by Sarah Lovett
She studied Benji's face as he worked; she saw apprehension re-form his features.
Abruptly, Benji drew back. "That's him. He poisoned me."
Sylvia picked up the drawing. It was rough and childlike—oval-shaped head, shaded circles for eyes and mouth, slashes across the cheeks. The painted face of Dupont White.
Benji stood and began to pace. He was clearly agitated, apparently in the throes of making a decision. Finally, he turned to face Sylvia. He stepped toward her, studied her—read her. He said, "I need to see Velio Cruz."
Sylvia knew the name. Just as Cole Lynch was the pen's jailhouse lawyer, so Velio Cruz was the joint's inmate shaman, "psychiatrist," all-around healer. Most important, he came from Benji's own culture: not Spanish, not Pueblo, not Anglo. . . but prison culture.
She asked, "Why Velio?" She heard a soft knock; the nurse was at the door.
Benji said, "Because he's the only one who can drive the witch from my body."
Sylvia believed Benji was right. She stood, nodded, and said, "I'll see if I can arrange it."
Benji's entire aura softened, and a shy smile transformed his face. He murmured his thanks as she left the room.
Cray was waiting for Sylvia in his office. He wasn't alone. The deputy warden, a squat, middle-aged man with small eyes and an apostrophe mustache, was by Cray's side. He didn't pause for an introduction.
He snapped, "Benji Muñoz y Concha is not under your care. You will not visit him again unless you have permission through proper channels. Is that clear?"
Sylvia bit her lip and nodded. She didn't say a word. And she didn't mention Rosie Sanchez.
OUTSIDE THE PEN, behind the steering wheel of her Volvo, she found herself staring at the cell phone in her lap. She'd placed three calls to Matt; she had left three messages. So where the hell was he? She dialed again and checked her own messages. Finally, after an interminable wait, she heard Matt's voice.
He said, "I thought you'd want to know, I checked out a body this afternoon, but it wasn't Jesse Montoya. It was a hitchhiker, a hit-and-run off Old Las Vegas Highway. Listen, I'm sorry about all this—you and me this morning."
She was sorry, too, and she regretted her angry outburst. A few seconds passed; she thought Matt's message was complete. But he had added a postscript "I'm working late tonight, so I'll just stay at my place."
She heard the sharp beep as the message cut off, but she sat with the phone still clutched in her hand. Overhead, a layer of gray cloud and smoke veiled what should have been a clear summer sky. Sylvia felt as though the pall had blurred her mind. The weather was unnatural; the normal pattern of the winds was shifting.
CHAPTER TEN
SYLVIA WOKE FROM a dream while it was still dark outside. The illuminated digital clock showed three-fifteen. She lay in bed under a thin sheet. Her skin was damp, she was uncomfortably warm. In the dream, at twilight, she and her terrier Rocko had hiked up the ridge behind the house. By the time they reached the rocky spine, night had fallen. In the floating time of dreams, they found themselves trapped between two large coyotes who stared with gleamy yellow eyes. The largest coyote lunged at Rocko, but Sylvia fought it off. It bit her hand as she hurled it over a round boulder. Blood poured from the toothmarks on her palm. When she looked to see if the coyote was dead, she saw her father, and he rose up and flew away like an owl.
Awake, she couldn't shake the sense of dread that hovered over her like a shadow. Her father had walked out of her life when she was thirteen. She still had no idea whether he was dead or alive. He would be in his sixties now. She thought of the way Anthony Randall had died. Jesse Montoya was missing four days now. Her thoughts and her dreams were occupied with absent or disappeared men.
Automatically she whistled for Rocko before she remembered her terrier wasn't staying at the house. She kicked the bedsheet away and switched on the small fan next to the bed. Warm air brushed her skin and brought little relief. When she managed to steer her mind away from Jesse, she found herself picturing Matt. By now he must be sprawled in his bed with Tom the cat. She rolled over and hugged the pillow where Matt usually slept. The whisper of lemon scent made her want to cry. The bed was suddenly depressingly large and unwelcoming. She fought the light-headed panic that came with the fear their relationship had shipwrecked. She felt like someone who was trying to complete a puzzle with missing pieces.
