Aragon smiled. After what Rivera would hear from Fager, they would be making plenty of federal friends.
“And,” Donnelly said, “I don’t like hearing that Walter Fager deserves a taste of his own medicine. Linda Fager deserves no less from us because of who she married. The way she was killed, there’s a good chance her killer will do it again.”
“He’s had plenty of practice.”
Donnelly studied her over the rim of his cup.
“I know you haven’t been observing your suspension. Your face tells me what your mouth won’t.” He held up a hand. “I don’t want to know. Keep on doing what you’re doing. I came to tell you I’m getting the forensics out of deep freeze. It’s my own channel. Dewey Nobles won’t know. Over the transom you’ll get everything a lead detective on a homicide is entitled to.”
“What’s a transom?”
“You make me feel old. I want to talk about Omar Serrano.”
“I don’t.”
“I received an audio file of him sexually harassing you. Calling you Butch.”
Sneaking around with a hidden recorder taping fellow officers was not Lewis’s style. Serrano’s partner, Fenstermacher, had been present, standing back with a pissed-off look. He had caught her at the copy machine a day later and apologized. Maybe burning Serrano on a harassment charge was the only way he could get assigned to a better partner.
Cops nailing other cops over PC shit. A homicide detective getting over the transom, whatever that meant, what she needed to catch a killer—the SFPD had come to this.
“Don’t know anything about it,” she said.
“Has he engaged in sexually hostile comments, made you feel uncomfortable because of your gender or sexual identity?”
“He makes me uncomfortable because he’s a lousy cop.”
“Agreed. I want him riding a Segway at the train station, checking busker licenses, nowhere near real police work.”
“You want real police work, stretch out the suspension. I need more time.”
“First I heard of a cop wanting stiffer punishment. Listen to that audio file. Confirm it’s Serrano and you’ll get more time.”
“Not an even trade. Pegging a murder investigation to a hazing beef. C’mon.”
“Good women can move into Serrano’s slot.”
“The women on my mind are named Linda Fager, Cynthia Fremont, Tasha Gonzalez. They’re not chasing a promotion.”
That made Donnelly smile. “Okay, I’ll tell Dewey I’m the one needs more time because you’re such a hard case.”
“Dewey. When does Professional Standards notice him? He makes Diaz and Thornton possible. When are you going to take him on so that the real police work you value so much can happen every day? So Professional Standards investigators and homicide detectives don’t have to conspire to get the job done before the Deputy Chief wakes up?”
“Thanks for the coffee.” Donnelly handed her his cup and let himself out.
Even if it was only manufactured homes welded together, Aragon liked Javier’s monastery in the pines a lot more than this one. The Buddhist compound sat back from busy Airport Road, behind a dirt parking lot. The entrance was at the end of a narrow alley, the monastery’s high white walls on the right, a neighbor’s dogs and chain-link fence topped with razor wire on the left. Approaching the monastery’s main gate, Aragon felt she was walking the state pen’s exercise yard.
Above the white wall, a tower with shining Asiatic eyes looked down on her. Gold leaf reflected sunlight. She saw a spot where gang graffiti had been covered over. The taggers had reached within six feet of the tower’s decorations. She wondered how long the gold leaf would last.
At the end of the grim gauntlet she found a plaza of single-story wooden buildings. A retreat center had drawn people with license plates from all over the country. Roshi’s white Audi roadster was there. Nobody was around except for a woman in a patterned dress sitting cross-legged on a porch, eyes closed, rocking slightly. Aragon looked for an office but found only a door through white walls to the temple grounds.
The meditating woman opened her eyes.
“Please enter,” she said. “You are expected.”
Aragon had not called ahead. Maybe they said that to everyone who appeared on their doorstep.
Inside the walls, a Scandinavian sort of man—long jaw, mop of blond hair, blue eyes, thin limbs—was raking leaves. All of three leaves. He told her the Roshi was praying and would be out in a minute. He spied a fourth leaf across the courtyard and picked it up by its stem to add to his tiny pile.
