“So what happened after that?” asked Jemimah.
“Brenda gets up to leave. Paula comes back and sits down. Brenda puts her hand on Paula’s wrist and starts screaming obscenities at her, calling her a slut. Then she grabs a steak knife from the table and lunges at her, hollering,
‘I’ll slit your throat, bitch.’ It took me and two of the waiters to bring her down. She didn’t stop screaming the entire time. The police came, arrested her, and I haven’t seen her since. I heard the Judge sentenced her to a loony bin somewhere in Colorado.”
“Did you press charges?” Jemimah could tell the conversation was difficult for him.
“No, but Paula did. She went down to the police station and filed a complaint. A couple of the waiters testified at the hearing. Lucky for me, I didn’t have to go to court.”
“What happened to Paula? Did Brenda frighten her away?”
“I never thought about that, but she probably did. We never had another date after that. I called her a couple of times but could never reach her. Can’t hardly blame her. Seems like she just dropped out of sight. Who knows, maybe she figured I was some kind of freak and didn’t want anything to do with me.”
Jemimah thought to herself that there might be more to it than that, but didn’t want to open up a can of worms with nothing more than a gut feeling about what might have really happened to Paula.
“Thank you, Jimmy,” she said. You’ve been a great help.”
“No problem,” he said, showing her to the door.
Chapter 44
Jemimah drove down the six-lane Interstate 70 in Denver—more traffic than in both Santa Fe and Albuquerque combined. She was glad she lived in Two-Main-Road Santa Fe, with no possibility of a freeway ever being built near it. Her exit came up quickly and she found the hotel with ease.
She sat on the bed in Room 118 of Denver’s historic Curtis Hotel, a large eclectic Victorian built in the 1800s. The hotel was small by Santa Fe standards, with only six stories and 150 rooms. But this wasn’t a pleasure trip. She preferred to stay in a central location where she could accomplish what she set out to do and return home.
Her room overlooked a pedestrian park with sandstone sidewalks. The trolley clanked noisily toward the station on the next block. It was early in the evening and a steady rain pelted her window. She didn’t feel much like sitting alone in the restaurant, so she decided to order from room service. She intended to catch a flight back to Albuquerque around seven the next morning.
She called Rick and told him what she had discovered about Brenda. There was no doubt in her mind that Brenda had not only killed each of the women in a jealous rage, but Charlie, too. Their conversation made her more determined than ever to have Brenda picked up for questioning. Romero told her that when she returned to Santa Fe, they would set up surveillance at her residence and at the bar in Madrid. Jemimah told Rick of her theory that Jimmy Fernando’s new girlfriend had probably met the same fate as the murdered women in Santa Fe. She would leave it to Rick to pursue that avenue with the Colorado State Police when the time came.
She reached over and set the alarm clock. Fifteen minutes later she was cozying up to the blankets. She could hear her phone ringing somewhere in the room. Where was it? She emptied her purse as it continued to ring. She finally retrieved it from the zipped pocket of her suitcase. Whitney’s name flashed across its face.
“Hello, Whitney. Long time no hear,” she said, yawning.
“Been waiting for you to return my call, Jem,” he drawled. “Too busy these days?”
“I’ve meant to get back to you. Right now I’m in Denver. Can this wait?” It was an effort to keep the annoyance out of her voice.
“You got a second?” he said.
“Sure,” she gave in. “But make it short.”
“You know that cold case I was asking for your opinion on?”
“The woman in the red corvette, yes, I do.”
Jemimah didn’t think this was something that couldn’t wait.
“Listen, I’ve been reviewing the file. Spoke to a few of the witnesses, and I’m thinking it’s not worth pursuing. Probably cost the taxpayers a whole bunch of money and then turn out to be a dead end.”
Jemimah was surprised. She could feel the pitch of her voice rising. “Not worth pursuing? A woman’s dead under suspicious circumstances. It sounded like a cover-up to me.”
