“She fell off her horse and injured her back. She was in a lot of pain and started using, then abusing, Percocet. She couldn’t break the habit. She got depressed and she threw herself into the Taos Gorge. It was a rotten thing to do to June, who hung around the commune for a while but eventually left. Sounds like she ended up in Albuquerque abusing drugs, just like her mother.”
“She called herself Maia while she was in Albuquerque.’’
“Why?”
“Maia was a figure in Greek mythology who escaped into the sky to get away from the attentions of Orion the hunter.”
“June was a looker, just like her mother. I’m sure she was pursued by men wherever she went unless she got heavily into drugs. Drugs will ruin a woman’s looks for sure.” Damon worked his thick lashes. “You kind of remind of them, the same pale coloring, the same high cheekbones.”
He smiled at Claire, but she resisted his charm, glancing over at Sharon to see how she was taking the flattery and the conversation’s focus on Veronica and June. Not well, was Claire’s impression. Sharon was the moon to Damon Fitzgerald’s sun, but her expression reflected an uneasiness not visible in Damon’s practiced smile. Claire was reminded that the moon had peaks and valleys and shadows of its own.
A bird popped out of a kitschy cuckoo clock on the wall to announce the hour. The timing was so perfect that Claire imagined it had been set off by a remote.
“Anything else?” Damon asked. “I’m pretty busy right now.”
“That’s all,” Claire said.
“Good to meet you. Stay in touch,” Damon said, squeezing her hand.
His attention had been focused on Claire throughout the conversation. She hadn’t seen him glance at Sharon once, although Sharon had not taken her eyes off him. He turned toward her now. “Would you take Claire to the door?” he asked.
“Of course,” Sharon said. She walked Claire back through the house and let her out the front door.
******
Claire was glad to be out of the house and into her truck. She was looking forward to going home, but she had one more stop to make before leaving Taos. Instead of turning south in the direction of Albuquerque, she turned north and drove through the village toward the place where the river had sliced a deep gash through the sagebrush mesa and the bridge straddled the gorge to the place where Veronica Reid had died.
Chapter Seventeen
THERE WERE PARKING LOTS ON THREE CORNERS of the bridge and a picnic area with restrooms on the fourth. Claire pulled into the empty lot on her side of the road. Barbed wire marked the edge of the lot and the beginning of Taos Pueblo land. She parked her truck, got out, and walked up to the bridge, which had sidewalks on both sides. The railing was chest height with protrusions in the middle of the bridge where pedestrians could look down several hundred feet into the depths of the gorge. A woman stood on the far side taking pictures. Her blond hair, a magnet for sunlight, made golden promises in the landscape of muted green sage and black volcanic rock. Claire imagined June’s mother, Veronica, standing on this bridge with her hair blowing in the wind. She’d been a beauty, a “looker,” a word used by men who thought a woman’s purpose was to look good on their arms. Damon had said that Claire resembled Veronica. Was that why Maia told her she looked beautiful, or was that just BS on Damon’s part? He was a man who’d be capable of flattery if he thought he could benefit from it—at least until someone else caught his eye. Edward hadn’t told Claire she resembled Veronica, but then he’d said he hadn’t seen her in almost twenty years.
Claire had come here thinking that if she could understand Veronica’s death, she could understand why Maia—June—died the way she did. On the surface both seemed like suicides, but this was a place where the surface had a deep crack in it. If there was another way to look at Veronica’s death, it might be found by walking a mile in her shoes. Claire stepped onto the bridge and a passing car caused a tremor beneath her feet. She gripped the railing but that trembled, too. The blond woman had returned to her car and driven away. There was no one else on the bridge. In the east clouds were building up over Wheeler Peak. Lightning flashed and Claire felt electricity zing through the railing. She released her grip and walked to the middle of the bridge with her hands at her sides and her eyes on the pavement.
