Wild Sorrow (28 page)

By this time, we had arrived at the Santana home. I put the Blazer in park and looked at my medicine teacher. “No, Momma Anna, my mother was not there. She left. She left, and I was alone.”

“You always have mother. You are beloved and cherish daughter to her.” She opened the car door and began to get out.

I closed my eyes for a moment. I was too sore and tired to argue with this stubborn old woman. Maybe she was trying to reassure me that wherever my mother was, she would always love me, but I couldn't take any comfort in that.

“Come in,” Anna said before closing the passenger door.

I followed her into the house, planning to say a quick good-bye and then leave. But Momma Anna gestured for me to follow her into the bedroom, a room I had never been in before. She showed me to a low altar that had been constructed from a plank of wood set on two large round aspen logs cut to the same height. Before it, she had folded a horse blanket, probably used for kneeling in prayer. On the altar was a framed photo of her father, Grandpa Nazario Lujan, who had passed away in November. In the picture, he was standing in front of a sunlit span of adobe with a white blanket draped over his shoulders, his long braids dangling in front of his chest, a cloth headband tied across his tall forehead. Anna had placed Grandpa Nazario's blanket, one of the drums he had made, a silver and turquoise cuff, his drum-making tools, and many of his favorite things on the altar and on the floor around it. Momma Anna handed me a box of wooden kitchen matches and pointed to the tall glass jar candle with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on it. As I was lighting the candle, she disappeared from the room.

I wasn't sure whether I was expected to kneel and pray at the altar, to remain and tend it, or to leave and follow my medicine teacher. I waited a moment and watched the flame flicker in the glass jar. Anna came back into the bedroom carrying a plate and a mug. She set them on the altar in front of the photo of Grandpa Nazario. She had fixed him a meal of some of the posole and elk-meat chili, a piece of pueblo bread, and a cup of coffee.

As I was leaving Momma Anna's house, she held the door for me. “You know that guy Tom Leaves His Robe?”

“Old Tom? Yeah, I gave him a ride the other day, and then I saw him briefly again yesterday.”

“You maybe pray for him,” she said. “They find him drunk behind that Wal-Mart. He almost froze to death again.”

“Oh, no. Oh, no.” I lowered my head into my hand. “He wasn't drinking when I saw him,” I said. “And the other day, he said he'd been sober for seven months.” Then I remembered Tom's urgency to meet with his sponsor to do his fifth step, and the roll of tear-stained yellow papers he had clutched in his hand. “I have to go, Momma Anna,” I said. “I have to make a call.”

 

It took three tries before I got through to Diane, and by the time I did, I was at the BLM. “Those papers you found in Rule Abeyta's home? Were they yellow, all curled up and water-spotted, written on with blue ink?”

“How'd you know?”

“Those weren't things Rule wrote,” I said. “Those were the fifth step that one of his AA sponsees had written out, a guy named Tom Leaves His Robe. I gave him a ride the other day, and he had those papers rolled up in his hand.”

I heard Diane sigh on the other end of the line. “Damn. I can't believe I had this all wrong. All the clues are dead-ending: that license plate number you wrote on your hand traces to a car totaled in an accident and destroyed for salvage metal. The sister at the pueblo church has claimed that the statue of the hanging nun belongs to the church and is a harmless icon. A nun says this!”

“You talked to Sister Florinda?”

“Yeah, because there's a strange wrinkle there. Guess what our data guys found when going through Cassie Morgan's finances? She had a will, fully executed. She left her entire estate to that little church at Tanoah Pueblo, named Sister Florinda Maez as the executor.”

I felt my eyes dilate. “Did the sister know about this?”

“She seemed surprised when I mentioned it. I haven't had time to run the whole thing down. Like I said, it's a little twist, but it's not giving me a buzz. Anyway, the lab report is back: the blood on the rope is Cassie Morgan's. But the DNA from the skin samples on the ends of the rope is not a match with Rule Abeyta's, so we are releasing him.”

I was quiet.

