I kissed his forehead and blessed him with a sign of the cross. Buoyed by this first glimpse of my grandson, I turned and left the room, closing the door behind me.
“Keep him safe, Pablita. I’ll be back with Nai’ya and Angelina as soon as I can.”
She nodded without a word and continued her rosary.
I lifted the collar on my leather jacket and walked out into the cold. I hurried into the darkness and back to my car. Onion was standing there, his back still to the wind.
I huffed up to him. “I know where they are.” I leaned against the Hudson’s fender and sucked in a couple of deep breaths. “What did you find out?”
“Plenty.” He pulled his notebook from inside his coat and thumbed through it. “Two guys Estefan had posted at the entrance to the Pueblo say Jacob Wallace and another man—Anglo, maybe thirty-five years old, five-six or seven—drove into the village about four this afternoon. The lookouts alerted Estefan by phone. He told them to find Sheriff Naranjo and bring him to the trailer. Naranjo was somewhere off Pueblo. It took more than an hour to find him. By the time the lookouts and the sheriff made it back to the trailer, well…you saw what happened there.”
“Anything about my family?”
“A young woman says she saw three people, two women and a boy, run from Estefan’s shortly after four o’clock and head for the other side of the village.”
“That checks with what Pablita told me.”
Onion continued, “I spoke with a paramedic and an EMT aide before they left for the nearest hospital.” He squinted to read what he’d written. “Christus San…”
“Christus St. Vincent. It’s in Santa Fe.”
“Anyway, they said he’s in real bad shape.”
“What about Belana?”
“Who?”
“His wife.”
“Oh. She came by about fifteen minutes ago and spoke with the sheriff. They both left the scene. Probably off to Santa Fe as well. I heard Naranjo tell one of his men he’d be back as soon as he could.”
“Damn. I need him now.”
“Why? What did you find out? Your family safe?”
“Nai’ya and Angelina are on foot, traveling cross-country to the Puye ruins.”
“Where’s that?”
“About six miles from here.”
“How much of a head start do they have on us?”
I looked off to the west. “It’s not their head start on us that matters. Jacob Wallace and that other guy are already following them. I have to find them first.”
“What can I do?”
“Stay here and grab the sheriff as soon as he gets back. If I drive back to the Pueblo entrance and go south to Tribal Road 601, there’s a chance I can be at the ruins by the time Nai’ya and Angelina arrive.”
“What about the kid?”
“He’s staying at Pablita’s. He’s safe for now.”
“So you saw him?”
“Laying on the bed there. A little angel.”
“Doesn’t resemble you at all then?”
I let that pass. “Might have my blue eyes, couldn’t tell. At least his nose is straight.” I fingered my own, broken three times.
“Back to work, Brain.”
“Remember. Corner Naranjo the minute he gets back. Tell him to meet me at Puye mesa top. He’ll know where.” I slid the .38 from my jacket pocket and checked all of the chambers. “If Wallace and his friend arrive, I’ll hold them off until you get there.”
“You sure?”
“It’s our only chance.” I started the Hudson and turned back down the Pueblo road. I kept one eye on traffic in the oncoming lane, in case the sheriff came along with Estefan’s wife. There was no sign of them.
I doubled back and drove south to the westbound turnoff for Tribal Road 601. The first ruins were five or six miles away. The dashboard clock showed six-fifty. Not much daylight left.
One of the advanced features of the Hudson in its day was a low center of gravity, what they called its “step-down” design. Unfortunately, this meant I had a mere twelve inches of clearance between the bottom of my car and the road.
For the first three miles, it didn’t matter. The gravel remained level. Only an occasional pothole that I swerved to avoid.
Then I had to slow up. Runoff from a recent storm had washed down the incline to my right and across the road. Deep furrows carved by the water crossed my path. I down-shifted and crawled ahead, praying I wouldn’t bottom out among the fissures.
