Read The Cinco de Mayo Murder for Free Online Page B

his fall,” Joseph said.
    “Looked that way, ma'am. He'd probably turned over a couple of times on the way down, slid some, grabbed onto scrub, but couldn't stop his fall, then went into the trees.”
    “How do you know he grabbed onto anything?” I asked.
    “His hands were scratched, kinda bloody if I remember.” That would mean he hadn't committed suicide, I thought. Of course, after having jumped or hurled himself down, he might have changed his mind or instinctively tried to stop his fall.
    “I don't remember seeing any comments about his hands in the autopsy report,” I said.
    “Haven't read it for twenty years. The ME was pretty sure it was an accident, so maybe he wasn't as thorough as he could've been. I don't think going down the slope is a very good idea, ladies.”
    I had to agree. I took some pictures of the slope, the stand of trees, the trail, and put my camera away. “What kind of trees are those?” I asked.
    “They're mesquites. Lots of them in this part of the country. They use 'em to flavor barbecue, and they make furniture out of the good pieces. Beautiful wood when it's sanded and oiled.”
    They didn't look very beautiful now, but rather scraggly.
    “Over there, that tree that's green from the roots up, that's a palo verde. Means ‘green stick’ and that's what it is. Even the trunk stays green.” He turned to me. “What is the purpose of your seeing this place?”
    “I knew him from high school. His death destroyed not only his life but his parents’ lives as well. His father died of a heart attack about a year afterward, and his mother had astroke that's left her with difficulty walking. The fear they both had is that he killed himself.”
    “It's possible,” Warren said, “but I don't believe it. You can see how hot it is right now at the beginning of May. My recollection is that he died on or about the fifth, Cinco de Mayo.”
    “What's that?” Joseph asked.
    “Ah, a great day in Mexican history, Sister: the day General Zaragoza won the battle of Puebla in 1862 after Maximilian was executed. If not for that, we could have had a French country south of the border.”
    Joseph smiled. “Thank you. Please go on.”
    “Let's see. I was about to say that May can get pretty hot here, over a hundred sometimes. I expect he wasn't prepared for the heat and the dryness. Could've been dehydrated, gotten dizzy maybe, lost his balance.”
    “That's what I'd like to find out,” I said. “I'd like to be able to tell his mother it was an accident. It won't make her a happy woman, but it will ease her conscience if she knows it wasn't suicide.”
    “Tough to prove one way or another. I got my gut feelings to go by, but that won't convince this poor fellow's mother.”
    “I know.”
    “Which tree was his body up against?” Joseph asked.
    “The one in the middle. It was in better shape twenty years ago. See that moss hanging from those branches? That's in the process of killing the tree. Next time you come, it may not be here.”
    “That's a saguaro, isn't it?” I asked, pointing to a large cactus whose arms stretched up and out.
    “Oh yeah. You'll see a lot of 'em in Arizona. Won't see 'em much elsewhere.”
    “They're really something.”
    “I'm sure you know that suicide is a very touchy issue in the Catholic Church,” Joseph said. “Priests often officiate at funerals for suicide victims on the assumption that they may have changed their minds when it was too late to save themselves. This could be one of those times.”
    “Which makes it harder to figure out what happened,” I added. “Was anything found near the body, Warren? Water or food or any piece of clothing?”
    “Nothing that I remember. It was pretty messy. There are animals—”
    “I know,” I said, cutting him off. I didn't want to think about the close-up pictures I had seen.
    “Was the backpack open or closed?” Joseph asked.
    “Closed, I think. Packed kind of neat. Had his ID, Social Security card,