Satans servant, p.5
Satan's Servant, page 5
Erminio was struck by the absurdity of the question. “Negative. I don’t think the family could pay fifty cents. It doesn’t look like it was for money.”
He ended the radio communication and took the fingerprint kit to Mike; then he started his investigation outside by examining the fallen window screen.
“It looks like it was pried off, boss. There’s marks in the wood. But there’s no good footprints. The sand’s too soft to hold them.”
“I’ll dust the screen when I’m done here,” Mike’s voice said through the open window.
“I’m going to see if I can find some tracks. I hope nobody walks through here very much. In this sand, new tracks and old tracks look the same.”
“If you need any help, holler.”
“Okay, boss.”
The house was at the end of the road. Beyond it, there was nothing but tumbleweeds—big green bushes this time of year—and range grass.
It took Erminio only a few seconds to find a set of tracks leading away from the house. He followed them for about two hundred feet and found himself standing at the edge of an arroyo. In its bed, tire tracks came from the right and ended just below him. He slid down the bank for a closer look.
There were no tread marks, only parallel furrows in the sand. The arroyo was deep; whatever had made them could not have been seen from the house. He followed them along the bed for about five minutes. Then, at a place where the arroyo became wider and shallower, they climbed the bank and cut through the weeds to a dirt road—but not before crossing a patch of hard earth which had retained the imprint of tire treads.
He went back to the house where he found Mike applying fingerprint dust to the crib.
“I think it was a pickup, boss. The treads looked like truck tires, but not a big truck.”
“Old eagle-eye Gabaldon strikes again, huh?” Mike blew the excess dust off a slat.
Erminio smiled. “You got anything else you want me to do?”
“Yeah. I’m going to be lifting prints off this crib forever. There must be thousands of them. Why don’t you get the camera and start shooting pictures.” He pressed a small square of clear plastic on the slat, then carefully peeled the material off and held it up to the light. “That’s a good one.”
“Maybe you should shoot the pictures, boss.” Erminio grimaced. “Mine were all out of focus last time.”
“You talked me into it. Just get the camera.”
8
The children had been dispatched to the back of the house, and Father John Sample and Maria’s mother had the living room to themselves.
They studied each other. She saw a dark-haired priest in his early thirties sitting on her couch, a broad-shouldered man with a warm and handsome face. He saw a stern-looking woman of about forty sitting in a high-backed wooden rocker. Her brown hair was pulled back in a bun; she looked at him through plastic-rimmed glasses.
Father Sample knew what the outcome of the meeting would be, but he had to try.
On the way in, he had noticed how immaculate the front yard was, not a weed in evidence, not a blade of grass unclipped, rose bushes along the side of the house neatly trimmed and still flowering.
The inside of Delores Jaramillo’s home was just as neat—and filled with the symbols of her religion. Small china statues adorned the tables and window sills; on the wall, directly above his head, was a large crucifix.
The house was only a block off the main road. Originally a small adobe, it had undergone several additions. The newer parts were plaster.
“Maria’s in desperate need,” Father Sample said. “I truly fear for her mental well-being. I don’t understand how you can still refuse to go to her.” He searched her eyes for any sign of softening. “If I could only describe the look on her face.…”
“The girl is being punished for her sins,” Delores Jaramillo said without emotion.
“But surely you must feel something for your daughter.”
“I do.” She motioned toward the back of the house. “I love Anna very much.”
“I mean your other daughter—Maria.”
“I have no daughter named Maria, Father.”
“But Jesus taught us to forgive and to love.” He raised his eyes toward the crucifix. “He would not smile on your hatred.”
“I have no hatred for the girl. When she sinned, she renounced Jesus, and she gave up her right to enter this house or to be my daughter.”
“But Jesus hears our confessions and forgives our sins. He does not turn his back simply because we are weak and make mistakes.”
“She is not banned from the church, Father—only from this house and this family. Jesus is strong enough to deal with sinners. I am not. Maybe that is my weakness.”
“I really wish I could get you to reconsider.”
“I’m sorry, Father.”
9
“Yeah. I noticed her because she looked scared, like she was afraid somebody was after her.” The construction worker pulled off his hard hat and mopped his brow, with his arm. “I waved to her, but she didn’t see me.”
“Did you see anyone following her?” Mike asked.
“Well, this pickup came by real slow after she headed down that dirt road over there.” He pointed in the direction of Calle del Norte. “The guy in the truck watched her for a little bit. Then he sped up and went straight on. He didn’t turn in after her.”
Mike pulled out his notebook. “Can you describe the driver?”
“All I saw was the back of his head. A young guy, I think, but I can’t be sure.”
“What color was his hair?”
“Couldn’t tell.”
“Did he have on a hat?”
“Nope. No hat.”
“How about the truck?”
“It was old and sorta beat up. I only saw the ass end of it, so I’m not sure about the make or year. I think it had round taillights, but I’m not sure. I didn’t know I’d have any reason to remember.” Glancing in the direction of the foreman, he lowered himself onto a sawhorse.
