Lewis took up a blocking position at the front door. In a second Montclaire was at the sink pouring herself a glass of water.
Rivera looked from Aragon to Lewis, got nothing, then nodded at the bookshelves lined with photographs from Montclaire’s past. “Lily, you were something to look at.” He stepped to a photo apart from the rest.
“I caught your use of the past tense,” Montclaire said, the edge of the glass at her lips. “I was sixteen in that one. I’d already seen Tokyo, Jamaica. A week in Paris being taken everywhere except restaurants.”
“Was this before or after your shoot for Cosmo?” Aragon moved toward the coffee table.
“I did Cosmo when I was nineteen. This one”—Montclaire took a framed photo off the shelf—“I was fourteen. My first job, for a photographer in New York. He said I had a glow about me, innocence under a knowing smile.”
“What’s this?” Aragon sat on the low couch and pulled the portfolio toward her.
“That’s private. I’d rather you don’t look.”
Aragon already had it open. She turned straight to the nude black-and-whites.
“The guy who got you started, nice of him to let you have some of the shots he took. Fourteen years old, innocence under a knowing smile. Even when you’re grabbing your ankles.”
Rivera was behind the couch in five steps.
Aragon turned pages. “Ah, here you are with clothes. I like it, all the light on your face. Man, the long neck.”
“It was one of my strong features.” Montclaire put her glass down and stood with hands on her hips. “That’s enough. You can stop.”
Aragon looked up, studied her neck, and said, “We all get that sag, Lily.” Back to the photos. “Here’s another nice one. You had the legs going on. Two miles long. Me, I’ve got short legs. Like Marcy Thornton. I get in a car someone else drove, I’m always sliding the seat up so I can reach the gas. Tomas, wasn’t Lily beautiful?”
She angled the portfolio so he could see the page she’d turned to: the first of the dead Lilys, a pale corpse on a bed of roses.
Montclaire had edged closer, but still couldn’t see what photograph they were looking at.
While Aragon turned the page to show Rivera more of Dead Lily she said, “You look great in pants. You had it, the way you’d lean against something. Like you were dancing with whatever was there, a chair, a doorframe, a car.”
Now it was obvious they were at the end of the book. Montclaire started backing away when Aragon flipped to the last page, the dead girl on the seesaw.
“I’m going to unpack,” Montclaire said, “and freshen up. I could use a shower. Please close the door when you leave.”
She left them.
“These pictures from Cosmo,” Aragon called out, getting to her feet and dropping the book on the coffee table. Rivera was ahead of her, following Montclaire. “They’re the ones you told us about, when I promised if you weren’t telling the truth about anything, our deal was off.”
Now they were in the hallway, a light on in the first room. Rivera entered first, Aragon right behind. Montclaire had her suitcase open on the bed. She was moving underwear and bras to the second drawer of her dresser, folding them, laying them in neatly.
“I went looking for those shots you bragged about.” She and Lewis hadn’t got this far into the house before. She looked around as she spoke, Montclaire not always in her line of sight, sometimes Rivera in the way. “The one of you on the bicycle, the one of you on the seesaw. I found that Cosmo issue. Lily, you weren’t ever in Cosmo. Those photos in your portfolio, the very last entries, they were rejected. You were rejected.”
Montclaire shook out a camisole, refolded it, placed it in the open drawer.
“They couldn’t use me.”
“You did the dead girl thing,” Aragon said, “and never came back to life.” Rivera slid closer to Montclaire. Aragon wished she hadn’t laughed off Lewis’s crack about digging through Montclaire’s underwear. She didn’t like not seeing her hands when they went in the drawer.
“I was ahead of my time,” Montclaire said. “Female corpses are back. There’s nothing more beautiful than a dead girl.”
“How much did you hate Andrea for being young and pretty?” The question made Montclaire stop, a bra strap dangling loose from her hand. “As much as you hated Marcy Thornton? Or was it all just a calculated play when you saw the cards going against you?”