Just as she began to enjoy the stillness inside the walls, the thumping bass of a gangster war wagon passed on the street. The man tending leaves flinched at the assault on the courtyard’s quiet. The sound receded as the priestess, today wearing a saffron robe, emerged from a curved doorway. The priestess shielded her eyes against the glare, then opened arms wide.
“Jeep.”
“Buff Roshi. Can we talk?”
They moved to a bench at the edge of a rectangle of smooth river stones.
“What happened to your face?”
She was tired of the question and again explained the Krav Maga class.
“We have definitely traveled different paths,” Buff Roshi said. “I hope we can catch up, do something together. Old times. What would be fun?”
“Any Holly Holm fight.”
“Pass. How about Pitbull? He’s coming to Albuquerque.”
“The rapper?”
“He’s great. My boyfriend loves him. But this will be our night.”
“Can we take your car?”
“Sure. I should have asked. Is there anyone in your life?
“Yes. No.” She didn’t know how to answer about Rivera. Maybe she could talk to Buff, down the road, when they got to know each other again. “Do you go,” Aragon looked at the robe, “like that?”
“Come on. Tight jeans and J Lo chiffon. But you’re not here about a girl’s night out.”
“Buff, I need to know more about celestial burial. Did you see photos of the girl?”
“I didn’t look very closely. I didn’t want to.”
“May I describe her wounds? It’s important.”
Buff Roshi nodded. She took a breath, preparing herself.
Aragon described the lacerations on the thighs. “Is that part of the ritual, or another anomaly, like the writing on the prayer flags?”
“The body is opened to ease its use by creatures of the air and speed transformation of the corporeal individual. In some ceremonies the viscera are exposed.”
“The body is opened after death?”
“Of course. This is a burial ceremony.”
“This girl was alive when she was cut.”
“Perhaps you have a sacrifice, not a burial.”
“The wrists almost suggest suicide. But with the legs, I can’t buy it.”
“The possibility of suicide makes me no happier.” Buff Roshi tilted her head to the sky, sighed, came back. “Buddhist views are more complicated than you find in Christianity’s blanket condemnation. Some Buddhists say saints would not kill themselves, though we have contrary accounts. Some hold the belief that the truly enlightened, those who have mastered themselves, may choose as they please in regards to the death of their mortal carcass. For the unenlightened, Buddhist ethics prohibit suicide. It is an irrational act of desperation and folly. In her next life she must again face that desperation and the evil fruit of seeking annihilation. Was this young woman perhaps suffering a terminal illness?”
“The autopsy found minor liver damage, maybe from substance abuse. Otherwise, an attractive, healthy young woman.”
“And the writing on the flags?”
“Tentatively identified as Ogham, which I’m told was the language of Druid priests.”
�
��I think you’ll find your answer in the message of those flags.” Buff Roshi folded her hands. “I must tell you I am very disturbed by this. I see a perversion of Buddhist beliefs and practices. Now I fear the same has been done to the faith of my Wiccan friends. Many of their ceremonies are conducted using the old Druids’ language.”
Another war wagon rolled by beyond the walls. Aragon waited for its clamor to pass before continuing.
“I have one more thing to ask. Our girl had sex shortly before she died. Does that fit at all with this transformation thing?”
“Transformation thing. I may use that in my lessons on nirvana.”
“I didn’t mean to … ”
“No, I like it.” The Roshi smiled. “About sex. Buddhism does not see one’s genitals as a pathway to enlightenment. But Wicca in its original form was a fertility religion.” She held up two fingers of her right hand and closed her eyes. Aragon wondered if she was shutting out the world or searching her memory. She opened her eyes with a look of sadness. “A woman in Albuquerque a few years ago, Sylvia something—as in sylvan forests and woods—used sex in a self-shaped transformation ritual. She killed her partner when he was inside her. That is desecration in any faith tradition.”
