The man didn’t respond.
“You agreed to have it here in half an hour.”
“I’m trapped in my car, and there’s a problem with blood.”
“What? Larry, you’re scaring me. What’s going on out there?”
You talk, he mouthed to Bernie, and turned his head away.
“Merilee, it’s Officer Manuelito. Ranger Hoffman had a car accident. I’m here with him now, waiting for the ambulance.”
The phone went quiet for a long moment. When Merilee spoke again, her voice had changed. “Oh dear. How bad is he?”
“I don’t know. I can hear the ambulance rolling toward us now.” Let the paramedics examine him, she thought, and then Hoffman can tell her his condition if he wants to.
“Good. Is Manzanares there, too?”
An odd question, Bernie thought. “No, ma’am.” She looked toward the white pickup as it rolled to a stop.
Merilee hung up without a good-bye.
Bernie offered the phone to Hoffman, and he tossed it toward the passenger seat. He didn’t react when the phone bounced from the seat onto the floor.
“So will you?” he said.
“Will I what?”
“That box?” She could see him struggle to find the words. “If my house rolls away, something might happen, you know?”
“You mean, when your car is towed, the box might disappear?”
Hoffman pointed over his shoulder into the back seat. “For Mamarilee. My flavor please. Remember?”
She recalled the book he’d sold her at a bargain price. The gift still sat in the trunk of her unit, awaiting Chee’s return and their reunion.
She took out her phone and took a picture of the box as it rested on the back-seat floor, and a close-up that showed the address on it, that of Merilee Cruz. Then she lifted it out of the back seat, put it in the trunk of her unit, took another picture, and came back to keep an eye on Hoffman.
Some minutes later the ambulance crew members jumped out, unloaded their stretcher, and headed toward the car. Bernie felt relief course through her. Hoffman would be in good hands. Two attendants began helping Hoffman while the third spoke to her.
“Did you see what happened?” he asked.
“No. I noticed the car as I was driving by.” She paused as a pickup pulled off on the shoulder and parked in front of her unit. “His right shoulder looks like it might be dislocated, and his nose is at a funny angle and bleeding. He’s hallucinating, and his glasses broke.”
“Is he drunk?”
“He told me he’d had a drink and some painkillers. He isn’t combative.”
“Anything else?”
“His name is Larry Hoffman, and he’s a ranger at El Morro.”
The medic thanked her. As she headed back toward her unit, she saw Manzanares, out of uniform, walking down the slope from the pickup white, toward the accident.
He stopped when he reached her. “What happened?”
“Hoffman said a phone call distracted him, and he ran off the road.”
He nodded. “Clear road. No traffic. How badly injured is he?”
“You’ll have to ask the ambulance crew. It looks to me like a broken nose and a dislocated shoulder. I don’t know what else.”
“At least he didn’t hurt anybody else. If you hadn’t been out here, it would have taken a while for someone to find him. Especially now that it’s getting dark.” Manzanares sighed. “Dumb bastard. Why are you here?”
She resented the attitude that went with the question. “I was checking out some old bones at the rescue site, and I saw a car off the road.” She’d used the wrong word, she realized; Cruz had not been rescued yet. “Have you heard how much longer the search will go on?”
“I don’t know, but the team is running out of places to look, and a big storm is on the way.”
“Why did it take so long for the search to get started?”
“What do you mean?”
“You showed up and made the call, and then at least two hours before anything happened, before Katz arrived and got things moving.”
“You know how ladies are.”
“I do. Efficient and professional. Katz said she was on the road within fifteen minutes of getting the call.”
“Well, then, it’s a mystery, isn’t it? Kind of like Cruz disappearing out here in the first place.” Manzanares turned his back on her and started down the hill.
As Bernie climbed up the slope to her police car, she glared at the Dallas Cowboys bumper sticker on his truck. Another point against the man. She liked the Broncos. She started the engine and, finally, headed for Shiprock.
