Enter by the Narrow Gate

by David Carlson

  Chapter Nineteen

  Worthy pushed the Jeep to the speed limit until he reached San Ignacio. Next to him sat Father Fortis. Behind them both, unusually quiet, sat Father Linus.

  “You okay, Linus?” Father Fortis asked, gazing into the backseat.

  “Yes, yes. Just a bit tired the past couple of days.” In a louder voice, the old monk added, “I’m so glad you asked me to come along, Lieutenant.”

  Glad? Nick must not have told him what we’re going to find, Worthy thought.

  “Do you know this particular morada?” Worthy called back to the old monk.

  “Yes, I think so. It’s been many years, though.”

  At the correct mile marker, Worthy eased up on the pedal and turned onto a one-lane, rutted road.

  “Are you sure this road actually leads somewhere?” Father Fortis asked as the Jeep bounced along. “Look at those boulders ahead.”

  “According to the directions, this has to be right,” Worthy replied. “And from the cloud of dust ahead, we’re not the first on it today.”

  “Guests at the monastery sometimes ask me where they can see a morada,” Father Linus quipped. “I tell them to find a road that looks like a dead end.”

  Worthy glanced in his rearview mirror at his passenger. “So Father, how far are we from the monastery?”

  “I’d say about twenty-five miles or so by foot, quite a bit more by road.”

  About the same distance as the retreat center, but in a different direction, Worthy realized.

  Father Fortis twisted in the passenger seat again. “Linus, I couldn’t help but notice how fit Father Bernard is. Does he exercise a lot?”

  Worthy shot a puzzled look at his friend. Why that question now?

  “Oh, I thought I told you. Bernard was in the military,” Father Linus said. “And yes, he’s very fit. I believe he entered one of those triathlon races a while back.”

  “Triathlons involve biking, don’t they, Christopher?” Father Fortis asked.

  “I think so.” He turned toward his friend. “Why?”

  “Just curious.”

  Obviously, but why? Worthy wondered.

  At an intersection with another dirt road, Worthy slowed to a near stop and looked out his window. “Fresh tire tracks and more dust,” he said.

  “I don’t know how you can tell—”

  “Quiet, Nick,” Worthy ordered as he turned off the throbbing motor. He craned his neck out the window and heard the faint rumble of generators.

  Starting the Jeep again, he hurried toward the slight rise ahead. A mile of twisting road later, the Jeep rounded a bend. Before them was a scene out of a movie. Three banks of unlit floodlights peeked over an outcropping of rock, while police vehicles, both cars and vans, lined the sides of the road. Uniformed figures crawled back and forth over the rocks like ants.

  “They’re at the morada’s cemetery. I hope they don’t disturb innocent graves,” Father Linus said.

  They’ll disturb one, Worthy thought. He inched the Jeep down the curving road to a gap in the rocks. From there they could see a simple adobe building, more like a barn than a church, surrounded by rows of wooden crosses. Nicely hidden, Worthy noted. Strangers happening down the road by mistake would be too focused on the potholes to notice what they were passing.

  As he pulled off to the side, Worthy felt his stomach tighten. Men and women swarmed everywhere around the building and within a cordoned-off square at the edge of the cemetery. What if he’d made a mistake? What if this was all for nothing? He scanned the officers for the only two he knew, Sera and Sheriff Cortini.

  “Do you want to stay here or come along?” Worthy asked.

  Father Fortis didn’t answer immediately. “We’ll come,” he finally said.

  Father Linus leaned over the seat. “Perhaps a priest will be needed, Lieutenant?”

  Worthy followed the two priests as they walked along the edge of the road toward the morada. Father Linus’s medieval cassock, the tongue of his leather belt slapping rhythmically on his knee, only added to the surreal atmosphere of the scene. High tech meets King Arthur, Worthy thought.

  He noted that some of the investigators were jumping from rock to rock like trained dancers. A few others scanned computer screens while another group worked in pairs with long tape measures. Abandoning the road and the two priests, Worthy climbed over a few rocks and walked toward the morada. The cracks in the building looked like wrinkles, as if the morada were an old and tired peasant.

