“That’s right.”
Raymond whispered to Hunter, “The owner of the Corazon cinnabar mine, and a dozen or so others.”
“And the hundred-thousand-acre ranch it sets on.”
“So, we’re talking big bucks here?”
“The quicksilver set Hart up, then he got into oil, but that was all the original Hart, from before the turn of the twentieth century. His children kept that going into computers, music, and a lot of other things.”
“What about this one?”
“He’s the youngest, and last in line. What I hear, he’s determined to spend all of it. He sort of went crazy after his older brothe
r disappeared. They’d been real close.” They watched the Deputy Sheriff talk to them, and Raymond said, “Let’s go look at the car. I wasn’t here for the show yesterday because of that group I was tracking, but maybe there’s something left to find.”
“What, that’s not burned?”
“Maybe all of it didn’t go up.”
They drove back to the Ford, and Raymond walked around the burned area while Hunter remained at the trunk. She noticed that Ellis wasn’t paying attention to Carlo, but only to her and Raymond.
Raymond said, “Can you open the trunk?”
Hunter went to it and noticed it wasn’t closed all the way, so she lifted the lid with a stick. The interior was scorched, but not as badly as the remainder of the vehicle, or the tarps and bones.
Raymond said, “You didn’t find any carrots and potatoes in there, did you?”
Hunter’s eyes widened. “Just some cop humor,” he said, and winked. He checked the inside, using a branch from a nearby dead mesquite to run around the floor and walls.
The inch-thick crust was like week-old bread lining the rim of the trunk, and Hunter checked how stiff it was. Her first pinch broke a small piece off, exposing a piece of half-inch long section of finger bone. She studied it and the crusted area around it. This was from a small person, and the tip of a finger.
Ellis frowned, He walked to join them at the car. Before he reached the car, Hunter grasped the small bone and pulled it loose, putting it in her pocket as she turned her body so Ellis didn’t see what she had.
Ellis reached Hunter, “Find something?”
She held up a piece of the smelly crust an inch from his nose, “Just this stuff. You want it?”
Ellis leaned his head farther from the smell, “I’ll pass.”
Hunter tossed the piece into the trunk, “Me, too.”
Raymond watched Ellis the way a guard dog silently watches a stranger. When Ellis returned to his friend Mike Hart, Raymond said in a soft voice, “That guy makes me uncomfortable. We need to find out about him, if he’s going to be around our country.”
Hunter nodded as she put her hand in the pocket to feel the small bone. She recognized it because the bone was so clean now after she pulled it out of the crust. It was a finger bone, the top joint, like one sheared off at the final knuckle. It felt so small she knew it had to be the pinky finger of a child or a very small person.
Raymond edged beside the burned hull and stopped beside her, his eyes turned down to her front pants pocket where her hand wriggled the bone. “I know you’re a woman, but it looks like you’re playing pocket pool there.”
She stopped. “I’ve got something we need to get checked out by forensics. Let’s slip out of here.”
“I thought we were looking for tracks.”
“Okay, we’ll do that first, then get back to the office.”
They began at the area beyond the burned Ford, going in slow circles around it, then expanding the circles from there. Hunter found a single set of tracks, but they quickly faded in the desert soil and rocks. Raymond said, “The tracks are lined out straight. Looks like whoever it was, was headed near the old cemetery.”
Hunter drove them to the cemetery and they walked through the crosses and small tombstones, looking for the tracks they saw earlier, but nothing showed. They made a circle around the area and Hunter found one possible partial print, but nothing beyond that.
An hour later, Hunter said, “We’re not finding anything worthwhile. Let’s head to the office so I can make some calls and get this bone checked out.”