Dark Reservations

by John Fortunato

  “I’m sure you know about the supposed affair between Edgerton and Faye,” Joe said. “Did you notice anything between them?”

  “No. Not at all. They seemed friendly, but professional. After all that stuff about them came out, Sierra came to talk to me. She asked about the same thing, thinking that because I’m a man, I might have picked up on something. I didn’t. The whole story didn’t make sense. Why would he have stopped to talk with me and visit the site, only to skip town? He even took photos. Why do all that?”

  They talked some more. Then the professor checked his watch. “I’m sorry, I have to get to my class. Can we continue this later?”

  “Sure, but one last question. Where was your site?”

  “Jones Ranch. It’s in the book.”

  Joe looked down.

  Trudle continued. “There’s a map inside. I didn’t give the exact location, but it’s within a football field of the actual site. We try to protect dig locations. Keep it. I have boxes of them in my garage. It wasn’t a big seller.”

  They walked into the hall.

  Joe saw the receptionist. She waved. Trudle glanced at Joe but said nothing.

  “Thanks for your time, Professor. I may have another agent from my office come out to talk to you about Arthur Othmann.”

  The professor seemed pleased.

  SEPTEMBER 30

  THURSDAY, 1:48 P.M.

  CENTRAL AVENUE NW, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO

  “Hey, Brainy Bug,” Joe said into his phone, surprised to hear from his daughter this early in the afternoon on a weekday. He was in his vehicle, on his way to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  He heard the stress in her voice.

  “What’s wrong, Lissa? Where are you?”

  “I’m…” She paused. “Don’t get upset. I’m okay. I’m at the apartment. There’s a policeman with me.”

  “What happened?” Joe’s hand clenched the steering wheel. The Tahoe drifted into the right lane. A car horn blared, and he swerved back left.

  “The landlord’s here, too,” she said.

  Joe remembered the man from his trip to New York to find Melissa an apartment for her second year at Columbia. Rudy. It took him a moment, but his last name came to him. Palmieri. Rudy Palmieri, an old Italian. A nice man. The kind of older gentleman who would look after two young girls on their own. Joe had approved of him and the apartment.

  “I got back from school about a half hour ago, and when I walked in … the place was a wreck. The TV’s missing and Shana’s laptop. They even took the router box for the Internet. I can’t believe it. I think they ate here, too. There was food left out on the counter. I didn’t check all of Shana’s stuff, but I’m missing my perfume and—”

  “Don’t worry about that. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. But I’m mad as hell.”

  “Where’s Shana?” Joe asked.

  “She’s on her way. She’s with her boyfriend.”

  “She’s okay, too?”

  “Yeah. She’s okay.”

  “Let me speak to the officer,” Joe said.

  He heard his daughter talking to someone, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying. There was a muffled sound, then a man’s voice came on the line.

  “This is Officer O’Brien.”

  Joe introduced himself and let the officer know he, too, was on the job. Then he asked for his take on the burglary.

  “The best I can tell, the perp jimmied the doorknob. Apparently, the dead bolt wasn’t set.”

  “Any damage to the place. Any sicko stuff? Anything I need to be worried about for my daughter and her roommate?”

  “No. Looks like a simple burglary,” the officer said. “There’ve been a few on the block the past month.” He gave Joe the log number for the report. Officer O’Brien wasn’t going to lift prints. Most big cities didn’t process burglary scenes unless it was a major theft or a burglary linked to something else, like murder or rape or arson. “I’ll give your daughter my cell number. If she has any more problems, she can call me.”

  “Thanks. If I can ever do you a good turn down here in Albuquerque, let me know.” Joe gave the officer his cell phone number. That was how it often worked in law enforcement. A favor for a favor. This guy might call a year or two from now looking for some help, never mentioning the original favor, only saying how they knew each other, or how their paths had crossed a few years back.

