

"Did you tell him we were there?"

"I said I didn't remember." Bernardo tore open a pack of cigarettes and quickly lit up.

"He's probably questioning everybody who knew Luiza. Don't get all bent out of shape. We'll get our shit together and it will all be cool."

Something clicked in Orlando's mind.

"But he's doing a background investigation on you. Asking who your friends are. Where you were last April. If you knew Luiza. That means you're a target."

Bernardo exhaled smoke and laughed.

"Did you learn that cop shit from your old man?"

"You knew Luiza, didn't you?"

Bernardo shrugged.

"Yeah, I knew her."

"She never wanted to party with us that night, did she?"

Bernardo smiled.

"I had to convince her."

"You meant to rape her all along."

Bernardo didn't respond.

"Do the cops know that you knew her?"

"Yeah, but it doesn't mean squat."

Orlando shook his head.

"You don't get it, do you?

You're a fucking suspect."

"So what?" Bernardo ground out the smoke with the heel of his boot.

Orlando turned to walk back to his car.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm splitting. I can't live with this shit anymore. I'm done with it. It's over, Bernardo."

Bernardo grabbed Orlando by the arm.

"Are you going to snitch me off?"

"I didn't say that. Let go of me."

Are your' Orlando yanked Bernardo's hand off his arm and pushed him away.

"I don't know what I'm going to do.

I'll let you know when I decide."

"That's not good enough, Orlando." Bernardo put his right hand in his back pocket and grabbed the handle of his sheath knife.

"Live with it," Orlando said.

"Can't do it, bro." Bernardo pulled the knife, took two steps, drove the blade under Orlando's rib cage, and ripped up to find the heart.

Orlando grunted once, his mouth open like a feeding fish, his eyes already empty.

Bernardo pulled the knife free and watched Orlando's blood pump out of his body as he fell to the ground. He'd read somewhere that during Vietnam the Communists would castrate dead Americans, stick their dicks in their mouths, and sew their lips together, to scare the soldiers who found the bodies. He thought about doing it to Orlando but dedded not to bother.

No one was ever going to see him again.

He stepped over to Orlando and slit his throat.

He wanted the body drained of blood before he hauled it to the truck.

When the blood flow turned to a slight trickle, he dumped the body in the truck bed and covered it with hay bales he'd brought along. Using a shovel, he dug around the sticky, deep-red blood pool, turning the soil until dry earth covered the ground.

Uncle Roque had told him to finish grading the road to the line camp, and get the dozer back to the Box Z. Prom today on, anybody who used that road would be driving over Orlando's bones.

Some of Orlando's blood had squirted on his hand.

Bernardo sniffed it as he drove away. It smelled good.

At the start of his shift, Russell Thorpe checked to see if the APB on Aland's truck was still active. Aland hadn't been spotted, so Thorpe got on the road to Santa Rosa. If he could pick up Aland, it would be a significant collar.

He found Sergeant Melendez at the reception counter in the Santa Rosa substation reviewing daily shift reports. Thorpe introduced himself and told Melendez what he was looking for and why.

Melendez rolled his eyes, said there were countless places to hide a tractor trailer rig where it would never be found, and finally suggested that Thorpe do a close patrol of Puerto de Luna, a settlement ten miles southeast of Santa Rosa.

The road to Puerto de Luna hugged the edge of a low butte at the far side of the river valley until it reached a sweep of pasture and farms that bordered both sides of the river. Thorpe crossed the bridge into the village and did a quick patrol. There wasn't much to the settlement: an old church with an adjacent cemetery, a fenced-off, abandoned one-room schoolhouse, a flat-roofed modern building with a brick facade that served as a community and senior citizen center, and several occupied houses made up the heart of the community.

He stopped at a road sign that told of the village's former status as the county seat, and its most notorious visitor, Billy the Kid, before cruising south to the end of the pavement. The road turned to gravel where two converging mesas pinched the valley close to the river, the streambed hidden behind thick bosque. He spotted several old semitrailers near barns and outbuildings, but it was dear they'd been stationary for years.

He worked a series of dirt roads, visually checking each ranch and farm that came into view, until he was a good ten miles south of the village.

Melendez had warned him not to get his hopes up, and Thorpe now understood why. As he crisscrossed and skirted buttes, mesas, arroyos, and canyon lands on rutted tracks that seemed to go nowhere, he realized that he could spend days in the boonies, find nothing, and still have hundreds of places left to search.

Back in Puerto de Luna, he stopped at the community center and talked to a cook and her elderly male assistant, who were in the kitchen preparing a midday meal for senior dozens.

"Do either of you know Lenny Alarid?" Thorpe asked as he watched the stout, middle-aged woman ladle food into a white Styrofoam container and hand it to the old man.

"I don't think so," the woman said.

The old man put the container into a portable warming cart and waited to receive the next meal.

"Do you know him?" Thorpe asked him.

The old man shook his head.

"He's a truck driver," Thorpe added.

"Lots of people around here drive trucks," the cook replied, holding out another meal.

The old man closed the lid and slid it into the can.

The thick veins in his liver-spotted hands were blood red under a thin layer of translucent skin.

"A semi truck Thorpe said. He described Aland's tractor trailer rig.

"Never saw it," the woman said "I have," the old man said.

"Where?" the cook asked before Thorpe could get the question out.

"At Perfecta Velarde's barn. The truck was there yesterday when I delivered her meal to her."

"Did she have any visitors?" Thorpe asked.

"Yes. Her daughter and son-in-law. The daughter's name is Gloria. I didn't meet the man."