  Worthy tried to find Sera but didn’t see her. He walked back to the road and looked into the line of police cars. In the third one from the end, Sera was curled up asleep on the front seat, a khaki blanket folded up as a pillow. Her eyes seemed closed more in prayer than exhausted sleep.

  He shook her gently, and she squinted up at him.

  “Hi,” he said. “Have they found anything yet?”

  Sera yawned as she sat up and opened the door. “A few fingerprints here and there, but not Ellie’s. They’re getting ready to dig up the grave.”

  Fine, Worthy thought. It wasn’t Ellie’s fingerprints he expected to find.

  “I thought you’d be more excited,” she said. “You all right?”

  “I’m always nervous at this point, but more than usual out here. When I see all this equipment, I see budget overruns. I sure hope I’m right.”

  “We’ll remember you if we don’t get raises this year. Want to go for a walk?” she asked.

  “Where to?”

  She pointed to a line of vehicles down the road. “That last one is our forensic van. They’re working on a blood sample they found about a half-hour ago, over by the grave.”

  As they approached, Worthy could hear the hum of the van’s air conditioner and thought how welcome it would be to step inside. But Sera seemed to hesitate as she walked up the steps.

  After knocking, she turned toward Worthy. “Brace yourself.”

  The door opened and a portly Hispanic man in stained surgical gloves looked out.

  “Look who’s here, Frankie,” he said, gazing over his shoulder into the van. “It’s my old high school sweetheart, the skirt who started all this.” He belched, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and eyed Worthy.

  “Lieutenant Worthy, this is Manuel Parres, a pathologist, and as he says, a classmate from high school.”

  The pathologist took a step toward her. “Oh, Sera. Is that all I am to you? True, you refused to go out with me, but how can I forget the dance we had at your wedding?” Manuel pretended to hold her in his arms.

  Worthy stood silently, the outsider from Detroit, impotent when it came to dealing with this jerk.

  “Why do I need to say anything, Manny?” Sera countered. “Maybe nobody wanted to go out with you because your mouth never stops flapping.”

  “Hey, Manny, she’s got you there,” a voice from back in the van called out.

  Manny leaned toward Sera and puckered for a kiss.

  Sera stepped back. “How about cutting the crap and telling us about the blood?”

  “Always in a hurry, Sera, even when you married Steve. Then, boom, along comes your kid. Sera, Sera, Sera, beautiful Sera with the angry black hair.” He glanced over at Worthy. “Foxy lady, don’t you think?”

  Worthy stepped forward. “Like she said, are you running a lab here or not?”

  “Ooh.” Manny grimaced in mock fear. “Yes, sir, Lieutenant from Detroit. Your blood sample is fresh and it’s human. Is that good enough for you?”

  It is for me, Worthy thought. He took a step closer to the pathologist and handed him an envelope. “See if the DNA is a match for this.”

  Manny balanced the envelope in his hand as if he hadn’t decided whether to cooperate. Finally he retreated in a stream of Spanish back into the van.

  Sera walked down the ramp, her arms folded across her breasts, and started toward the morada.

  “Heh, Sera,” Manny called out from behind them. “I hear you’re getting married again. Maybe
I dance with you at Freddie’s wedding, too.”

  For a moment, Worthy’s brain froze on the thought as he stumbled down the road toward the crime scene. The next feeling was the memory of Sera on their first meeting using his back to draw him a map. Why the shock? he asked himself. She’d never given him grounds for thinking there was something between them, had she?

  “I thought you knew,” Sera said softly as Worthy turned his back to her. “But of course you wouldn’t.”

  “What? No, I was thinking about something else,” Worthy said as he scanned the mountains in the distance.

  A sharp voice interrupted them. “Hey, you two, they’re starting on the grave.”

  Sera turned and jogged toward the site, Worthy right behind. They approached two uniformed gatekeepers who let Sera through but blocked his path. A young policeman, kneeling on the ground, looked up at the men and nodded. Worthy stepped under the rope barrier.

  That must be Choi, he thought. He watched as Sera pushed through the others toward the front. Two German shepherds pulled their handlers toward the mound in the center.