  Joe had parked in the lot in front of the museum and was walking through the main doors when Melissa got back on the phone.

  “Did Shana get there yet?” Joe asked.

  “No.”

  “Ask Mr. Palmieri if he can stay with you until she gets home.” More mumbled voices.

  “He will.”

  “You have a chain on the door, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Tonight, set the chain and the dead bolt. The officer said the perp must’ve jimmied the doorknob lock. Did you or Shana set the bolt today?”

  “No, we haven’t been.”

  He walked to the counter where visitors purchase tickets.

  “Hold on a second, honey,” Joe said into the phone. He lowered it and spoke to the woman behind the counter.

  “I’m here to see Ms. Hannaway. She’s expecting me.”

  She picked up a phone and dialed a number.

  Joe spoke into his cell phone again. “Did either of you lose a set of keys recently?”

  “No.”

  “Double-check with Shana.”

  “She’s waiting for you by the security desk,” the woman behind the counter said. “Right through those doors.”

  Joe nodded but continued speaking into his phone.

  “You’re getting a security system installed. I’ll arrange it.”

  On his right, large glass partitions separated a gift store from the main corridor, which led into the museum proper. A round information counter was tucked up against the glass wall. Behind it sat a disinterested middle-aged security guard, a copy of the Albuquerque Journal opened to the crossword puzzle.

  “Dad, we don’t need a security system. We’ll lock the dead bolt. I promise.”

  Sierra Hannaway stood beside the security desk, talking to a man with a ponytail and a goatee. He wore a white thigh-length lab coat, bell-bottoms, and sandals. A bohemian.

  “Don’t argue, Lissa. This guy could be a wacko. Either you let me install the alarm or I fly out there, lift prints, and investigate. What do you want to do?”

  No response. Joe knew Melissa was getting angry.

  The security guard handed Joe a pen and pointed to the visitors’ log. Before signing, Joe looked over at Sierra. She and the man were watching him. She turned and said something to the man, but Joe couldn’t hear what she said. He seemed to size up Joe. Then he walked away. The man was younger than Sierra, perhaps by ten years, but the way he’d stood next to her made Joe think they knew each other well, maybe intimately.

  “I’m sure Shana would prefer an alarm system over my poking around the apartment and interviewing her boyfriend,” Joe said. “What’s his name?”

  “Fine,” Melissa said, her frustration obvious. “We’ll do the alarm.”

  Joe didn’t care if Melissa was upset with him. He didn’t know what he would do if something happened to her. What he wanted to do was hop on a plane and check out the situation himself, but he knew that was overreacting. Or was it?

  “How about I fly out there and spend a few days with you. Maybe we—”

  “Dad. Stop it. You’re doing it again. You’re smothering me. I’m fine. We’re fine. The alarm will be more than fine. No more. Please. I called you because I wanted you to know. Don’t make me not want to call you when something happens.”

  Joe took a deep breath. “Okay. We’ll do the alarm. I’ll call you later. And get me the boyfriend’s name.”

  “Dad!”

  “I’ll call you later.” Then,
in a low voice, he said, “I love you.”

  “You seem busy,” Sierra said once he’d pocketed the phone. “Should I expect to be told you don’t have time to work on my sister’s case?” She was obviously still mad that he hadn’t called her about the body. She’d been testy when they’d spoken earlier.

  “That wasn’t a case. It was my daughter. She’s in New York, at college by herself. Her apartment was broken into. Couldn’t wait. Sorry.” He wasn’t sorry.

  He noticed something change in Sierra. Perhaps it was a shift in her stance or maybe her face softened. He wasn’t sure.

  “I apologize,” she said. “I shouldn’t have attacked you. I’m not used to anyone paying attention to my sister’s case, and I want to yell at someone about it. I guess you’re that someone.”

  They talked as they walked.

  “I can understand your frustration,” he said.

  “I’m not sure you can,” she replied, but her voice was soft, almost apologetic. “Hearing people give you lip service when you’re trying to deal with your grief is difficult.”