It was four-thirty when she gave up on sleep and brewed a pot of espresso. She carried her coffee outside to the deck, stretched in a chaise longue, and watched the sun peek over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. A ghost of the full moon still hovered in the western sky where the fires had turned gray clouds pink. Liminal time, no longer night, not yet day. An interim she usually loved.
She closed her eyes, and her fingers grazed a glossy page; the book lay on the table next to the chaise. It was a museum edition—Art, Ceremony, and Religion—from her own shelf. It was just the way she had left it late the night before, opened to a full-color photo of a Papua New Guinea totem mask and a smaller black-and-white inset of a warrior mother kachina doll used in a Hopi Pachavu ceremony.
Sylvia found her reading glasses folded in the seam of the pages. She put them on and studied the images once more. In many cultures the mask traditionally expressed an alternate identity. It might transform the wearer into an animal or human spirit, invoke the soul of the dead, or impart transcendent, godlike powers.
The mask itself might be the actual dwelling place of a particular spirit. Masks were almost universally thought to hold great power—dangerous power if the wearer was not properly prepared and protected.
Sylvia had marked several other pages. She turned now to a Zairean initiation mask that was passed from male to male in families of royal lineage. That ritual was about the transference of power and potency among earthbound gods.
Finally, she let her fingers trace the simple sketch of an Anasazi petroglyph. This was a masklike face stained on rock. Better than the other images, it expressed the aggressive, poisonous rage of Dupont White.
Sylvia stood, stretched, and walked inside her house. She found a weathered Marlboro under a wooden spoon in her kitchen drawer. She lit it, inhaled, and stepped outside to exhale. She had already tasted smoke on the air, and last night's news had featured footage of forest fires burning in the Sandias and the Gila, and a new fire in the Jemez. This summer was proving itself to be the burning season. A gust of wind stirred the salt cedar that had grown up next to the deck. Behind the house, gray-blue sparrows bobbed on the telephone wire like a strand of live ornaments. A feather caught up on the air currents skittered past Sylvia's bare toes.
As she smoked the last of her cigarette and drained her coffee cup, she stared out at the dirt road at the end of her driveway. Her eyes skipped to a more distant focus—the pastures that belonged to her neighbors, the Calidros. Heat-browned grass offered skimpy grazing for the chestnut mare and the paint gelding. She thought again of her father, and how he had walked across those fields so many years ago. Was he still alive somewhere? Or was he dead?
Ghosts, witches, and Dupont White. If Dupont was alive, what dead spirit was he resurrecting with his painted mask? Or did his mask allow him to become God?
HER LAST PATIENT—at the end of a very long day—was early for his appointment. Kevin Chase walked into the waiting room of the Forensic Evaluation Unit at eight minutes before the hour. He looked pale and reeked of musty tobacco and smoke. Sylvia told him to help himself to coffee and join her in the office.
Her goal was to follow up issues raised in the previous session. This would be a last chance to assess Kevin before she met with Frankie Reyes, his probation officer. She had little doubt Frankie had decided to begin the revocation process.
They were twenty minutes into the session, when Kevin turned to gaze out the small window overlooking a neighboring garden; his sleeves pulled back on his arms and Sylvia saw what looked like rope burns on both wrists.
She confronted him: "Kevin, what h
appened?"
His hands quickly disappeared under crossed arms. "Nothing. . . I cut myself."
"Those aren't cuts."
Kevin's head moved ponderously, and he refused to look at her.
She said quietly, "Show me your wrists." She waited while he made up his mind whether or not to comply. Finally he stretched out both arms, and she saw a band of irritated skin encircling each wrist where a restraint might have caused abrasions.
Sylvia's first thought was sexual bondage. Her second thought was of the Polaroids, the bound men.
Kevin looked up at Sylvia and there were tears in his eyes. "Ja—she didn't do anything.''
"Jackie?"
"No." He took a deep, apparently painful breath and Sylvia heard him swallow. "I didn't mean that." His head swayed back and forth like a clumsy metronome. "I got to feeling crazy, so I burned myself."
"Those aren't burns. Did you try to kill yourself?"
"No!" He looked shocked.
She believed he was self-destructive—not suicidal. "Did somebody restrain you?"
"What for? No."
