The Case of the Sin City Sister (3 page)
“There’s no time to take anything.” Her husband rushed into the bedroom, trying to hurry her along. “There’s no room for those,” he said, nodding at the two framed pictures she’d just pulled from the nightstand. “Just essentials.”
She turned to him and started to argue but realized it would just take time—time they didn’t have. She put the pictures back and opened a small drawer to pull out a few things she didn’t want to leave behind: a small angel given to her by her mother when she moved to Vegas, a bracelet with silver charms, a tiny seed pot from a potter living on the Acoma Pueblo. She closed the drawer without removing the small book she hoped would not be picked up by the wrong person.
He swore. “I hear a motorcycle,” he said and darted from the bedroom into the kitchen.
A motorcycle
, she thought. Wouldn’t that be great if it was her sister arriving and not the man terrorizing the two of them? But
her family was nowhere near the town she was in. She shook her head and glanced around, wondering what she needed and if she would ever be back, if she’d ever recover these things that she had treasured.
There were so many other items she wanted to take, including a necklace from her mother, a Navajo squash blossom design of turquoise and coral, the one she wore all the time, the one given to her just before she died. There was the painting found in the back of an old church—the sisters Mary and Martha sitting at the feet of Jesus—and a book of prayers she’d received from her parents on her sixteenth birthday, a book she had never been without. She picked it up and couldn’t help herself; she fanned through the pages, remembering when it had been given to her, the way her mother smiled, as though she thought it was the perfect gift for her teenage daughter, a gift she seemed to think might save her—from what, she would never say.
“I need more time,” she said to no one in particular.
“What?” he called from the other room. “What are you saying?”
“I said I need more time,” she repeated, speaking up this time so her husband could hear her. “I like it here. It took us a long time to find this apartment, and I don’t like leaving all our stuff like this. I don’t like worrying that somebody will take it.”
“Don’t worry about it. I called next door. They have the extra key. They’ll make sure nothing gets stolen while we’re gone. I took care of it,” came the voice from the other side of the wall.
“Right,” she said under her breath. “Just like you took care of everything else.” She stuck the book of prayers in one of the side pockets of the suitcase. She hobbled over to the closet, her
ankle still swollen and sore, and grabbed a few blouses, along with a jacket since it was still chilly in the evenings.
“We’ll buy clothes. Don’t worry about clothes.”
“Buy clothes?” She looked at him. “How are we supposed to buy clothes when we don’t have any money?”
“I’m going to get the money,” he said. He walked over to where she was standing and put his arms around her. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.”
She closed her eyes and dropped her face into his shoulder. She took in a whiff of his cologne and was somehow comforted by the familiar smell. He was trouble, always had been, but she loved him, and she was going to do what he said.
Suddenly he yanked away. “I hear it again. It’s him for sure. He’s here.” His voice had dropped to a panicked whisper.
“Okay, okay,” she said, leaving the closet and grabbing the suitcase from the bed. “Let’s go.” She hopped to the bedroom door and glanced around once more at everything she was leaving behind. “I hope it’s enough,” she said, but her husband did not hear her.
Carlos and Joseph Diaz had been four-wheeling on every trail in the Santa Fe National Forest since their twelfth birthday. Mary, their mother, thought her twin sons too young to have the ATVs, but she had been outvoted by her husband and her brother, a dealer in Santa Fe who’d gotten them a great deal on a matching set.
They rode on the marked trails where motor vehicles were permitted, the ones their father had pointed out the day they got their new toys, and they rode on the ones where they were not allowed and had not been authorized to ride by a parent or adult. Since federal lands were rarely patrolled, the chances of their being discovered and punished were slim, and so for three years they had been running up and down the mining trails as though they owned the land. Sometimes they even parked and entered some of the abandoned and closed mines they drove past, something they had promised never to do. One mine in particular had captured their attention on an earlier ride, and on this day, they’d brought
flashlights and a few supplies, determined to go into the mine and stay a little longer than they had when they’d first discovered it.
The brothers drove from the back side of Madrid all the way beyond the Cerrillos Hills, out past the marked trails and old mining roads. They rode on private land, but the fence that bordered the property had been cut and pushed aside long before they’d arrived the first time. It was Carlos who had noticed the opening the previous Saturday morning, providing them with a new territory to ride, a new area to explore, and he had hurried to stop his brother and turn back to drive across the unfenced border. He knew he wouldn’t have any trouble convincing his brother to follow him because Joseph was usually the first one of the pair to break any trespassing laws.
When they found the old mine the first time, it was late in the afternoon, the sun was setting, and they couldn’t see past the boarded-up opening. Having heard all too often the stories of collapsing mine roofs and how the mines were often dens for mountain lions and rattlesnakes, they’d pulled aside a couple of the boards but decided to come back another day with more time and better supplies to see and discover what lay within the small hillside opening.
“You sure it was this far out?” Joseph asked when they stopped along the trail, neither one of them completely sure of the exact spot where they’d crossed.