When she reached the lookout, she raised her eyes to the wild and vast landscape. When she was younger the wide openness of this place would have caused rats to gnaw at her stomach. Her heart would have been racing, her palms sweating. She would have been pierced by the fear that she would harm herself or someone else if she didn’t flee, but once a woman started to run, she might never stop. Running turned a woman into prey. Claire gripped the rail and made herself look into the depths of the gorge, down, down, down into the place where the rocks met a ribbon of bronze river. She’d heard rafters’ accounts that the riverbanks were littered with the wrecks of canoes and of vehicles that had rolled off the edge of the mesa. It was a place that tempted the reckless and the unhinged. Many people had died here. Their spirits seemed to linger in the gorge and whisper on the wind.
Claire wondered if Veronica had come here intending to kill herself or if the gorge had exerted an irresistible pull that sucked her in. The railing was an obstacle that could be climbed over, but nobody accidentally fell from this bridge. Death in this place was a deliberate act. Why did a woman who was afraid of heights choose this spot to die? Why not shut herself up in a room with her drugs the way her daughter had? Claire could imagine the terror an acrophobic person would feel staring into the gorge. Maybe Veronica wanted to rid herself of all her fears and her ansia had pulled her in.
Claire’s thoughts were interrupted by a cackling sound. At first she thought it was a raven, but then a couple stepped onto the southern edge of the bridge, shoving each other and laughing. Claire hadn’t solved anything. She didn’t want her thoughts to be interrupted by laughter. She yielded her place to the couple and walked off the bridge.
There were three vehicles in the parking area now—her truck, an SUV, another truck. Since she needed to use the restroom before heading home, she got into her truck and drove across the bridge. After she used the facilities, she decided to take a walk along a trail that followed the rim to stretch her legs before the long drive back to Albuquerque. Walking on the trail felt far more natural than walking on the bridge. There was nothing to hold on to, but the ground didn’t shimmy beneath her every time a vehicle passed by. She saw a few places where the mesa ended abruptly at the gorge, but mostly a series of sage-dotted ledges led down to the river. The color of the water changed from green to bronze to brown as her perspective shifted. Sometimes the water had no color of its own but was a shimmering reflection of the sky.
Claire enjoyed the walk and went farther than she had intended. When she noticed that her shadow was lengthening beside her, she knew it was time to head for home. She turned toward her car and saw a man, wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt, approaching on the footpath. He was slender and medium-sized with short and straight brown hair. He had a quick, alert way of walking, like a boxer balancing lightly on the balls of his feet.
“Hey,” he called out.
Claire had been so deep in her thoughts that she had the sensation the man was a vision or a dream. She blinked but he didn’t go away. She didn’t relish meeting a man in such an isolated place. No one else was in sight on the rim. The path was too narrow to circle around him. It would be foolish to run. There was nothing to do but stand still and watch him approach.
The man stopped and extended his hand palm up in the conciliatory gesture used to calm an anxious dog. “I didn’t mean to alarm you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I just want to talk for a few minutes.”
He was close enough now for Claire to see the tension that wasn’t evident in his movements chiseled into his face. His forehead rippled with worry. “What about?” she asked.
“June Reid. I heard you were asking about her.”
“June’s dead,”
Claire replied. She was too tired to put a bouquet of pretty words on this piece of bad news.
“So I heard.”
“How did you know I was asking about her?”
“A woman at the commune called and told me you’d been there.”
“What woman?” Claire asked, thinking it must have been Maureen.
“She asked me not to say. She told me you might be going to Damon Fitzgerald’s house. I saw your truck parked out front. I waited and I followed you here. It took me a while to get up my courage to talk to you. I thought you’d be alarmed if I approached you on the bridge, and then that couple showed up. I’m sorry if I frightened you.” He pointed into the gorge at a point well south of the bridge. “That’s where June’s mother Veronica died.”
“I thought she jumped off the bridge.”
“Who told you that?’’
