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you drove up.”
    “The place with all the Indian drums and pottery in the window?” Guzman nodded. I patted myself on the back. Now I knew where I’d seen the girl before. Up on the mountain where Cecilia Burgess had been knocked over the guardrail, the light had been poor—just the spotlights and flashlights. And when the girl had been placed on the gurney, her profile had been visible to me only briefly. But it was enough to stir a memory.
    Earlier in the day, before I’d started my outdoorsman’s hiking act, I’d stopped at Garcia’s Trading Post, thinking I might find a birthday present for my oldest daughter, Camile. Odds were good I’d find something that she hadn’t seen already in ten department stores near her home in Flint, Michigan.
    The polite young lady who’d let me browse without interference through blankets, beads, and jewelry had been Cecilia Burgess. I was sure of it.
    “What I mean is that she had the opportunity to see all sorts of people,” Guzman continued. “San Estevan is pretty small, but there’s still plenty of the young and willing. My nurse said she’d heard Burgess had been seeing a guy from on up the canyon.”
    Guzman turned and called Mary Vallo, who’d gone back out front. When she appeared in the doorway, Guzman asked, “Who was that kid you said Cecilia Burgess was seeing up north?”
    “I don’t know his name,” Mary Vallo said, keeping her voice and facial expression that wonderful stone neutral that serves Indians as such a perfect barrier when they don’t want their minds read.
    “Yeah, but wasn’t he the one who was living up at the hot springs?”
    “I heard that he was,” Mary said.
    Guzman turned to me. “There’s a little group of leftover hippies who camp out about nine months of the year in the National Forest, up behind the hot springs. They drift in and out of town, work a little, panhandle a little, and generally make the tourists nervous. I heard Cecilia Burgess was hanging around with one of them. I never saw him.”
    “He didn’t wash much,” Mary Vallo said evenly, and when I glanced up, surprised at her opinionating, all I saw was her back as she retreated back down the hall to the front office.
    I chuckled. “Terrific. And hippies? I thought they were twenty years extinct.”
    Guzman grinned. “Maybe that’s the wrong word. But whatever you want to call ’em, then. Squatters. My father used to call them
greÑudos hediondos
, but then anyone who drove a van without being a plumber was suspect to him.”
    “Is there a colony of them up there?”
    “No,” Guzman said. “Not as far as I know. Just a few individuals, kids who like to spend the summer sacked out under the stars. Some of them live in tents…some just throw a bedroll under the overhang of a rock.” He spread his hands. “It’s just some place to stay where they aren’t harassed. The only time I’ve ever heard that the Forest Service forced anyone out of there was when the fire danger got too high.”
    “Like now?” I asked, remembering the crunch of the needles under my feet.
    “This is wet compared to six years ago, according to some of the locals. Ask Mary. I’ve heard that back then the state cops wouldn’t even let you park along the shoulder of the highway.”
    I fell silent for a moment, deep in thought. “That’s quite a hike, from town up there.”
    “About six miles,” Guzman said.
    I shrugged. “If you’re young, I guess that isn’t so bad. Maybe that’s what she was doing…hoofing it on up there for a little midnight nookey. Did she hang around with anyone else?”
    “No, but as I said, I don’t keep a census. You might find some other answers if you check with the Department of Social Services. The girl might have filed for child assistance. And I don’t know where the other child is or even
if
it is.”
    “What other child?”
    Guzman frowned and grimaced. “I keep forgetting.” He flipped open the manila folder on his desk, and I