by AULT, SANDI
“No, he’s done everything. But right now, he’s head of the hate crimes unit in this region, and that’s a lucky thing for me.”
I thought of the woman on the stone floor in the chapel. It was hard to think about luck in a situation like this. But I also knew that Diane’s detachment from the horror of this crime was a vital element for her survival and success in her work. You couldn’t let it get to you, or you wouldn’t last—you were no good to anyone. I wasn’t as adept at this as my friend. I’d seen plenty of death—more than my share. I never got used to it.
We’d walked out a few hundred yards to a flat place on the mesa, near where Diane had left her ATV when she arrived. We cleared some brush to make a heliport, then tied several long lengths of yellow Crime Scene tape to the ATV, which Diane parked on the perimeter on the west side. The lutescent tape fluttered in the morning breeze, creating a marker for the pilot as well as a gauge for wind speed and direction.
“The Silver Bullet could sure give my career a boost,” Di said as we worked. “I’ve been stuck here in Taos without any opportunity for advancement for three years now.”
“What can this guy do? Can he get you a promotion?”
“He’s got long coattails. Everyone who works with him moves up. I could get out of here and get someplace civilized.” She tossed a stone away into the brush. “Look at my hair,” she said, coming toward me. “Look at this side here.” She pointed to the place in front of her left ear. “I had to cut that way back because it was burned. And check out my eyebrows. They’re singed, too.”
I inspected her face. “What happened?”
“My oven blew up on me. I told that worthless landlord it wasn’t working right, and he had some creepy cousin of his named Benny come out to fix it. But all he did was ogle me and fool around with the stove like he knew what he was doing, which he didn’t. The next time I went to use the oven, I opened the door, and flames shot out.”
“Wow. You’re lucky you didn’t get burned.”
“That’s just one example of how it has been for months now. I leased from this guy, I paid him first and last month’s rent and a deposit, and I’ve had nothing but trouble with him. The fridge either freezes all my food, or everything spoils. And the front door won’t even shut properly. I’ve come home and found it standing open. I have to slam it so hard just to get the darn thing to stay closed that the front window rattles in the frame. And this guy has said he’ll evict me if I make any more complaints. He doesn’t care if I’m happy, there’s a long list of poor schmucks who will give him a deposit and first and last month’s rent, and he triples his money every time he gets a new renter.”
“Isn’t there an agency that regulates . . .”
“I’ve checked. It’s hard to enforce tenant rights in New Mexico. I read the statutes, and they are nine-tenths about the right to evict. The only thing I could do would be to take the guy to court.”
“Maybe there’s a better place to rent while you figure all this out.”
“Nah, I’ve looked. There’s not much out there, unless I want to live in a trailer. And I can’t afford one of those new condos. But it’s not just the rental situation. Taos is the only third-world country in the United States.”
I was quiet. The thing I loved about Taos was how time seemed to stand still, how the past refused to give in to the present and held steadfast to ancient customs and rich cultural distinctions. Taos was timeless, and fiercely so.
Diane’s sat phone rang. “Give me that lat and long,” she said to me, nodding toward the small yellow GPS we’d used to calculate our exact location.
I read the coordinates to her. Within minutes, we could hear the hum of the chopper coming; then we saw it buzzing toward us from far away, like an oversized mosquito bearing down on its target. As soon as the wolf recognized the sound, he broke into a run, away toward the high ground near the ruin.
I ran after him, calling to him to stop, but he scooted up the slope with his tail between his legs. I finally caught up with him when he tried to hide in a low area next to a big sagebrush. He was shaking violently, huddling into the small hollow. The sound and wind of the helicopter were enough to scare anyone. But only a few months before, Mountain had been airlifted by a chopper during a wildfire when he’d been severely injured. I could still remember how he looked then as he hung suspended in the air from the rescue belt—weak and frightened, as if he were about to let go of life. I approached the shallow pit, crouched down next to his head and shoulders, and leaned over him in a protective way. I put my arms over his back and sheltered his head. He shook with fear, his body trembling like a tuning fork.
