Wild Mystic

by Sandi Ault

  But the big blonde man ignored him and grabbed the bars of the cell right in front of where I stood and gave me a seething glare. “You got my prize dog killed,” he said. “So your wolf has to die.” He worked his mouth for a second and then spat a huge glob of phlegm into my face.

  I tried to raise my right arm to wipe my face with the sleeve of my jacket, but it hurt so much that I couldn’t lift the arm all the way. I spun around and made to leave, not wanting to show any sign of weakness in front of Talgren, and Padilla followed close on my heels. Before he put his key in the gate to let me out of the cage area, he held his handkerchief up and gently blotted at my face, then pressed the soft cloth into my hand and unlocked the gate.

  On the way back to the Bear’s Paw, Padilla tried to reassure me. “He’s jonesing right now, needs a fix bad, you see, and that makes a meth addict insane. You can’t reason with him. He might talk when he gets a little more detoxed. I’ll keep on it. I’ll get him to tell me where he’s got Mountain. I promise.”

  My lower lip quivered as I rode along in silence, trying hard to suppress another bout of sobbing.

  “We’ll keep looking for him,” Padilla said. “He’s gotta be someplace Talgren goes to regularly. We got guys on it. I promise we won’t stop ‘till we find your wolf.”

  Tears escaped in spite of my efforts and they felt hot and stinging as they made their way down my face. I had scrubbed my cheeks, nose, and chin with the harsh hand soap in the washroom at the lockup to try to make sure I got all of Talgren’s foul fluids off of my skin. “I won’t stop either,” I said softly.

  “Beg your pardon?” Padilla leaned over slightly in my direction.

  “I won’t stop until I find Mountain.”

  The deputy was ready to argue with me when the double-chime sounded from the new phone again and I pulled it out of my jacket pocket and pressed to answer.

  “Jamaica, where the hell are you?” It was Roy.

  I wanted to reply but, inside me, the dam that had constrained my sorrow broke, and a sob came out like the wail of a banshee and rivers of pent-up tears flooded from my eyes. My chest heaved and hurt and I sobbed and sobbed. I dropped the device on the seat and Padilla picked it up and held it to his ear.

  After a minute of listening, he said, “Roy, this is Jerry Padilla. Your agent here is in bad shape. She’s hurt pretty bad and she’s all broken up about Mountain. So don’t bark at her right now, okay?”

  He was quiet for a few seconds, then responded, “I’m taking her back to where she’s staying. She really needs to rest and try to heal. And we got to find that wolf for her. If you got anybody you can put on it to help, I know she’d appreciate it.”

  After Padilla helped me out of the county cruiser, he put a hand lightly on each of my shoulders and looked down into my face with a stern expression. “If I catch you out in that Jeep of yours before daylight, I will have you arrested for driving while impaired. Do you understand me? You’re to go straight to bed and stay there and let yourself heal a little. It’s dark now, we don’t have any leads, we already searched Talgren’s place, so we gotta work on getting him to talk to us when he comes down some. I promise I will get it out of him—beat it out of him if I have to. We are going to find out what he did with Mountain and go get your wolf for you, you got that?”

  I tried to avoid his stare, but he kept twisting his head to engage my eyes until I looked back at him and held his gaze. I nodded my head and whispered, “I got that.”

  “I’ll head back down to the county lockup and when I see him start to look almost human, I’ll interrogate Talgren.”

  “Please do.” And then I started to cry again, which vexed me because I was not normally much of a crier. “I just want Mountain. That’s all. I would be willing to drop the assault and battery charges…”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Padilla said, as he walked me toward the door of my Jeep. “You aren’t going to do that, and even if you tried, he would still be going to the big house for a long time. He was operating a meth lab, and that’s a fed rap. No matter what, he ain’t going home, he ain’t passing go, and he ain’t collecting two hundred dollars. He is going to prison. But I will make him talk before that, if there is any way in hell to do it. I promise you that. Now get out of here. Did the doc give you anything for the pain?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay. Well take some of that stuff and go to bed. I’ll call you tomorrow with an update.”

