A Pilgrimage to Death

by J. J. Cagney

  Jeannette scoffed. “Sure. Because you’re so kind and generous. Everyone knows you’re the department hot shot.”

  “I missed all the signs with you,” Sam said, his voice soft. “But then, it never occurred to me that my girlfriend not only lied, but was only my girlfriend to further her career.”

  Evan flinched near as hard as Jeannette gasped. Cici took off down the hallway, unable to listen to more. Her heart ached for Sam—somehow, this entire situation kept getting more untenable.

  Evan grasped her arm and tipped his head. They slunk down the hall to Evan’s smaller but just as opulent office. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it.

  “That was so awkward.” Evan shuddered. “Way she was acting, that conversation would have gone south in a hurry.”

  “Dios mio, I don’t even know how to process Jeannette . . .” Cici licked her dry lips. “Does everyone have a secret identity in this town? Who are you?”

  “Just Evan Reynolds, Esquire. Tax attorney. I can’t handle more than that. Especially not after that exchange.”

  “Why?” Cici asked.

  Evan looked down at the plush carpet under their feet. He wore battered tennis shoes. Old ones. For some reason the slight peeling at the edge of the mesh endeared him more to Cici.

  “I loved Anna Carmen. You need to know that.” Evan blew out a breath. “But I liked her connections.”

  “Ah.” Cici crossed her arms over her chest. “To our father. Thought you’d—what? Be governor one day?”

  Evan shook his head, hard, once. “I wanted to be the tax attorney. Frank Gurule is known for helping those he chooses.”

  “Too bad you didn’t understand how deep the rift ran between him and Anna Carmen, especially.” Cici closed her eyes and leaned back against the door. “Aci and Mom were close—so close. Dad leaving . . . it destroyed their relationship.”

  “Figured that out,” Evan said. He smiled and it was soft, lost in memories. “But by then, I was in love with your sister.”

  Cici flopped down into one of the visitor chairs. They needed a change of pace. Something to lighten the heaviness permeating their air.

  “This investigation keeps growing,” Cici said. “Like bad mushrooms.”

  Evan barked out a laugh. “Do I even want to know how the well-loved local reverend knows about ’shrooms?”

  “Not from personal experience. At least, not the kind you’re talking about. I meant the ones that pop up all over Sun Mountain.”

  Evan sat in his chair. “Sure you did.”

  “Um. So. I’m glad we have a minute,” Cici said, leaning forward so her elbows rested on her thighs. “About Anna Carmen and your lost position in Scottsdale.”

  Evan waved a hand. “The job falling through was a blessing in disguise. I’ve heard things . . .”

  “About that law firm?” Cici asked.

  Evan nodded. “I don’t mind working, but one hundred-plus hours every week for years to not make partner? No, thanks. I miss Anna Carmen, though.” He blew out a breath. “More now that I know she didn’t plan on dumping me—wasn’t cheating.”

  “I’m here for you, Evan,” Cici said. “Whatever you need to process the grief.”

  He studied her. “Sam’s right,” he murmured. “About you and your sister. Anna was the life of every party. Bubbly, happy, and easy to talk to. You’re deeper.”

  Cici pressed her lips together. “Grief dug deep into my soul.”

  Evan’s eyes lit up a little. Not enough to smile but this was a . . . an understanding.

  “I don’t doubt that. But it’s more. It’s . . . if there was one thing about Anna Carmen I didn’t love, it was her desire to deflect what she didn’t want to talk about.”

  Cici leaned back, but she nodded. Her sister became a master of deflection and redirection, which served her well with students but ended up making Cici feel lonelier at home. That was part of why she accepted the scholarship to Columbia for her undergraduate degree in the first place.

  “You think Sam and Jeannette will be okay out there?” Cici asked, glancing back at the door.

  “You want to go find out?” Evan asked.

  Cici shook her head.

  Sam tapped on Evan’s office door a few minutes later, and from the tightness around his mouth and the angry sheen in his eyes, Cici decided now wasn’t the time to ask how the rest of his conversation with Jeannette, the manipulative DEA agent, went.