“The Silver Bullet is upset with me because he says I arrested the wrong guy, even though he was with me every step of the investigation. I'm headed out to Tanoah Pueblo in a little bit. I'm going back over everything. We must have missed something.”

“So we're back to square one.”

“We are.”

And I'm still a target,
I thought.

“I'm having better luck with my personal sleuthing. I found out that the landlord's creepy cousin is named Benny Baca, and he's done some time in California. I ordered his sheet, and I'll know more when it comes across the wire. He's no appliance repairman. I can use this to discredit Eloy Gallegos in an appeal in district court.”

“Wait a minute—Benny Baca? Have you looked at that sign in the big lot at the end of your street? It says ‘Baca Land Development Company.' This supports what I suggested to you at the courthouse yesterday—that Gallegos wanted you off his land because he's either trying to put together a development deal of his own, or to sell to a developer. But he must need an easement.”

“Good, that's good. I'll run the Baca Land Development Company and see what I get. Hey, guess what else I found out.”

“What?”

“I know Agent Sterling's first name.”

“Tell me.”

“It's Sterling.”

“So he goes by his first name?”

“No, that's both his first and his last name. He's Sterling Sterling.”

Answering the Call

I sat at a desk in one of the cubicles at the BLM that afternoon, staring at the paperwork Roy had left for me. It was an application to the Natural Resource Police Training Center in Artesia, New Mexico, as a candidate for BLM ranger training in the spring program, which was a ninety-day residential assignment. Roy had already submitted my records, and this was more or less a formality.

Mountain had made the rounds of the few folks working there at the BLM office on Christmas Eve day and collected a minimal supply of rubs, scratches, and attention. Now he lay on the floor at my feet, snoozing contentedly. I worried over how to handle the issue of his care while I was gone to the training. The past summer, I'd deployed with an incident management team on a fourteen-day assignment to a wildfire, and entrusted Mountain to Momma Anna's care, but she had ended up bringing the wolf to the wildfire. And Tecolote couldn't manage the wolf for more than a few hours. Now that he was prone to running away and chasing coyotes, I didn't trust him with anyone but Kerry. And Kerry was going to Washington.

I filled out the first page with my personal information, then doodled on a notepad, unable to concentrate. I shoved the paperwork away. My side pained me terribly, as did my face. It still hurt to pee, although I'd stopped passing blood. I was not only worried and hurting, I felt edgy and confused. I didn't feel safe. I didn't know why the two men had attacked me, why any of the attacks in the past week had happened, or what it all had to do with the murder of Cassie Morgan. Until that case was solved and I was safe on the streets, I wouldn't be able to make any plans.

My joints had stiffened up while I had been sitting in the chair, so I forced myself to get up and move. Mountain fell in beside me as I pulled on my coat and walked down the unusually quiet hallway, through the empty lobby, and outside to the parking lot to get a breath of fresh air. A deepening cold was causing the afternoon to go gray and miserable. During the time I had been in the cubicle inside, most of the employees had left the BLM to begin their Christmas holidays. There were only a few cars parked in the lot. I went to the Blazer and took out the bag Tecolote had given me. In it, I had brought the
carne de cabra
from the refrigerator at home to give to the wolf for his dinner before going to the pueblo that night. Kerry was due to pick us up in fifteen minutes, so I thought I would go ahead and feed Mountain now.

Back inside, I filled Mountain's water bucket and then opened the packet of meat. There were five thick red slices of gamey-smelling flesh. I picked up one between my fingers and tossed it to the wolf. He raised up and snapped the meat between his jaws, then almost inhaled the whole piece without chewing. I made him wait for the next one, and this time I held it up and said, “Be nice, Mountain, be nice.” A filament of drool stretched from his lip halfway to the floor. He came forward and took the slice gently, then chewed and swallowed it quickly. I set the paper with the three remaining slices on the floor and made the wolf wait—in terms of wolf behavior, this was an exercise that maintained my role as the alpha. I gave the release, and he gobbled the meat down in seconds. Protecting my sore ribs as I moved, I began working my way out of the chair to go wash my hands when the phone on the desk in the cubicle rang.