  He turned around to search for Father Fortis and Father Linus and saw them well back beyond the yellow cordon. Father Linus dropped to his knees on the rocky ground and crossed himself.

  “Bring me a long stick,” Choi called. Someone stepped forward with a stick and handed it to the lieutenant. Gently, he moved dirt aside from what looked to be tiny holes along the edge of the mound. Another policeman stepped forward and laid a sling of tools down next to him.

  “Turn off the generator,” Choi commanded.

  The whining motor sputtered to a halt, leaving the group in eerie silence. Worthy tried to catch Sera’s eye, but her gaze was locked on the ground.

  “My probe is hitting something hard, maybe rock,” Choi said in a calm voice. “I think these holes were made by varmints, which means something down there attracted them. Who wants to start the digging?”

  Choi rose to his feet and let two crewmen take his place. As he took his position next to Sera, he directed them to call out whenever they found something. Hands clasped in front of her, Sera looked like a student awaiting instruction. She answered a question from Choi asked too softly for Worthy to hear above the scraping sounds at their feet, but in a moment Choi walked over to him.

  “Nice to finally meet you,” he said evenly. “I wasn’t too keen on your theory when I first heard it, but here we are. How do they say it? The proof is in the pudding. You should feel proud.”

  Worthy shrugged, angry that it was proving hard for him to get past Sera’s news. What did that matter now? He’d be home by tomorrow.

  In the afternoon heat, the methodical digging continued. The mound of dirt and stones, flat as tables, were removed first, exposing another layer of smaller stones. Everything was reassembled to the side, as if the group were archeologists, not police. The faces around the site changed as some wandered back to their cars and vans, and new diggers moved into the deepening pit.

  Like sentries on opposite sides of the circle, Sera and Worthy remained as the afternoon dragged on. Beyond the cordon were Father Fortis and Father Linus, though the old monk finally sat on the ground and accepted water from a crew member. Choi’s ever-watchful eye surveyed the scene as he sipped from a thermos and calmly encouraged his diggers.

  Shortly after five o’clock, when Worthy felt his head would explode from the heat radiating off the rocks, one of the diggers suddenly jumped out of the pit and gagged. The other scrambled out after him and covered his mouth and nose with a rag. Choi jumped cautiously into the pit.

  “Tissue decay,” he announced, “but it’s from beneath another layer of rocks. Get masks if you need them.”

  Worthy looked over at Sera, who shivered, despite the heat. He wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to stay, that he could identify Ellie’s body. There’d be no note of triumph in his voice, for it was a victory without any satisfaction. Sera glanced up at him sadly and shook her head, as if she’d read his thoughts. But she didn’t leave.

  Now minutes will seem like hours, Worthy thought as the sun moved behind a mesa and a stand of lights was brought to the edge of the pit. The generator roared back to life. The man in the pit was handed a broom, and minutes later he’d exposed a floor of loose rocks at least two feet across, six feet long.

  That must cover the body, Worthy thought. The boy was certainly meticulous.

  Choi looked around at his crew. “We’re close, gentlemen, so be careful.”

  After the sixth stone had been methodically removed, the digger stood up and looked toward his superior. “There’s some sort of tarp, I think. What do you want me to do?”

  Choi licked his lips as he leaned over the edge of the hole. “Is the smell any worse?”

  “Hell, yes,” the digger replied.

  “Any evidence of animals eating through the tarp?”

  The digger knelt down again in the pit. “Hell, yes.”

  Choi handed the digger a smaller tool. “Take these scissors and see if you can enlarge one of the holes. Be very, very careful.”

  The crowd had re-formed around the pit, ready for the payoff. Worthy edged forward and knelt down by the lip. Suddenly the digger stopped.

  “What the hell! It’s made of wood!”

  Choi jumped into the hole and fell to his knees as everyone waited for the verdict. Wooden? Worthy thought. He raised himself and watched as the message traveled through the crowd, past the cordon tape, to the two monks. The two looked at each other, and Father Linus crossed himself.

  “It’s wood, all right,” Choi called up. “But it looks a lot like a body.”

  Worthy glanced over at Sera. To his surprise, she was gone, having retreated to the cordon tape where she spoke with the old monk.

