A bloodstain the size of a dinner plate soaked his denim work shirt. The shirt was old and faded, with plenty of rips here and there, the kind barbed wire would tear when a man’s a little careless ducking through fences. I stepped closer. The seven small holes in the center of his back weren’t from barbs…and they were grouped tightly enough that I could have covered them with my hand. Without moving my feet I twisted around looking for spent shell casings. There were none. I walked backward the way I had come, trying not to disturb the arroyo bottom. A half dozen times I thought I had found a shell casing, but it was only the sun winking from the quartz-loaded stream gravel. At the juniper I turned around. Downsteam, the ambulance crew was just making preparations to load Cecil Lucero’s body on the gurney. I whistled sharply. Estelle Reyes-Guzman must have read the urgency on my face, because she got off her knees where she’d been photographing the .22 rifle and walked up the arroyo to meet me.