“I just said I did some investigating into the circumstances, and I’m reclosing the file,”
he said.
“Are you sure? I ...” Jemimah stammered.
“Case closed, Jemimah,” he said abruptly.
“Already filed away.”
“Your call, Whitney.” She wasn’t ready to debate the point.
His tone of voice changed to one dripping with honey. “So what you doing this Friday. Want to have dinner?”
“No thanks. I’m pretty involved in this case. I’ll probably be doing a surveillance that night,” she said.
“My, my. Aren’t we moving up the ladder.
Rain check?”
“I’ll think about it and let you know,” she said.
“Getting sweet on the Lieutenant, are we?”
“Put a sock in it, Whitney,” she said, annoyed.
“Pleasant dreams, Jem.” He hung up.
Jemimah thought about the case Whitney had asked her opinion on. Even a cursory examination pointed to a blue wall erected around it. She was sure there was a lot more to it than Whitney was letting on. Maybe he had just used the case as an excuse to get closer to her and then realized she had read more into it than he expected.
Or maybe he had a deeper, darker involvement.
Chapter 45
On Saturday, Rick Romero decided he needed a break. He had been working non-stop on his caseload. A drive south on Highway 14 might help him develop a new perspective on things. He loved the hilly terrain of the Cerrillos area. It encompassed elements of wonder and beauty, ever-changing on the horizon. About fifteen miles out, he drove up to Sandia Crest, the highest point of the Sandia mountain range, which stretched farther south to surround the Albuquerque landscape.
Romero parked his car, walked a short distance, and sat on a rocky escarpment to look out on the vast expanse. The sky was dark and cloudy, threatening a rainstorm. But it didn’t matter to him. A series of lightning bolts generated a dazzling light show over the Sandias. A sense of peace and stillness permeated his entire being.
In the 1950s, an airliner had crashed at the top of the highest peak of the Sandias. There were no survivors, and because of the difficulty in reaching the plane, only those items that could be recovered were brought down the mountain. Some twenty years later as a teenager, Romero climbed the face of the mountain with his father, curious to see the wreckage eleven thousand feet up. Each time he drove on I-25, he could still see the glint of the sun reflecting off the remaining metal skeleton of the plane.
It had been a while since Romero had taken the opportunity to relax with nature. The surrounding fields below were covered with purple and yellow wildflowers, in contrast to the carpets of cholla cactus growing next to the highway. There was a lot he had to think about. For months he’d been hoping he and Jemimah could embark on a romantic relationship, but that wasn’t working out. As a police officer, long term relationships scared the crap out of him. Were he to be killed on duty, the ones he left behind would suffer. But then again, up to this point he really hadn’t met anyone he wanted to become deeply involved with.
These rare moments of relaxation always brought up the past for Romero. As a young man he didn’t want to be Spanish—his parents’ culture. He endured years of teasing and name-calling for his home-cut hair and for the way he and his group of friends butchered the English language. By the time he graduated from high school, Romero had honed his language skills and learned to speak English without a hint of an accent.
He spent the next couple of hours sitting on the side of the mountain gazing out over the
landscape. Another round of lightning made its way through the sky, pausing for a millisecond and then erupting again. From force of habit he counted to seven and, as if on cue, the clap of thunder reverberated all around him. He smiled as he thought about the childhood game his mother had introduced to him on rainy days. Years later he’d come to find out that it wasn’t an old wives’ tale.
The rain began as a slight drizzle, small droplets refreshing his face. By the time he decided to walk back to his car, he was drenched. He laughed, recalling the many times his grandmother chided him for not having enough sense to come in out of the rain.