“What color was it?”
“Mostly, it was rusty. What paint I saw was light gray.”
“Would you recognize it if you saw it again?”
“I might.”
“If you do, would you try to get the license number and give me a call.”
“Sure. By the way, you ever try one of the hamburgers they make in one of these places?”
Mike grunted. “Yeah. They’re lousy.”
“I know. No matter how many times you tell them, they always put mayonnaise on the goddamn things.”
10
Erminio was waiting at the car; he had learned nothing from the other construction workers.
Mike told him about the man in the pickup. “She was right. She was being followed.” He slapped the gearshift to drive and pulled out of the construction site. “So what the hell do we do now, Erminio?”
“Some guy in an old pickup stole the baby—at least that’s how it looks.”
“Yeah, that’s how it looks. Some guy followed her and waited for his chance to grab the kid. But why?”
“I don’t know, boss. It couldn’t have been for ransom.”
“That’s for sure. But what other reasons are there for taking a baby?”
“Some people sell them.”
“That’s all I can think of—the baby black market. Although I’ve heard of people taking babies because they couldn’t have any of their own.”
“What are we going to do now, boss?”
Mike pulled to a stop partway down Calle del .Norte. It was an area of modest two-and three-bedroom homes. Two or three of them had lawns, but most of the front yards were barren, their owners apparently unwilling or unable to pay the huge water bills that resulted from the effort to make grass grow in parched sand.
“There’s only about ten houses in this neighborhood,” Mike said. “Let’s find out if anyone saw anything. You take one side, and I’ll take the other.”
Twenty minutes later, they were back in the patrol car. None of the neighbors had seen anything.
11
At the station, Mike found two television news crews waiting for him. He invited the TV people in, and the phone started ringing. It was a newspaper reporter.
12
Twenty miles away, in his apartment, Father Edward Gardner did not pay much attention to the kidnapping story when it came up on the ten o’clock news. He had been staring at the TV set all evening without really being aware of what was on the screen. Three times he had squeezed his left hand so hard it hurt and had to consciously force himself to stop.
Whatever odious thing was about to creep up from the underworld was ready; it would strike tonight.
Father Gardner slid out of his chair and onto his knees, looking pleadingly at the figure on the crucifix above the mantel. Then he crossed himself and began to pray.
Chapter Five
1
“It still makes no sense at all to me,” Jill said, looking at Mike across the breakfast table. It was a cheap metal-legged thing with a blue synthetic surface that clashed with just about everything in her kitchen, and she wanted to get rid of it. “Why would anyone steal that baby?”
“The first thing I thought of was the baby black market, but then I realized it didn’t fit.” Mike took his last bite of scrambled eggs. “The black-market people would get their babies from unwed mothers or maybe even from foreign countries. But they wouldn’t steal them. It’s too great a risk when there’s so many safer ways to get babies.” He tossed a piece of crust to Pita’s waiting jaws.
“So, what are you going to do?” Taking a sip of black coffee, she checked her watch.
“I’m going to get a list of all the pickups registered in this county and in Bernalillo County from MVD. Then I’m going to start contacting adoption agencies and see if I can work up a list of people who were turned down. Then I’ll hope that I find the same name on both lists and that the pickup is an old one.” He put two spoons of sugar in his coffee. “Where’s the cream?”
She got up, went to the cupboard, and returned with a jar of cream. “Here you go.”
“Why don’t you just leave it out?” He added a spoonful of white powder to his coffee. “I always use it.”
“Because it looks terrible on the table, and I never know if you’ll be here for breakfast or not.” She checked her watch again. “So you think someone kidnapped the baby because they wanted a kid and couldn’t have one?”
“Either that or it was the work of a complete nut. God, I hope it wasn’t a nut. They don’t think like regular people, and it’s almost impossible to outguess them.”
She took another peek at her watch. “Ummm, I’ve got to go, or I’ll be late.” She took her dishes to the sink. “At least one good thing’s come out of all this.”
“What’s that?”
“Last night, you fell asleep and didn’t go running off to play policeman.” She ran water over the dishes. “For once, it wasn’t wham-bam, thank you ma’am.”
“I guess I was pretty tired last night.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” She dried her hands on a towel. “There wasn’t even any wham-bam.”
Mike grinned and took a slug of coffee.
“You must be the only man in the world that, when he spends the whole night with a girl uninterrupted, it means he wasn’t interested in sex.”
He laughed. “Yeah, but I’m noted for my fine quickies.”
“Oh, poo! I’m going to work.” She threw the towel at him.
2
“Right a little! Left just a hair! Good!” The head chainman’s plumb bob string was dead center in the cross hairs of Oswald Thompson’s transit.
A hundred feet away, the head chainman tied a piece of orange flagging to a nail, pushed it into the ground, stretched out the chain again to check his accuracy, then moved ahead, dragging the metal tape behind him.
“Chain!” the rear chainman yelled.
The head chainman stopped and kicked a small cactus out of the way.
