Wild Mystic

by Sandi Ault

  I struggled with all this Spanish. It took me a few moments to translate some of what she had just said: I am very tired, the exchange with the raven…I hope to recover, but I am an old woman after all. I opened my mouth, about to decry this last…

  “Listen only now, do not speak. I know why you came. What you want to ask.” She turned her head and spat a gob of phlegm into the fire, then tried repeatedly to clear her throat but it sounded like sandpaper on dry wood when she spoke again. “You may not enjoy the answer.” She teetered and grabbed the table to get her balance, then dropped her head, swallowed hard, and gave another dry cough.

  I was already halfway out of my chair to help her, but the curandera raised her palm, signaling me to stop. “That good friend of mine sees much from the sky. She tells me things, I listen. Now you listen to me, Mirasol.” Again, she coughed and spat into the fire. “You need to look for los gemelos. You will need to fly to find them, perhaps you will fly many times. You will be flying tonight, just like mi amiga el cuervo, that beautiful raven. You will see from above what you cannot see from over here where you walk on two legs. You will be able to see much more.” She turned away from me and back to the statues of saints in the nicho where she had lit the candles. She coughed and coughed and then cleared her throat again. This time, her voice came back as a hoarse whisper: “Ahora, eso es todo.”

  I stood up. “What do you mean, now, that is all? That is not all! Let me take you to the clinic in Embudo.”

  “No. Go now.”

  “I’m not going to leave you when you are so weak. I can help you. I’ll make some tea for you and you can rest.”

  She didn’t turn around, but waved me off with her hand, shaking her head.

  “I’m too worried about you to go.”

  She barely managed to rasp: “You must go. Go! Leave me now. You know what to do.”

  “But I don’t know what to do! And I don’t know what los gemelos means. I don’t know what anything you said means. I didn’t understand one word of it, much less what I just saw happen!”

  Again, the bruja huffed and spat something into the fire, regaining a little voice from this effort. “Mirasol, you must go now and prepare. You will not sleep well tonight. I am very tired. I need to rest.” She wagged the back of her palm to one side, as if to brush me out the door.

  I bit my lip in frustration, and turned to leave. Mountain had been ready and bolted out before me. When I looked back as I pulled the door shut behind us, I saw Tecolote struggle to lower herself into a kneeling position before the host of santos and flickering candles and then fold her hands in front of her chest, muttering what must have been a prayer.

  30: A Real Dick

  I drove up Lower Llano Road toward Rio Chiquito, a route which would take me to Highway 75 and through Peñasco. It was getting dark and I wanted to get to Abasolo’s house while I could still see well enough outside to find a hiding place for the Jeep nearby. I didn’t know who or what had caused the Blazer to explode, but I didn’t want the same thing to happen to the Jeep. I figured if I could park it behind the house or in some thick brush or trees, that would be one less worry for me during the night. I was still feeling a mix of concern and confusion about the old bruja and the incident with the raven when I glanced in my rear view mirror and saw a car behind me driving with headlights off. I slowed to let it come closer so I could make out what kind of vehicle it was, but the driver echoed my movements and slowed, too. It was a big vehicle, dark-colored. It could have been Eddiejoe Ibanez in his pal’s oversized dooly diesel pickup, or more likely, it was the Hummer that had tailed me before, given the way it matched its pace with mine to stay out of clear view. I was trying to think what to do, but I still felt rattled from the episode with Tecolote. I took a slow, deep breath. Suddenly, my conversation with Sevenguns from the day before came to mind, and it was as if I could hear the old man’s voice in my head: You maybe can set a good trap…

  I knew from traveling this road before that just ahead, where it turned east, there was an old, deteriorating barn right beside the road, sheltered by giant cottonwoods that drank from the nearby acequia. As I approached the curve, I cut the Jeep’s lights, sped up suddenly, torqued the wheel to the left and pulled off onto the side of the road. “Hurry up,” I told Mountain as I urged him out of the back, grabbing my rifle from under the seat. I led the wolf by the collar to a place out of sight behind the barn and settled into a squat to watch the car I’d left as bait. “Lie down,” I told the wolf.

