Nothing but Trouble_ A Kevin Kerney Novel - Michael Mcgarrity [29]
Only the song of a blue jay on a nearby fence post and the lowing of a cow broke the silence. The growing sound of an engine drew Kerney’s attention to the road and soon a noisy, rattletrap panel truck came into view, traveling at a high rate of speed. Headed north to Hachita, it passed Kerney without slowing.
Back on the highway, Kerney continued in the direction of Antelope Wells with the Big Hatchet Mountains guiding his way south, announcing the border and Mexico beyond. The road curved sharply at Hatchet Gap. Kerney came through the pass and saw a small flock of crows converging over the blacktop. On the center stripe, a quarter mile distant, he spotted what appeared to be the carcass of a large animal, perhaps a yearling calf. Kerney drew near and hit the brakes as soon as he realized it was a body facedown on the pavement.
He grabbed his first-aid kit from under the seat of his truck, ran to the body, and rolled it over. Blood bubbled from the smashed mouth and nose, and the skull had been crushed at the temple, exposing the cranial cavity. Teeth protruded through the lower lip, and Kerney couldn’t force the mouth open. He ripped open the shirt, took a small penknife from the kit, probed for the soft spot beneath the trachea, and punched a hole in it. Bloody fluid gushed out, splattering Kerney’s hands and face.
He dropped the penknife and started CPR, but it was too late. He sat back on his haunches and stared at the body. From what Kerney could make out from the mangled features and the clothing the victim had been a young man, maybe a teenager, probably Mexican, and most likely an illegal immigrant worker.
Had he been dumped out or accidentally fallen from the back of the panel van?
In the silence of the sun-drenched morning, as the crows circled noiselessly above, Kerney sat next to the body for a moment on the empty highway, thinking that he’d seen, in both war and peace, far too many dead people.
He got slowly to his feet and used his cell phone to call for police assistance and an ambulance. He got a tarp and some road flares from the toolbox in the bed of his truck, covered the body, and set out the flares. Above him the crows called out in protest as they floated down to the side of the road and pranced noisily back and forth, while Kerney kept them away with his silent vigil.
Forty minutes later an EMT from Hachita arrived on the scene, closely followed by a Border Patrol officer up from Antelope Wells. Kerney identified himself to the men, and the officer took his statement while the EMT inspected the corpse. Soon after, a state police officer from Deming appeared with an Animas volunteer fire department ambulance trailing behind. Two cowboys in a pickup truck, hauling a horse trailer filled with hay, stopped to watch the proceedings.
Kerney gave another statement to the cop, a senior patrol officer named Flavio Sapian, whom Kerney knew from his days as deputy chief of the New Mexico State Police. Sapian put out a radio bulletin on the panel van and took photographs of the dead man. He checked the roadway, the shoulder, and Kerney’s truck for any sign of a collision before releasing the body for transport. As the ambulance pulled away and the Border Patrol Officer left, Sapian walked to Kerney, clipboard in hand.
“Does this happen often?” Kerney asked.
Sapian, a stocky man with a fleshy face and deep chest, waved at the cowboys as they drove off. “Not like this. Sometimes a rancher will find a body on his land, or the coyotes—the smugglers who bring the illegal immigrants across the border—will abandon them in the desert. But mostly that happens west of here, where the copper smelter is located. It’s forty miles