The Vortex

by Robert R. Dozier

  When Curt finished, he waited while Myers sorted it out. It took him about 60 seconds.

  “It doesn’t sound like kidnappers. Could be they are the same guys parked out there right now. If they’re foreigners looking for something in the house, they’re really a laugh. If anyone wanted to grab Elizabeth, it would be a hell of a lot easier to do it in South America than here. No, it doesn’t wash. If she was taken, it could only have been to keep her quiet.”

  “Say, Myers, you don’t think she’s been killed, do you?”

  “It’s a possibility – unless she went off the deep end and assumed some new identity.”

  After a pause, he continued. “Well, so far none of it makes any sense, but that’s not unusual in the beginning of cases like this. Sounds like we’ve stumbled into something that’s been going on for a long time. If those guys in the house were would-be assassins or kidnappers, they’re the biggest turkeys on the market. I can’t think of anyone coming into a house four times and not doing anything but warning the old girl that they could get in. No, there’s more here than we’re hitting – so keep at it – we need more information. In the meantime, get up to Santa Fe and give the Baca thing a real shot, and…”

  “Yeah, I know, make up a cover with the Cavanaugh woman.”

  “OK Curt; I’ll wait for your next report tomorrow night, same time. Don’t let on that you know anything about the other agents.”

  “Yeah,” Curt answered as he rang off. This was not turning out as he expected. One of the appealing aspects of his work with the agency so far had been the unveiling of dishonesties of others. Now he was expected to lie and deceive a person he very much wanted to impress, or get close to, or something.

  On his way to Santa Fe the next morning, he tried to keep his mind on the Baca case without success. The morning was unbelievably crisp and clear – he could see mountains and valleys in the distance so distinctly that he could almost make out bands of different colors in the rocks. Then there was Sheila. He had called her and told her that he would work for her on his own time until one of the two cases he was on was solved. She had not gushed out thanks, but, with a note of relief in her voice had told him of her appreciation and assured him that working for her would not interfere with the finding of her aunt. Curt had not yet made up a cover, but he was sure one would come to mind later. He tried to salve his conscience ahead of time by arguing to himself that the lies and pretenses he’d present to Sheila were really for her own good - if she wanted her aunt back, that is.

  The address in Santa Fe of Baca’s former employer, Henrietta Dunstan, was 1114 Magdalena Drive, which he found with little difficulty. His knock on the door was answered by a tall, sixtyish woman, with bright blue eyes and graying hair.

  “Hello, I’m Curt Jenson with Confidential Investigations.”

  As he handed her his card, he said, “I’ve been sent here to help find Mr. Alfredo Baca.”

  “What’s that you say?” she responded with a frown and a definite twang.

  “Mrs. Maria Lopez, Mr. Baca’s granddaughter, has engaged our firm to determine his whereabouts.”

  “Where’d she get the money?” she replied suspiciously.

  “I really don’t know, Mrs… .”

  “Dunstan, Henry Dunstan, as the herders like to call me. Come on in.”

  Curt entered the ranch-style adobe home that was visibly in need of repair. The furniture, solid and well-made, was old and worn and the interior walls could obviously stand a coat of paint and some re-plastering.

  “Sit down.” Mrs. Dunstan ordered, pointing to a wooden-armed chair with a frayed cushion. Curt did so with a pleasant feeling. Henrietta Dunstan was obviously used to giving orders and was not being rude. She lacked all pretenses and was a straight-to-the-point kind of person. No wonder the herders called her “Henry.”

  “Now, young feller, tell me what you want,” she said as she pulled up a comfortable, wilting, wicker rocker and sat beside him.

  Curt showed her his letter of authorization from Maria Lopez and explained that he knew very few details about the disappearance other than those reported in the newspapers.

  “What I need,” he continued, “is more information about Baca and any ideas you might have about where he might be.”

