Dragonfly Bones (2 page)

“
Je
sus,” he said.

“Help me here,” Brittles asked Guzman and Klossberg. “Pull the Baggies open, quickly, one at a time.”

For half an hour Brittles handed up fragments until his quads cramped up and he had to stand up straight and finally step out of the trench. Everybody gathered around the piles of Baggies. Pardee had numbered one hundred and fifty-seven bags, each with a tiny bone fragment.

“What the hell are those?” Guzman asked.

“They ain't human,” Thumb said. “That's for sure, that's for damn sure.”

“Snake?” Klossberg asked. “Baby quail?”

“Hell,” Thumb snorted. “Them must be from dragonflies.”

“Get a forensic anthropologist up here,” Brittles said to Pardee.

“Anthropologist?” Guzman started laughing wildly, her mouth wide open, revealing three missing teeth. “Them ain't human, you fools. What you all got here is dragonfly bones.”

“Theresa,” Brittles said. “Let's go talk somewhere.”

Thumb started to accompany them, but Brittles waved him off. Back at the flatbed, Brittles poured out two cups of water, and Theresa drank hers so fast he gave her another and another until she poured the last one on her cornrow-braided hair and whipped her head side to side, shaking off drops like a dog coming out of a pond.

“You know what I've got to ask you,” Brittles said.

“Yessir.”

“So?”

“I was told,” she said shortly.

“By who?”

“Sean.”

“And Sean is…?”

“Another Rapture Warrior.”

“How did he know? How did Sean know, about the bodies?”

“You think those bones is from…is, like, body parts?”

Brittles nodded.

“Oh.”

“How did Sean know the spot?”

“Work crew.”

“What kind of work?” Brittles said patiently, wildly impatient inside but working hard not to show it and spook her.

“Clearing brush.”

“Here? In the housing development?”

“Nah. Out in the desert. You know, we chop and pull weeds, uh, pick up plastic bags and bottles and trash.”

“And is Sean still at this…what
is
the Rapture Warriors Camp anyway?”

“Enforced residence for troubled teenagers,” she said by rote.

“Sean is still there?”

“Was at breakfast.”

“Okay, Theresa. Thank you. I'll send you back to jail with the deputy.”

“No!” Shouting in alarm, fear bugging out her eyes. “I can't go there. I told, you know, I told you, about the burial, if I go to that jail, I'll never leave.”

Thumb heard her shouts and came over. Opened the rear door of the Tahoe. Brittles saw a D-ring welded to the floor, knew that Theresa would be chained to it.

“I'm not going back!”

“Why?” Brittles said.

“I'll never leave. They'll never ever let me leave.”

Brittles went for his suit coat, pulled it on slowly, bent to brush off his boots, trying to find the right decision, but in the end shrugging his shoulders.

“Miss Prejean, sorry, but I have no authority to keep you here.”

Thumb tried to pull her into the Tahoe's backseat. She raised her hands, clanked the wrist chain and cuffs on the roof again and again, digging through the white paint, sparks flying as she flailed to keep Thumb from pushing her inside.

“I'll have somebody at the jail to talk to you this afternoon,” Brittles said.

Thumb dug a knee into her back, then kicked her legs out from underneath her. As Theresa lost her balance, he shoved her into the seat, in the same moment reaching for the open end of the handcuffs on the D-ring and snapping the cuff around her wrist chain. She spat into his face and spewed curses, but he slammed the door shut just in time, her face pressed against the window, distorted with rage.

“I apologize,” Thumb said to Brittles. “We ain't never had to deal with somebody thisaway before. You say somebody will pick her up at the jail?”

“Sometime today.”

“Piece of work,” Pardee said from behind as Thumb drove away.

“She's afraid of something,” Brittles said.

“Didn't mean her. What do we do now?”

They watched the Tahoe go around a bend, dust devils lingering in the air.

“You call the forensic anthropologist?”

“On his way. Sounded kinda excited, said we'd have to stop digging, lots of political problems involved with old Indian bones.”

“Keep that backhoe working. I've got to go to Perryville prison, that job's got priority. You handle these bones okay?”

“Just us dragonflies here, boss,” Pardee said without smiling. “Just one thing.” He held out two Baggies. “We've got something that sure doesn't come from an old Indian.” He pulled on a clean pair of latex gloves, held up the first Baggie. “Some kind of bone. But there's still shreds of flesh on it.”

“What's in the other Baggie?”

Pardee reached inside, took out several small colored objects.

“Is that nail polish?” Brittles asked, astonished.

“Yup. Fingernails. I've got a bad feeling about this, Nathan.”

“Stop digging until the anthro guy gets here. While you're waiting, get a federal warrant out for Theresa Prejean. Find out where that place is, Rapture Warriors Camp. Get her into protective custody, have them take her to that safe house we use in Tucson.”

Pardee pushed the nails into a straight line on top of the Baggie. There were nine fingernails, the polish chipped on some and undisturbed on others. Five had color variations of brilliant red, another was black, another pale lavender, and two more had a French manicure.

“You figured out my bad feeling yet?” Pardee asked.

Brittles grimaced.