“Yeah, it was way past those switchbacks and just before we usually cross the arroyo.” Carlos peered out into the desert landscape before them. “I think it’s just past that old sign.” He raised his chin to point out where he thought the fence was cut and headed out again. Joseph pulled out behind him.
Sure enough, Carlos was right, and the two of them picked up speed as they rounded the far hill and headed toward the abandoned mine they had only recently found. When they got to the opening, they slowed and parked, turning off their engines at the same time.
“You got the hammer?” Carlos asked, remembering that they had pulled off only two of the top boards so they could peek inside. They had tried to pull off the others but were unsuccessful. That was the other reason they had decided to come back. They knew they could cross over the old boards, but neither one of the brothers wanted to be the one pushed up and over without knowing what was on the other side. It would be easier, they decided, to go in together, and to do that, more of the boards needed to be pulled away.
“I got it,” Joseph answered, reaching inside the small toolbox he kept attached to the back of his four-wheeler.
“You brought Dad’s good one?” Carlos asked, sounding both impressed and a little nervous at what his brother had done.
“We’ll get it back before he needs it,” Joseph replied. “Here,” he said and threw him the flashlight while he walked over and started pulling nails out of the boards.
“What kind of mine is this, anyway?” Carlos asked, turning on the flashlight and beaming light in between the boards.
“Silver, I think,” Joseph responded. “Up front they were mining for placer gold, but back here I think it was silver.”
“It could be turquoise,” Carlos noted. “We studied that in history last year. There were a lot of people digging for turquoise in the early 1900s. Cerrillos was almost picked as the capital of New Mexico.”
Joseph yanked out another nail and pulled at a board from the center of the opening. “I know, Professor. We’re in the same grade. I take State History too.” He turned back to his brother. “Are you going to just give history lessons or are you going to help?”
Carlos turned off the flashlight and stuck it into his back pocket. He walked over next to his brother and yanked at a loose board until it came free. He threw it off to the side. “You want to get that last one?” he asked, pointing to the board near their feet.
“We can just jump over that one,” Joseph said. He dropped the hammer at his side and took a step inside. “Man, it must be twenty degrees cooler in here,” he commented.
Carlos paused and then walked in behind him, turned on the flashlight, and began to throw light inside the old mine. He shivered. His brother was right—it was very cold inside. He was glad he had worn a long-sleeved shirt.
“Here, let me see that.” Joseph reached over for the flashlight.
Carlos handed it to him.
“Look, it goes way back,” Joseph noted, pointing the light in front of where they stood. “You ready?”
Carlos shrugged. “How do we know there’s no rattlers back there?”
Joseph grinned. “Guess we don’t until we hear them.”
“Or get bit by one.”
“We’ll just go a little ways,” Joseph said, trying to persuade his brother. “That’s why we came back, right?” He turned to Carlos and shined the light in his eyes.
Carlos turned away. “Geez, Joe, you trying to blind me?”
His brother laughed and started toward the back of the mine.
“Looks like it gets a little smaller,” he commented, pointing to the opening. He knew his brother was claustrophobic. “You can wait out there if you want,” he added, prodding him.
Carlos followed. “I’m not scared, if that’s what you think.”
“Okay then, why don’t you go ahead?” Joseph stopped and waited.
Carlos paused. “No, you go first. That way if the snake or cat jumps out, you’ll be lunch and I’ll have time to get out.”
The two brothers walked in a few steps farther.
“Just looks like the others,” Carlos said as he followed close behind his brother. “I think it would be boring being a miner. Never seeing the sunshine, breathing in all this dust and dirt.”
“Yeah, but if you found the gold or the silver or whatever thing you were looking for, well, then you would be set for life,” Joseph noted. “You could be a millionaire.”
“I don’t think that really happened to most of those guys. A lot of them were on the payroll for the big companies. Most of them came out here, spent all their hard-earned money, and went home broke and without a piece of gold or silver or turquoise to their name.”
“And probably they were the lucky ones.” Joseph stopped. The flashlight was shining straight ahead of them. “Some of the other ones may have ended up like him.”
Carlos’s gaze followed the beam of light.
There, straight ahead of Joseph, about ten feet from where they stood and propped up against the side of the wall, was a pile of bones, along with a skull and a rib cage—a human skeleton. The two boys didn’t speak.
There was a scratching noise from farther down in the mine and then a long, high-pitched cry.
Joseph dropped the flashlight as Carlos pushed past him and didn’t stop running until he was astride his ATV. He glanced behind him only to make sure his brother had made it out, and then he cranked the engine and took off. Joseph was only a few yards behind, leaving the entry wide open, the boards thrown to the side, hiding their father’s favorite hammer as it lay abandoned in the thin weeds, and the flashlight still on, rolling across the dirt floor, casting shadows across the walls of the old turquoise mine and across the old bones of someone who had died inside.