Hearts of the Missing

by Carol Potenza

  “Of course not. University policy is to keep all student correspondence. Here. See?” She typed in a name. “This is another student in my class and I have all of his emails.”

  “You said you might have notes from a meeting with Sandra? Could you look for those?”

  Fredrickson sighed again. “I was, until you asked me for the emails.” She yanked the yellow pads forward and riffled through them. “Here we go. There’s not much, but I did write down a tentative title for her project. Would you like a copy of this, too?”

  “Please. What was the title?”

  “Uh, let’s see. Oh. Here it is. ‘The Hearts of the Missing Still Beat.’ Actually, that was my title. Sandra proposed one that wasn’t as effective,” she said in a dismissive tone. “Although she refused to show me any statistics, she was adamant the number of her tribe members declared missing in the last two years had increased significantly over the previous years. And she had a specific word she insisted on using when she talked about them.”

  “A specific word?” Nicky was filled by a gnawing sense of dread.

  “Yes. I wrote it down. Uh…” She moved her finger down the page. “Here. She said these people weren’t missing. They were perdido. Lost.”

  * * *

  The University of New Mexico Residential Life and Student Housing wouldn’t release details on the comings and goings of an adult student without a warrant. The same occurred at IT when Nicky asked about emails, but that didn’t surprise her. She’d have to approach the FBI and get them to go before a federal district court judge since she was out of her jurisdiction.

  The inside of her unit was hot by the time she finished. She started her truck, cranked the air conditioner to high, and merged onto Central heading for the freeway. The information she’d discovered at UNM was confounding. A woman excited about graduating and applying for jobs didn’t sit well with the complete wipe of her social media sites.

  Her stomach grumbled. She’d already passed the Tramway exit and decided to head to Bernalillo, grab lunch at home, then go back to the police station for more paperwork and phone calls.

  The Bluetooth buzzed in her car.

  “I got your text.” It was Ryan, his voice groggy.

  “Hey. You awake?” she asked.

  “Sort of. Nights suck. What’s up?”

  “Ryan, I messed up. This missing person case I’m working on? The woman graduated the same year as Savannah, so I asked her about it at dinner last night.” She blew out a long breath. “Not good. She was really upset. Told me to talk to you and politely asked me to leave.”

  Ryan stayed silent for what seemed like forever.

  “Who, Nicky?”

  “Sandra Deering. Since they were in the same class in high school, I thought…”

  “Shit.”

  Nicky swallowed. Ryan never cursed, even mildly.

  “I didn’t know.” She could hear the pleading note in her voice. “I wouldn’t be so cruel, you know that.”

  “Did Savannah go to work today?”

  “Yeah. But I haven’t seen her. I was at UNM this morning as part of the case. Will you meet with me? Tell me what happened?”

  “Does it have anything to do with Sandra going missing?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it.” She paused, hesitant. “Ryan, I’ve never asked about what … what happened when her brother committed suicide. I didn’t realize there was a connection to Sandra.”

  “Savannah told you to talk to me about it? That’s a step forward, at least,” he mumbled. “Do you want to do this now?”

  “No. Tonight? When’s your next shift?”

  “Not till tomorrow morning. Come over to my place after work. I’ll cook. And if we’re feeling brave later, we can walk to Savannah’s.”

  There was another long pause.

  “Ryan, is it bad?” she asked.

  “Yeah. But not in the way you think.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Nicky turned onto the road that led to Ryan’s duplex. He lived in a new housing development about a mile from the reservation’s second largest village, Little Aquita. Built with casino profits and BIA housing grants, it consisted of a couple dozen single-family homes scattered randomly in among piñon and chamisa. Most of the houses were stark, without artificial landscaping to soften utilitarian lines, their only differences in paint color, flat or peaked roofs, or whether there was a carport attached. Children played under yellow streetlights flickering on with the coming night, watched over by grandmothers sitting on long front porches. A few kids stopped what they were doing and stared as Nicky drove her unmarked Tahoe down the street.

  She parked her unit on the gravel pad next to Ryan’s battered red truck. The sky glowed from the setting sun, small, streaky clouds lit pink from behind. A warm evening breeze enveloped her as she climbed out of her vehicle. With a tired sigh, she shrugged off of her dark blue blazer and draped it across the back of the driver’s seat. Her shoulder harness followed. She massaged the crick in her neck before she slotted her service weapon in her bag.