All the nails were different sizes.

Nine different women, nine different bodies.

And they'd only begun to dig.

1

B
adwater. Death Valley, California.

The three of us gathered at six in the morning around a small pool of saltwater, the lowest place in the United States.

“Ready?”

Rich held up a hand with fingers cocked like a starter's pistol.

Veronique Difiallos laughed.

I grinned.

“Bang!” Rich Thompson shouted.

Veronique coaxed her ancient VW camper van to life. She'd follow me, Rich driving his pickup ahead toward Furnace Creek Ranch. It was June twenty-third, the temperature already one hundred and seven degrees. Veronique's tape player started blasting an old Bink Dog rap.

I settled my lightweight headphones, turned on my iPod to get adrenaline ramped up with a Mad Squirrel rap, and started running.

Mile three. These first few miles were fun miles. Long-before-dawn miles. Juiced-up, hydrated, pumped, before-you're-dry, ready-to-
fly
miles.

Veronique pulled alongside in the VW van.

“You okay?” she shouted.

I nodded without speaking.

“I can't
hear
you, lady.”

She muted her CD player, leaned over to shout out the window at me.

I shouted back.

“You're cooking,” she shouted, dropping the van behind me.

 

Yeah, yeah, I'm fine.

I'm nuts to be running so far in this brain-frying heat, but I'm fine.

Left big toe blistering in the heat, my foot probably another twenty degrees hotter inside the running shoe. Right hamstring twingeing now and again, protesting and I'm wondering,
Why am I
doing
this? Like, remind me again, dear body?

The Death Valley Badwater Run starts very early on a July morning. You run around the desert here and there, finally heading, uphill, a long way uphill, one hundred and thirty-five miles gradually uphill, climbing over eight thousand feet to the finish line, which was a third of the way up Mount Whitney.

It's the toughest extreme sports run in the U.S., and I loved it. The actual Badwater Run wasn't scheduled for another two weeks, but Rich and I had already made reservations that weekend down at Rocky Point on the Sea of Cortes.

So why exactly was I running?

I hadn't snorted Ritalin in months. I'd changed my addiction to long distance running. Extreme long distance. Plus hand weights. Rich had been my live-in partner for two months. We'd met one night at Nonie, downing Susie's dirty martinis and rubbing elbows until I decided it was time to end my long celibacy.

Rich made me conscious of my forty-six-year-old body to the point where I sought muscle definition, stamina, energy—oh, hell, let's be honest, I sought something more permanent than a methamphetamine addiction. When you're running, those fan
tas
tic endorphins kick in after a few miles. You get high. You don't get strung out, just really tired, and I had an ability to run farther and farther every week.

Veronique lived with a Tewa who'd given up his fiddle for a three-stringed cello to accompany her on homemade rap albums, which she sold on the Internet. She was somewhere in her fifties, he was ancient, their blissful lives a constant wonder. Veronique knew me at my down and out worst, when I'd first tried to kick Ritalin and wound up liking too many martinis. Veronique was half Venezuelan, half African-
American. Slim and beautiful, she tattooed her lips and eyelids with impermanent ink that lasted two or three months. I'd thought it was a beauty thing, but she insisted that the tattooed lines made it easier to avoid daily makeup. She didn't drink, didn't do drugs, but brewed whole kettles of bancha tea every three days and infused my spirit with her energy, along the way teaching me hiphop and alternative rap. I loved rapping, and once I got past thug rap and the constant gangsta and ho routines, I gradually wrote my own raps, which the two of us would exchange in a weekly shoutdown.

She pulled alongside me again and motioned that we had a scheduled stop.

Mile six.

Gasping a bit, more from the heat than the physical exertion, hands on knees, greedy with the water bottle she handed me, greedier to sit in shade against the side of the van on the cardboard she laid out. We'd discovered early on that the pavement was hot enough to burn my thighs if I wasn't careful. But water loss was the death threat. Oceans of sweat poured down my face, my arms, under my running bra, into my shorts, down my thighs to soak my socks. We figured I had to drink a minimum of one gallon of water every hour, just to keep basically hydrated.

“What's my time?”

“Twenty-two minutes a mile. Not bad.”

“I'm dying, Veronique. That works out to running the whole thing in about forty some hours. I'm gonna cut back.”

“You can drive awhile. I'll run. Nobody will know the difference.”

“Nobody but me.”

I spritzed a whole water bottle on my ponytailed hair and shoulders, adjusted the loose fitting cotton blouse, and fastened my hat with sun-protection tenting at the back. The fresh water seemed to evaporate on contact.

“I'm not going much farther with these soggy socks, so get the next pair ready when I wave at you.”

“Blisters?”

“Don't ask.”

“You change your socks, we check for blisters. When we get to Furnace Creek Ranch, we decide how much longer you want to prove to yourself that you can do this crazy business.”

She handed me a large paper cup full of some mineral-enhanced orange juice, then another eight ounces of water. I stretched, got out of the shade of the van, and started a slow jog after I got Mad Squirrel going again.

