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“Ronnie’s got to call her back to the stand, do some damage control. That’s when we get to the rest of it. Otherwise it looks like I’m picking on her.” Truman leaned closer to Hunter and said, “He won’t do it now, though, ‘because we just popped her credibility bubble and he’ll have to think about how to build her back up.”
Ronald shifted tactics and used blow-ups of charts, photos of the incident site, and autopsy photos to set the scene in the jury’s minds of what happened that day. He conveniently left out the photos of the hidden bed in the pickup with the visible packages of heroin.
Truman objected several times, more to break up Ronald’s rhythm than anything, but he grinned when the Judge sustained one of them. At four-thirty, the judge stopped proceedings and admonished the jury not to talk about the case, saying court would resume at nine AM tomorrow.
Truman decided they needed to celebrate living through the first day and he took Hunter to The Cattleman’s Restaurant near Fabens. Hunter ordered the smallest steak on the menu and picked at her food, eating more of the coleslaw than anything else. Truman ordered the largest steak medium rare with all the trimmings, and wolfed it down.
Hunter said, “How can you eat like that and be so skinny?”
“Nervous energy,” Truman said as he looked over the dessert menu, “That, and running five miles every morning for the last ten years.”
“Yeah, that’ll do it.”
He waved over the waitress and ordered Dutch apple pie a la mode, when she left, he asked Hunter, “You gonna eat the rest of your steak?”
Hunter pushed her plate toward him. “Help yourself.” Truman cleaned the plate in swift, hungry bites.
***
Sleep didn’t come to Hunter until after midnight. The two young girls and the infant visited her dreams. The three children stood with their backs at the edge of a great cliff that dropped into a mile-deep canyon. Clouds floated a thousand feet below them. Wind whipped the children’s clothes and hair, almost blowing them off the precipice. Hunter faced them and could feel the powerful gusts hitting her back.
One of the girls asked, “Have you forgotten us?”
“No, not ever.”
“They are closing in on the other one,” she said.
“Who?”
The girl pointed into the canyon where a narrow slab of the steep wall jutted like a shark fin into the canyon floor. In the dream, Hunter was able to zoom in and see figures at the bottom, their backs to the stone wall. She recognized Anda, and saw someone with her, but couldn’t make them out. They were facing out, and a pack of huge, terrible looking wolves with red eyes and slavering jaws edged toward them. Anda and her companion were trapped, and there was no place to run.
Hunter groaned. The girl said, “Do you not see?”
“I see her, see them both.”
The girl pulled Hunter’s gaze back to her own face and said, “See her, and remember us as you found us.”
It clicked. The same bright-colored shawls, same style huaraches, and the same manner of dress as that worn by Anda.
The girl pointed to the visible edge of the cliff face and Hunter saw where part of a narrow trail had recently sheared off near the top, leaving a long patch of lighter-colored rock slashed across the rest of the cliff.
A huge gust of wind knocked Hunter to her knees and peppered her back and legs with stinging bits of sand and gravel. She looked for the girls but couldn’t see anything in the swirling cloud of dust enveloping her. Hunter crawled to the lip of the cliff and looked over the edge, but there was nothing. She turned her head to look for Anda and saw an empty canyon floor. As the wind died, Hunter staggered to her feet and she heard the girl’s voice echoing up from the canyon.
“Fiiinnd themmm.”
Hunter woke with her heart thudding against her ribcage. It took several minutes to calm down, then she turned on the bedside light and looked in her purse for Bobby Mata’s phone number. As Hunter dialed, she glanced at the clock. 4:30 AM. She finished dialing and after the fifth ring, Bobby’s voice told her he wasn’t in right now, but to leave a name and a number and he’d get back. She gave him the hotel number and said she would be there for three or four days, most likely, and for him to call, it was urgent.
Going back to sleep was impossible, so she went to the bathroom and ran water in the sink. After several handfuls of cold water on her face, Hunter dried off, got her running gear out of the drawers, and dressed in her gray cotton sweats and the old pair of Asics Gel-Lytes. She started though the silent streets of El Paso, walking for fifteen minutes, and then moving into a slow jog, keeping her pace at a twelve-minute-mile clip until the sun broke the horizon and she returned to the room for a shower and the second day of the trial.
***
Hunter couldn’t keep her mind on the proceedings. At every break and at lunch she called Bobby’s house only to get the answering machine. At three PM Truman whispered, “Earth to Hunter.”
“Sorry.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve got some things on my mind.”
