Talk about delusions. Dakota was living in one. Maria pressed her arms to her side so she didn’t reach over and slap the girl.
“I guess that didn’t work out as planned, did it?” Rod didn’t hide his sarcasm. And with Dakota’s confession out in the open, he didn’t need to keep it in any longer.
“No, it didn’t.” Dakota hiccupped. “When I saw you outside the Mexican restaurant, I realized I didn’t want to go through with the plan. I had wanted to see you once again before you went … crazy. When I saw you that night you seemed so happy. It made me have second thoughts.”
“So it was you I saw outside the restaurant?” Rod asked.
“Yes.” Dakota sniffled. “After that night I told Brian I was out. But he wouldn’t change the plan. He told me he’d expose me. Send me back to Mexico unless I went through with it. So I stuck to the plan until I heard you were really sick and might die. Brian lied to me. When I confronted him, he told me the bacteria he used had no guarantees.” Dakota blew her nose again. “Rod, I never would have done it if I’d known it might kill you. Please, please believe me.”
Everyone in the room waited for Rod’s response, but he said nothing.
“Rod, I didn’t mean for it to happen like this,” Dakota pled. “Please forgive me. I was so scared. My cousin—I found her murdered. I had to leave. I had to. And then it was awful in Mexico. I ate worse than our dog Clyde did. You wouldn’t have wanted to see me live like that. I had to do something.”
“That’s when you should have contacted me.” Rod sat up in bed. “You should have told me what happened. Told me the marriage was a fake. Explained about your cousin. I would have helped.” Rod gathered strength as he spoke. “But you don’t frame me for murder, make me go crazy, and nearly kill me.” He shuddered. “Do you know what the infection did to me? I was out of my mind, literally more freaked out than I’ve ever been in my life. I wanted to die. I was begging for it at the end. And I remember it all. Every single crazy paranoid thought.”
“I’m sorry.” Dakota looked away.
“There are some things you never forget. Like when a spouse leaves you after a few months of marriage.”
Dakota hung her head. “I didn’t think things would go so wrong.”
Grant stood up, red faced and indignant. “That is the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard. Are you serious? You didn’t think of the risks? You are—”
“Grant,” said Beth, pulling on his arm. “Let’s go for a walk.” She pushed him toward the door.
“Hey,” Rod said to Grant as Beth was coaxing him out of the room, “can you find me the name of a good probate lawyer? I’m going to need one. And soon.”
“You and me both, brother. I’m on it.”
Grant and Beth left the room as Dakota continued to cry, sopping up tears with tissues that Melissa kept handing her. Maria didn’t know what to do except stay and watch. The amount of deceit it took to do what Dakota and Brian had done was sickening. Dakota could act as innocent as she wanted to, but deep down the woman was a selfish narcissist.
At last, the prosecuting lawyer took Dakota by the arm and told her she needed to come with him. He escorted her out with the police officers following closely behind.
Melissa made a quick phone call. “Tom, I need you to track down Brian.” A pause. “Yes, our Brian. It’s big. You can’t lose him no matter what.”
Melissa hung up the phone and walked to Rod’s bedside. She put a hand on his shoulder and patted it. “We’ll get him, Rod. I promise.” She then turned, offered a quick smile to Maria, and left.
It was the two of them now—what Maria had been waiting for all day. Yet she wished she could be anywhere but there. Rod Thorton had not been in the CIA. He had not been captured by terrorists. He had not been put in solitary confinement.
But Rod Thorton had lived through his own version of Tehran.
Maria understood too well what that did to a person. His soul was broken. He would need time and patience.
Was she strong enough to give it to him? Because only then would the healing come.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Over the years, a lot of people have argued about the probable cause of these hapless, headless victims. Were they murdered, all in the same way? Or were they simply victims of a terribly cruel environment? Had they been shot and beheaded, or had they died of dehydration and had their bones picked clean by scavengers? One explanation seems just as plausible as the other.