After stopping to rest for an hour at Furnace Creek Ranch, I decided I'd do the next major leg and quit there. I'd run seventeen point four miles, and I told Rich and Veronique I'd quit at Stove Pipe Wells, which would be about fifty miles total. We could eat something at the restaurant, maybe Rich and I could spend the night at the small motel. So we started off again, but it wasn't much fun anymore.

Until I saw the six-foot-long green caterpillar.

Somewhere along the route the actual physical effort of running becomes automatic, runners pulled along with a tractor beam right out of Star Trek, a magnetic force-field bubble that encases them with mystic energy. Some endurance runners take the stress and fatigue mainly so they'll
move way beyond endorphin rushes into hallucinations. Runners from previous races reported seeing such things as a Boeing 747 taxiing alongside, nude men and women rollerblading with them for company.

I had no more hallucinations that day, but when my iPod quit working I chanted some of my latest rap, modifying some lines to fit this run.

I found myself repeating the last four lines again and again, gradually reducing it to the phrase “resigned to let things unfold,” and that got so unsettling I slowed my pace. Veronique pulled alongside and asked if I was okay, why was I just walking, was I tired?

“Radio ahead to Rich,” I said. “I've had enough of this. Let's drive home.”

2

R
esigned to let things unfold.

That bothered me for several days after the Death Valley run, because I was weary of unfolding past events, weary of reading those events like tea leaves, like I Ching stalks. Enough unfolding, I finally said to myself, but what I mostly thought was that I wanted to fold up my life and move on somewhere.

Not just anywhere.

Somewhere permanent.

A home I could live in for years, for decades.

Most of all, a home where I could live beyond haunted memories.

 

After San Carlos, after Meg killed the man and I took her home, I had to clean up my entire life and it took me several weeks just to work out how to begin.

Months before, my best friend Meg Arizana arranged for me to accompany her on a drive from Perryville prison down to Nogales. At the border crossing, several people died in a monster shootout, Meg was kidnapped and held hostage in the Sonoran desert by the brother of a woman Meg had killed with a shotgun in my old Tucson house. I spent two weeks fulfilling my shouted promise that I'd come find her. The farther I got into Mexico, the more people died.

In the process, I wound up totally estranged from my second-best friend, Rey Villanueva, Meg's ex-husband, and thought I'd found my ideal man in Kyle Callaghan, a kidnap-rescue negotiator from New Zealand. Like Russell Crowe, in that movie
Proof of Life
. Except Kyle had a young daughter and still loved his dead wife.

Meg and Rey remarried, got divorced again after just a few months. Meg went to Alaska, the coldest place she could think of where she might forget being kidnapped and held for ransom in the desert. Rey moved on…somewhere. I'd not heard from him since.

I knew
I
also had to move somewhere.

But
where
?

I knew I had to leave my house, leave all those visual memories of life, but where should I go? What should I do?

With no goals in mind yet, I started by cleaning out the room I used for my office. This took several weeks; actually, the last week was when I did things, the first ten days I had to decide what to keep and what to throw away. I keep few mementos, souvenirs, reminders. But I don't discard things easily.

Most of my life I've been an outsider to my community, my few friends, myself. Be prepared, that's Laura's marching song. Prepared to move on when trouble happens. When Law gets too close, especially when Law gets in your face even if they don't know what they're staring at.

But like all people, I do have my souvenirs. My remembrances, memorabilia, mementos. So I had to sort through stuff carefully, had to form a willingness to throw it all out and just move on.

No. That's wrong.

Tired of moving on, I wanted to settle down, find a home. A real home. A
perm
anent home. A symbolic and physical place I could call Home. Most people have that all their lives, even when they move, they just pick up their sense of home and take it with them. When I've moved on, at the back of my head I already knew the move was temporary even before I made it.

So I sorted out my office things with a deliberate sense of importance, no matter how slight or peripheral to my past. Searching, I guess, for those things which had true importance. Oh, hell, let's face it, I tell you, I wasn't really search
ing for bits of the past, I was looking at all my stuff and wondering why I'd even bothered to save it.

I moved piles into my living room, other piles onto the kitchen table and counters, still more stuff into my office and bedroom. Piles of stuff right on the floor. On carpets, tiles, wood, bricks, even on top of clothing, because I was sorting all that, too. Gradually, I saw a pattern to the sorting according to which room I was in. Listen, you've all moved a few times in your life, some of you have moved on, a few of you know the sudden panic of not even being able to go home, you had to move on so fast you just left everything behind. Or you ran away from it.

Living room.

Books in a corner, CDs in another corner.

Office.

Paper trails of a few hacking solutions. A few photos, none of them showing people, just computer and networking hardware. Some hard copy of special hacks I'd done, software scripts I'd written, printouts of downloaded website articles.

Kitchen.

My DVDs. I had hundreds of them. I wanted to sort them into piles, wanted to classify them, you know, noir, classics, kung fu, romantic comedies, whatever. Maybe they were in the kitchen because I spent most of my time there, I wasn't sure about that, but I loved my DVDs, knew I'd be taking pretty much all of them. No way I'd even begun to figure out
where
I'd be taking them. But I knew they'd come for the ride.