Montclaire balled up the bra and tossed it in the drawer, no longer careful to fold everything.
“You broke into my house when you were holding me.” Montclaire tried a fierce look but failed. “You saw my portfolio before. All this time, me thinking I was helping you, you were after me. You can never use that, anything you saw in here. I know about fruit of the poisoned tree, how an illegal search taints everything. You thought you were so smart. But you screwed yourself.”
“Lily, I never saw your photos before. You let us in, just now. The portfolio was in plain sight. You explicitly said, ‘Make yourself at home.’”
“I heard it,” Rivera said.
Aragon might tell him one day that’s why they wanted him along, to witness Montclaire inviting them in so they could use what they already knew was inside. An FBI agent backing up two detectives, hard to beat.
Lily reached into her suitcase—how much underwear did this woman have? She held up a red negligee, shook it loose, drawing Rivera’ eyes as she tossed it on the bed. Aragon was wondering why she would have packed something like that for a stay at the police station when Lily’s hand came out of the drawer.
A little gun pointed at Rivera’s face. Montclaire fired.
Thirty-six
Lewis charged the bedroom. His shoulders swept pictures off the narrow hallway walls. He came around the door frame gun first, the side away from his heart exposed.
Blood seeped from Aragon’s fist. She had her bloody hand over Montclaire’s, a polished wooden grip and thin black barrel showing between their fingers. Aragon had Montclaire’s other arm by the wrist as she twisted and turned. Rivera was behind, trying to get his arm across her throat.
Montclaire kicked Aragon’s leg. Aragon kicked back, a knee to the top of the thigh, her foot raking Montclaire’s shin, slamming onto her instep.
The gun hand swung his way. Lewis stepped out of its path as Aragon drove her knee into Montclaire’s groin. Montclaire folded, a sick groan replacing her shrieks. Aragon backed away with the gun, a small Beretta, a twin to the one found in Thornton’s Durango.
Rivera pulled Montclaire’s hands behind her back and pushed her to the floor.
“I never thought that worked on a woman,” Lewis said. “Jesus, your hand.”
Blood pulsed from a hole between the bones for the ring and pinkie fingers. The flow increased, blood spurted. Lewis took the Beretta and lifted Aragon’s empty hand above her head. His thumb pressed the hollow on the inside of her wrist.
“Does it hurt bad?”
She shook her head. “I grabbed the gun right as she fired.” Blood now flowed down her biceps and reached the shirt sleeve. “She couldn’t fire again. The spent brass couldn’t eject. That barrel has to pop up.”
“I told you I didn’t like those things.”
“I love them. Any other gun, someone would be dead.”
“You saved me from getting shot in the face,” Rivera said, his knee in Montclaire’s back while he dug plastic ties from his rear pocket.
Aragon looked at the hole in the back of her hand, then the ceiling. “It went somewhere.”
Lewis stripped a pillowcase from the bed and wound it tightly around her hand. He told her to keep it high. Instead, she kneeled to bring her mouth close to Montclaire’s ear.
“You just made the case for us, Lily. Those creepy photos, they weren’t enough. But with you trying to kill an FBI agent, and actually shooting
a Santa Fe police officer … Let me just say, thanks for your invaluable cooperation.”
Lewis reached to help her to her feet but she pulled away.
“What’s that, Lily?”
“I said—” Rivera’s weight on her back, Montclaire spoke into the carpet. “I can give you more on Marcy. The things she had me do. You have no idea.”
“We don’t trade a girl’s murder for piling on a dirty lawyer. Thornton’s through without your help.”
Aragon let Lewis pull her up. She leaned into his arms.
“Okay, now it hurts,” she said and began shaking and couldn’t stop.
“You know what you did?” Rivera at the foot of her bed, a private room at Christus St. Vincent. She was still groggy from the stuff they’d slipped into her blood before surgery, a man behind a light blue mask saying softly, “You might like this.”
“Don’t you see it?” Rivera tried again, and she still didn’t know what he was talking about.