“I remember. A young Anglo woman picked up an older man, Hispanic, father of three. I think they met in a casino. Took him to the mountains, and killed him as he came under a full moon. The experience was supposed to change her, and it worked. Changed her from a young woman with a future to a lifer without parole.”
“Let’s change the subject,” Buff Roshi said, and took Aragon’s hand, an old friend again, not so much the religious official. “I really want to hear about your life, why you became a police officer, what that’s like. Maybe you could join us for an introduction to meditation. A guided introduction. With the stress and horrors of your work, you might find it beneficial. Do you ever wonder why the people you pursue do what they do?”
Only if it helps me nail them. I could give a fuck what makes them tick.
That’s what she’d say to another cop. To this gentle woman she said, “Thanks, Buff. I’ll keep it in mind.”
Thirty-Two
“Maybe this is the start of something new for you, Fager. Like a reformed burglar advising businesses how to prevent break-ins. Finding weak locks, windows easy to open. You could be telling the district attorney how to spot the next sleazeball move coming from sleazeball lawyers. Hell, you should know.”
“Shut up,” Aragon said, and shot Goff a glance telling him he would be gone if he kept it up.
She sat across from Fager and Bronkowski, Lewis on her right. Juanita’s Café again, between lunch and dinner traffic. Goff, on her left, had started with a bowl of menudo before the rest arrived. She pushed a map clipped with a business card at Fager.
“So far, the information’s been one-way. I want that evened up.” She tapped the map. “Geronimo’s ranch. We can’t go in without a warrant.”
“And you being suspended and all,” Bronkowski said.
She returned a sour smile. “But you two don’t need a warrant. Even if you trespass, you can tell us what you learned, and no suppression motion will knock it off the table.”
“The silver-spoon doctrine,” Lewis said.
“Not quite,” said Fager. “That doctrine was rejected by the Supreme Court years ago. It allowed federal agencies to use evidence illegally seized by state law enforcement. And just because evidence is found by a private citizen does not mean it is insulated from a suppression motion. The question is whether that individual was effectively a police agent. A citizen becomes a police agent if they act under the instruction of the police, or the police controlled how they conducted themselves. So,” Fager looked straight at Aragon, “be very careful about your next words.”
Aragon raised eyebrows at Lewis.
“He’s the lawyer,” Lewis said. “I only know what I found on the Internet.”
“And it’s the silver-platter doctrine,” Fager said. “Not spoon.”
She could see Fager waiting for her to frame her next words. She had planned on telling him where to go and what to look for, exactly how to document what he saw and report back.
Instead she said, “It’s up to you, if you want to go to this place. Or not. Or that piece of land up the canyon from the house that may or may not be of interest because of what may be in the ground. You are free to throw this map away. Frankly, we don’t care what you do. Have menudo with Goff, for all I care.”
“We’ll give it a look,” Fager said, and passed the map to Bronkowski. “What piece of land up the canyon?”
She had found the right words to turn Fager loose.
“It’s federal land. But unless you’re a mountain goat you can’t get there without crossing Geronimo’s property.”
Lewis took over. He produced blowups of still frames from Game and Fish overflights.
“What does that look like?”
Fager and Bronkowski studied the photos. Goff ate silently with one eye on them, watching for their reaction.
“A graveyard,” Bronkowski said.
“Even a dumb Polack could see that,” Goff said, and turned his eyes back to his food.
“Maybe after,” Aragon said, “if you do go there, you might want to call that number on the card.”
Bronkowski read aloud, “FBI Special Agent Tomas Rivera.”
“If we feel like it,” Fager said. “We might call.”
“Sure, if you feel like it,” Aragon said. “Now, what have you been up to, Leon?”
Bronkowski looked to Fager. The lawyer nodded, then turned his attention to the aerial photo. Bronkowski gave them everything he had been doing since Linda’s murder, including his conclusions about Estevan Gonzalez blackmailing Geronimo and the cause of the residential fire on the west side of town—Lily Montclaire getting ahead of them, nixing a key witness and critical evidence.