  Joe thought about Christine. “I had a lot of doctors and specialists talking about hope and new advances when my wife got sick. In the end, I think the truth would have been easier.”

  She stopped walking and turned to face him. “I’m sorry again. I didn’t mean … of course other people have loss. I wasn’t—”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “You’re allowed to feel the way you do. There’s no right way to deal with these things. Believe me, I know.”

  She looked into his eyes. “Thank you.”

  They were in the grand room of the museum now, the ceiling at least three stories high. A twenty-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus rex turned its head to Joe and opened its mouth, revealing two rows of massive teeth. An elephant-size Triceratops ignored the apparently hungry meat eater next to it and bobbed its head up and down, grazing on a mound of plastic foliage.

  “Pretty neat, huh?” she said. “It’s animatronics. The same engineers who design robotics for Disney built that.”

  “Kids must love it.”

  “When we have visiting classes, we have to post a guard next to the display to keep them from climbing on top of them or putting their arms in the T. rex’s mouth.”

  She led Joe around the left side of the two dinosaurs, into an alcove, and then down another corridor. They passed a set of double doors.

  “What do you do here?” he asked.

  “I’m the chief preparator. I actually work in the building next door, which is where we do our skeletal restorations and assembly. I also oversee our volunteer restorations and sometimes help set up displays. That’s the fun part.” They stopped at a glass-enclosed room, which allowed visitors a full view of the workers beyond. A sign read FOSSILWORKS. “This is where our volunteer preparators work.”

  An assortment of various-size metal tables lined the walls of the work space beyond. Three people sat at different stations, all of them hunched over, focused on the items on their individual tables. An older gentleman, possibly in his sixties, sat at the table closest to where Joe stood looking in. He wore a T-shirt showing a squatting dinosaur; it read COPROLITE HAPPENS! Joe grinned. In front of the man was a mound of soil and rock sitting in what looked like half of an egg the size of a baby’s cradle.

  “What’s that?”

  “The white part is a plaster mold, called a ‘jacket.’ We pour it over a fossil deposit out in the field and then dig down below the mold to scoop up that portion of sediment. He’s extracting the jaw of a phytosaur,” she said, pointing to an oar-shaped fossil next to the man. “A giant crocodile that prowled the floodplains in New Mexico in the late Triassic period. About five hundred fragments so far, all glued together.”

  An old woman sat at another table. She squinted through a large round magnifying glass that articulated on a mechanical arm attached to the edge of the table. She appeared to be working on a collection of small vertebrae. She held one of the tiny bones between her gloved thumb and forefinger and probed it with a dental pick.

  Next to her sat another older gentleman. He rubbed a small animal’s skull with a bright green-and-yellow toothbrush.

  “I’ll be right back,” Sierra said. She walked through a door at the end of the glass wall.

  Joe watched her through the glass, her white lab coat swishing this way and that. He appreciated her slim figure beneath, which swayed from side to side against the material, outlining her hips and legs.

  The little pixie back at UNM had warmed his blood.

  Joe turned his attention back to the volunteers. The old woman was looking at him. Their eyes met, and she smiled.

  Sierra now stood at the center of the room. The three occupants turned to look at her. She said something that Joe couldn’t hear, and the two men nodded and returned to their work. The old woman waved Sierra over. They exchanged a few words, and at one point the old woman stole a glance at Joe. Sierra shook her head. The old woman nodded. Sierra walked away, exiting through the same far door.

  “Did she guess I was a cop?” Joe asked.

  “No,” she said.

  He waited, but she didn’t offer any further explanation.

  “There’s a conference room upstairs we can use,” she said, and walked off.

  Joe glanced back into the volunteer preparators’ room. The old woman smiled and waved. He waved back, then turned and hurried after Sierra.