I cleared the damaged area at last and drove on to within a mile and a half of the first group of cliff dwellings and ruins. Even in the dusk, I could see how much the area had changed over the past thirty years. The massive Cerro Grande fire in 2000, and the mudslides that followed left fearful scars on this land.
About a mile on, I hit a second area of severe erosion, worse than the first. The creases across the road were two feet deep in places. The Hudson couldn’t take me any farther.
“Fuck.” I pulled over to the side of the gravel road and left the car there, keeping the roadway open. I figured Naranjo would have four-wheel drive.
I grabbed a flashlight from the driver’s side glove compartment and stepped outside. Gusts of wind spilled down from the rocky plateau above me. The frigid air burned my cheeks. Large snowflakes were now sticking to the ground.
The faintest bit of daylight remained. I slipped the flashlight into a jacket pocket and hurried along the road, my .38 ready. I shifted the gun from hand to hand and tried to flex away the numbness in my fingers.
The sound of gravel beneath my feet and the howl of wind filled the air. A low ceiling of gray clouds slid toward the east and cast a dull cloak over a desolate expanse of road in front of me.
Then I heard it—carried on the wind—the cry of a woman’s voice, faint and distant. Nai’ya’s voice.
I froze in my tracks and tilted my head to determine the direction of her call. I couldn’t. The wailing wind drowned out everything else. I ran on up the road.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I heard another faint voice—a man’s, this time. Then a second one. Both came from the darkness in front of me. A sick feeling bubbled in my stomach. I gripped my gun and slid the flashlight out of my pocket with my left hand. I left it off for now and continued on.
Every twenty yards or so, I stopped to listen. The voices sounded louder, closer. Definitely two men. I shuddered and kept on up the gravel road as it angled to the right, hugging a tall, rocky outcrop. I edged around the corner. A dark green Range Rover sat in the middle of the road. The engine was off.
A hulking figure with a ponytail hanging down over a buckskin jacket stood with his back to me. He murmured to a shorter man in a brown bomber jacket, a wrap-around scarf, and tan khaki pants. The shorter man unfolded a piece of paper and stretched it out on the hood of the vehicle. They huddled over it, deep in quiet conversation. The taller man pointed twice in the direction of the Puye Cliffs.
I hung close to the rock wall and waited. A minute later, the shorter man folded the large paper and tossed it into the front seat of the Range Rover. Both men checked their guns. Then the taller man led the way off the road and across a small empty parking lot.
I crept along the edge of the wall, then darted out and knelt behind their vehicle, keeping the body of the Range Rover between us. The howling of the wind made it impossible to hear what they were saying. I scurried around to the driver’s door.
The men paused at the base of a concrete stairway that lead up a slope to a familiar adobe building. I’d been here with a group of undergraduate students back in the early 1980s. It was an old Harvey House, now converted into a Visitors Center with a souvenir shop on the right side and tribal offices on the left.
A ten-foot wide passageway at the top of the stairs split the two halves of the building and allowed access to the Puye Cliffs about fifty yards in the distance beyond. A series of dim lamps lined the stairs and the path beyond as far as I could see.
&nbs
p; The smaller man stepped aside. I got a brief, clear glimpse of the ponytailed man in buckskin—Jacob Wallace. The picture I’d given Estefan was a good likeness.
I had to make sure both men stayed here until my help arrived. I peered into the Range Rover. A set of keys hung from the ignition switch inside the car. I tried the door. Unlocked. When another howl of wind raised the dust at my feet, I inched the door open. The overhead light flashed on. I reached inside and stabbed at the keys. They wobbled and fell to the floor. I stretched and snagged the ring that held them, pulled my arm out and closed the door. The light blinked out. One more gentle push and the door lock clicked.
Bracing myself against the vehicle, I stood, extended my arms across the hood and took aim at the buckskin jacket. “Stop where you are, Wallace!”
Both men turned my way and froze.
“Sit on the steps. Don’t try anything.”
Wallace sat down first. The smaller man crouched down behind him. When they did so, they moved into shadow. I’d made a mistake.