“June’s father, Edward Girard. He said he read it in a newspaper clipping someone sent him.”
“It’s not true. I was on the search-and-rescue crew that pulled her body out of the gorge. A rafter saw it there and called us.”
“Could the river have washed the body downstream?”
“No. Veronica landed on the riverbank, not in the water. She never even got wet. If she jumped, she jumped from Buffalo Point.” He pointed to a place where the mesa jutted into the gorge.
“She killed herself?” Claire asked.
The man left pauses of doubt between his words. “No note was found. The police ruled it an accidental death. Veronica had reason to commit suicide, so everyone assumes that’s what happened.”
“Oh?” Claire asked.
The man’s hands were at his sides and he clenched his fists. His shadow lengthened beside him, reaching toward the gorge. “Her former lover Damon Fitzgerald had sex with her daughter, June.”
Claire felt the ground was falling away and leaving her standing perilously close to the edge. It was deeply shocking news, yet in a way it made perfect sense, like finding the one uniquely shaped piece that fit the hole in the heart of the puzzle. As Claire had suspected Maia/June was “a girl who.” “How old was June when that happened?” she asked.
“Twelve.”
The age in the painting, the dangerous age.
“Damon thought he was a Peter Pan who would never grow old. He had a good idea once and a chance to make it big, but he lost a couple of major commissions. To feed his ego he turned to seducing young women. Ecstasy helped.”
“He slept with his lover’s daughter?” Claire asked. It would be step-incest, one stage removed from the ultimate taboo—real incest. Damon Fitzgerald was the shadow in the corner of the painting, the relative who turned into a bear.
“His former lover. He and Veronica had broken up by then. June said it happened several times, but Damon would only admit to once to Veronica and to nothing to the DA.”
Claire had heard the “once” excuse before. Whatever men did wrong, they only admitted to doing it once. Why did they think once was any different from ten thousand times? “Was that why he moved into town?”
“Yeah. Damon said the sex was consensual and June didn’t deny it, but the scandal tore the Cave Commune apart. Damon moved into town and eventually found Sharon Miller to support him. She was new to Taos and didn’t know any better. Damon talks a good game. He’s magnetic, and in the free-love atmosphere of the commune he was king. Some women find him irresistible, but he’s scum and love is never free. Damon didn’t think there was anything wrong with having sex with underage girls, even a girl who was the daughter of his lover.” The man put his hand over his eyes to shield them from the sinking sun. “Could I see the picture you have of June and the girls dancing?”
“I’d like to know who you are first and why you want to see it,” Claire said.
“My name is Bill Hartley. I teach skiing in the winter, work construction in the summer. Damon had sex with my daughter.” He clenched his fists again, tightening the muscles in his forearms.
“All right.” Claire was glad to move away from Buffalo Point, but she wasn’t willing to walk next to Bill on the edge of the precipice. She wasn’t comfortable with him walking behind her, either. “You go first,” she said.
He walked quickly with an athlete’s fluid grace, never once turning back to see if Claire followed. When they reached her truck she unlocked the cab, took the picture out of the folder, and handed it to him.
Although there was little wind, the picture fluttered in his hands. “That’s my daughter, Rose,” he said, pointing to one of the girls. Her face wasn’t visible, but she had her father’s medium-brown hair. “I want to know how my daughter ended up in this picture.”
“June asked an artist in Albuquerque to paint her with six other girls dancing in a circle. She described the other girls and herself as she was when she was twelve,” Claire stared at the girls in their white dresses. “Did Damon sleep with all of these girls?”
“I don’t know. I only know he slept with my daughter, Sophie Roybal, and June. Sophie wouldn’t talk to me about it. She’s moved to Durango.”
“Did all those girls live in the commune?”
