by Sandi Ault
I dropped my chin to my chest, trying to think what to do.
Eddiejoe Ibanez’s shadow fell over me and I looked up at him, his face still a sneer. “They give them dogs steroids to make them more violent in the fights. And other drugs so they won’t feel the pain no matter how bad they are hurt. They just want to make sure they will keep fighting until one of them dies. Those guys raise them to do that, they train them to kill. That pendejo Talgren must have got those two dogs hopped up and then put them in with your wolf, knowing they would try to kill him.”
I felt my face squeezing itself into a grimace of anguish, but I could do nothing to stop it. I would have cried, shed tears, made any sound, but I could not. In my misery, my grief and fear, I had lost the ability to do even that.
Ibanez reached out a hand and put it on my shoulder.
“Why did you…?” I tried to form words as I looked up at Ibanez.
“Enemigo de mi enemigo—enemy of my enemy,” he said. “You and me, we maybe got into it over a little thing, but I got a really big thing with Talgren. He started cooking those drugs and peddling them all over this place more than a year ago. Everyone over here hates him. My little brother, he got hooked on that shit, and before Thanksgiving, he OD’d. It almost killed my mom to lose him, he was her baby. Ever since that happened that culo wouldn’t dare come anywhere around Peñasco because of me, he knew I would make him sorry if he did. But today, he must have decided he wanted to hurt you more than he was worried about me hurting him. When the people over here saw what he did to you, dragging you down the road and beating and kicking you, you know, word got around, they called me. I would have gotten that cabrón myself and drug him down the highway for everyone to see if the sheriff hadn’t arrested him first. When they told me he stole your wolf, I figured he probably took him to that place where he fights his dogs. I was on my way there when I saw you pulled over in front of the café.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“De nada. I hope that wolf of yours is going to make it. I’ll light a candle for him. I’ll have mi madre say a prayer, too. Maybe sometime, if I need a grazing permit, you can help me out with that,” he said, and the sneer turned into a smile.
I wanted to, but I could not smile back. I was almost numb with worry about Mountain, and with exhaustion and pain from the ordeals of the day.
Roy edged forward and said, “Sorry to interrupt, but I just got a call from dispatch and I have to get back to Taos right away, so I’m gonna have to head out now.” He turned to face Ibanez. “I want to thank you, too. And if you ever need a grazing permit, or if there’s anything else I can help with, you give me a call.” He handed Eddiejoe a card. “Jamaica, I’m sorry I have to go, but I’ll be back as quick as I can. And you call me if you need anything.” He turned and left through the main entry door.
Ibanez looked down at the card as if it were a winning lottery ticket, then held it up and waved it, grinning at me as he, too, exited the ranger station.
Once again, my pocket vibrated and suddenly I remembered that I had told Coronel I would wait so he could meet up with me at the Bear’s Paw—when was that?—well over an hour ago. I pulled out Buzz and held it up to answer.
“What happened to you?” Hank Coronel’s voice was an equal mix of anger and worry. “Where are you?”
“I’m sorry. I’m at the ranger station. The vet is trying to save…he’s working on Mountain.”
Hank was quiet for several seconds. “Is he going to be all right?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I don’t think so.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I lied.
“Well, you stay there and take care of Mountain. And call me when you have news.”
I had stiffened sitting in the chair so it was not easy to stand up again, and once I did, I felt like I might teeter and fall over before I managed to get my legs to move under me. I made my way closer to where the vet stood over Mountain, but Dominic Gomez interceded. He blocked my view and took me by both arms and said, “Now, Jamaica. Let the doctor work on your wolf. Give him room to do what he needs to do.”
“I heard you got bitten trying to save Mountain. Are you okay?” I looked down at his bloodstained pant leg.