Chapter 46
Brenda Mason resided in a small two-bedroom house on a side street a few blocks from downtown Santa Fe. She rented a room from Sonja Swentzel, a forty-something woman who remained stuck in the sixties. Sonja dressed in long cotton broom-skirts and puff-sleeved lace tops, with rows of colored corn necklaces and faux turquoise beads around her neck. She was pale-eyed and pale-complexioned, with brown hair down to her waist. Unlike Brenda, who was always high, Sonja was a whiny, depressing person. She had glommed on to every assistance program offered by Santa Fe County. Brenda saw her as a malingerer who spent most of her time thinking of ways to scam the State, the County or the City, to talk them into paying for more of her expenses and those of her now full-grown illegitimate son. She had racked up over a quarter of a million dollars in assistance since he was born twenty-five years earlier, and some poor fool she’d selected as a sperm donor was now up to his ass in debt to the State for all those years of back child support she claimed he never paid.
Sonja might be an opportunist, but she was no dummy. She had just never taken advantage of her college education. Instead of using her Master’s degree, she preferred to be on the dole. The City paid the rent on her house, and she rented part of it to Brenda, who took her time paying the rent. Brenda knew it annoyed Sonja that she only stayed there when it was convenient, spending the remainder of the time with Charlie or some other temporary boyfriend.
Brenda pulled into Sonja’s driveway. She reached over to the back seat, grabbed Charlie’s backpack and sauntered up the brick sidewalk. The small adobe house was typical of the area, except that the front door was painted bright yellow—Sonja’s idea of drawing the sun’s energy. Brenda turned the key and opened the door. She was glad Sonja wasn’t home. She went into the bathroom, stripped off her clothes, and drew a bath. As she toweled off, she debated whether to stay home or go out for drinks. On the way home, Brenda stopped at a trendy shop on the plaza and bought herself a skirt, top and a pair of sandals. In the bedroom, she took the new outfit out of the shopping bag and got dressed.
She reached into Charlie’s backpack, grabbed a handful of bills and put them in an envelope for Sonja with a note stating that she intended to move at the end of the month. She emptied the contents of the backpack on the bed, stuffed the bills into a small overnight satchel and hid it under a stack of junk in the closet.
Brenda stood in front of the full-length mirror. Killer extraordinaire, she thought as she checked her makeup. She sat down at her computer, logged on to the local newspaper site and scanned the local news. She erupted into raucous laughter as she read the front page headline about four women found dead in Santa Fe County. Could there possibly be a connection to the recent shootings, the reporter asked the Police captain. “Shit, yeah,” Brenda raised her arm to mimic the pull of a train whistle. “Every one of these bitches slept with Charlie. That’s your connection, asshole.”
When she was twenty-two, a psychiatrist had told her the psychotic episodes would return unless she stayed on the meds. He prescribed Xyprexa and Haldol and told her to see him in a month, but she never kept the appointment; she could buy all the drugs she needed on the street. She moved to Colorado and found a job and an apartment in Denver. Things progressed smoothly until the breakup with Jimmy Fernando. To get even with Jimmy for dumping her, she killed his new girlfriend. That would fix his ass. She packed up all her stuff and moved to New Mexico. When she met Charlie, everything was fine until she told him she was leaving. She had been sure that he would profess his love and beg her to stay. Instead he had told her not to let the door kick her in the ass on the way out.
After the breakup with Charlie, Brenda began parking her car a short distance from the ranch. When she saw the lights go out, she sneaked in through the sunroom door, which Charlie never locked. She had previously drugged the bottle of whiskey he kept in the cupboard. When he and his date had passed out, she lifted the woman onto the little red wagon the old lady who owned the ranch had used for carrying firewood. In the barn, she placed the limp body on the plastic tarp, slit its throat and dragged it down the ramp to the tunnel. Charlie woke up the next morning thinking the woman had left in the middle of the night.
Brenda had discovered the entrance to the tunnel quite by accident while scouring the barn for Charlie’s stash of grass. She spotted a piece of old canvas sheeting under a layer of dirt and figured it might be covering a hiding place. Lifting the edge of the frayed tarp exposed a metal grate over what appeared to be a tunnel. Shining a flashlight ahead of her, she followed the shaft for a thousand feet—she couldn’t tell exactly how far—until it ended at a four-rung ladder. She climbed up the ladder but had a hard time dislodging the boulder over the exit. Finally it gave. Emerging from the other end of the tunnel, she was momentarily disoriented. What a surprise to find herself at the cave at Medicine Rock. From where she was standing, she could see all the way to the barn. Holy shit.
