Arthur shrugged, scooped up the last of his enchilada. “Sounds like a good idea. If I can stop any more of my guys from ending up like Derrick, I’ll do anything.”
“What are we going to do about the people you have booked for back country rides this week?” Sharon said. “Do you think Billy can handle it?”
“I have no doubt,” Arthur said, finishing the rest of his plate. “He knows what he’s doing. I’ll make sure he has no truck runs to make, but I think we’re good.” Then he asked about Kathy Derrick.
Sharon sighed. “She’s devastated, of course. Even though she knew this was how it might end, she’s still in shock.” Sharon glanced absently at the quiet fountain sitting beneath the clouded, azure sky mural. “She feels guilty because she thinks she somehow could have stopped it.”
“She couldn’t have stopped it,” Arthur said quickly. “No one could’ve. Because no one knows what it’s like over there. People here see snippets on TV or read about it in the papers or online and the idiots in Washington talk about it, but no one here at home really knows what is going on in the CZ.”
“CZ?”
“Combat zone,” Arthur explained.
Sharon reached a soft hand across the table and laid it over Arthur’s as he continued. “And you know what sucks? You come back home and try to be normal again because everyone expects you to, but you can’t. You know why? Because everyone back here is just walking around in their own little world, worrying about shit that doesn’t even matter.”
“But you came home,” Sharon said softly, “and you’re all right.”
Arthur pursed his lips and shook his head slowly. “I had my own demons long before you came along. I served my country for almost ten years. First in Bosnia, then Serbia, then Afghanistan. After a while, it felt like we were just fighting over oil and sand … then 9/11 happened. I stayed another year after that. I saw and did things that no one else can understand except another combat vet.” He drank a mouthful of wine and swallowed. “And when I got home, I walked with my own ghosts every day.”
Sharon had never asked him before, but now, since he was opening up, she decided it was time. “The ghosts of men you killed? How many were there?”
Arthur looked at her across the table. “I stopped counting after my first tour.” He swallowed some more wine. “Let’s just say, enough.”
“I just want to try to understand you better,” Sharon whispered.
“But that’s just it,” Arthur insisted. “You can’t. You will never be able to understand unless you had actually been outside the fence.”
“Outside the fence?”
“That’s someone who’s been off the base in a combat situation.”
She lowered her face slightly. “I see.”
“Before I met you,” Arthur said, “I spent a lot of time learning the healing power of the flute, working during the day and spending my nights in ceremony asking the Creator to heal me and reveal my purpose. Once it was revealed, I took it into my heart and let it shape me. But these guys don’t have anything like that. Most of them are just trying to keep their heads above water and not drown in a lake of depression.”
Sharon shivered briefly because she knew what Arthur was talking about. Because her own demons had been stalking her ever since she had been kidnapped. There were times she could still see the look on Gloria Sanchez’s dead face in her nightmares, could still feel the ropes that had bound her and cut into her skin, and could still feel Leonard Kanesewah’s hot breath on her neck that night in the snow as he held her against him. In fact, she could still feel the warm liquidity of his blood as it spattered across the side of her face when Abraham Fasthorse’s arrow pierced his skull. And what was worse—there were times she could swear she still smelled him all over her.
Arthur noticed Sharon’s faraway look. “You okay?”
She startled at the question. “I’m fine.”
“You looked like you were off somewhere else just then.”
“No, no,” she said. “I was listening. Go on.”
Arthur looked at her as she sat across the table. He studied the black hair that fell long over her left eye, just enough to bring out her intrigue before trailing off into dancing curls that spilled over the front of her shoulder. He noticed how her dark eyes seemed to reach somewhere deep inside him and touch his soul. And he felt her hand on his too, soft and tender. Of all the things the Creator had blessed him with, she had been his greatest gift.
