Free Prolonged Exposure by Steven F. Havill Page A

gazing off into the trees. Francis leaned against her, still tightly clutching her hand. “Come here, sir,” Estelle said, and beckoned me.
    I trudged over and she indicated the ground under the nearest piñon, soft and inviting with the thick scatter of needles. It looked soft and inviting anyway. Before I had a chance to remind her that those cussed things could be as sharp as carpet tacks and as sticky as old gum on a hot sidewalk, she sat down, cross-legged, and patted the ground. “If I get down there, I’m going to need a crane to pick me back up,” I said.
    “It’s a good place to rest,” Estelle said. I glanced back at the Blazer. Camille was rummaging in her voluminous handbag, no doubt for more film. I took the plunge before she could record the episode on film.
    Estelle encircled her son at the waist, hugging him close. As she talked to me, her breath whispered right beside the child’s ear.
    “Suppose he’s playing right here. This is the only spot that makes sense, and this is where his mother remembers him being.” She lifted one of Francis’s arms as if he were a rag doll and pointed with it off to the left, past the Blazer. The youngster giggled and squirmed closer. “That’s the direction of the fire.” She swung Francis’s arm and pointed off into the woods. “In the dark, it would be just about impossible to walk in that direction.”
    I ducked my head and looked past them at the dense limb wood. Both piñon and juniper were the kind of evergreens that went for the tender parts of the body, with sharp prongs, wild shapes, and lots of dead limb wood to cut, grab, and scrape.
    “He wouldn’t have gone far, that’s for sure.”
    Estelle nodded, hugging Francis. “That’s for sure.” She lifted the kid’s arm once more, pointing in the direction we’d come in the Blazer.
    “Now, that way, it’s easy walking,” she said, bending her head close to her son’s. “Look way down the road, hijo . Do you see where we turned the corner by those trees? See where the fence comes in and then crosses the road?” Francis nodded. The fence was no more than thirty yards away.
    Estelle pushed her jacket cuff back and held up her watch. “Show padrino how fast you can run down to the fence and back.”
    Francis straightened up and turned to look at me, his dark eyes big and round, as if I’d made the strange request, or at least as if it was my fault. “Better him than me,” I muttered, and Francis heard me.
    He held out a tiny hand, as if his thirty-five pounds could hoist my two hundred-plus to my feet. I grinned, seeing the same gesture mirrored that his mother had used with him earlier.
    “You go,” I said. “You’ll be there and back before I even get up.” He didn’t buy that one. I turned my head to see what Camille was doing. She was reloading the camera, forehead furrowed in concentration. “Camille, take a picture of Francis.”
    That was a miscalculation. Showing off his track-and-field skills wasn’t on the youngster’s agenda, especially in front of a camera. He said something in Spanish and collapsed against his mother’s knees, head down behind, out of sight. Estelle rubbed his back. I found it hard to believe that this was the same perpetual-motion machine whose standard speed setting at home was set at “Cyclone.”
    “I don’t think so, sir.” She craned her neck, looking up at the canopy of contorted branches. “Especially in the dark. I can’t imagine him straying away from the campfire, especially if there was something going on, like music. Fire attracts. Children can’t ignore it. I’m sure you’ve seen the looks on kids’ faces when they’re staring into a bonfire. Every spark is a fascination.”
    Francis pushed himself up and leaned against her knees. He regarded me soberly; then I saw his eyes shift. He giggled and ducked his head a fraction of a second before I heard the click of Camille’s camera.
    “Estelle’s right, Dad,” she