  I got in the Jeep with great difficulty. Padilla watched me from a few feet away, standing beside the open driver’s door of the SUV, making sure I was going to be able to drive. I gave him a half-wince-half-smile and held my fist out with my thumb pointed skyward and started up the Jeep. I waited for Jerry to get in his vehicle and drive on from where he had parked behind me. He pulled onto the highway and the supercharged SUV sped off to the south, its taillights streaming bright ribbons of red lightning behind it as it vanished into the dark.

  Before I could back up the Jeep and disappear into the night as Padilla had done, Buzz purred, danced, and lit up, so I shifted the transmission back into park, and answered. Hank’s voice said, “You were right.”

  “I was going to call you,” I said.

  “Did you hear me? You were right. The letter from the Archdiocese identifies the girl child Abasolo gave up for adoption as Susan Lacy. It says that Lacy had given her permission for her identity to be revealed in correlation with her own inquiries. So she had been looking for her birth mother, and she had to have known that Abasolo was also looking for her, at least by the time this was written, which was a week before Christmas.”

  I barely registered all this. “Mountain. He’s gone,” I blurted. “He’s been taken!”

  “What? Where is he? Where are you? I’ll come to you.”

  “I’m at the Bear’s Paw in Peñasco. He’s not with me. He’s gone.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” the agent said, and he hung up.

  I decided to call Kerry. I reached into my pocket to retrieve the BLM phone and again saw the red dot indicating I had a voicemail. I pressed to play it, thinking that hearing his voice would soothe me. But it wasn’t Kerry’s voice on the recording.

  “Miss Jamaica?” It was Federico Yazza, young Rico. “I don’t know who I should tell about this, but I figured since you got a badge and you work for the BLM, maybe you will know what to do. Someone has been coming and going to this place down below the rim of the canyon just outside the rez. It’s an old ruin. I didn’t think nobody knew about it but me. It used to be more covered up than it is now, but one time I went down on that ledge using a rope, and I could see that somebody’s been in there and dug it out some. I think maybe they are in there now. I thought you ought to know. Don’t call me back on this number, it’s my uncle’s phone, and I’m not supposed to use a phone right now because it’s Quiet Time. Just come to the rez tomorrow and I’ll watch for you and show you where I mean.”

  I looked at the date and time of the call and noted that he had called late last night, after he had left Abasolo’s. So tomorrow meant today, and today was already over, or nearly so. I hadn’t listened to the message in time, and now it was after dark and too late to go to the pueblo or to see anything in the canyon from the rim.

  I was about to call Kerry when I recognized the growing clamor of a loud, hammering souped-up truck engine approaching. The same Darth dooly diesel that Ibanez had come in before had pulled into the now-empty parking lot, stopping right behind my Jeep. I looked toward the restaurant hoping someone might be there to come to my rescue again, but the place was dark and empty—even the sign wasn’t lit—because the Bear’s Paw was closed in the evenings in the winter, except on weekends. “Oh, no,” I said. “Oh, no.” I turned off the engine, pushed the door open and struggled out of the Jeep and to my feet. I was damned if I was going to let anybody intimidate me while I sat helplessly in my car.

  The driver turned off his headlights, but not the engine, and the die
sel pounded and clanged and rumbled in the otherwise-quiet night. Ibanez jumped out of the truck and came toward me, and as he got closer I could see his menacing scowl.

  I did what I would have done if a bear or a mountain lion challenged me in the wild. I stood as tall as I could and threw both hands in the air, half-shouting, half-crying: “Eddiejoe Ibanez! You want to throw a sack of shit at me, go ahead! You want to insult me, try to intimidate me, you go right ahead! I got no backup, I’m barely able to walk upright just now, and my wolf has been stolen and we don’t know where he is, so you do whatever it is you came to do, and get it over with!”

  He came closer and pushed out his lower lip. “I came to help you.”

  I was going to protest more until I realized what he had said. “You came to help me?”

  “I got an idea where that big goon took your wolf.”