“I’ll be all right. I just gotta go down to the clinic in Embudo tomorrow to get a tetanus shot. It’s just a few little puncture wounds, but they’re deep, they bled for a bit. They gave me first aid here, antibiotics and a bandage wrap. I’m going to stay here tonight and help watch over your wolf, and then I’ll go get the shot first thing in the morning when the clinic opens.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For…Mountain.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know how long he had been there before we got to him. They got him pretty good, those two dogs. I had to shoot…”
“Roy told me. I’m so sorry.”
“I tell you, that didn’t bother me, having to shoot it, that dog was ruined. That kind of dog would attack a kid if he saw it running, or the UPS guy or anyone, that’s the way it was, just completely ruined. And if I didn’t shoot him, he would have torn me up like he did your wolf. I’m the one who’s sorry—for you. I wish I could have gotten there sooner.”
I saw that someone had made some coffee in the break room, so I went and got myself a cup. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the remedio de hierbas, the aromatic remedy that Tecolote had made me. I held it firmly against my nostrils and the soft, gelatinous compound inside the cloth conformed to the underside of my nose. I inhaled deeply. Again, I felt the tiniest surge of relief. But it was not enough. I took out the bottle of pills the doctor in Embudo had given me for the pain. I bit a tiny piece off of one of the tablets and washed it down with some of the coffee, then topped off my cup with more of the black liquid. I was going to need to stay alert, but I couldn’t keep hobbling around incapacitated, so now—like Talgren’s pit bulls—I needed at least a little bit of the drug the doc had given me to mask the pain so I could go on fighting. I went back to my chair and pulled another in front of it. I sat down gingerly in one, and put my legs up in the seat of the other to ease the pain of the swelling. I drank the rest of the coffee, hoping it would offset any drowsiness the pain meds would cause. I sat there for a few minutes and tried to focus my mind away from the wolf and my fear and worry, because I couldn’t do anything about that, but there might be something I could do about the mission I had been working on for the past few days. I pulled out the new BLM phone. First, I sent a short text to Kerry: I need you. Call as soon as possible. And then I got ready to make some calls.
Before I finished dialing the first number, a shadow fell over me, and I looked up and saw the veterinarian who had been working on Mountain standing in front of me.
I got up at once, and noticed that, already, the combination of Tecolote’s herbs and the pain medicine was helping.
“I’ve done everything I can do for now,” the vet said. “Your boy’s sedated. He’s on an IV to keep him hydrated and that’s also got antibiotics and pain medicine in it so he gets a steady dose. I don’t want him moved. I’m going to go home and get a few hours of sleep, and then I’ll come back and check on him. You should do the same. The rangers here have divided up into two shifts, and they’re going to watch him through the night and call me if they need to.”
My lips started to tremble. “Is he…? Will he live?”
The wrinkles around his eyes deepened. “He might have a shot at it if he doesn’t develop an infection. He’s got a long way to go before he’s out of the woods.”
“Can I see him now? Is it all right if I touch him? Is he going to be able to walk again?”
He held up a palm. “One thing at a time. Yes, you can go see him. But I don’t want you to touch him; keep a little distance and let him be. He’s got wounds and scratches and scrapes everywhere, and the flesh was torn back in a few places. I cleaned them up the best I could, but you could contaminate him with your germs. Plus, he might
rouse if he senses you, and he needs to sleep and not move so those sutures can set. As for what he’s going to be like after tonight…well, I can’t assess anything more until we get him a little further out of the woods. Then we can talk again.”
As I crossed to the back of the office area, I saw a female ranger setting up cots in the break room. Two men in green Forest Service hoodies had drawn up chairs near Mountain to make sure he didn’t try to move or somehow scoot off of the double-desk operating table they had created for him. When I approached, the men smiled at me. Painfully, I managed to maneuver myself down on one knee a few feet from my best friend and put my face at eye level with his. “I love you,” I whispered. “I love you, Mountain. You can do this, buddy,” I said. “I know you can.”