Aragon said, “We’ve operated on the assumption that Geronimo killed Tasha. Step back for a sec. What do we have? She worked for Mujeres Bravas. They cleaned Geronimo’s gallery. There’s that. But that’s all we can confirm. It was Estevan Gonzalez, and only him, who said she had been getting cash to model for Geronimo. Yet Tasha was found nowhere near any place with a connection to Geronimo. I’m with you that Estevan’s blackmailing him. But maybe he’s blackmailing Geronimo with something else, like what’s in that ground behind his ranch. Rick found an interesting pattern in Santa Fe’s missing women.”
“I went back twenty years,” Lewis said. “Grouped missing women by age, weight, race, nationality. The largest number are Hispanic, age thirty-five to fifty-five, all dark hair, heavyset. Most were illegal immigrants. Some disappearances were reported immediately.
Others only much later, after the family stopped worrying about ICE. All the missing women in this category came from Hermosillo.”
“Who else came from Hermosillo?” Aragon asked, but knew the answer. Lewis had called her from his van in his garage late last night.
Lewis said, “Estevan and Tasha Gonzalez. The women worked at least one day for Mujeres Bravas Cleaning Service. They reported to an Allsup’s and were picked up, driven to the job by a guy named Steve. He paid cash.”
“Back up,” Goff said and put down his spoon. “Where you taking us? That Geronimo didn’t do Tasha Gonzales?”
“She was not found any place connected to Geronimo,” Aragon repeated, starting slow then gaining confidence as thoughts she’d been carrying found words. “Maybe Estevan had something to do with bringing women to Geronimo. Maybe Tasha was in on it. Estevan’s a plotter. I think he’s been squeezing Geronimo for a decade, but had the discipline to lay low until now. Maybe he wanted it all for himself. Or maybe Tasha did not want to profit off dead Mexican women and he got her out of the way.”
Fager tapped the aerial photo.
; “So the missing Mexican women might be here. Of course, no way you could know that, never having been there.”
“Goff, I didn’t see it in the file. Did you talk to Estevan?” Aragon asked as she avoided Fager’s intent stare.
“Not the way I wanted,” Goff answered. “He left behind a big panel truck. I always wondered about that truck.”
“Maybe bringing people up from Hermosillo,” Aragon said.
“And you let him fly into the wind,” Bronkowski said to Goff. “A little by-the-book detective work and you would have learned he went north. Jackson Hole, Wyoming.”
“Fuck you, Bronkowski. I had the rug pulled before I got going.”
“I learned it with one phone call.”
“Walt, you want to say something,” Aragon said to steer the discussion from two guys bumping chests.
“I can’t see Linda fitting any pattern with those women,” Fager said. “The ones in the ground might be more like Linda, not Mexican at all.”
“You might want to take plenty of water,” Aragon said. “It’s hot out there, even this time of year. What’s there, you can’t drink.”
Fager lifted the map.
“But there’s a river right here,” he said, “Four witnesses just heard you say the water is undrinkable. Marcy Thornton will learn everything about this conversation we’re having. She’ll ask how you could know the water is undrinkable, unless you’ve already trespassed on Geronimo’s land. What do you tell her without requiring all four of us to lie and conspire to bail you out?”
Lewis reached across and dropped a finger on the blue line.
“Rio Salado” he said. “Salt River. Anybody would guess the water’s no good.”
“That’s right,” Aragon said, and tapped Lewis’s foot under the table.
Fager examined the map, then looked hard at her. He pushed himself away from the table, ready to rise.
“Yo, before you go,” Goff said. “Not you, Bronkowski. I know your answer. Fager, that case you did, the DWI multiple homicide, the family coming home from church, that bullshit narcolepsy defense you concocted to blame the father. What were the names?”
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