When Brenda killed the first woman, she decided to stash the body in the shaft until she could drag it over and dump it in the old well some distance behind the barn. But she never had that chance. Besides, it looked like nobody had ever been in the tunnel, not even Charlie, and it pleased her that she had found the perfect hiding place.
Initially there was only going to be one victim before Brenda attempted to get Charlie back in her life, but that asshole was never satisfied. He had to have every woman. At least once every couple of weeks he brought a new someone home to the ranch. There were probably more that Brenda didn’t know about, but she couldn’t keep track of him twenty four-seven, however hard she tried.
Brenda stared at herself in the mirror, deep in thought. I’m Scot free; the cops are focusing on Charlie. Right now she was looking forward to having a drink at the bar in Madrid and getting on with life. That fifty grand was going to make life much, much easier.
Chapter 47
At the Mine Shaft Tavern in Madrid Brenda sat on a barstool in front of the forty-foot wooden bar. The place was just dark enough. Neon signs illuminated the backdrop of the bar. The place was weighted with stale cigarette smoke, western memorabilia and cowboy kitsch. A pool table sat in the center of the back room, cue sticks lined up against the wall. The bartender was a stocky hunk of a man with long brown hair grown out of control. It was Margarita hour. Brenda motioned to him, and he set a drink in front of her.
She eyed her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. She had been a patron here ever since moving from Colorado. These were her type of people: rowdy, nonconformist, but all hard-drinking bar-friendly folks. She never fit into the haughty Santa Fe night scene. It was too phony for her. Everything was just fine here. She was dressed in a short skirt, a black Lycra top and leather boots, all of which accentuated her well-toned physique. There was no question that she was fit and strong. A group of regulars hunched over their drinks, cigarette ashes dropping casually to the floor as they discussed football, the economy, and women in general.
Jemimah drove into the Tavern parking lot. She was there to meet Tim McCabe. She spotted his familiar silver Hummer rumbling toward the parking lot. She placed her notes back in her briefcase and stepped out of the car. It was seven o’clock, but the sun was taking its time slipping behind the mountain. She waved at McCabe. They walked into the bar together, hoping to encounter Brenda in her element. Julie the barmaid came over to greet them and directed
them to a corner table where they could observe people coming and going. Jemimah introduced herself and McCabe and they both ordered Budweiser on tap.
As the bartender poured beer into glass mugs and slid them across the bar to Julie, Brenda motioned for a refill on her rum and Coke. Julie carried the tray to McCabe and Jemimah and placed the beer on their table. She leaned over to hand them napkins.
“She’s here,” she said to Jemimah. I’ll point her out to you.
Julie worked her way across the room over to Brenda, wiping tables in her path. She motioned to Jemimah, then picked up Brenda’s empty glass, took it behind the bar and placed it in a plastic bag. Oblivious, the bartender continued to mix drinks and unpack cases of liquor. Julie handed the bagged glass with Brenda’s fingerprints to Jemimah. McCabe would deliver it to the Forensics lab.
Chapter 48
Brenda confronted Julie in the bathroom.
“Who was that couple you were so chummy with, Julie?” she said.
“Which couple you talking about?” Julie asked as she blew her hands dry.
“Don’t play dumb. The ones you pointed me out to.”
Julie knew she was no match for Brenda, having been privy to her intimidating side on recent occasions.
“All right,” she said. “I think she’s some kind of investigator. I don’t know him. Maybe he’s a boyfriend.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” Brenda hissed.
“Nothing, I guess,” Julie lied.
Brenda grabbed her arm and gave it a menacing twist. “C’mon, Julie. There’s more to it than that.”
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