“MYSTERIES & MIRACLES OF ARIZONA” BY JACK KUTZ. RHOMBUS PUBLISHING COMPANY, 1992, PAGE 34.
Maria held a Styrofoam cup full of herbal tea. She sat on a picnic bench in the hot living room of The Keeper’s lodge. Sierra, the Materfamilias, rocked in her La-Z-Boy recliner with her own Styrofoam cup in hand. The envelope full of photographs Maria had taken from the lodge was at Sierra’s side.
“Thank you for bringing these back,” the old woman said to Maria. “We have an important work here, and these photos are part of it.”
The woman had been more than gracious to let Maria in and had even offered to make her something to drink.
“You’re welcome.” Maria had hoped for a frank conversation with the old woman. Something more intimate than she would have gotten if Beth or Derrick had come with her. “You know, I’m not the type to spout off fake apologies. I could tell you I’m sorry for taking the photos, but I’m not. I’m glad I did. Question is, why did you let me take them? You were there that night. In the igloo with me?” Maria took a sip of the tea and about gagged at the heat in the already sweltering room.
“Yes, that was me in the igloo.”
Maria forced herself to keep a calm face even though the woman had admitted to being a dog—at least some of the time. “So why did you let me take them?”
Sierra rocked a moment in silence. “I don’t always know why I do the things I do. I’m like you, Maria. Sometimes I ‘feel’ it. That night I knew you needed the photos. At first I didn’t, so I’d called the boys. But in the igloo I changed my mind.”
“Why don’t you feel threatened by people like me and Sofia?” asked Maria. “It seemed like Ranger Ferlund did.”
“Unlike Chalipan, I mean Ranger Ferlund, I appreciate others who are not of our kind who possess the Sight.” Sierra adjusted one of the slippers on her feet.
“What is it? The Sight?” Maria stopped herself from taking another sip of tea. She wasn’t thirsty, but it was a habit to drink whatever she was holding.
“My people all have it. We are born with. It allows us see what others can’t. But there are very few of us left. One less now that Ranger Ferlund has … ah … passed on.”
Maria winced. So Sierra and the ranger were related.
“Don’t regret what you did,” said the old woman. “It needed to be done. He’d gone astray. His methods were not what the ancients would have done. I too protect the mountain, but I have found a better way. A more peaceful way.”
“So that is what you do? Protect the mountain?” asked Maria. “I thought you were in it for the Dutchman’s goldmine.”
“And that is why I’m so successful.” The smile lines in old woman’s face deepened as she spoke. “There are many kinds of treasure. I have many helpers because they think we seek a treasure of gold. I do not correct them, and I throw them a bone every so often. A few nuggets here. Some gold dust there. It’s mutually beneficially.”
“So you don’t kill people? And then cut their heads off?”
“Gracious no. I don’t kill people. I do all I can to protect them—even from my own kind. Like the dear, misguided ranger. But I wasn’t always successful, as was the case with Sofia. She had a strong sense of the Sight, that one.”
“Dakota’s cousin?”
“Yes.”
“Why was her Sight so strong?”
“I believe it was in her blood. One of my ancestors must have mixed among her kind. That’s usually that way it goes, skipping many generations and then showing up all of a sudden.”<
br />
“And how about me?” Maria asked. “Is my sense of Sight strong?”
“No. Quite the opposite. It’s very weak. Sporadic. I am quite sure you weren’t born with it. I think it developed. On occasion that happens. Sometimes the soul is exposed to things so hard that the Beyond can no longer be hidden from the person.”
Maria caught her breath. It was true that all of her ghosts—both the hallucinations and the real ones—began with her time in Tehran.
Sierra continued speaking. “In your case, my dear, the Sight comes and goes. Be grateful. Having it all the time is no treat. Trust me.”
The swamp cooler rattled away, doing little to reduce the sweltering heat. It felt like the world had collapsed into this tiny living room space. All the answers were in front of Maria in the form of a wrinkly woman wearing fuzzy slippers and sipping tea in one hundred degree weather.
