"Whatever you say," Kerney said as he locked on to Bernardo again.
"Did Luiza leave her Box Zjob because of you?"
"Because of me? That's crazy."
"We'll talk again," Kerney said, to raise Bernardo's tension.
"I'll listen to anything you have to tell me."
Bernardo turned his head, cleared his throat, spit on the ground, and said nothing.
Kerney waited a few beats, nodded good-bye to Roque, gave Bernardo a quick, even stare, and left.
The grandeur of the valley and canyon lands didn't hold Kerney's attention on the drive back. His mind stayed focused on Bernardo.
Perhaps the kid had simply made some Don Juan moves on Luiza, got rejected, and-like a lot of young studs-moved on to greener pastures.
But too many issues led Kerney away from such a generous conclusion.
Bernardo knew the victim, had shown an interest in her, and could be placed near where Luiza had last been seen, on the same day, and at approximately the same time as her disappearance.
More damaging was the fact that some of Luiza's bones had been found on land Bernardo's family controlled.
That, coupled with Bernardo's uneasiness under questioning-his body language, his defensiveness, his vague answers-raised Kerney's suspicions. He stopped at the Las Vegas district office and called Emmet Griffin.
"You said you saw Luiza occasionally refuse rides from strangers when she went out walking."
"That's what I said," Griffin replied.
"Did you ever see her refuse a ride from someone she knew?"
"I can't say that for sure."
"Meaning?"
"Once I saw Nestor Barela's grandson driving real slow on the wrong side of the road, talking to her while she was walking. It went on for maybe a minute or two.
He spun his wheels and threw up a lot of dust when he left. You know, show-off kid stuff."
"You mean Bernardo?"
"That's the only grandson I know."
"Did you ask Luiza about the incident?"
"No, I didn't think anything of it at the time. She waved and smiled when I drove by. I figured she was just out on one of her evening walks."
Kerney thanked Griffin and hung up. What had Bernardo said at the line camp? He took out the pocket-size microcassette recorder he'd used to surreptitiously tape the conversation with Bernardo and Roque and played it back. On the tape Bernardo said he hadn't talked to Luiza after she started work at Horse Canyon.
According to Emmet Griffin's recollection, mat was a lie. him Anton Chico, Gabe took a look around to familiarize himself with the terrain. The phone company's records showed a customer named Bernadette Lucero had made a number of calls to Buena Vista Lumber and Supply.
Bernadette had been a participant in the singles events sponsored by the Las Vegas newspaper.
A cross-check revealed frequent calls from Joaquin Santistevan to Bernadette during the workday from his office phone and late at night from his home. The pattern of calls suggested thatjoaquin's reconciliation with his wife hadn't kept him from keeping company with Bernadette.
Anton Chico was Spanish for Little Anthony. Some held that the village was named after one of the original Hispanic settlers, others that it was a corruption of and6n chico, which meant "little bend."
Gabe cast his vote for the little bend theory. The village sat on a gentle rise above the Pecos River where it curved out of a progression of low-lying barrancas and flowed toward the eastern plains. Old cottonwoods graced the wide fields and pastures along the river, and the houses and farms perched above the flood plain were almost all nineteenth-century stone and adobe structures, with a few modern additions tacked on here and there.
Anton Chico and the neighboring settlements were part of a Mexican land grant still controlled by the descendants of the original colonists.
Halfway between Las Vegas and Santa Rosa-a city that thrived on the tourist traffic along Interstate 40-the village was off the beaten path, and provided no amenities for travelers.
Aside from a modern public school and a post office housed in a mobile home on a large dirt lot, the village center consisted of old territorial buildings. A mercantile store, a church, a rectory, some traditional long adobe houses with narrow portals, and old stone cottages with tin roofs faced two parallel lanes.
There were no gas stations, motels, restaurants, or markets. Where the lanes converged at the outskirts of the village, the pavement ended, and dirt roads wandered to nearby farmhouses and ranches.
Gabe stopped at the post office and approached the clerk after waiting for several locals to pick up their mail and leave. A round-faced woman with silver hair, she reached for reading glasses that hung from a cord around her neck and studied Gabe's credentials.
"Do you know Bernadette Lucero?" he asked.
"Why do you want to know?"
"She applied for a job as a police dispatcher. We do a background investigation on every job applicant. It's required."
"You must mean Gloria's daughter," the woman said.
She removed her glasses and let them dangle against her chest.
"Is there more than one Bernadette Lucero living in Anton Chico?"
"Not as far as I know."
"What can you tell me about her?"
"She's turned into a real good mother since she had the baby" "How old is her child?"
"About two months. She had a boy."
"Do you know the baby's father?"
The woman shook her head.
"Bema isn't married."
"How can I find her?"