I headed back to my pushed-together chairs to make my calls, and almost ran into Gomez coming out of the washroom. He had untucked his shirt and I could smell soap, as if he’d just washed up. He was headed for the break room, and likely one of the cots.
“Wait,” I said, “Sorry. I know you need to get some rest. I have a question. I could look this up, but it could also be a colloquialism, so I thought it would be better just to ask you.”
He shrugged. “Shoot.”
“What does los gemelos mean?”
“¿Gemelos? It means twins.”
40: Los Gemelos
I called Zeke Mitchell first. “When we were talking this morning, you mentioned a set of twins who might be able to inherit from Quintana’s will.”
“Yeah. I don’t know that they could for sure, but they might be in line, maybe in the fourth succession if they prove to be Quintana’s or the fifth if they could even just prove that they were born to one of the witches, which is where their heirs and assigns inherit. But like I said, I had to rule out Abasolo before I looked into any of that, because if we’re right about her, none of that matters. She gets it all after the foundation’s 10 percent. And maybe now her daughter…”
“The twins,” I interrupted, “how old are they now?”
“Let’s see…” I could hear him moving things around, papers shuffling. “They would be about a year younger than Nona Dodd—she’s the only known child, the one I mentioned who got specifically excluded from the will. Let me see here, Dodd was twenty-seven in August. So they would be around twenty-five or twenty-six, I guess. Why?”
“Hmmm. Male or female twins?”
“One of each.”
I drew in a breath. “Do you know their names?”
“Yeah, I do. I have them here someplace. My secretary just sent me a copy of the birth certificate that got created when they enrolled in middle school. It shows their mother as Ursula Lindstrom, and their names are…”
We said the names in unison: “Uma and Kyle.”
“That’s right,” Zeke said, surprised. “How did you know?”
“I thought they were a couple, but they’re twins!”
“No, I mean how did you know their names?”
“I met them, they’re here!” I said. “They’re here in northern New Mexico.”
“Where? How did you know…?”
“In a minute. One more thing: Ursula Lindstrom, the mother named on their birth certificate. She’s the one that was known as Qual, wasn’t she? The one whose bones were found in Canyonlands?”
“You must have read that article in Outside Magazine, too. Yes, I think she is—she was, I mean. So, there’s an avenue for the twins with Qual’s DNA at the fifth level of succession, or like I said, if they’re Quintana’s they would be in line to inherit before my clients. But Abasolo is first. She and her daughter basically get everything, so none of that counts unless…”
As soon as I had finished that conversation, I called Coronel again. “When you were telling me about the satellite photos, you said you had a few possible targets in those specific areas you were searching. Any chance you also identified those other objects? Were they cars, too? And what made them stand out so much that you wanted a second-pass look at them?”
“You know, you’re good at this, you’re a natural. I’m only slightly ahead of you on that. Even though the area is only sparsely populated, we couldn’t peg every car and enhance it, that would have taken forever. So I looked at cars that seemed out of place, not in front of a house, not where a car would normally be parked, and of course, the nearer to Abasolo’s place, the more I wanted to see it. I did look closely at the other two potential targets and we did some enhancement on those images. One of them was not a fixed target, but it appeared in both sets of photos.”
“Meaning it moved after the first pass?”
“Affirmative. But it was in the same general vicinity in both sets of photos, so I had the IT guy blow up the image of it, too. The angle doesn’t give us a look at the plate. But it’s a green SUV, maybe a Subaru.”
“Holy shit.”
“What?”
“Where was it?”
“On the first sat pass, it was parked in an area where there used to be a mine, north and west of the pueblo. On the second pass, it was down all the way at the end of the mine property, off-road, right near where the mine abuts public land at the mouth of Picuris Canyon. At first, I thought the car had to belong to someone from the mining company. They went bankrupt and closed up, but I guessed maybe it was someone who was overseeing the property. I didn’t think any more about it once we located Abasolo’s car. But then, when they didn’t find her remains in the car, I began to think about that green SUV.”