“I hope you don’t mind me asking,” said Maria, tentatively, “but who are you? Who was Ranger Ferlund? And how do you … you know … do the whole changing thing?”
“If I told you,” said Sierra, eyes glinting, “I’d have to kill you. And we’ve already established that’s something I try to avoid.”
“And what about the mountain’s treasure. Is there really any gold in the Superstitions?” Maria didn’t know why she cared. She’d already swore to herself that she was never going back into the wretched place.
“Remember the gold dust and nuggets I throw my boys?” asked Sierra. “They come from somewhere. Believe me, the benefits from Medicare are not that good.” She laughed. “But that is all I can say. For now, I think it’s time for you to go. There’s someone who needs you. Someone who is hurting. Be kind to him. And patient.”
Rod.
“I’m going to go see him right after I leave here. He gets released from the hospital tomorrow and we’re headed home. Rest and relaxation are the doctor’s orders.”
The old woman laughed, knowingly. “You’ll have to tell me how that goes. If you’ve noticed, serenity doesn’t seem to be your friend.”
Maria had to agree. “Thanks again for the tea. Is it okay if I take it with me?”
“That’s why I use Styrofoam. So my guests can leave sooner.” The old woman snorted.
Maria laughed. “I’ll let myself out.” She stood and turned toward the door.
The old woman called out. “Oh, and if you ever run into old Joe again, please tell him ‘hi’ for me.”
Maria swung back around. “Joe?”
“Yes, Joe. I believe he helped you a while back. Some sort of a toe sacrifice? He mentioned it to me not long after it happened.”
“Oh.” Maria looked down at her manicured pinky toe, still there. A reminder of her time in the middle of the night in the Moquith Mountains with Joe and his knife. “I will. I’ll tell him ‘hi’ from you.”
The Materfamilias waved. “Excellent. Goodbye. And good luck.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
This is the Lost Dutchman story … An old German prospector name Jacob Waltz died in his modest Phoenix-area ranch house with a large pile of gold ore near, having told at least one person that the ore came from a gold-rich mine hidden in or near the Superstition Mountains. The variations on that theme are the real heart of the legend, though. There is a seemingly unending list of added details—nearly a printed encyclopedia’s worth of stories accompanied by enough crudely rendered maps to fill an atlas. They range widely. Some [stories] lack hard-boiled science; others are rooted in plausible but improvable second-hand information; other bits revolved around curses enforced by mystical guardians.
WWW.PHOENIXNEWTIMES.COM. MARTINE CIZMAR, APR 22, 2010.
Maria walked into Rod’s hospital room just as he walked out of its small corner bathroom, pulling his IV pole behind him. His hair glistened, and the air smelled of cheap shampoo. He jumped when he saw her and flung his arm around to his backside, closing the gown that was about to precariously swing open.
“Wow, you look fantastic!”
“Thank you,” said Rod, sporting a genuine smile. “I actually feel pretty fantastic. It’s amazing what even a hospital shower can do. I feel almost human again. I even trimmed off that horrible scraggly beard thing that was going on.”
He really did look so much better. Maria literally stared at him for a good ten seconds before realizing what she was doing. His face was almost back to that full, chiseled Roman god look. No more sunken cheeks and sags under his eyes. What she wanted to do was rush over and wrap herself around him, holding him safe and sound in her arms.
A few, okay a large number of kisses would be nice too.
Instead, she held her ground and warmly smiled. “One of the best memories of my life was my first shower after getting home from Tehran. It was unbelievably amazing.”
“I tell you what,” said Rod, sitting down on the bed and swinging his legs onto the mattress. “As soon as I get back to Kanab I’m taking a bath in my jetted tub and I’m not getting out until I have to go to work. I want to wash all of this … hospital off me.”
Maria felt a growing sense of joy. Rod’s mood was so much more improved than it had been in the past several days. His perky, upbeat attitude was making a comeback at last.