Tony, the head chainman, was a slight young man, but he was intelligent and a hard worker. If he continued to show promise, Thompson might give him a crack at being an instrumentman. Frank, on the other hand, was a big lumbering man in his late forties and not too bright. He was adequate as a rear chainman, a position Thompson was convinced Frank could never rise above.
Thompson could feel the perspiration starting to soak into his hatband; it was going to be another hot day. At least they were in a more-or-less clear area now.
Starting out, they had to continually chop away the dense river brush which snarled the chain and blocked Thompson’s line of sight through the instrument. It was only a respite though. Ahead was still more brush and the spot where he had found the dead chickens. If he found a fresh carcass there, he would make sure Ryan heard about it.
He leaned around the transit. “Tony, pound in a hub there, and I’ll move up. Then take the range pole and see if I can see the next brass cap from there. It should be just beyond that rise. Frank, you’ll have to grab the other pole and give me a back sight on the last hub we set.”
The chainmen flopped their plumb bob strings over the metal tape and pulled it taut. Thompson yelled “right,” “left,” and “good.” Then Tony hammered a pointed two-by-two stake into the ground until it was nearly flush. Again, the chainmen measured and Thompson shouted; then Tony tapped a tack into the top of the stake, marking the precise point on the surface of the wood where line and distance fell. Thompson gathered up his transit and moved up to the new point. The chainmen grabbed their red-and-white-striped poles and scurried off.
Thompson finished setting up the transit. He back sighted on Frank’s range pole, walked around the tripod, flipped the telescope over, and peered into the eyepiece.
“What the hell’s Tony doing up there? Shit, he dropped the range pole and he’s running back.”
A few moments later, Tony came frantically running up. His face was white and expressionless, but it bore the unmistakable look of absolute horror.
3
Rancho Lucero’s police station had been a house until the town acquired the building and remodeled it. From the outside, the brown stucco structure still looked like a house, except for the hand-painted sign over the front door: POLICE DEPT. Inside, workmen had converted the house’s four small rooms into two large ones. The two bedrooms became a jail with three cells, and the kitchen and living room became the office. The phone was ringing as Mike unlocked the door. He hurried to his desk.
“Police, Ryan.”
Mike grimaced when he heard Oswald Thompson’s voice. But his scowl was almost immediately replaced by a look of shock, and he unconsciously gripped the edge of the desk with his free hand.
“What did—no, never mind. Don’t let anybody touch anything. I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone and ran toward the door, then stopped, whirled around, ran back to the phone, and dialed.
“Hello, Cora. This is Mike. Let me have Erminio. It’s an emergency.” He fidgeted nervously until he heard Erminio’s voice. “This is Mike. I need you right away. Remember where I said Thompson found those dead chickens? Head over there as fast as you can. They found the baby and maybe the kidnapper. They’re both dead.”
Mike hung up and ran out the door without giving Erminio a chance to react.
4
Most of the townspeople immediately knew something really major had happened when Mike’s patrol car screamed away from the station, both red lights and siren going, burning rubber. That sort of thing was commonplace in the city where crime and violence were a way of life, but not here. This was a small town where the main function of policemen was to make sure outsiders obeyed the speed limit when they passed through. And to see a town police car with all its emergency equipment going and burning valuable pennies worth of rubber off the taxpayers’ tires was unheard of.
5
Thompson and his two chainmen were standing near a beat-up truck as Mike pulled into the clearing.
Thompson came running up. “That’s his truck. We haven’t touched it or anything.”
Mike popped out of the car. “I’ll look at it later. Where are the bodies?”
“Come on.” Thompson led the way, and the two chainmen fell in behind. “You won’t believe it until you see it.”
They were following the same path Mike had discovered two days before.
“I found it,” Tony said. “I had to shake my head and blink my eyes before I could believe it was real. It was awful.”
“Yeah,” Frank added. “It was awful.”
As they stepped into the small clearing, Mike drew a short breath. The blood-covered body of a young man lay on the far side, and the place looked as though it had been hit by a whirlwind. Debris was everywhere. Most of it was splintered wood, but there were other things, including a twisted metal candle holder and scraps of cloth which looked like pieces of the dead man’s clothing.
“Where’s the baby?” Mike asked.
Thompson pointed to his left.
Mike gasped when he saw the tiny body spattered with blood. The baby was on its back, its legs spread, its arms flopped out to the sides. Mike sucked in his courage, then walked over to the small body and examined it. The baby’s throat had been slit, and up close, the tiny corpse almost looked as if it had been used and then thrown aside, like a piece of garbage.
Taking a moment to steady his stomach, he moved across the clearing to examine the other body. It was a young man in his early twenties, sprawled face-down in the sand. His blood-soaked clothes were badly ripped; large pieces of cloth were missing from his shirt and blue jeans.
“Look at his back,” Thompson said.
Mike bent over the body. “I can see it. But I have no idea what the hell could have done it.”
The dead man’s skin was exposed through a large hole in his shirt. The flesh was ripped and gouged in groups of parallel lines. They were unmistakably claw marks.