  Probably best not to bring it up at all.

  Cici thanked Evan for his help getting them in the office. For the first time in over a year, she hugged him back, glad for the connection with another person who’d loved her sister as much as she did.

  Still pondering mind’s ability to deflect grief and other unwelcome emotions, Cici followed Sam back out to his police-issued sedan. She sucked down the last of her ginger lemonade she’d ordered with her lunch, scrunching her nose at how watered down the beverage became in the heat of the car.

  Sam drove with the efficiency and proficiency of long habit—a good thing, too, because his mind was clearly not on the streets or even his fellow drivers. Cici shut her eyes after the third close miss and prayed she’d arrive at their next destination in one piece.

  “Did you know Jeannette worked for the DEA?”

  Cici jumped and yelped. The car had been so quiet, almost restful when she ignored the potential for an accident, and she’d been sliding into a light doze. Lack of sleep caught up with her, finally.

  “No. I thought she was the mayor’s executive assistant.”

  “She lied to me,” Sam said.

  His voice was soft, but Cici still heard the pain there.

  “The whole time we were together.”

  “Maybe she had to. Maybe she felt she was protecting you or her job or the case or whatever.”

  Sam grunted. He flicked on his blinker and they turned onto the street with the low-slung adobe houses and stately trees. The large trees were what made this area so coveted. That and the oversize lots, the closeness to Canyon Road and downtown. A lot of checks for the real estate boxes, but Cici had always felt the houses here tended to be overpriced and sought out not for their seventeenth-century charm, but for the prestige of address—and elementary school. A source of unnecessary pride that stated most of the residents bought up the homes that the families who’d been there for generations could no longer maintain or pay the taxes to own.

  Cici and Sam pulled up in front of Susan’s double-adobe hacienda a few blocks from the Acequia Madre—a street named for the “mother ditch,” a man-made tributary from the Santa Fe River used to irrigate the compounds and farms along this, the original stretch of Santa Fe.

  “You know what I think?” Sam asked, breaking into Cici’s budding melancholy.

  She made an affirmative noise.

  “I think Jeannette got off on lying. And you know something, Cee? I just . . . I’m beginning to think there’s never a good thing that comes from lies.”

  “Look at what happened to the Johnsons,” Cici averred. “Donald might have tried to make it right after the fact. But laundering all that drug money, if that’s what he did, probably led to those deaths originally. I can’t see how people think their omissions and falsehoods—whatever they call them, they’re still lies—won’t come back to bite ’em at some point.”

  “Does it make you angry?” Sam asked.

  He stopped on the sidewalk, looking over at the Johnsons’ large sand-colored home. Touches of an understated turquoise metal flashed in the large garden—wind sculptures purchased on posh Canyon Road, no doubt.

  “What’s that?” Cici asked.

  “The fact that Donald’s drug problem, his greed, cost Anna Carmen her life?” Sam replied.

  “Yeah.” Cici blew out a breath. “Yeah, that makes me really, really angry.”

  Sam tipped his head back to where Jeannette popped out of her perky little Prius.

  “I have to go in here with her. See what we can see
. She’s livid, by the way. That her cover’s blown wide open, which is going to make it harder for her to get another undercover assignment.”

  “I’m not sure what to say about that,” Cici said, shoving her hands into the back pockets of her pants. “It’s not like we went looking for her.”

  “That’s the way of these revelations. You never expect them.”

  Sam’s shoulders slumped as he shoved his hands into his pockets. Before he turned up the narrow brick path, he looked over Cici’s shoulder. She turned, too, to see Miguel standing on his mother’s porch, hands gripping the railing. He wore a bathrobe that hung open over a white T-shirt and flannel pants.

  “Why don’t you go talk to Miguel?” Sam asked. “I know you don’t want to come back in Susan’s house.”

  Cici shuddered. “I really don’t.”

  “It’s fine,” Sam said. “Better you talk to him anyway.”

  Cici eyed Jeannette’s rolling gait as she sauntered toward them. She caught Miguel’s dark scowl.