  A flash of gleaming orange light—known as a fire-sky—caught her eye as the sun finally dropped below the horizon, outlining the extinct volcano that was at the heart of Fire-Sky culture. Rimmed golden in the waning light, Scalding Peak was the most sacred place on the pueblo, many areas off-limits except to the war chiefs of the elemental clans. Flat on top where the caldera had collapsed, its forested slopes fell smoothly downward on one side, while the other side was a jumble of jagged rocks, deep crevasses, and ancient lava flows riddled with caves. It was a constant struggle for the pueblo conservation officers to keep non-Native extreme climbers out of that area.

  The side door off the kitchen opened and Ryan stepped out.

  “Nice view, huh?” There was a smile in his voice. “I got lucky when they assigned me this place. Close to work. Close to Savannah.” He lifted his chin toward Savannah’s home down the street. Light glowed through her front window.

  “Yeah.” Nicky strolled over to Ryan, not yet ready to leave the peace of the evening and go inside. “Have you talked to her?”

  He drew in a deep breath of the sage-scented air. His face relaxed, cares seeming to flow off his body.

  “Nah.”

  Ryan stuffed his hands in his back pockets, and Nicky looked him over appreciatively. He was tall and lanky, but padded with ropy muscles outlined by a thin, faded T-shirt and well-worn jeans. The planes of his face were sharp, his nose aquiline, lips thin. His dark features mirrored every photo she’d seen of Apache warriors from the past, incongruous with his hazel eyes and long golden brown hair. But somehow the whole package worked.

  She’d met him five years ago when she first was hired, but there’d never been any spark of attraction between them. Maybe it was because she’d been entangled in the end of a failed relationship at the time. Or maybe because he was focused on one woman only. One who called him a friend but held him at arm’s length: Savannah.

  Would their talk tonight about Sandra Deering answer some of the questions she’d never asked about Savannah and Ryan’s connection? Nicky sighed inwardly. She was afraid it might.

  Sunset brought an almost instant drop in temperature and she rubbed her arms. The high desert of New Mexico was like that in April, especially when there was snow left on the mountains.

  “Ready to eat?” Ryan asked as he ambled back to the house.

  Nicky followed him into the warm kitchen, fragrant with baking food. Ryan wasn’t a cook. Most likely she was smelling fish sticks or chicken nuggets, all out of the freezer aisle in the grocery. On the counter, a green salad filled a ceramic bowl glazed with Native black-and-white patterns. Next to it sat a small bottle of Pellegrino. Ryan never drank anything else. Or at least she’d never seen him drink anything else.

  The timer buzzed and he grabbed an oven mitt.

  “There’s water in the fridge. Or coffee.”

  She grabbed another Pellegrino while he slid a cookie sheet out of
the oven. Fish sticks and french fries.

  Plates full, they settled into padded kitchen chairs at the table.

  Ryan dipped his fish in catsup and took a bite.

  “So, what’s this about Sandra Deering?” he asked.

  “Do you know Juanita Benami?” At his nod, she continued. “She and her grandchild, Squire Concho, came in a couple days ago and reported her missing. Sandra’s a student at UNM, graduating in May with a journalism degree. Apparently she came home sometime last Friday night or Saturday morning. Her car was at the grandmother’s house, but they never saw her. She didn’t answer her phone, and when Squire checked her social media—Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, email—they’d all been erased. I haven’t been able to find her in any of the police databases, either.” She took a bite of salad.

  “The social media wipe is disturbing,” he said.

  Nicky hummed an affirmative and continued to eat. It was a classic sign of a suicidal individual on the reservation. They would first commit Internet suicide, then within a few hours or days …

  “I spoke with one of her professors. She said Sandra was excited about graduating and had a big presentation to give next week. Apparently it was about an increase in the number of Fire-Sky Tribe members reported missing over the last two years. Except Sandra wouldn’t give her any details because it might put her in danger.” Ryan’s brows rose. “I know. That gave me pause.”

  “Did you check the missing person reports?” he asked.