  For once, he did as I said.

  “Okay, buddy,” I whispered. “Let’s see what we catch with this trap.” I had brought my rifle with me so it couldn’t be pulled from the Jeep and used against me, but it was not the weapon of choice for close range. I set it down carefully alongside me on the ground, unsnapped my holster, and drew out my SigSauer P229 semiautomatic pistol.

  Within a matter of seconds, the Hummer came around the curve and slowed, idled at a snail’s pace past my Jeep, and then drove on.

  “Shhhh, wait,” I said, holding up a hand as Mountain started to get up again. “Stay right here.”

  The wolf peered intently in the direction of the Jeep and seemed to sense that we were in hunting mode. Once he realized this, I knew he would remain stealthy and not give away our position.

  We didn’t have to wait long. The black Humvee returned, heading in the opposite direction from which it had just come. It slowed, passed by my vehicle again, and drove on past, still not using headlights in spite of the deepening dusk.

  Mountain and I held our position and waited.

  A few minutes went by, and I was thinking of giving up, until I spotted a dark silhouette on the roadside, someone on foot moving toward the Jeep. As he came closer, I made out the shape of a large man, certainly the same one who had peered into the windows of my car yesterday when I had parked it by the Forest Service gate while Mountain and I took a romp in the snow. I held up my left hand again, signaling Mountain to hold, and I carefully balanced the fat grip of the handgun in my right, finger alongside the trigger, and prepared myself for what would come next.

  The tall man drew close to the Jeep, and I saw his head swivel from side to side. After surveying the surroundings, he fixed his attention on the barn. I pointed the SigSauer at him. “Federal agent,” I yelled. “Put your hands up!”

  His shoulders dropped for an instant, and then he slowly raised both hands into the air. I moved out from the cover of the barn and walked toward him. Mountain kept apace along my left flank, nose down, eyes fixed forward on the target.

  When we were a few yards from the man, I stopped, the pistol pointed squarely at his center mass. “Are you armed?”

  “I am,” his voice was deep and flat, no emotion. “I have a permit. I’m a private investigator.”

  “Why are you tailing me?”

  “You’re not the one I’m investigating, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “That’s not what I asked you. Keep one hand in the air and carefully take out your wallet. I want to see your permit and your I.D. And while you’re doing that, answer the question I just asked you.”

  “My wallet’s in the back pocket of my pants.” He reached behind his back and I watched carefully as he brought the wallet forward, in front of him, then said, “I’m going to need to use two hands to get my license and permit out of here. And to answer your question, I tailed you because I’m looking for someone, and I think you are looking for her, too.”

  “Drop it on the ground,” I said. “Now, where’s your weapon?”

  “I have a handgun in a shoulder holster. It’s inside my jacket on the left side.”

  “Unzip the jacket and slowly take it out, only the tips of your fingers on the butt, and then drop the gun, too.”

  He did as he was told.

  I moved forward and kicked the weapon to the side. “Hands up,” I reminded him.

  He raised his hands again and put them on the back of his head.

&nb
sp; “Who are you looking for?”

  “Adoria Abasolo. Isn’t that who you’re looking for, too?”

  I came toward him, keeping the pistol pointed at the center of his chest and used my left hand to reach around the back of his waist and pat the middle of his back to be sure he didn’t have a second pistol. I squatted down in front of him and brushed my hand down the sides of his ankles, and then picked up the wallet from the ground as I stood up and handed it to the man. “Let me see your license.”

  He reached fingers into the folds of the wallet and retrieved a laminated photo I.D. and a business card and handed both to me. It was too dark for me to read it without a flashlight. “The permit is issued by the State of California,” he said. “And that’s my card. My name is Zeke Mitchell. I’m investigating for a client, and Ms. Abasolo is someone who figures large in my research.”