“War isn’t about making you a man,” Arthur said. “I know people get that impression. It’s about staying alive. And it’s about keeping your guys alive.” He paused to reflect. “I guess somewhere along the line I failed them, too. I failed my men and I failed Margaret’s two boys.” Arthur slammed back the last of his wine. “Great dinner conversation, huh? Real romantic.”
“It’s all right,” Sharon said softly. “You should get hold of your guys and set something up. I think it might be good therapy for all of you. That way you can still have each other’s six.”
Arthur grinned. “Look at you, talkin’ all jarhead.”
Sharon’s smile grew. “I’ve listened to you a lot over the years.” She gently picked up his hand in hers and held it in her palm, rubbing her thumb lightly over the top of it. “And when you see Delores Mendoza again, try not to stare at those fake tits.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Arthur’s trip to Flat Iron Rock in the early morning hours of the following day revealed exactly what he had expected. The boys, indeed, had not been out there alone in the middle of the night.
After scouring the ground where Tsela and Tahoma Tabaaha had been found, Arthur had discovered two sets of smaller footprints in the sand, near the remnants of the beer cans, as he circled out from an area close to the rock that lead down the slope and north toward the hard-packed road. Judging by the size seven or eight they appeared to be, and the fact that one’s tread was a herringbone pattern designed for traction with what looked like an arrowhead on the heel and two off-kilter kite-shaped quadrilaterals gracing the ball of the shoe, Arthur figured they were most likely some sort of girl’s athletic shoe. The other prints, mixed with the standard-issue police-uniform shoe, were simply that of some ordinary shoe with no special purpose other than to be comfortable. He also noticed that the footprints hadn’t seem hurried or frantic, so his presumption was that whoever the girls were, they had left before the shots had been fired. Now he found himself hoping Margaret had been able to keep her grief under control so that she could help him discover whose footprints the seven and eight might be.
* * *
That hope quickly melted away when he arrived at the Tabaaha home. Arthur let himself be led through another one of the nondescript Navajo Housing Authority houses by a woman from his past who seemed to have poured herself into a bottle the night before and never bothered to crawl out.
“You wan’ some coffee?” Margaret Tabaaha said in a voice Arthur determined to be a cross between a shattered will and a drunken soul. “Or maybe somethin’ a little stronger?”
Margaret guided Arthur to the kitchen of the small, tan NHA house that looked just like all the other small, tan NHA houses in Ojo Amarillo. All had brownish roofs with single carports and concrete driveways and dirt yards. Margaret was dressed in nothing but a gray, oversized T-shirt that she had obviously slept in. The shirt ended just below what Arthur remembered to be two extremely soft but firm buttocks. He watched her dirty, bare feet as they shuffled across the cold tile floor, what remained of her chipped nail polish reflecting the morning sun that managed to seep in through the drawn curtains like moving pieces of shattered glass.
“No, thank you,” he replied. “I’m good.”
Margaret showed him to one of four wooden chairs stationed around a worn, rectangular pine table. His eyes noticed several nicks and gouges and small carvings of assorted childish designs, mos
t likely made by Tsela and Tahoma when they were young. As Arthur’s fingertips traced them, each groove brought with it the sadness of a life never lived and a loss never forgotten. His eyes quickly panned around the contractor-grade cabinetry and laminated countertops, lingered briefly over the brass pendant light dangling above the table where he now sat.
“You sure you don’ want anything?” she said, wrapping her fingers around the neck of a Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey bottle that he guessed had been sitting on the tile counter long before he had arrived. She held it up, hoping for his approval.
Arthur smiled politely and declined.
Margaret shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
She grabbed a glass from the cabinet before sitting down at the table and unscrewing the black cap from the bottle. Arthur watched as she poured more than three fingers into the empty glass. No ice. She looked like she was simply picking up from where she had left off the night before—or earlier that morning. She drank from the glass and looked at him with glazed eyes.