  “This afternoon. There might be a slight uptick, but nothing dramatic. When I reviewed the numbers going back a few years, there was no statistical difference between now and then.” She swirled a fry in her residual salad dressing. “And I don’t know how Sandra found out any of this. There are no official requests for that information. It’s not easy to retrieve, either.”

  “Maybe she had other sources.”

  “Maybe.” Nicky finished her last fish stick and shook her head when Ryan offered her more. “That professor at UNM? She’s required by the university to keep all email correspondence from her students. She was going to give me a printout of Sandra’s emails for the semester, and, in her media wipe, somehow Sandra erased them, too, I guess. I filed a warrant today for Sandra’s emails archived in the UNM database, and for her swipe card usage at UNM housing.” She stared at Ryan. “The tribe was paying a hundred percent of her tuition, room, and board.”

  “Wow. That’s definitely not the Sandra Deering I knew from high school.” Ryan was rummaging through his freezer. He took out a sleeve of Girl Scout Cookies.

  At her smirk, he said sheepishly, “It’s all I have for dessert. Why do you think I’m always over at Savannah’s for dinner?”

  He peeled open the cellophane and snapped off a frozen cookie. Nicky did the same. They munched quietly.

  “This case is really bothering me, Ryan.” She hesitated. “There’s more I need to tell you, but I want to know what your connection is to Sandra. And why Savannah was so upset.”

  He shrugged again. It was such an Indian gesture Nicky had almost forgotten how evocative the motion could be.

  “She’ll forgive you by tomorrow, you know. It’s Savannah’s way.”

  She bit into another cookie and waited.

  Ryan settled his elbows on the table and stared out the large picture window in the breakfast nook at the dusky sky.

  “Sandra Deering was Santiago Analla’s—Savannah’s brother’s—high school girlfriend that last year. My senior year. You already know Savannah was in the same class as Sandra. There was a bunch of us that ran together. Not Savannah. She was such a goodie two-shoes.” His face softened, then his lips quirked up on one side. “We weren’t.” Ryan looked her in the eyes. “Alcohol, pot, shoplifting, tagging. Fights. Sex. Teenage stuff. We’d ditch school and hang out. We had a spot in the culvert by Peetra Road, under the train tracks. We thought we were so cool.”

  Ryan stood and turned off the ceiling lights, leaving the hanging lamp above the table as the only source of illumination. He scrubbed a hand over his face and stared out the window above the sink.

  Nicky sat quietly and watched him. He rarely spoke so much at one time.

  “Savannah tried to get Santiago away from us. She came to the culvert once, in her mom’s car. I think that was the only time she’s ever broken the law, ’cause I know she was too young to drive. She screamed at us, told us we were wasting our lives, our blood.”

  Nicky’s brows knit. Wasting their blood?

  “Especially Santiago. Did you know he’d been selected as a cacique? A Tsiba’ashi D’yini tribal priest. He would have been a traditional leader of his people. A chief. It’s more than that, but it’s hard to describe in English,” he said, giving her a faint smile. “You can’t turn that down. It’s not like a job, you know? It’s a state of being.”

  Ryan’s expression became distant. The light above pooled around him, softening his features. Only the blinking of his eyes and the movement of his lips broke the stillness of his body.

  “Santiago would laugh about it, saying he’d make sure things changed on the reservation when he was chief. He’d build casinos and make everyone rich with the distribution checks. He’d decree beer could be sold on the pueblo and abolish the drinking age. Stupid stuff that mattered to us at the time. But if you really looked at him, looked in his eyes, you could tell he was terrified.” Ryan scratched the side of his face. “He got really drunk one night and told me he didn’t want it, afraid he’d let his People down. Then he let slip he’d been chosen to be cacique because men in his family had ‘faraway eyes.’”

  Nicky’s gaze sharpened. It was the same phrase Squire’s grandmother had used.

  “He said he had visions of the ancient ones, and special powers. Like how he could tell if someone would catch us if we shoplifted. I didn’t believe him, until it happened. A bunch of our gang got arrested for swarming a mini-mart. Santiago got me out, just in time.”

  Nicky nodded. Sandra had a couple of shoplifting arrests from high school.

  “So, we started, I don’t know, testing him. Daring him to do things.”

  Dinner settled like a cold stone in her belly.