  “I definitely got the safer assignment.”

  Sam chucked her under the chin. “Keep it that way.”

  Cici picked her way between a couple of the cars parked on the roadside before ambling toward Miguel. As she moved closer, she noticed he wore work boots, still unlaced.

  She glanced back toward the Johnsons’ statement mansion once. Sam ducked under the yellow crime scene tape, clearly not willing to help Jeannette do the same.

  Cici turned back toward Miguel. She placed her hands behind her back.

  “You’re looking better,” Cici said. “How do you feel?”

  Miguel nodded, his tanned skin lined with wrinkles around his mouth and eyes. Hard living for a man still in his forties. But then, grief created hard living.

  “Like my body’s trying to kill me. But then, I did almost die.”

  Like many native New Mexicans, Miguel’s vowels were longer, his speech slow and steady. Cici’s shoulders began to relax, enjoying the comfort and familiarity of the local idiosyncrasy.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, Miguel,” Cici said.

  “Thanks. And thank you for stopping by to make sure my mother and Juanito were doing good while I was in the hospital.”

  “I’m here to help. I hope you know that.”

  “Come on up,” Miguel said, motioning her up the steps. “No reason for you to shout from down there.”

  “Are you sure about that? Last I talked to Juan, he seemed to think I was the problem.”

  Miguel made a dismissive noise in the back of his throat. She decided to take that as a positive sound, and she stepped up onto the porch. Miguel turned his dark gaze back to the Johnsons’ house across the street, his scowl back, blacker and even angrier than before.

  “I like you, Reverend. But that don’t mean I trust you.”

  Cici held out her hands, palms up, but Miguel moved forward faster than she anticipated and flipped her hands over. His callused fingertip traced the red gashes on the backs of her hands.

  “How’d you get these?”

  “I had a run-in of my own. Probably with the same people who killed Marco.”

  Miguel closed his eyes. A thick, heavy breath slid from his nose. “How did you find out?” His voice was filled with exhaustion but also fear.

  Cici tipped her head back toward Susan’s house. “Susan. I heard Ernesto Espinoza murdered Rosalia.” Cici bit her lip until the trembling in her chin ceased. “I’m so, so sorry for all you’ve been through,” she whispered.

  Miguel’s dark gaze held hers, looking deep, then deeper still into her soul. Eventually, he nodded. “So you are. As I am for your loss. Rosalia . . .” He sighed. “I loved that woman, but she done messed up. Got my kid involved. That’s not right.”

  “No,” Cici whispered. “That wasn’t right.”

  “Your sister? She tried to help Marco. At first I thought . . .” He dropped his head in shame. “I thought it was more than helping. Like . . . see, Marco adored Miss Gurule.”

  Cici’s stomach twisted with a nasty feeling, but she, too, had read the stories of relationships between teachers and their students.

  “That wasn’t it,” Miguel hastened to add. “Miss Gurule helped out all her kids.”

  That sounded more like the sister Cici grew up with, was close to. The slick ooze eased from her belly and Cici managed to breathe again.

  “But Miss Gurule didn’t know what she was up against. She and Marco were innocent of the ways of that sick world. People died who shouldn’t have, Reverend. For no other reason than they learned too much about the bad seeds living here among us.”

  Miguel leaned against the porch, looking out at Susan’s house with abject hatred.

  “No way I’m helping that,” he muttered.

  “How about you help me?” Cici asked. “Please, Miguel.”

  The older man remained stubbornly silent, his gaze planted firmly between his unlaced boots.

  “You heard the shots?” Cici asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you called it in,” Cici coaxed.

  Miguel nodded, his hang-dog expression becoming even more hang-dog.

  Cici raised her hand and set it on his tense shoulder. “You’ve had more than your share of hardship and yet, you’ve come out of it with such a kind soul,” Cici said. “I’m in awe of you.”

  “You’re a good woman, Reverend Gurule,” Miguel said, but he didn’t sound as though he believed anything positive would come from the call. Miguel scratched his head, causing his dark, gray-threaded hair to stand up about his face.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Cici asked, hesitant. “When Rosalia died.”