  Choi crawled out of the pit and dusted off his knees. “Anybody here have a clue about this?”

  Sera called from the back over the roar of the generator. “Lieutenant, this priest knows.”

  “Bring him here,” Choi ordered.

  Father Linus stepped under the tape and approached the hole. Again, he crossed himself. “Lieutenant Choi, Father.”

  The detective didn’t seem to remember the old monk who’d given him such a hard time at the monastery a week before. “What do we have here, Father?”

  “It’s La Muerte. The black cloth isn’t a tarp, but a robe to cover the figure.”

  “Do you know what he means?” Choi asked Sera.

  “It’s a death figure, a wooden carving of a skeleton. The Penitentes use them.”

  “Shit, is this just a goddamn prank?” one of the diggers, wiping off sweat, called out from the side.

  “Not with this smell,” Choi replied. “Let’s find out what we have here, but whatever you do, try not to touch the cloth any more than we already have. And I want Parres ready to check for prints as soon as we get it out.”

  Worthy walked around the hole and approached Father Fortis.

  “Do you know what this is about?”

  Father Fortis wiped his forehead. “A death figure was taken from a morada up in Colorado, one Father Linus knew about.”

  “So?”

  “There’s a cart that always goes with the death figure,” Father Fortis added. “That was found in the retreat house next to Sister Anna’s body.”

  “What? I don’t follow.”

  “Don’t let it bother you, Christopher. It fits your theory to a T. Other moradas, the retreat house, and now here. Victor Martinez is the common link.”

  It took two diggers to lift the wooden skeleton from the hole, the jointed arms and legs of the figure swaying eerily like a corpse’s. The whitewashed wooden face was painted with black circles around the mouth, the eyes made of shiny shells. Worthy moved to his left to get a better view into the pit, expecting to see the exposed remains of Ellie VanBruskman. Instead, at the bottom of the pit, was an enormous wooden cross.

  Only the stench emanating from the hole withstood the c
razy thought that he’d brought everyone out here for a colossal waste of time. He noted the animal holes dotting each side of the cross’s central beam. There had to be a body nailed to the other side.

  As the fog in his brain cleared, Worthy saw that Sera had come around the pit and was kneeling next to him, her eyes wide.

  “Oh God, I guess this is it,” she said. “Even this morning, I didn’t think it was possible. I guess I owe you an ….”

  He touched her arm. It’s more than possible, he thought. What they’d found was almost logical, in a crazy sort of way. Ellie VanBruskman’s study partner, the boy she’d befriended and run away to find, had indeed found her. Driven over the edge by guilt, he’d killed his college friend and nailed her to a cross.

  Behind him, even over the hum of the generator, he heard Father Linus begin to pray. No doubt Father Fortis would be joining him. Too late, Worthy thought. Weeks too late.

  He thought of the girl he’d never meet, whose bad fortune it had been to find Victor just after he’d taken a final bloody step into psychosis. He thought of the phone call he’d have to make to the VanBruskmans and wondered if their anger would finally give way to grief. He imagined Victor’s mother and grandmother on Acoma living out their last years in perpetual grief, as would the uncle in Chimayó.

  The only remaining question was where they’d find Victor. Worthy glanced out at the hills, his eyes spotting a wooden cross set halfway up a hillside path. Was he up there somewhere, watching as they uncovered his handiwork? Or was he holed up in yet another morada, crazed out of his mind?

  The shovelfuls of sand grew smaller with each passing minute. Finally, after a full half-hour, the lead digger asked for a small hand broom and began whisking the last remaining dust from around one arm of the cross.

  Bending down, he called out, “I think I see a blouse.”

  “Be extra careful,” Choi ordered. “We want to hoist up the cross without touching the girl’s body, if that’s possible. Let’s get the winch in place.”

  First the top of the cross and then its arms …. The steel cables were secured. Choi waited until everything was in place before he gave the order. At his command, the winch groaned, and the cross was slowly raised. A photographer joined the last digger near the hole as first a sleeve full of dirt broke free, then the edge of a hand. Fingers caked with blood and dirt came free next.