The highway was dark now, and only one vehicle passed her. She enjoyed this ride in the daytime, but now, especially after the hike to see the bones and the excitement of Larry’s accident, she wanted to be home. Snow fell lightly now and she turned on the wipers.
At the junction with I-40, she hesitated, deciding that she had enough fuel to wait until the truck stop west of Grants. She would stretch and get some coffee, shake off the weariness she felt. From there it was about two hours to Shiprock. She heard her phone vibrate. Chee? No, it was Manzanares.
“Larry Hoffman is in the intensive care unit. Did he talk to you about a box that was in the back seat?”
“Yes. He said it was an old pot and asked me to take it to Merilee Cruz for him. I said I would because he was so concerned about it disappearing when his car was towed.”
“He played you. Bad move. I found pills in a baggie under the front passenger’s-side floor mat. I don’t think there is a pot in that box. Or if there is, it’s probably packed with drugs. What were you thinking, sweetheart?”
His condescending attitude made her bristle.
“Are you sure about the baggie?” Bernie remembered lifting the mat and replacing it. It had fit snugly, with nothing hidden beneath it.
“Of course I’m sure.” Manzanares spoke with a sneer. “I didn’t find a phone in the car or on him. Did you take that, too?”
“I saw him try to toss it on the passenger seat. It bounced to the floor.”
“Well, don’t worry about the phone. It’s not your case or your jurisdiction, and I know you’ve got plenty to do. I’ll talk to Merilee Cruz about the box and handle this.” And he ended the call.
She drove on, her earlier sluggishness evaporated in the heat of Manzanares’s lies. Her brain, which had been puzzling over Cruz’s disappearance ever since she received Cooper’s worried call, grasped some rough edges that gave her purchase on the problem at hand. She hadn’t missed the drugs; they hadn’t been there when she searched. That could only mean one thing. Manzanares had planted them for some reason.
Her next stop was Merilee’s house. She would open the box in the woman’s presence. If there were drugs in it, she’d take photos. If not, she’d ask some questions about how the pot was acquired and exactly what the Internet art business was, and see where the conversation went from there.
Hoffman had referred to the pot as “her” pot. Did that mean Merilee had purchased it from the museum shop? What if, instead, he’d had the pot on consignment there from Merilee?
By all accounts, Domingo Cruz knew the Malpais, and he hiked with his camera. What if he’d stumbled across some burials, caves of bones such as Annie had found, but with grave goods intact? It would be easy for him to photograph them as he found them, and then Merilee could market them on the Internet. Or Larry Hoffman could sell them under the counter at the monument store, preferably to visitors like the French people she met or others who didn’t know or care enough about the antiquities law protecting cultural resources to ask how they happened to be at the gift shop.
The more she thought about the pot in the trunk of her unit, the more questions she had.
No lights were on in Merilee’s house, and there was no vehicle in the driveway. She rang the doorbell, and when there was no answer, rapped with the big metal knocker. As she waited in the dark, snow began to fall in earnest,
melting as it touched the ground. The temperature had dropped, too.
Her mind scrolled back to her encounter with Manzanares at the accident scene. He hadn’t asked her to give him the box, or even to leave it at the police station for him. That reinforced her idea that the issue wasn’t drugs in the box with the pot, but the pot itself. One of the searchers had mentioned that the Manzanares family ranch bordered public land. Had Dom taken the pot from the ranch? An old pot found on private land could be legally resold if it wasn’t associated with a burial. One from the Malpais, with its collection of federal agency jurisdictions, was off limits, as was anything associated with the dead.
Did any of this explain why Domingo Cruz was missing? Was Merilee propping up Wings and Roots with her Internet sales?
Bernie rapped again and called for Merilee, then took an official Navajo Police business card out of her backpack. On the blank side, she wrote “Call me about Larry’s box.”