  I pocketed the business card and handed back the license. “Who hired you?”

  “I’m not obligated to tell you that. Aren’t you with the BLM? Do you even have any jurisdiction right here?”

  I frowned. “I definitely had jurisdiction where I parked my car yesterday when you were looking in it. And I have jurisdiction wherever I am if it involves any criminal activity on public lands.”

  “So you don’t actually have any authority to be holding me at gunpoint here, am I right?”

  “I am a federal agent and I have a right to protect myself from anyone I deem is a threat. You’re stalking; that’s a threat. What do you want with me? Why have you been tailing me?”

  “I told you that.” He started toward his handgun, then stopped, faced me, opened his palms and made a questioning face, as if to ask permission.

  I waved my hand to signal it was okay. “Go ahead. When did you start investigating Abasolo?”

  “I’m not required to tell you that either,” he said, “but as you probably guessed, she seems to have disappeared.”

  “I know,” I said. “You don’t have any idea…?”

  “Not the slightest. I was doing records work on her in L.A. before I came out to do surveillance, and by the time I got here, she had evidently already taken off.”

  “Taken off?”

  “I’m assuming. Her car is gone.”

  “Has she committed a crime or something? Why would she take off? Why would you be surveilling her anyway?”

  “I’ve been hired to solve a case, and she’s part of it. Why are you looking for her?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” I said.

  “See? Likewise. You don’t share, I don’t share. So if we’re done here, I’m going to stroll back to my car and go find some dinner.”

  “We’re done,” I said, begrudgingly. “I trust you will stop tailing me now?”

  “No promises,” he said, and started walking back in the direction from which he had come.

  “I’ll file a complaint if you don’t. I work with everyone in law enforcement here, you know.”

  He called over his shoulder as he continued walking away, “I doubt there’s a law against someone just driving around in these beautiful mountains,” he said. “I’ll be seeing you.”

  31: Looking to Give Back

  There was no way to hide my Jeep behind Adoria’s house. Her dirt lane dead-ended at the small gravel parking area, and that was lined by closely-placed trees. A wall shielded the front of the house and I couldn’t access the sides or back by vehicle because of the vegetation on either side of the parking space. I could have gone off-road across her land and not taken the driveway at all, but in the night in winter, after snow thaws had created deep mud in many areas, I worried that I might mire the vehicle up to the wheel wells in an unseen bog of still-wet ground. Instead, I drove back out the lane and onto the drive leading through the property next door that abutted the monastery’s hops field, just pulling far enough down the track to make sure the Jeep wasn’t visible from the county road. The thickets of brush and scrub on either side helped to conceal the Jeep, but it meant that Mountain and I had to cross a wide, overgrown meadow in the dark to get back to the door of our night’s lodgings.

  That was okay by me. I figured the wolf would get his business done, sniff around, and work off some of the anxious energy he’d exhibited ever since we’d encountered Esperanza and the raven. And I didn’t mind a chance to clear my head, too, so I ambled slowly along and looked up at the stars, which appeared so large here—away from any city’s lights—that they looked like bright, plum-sized gemstones, close enough that I could reach up and pluck them from the dark dome of the heavens. I breathed in the cold air, listened to the shushing sound of the brush against my boots and the soft fall of my footsteps, and I noted how otherwise silent the surroundings were. I slowed my steps even more to allow myself to absorb all this and to shift gears from the strange, busy day I had experienced. Mountain darted in circles around me as we crossed the open field, and then fell in on my left flank as my boots crunched across the gravel parking area and we approached the wall in front of the house and walked through the gate.