  The conference room consisted of eight chairs arranged around an oval table. Sierra took a seat at the end closest to the door. An accordion folder already sat on the table. Joe chose the seat opposite hers. When he’d called to arrange this interview, they’d spoken about the recovered skeleton, so he felt comfortable starting with a different topic now.

  “I spoke with Professor Trudle at UNM,” he said. “He told me about the dig at Jones Ranch and that you were there when the congressman and your sister visited. Tell me what you remember about that day.”

  “I’ve played it over in my mind so many times. Down to the clothes I wore. Nothing stands out.”

  He flipped open his notepad and took out a pen. “Tell me what you remember.”

  She took a deep breath. “I have to go back about two months before the visit. That’s when my sister called me. At the time, I was doing graduate work in anthropology at UNM; only later did I get into paleontology. She told me about a bill Arlen was working on to protect Native American artifacts and asked if there was someone at the university he could talk to for some background on the issue. I gave her Professor Trudle’s name. Two months later, we had the theft at our dig site, and Professor Trudle asked me to tell Arlen. I called my sister. The next day, he and my sister came out to look at the site.” Sierra paused. “She surprised me. I didn’t know she’d be with him.”

  She stared at his notepad.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “You’re the first person in twenty years to take what I’m saying seriously.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t remember any of the other agents taking notes. All they did was ask about Arlen and Faye, and how they got along, if she ever talked to me about him.”

  “Some investigators don’t take notes during an interview, but make them afterward,” Joe said.

  “No, that wasn’t it. They were so damn convinced that he was guilty and my sister was his lover. You’d think we were talking about Bonnie and Clyde.”

  Joe wasn’t about to argue with her. He’d started to feel the same way about the investigation. Over lunch, he’d reviewed Sierra’s statement from back then and had not seen any mention of the dig site or Sierra’s contact with Faye about the theft. Sierra had been mentioned only as Faye’s sister. But the omission didn’t mean the original agents were unaware of the connection. During an investigation, a lot of work is performed and a lot of people interviewed, but not everything makes it into a report.

  “You’re sure they visited the site the next day?”

 
; “Yes.”

  “What time?”

  “Early. Ten o’clock maybe.”

  If their disappearance had been planned, it had been planned the day before.

  “How did she know where to go? The dig site doesn’t sound like it was easy to get to.”

  “I gave her directions over the phone. We didn’t have e-mail back then, and I didn’t have access to a fax to send her a map.”

  “Where did you call her from?” Joe asked, looking for some clue as to who might have known about the visit.

  “I drove to Gallup and used a pay phone in front of the courthouse. No cell phones back then, either.”

  “Who knew about the congressman’s visit?”

  “Hmmm. I never thought about that. I guess it was me, Lawrence, of course, Arlen, Faye, and Steve Mercado. He was another grad student working at the site. He’s a professor now at UNM. Oh, and Nick, Arlen’s driver.”

  “I notice your refer to the congressman as Arlen.”

  “I worked on his campaign. Even danced with him at his election party. He was a nice man. Not a bad dancer, either. I knew Nick, too.”

  Another omission from the file.

  “Don’t get offended, but I need to ask. Was the congressman a womanizer? Did you get any sense of that when you danced with him?”

  “You’re starting to sound like the others.”

  “All I’m asking for is the truth. You’re an attractive woman.” Joe realized belatedly what he’d just said, but he continued on without a pause. “When you danced with him, or spent time with him, did he ever make a pass, or in any way indicate he was—”

  “No. Even when we danced, it was at a distance. You never met him, I’m sure, because if you had, you would know better. He was always a gentleman.”

  “I know you don’t like the question, but I need to explore the possibility of another woman, and I don’t mean Faye.”

  “I never saw anything that made me think he was stepping out on his wife. And Faye never said anything like that.”

  “Let’s go back to the dig site. They arrive. Then what?”

  “Then Steve and I head into Gallup to get water and supplies.”

  “What kind of supplies?”