  39: Had A Dog in the Fight

  If there truly were angels, I would never have guessed that one of them would look like Eddiejoe Ibanez. As I followed the black Vader-mobile down the High Road at top speed, I used the hands-free system in my Jeep to make a series of calls. First, to Jerry Padilla: “Send a car. I need backup. I’m pretty sure we’re headed to the place where Talgren left Mountain.” My next call was to Dominic Gomez, because he had told me he lived close by and I hoped he could get there quickly, maybe sooner than the sheriff’s office could. I would have called Coronel, too, but I couldn’t use Buzz with the hands-free unit and I couldn’t switch phones—we were driving fast. Ibanez had told me that Talgren’s dogs had all been raised and trained for fighting, and that illegal dogfights were held monthly at an old abandoned church on a little-used back road on the way to Vadito. When I relayed this to Gomez, he said he knew exactly where the peleas de perros were held. Padilla knew the abandoned church and was on his way.

  Tears streamed from my eyes as I drove; my parched lips begged for a drink of water, my cheeks felt hot, but I kept both hands on the wheel and my eyes on the taillights of Ibanez’s truck. Once I knew I had help coming, I called Roy. “We’re going to get Mountain,” I said. And I repeated what I had told the others.

  He was already in action. “As soon as Padilla told me what happened, I staged a crew at the ranger station in Peñasco and they started a search and rescue—a few of them are up there right now, and more are out looking for Mountain. I’ll let them know. The Forest Service keeps a large animal vet on call for the horses they keep there, and they got him on standby if we need him. Maybe I’ll have him head on over to the ranger station so he’s ready…you know, just in case.” Roy said. “Anyway, right now, I’m about to turn and go through Dixon, so I might get to that church before you do. I’ll lose my cell coverage any minute now, but don’t worry; I’ll see you there. You drive safe, don’t do anything crazy. We’re going to get Mountain, so just stay calm and be safe.”

  Ibanez set a terrifying pace, but I wasn’t about to let the rear of that truck out of my sight, so I kept the pedal down on the Jeep and fought the ruts and washboards and cried out aloud as the jarring and bouncing tormented my midsection with bolts of anguish. My breath came and went in hot gulps and blasts, my heart felt like it was about to explode in my chest, my hands were so clammy that I kept taking one and then the other away from the wheel to wipe them on the legs of my jeans so I wouldn’t lose my grip.

  At one point, Ibanez veered wildly to the right, and I spotted an oncoming truck moving at a terrifying clip toward us. We both quickly pulled into the ditch and surrendered the road to the crazed driver, who never even slowed as he barreled by. We were lucky there wasn’t a collision.

  After the turnoff to Vadito, Ibanez suddenly killed his lights, but he kept going, and he eased around a bend that must have bordered a stream or a river. I saw the tall inky shadows of cottonwoods. There was no moon yet, so it was hard now to see the black truck without lights. Although I feared I might rear-end him, I dreaded more that I would lose him and not get to Mountain. The truck stopped and idled for a few moments at an old wrought iron gate on one side of the narrow road. Its design was simple but powerful: sharp-pointed spears mounted over black iron crossbeams, and in the center, where the two halves of the gate met, a huge, ornate iron cross—a symbol that once marked passage onto hallowed ground. But it was obvious that years had passed since it had been maintained by the parishioners. Now, the tips of some of the spears were either bent or missing, welds had broken leaving a few hanging and others tilting askew, and vandals had used the cross for target practice and the face of it was scarred with pockmarks. The gate had been left open, each half swung wide to the side. Ibanez idled through a few yards, pulled over into the field, parked the truck, and turned off its noisy engine. I parked behind him and cut the motor on the Jeep. He walked back to me as I was struggling to get out. Adrenalin masked my pain more and more now, and I found myself able to bring myself upright in half the time it had taken me when I’d gotten out to confront him at the Bear’s Paw earlier.

  “Someone’s here,” Eddiejoe said. “That gate is usually closed. That loco idiota that almost creamed us probably came out of here, but there’s a couple more trucks up there by the church. We need to be careful.”

  I had already clipped my handgun to the back of my belt, and I was carefully opening the side door to get my rifle when a loud popping sound broke the silence; and then another pop followed. “Gunshots!” I rasped. “Mountain!”

  Ibanez struck out running for the church, and I tried my best to go after him, but my legs were so swollen and stiff that I could barely hobble. I hadn’t gone far when I heard tires crunching on the dirt drive behind me, but I didn’t care, I was fixed on the old church ahead, desperately praying that someone hadn’t shot Mountain. I stumped along without stopping to see who was coming, and then I heard Padilla’s voice: “Get in the car, Jamaica.”