  A dim amber light had been left on in the portal over the front door, so I easily managed the key in the lock and pushed open the big entry door. Mountain scurried in and then immediately pressed his nose to the tile floor and moved down the long hallway that led to the sleeping rooms. I paid no attention to this at first, and instead hung my jacket and backpack on the coat rack in the lobby. But my companion exhibited the telltale signs of an alert as he neared the end of the hall, at the doorway to Adoria’s bedroom: a ridge of fur stood up on the back of his neck, his ears lowered, and he stopped, silent. I crept down the long, narrow passage as quietly as I could, and as I got closer, I heard bottles clinking and doors and drawers opening and closing. For the second time that evening, I pulled my P229 from my holster. I gripped the gun with both hands and pushed with my boot on one of the two French doors, which was already partway open, pressing it wider so I could see into the room. I trained the pistol from left to right. The bedroom lamps were not lit, but light escaped from the doorway beyond and partially illuminated the room. The noises and the light were coming from the bathroom.

  I stepped toward the open door of the bathroom and stood to one side of the jamb, tilting my head slightly to look around it and inside. I lowered my pistol but I didn’t holster it. “Ray,” I said, in a loud voice. “Come out of there.”

  The clinking and clattering sounds stopped, and the room fell silent. For an instant I thought I might have to go in and retrieve the boy, but he stepped into the bathroom doorway, his face in shadow, his slender shape framed by the light behind him. “Busted,” he said.

  I turned the switch on a bedside lamp and studied the young man. He looked frightened but he tried to mask it with a smile. “This is not what you think, Miss Jamaica.”

  “What are you doing in here?”

  “I’m looking for something.”

  “Looking for what?”

  “Something I gave Auntie Adoria. I mean, Mrs. Abasolo.”

  I cocked my head to one side. “I think we need to talk. I’m going to put my gun back in the holster because I don’t intend to use it, but if you try to run off before I get a chance to find out what you’re up to, I will chase you down, and if necessary, I will get the sheriff and bring a warrant for breaking and entering. Do you understand me?”

  “I understand.” His eyes were as big as an owl’s and he suddenly looked much younger and more fragile than he tried to let on.

  “Now, go back in there and close that window you came through, and then let’s go to the kitchen,” I said. “Mountain is hungry. So am I. Have you eaten dinner?”

  In the brightly lit cocina with its colorful hand-painted tiles and hanging copper pots, I let the boy calm down while I broke up some of the block of defrosting hamburger into a bowl for Mountain, then took the tamales, rice, and beans from the refrigerator and heated them, one by one, in the microwave. I set two places at the kitchen table and told the teenager to get us
each a glass of water. He did so in silence, then sat in a chair, looking small and a little desperate.

  I brought the food to the table and put some of everything on a plate for him, then served myself. I sat down and picked up a fork. “Now, tell me. Tell me everything.”

  The boy didn’t touch his food. He sat with his hands gripping the chair, working his lips back and forth as if he were trying to find his own tongue. Finally, he tried: “I’ve got nothing to say.”

  I set the fork down. “You want to play it that way? Fine. I’ll call the sheriff’s office and you’ll be living in a juvenile jail down in Española before you know it. Is that what you want?”

  He glanced at my face and saw the stern look on it. “Okay. I gave something to Auntie Adoria. I was trying to find it. I need to get it back. I’ve been waiting for her to come home, but she hasn’t been here for days. I need it back. I wanted to ask her to return it to me, but she’s never here when I come. I think she has gone someplace for a while.”

  “Your name’s not Ray, is it?”

  He dropped his head. “No, Miss.”

  “It’s Federico, am I right? Federico Yazza?”

  He didn’t lift his face. “Yes, Miss Jamaica. They call me Rico. Or sometimes Freako.”

  “So why did you tell me it was Ray?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Look at me. What do you like to be called?”

  He raised his head. “Rico. I like Rico. My mom calls me that.”

  “Okay, Rico, did you give Señora Abasolo some peyote buttons that you took from the Carry Water Clan at Tanoah Pueblo?”

  He let out an almost imperceptible whimper and dropped his forehead into his hand. “I want to make everything right. I want to give the medicine back. I don’t want to live up here with my uncle. I want to go home!”