For the next fifteen minutes, Sylvia tried to get a clear read on Kevin, but he was guarded and evasive. After he left, she stood on the second-story landing and gazed out at the parking lot of the judicial complex across the street. A gold Toyota Tercel was idling in the lot. Barely visible behind the steering wheel, Jackie Madden puffed on a cigarette.
Sylvia watched as Kevin left the courtyard and crossed Griffin Street. He sprinted around the vehicle on his way to the passenger door. After he was inside, the car remained stationary. His guardian was talking intently, and she drew circles with her cigarette. After several minutes she turned to look up at Sylvia. She raised her hand limply, put the car in gear, and drove slowly out of the lot.
Sylvia left her office two hours later. As she drove the few blocks to Adult Probation and Parole and her meeting with Frankie Reyes, she pondered Kevin Chase. After seven weeks of treatment, Sylvia was reading his overall clinical diagnosis as borderline organization with narcissistic and undersocialized features. He was adept at passive manipulation, he blamed the world for his problems, and he would desperately form dependent relationships and then ride an emotional roller coaster.
Were Kevin and Jackie Madden enmeshed in an "incestual" sexual relationship? Or had Kevin done his best to plant that false accusatory seed in Sylvia's mind? By the time she was seated across the desk from Frankie Reyes at the offices of Adult Probation and Parole, Kevin's revocation process had begun.
Her client was on his way to prison.
BY EARLY EVENING, the Tsankawi fire had consumed three hundred acres and cut dangerously close to Tsankawi ruins between Los Alamos and Bandelier National Monument. Firefighters had gained a foothold on the blaze since it had been spotted two days earlier. Still, from his vantage point on the Highway 4 lookout, Matt saw pockets of flame explode at uneven intervals. He stepped out of the Caprice and walked to the edge of the gravel. Below him, the ground sloped down steeply. Gamble oak, chamisa, and dwarf juniper clung to the rocky soil. So far, these native plants had escaped the wrath of the fire. Two hundred feet lower, the vegetation and wildlife had not been so lucky. The burn pattern looked like a glowing crazy quilt.
Matt heard a small landslide, and he was startled to see the shadowy form of a young deer barely fifteen feet away on the slope. The animal scrambled up onto the gravel and stood in front of the Caprice. A doe. She snorted, nostrils wide, eyes luminous. He heard the harsh quick intake of her breath. He caught her dense musky scent. His heartbeat quickened the way it always did when he encountered a wild animal.
Headlights cut across her flank as a car rounded a curve of the highway. The animal bolted, and Matt grimaced as he heard the screech of brakes followed by a dull thunk. He sprinted out toward the highway, but the deer was already racing up the other bank.
Matt followed the Lincoln as it slowly turned off the road and pulled up next to his Chevy. The door opened, two booted feet hit the ground, and Special Agent Dan Chaney climbed out. A cigarette dangled from between his lips. He'd lost weight, his face was hollowed out—so changed Matt barely recognized his old friend, who had called for this out-of-the-way rendezvous.
"Where the hell have you been? I've been tracking you for a week." Concern became anger when it reached Matt's lips.
"I've been moving around." Chaney held out his cigarettes, an offering. Matt didn't make a move so Chaney stuffed the rumpled pack in his shirt pocket.
Matt said, "When I couldn't reach you, I finally called Cruces, Dan. Someone I can trust. He says your S.A.C. and the agency psychologist are both wondering where the hell you are. You haven't shown up for your counseling sessions. You are AWOL, guy."
"Yeah, well fuck it, I'm crazy." Chaney's voice was harsh. He tossed a manila envelope at Matt. His cigarette glowed deep orange while he inhaled. The residual smoke dispersed like a very light fog.
The special agent continued. "I still have friends I can trust, too." Smoke streamed from his mouth. "That's the forensic report on the bodies from Las Cruces—the blowout."
Chaney flicked his cigarette on gravel and ground it out with the toe of his boot "No remains, no DNA match for Dupont White." He had already jammed a fresh cigarette between his lips, and he lit it. Still containing the smoke in his lungs, he said, "Proof my man is alive."
Matt opened the envelope and pulled out two sets of stapled reports issued by the state crime lab and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He clicked on his belt flashlight and scanned the photocopies. While he read, Chaney walked to the edge of the turnout and stared out at the Tsankawi fire.
