Free The Cinco de Mayo Murder by Lee Harris Page B

Do you have time now to discuss some questions about Heinz's death?”
    “No, I don't. But I definitely want to talk to you. Give me your number and I'll call you back. Shall we say two hours from now?”
    “That will be fine.” I gave him my number, made sure he had my name, and hung up. My heart was banging. However our conversation developed, I had hit the jackpot on my first try. I wanted to call Jack and tell him, but I knew his days were very busy and I didn't want to bother him until I had something definitive to say.
    Instead, I took my notebook into the kitchen so that I could workwhile eating, and fixed some egg salad from an egg I had hard-boiled that morning. I added some salad greens and poured a glass of tomato juice. Ordinarily, I eat sandwiches, but Joseph and I had feasted almost every day in Arizona; foregoing the bread for a few weeks could only help the situation.
    As I ate, I wrote down questions to ask Professor Fallon. I wanted to know how close their friendship was, what heknew of Heinz's trip to Arizona, who had accompanied him or might have accompanied him. Had Fallon ever met Heinz's parents? The questions filled the page as I ate and wrote. After lunch, I went back to my dining room notes. Perhaps Fallon knew the student whose whereabouts were unknown to the college. Perhaps he knew the man who had no apparent job. Teaching at the college, Fallon would be able to see his classmates every five or ten years when they came to reunions. He might be a gold mine of information. I could hardly believe my good luck.
    By the time Fallon called me at a little after two, I was ready for him. “All right,” he said, taking the lead, “what has happened that prompted you to call me?”
    I went through my story. He interrupted several times, but allowed me to finish. Apparently, his curiosity was stronger than his desire to control the conversation.
    “Then it was just a coincidence that you looked into his death, is that right?”
    “That's exactly right. I was going to Tucson and I remembered that that was where Heinz had died. The day after my friend and I walked up the trail he took, I met with the Towers, the people who—”
    “Not so fast. How did you find this trail? How do you know you went to the right place?”
    I told him about Deputy Warren Gonzales.
    “I see. And he was the man on the scene when they found Heinz?”
    “Yes, he was. And I was able to locate the couple who first spotted the body.”
    “Who were they?”
    “A young married couple at the time.” I described our meeting and the crucial new piece of information about the backpack.
    “Amazing. And no one knew this for twenty years? What kind of police work was that?”
    “Professor Fallon, it looked like an accident, a fall off the trail and down a very steep slope. The Towers said only that they had spotted the backpack and the body without mentioning in which direction they were walking. They didn't even realize until we spoke about it that they hadn't seen the backpack on the way up.”
    “And no one asked. No one thought to ask.” He sounded angry and discouraged. “A young man dies and no one considers it anything except an accident.”
    “Was there any reason that you know of that they should have considered foul play?” I asked, finally inserting a question of my own into the dialogue.
    I could hear him exhale a thousand miles away. “No, I suppose there wasn't, at least nothing obvious.”
    “Then what makes you think they should have considered something other than an accident?”
    “Because everyone has a surface life and another life below the surface. When something as huge as a sudden fatality happens, investigators shouldn't go for the neat and obvious and close the books. Heinz was a quiet guy. I liked him. I'm a bully; you can tell that by listening to me. Just verbally; I don't hit people. But I'm another person under the argumentative exterior. Heinz was the opposite. He was this quiet guy who hit