As she walked back to her unit, she looked over at the greenhouse, a building about the size of a two-car garage. The lights were on, creating a warm glow. Maybe Merilee was there. Bernie opened the waist-high garden gate and walked toward the greenhouse along a path illuminated with small solar lights. Heat and moisture had steamed up the glass, but she could discern treelike shapes, faintly green through the opaqueness.
She rapped on the door. “Merilee, it’s Bernie Manuelito. Are you in here?” She waited, then tried the doorknob. It turned, and she entered.
It took a minute for the loamy perfume to reach her and for her to feel the warmth and humidity. The raised beds were empty, their dark soil resting from whatever crop they had held. Large pots held rosemary and small trees bearing aromatic white blossoms and small little oranges among the shiny leaves.
Some ficus trees had yellow leaves along with the green, as she would have expected in December. Sticklike dormant plants waited for the welcome warmth and light of spring. On the wall was a timer, evidently the device that controlled the watering and the light system for the greenhouse. But no Merilee.
A heady fragrance drew her to the brugmansia. One plant, its showy yellow trumpet flowers as big as soup bowls, was fully in bloom, giving off a rich, deep perfume. Rubber gloves lay next to the plant’s pot, a reminder that, like many beautiful things that grow in gardens and greenhouses, brugmansia are potentially toxic. Bernie looked around once more, and then went back into the chilly night air, closing the greenhouse door tightly against animal intruders and the cold before she hurried down the lit path to her unit. The fresh air cleared her brain after the heavy scent of the beautiful brugs.
As she drove out of the neighborhood, a dark vehicle passed her, headed in the opposite direction. She slowed, thinking it might be Merilee, but it wasn’t the Mercedes she’d seen in the driveway on her first visit, but an older truck. As she watched the vehicle in her rearview mirror, it made a U-turn. The driver flashed the headlights at her and honked. She pulled to the side of the road, and the other driver stopped next to her and lowered the window.
She lowered hers, too. “Franklin. What are you doing out here?”
“Officer Manuelito, hi. I was looking for Merilee, same as you, I guess. I heard some terrible news, and I thought, well, if she didn’t know, I’d break it to her.”
“What?”
He brushed the snow off the truck’s window frame. “These flakes are the forerunners of a huge storm. If things are as bad as the weather service predicts, they’ll be calling off the search tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I thought Merilee might be able to do something since she’s a blood relative. It’s not right, you know.” His voice began to crack. “It’s just not.”
Bernie turned her heater up a notch. “I was out there today with the searchers, and they looked exhausted. A break might give them more energy and ideas.”
Franklin pulled a blue knit cap tighter over his ears. “I guess I can’t blame them. I mean, they don’t even know Dom, and they are leaving their own families at home to help find him, and the weather will make all of it more dangerous. But I hate to think of him out there in the cold, in the snow. I mean, if he’s conscious, if he’s still alive somehow. Or even if he’s dead, his poor body . . .” He stopped and sighed. “I’m babbling. I wasn’t prepared . . . I wasn’t expecting—”
“I could use something to eat before I drive home,” Bernie broke in. “I don’t know Grants very well.” She thought about suggesting a fast food place—they’d have burgers for sure—but the generic anonymity did not seem an appropriate setting in which to deal with fresh grief. She mentioned the only place she’d tried that wasn’t fast food—First Street Cafe, with its view of the mountains.
Franklin nodded. “I like that place, but they don’t serve dinner. I know a good family-run New Mexican spot. El Cafecito.”
“Do they have hamburgers?”
“Probably so. Dom and I always get the New Mexican specials.”
The restaurant featured whimsical metal lizards on the walls and smelled of simmering chile sauce. Despite Franklin’s enthusiastic recommendation of chile rellenos and sopaipillas, Bernie ordered a Coke and a burger and bought coffee for Franklin, who protested that he wasn’t hungry. He added three sugars to his cup but barely touched it. Under the restaurant’s bright lights, his nails looked ragged, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
“Have you slept since Dom disappeared?”