Chaney said, "What do you think. . . you got yourself a fire starter?" Matt grunted, and the federal agent continued. "Did you see the New Mexican today? That one-column short about a federal inquiry into the blowout at Las Cruces?" His voice went flat and hard. "They'll try to cover their asses. Just like they did with Ruby Ridge and Waco."
Matt lowered the report he had been scanning. "Who's they? Are we talking about your S.A.C.? The F.B.I. director? The attorney general? Shit, Dan."
Chaney's grin was cockeyed. His teeth reflected light from Matt's flashlight. "I think we can leave the President out of this mess."
Matt tried to curb his impatience. He waited for his old friend to offer more information.
Chaney picked up gravel in his palm, shook it, and then tossed it over the slope. He said, "Dupont was a federal snitch. That videotape I showed Sylvia? The agency had it—and the Polaroids—months before Las Cruces went down. Somebody knew Dupont White was a serial murderer. Somebody knew how dirty he was."
"They didn't pull him in."
"Because he was too dirty—or too damn valuable." Chaney's eyes shone with manic light. "If he was going to give them something big. . ."
"What?"
"I don't know, but I think he came to Santa Fe to get it."
Matt shook his head. "The N.C.I.C. database has him for a couple of possessions raps and some interstate trafficking—no murders, no assaults. It was Dupont's partner, Cole Lynch, who got sent up."
Chaney snorted derisively. "Who you gonna believe, guy? Dupont was a killer and a snitch—and somebody didn't want him to exist any longer, so they set him up in Las Cruces. They finally decided to kill him. But they missed. I know. I was there."
Abruptly, Chaney slapped the stapled pages Matt held. He said, "Read the last lines of the summary."
Matt turned pages, moved his light over the text, and began to read. "Existing DNA samples obtained from the crime scene were matched to known samples originating from Special Agent Nina Alcon Valdez, Special Agent Frank Teahouse, Ronnie Lee Hatch, and Jay Dennis Hatch."
Chaney said, "The Hatch brothers were supposed to make a buy from Dupont."
"There's no evidence Dupont was even on the premises." Matt switched off his flashlight.
"Oh, the scumbag was there, all right." Chaney snorted derisively. "We saw him go in. And I
saw him run out of the warehouse just before it went up. I think I got one round into the asshole."
Matt stared at his old friend. "You reported all this?"
"I was put on stress leave for my trouble."
Chaney's Lincoln was parked nose to tail with the Caprice. The agent opened his door, then he stood staring up at the sky. "I talked to Sylvia this afternoon. I called her—told her where to reach me—which is more than you seem to do these days."
Matt shook his head to warn his friend off sensitive territory. After yesterday's argument, he'd decided to keep his distance for a day or two.
The special agent shrugged and climbed into the car. "She told me you're waiting for Jesse Montoya to turn up dead. He will." Chaney chuckled. It was an eerie sound, without mirth.
In the shadows, Matt saw only the rough, broad strokes of Chaney's features. He swallowed, glancing out at the fire. It cast a halo in the sky. Orange and sienna. It was beautiful. Deceptive. From a distance, the light was seductive; up close it was deadly. He didn't say a word.
Chaney shifted the Lincoln into reverse but kept his foot on the brake. "I just want to know if you're with me now."
"Yeah," Matt said softly. He turned to face the other man. "I'm with you."
All of Chaney's raw emotions seemed to tangle in his voice. He said, "When Nina died, it was like suddenly, I was bigger. There was more substance to me because I felt responsible for her. I wanted to carry on her laugh, her thoughts, her life. Now, I feel diminished. There's this hole inside me. And it keeps getting bigger."
Matt thought he heard Chaney crying.
Chaney continued. "Nina was everything. . . my life. I should've divorced Lorraine, married Nina, had kids, the whole bit." He rubbed a hand over his face. "I know you, Matt. We've been through a lot together. Don't you screw things up with Sylvia. You better clean up your act." He slammed the Lincoln into drive, and it lurched forward, out of the turnaround.
Matt stood for minutes on the edge of the mountain. He could taste the bitter ash in his mouth. The fire had spread out, wild and terrible.