Wild Penance (27 page)

He closed the door without speaking and walked back to his car. I watched him in the rearview mirror as he got in the Land Rover and backed down the dirt road. I felt tense and fatigued, as if I had soaked up some of his and Regan’s anxiety and added it to my own.

I backed out of the drive and crossed the bridge over the rio. At the junction where the bridge met the road, I looked left—no oncoming traffic, then right—none coming, and when I turned to look left again, Esperanza’s face was pressed against the driver’s-side window. My heart stopped, then pounded. I heard a high ringing sound as the sudden escalation in my blood pressure looked for a way to escape the constricting confines of my arteries. I rolled the window down, my eyes dilated from the jolt.

“Don’t come to
la casa
, Mirasol! It is not safe. I will let you know when it is all right to come again.” She was wearing her thick lavender shawl wrapped around her head and shoulders. She stood beside the car and peered at me. Her eyes were at the same level as mine.

“Esperanza, I need to talk to you.”

“You must wait.”

“No, I need to talk to you now.” As I said this, I looked for a place to pull over, in case a car needed to come past.

“No!
¡Deje de hablar! ¡Escuche!
Stop talking, you must listen!”

She had my attention.

“You must wait and watch out now. You are in danger.”

“I know. I have so many questions—”

She shook her head in exasperation. “I have already told you everything that you need to know. But you do not hear me, Mirasol.”

“What about La Arca?”

“Hush! Do not wag your tongue at me! Your mind is like a dog with fleas, always scratching, digging at itself.” She plunged her arms in the window and seized my head in a viselike grip. Then she pressed her thumbs over my eyes, holding them tightly shut. Her voice gained that high-pitched bat-cry quality. “Wait. And watch out! That is what I am telling you. Keep yourself safe. You will be all right to go home today and sleep. You must sleep to be strong. You will be protected at your house by the
ángel
today so that you can get the rest you need.” I felt her grip relax, then release completely. I opened my eyes. She was gone.

I sat unmoving for several minutes, then turned my Jeep toward the highway and drove at an idle down the graded dirt road through the village. Soon the acequias would be full of the snowmelt and running with sparkling water down the slopes to the rio, their banks swelling with poleo, wild asparagus, and new, tiny shoots of red willow. The rio would run full and fast, rapids would foam over jutting rocks into the low places beneath them, and the wildflowers would bloom again. Centuries-old orchards of apples, plums, and pears would swell with buds and flowers, the ground beneath them full of wild watercress from the flood of water through the acequias, and this little crack in the earth would be lush with new life. The people of this valley would be planting their kitchen gardens with corn and squash and chiles and taking their cows to pasture on land leased by permit from the BLM. And some would gather straight saplings for coyote and
latilla
fences to keep the animals out of their gardens. And some would fly-fish in the river. Most would live on their land just as their families had lived since the Spanish conquistadors came, harvesting and putting up their fruits, drying the chiles in beautiful ristras and perhaps selling some of them along the roadside or in town, trading eggs for flour, milk for sugar, bartering their skills among themselves until all their needs were satisfied. A few would take jobs with the government in Los Alamos or find work during the tourist season as hotel or wait staff in Taos or Santa Fe. Some would grow up, some would leave home, some would get married, some would have children, and some would die.

Like Father Medina.

In a little while, nobody would much remember what it was like before, when he was here, what his days were like, how he looked, his wonderful melodious voice, his dark eyes, the white streak in his hair, his love for his work, his passion, what he lived for.

And they sure as hell wouldn’t remember what he died for. Not, especially, if they never knew.

Disappeared

At dawn the next morning, Holy Thursday, I completed an uneventful shift. Roy had assigned Art, the BLM ranger from the Taos Field Office, to team with me in my section. We had spent the entire night in sight of one another, and I was grateful for the company and the extra protection. After we had put the horses in the stalls and dropped the truck and trailer at the ranger station in Peñasco, Art left to go home and get some rest. I was getting ready to load my gear into my Jeep and do the same when Kerry drove up.

“I missed you the other night,” he said. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes, I am, thanks. Sorry to let you down. It must have been something I . . . imbibed.”

He smiled. “That’s an interesting way to put it. But don’t worry, you didn’t let me down. It has been quiet up here for a few days now. No more fence cutting, no more signs of trespassing. Want to go and get some breakfast after I check in my gear?”

“Sure.”

In less than a minute, Kerry came back out the door of the station and strode toward me in a hurry. “Jump in my truck. We’re going down to Suazo’s place.”

“Why, what’s up?” I closed the Jeep’s hatch and locked it.

“The dispatcher said Suazo’s wife called the sheriff’s office to report him missing. They said she asked for you and ‘that forest ranger’ to come talk with her.” He handed me a message slip. “And that’s from your office in Taos. I guess she tried to reach you there, too. They relayed the message up here for you.”

“Well, that’s interesting. I was just wondering about Santiago Suazo myself.” I got in the truck and we lumbered down the slope in low gear.

“It can’t be such a big deal that he’s missing,” Kerry said. “She said he always goes off when he has money, and she told us he had money.”

“Yeah, I hear you. And what is this—Thursday morning? I saw him Monday in town, and he was definitely loaded, in more ways than one. We had a little altercation.” I reached for the radio.

His hand caught mine before I could turn it on. “An altercation? Why didn’t you tell me about that?”