“Did you tell your FBI contact about the green car?”
“No. For one thing, those satellite images were done for me as a personal favor, and people could get in trouble…and for another, The Bartender has not given me the green light to fully read anyone else in. The car crash prompted the missing persons on Abasolo and the involvement of the FBI, I didn’t. But it was easy enough for me to call the FBI—since the car was identified as Abasolo’s and everyone knows she’s the poet laureate—and say that The Bartender was worried and wanted to know anything they found out…get some information as a professional courtesy. But what you and I have been doing these past few days is not public, not with anyone, even the FBI.”
“Well, I think you should call your FBI contact. Either you could do it and say it’s a professional courtesy in return, or give me her name and number, and I’ll do it. We need to convene a search party by dawn.”
“You think someone’s got Abasolo back in one of those mine caves?”
“I think two people have Abasolo, and I think they have her daughter, Susan Lacy, too.”
41: The Dreamers
Roy called me before I could dial the phone again. “I’m on my way back to you. I’m bringing a couple people with me. They say they’ve got to see you at once, that it’s a matter of life and death.”
“Who are they?”
“Just stay right there at the station and we’ll be there shortly.”
When the glass door at the entry opened, I was standing over a set of quads showing every geographical detail of the ranger district, scrutinizing them with a magnifying glass. Roy stuck his head inside and saw me, then withdrew and held the door open while two people came through. First: Yohe, wrapped in a Pendleton blanket, her head covered with a bright-colored scarf tied under her chin. The second: a man wrapped in a chief’s blanket, wearing long silver braids with a black strip of cloth tied across his forehead. I did not recognize him. Roy ushered them over to me.
I bowed my head to honor the elders, then spoke to Yohe with a smile. “Auntie Yohe, I am so happy to see you.”
She held a hand in front of the tall man. “This Bernat Deherrera. Him chief Carry Water Clan.”
I dipped my chin again and said, “I am so happy to meet you, Uncle. I know Paul Deherrera from Picuris.”
The old man spoke with a hoarse, cracking voice, “My nephew.”
I looked around, then pointed to the chairs where I’d been sitting earlier. “Please, sit down. Can I fix you so
me coffee or get you anything? Maybe some water?”
Yohe answered as they shuffled toward the chairs, “That be nice, maybe some coffee.”
I tiptoed into the break room where Gomez and the woman ranger were sleeping and put an envelope of coffee grounds into the basket, then filled the pot with water and poured it into the well of the machine. I turned the switch to the on position, and rummaged around in the cupboards. All I could find was a box of crackers and a couple of packages of Twinkies. I grabbed these, two cups of water, and some paper towels and headed back to the entry lobby area where the Tanoan visitors sat in the chairs. Roy had gone across the length of the offices to talk to the guys watching over Mountain.
“I brought some things.” I gave a cup of water to each of the Tanoans. “The coffee is brewing and it will be ready in a minute. Would you like something to munch on?”
Yohe’s eyes lit up when she saw the Twinkies, so I set the box of crackers on an empty chair and gave them each a package of the sweet cakes and a paper towel. I went back to check on the coffee, and noticed that Roy had pulled up a chair next to Mountain and stretched out his long legs in front of him, one boot crossed over the other at the ankles. I watched him pull his cowboy hat over his face and cross his arms over his chest, prepared to take a nap.
I returned to the Puebloans with cups of coffee. “I am so honored that you came all this way to see me,” I said, knowing better than to ask why they had come.
“This coffee good,” Yohe said.
The clan chief nodded in agreement and took another bite of his second Twinkie.
“Bernat not talk good English. He want me help, come tell you what the dreamers see.”
“The dreamers. The peyote dreamers?”
She grimaced, wiggling her head quickly back and forth as if Bernat Herrera might not see this small gesture.
I instantly regretted asking the question, and I gave her an apologetic look. But I dared not speak, not even to say as much, if I wanted to hear more of what they had come to tell me.