“That sounds like a brilliant idea. Just think. One more day and you’re out of this place. Good riddance,” said Maria, easing a few steps his direction.
“I know. You’ve got to be so glad to get out of here and back to your police business, too. Some class reunion, eh?”
The corner of Maria’s mouth twitched. The back and forth banter felt wonderful. Whether it was the antibiotic or the aftermath of all of the sedatives Rod had been on, he hadn’t been himself. Today was definitely looking up. “Yeah, I’ve got to admit, I highly doubt I’m going to my high school’s fifteenth. It’s in three years. Can you believe that?”
Maria was a foot from his bed now. It was time for her to find a chair to sit in. She wondered if he’d try to at least hold her hand today. So far, he hadn’t initiated much physical contact. It was literally painful for Maria to sit in the same room with him and pretend like she didn’t want to snuggle up to his side and find her comfy spot. But she held back. Gave him the space he needed.
She knew it was normal. To be expected. The man had found his wife, ex-wife actually, that he’d been pining over for six years. Granted, the woman had been trying to swindle him from day one, but that was neither here nor there. The fact was Rod had loved Dakota deeply.
All of the old emotions of abandonment had clearly resurfaced in Rod. He’d been withdrawn and despondent since the moment Dakota had left his hospital room with the police. It had been an awkward situation—alone with Rod, she watched him plummet into the stages of grief. The denial. The anger. He seemed to experience them all at once.
Over the last few days Rod and Maria had talked some—mostly she’d explained as much as she could about the case. She told Rod about the switched contact solutions. She also admitted that for a while she’d thought it was Amy who had done it, but understood now Amy was a pawn, just another woman Brian had played.
Maria also had told Rod about Brian’s breakdown during questioning. He hadn’t admitted to everything, but he did confess to attempted blackmail after Dakota’s disappearance. He’d stopped when he realized it was too dangerous. He also admitted to planting the fake evidence by Sofia’s skeleton, but he claimed it was all Dakota’s idea. He said Dakota was even the one who’d purchased fresh meat to rub over the skeletal remains to make sure Clyde would pick up on the scent and find the evidence once the old classmates got close to the area.
Today, however, Maria promised herself she wouldn’t talk about the case at all. It was going to be nothing but happiness and positivity. She planned on spending her time reliving old memories with Rod.
“Hey,” she began, “do you remember the time that you and I—”
Rod reached over and picked up the television remote, switching it on. A weather man rattled
off the forecast for the day which, not surprisingly, was going to be hot.
Maria wasn’t sure if Rod had interrupted her on purpose or on accident. She waited to see what he would do next.
Methodically, he stirred his vanilla pudding, scooping up a spoonful and shoveling it in his mouth. “If I ever have to eat anymore of this stuff, I’m seriously going to get my stomach pumped.”
“It’s not that bad,” said Maria. ‘But you should have gotten the chocolate. It’s much better.”
“What is it with you women and your chocolate, anyway?” Rod turned to look at her. A grin spread on his face. “It’s almost like you think you could put wheels and a steering wheel on a chocolate bar and drive it around. Now a car … that’s something I could get excited about.”
“Speaking of,” said Maria, pulling something out of her backpack, “look what I brought for you.” She handed him the latest issue of Road and Track.
Rod’s face lit up. “Sanity at last.” He accepted the gift and started immediately flipping through the pages. As he did so, he rubbed his temple with his index finger.
“Headache?” Maria asked.
“Yes. Constantly it seems.”
“Did you take something for it?’ Maria remembered the migraines she suffered from for a long time after Tehran.
“Just some Tylenol. I don’t want anything stronger. I’m not a big fan of drugs. Besides, they don’t work. It’s like my brain won’t shut down. It keeps replaying all of the horrible things that seemed so real during my craziness. It’s exhausting have hallucinations.”
“I know,” said Maria. And she did. If there was anyone who could understand Rod it was her.
“I know you do.” Slowly, Rod reached out and slid his fingers in between hers.
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