“No. After the scandal Damon moved into town and had sex with some of the town girls, including my daughter. I complained to the district attorney, Allana Bruno, but she said it would be very difficult to get a conviction in Rose’s case because she was sixteen at the time. She’s twenty now. Allana needed a victim younger than thirteen to convict Damon of criminal sexual penetration in the first degree. The only way she could get a conviction for Rose was if she would testify that she was raped. But Rose wasn’t willing to do that. That scumbag took away my daughter’s innocence, and I want him to pay for it. The DA brought him in and got him to agree to counseling, but that’s nothing. He meets once a week with other sex offenders, only he doesn’t think he’s like them. In my opinion he’s just like every pedophile priest who took advantage of his power.” The photocopy of the picture rattled in his hands like a dead leaf.
“What became of your daughter?” Claire asked.
“She’s working in Denver and getting her life together. But my wife and I are still here. This is our home. Why should we have to leave? Taos is a small town and everywhere I go I see Damon Fitzgerald. I can’t even pump gas without running into the son of a bitch. June was my only hope for putting him in jail. Because she was twelve the criminal sexual penetration was a first-degree felony, which could mean life in prison. There’s no statute of limitations on first-degree felonies. It took me a long time to track June down but a friend of Rose’s saw her on the street in Albuquerque carrying her belongings around in plastic bags. I went down there to find her and talk to her.”
“When?” Claire asked.
“In May. I went to the homeless shelters but no one would tell me anything. They think a man who is looking for a woman on the street wants to cause trouble. I started asking street people and I met one who knew June and knew where she hung out. I found her in the public library on Copper.”
“Was she on drugs?”
“She seemed straight to me. June was a smart girl. She told me she spent her days in the libraries reading and studying. She hated Damon. She said she and Veronica had a horrible fight over him and she blamed herself for her mother’s death. I don’t think she ever recovered from that.”
Does anyone ever recover from the suicide of a mother? Claire asked herself. Especially in those circumstances?
“She said she never wanted to come back to Taos or to see Damon ever again. I pleaded with her.” Bill crunched the picture in his hand until the paper crumpled into peaks and valleys. “I told her she owed Rose and the other girls, but she was stubborn. I got angry. I yelled at June, and I shouldn’t have done that. The librarian came and asked me to leave the library. That was the last I saw of June.”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and stared at the paper as if surprised to see it had become a model of a mountain range. “I’m sorry,” he s
aid. “I hope you have another copy.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Claire said. “You were asking a fragile young person to do something very difficult.”
“I know. Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed so hard. But later she called me and said she had set up an appointment with Allana Bruno, only she didn’t show up. I never heard anything more until you turned up looking for information about her. Why? Was she a friend of yours?”
“I only met her twice.” Claire explained the events that had brought her to Taos. “Did June mention her father when you talked to her?”
“No. I didn’t know who her father was. I’m sure he would be angry as hell to know that Damon Fitzgerald had sex with his twelve-year-old daughter.”
How angry would Edward be? thought Claire. As angry as Bill Hartley? Was Edward emotionally connected enough to his daughter to feel anger or anything else?
“Who was the person who told you where to find June?” she asked.
“A woman on the street with dyed red hair. I don’t know her name.”
“Where did you find her?”
“She was sleeping in the backseat of a parked car near Central. She knew June well enough to know where she hung out. How exactly did June die?”
“Of a heroin overdose. She went into a storage room to sleep or to shoot up.”
“Did she leave a note?” Bill asked. His eyes, which had remained focused on Claire so far, began to circle around the mesa.
Claire saw guilt in the eye movement as if Bill feared his confrontation with June might have driven her over the edge. “There was no note,” she replied. “June—who was known as Maia on the street—injected a strong type of heroin not usually seen in Albuquerque. Apparently she hadn’t used for a while. Maybe she’d become more sensitive to the effects of the drug.” She didn’t say that something—or somebody—had driven June to start using again. Deepening lines in Bill’s forehead indicated he might already have considered that. On the other hand, facial lines always deepened in New Mexico as the sun neared the horizon.
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