“Wild. Resource Protection,” I said.

“I want to help you.” The man's voice sounded muffled.

“Who is this?”

“I know you are in danger. I can help you.”

“Who is this?”

“Come to Tanoah Pueblo tonight for the procession. I will meet you there. I can tell you who killed that woman.”

I was quiet, trying to think what to do. Could I record this call somehow? Could we trace it?

“Are you there?”

“I'm here,” I said. “Tell me now.”

“Meet me tonight at the pueblo.”

“I can't. If you have something to say, say it now.”

“I will be wearing the mask of the deer. Look for the downy eagle feathers on the tips of the antlers.”

“I won't be there, you'll have to talk to me now.”

“I do this to help you. My standing among the tribe will be in jeopardy if anyone finds out I told. I do not know who is there with you, or who might be listening.”

“I'm alone. No one is listening. You haven't even told me who you are.”

“At five o'clock, I will be in my mask. You will not know who I am, but I will tell you who killed the woman. Until you know, you will not be safe.”

I looked at my watch. It was four thirty. Kerry was overdue. “I can't get there in time.”

There was no reply; the line was silent.

“Hello?”

 

I called Diane and recounted the call to her. “I'm out at the pueblo now,” she said. “I'll be watching. I'll try to stay close to the footbridge that goes across the río. Don't come up to me—it might scare your guy off. I'll watch for you and try to keep eyes on you.”

“I'll have to go in the back way to try to get there in time. The front entrance will be clogged with visitors coming to the procession from all around.”

“Just be careful. Watch your back. And bring your cell phone—make sure you leave it powered on. If I see something I need to warn you about, I'll call you.”

I left a note on the front door of the BLM office that read:
Meet me at the procession.
I loaded Mountain in the back of the Blazer and drove away muttering, “Damn it, Kerry, where are you?”

The Procession

Numerous events marked the eve of Christmas in the Taos Valley. One was the ongoing neighborhood reenactments of Las Posadas. Another was the spectacular ritual procession at Taos Pueblo, attended by hundreds of tourists and Taos town residents. And then there was the smaller, but more primal procession at Tanoah Pueblo—which drew few tourists, but rather mostly its own tribal members, some locals, and many rural villagers who traveled from the surrounding mountain communities where families had made the pilgrimage to the pueblo on Christmas Eve a tradition for generations.

I parked in the corral and came over the wall on the plank-wood steps near Grandma Bird's house, passed by the old cemetery, and went down a narrow alley between two massive adobe structures, entering the plaza at one corner, instead of through the main entrance gate by the church. Crowds of people packed the small square in the twilight, in spite of the merciless cold. Many wore traditional blankets, some were dressed in modern winter coats, and a few boastingly sported furs and fox-trimmed après-ski boots. Dozens of tall turrets, twelve feet high or more, had been framed from stacked piñon logs for the bonfires that would be lit as soon as the last of the day's light had left the sky.

The temperature had been dropping rapidly all afternoon and now hovered well below freezing. The waiting crowd queued up for spots nearest the soon-to-be-lit vertical pyres or visited the few resident vendors who sold refreshments out of their homes to buy cups of coffee and hot cider to warm their hands. The sky was clearing, and as the clouds broke, what little warmth had been trapped beneath them escaped upward to the stars.

I stood on a spot of high ground and scanned the crowd. Not far away, I saw Sevenguns waiting by the churchyard wall, wearing a chief-style woolen blanket. Under the hide-drying racks in front of the main pueblo building, a large group of Tanoah women stood gossiping, their blankets folded in half and fringed around the outer edges to make warm, beautiful shawls. In the near darkness, it was getting hard to make out details, and the individuals in the crowd began to look more and more like vague shapes in silhouette. I moved toward the center of the square. On the footbridge over the río, I spotted a tall, slender figure wearing dark jeans, a military-style jacket, and a black-billed cap.
Diane.