“Don’t gimme that look,” she said. “My boys are gone. My husband’s been gone a long time now.” She took a deep breath and downed the rest of the whiskey with one tilt of her head, then set the glass down on the table with a loose fist. “My boys was all I had left. Now I have nothing.”
It pained him to do it, but Arthur knew he had to steer the conversation to the boys. “Margaret, have you or the boys ever had any contact with the Desert Patriots?”
Arthur had her dazed attention now. He could see her hollow eyes trying to focus on a thought floating around her muddled brain, doing their best to peer through the golden Jack haze. “You think … you think they killed my boys?”
“I don’t think anything just yet,” he told her. “I’m just asking questions.”
Margret huffed and poured out two more fingers of the whiskey.
“You remember back when we talked about marriage and kids?” She knocked back the glass again in one fluid motion before placing it down on the table, leaving her hand still wrapped around it. “I shoulda stayed with you,” she mumbled as she poured another glass. Arthur watched as the contents of the square bottle continued to diminish. Margaret didn’t seem to care. She crossed her legs as a smile of regret flashed across her face, and her eyes looked up at him seductively from under her eyebrows. There was a drunken sparkle to them that led to the long fingers of her free hand curling under the bottom edge of her T-shirt. She began pulling it slowly up her cinnamon legs, revealing more and more as she went, stopping herself just short of revealing anything she would regret later.
Arthur gently pulled the bottle away from her toward him. “Margaret, yesterday you said the boys might have had girls out there with them. Do you know who they could be and where I could find them?”
Margaret held the T-shirt where she had stopped it and licked her lips, as if to capture any of the residual liquor that lingered there. “Jenny somebody and Tiffany somebody.” She pulled the bottle back toward her, poured another drink, and waved the glass in the air absently. “They all go to Central High in Kirtland.” She toasted with her fresh glass. “Home of the Broncos!”
“Did the boys have cell phones?”
Margaret was drinking the liquor like it were the air she depended on to breathe. And maybe, to her, it was, Arthur supposed.
“Yeah, what kid doesn’t these days.”
“Then I’m guessing the police have theirs, so do you have yours? I’m sure you are friends with them on Facebook or other apps, right? If we look through their friend lists, maybe you could pick out the girls for me.”
Margaret’s head wobbled on her shoulders as she glanced around the kitchen. “It’s around here somewhere …” She stood up, faltered a bit, and regained her balance. As she moved past Arthur, she let her right hip purposefully brush against his right arm and shoulder. He could feel her naked skin beneath the thin, cottony veil of T-shirt, but the meaning she intended was lost in the mixture of day-old perfume and Honey Jack that had already begun evaporating though her pores. And she needed a bath.
Arthur turned and watched as she walked away from him through the doorway of the kitchen into the living room. He continued watching as she raised her arms above her head in a teasing attempt at a morning stretch. She tussled the bush of grayish-black hair that now flowed down the back of the T-shirt to the small of her back and tumbled over what he remembered to be soft shoulders. His eyes were quickly drawn to the bottom of the T-shirt that rose like a theatrical curtain to reveal the still-round cheeks he remembered from their youth. Arthur felt his testosterone level surge as he stared at her smooth and muscular legs, still something to marvel at, before she disappeared around the corner. His heart sank again as he turned his eyes back to the table and the almost-empty whiskey bottle.
He took this moment to remove the empty whiskey glass and three-quarter drained bottle from the equation. He rinsed the glass in the stainless sink and emptied the remainder of the bottle and watched it swirl down the drain. The smell of it bit into his nostrils. He screwed the cap back on and tossed the bottle into her trash can as he watched the water continue to wash the smell of the sweetened whiskey away. Turning off the faucet, he returned to his chair just before Margaret came back into the kitchen. She tossed her cell phone onto the table without saying a word and then fell back into her chair, not even noticing the missing glass and bottle. She seemed trapped once again by her own shattered thoughts.