Cards and balloons taking up the space along one wall and the dresser top. She’d requested no flowers, especially roses. She couldn’t force Tomas to leave and didn’t want to start anything with Sergeant Perez in the room. Soon a captain would join them, standing in until the chief got back from the border law enforcement conference to check on his wounded detective.
Rivera was on the other side of her bandaged hand and the arm with the feed to the tube running to a bag on a hook. Her hand was suspended above, her body in a thin blue robe tied in the back, riding up her thighs, ankles locked, wanting a sheet to cover all of her. They said the hand had stopped bleeding, but it throbbed like a beating drum. The little bullet had cut through small bones that would take a long time to heal, then plastic surgery after this first round of cutting to re-attach ligaments so she’d have some grip and strength. Months with a physical therapist getting muscles to work, fingers on her good hand crossed, like her ankles. Hoping.
“I did my job,” she said, her voice scratchy from the tubes shoved down her throat when they’d put her under.
“You saved Miguel,” Rivera said. “The barrel was pointing at me, but it was Miguel you jumped to save. Now you can put that behind you. You don’t need to blame yourself anymore.”
She saw the look on Sergeant Perez’s face. Who’s this Miguel?
“I don’t want to talk about it. Get me a blanket, so everybody isn’t looking up my robe when they come in the room.”
Rivera left. She heard him calling for a nurse in the hall.
Sergeant Perez said, “You were talking about a Miguel when you were out in surgery. The doc told me it was about a rape and shooting. Another Silva we need to worry about?”
“Nobody you need to know about.”
“Rapes and shootings, that’s police business.”
“It’s personal, from when I was a kid.” Rivera was back with an ugly orange blanket. Maybe they used that color so nobody would want to steal one. “Tuck it under my feet,” she told him. “Here.” She grabbed a corner and pulled an edge to her waist, catching Rivera’s eye as he worked around her feet. Wanting to chew him out for mentioning Miguel in front of Perez, knowing the sergeant would always be wondering.
And then she saw that Rivera was right. She had saved the life of a man who loved her. Her nightmare with Miguel relived, but coming out different, the way she’d wanted to turn those dark dreams around. Yeah, she felt it. Rivera did love her. He’d never told her, but she was sure he’d said it to himself, maybe catching it later like she had, surprised, hearing it inside her head.
Does this make up for Miguel? Will all of that stop?
“You guys want coffee?” Perez asked and they shook their heads.
Never gonna stop. That day on her back watching Miguel die at her feet was in her, always would be. It’s what made her, drove her forward, forced her to be always stronger.
When they were alone, Rivera said, “I want to do something to thank you. I know you like the fights. We could catch a big card in Vegas, see the next women’s championship.”
“I hate Vegas. You know how many times I’ve gone there to bring back someone’s daughter, or return with worse news?”
“The opposite of Vegas, then. Disneyland.”
“We’re a little old for Mickey and Cinderella, don’t you think?”
“Just trying here. What about Nashville? You love country music.”
Every one of these an overnighter—how many nights?—going through the trouble of insisting on her own room when they checked in. No, before she even agreed to go.
“Or a Sandals resort in the Bahamas.” Rivera not giving up. “Sit back, be pampered. Somewhere exotic, an island with white beaches and palm trees. You told me once you’d never seen the ocean.”
“You want to do something for me?” Her toe peeked out under the orange blanket and she thought for a second of what Marcy Thornton was going through in another room in this hospital. “Check the bull riding in Farmington.”
“Farmington? You want a date in Farmington? Pump jacks and cowboys?”
“I like Farmington. It still feels like New Mexico, more than what’s happened to Santa Fe. Regular people at regular jobs. No New Yorkers or Californians claiming they discovered the Land of Enchantment. Those Navajo boys come in to show how crazy brave they are, bull-fighting teams getting between horns and riders when they hit the ground. You’ve never seen fearless until you see a skinny Indian pulling the tail on a one-ton steer named Red Rock Assassin.”
“Farmington?”