  “There ain’t much to say about Alfredo. He was with us, my husband and me, when we started the ranch thirty-five years ago. When my husband passed away ten year ago, Alfredo was one of the few herders who would work for a woman boss. I owe him for that. He’s a good man; lost his wife and all his children ‘ceptin’ Maria’s mother, in a flash flood. That started him drinking, but he still did a day’s work for a day’s pay. He started going downhill fast about the last six months – always talking about his “hill” and “Betty” and so on. Said that hill talked to him. Well, I went up there once but I didn’t hear nothing. About the same time, he got TB, but Doc Hawkins had him ‘bout cured when he first began lying in bed - not doing nothing. It got so bad we had to feed the old man by hand - although the Doc said there was nothing wrong with him. One morning, when I took his breakfast to him, he was just gone.”

  “When was that?” Curt asked.

  “Almost a couple weeks ago. I called the sheriff when he wasn’t there for supper, - and I even put an ad in the newspapers, - but no one’s seen him since.”

  “Couldn’t he just have walked away?”

  “Why sure he could have. But where would he go? He didn’t have no money, - never could save a cent – drank it up. I even had to pay his way to see Maria from time to time. Besides, if he wanted to leave, he could have asked me for money. He had mor’n his wages coming and he knew it. No, he just didn’t up and leave. I figure he got drunk and is lying dead out there in the fields somewhere. I’ve got my hands looking, and all the ranchers hereabouts are doing the same. If the animals don’t scatter his bones too much, I figure we’ll find him this summer.”

  “What about that hill that talked to him?”

  “It’s a cave in a hill, sort of. It was made about six months ago when we had that landslide. But that’s the first place we looked.”

  She chuckled. “He used to really carry on about it, and it took some doing to keep from embarrassing him by getting him to shush. He was old enough to think what he wanted, but I was afraid others… . Say - you might talk with Doc Hawkins. He said there was something strange about Alfredo besides his stories.”

  Hawkins, Curt learned, had hospital calls to make that afternoon so that it was six o’clock before he caught the doctor at home. Hawkins wasn’t what Curt expected. Short, wiry, with leathery skin, he looked more like a ranch hand than a doctor. His grizzled grey hair and bright brown eyes contrasted strongly, but all, strangely exuded friendliness and an open mind.

  “So you’re looking for old Alfredo,” he said as he welcomed Curt into his office. “Henrietta told me to help you all I can. You made quite an impression on her.” As they shook hands Hawkins guided Curt into his office. With an agreeable nod, he said: “Sit down, would you like some coffee?” as he sat behind his desk.

  Curt tensed up under all this hospitality. All afternoon while he toured Santa Fe and watched the operatives who were tailing him, he had been experiencing a struggle within himself. The Baca case was supposed to be a cover, something to hide his investigation of Elizabeth Aikens’ disappearance, but Curt found that Baca was now more than just a shield, he was becoming real, and the more he learned about Alfredo Baca, the less he could use him and his very real predicaments for ulterior reasons.

  Henrietta had given him directions to Baca’s room in a building on the edge of town, and as he had gone through the few material possessions the old sheepherder had left, a few shirts and pairs of faded jeans, two sweat-stained wide brimmed hats, an old pair of boots with holes in the soles, Curt felt almost like a criminal. On the dresser with a crac
ked mirror, were two photographs and one studio portrait. One photograph, badly out of focus, was of a man, woman and seven children, obviously, Baca with his family before the flash flood disaster. The other photograph was of a dog in the field, and the posed studio portrait was a young, smiling, dark-haired woman, with a still darker man holding a young boy. This was probably Maria Lopez with husband and child.

  What right did he have to intrude on the life of this honest old person and those who loved him just to provide a cover? Myers had warned him not to get “involved” with his clients or “peripheries” in the course of his investigation; but Curt was doing exactly that. His minor dissatisfaction with the kind of work he was doing grew considerably that afternoon. Now he was facing another of these open, honest people and he felt himself decidedly disadvantaged.