“Don’t shoot, Mister. There’s been some kind of mix-up. My name isn’t Wallace. It’s Goodwin. Frank Goodwin.” He brushed his ponytail aside and raised his hands.
I kept a steady bead on him with my .38. “Shut up. And you—little guy—move out where I can see you. Now.”
A crack broke the sound of the winds. A gun flashed from behind Wallace’s shoulder and a bullet ricocheted off the roof of the Range Rover. I ducked behind the left front fender. A second bullet buried itself in the gravel at my feet.
I swung to my left, peered around the front bumper and caught sight of the smaller man rolling to my right and off the steps into darkness. My first shot caromed off the metal railing. I shot into the darkness beneath it.
He cried out and staggered into the open, one hand clutching the side of his face. I aimed low with my third shot and caught his leg. He folded, sprawling across the steps, his head landing below the rest of his body.
There was a commotion farther up the stairway. Wallace had taken off, disappearing into the darkness on the far side of the Visitors Center. I’d deal with him next.
First, I approached the fallen man, edging toward him with my .38 fixed on his chest. His gun lay on one of the steps several feet below his body. I bent down and pocketed a 9mm Beretta.
Blood discolored the man’s pants. I spent a moment examining his head wound. He appeared to be half-conscious and probably in shock. He groaned. I rolled him on his side and his hand fell from his face. My second shot had creased his cheek. One of his teeth stuck through the wound and dropped onto the concrete as his head swerved side to side.
He wasn’t bleeding too much. I left his head wound alone. But I unwrapped a patterned scarf from around his neck and jerry-rigged a tourniquet six inches above the bullet wound in his knee.
His jacket was open. I felt around for an inside pocket and touched a wallet. In the dim lamplight, I opened it and turned my flashlight on the New Mexico driver’s license it held. The photo matched the man’s face. I checked his name—Charles Jepson. Then I read his address.
In that one moment, everything I thought I knew about recent events changed.
The wallet contained fifty-three dollars in mixed bills. I lifted them out and threw them to the winds. Only a folded piece of light green paper remained inside. I took it out and unfolded my bank check made out to cash in the amount of five hundred thousand dollars.
I ran back to the Range Rover and looked for anything inside that might help me take down Jacob Wallace. One of us would have to die tonight.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I found nothing useful in the Rover except a mini-flashlight. It fit in the breast pocket of my shirt. The large folded paper in the front seat turned out to be a map of the Puye region, with the area of the nearest ruins circled—the very place Nai’ya and Angelina were heading. I reloaded my .38 and slipped it into my jacket pocket.
Charles Jepson lay still now. I moved around him on my way up the stairs, keeping to the edge and staying out of the light as best I could.
At the top of the stairway, I tested the doors to the souvenir shop and the tribal office. Both locked. I crept beyond the passageway and out along the path to the cliffs.
Dim solar lights marked both sides of the pathway. The cliffs stood fifty yards ahead of me. I took a parallel route, well to the side of the path, stepping with care through the rocks and thin vegetation. Stay in the darkness, Gabe. Wallace could be anywhere.
I paused at the base of the cliffs and listened. The wind swept down the wall of rock and whistled in my ears. I looked up just before a boulder crashed to the ground at my feet. Wallace might not be able to see me, but he knew I was coming after him. I stepped out from behind the rock and fired a shot up toward the edge of the cliff.
“It’s no use, Wallace,” I yelled into the wind. “The police are on their way. Come down now. Give yourself up.”
Two more rocks cascaded down the cliffside in response and fell ten feet to my right. I took the large flashlight from my jacket and stood out from the wall. Holding the torch at arm’s length, I aimed the beam toward the top of the cliff. Wallace hugged the edge, then slung his body over and disappeared from view. He’d reached the top of the mesa, less than a quarter mile from the ruins.
The cliff rose nearly one hundred feet at an angle about twenty degrees off the vertical. Somehow, Wallace had made it in the dark. I’d have to do the same.