Arthur picked up her phone, got into its main screen of apps, and tapped the Facebook icon that floated with the others above the thunderbird sand painting Margaret had chosen as her screen’s wallpaper. Her page opened up. After getting into her profile, he brought up her friends list and found the boys. He chose Tsela’s account first, scrolled down, and got into his friends list.
“Margaret,” he said, “can you help me go through these faces until we find Jenny or Tiffany?”
Margaret snapped out of her fog long enough to move her chair closer to him so that her left leg was now resting against his right leg. She leaned in close. As Arthur scrolled through Tsela’s six hundred nine friends, he felt Margaret’s left hand rest gently on the muscles of his right thigh as he pushed his thumb up the screen. They watched each profile picture scroll by until Margaret’s voice stopped his scrolling.
“That’s her! That’s Tiffany.”
Arthur tapped the small picture and opened up Tiffany Maldonado’s page. Her profile picture was that of an attractive blond with a vibrant face overshadowed by a larger picture of the Kirtland High School logo, a yellow and purple horse head. Arthur tapped her picture and watched it fill the screen. He held his finger on it until the Save Photo prompt came up, tapped, and saved it. Then he searched the blond’s friends until Margaret noticed Jennifer Peshlakai’s picture. He went through the same motions with her, then got into Margaret’s photos app, hit Select, chose both of the girls’ pictures, and sent them to his phone.
When he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, he asked, “Do you know where either of these girls live?”
“Tiffany lives in Kirtland. By the school somewhere. Jenny lives in Kirtland too, but down by the river.”
“Think, Margaret,” Arthur prompted. “Did the boys ever go there? Did they ever give you an address? Did you ever pick them up from either of the girls’ houses?”
Margaret looked around the kitchen in a lost sort of way. “Where’s my bottle? What did you do with my bottle?”
“Nothing,” he said. “You drank it all.” He held her chin softly in the fingers of his right hand and looked into her distant eyes. “Do you have an address for either one of these girls?”
Margaret’s eyelids seemed to be weighing heavily now, and Arthur hoped she would remember something that would give him a direction before she passed out. “Jenny’s folks have a piece of shit trailer on 6400, south off 489, I think. Across from some woode
n fencing.” Margaret’s head slowly fell to Arthur’s right shoulder, and her eyes sluggishly closed, eyelids made much heavier by the weight of her grief. As she breathed softly, Arthur could smell her warm Honey Jack breath. Without warning, the fingers of her left hand crept gradually up his thigh toward a place they hadn’t been in twenty-eight years. He quickly but gently placed his hand on top of hers before it reached its goal.
“I need to go,” he said.
Her head rose slowly from his shoulder like it was a large stone, cumbersome and difficult. She turned and gazed at him through damp and teary eyes.
Arthur confirmed, “You said Jenny lives in a trailer, right?”
Margaret shrugged. “Yeah, whatever.”
“I promise you I’ll find them.” A tear trickled down her cheek, and he brushed it away from her face. “I found some tracks out by Flat Iron that could have been the girls. Maybe they saw something that will help find whoever did this.”
Margaret’s attention span was fading, and quickly. He laid her phone on the table and used his thumbs to wipe away more of the tears that found their way running down her still-beautiful face.
“I promise you,” he said. “Ádee hazhdidziih.” I promise.
She nodded, managed a painfully numb smile, and sat up straight with the help of the kitchen table. She self-consciously pulled down the T-shirt as if she were now ashamed for thinking they could relive the past.
“You’re a good man, sheʼashkii.”
“And you are a good woman, sheʼatʼééd,” he replied. They had not called each other sweetheart since those carefree days many years ago, but it felt good to do so now. “Is there anyone who can stay with you?” Arthur asked. “A friend maybe? Or a neighbor?”
She looked at him through weary eyes and exhaled a heavy breath. “I’ll be all right. I’m jus’ very tired right now. I should prob’ly go and lay down.”
Death Waits in the Dark Page 5