  “No coffee, thanks.” He said as he sat on a hard-backed chair next to the doctor’s desk. “I see you take patients in your home.”

  “Well,” Hawkins said pleasantly, “my patients are mostly ranch hands. I have an office near the hospital in the Medical Center, but if patients want to see me, I can’t hold them to office hours and such like. It’s no bother.”

  Taking out his notepad, Curt began his questioning.

  “I’m aware of doctor-patient confidentiality, Doctor Hawkins, so…”

  “Call me Doc - even my wife does.”

  “All right, Doc; what I’m trying to say is…”

  “I know what you’re trying to say, Mr. Jenson, - OK Curt - but this is a rather special instance; wouldn’t you say? Alfredo, like most people in these parts, lives his life openly. If a thing is true, he wouldn’t try to hide it behind legal technicalities. Maybe that’s because there’s still some respect out here for the rights of others to do as they damn well please, as long as they’re willing to take the consequences.”

  “Ok, Doc. Is Baca senile?”

  “No, not in the least.”

  “Is he suffering from any neurosis or psychosis?”

  “That’s a hard question. We all have habits and behaviorisms that might be labeled neuroses by others with differing views of what is normal. Other than the fact that Alfredo has values not in conformity to this swinging generation, I’d say he is perfectly normal, - but remember, I’m an internist, a GP, I’m not a psychiatrist.”

  “But what about the delusions he has? That is, the hill that talked to him?”

  Doc stood up and walked slowly around his desk.

  “I thought you would ask that when Henrietta called,” he said as he leaned on the edge of the desk, and, raising his hands in surrender said, “Frankly, I don’t know what to say. When Alfredo first told us about his voices in the hill, it didn’t occur to me to question either his honesty or his sanity. If he said he heard voices in the cave in that hill, I believed him. Alfredo doesn’t lie – has no reason or desire to. I’m not saying that I believe there were voices, you understand, just that I believe Alfredo thought he heard them. If that makes him senile or deranged, then I guess he is. But everything else, or almost everything else about Alfredo was as normal as could be. If the mind is going, surely there would be manifestation of it in other parts of his perceptions of reality. In Alfredo’s case, there are none.”

  Curt shook his head as he tried to make sense out of what Doc Hawkins had related.

  “But,” he said, “now that Alfredo’s missing, shouldn’t you take his stories more seriously?”

  “I do take them seriously,” the doctor replied, “but in the context of everything I know about the man. Listen, Alfredo is a sheepherder. Do you know that that means? He spends most of his time alone – day and night - his only companions are his dog and his sheep. Is it any wonder that he might animate some parts of his environment? His hill, incidentally, is the hill where he beds, or bedded, in a sort of cave. It seems logical to me that, out there alone, half dreaming, half awake, he could easily confuse his dreams with reality. Does that make him senile?”

  “And you don’t regard that as unusual?”

  “Of course I do, but nothing to be alarmed about. What I regard as unusual were the changes in his physical state.”

  “What do you mean? Wasn’t he ill?”

  “Alfredo was healthier right before his disappearance than he had ever been since he was my patient.”

  “I thought he has tuberculosis, and, at 70, how healthy can a person be?”

  “That, to me, is the strangest thing about this whole business. Look, let me show you.”

  Hawkins went to his files and withdrew a large manila envelope. Taking out four x-ray films, he mounted them on a viewer and called Curt over.

  “Now this one,” he said pointing to the picture on the left, “was when I diagnosed his TB. I took this about six months ago. See those white areas there? Those are scars on his lung tissue. But note this too - see that swelling on the clavicle? That was from a break that had never been set correctly. Alfredo probably never told anyone about it - just suffered until it stopped hurting. Looks like it happened five – six years ago. This second film was taken three months later. Notice how the scar tissue is regressing? And note how the clavicle is less swollen? This third one was taken a month later; see, no scar tissue and the clavicle shows no evidence of ever being broken. This last film, taken just before Alfredo disappeared, shows the chest of a much younger man. Even those arthritic joints are improving. And mind you, I have these films in the correct chronological order. By all reason, they should be reversed.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Curt said slowly.