“I saw his truck at El Toro. I went in to ask him what he had been doing up around Boscaje, where you had seen his truck those two times. I was just going to talk to him, but he blew up and started hurling insults, and even made an implied threat. I went after him, and he took a swing at me.”

“You went after him?”

“Well, at first I just tapped his shoulder to get him to turn around and talk to me after he had hurled a string of particularly unsavory insults at me at the top of his voice in the restaurant. But after he tried to slug me, I pinned him up against his truck. I tried to get him to say what he’s been doing up here in this area. But he wouldn’t say. Just kept threatening me and insulting me for being a woman. It sounds weird, but even though he was acting like the same little banty rooster we know, it was almost like he was scared of something.”

Kerry looked at me, incredulous. “Hey, whether they’re scared or not, if you plan to wrestle with the bad guys and don’t want backup, will you at least give me a shout so I can sell tickets?” His tone was angry.

“It wasn’t like I planned it. You weren’t around. I was on my way in to the BLM and I saw his truck. We haven’t been able to catch him sitting still, so I took advantage of the opportunity. Luckily, it played out better than it might have. A couple people I know pulled up and it ended peacefully. Suazo saw his moment and bailed. Unfortunately, though, I never got any information from him.”

“All right, but can I just ask you something?”

“Sure. What is it?”

“Is something going on with you that I ought to know about?”

I didn’t look at him. Suddenly, my face felt hot and I noticed I was clenching my jaw.

He didn’t wait for me to answer. “The other night, Roy asked me to go check on you. Then last night, he doubled you up with the BLM ranger. It’s almost like he thinks you need protection.”

I thought about denying that anything was wrong, but I couldn’t do that. It would have been lying, and I didn’t want to lie to him. “I can’t talk about it,” I said.

He kept his eyes on the road, but he raised his eyebrows. “You can’t talk about it?”

“No, I’m sorry. I really wish I could tell you, but I can’t.”

He drove a minute or so in silence. “Well, can you at least answer my question? Do you need protection?”

I took a deep breath in and slowly let it out. “I don’t know.”

Kerry shook his head. “What kind of answer is that?”

“It’s . . . it’s about a case I’m involved in. I really can’t talk about it.”

He gave an exasperated sigh. “Listen, you said the thing with Suazo happened on Monday. We worked together that night. Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

So much had happened, I had to think back. “Monday night was when you checked on me at my base camp. As I recall, we didn’t talk much while you were there.” I looked across the cab at him, studying his profile, remembering the warmth of that kiss.

He turned and caught me staring at him and smiled. “No, I guess we didn’t.”

Mrs. Suazo was feeding two little kittens when we drove up. She looked a lot better than the last time we had seen her. Her hair was clean and loose around her face. She was wearing a navy dress with flowers on it, a cardigan sweater, and white cotton socks folded over the tops of some new-looking boots. The porch had been swept and the cat litter raked away. She looked up at us expectantly, and then, seeing the Forest Service truck, her look moved rapidly through disappointment and into an expression of hurried anxiety. She moved quickly to put the lid on the tin container of cat food, brushed her hands on her skirt, and then, catching herself, rubbed them back and forth on each other. She hurried off the porch and almost made it to the truck before we could open our doors. Something was missing . . .
Right! Where were the dogs?

“I thought you might have been him,” she said, taking hold of the handle and yanking the passenger door back as if to hasten me out. “I ain’t seen him in two days. Something has happened to him.” Her brow was like a plowed field. “I can’t get the sheriff to listen to me.”

Kerry and I got out of the truck. I looked around the place, then spoke. “Well, Mrs. Suazo, when we talked to you before, you did say he is sometimes gone for days at a time.” I didn’t know how to put it any more kindly.

She stopped the frenzied pressure of her approach when I said this—it seemed to affect her like a red light does traffic. “Well, you’re right. I did say that. And he does do that. I reckon you’re right.” She twisted at the ends of her sweater. Then she looked into my face. The bruise under her right eye had turned yellow and was fading. “Would you just believe me when I tell you that this time it’s different?” Her tone was flat, but her look was pleading.

By this time, Kerry had come around the truck and was behind her. He moved to the side so she could see him when he spoke. “Mrs. Suazo, why don’t you tell us what you know, and we’ll see if there is anything we can do to help.”

She turned toward him. “He came home Monday in the middle of the day and said we needed to leave town.”

I glanced at Kerry. Our eyes met, but neither of us spoke.

“He promised to take me back home to Texas. He said he would take the dogs to his cousin and sell or give away whatever we didn’t want to take with us. We started right then going through stuff. I knew he really meant it, because that evening, he took the dogs and told me to keep packing things. He kept saying we were going to make a brand-new start, and we were going to be happy again. When he came back, three of his cousins followed him in their trucks and they went through our stuff and took a lot of it and gave us some money for some of the things, like the TV and such. Listen, I know the sheriff don’t believe me, but this time it’s different. Santiago never went through giving stuff away or selling it off like that before. And he wouldn’t never have gave those dogs up if he didn’t mean to do what he said.”

“What happened after his cousins came?” Kerry said.

“He said he wanted to get out of here the next day, if we could get our packing done. We worked right on up until late that night. The next morning we got up and started in packing again. By a little after noon, we were done. Santiago went to get gas in the truck, and we was going to load it up when he got back and then get on down the road. But he never come back.”

“He was just going to go get gas in the truck?” I asked.

“That and pick up the rest of the money he was owed for something. He said it was all set up and it wouldn’t take long.”

“Do you know who he was meeting for the money, or what it was for?” Kerry said.