  I turned and looked at him, my rifle in my left hand. “Gunshots! Up there! There were two gunshots!”

  “I heard ‘em,” he said. “Now get in the car. You’ll get there faster than you can gimping like that.”

  I climbed into the passenger seat. Jerry proceeded slowly up the drive in the dark with his lights off. “I got another car coming,” he said. “Wait! Isn’t that Roy’s truck?” Padilla rolled the SUV to a stop at the edge of what had once been a graded parking area.

  I looked at the white Chevy Silverado and could just make out the BLM Taos emblem on the door. “Yes, that’s Roy!” I opened the door on my side of the cruiser and heard shouting. Jerry, who had sprung out of the seat and drawn his weapon, disappeared toward the sounds. I strained to make out what the voices were saying as I got to my feet and started after him.

  Then I heard: “We got him! We got him!”

  I had only made it a couple yards past the sheriff’s car when I saw Eddiejoe Ibanez coming fast through the gateway in the churchyard wall, then another, odd-shaped figure I couldn’t make out right away. I stopped, my heart throbbing in my chest, the hair standing up on the back of my neck when I realized it was someone, a man walking fast, carrying a limp body in his arms…the body of a wolf. I screamed: “Mountain!”

  In a flurry of action, Padilla dashed to his vehicle and yanked open the back door, and Ibanez ran toward me and grabbed me by the arms, as if he thought I might collapse. The men’s voices were all talking at once; I heard Dominic Gomez saying, “Use my jacket! Here—use my jacket!” Roy cursed and muttered something I couldn’t make out and then the deputy ran around the car to the other side and opened the rear passenger-side door and plunged in, coaching the others, “Hold his head…there…hold his head…get that front paw, it’s caught…now ease him in here.”

  And then Roy was at my side, and he took my arm and Ibanez held the other as the Boss said, “Jamaica, he’s hurt bad. We gotta go.”

  I turned gingerly in the front passenger seat, and looked at my beautiful wolf-boy lying as Jerry Padilla sped with lights flashing down the drive, then the dirt road, and then the highway behind
me. “Please hold on,” I whispered. “Mountain, please hold on!”

  When we got to the ranger station, a crew of folks rushed out. They eased Mountain onto a sled and into the station before I got to the door. Buzz began vibrating in my pocket, but I ignored the device and hurried inside. Once again, Roy took my arm. “The vet’s already working on him. You need to stay back and give him room.”

  “Let me see him,” I cried. “Let me at least see him!”

  Roy held onto my bicep and ushered me toward the makeshift surgery the rangers had created by pushing two desks together at one end of the offices, padding the desk tops with horse blankets and a sheet. A tall man in a plaid shirt leaned over my beautiful wolf, and I saw ripped flesh and deep gashes on Mountain’s legs, his chest, his face, and his sides. One of his ears was torn at the tip and he had swollen mounds on his side and flank and blood oozing from numerous puncture wounds. “Mountain,” I said, my voice too loud, shaking. “Hold on, buddy. I’m right here. I’m just right here.”

  The vet moved to the end of the table near the wolf’s head, blocking my view, and Roy turned me back toward the other side of the offices. He steered me to a chair and helped me into it, then squatted down in front of me. I looked into his face as tears streamed from my eyes. “Is he going to die?”

  “That ole’ boy that’s working on him is going to do everything he can,” Roy said, “but I won’t lie to you, Jamaica. Mountain got tore up pretty bad by those pit bulls in there. The guys that were there bugged out as soon as they saw us come in, but they let the dogs out of the pen to attack us while they got away. Those bulldogs both came after me and Gomez, and even when I fired my rifle in the air, they didn’t stop. One of ‘em grabbed onto Dominic’s leg and was about to tear it off, so he drew his pistol and shot him. The other dog just went limp and laid down after that. It turned out that one was already hurt bad himself, and I managed to get him corralled into one of those steel cages they had there. Then we found Mountain over in a corner.” Just then, Roy’s phone started chiming and he moved away to take the call.