  “Well,” Doc Hawkins said, turning off the viewer, “lung tissue does not regenerate. Alfredo should have had those scars forever; and why calcium deposits around former breaks and joints should be absorbed… . Well, it is strange.”

  After a pause Curt suddenly thought of something. “Mrs. Dunstan said Alfredo was ill - that she had to hand-feed him.”,

  “Yes, I know. I did some of the feeding myself. The problem he had wasn’t physical.”

  “Alright, Doc,” Curt said with a resigned tone in his voice. “With all that you’ve told me, do you have any idea why he should disappear?”

  Putting the films back in the manila envelope and restoring the envelope in his files, Hawkins said,

  “I don’t think he wandered out in the fields to die, as Henrietta does.”

  He turned to his desk, leaned on a corner of it and folded his arms.

  “Moreover, I can’t see him leaving this area permanently. His friends are here, his memories, in fact his whole life was in this area. If he’s gone somewhere, it’s for a special reason, but he’ll be back.”

  When Hawkins didn’t continue, Curt looked at him quizzically.

  “You’ve said what he didn’t do. What do you think he did?”

  “This is only a wild guess, and don’t you hold me to it. But just consider - supposing you had spent the last twenty years experiencing the slow deterioration of your body, making up your mind that was the way of life, and that was the thing that should be expected. Then, all of a sudden, the process was reversed. Things you hadn’t been able to do for years now become possible again. Instead of growing older, it seemed as if you were now growing younger. What would you do?”

  “Why, I don’t know,” Curt answered.

  With a smile, Hawkins continued.

  “You haven’t had the experiences of growing old, or of the frame of mind necessary to accept it with grace. There is something final about it - but back to Alfredo. I suspect that he went into shock when he had to develop an entirely new orientation. That’s why he was practically immobile – why we had to care for him hand and foot. He was trying to adapt to the situation and he didn’t know how. Want to hear even a wilder guess?”

  “By all means,” Curt said eagerly.

  “I’ll bet he’s lo
oking for Betty, whoever she is. If he has any idea where she is, that’s where he’ll try to go. If you want to find Alfredo, find Betty.”

  “I thought she was Alfredo’s fantasy.”

  “Maybe so to us, but to him, she was real. Frankly, I think the only way to get any notion of where Alfredo is or what happened to him is for you to see the world through his eyes. Why don’t you spend some time in his cave? Just sit there for awhile and I’m sure you’ll have a clearer picture of how he sees the world. It would be better if you could visit at night. Let me draw you a map.”

  “That sounds like a good idea; at least it’s something. I won’t be able to do it until next week sometime…”

  “Fine! I think you’ll understand better what I’ve been trying to say about the old man.”

  That night, in his motel room, Curt looked at his notes and tried to make sense of it all. He knew Myers would be upset with one of his decision. He had decided to make a real effort to find Alfredo Baca as well as continue his work on the Aikens case. There was simply no other way out. As long as Mrs. Dunstan, Doc Hawkins, and Maria Lopez thought he was trying to find the old man, they would rely on his doing just that and not take any other steps themselves. So that was it; he had to make an honest effort.

  The next part was more disturbing. Instead of the Aikens case getting clearer, the whole business was becoming more confused. No matter how he tried to arrange his findings into some sort of coherence, the facts seemed to be just scattered about. Why wouldn’t Sheila, for instance, let him call in the real experts at finding people now that it seemed as if someone came and went with ease through Elizabeth’s house? Why did she want to hire him? Why were so many operatives following him? Curt had even seen one in the motel lobby, trying to look inconspicuous behind a newspaper.

  Pushing all his questions aside, Curt dialed Myers.

  “Hello, is this the Hoover residence?”

  “Yes, it is,” a female voice answered, “but Mr. and Mrs. Hoover are out and will not return until tomorrow.”