He shook his head. “Every time I’m about to nod off, I think of him, and I wonder if he’s cold, if he’s hungry, desperate for water, you know.”
“I wish I had met him. Tell me about him.”
Franklin talked as she ate. He reinforced what she already knew: Domingo Cruz was both nervous and excited about the opportunity to become director of the Wings and Roots, but he hadn’t made a firm decision yet. If he took the job, Franklin explained, he’d miss the direct work with the kids, but he wanted to make sure the organization continued. “I believe he’ll stay because he thinks the best way to solve the problem is to become the director.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Dom didn’t talk specifics, but I know they need money. Every nonprofit group in the country is hurting because of the economy. Dom always pushed for Wings and Roots to work with all the students who need the help, not only the ones whose parents can afford the price. Sometimes, if a student wanted to be part of the program and her relatives couldn’t pay, he’d contribute to the tuition. All quietly, of course. He didn’t want any attention.” Franklin shifted onto one hip and pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket to blow his nose. “I told him he couldn’t afford to do it, but he said he’d get by. And he always did.”
“How much does he give?”
“He put in three hundred dollars once.” Franklin chuckled. “We ate a lot of beans that month.”
Bernie put her burger down. “I saw some of his photos at Merilee’s house. They are beautiful.”
“He got interested in photography as part of a teacher training program he took at the New Mexico State University branch college here. He uses a camera, not a cell phone, to take photos. He’s excited about the book he and his sister are working on, a collection of some of his pictures. Even though he was exhausted, he’d stay behind after every trip to the Malpais to get some shots. When Merilee told him she was having trouble coming up with money for publication, he stopped for a while and fell into a funk. He went back to taking photographs this fall, and it seemed to lift his spirits.”
“Does he specialize in petroglyphs?”
“No, but he likes to take pictures of them. He said it was interesting to see how they almost disappeared, depending on the light. He said the idea of standing where the ancient ones had stood when they made the drawings gave him a great appreciation for the past.”
“Did he ever mention anything about graves?”
“No. Not to me. We don’t talk about that kinda stuff. I think the dead sh
ould be left alone.”
“Agreed.” Bernie sipped her Coke. “Did Dom share that view?”
“Dom doesn’t spend much energy thinking about the ones who have left us; he focuses on the future. That’s why he loves working with kids. When we’d argue about something, he used to say that the past is the past, and we can’t change it. If we want a better future, we have to work with the present.” Franklin looked at his coffee cup. “He always tells me to make each day count and consider it a gift. I had to remind him of that when he was feeling down about the agency and all the debt.”
Watching Franklin’s throat vibrate as he swallowed, she gave him time to rein in his emotions. “Do you think Dom could have been mixed up in something dangerous?”
“Dangerous? Just being out there was dangerous. Other than that, no.”
“I’m just trying to consider all possibilities.”
Bernie took the last bite of her burger. They sat quietly, like old friends, and she watched the waitress clear a table across the room. The restaurant was nearly empty. Closing time.
Franklin broke the silence. “When Dom and I first met, he took me for a hike out there in the lava field. It was late April. He showed me some petroglyphs and said they had probably been left by the relatives of someone from Acoma or Zuni. We ate lunch and listened to the wind. He told me that was his special place, where he always felt peaceful. I felt safe with him. Wherever he was, when I was with him, it was my special place. We’d come out here on weekends and stay in my little house in San Rafael. Without him, if he’s gone, I don’t have a safe place. They can’t stop the search and leave him out there tonight.” Franklin bolted to standing.
Bernie put her hand on his arm. “I can call Katz right now, and you can tell her what you know about how to find that place. If they haven’t already looked there, they—”
Franklin pulled away. With one quick motion he zipped his jacket and tossed a five-dollar bill on the table.
“Wait for me to pay and—”
Bernie stopped. He’d already run to the door and disappeared into the night.
Cave of Bones Page 20