“Yes, Farmington.”
“Is there anywhere to eat out there?”
“We’ll eat in the stands. Navajo tacos and mutton stew. Then we can drive back home. After that, maybe I’ll think about some place on a beach, as long as it has a weight room. You can get your daily dose of iron, too.”
Thirty-seven
Aragon admired the T-bone, its juices pooling on the plate, long, thick scallions across the top for the extra kick. This restaurant, almost a part of the Roundhouse it was so close, had great steaks, but the green chile—wrong part of town for that. Too bad. The high temps and dry weather during a long fire season gave this year’s chile crop sweat-popping heat. Still, she wished the monsoons had come sooner. A fire in the Pecos Wilderness had charred a stretch of aspen she loved to run.
More than autumn was in the air. She was smelling roasting chiles everywhere outside the tourist sectors. Farmers sold them out of pickups, searing them on the spot in homemade steel mesh turbines spun over propane flames. She’d bought a bushel, roasted, of Chimayos, dumped into a plastic fifty-gallon bag almost melting from the heat. A week later, she still had to let down the windows when she drove to work to keep her eyes from watering. Her car would smell like roasted chile until Thanksgiving.
Lewis leaned forward with a knife and fork. “Should I cut it for you?”
She said thanks and reached for her beer while he sliced her steak into fork-sized pieces. She still couldn’t hold anything in her right hand. She was getting better shooting with her left, working up from a .22 revolver, fighting the soft-wrist issue of shooting with only one hand. She was finally able to work a semi-auto without a misfire.
“You sure tuned up Montclaire’s insurance company.” Lewis pushed her plate back to her.
“They’re going to pay policy limits,” Aragon said with a mouthful of rare beef. “Who’s going to rely on a child molester, murderer, lying monster to make your defense? Intentional infliction of emotional distress on top of physical injury, making me see Cassandra Baca in the dumpster. It will always be with me. PTSD for life, you know.”
“Yeah, you’re damaged for life. You’re looking happy.”
“Three hundred grand can do that.”
“I thought Montclaire had a half-mil policy.”
“Lawyer’s cut, costs. You should have sued, too. You
saw the body, something you’ll never get out of your nightmares. You were traumatized by Montclaire waving the gun around, seeing yourself killed, your daughters without a father. You could be buying this dinner.”
“That case would have been fought to the bitter end. Every cop who sees a body, who has a hard time with a suspect, from now on getting to sue?”
“It’s our turn. Everybody’s always suing us.”
“You got yours because you got shot, and Thornton didn’t want your claim hanging over her while she’s fighting criminal charges. Hey, the damages you claimed for not being able to use your hand. I wanted to ask about that.”
Aragon chased beef with the last of her beer and looked to the waiter for another round. “Hedonistic damages,” she said. “Loss of life’s pleasures. Shooting is what I like to do. And Krav Maga. Can’t be blocking punches with a hand that leaks doing push-ups. And working out. No más, for a long time.”
“Your legs, though. What are you squatting?”
“Over a hundred pounds more than before. But only on the machines. I can’t handle a bar. My left arm’s getting stronger. Lots of curls and extensions.”
“Don’t build up too much while your right side’s out of action.”
“I’m freaky enough, huh? The docs say I’ll have scars from that acid, here, near my eye. But it’s all right. I never saw myself as a fashion model. Man, this is a good piece of meat, even without green chile.”
“Check out Hop Along.”
She followed Lewis’s gaze. Marcy Thornton had entered the restaurant. Black leather pants, black boots, a black cane, one with the three prongs on the end like old people use so they don’t fall. Thornton was scanning tables, searching for someone.
“Crap, she’s coming over.” Aragon hunched her shoulders and burrowed into her meal.
“Detective Aragon, nice to see two of Santa Fe’s finest enjoying the good life.”
Aragon looked up from her plate. “We were just trading jokes about one-legged whores, but we’ll stop.” She jabbed a cube of bloody meat and pulled it off the fork with her teeth.
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