I re-tied my hiking boots and unzipped my jacket for greater flexibility. One last sweep of my flashlight along the incline, searching for the path of ascent. After a couple of deep breaths and a short prayer, I started up the wall.
Very few loose stones along the narrow path. That was good. What wasn’t good was the mere sliver of moon. The rock outlines were still clear, but depth was impossible to judge. One step at a time. I made a good thirty feet, moving on a diagonal, then stopped for breath and scanned the wall above for the first switchback.
Ten feet away and five feet up, a lone tree projected from the rock, its trunk a solid half foot at the base. If I could reach it, I might see a way to the top.
I inched as close as possible and stopped. The path dropped off between my foothold and the tree, the opening nearly five feet across. The pathway I’d remembered must have been washed away over the years. No way I could jump that without a long running start. No way at all.
My jacket scraped against the rock wall and I felt the flashlight in the jacket pocket. I grabbed it, flicked it on once more, and swept the wall above me.
That’s when I saw them—a series of ancient, ascending hand and toe holds two feet behind me. They continued all the way up the rock face, as far as I could see. I’d been so fixated on the tree that I’d moved right past without noticing.
The holes were small, barely large enough for the toes of my boots. I’d need both hands and feet to make the climb and would have to feel my way. I turned off the flashlight, put it back into my jacket pocket, and took the mini-flash out of my shirt pocket. I turned it on, clamped it between my teeth with the beam turned away from my face, and bit down hard. It was the best I could do. Hand-over-hand, toe-over-toe, I edged up to within twenty feet of the top.
Then the wind shifted. It gusted down along the wall and swirled around me. I pressed my body to the rock as sand from above spilled down the embankment onto my head, into my face and nose. I felt the urge to sneeze. With no way to stifle it by hand, I buried my face into the shoulder of my jacket and let it come. My right knee buckled, my body wavered and the mini-flashlight fell from my mouth. It clanked against the rock wall several times before thudding to the ground at the base of the cliffs.
I opened my eyes. Nothing but a thin, gray haze all around. I blinked, but couldn’t focus. I remembered Dr. Aguilera’s warning about visual distortions and gripped the handholds as tightly as I could. Climbing blind, I scraped the rock with my boot for the next toehold. Despite the temperature, sweat streamed into my e
yes. I blinked and blinked some more until the stinging abated and my sight cleared. The outline of the rim against the darkened sky spurred me on. I couldn’t let Nai’ya and Angelina down.
Ten more feet to go. My left boot caught in the next toehold. I heaved myself upward and flailed with my right hand. Got it. I pulled and stabbed out with my right foot at the same time. A few feet closer. More sand in my face. Another sneeze. My left hand slipped. My fingers wildly fought to regain their hold. Got it again. Hold on. Now once more…
The next handhold was full of sand. I leaned into the wall once more and scraped out as much of it as I could. Another pull. Another toehold. I could see over the edge of the rim now, the mixed scent of sand and knapweed on the ground made a sweet perfume.
One final toehold to go. I paused for a deep breath. I had one shot. Make it over the rim, or plunge to my death.
I waited for a lull in the wind and pushed upward with my right leg. I felt for the toehold with my boot. My left hand felt along the top of the plateau. The sandy ground beneath my fingers slipped away over the ledge. With a final, desperate effort, I pushed and grunted and willed my way over the top.
Exhaustion made it impossible to stand. I laid out on my back and stared at the slight crescent moon off to the east.
For some crazy reason, I thought of the original inhabitants of this land. Had it been this hard for them as well? I forced the question from my mind. The only two people I cared about now huddled somewhere in the darkness ahead of me.
The one thousand partially restored rooms atop the mesa formed an adobe and sandstone maze, a vast grid of shadows under the faint starlight. At least the walls would provide Nai’ya and Angelina cover from Wallace’s eyes and some measure of shelter from the bitter winds.
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