  “We were all scared, you know? Graduation was coming up fast and we couldn’t see any type of future. We were all such stupid fuckups.”

  Her eyes widened at his language and he gave her a somber half smile. It was the second time she’d ever heard him curse, both times that day.

  “It’s the only description that really fits. But there was special pressure on him. Santiago wasn’t a leader. He was a follower, and to be a cacique, you had to be a leader. I think sometimes it haunted his every waking minute.”

  “You were there? The night he—” Nicky stopped.

  “Yeah.” Ryan grimaced. “That night, we met at the culvert. We were all supposed to bring something to get high on. I’d really scored. A litter of kittens had been born out in the shed behind my house, and my mom told me to take them to the shelter.” He looked at her, his eyes empty, desolate. “I stole a vial of ketamine and some needles from a vet’s bag. You know what ketamine does?”

  “Yes,” she said. Normally used as an anesthetic, if abused it was a powerful hallucinogen.

  “We’d never injected drugs before. Never. Just pot. Coke if we could score it. I filled up a syringe and we decided on one mil each. But when Santiago got the needle, he used all the rest. I don’t know how much. I loaded another needle, and the next thing I know, we were all dancing around on the railroad tracks.” Ryan’s lips were white. He took a quick drink.

  “Except Santiago. He stood between the rails, his arms out, palms up. Head tipped back. He began to chant in Keresan. Even as high as everyone was, we recognized the ‘Song of the Dead.’ He looked at us then, and I swear his eyes glowed. He told us a train was coming and we needed to get off the tracks. It wasn’t but a couple seconds later we could feel the vibrations. And did that sober us up. We all ran off the tracks, except Sandr
a and Santiago. She was giggling and trying to catch the rabbit she said was running around her feet. Hallucinations.” Ryan pressed his lips into a pained smile. “Someone grabbed her and I yelled at Santiago to come, but he said the ancient ones were all around him, as a shield against harm. He would prove to us his power by stepping off the tracks at just the right time.

  “The conductor had seen us by then. The spotlight from the front of the train was blinding. Brighter than anything I’d ever seen. Like looking into the sun. You could hear the brakes, the horn blowing. But Santiago didn’t move.”

  Ryan’s eyes closed, like he couldn’t watch the scene he was describing.

  “The train was coming fast. It was so loud, and we were all screaming at him to jump away from the tracks. And, in what seemed like the last second, Santiago stepped off. He’d done it. He’d saved himself. But Sandra jerked away, ran onto the tracks in front of the train. I don’t know how…” His voice choked and tears shimmered on his cheeks. Her own eyes burned at his pain. At Savannah’s pain. “I don’t know how he did it, but one minute we knew she would die, the next, Santiago had pushed her away. And disappeared.”

  He wiped his face with the back of his hand and looked at Nicky. “And we ran. We all ran away. And we let them call it a suicide.”

  Nicky pressed a hand over her mouth. The Ryan she knew was so very different than the boy in the story.

  “What happened?” she whispered.

  “I left the rez. I told everyone it was because I wanted to go, but that was a lie. You know my father—stepfather—is a cacique? He’s a very powerful man on the pueblo. He knew I was jealous of Santiago because I wanted to be a cacique, too, and I couldn’t because I wasn’t Fire-Sky, because of my blood. I think my dad suspected I played some part in Santiago’s death. Maybe someone talked. I don’t know. After the funeral, he and my mom told me to leave the pueblo. They banished me from their home, my home.” His jaw bunched. “It was … I felt so lost. Like I … I had no place.”

  “What about your mom’s family?”

  “That’s where I ended up. My father—stepfather—bought me a bus ticket to the Jicarilla Reservation up north. They made jewelry, so they taught me. I liked it, but I was restless, undisciplined. They decided it would be best for me to join the Marines.” He chuckled without humor. “God, I hated it at first. But it saved me. I got my GED, went through basic in San Diego. The Marines straightened me out and sent me to Fire School.” He smiled. “I finished my five years’ active duty, and applied for a job here. I was ready to come back and face my past.” His smile faded. “I contacted Savannah and her family and told them about that night, about how Santiago was a hero. How it was my fault. She forgave me immediately.” He looked at Nicky, his gaze steady and soft. “I think that’s the moment I fell in love with her.”