  Miguel turned back to stare at the house across the street. He was silent for a long moment. Then, he crossed the porch and settled into one of the chairs.

  “You think it could save people’s lives?” he asked.

  Cici nodded.

  “Not sure I care no more,” Miguel said.

  Cici leaned forward and laid her trembling hand over Miguel’s.

  “I’m really angry, too. They took too much. You lost your wife and child. I lost my twin.”

  She bit her cheek. Part of her expected Miguel to toss off her hand and stomp into the house. He stayed still and silent.

  “I’m worried for Juan,” she said. “For Jaycee. If people find out the kids came to see me.” Cici’s voice thickened with the worry and fear she’d tried so hard to keep at bay. “They shot my dog, Miguel. In the chest. He’s . . . he might not make it. My dog. On a trail. We aren’t talking about someone who gives one damn about the sanctity of life.”

  As she caught her breath, her eyes went back to the house. Her body stiffened when Jeannette bee-lined from the house.

  22

  The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, which still we thank as love. — Shakespeare

  Cici’s eyes followed Jeannette as Miguel ripped his hand free from hers. He scowled.

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  Jeannette glanced over at them, her face unreadable. She opened her trunk and pulled out some items.

  Cici craned her neck, trying to see what they were, but Jeannette was turned so that Cici couldn’t see much more than her back. Cici made a grumpy noise because Jeannette knew Cici wanted to see.

  “What’s that gal got to do with this?” Miguel tilted his chin toward Jeannette. He still scowled, anger radiating off him in thick waves.

  Cici shrugged. She didn’t understand how, exactly, law enforcement worked, but the fact that Jeannette had been undercover meant Cici probably shouldn’t share Jeannette’s role in the case.

  “Weren’t they dating?”

  Cici’s face heated. She didn’t like gossiping, but Miguel would remain fixated until Cici told him what he wanted to know, and she still hoped to find out about Rosalia, Marco, and her sister.

  “I don’t think that’s working out so well,” Cici said.

  Many long moments passed
. Cici began to despair that Miguel wouldn’t say more about what happened to his wife and son.

  “I don’t have much else to tell you,” Miguel said, staring off into space as if ruminating.

  Miguel gestured for her to take a seat, so Cici settled into the flaking wrought iron chair next to Miguel’s.

  “I saw them, see,” Miguel said. “At the prison. If I’d kept my mouth shut, maybe none of this would happen. But I didn’t. Talked to Rosie and she got too interested. I didn’t know then—not until well after my wife died that she’d been getting drugs from Ernesto. Tried to blackmail him into more drugs in exchange for some photo of the new girlfriend. Young gal.”

  Cici clutched her hands together on her lap. “As in underage?”

  Miguel shook his head. “I don’t know. I never saw the photo. But Marco did. So did your sister. Miss Gurule took it, Marco said. They’re both dead.”

  Miguel crossed himself, lowered his eyes.

  “And I was glad I didn’t know. I needed to be here, to raise Juanito.”

  “I need you to tell me anything else you know,” Cici urged.

  “Why should I?” Miguels gaze tracked someone from across the street. “Your guy there seems like a good one, but I met my share of police, Reverend. I been on the right side of the law myself and what’s it done me?”

  Sam came up the steps with his hands in his pockets. “Want to add anything to the statement you gave earlier?”

  “Nope.”

  “You heard from the penitentiary?” Sam asked.

  Miguel glowered, as much of an answer as he was willing to give.

  “I’ll talk to the warden personally,” Sam said. “Let him know what happened to you, Mr. Sanchez.”

  Miguel’s eyes narrowed, his face turning thunderous before he swallowed and cleared his throat.

  “Thanks, Detective. I need that job to pay Juanito’s school fees.”

  Sam nodded, the frown continuing to mar the smooth skin on his forehead.

  Miguel stood, a bit shaky, and turned to head into the house.

  “Mr. Sanchez?” Sam called.