When the chopper’s blades stopped beating and began to shift from a high-pitched whine to a sputtering drone, the wolf got to his feet. I grabbed hold of his collar, thinking he was going to flee again, but he stayed beside me, still quivering, his body pressed tight against my leg. We walked partway back down the slope, then stopped and watched as the heavy cloud canopy to the east parted, and the morning light burst through a gray cowl, bestowing the helicopter with a shimmering silver halo.
The door of the airship opened. A man dropped to the ground, light on his feet, stooping to avoid the slow-spinning blades overhead. As he stepped toward us, he straightened. A thick crest of shining silver hair topped a suntanned face and a tall, powerful physique. Agent Sterling wore black—from his shades to his boots. He looked like Adonis. Behind him, the medical examiner climbed out and someone from inside the bird handed her a black bag. The ME trudged toward Diane, clutching her hat to her head with one hand, holding her bag in the other.
But I could not take my eyes off the Silver Bullet. And neither could Diane.
While the FBI and the medical examiner went to examine the body, I returned to the ruin to check on the cougar offspring. But the den was abandoned—the she-cat had moved her cubs in the night during the storm.
After he’d seen the body, Agent Sterling wanted to talk with me. “Tell me your name again?” he asked, removing his shades as we stood in the dim light of the chapel.
“Jamaica Wild. I’m a resource protection agent for the BLM.”
He smiled, his teeth white against his tan face. “I know who you are. I just wanted to hear you say your name. So what brought you here?”
“I was after a wounded cougar.”
“Tell me about how you got in here,” he said with a flip of his hand.
“We got caught in a blizzard—”
“We?” He moved his head slightly toward me, tilting it to the side as if he hadn’t heard me correctly.
“My wolf, my horse, and I. We needed shelter. The slat over the double doors was loose.”
Sterling walked out the door and looked to one side. He pointed with the sunglasses in his hand at the piece of wood on the ground. “Was that the slat?”
“Yes.”
He squatted and scrutinized the wood. “Did you make these pry marks here?”
I bent down to look. “No, I pulled it off with my hands. It was loose.”
“And the door?” He stood up and pointed with his sunglasses again. “Did you do this damage to the door?”
“It was the only way I could get the horse through.”
He nodded, pressing his lips together. Then he walked across to the entry gates. “And these gates? Did you break them for the same reason?”
“That was an accident. The storm made Rooster skittish—”
“Rooster is the horse?”
“Yes.”
“And the wolf, what’s his name?”
“Mountain.”
“Gorgeous animal.”
Sterling waited, but I didn’t reply. Someone who kept a pet might have said “thank you” with pride of ownership. But Mountain was not my property, nor was he my pet. He was my best friend, my companion, my family.
After a few seconds of silence, the agent spoke again: “What kind of a woman lives with a wolf?” He didn’t look at me at first, but then turne
d and locked his dark brown eyes on mine.
“Is this about the investigation?” I asked.
He continued to hold my gaze and gave a fleeting grin. After a moment, he looked back at the chapel and said, “This crime scene is pretty well trashed.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was a crime scene until after the damage was done.”
He popped his shades on, raised up his chin, and smiled. “I like a challenge.”
5
Facts of the Matter
Daniel Kuwany wanted to believe that the predator he’d shot was a wolf. “They say wolves are coming down at night now. The people hear them howling, especially the village priests when they go out to pray on the rooftops.” The shepherd eyed Mountain with suspicion. “Is that wolf there a pet or something?”
I had hooked Mountain’s lead to my belt with a carabiner so he couldn’t run the sheep. “Something like that,” I said.
Kuwany licked his fingers as he finished the rest of the meat-filled tortilla he’d been having for lunch. Grease stained his shirt cuff where the mutton juice had oozed down his wrist.
“The animal you wounded was a cougar,” I said. “A female with two cubs to feed. The three of them are starving. That’s why she’s been coming close to the pueblo, raiding the sheep.”
“How do you know?” he asked.
“I saw her. And her cubs.”
Kuwany, who had been sitting over a weak fire trying to force it to thrive on sage limbs and dried chamisa, jumped up and grabbed his rifle. “Tell me where they are, and I’ll go shoot them.”
“They’re not there anymore. They were at the ruin out by the abandoned Indian school.”
“That’s a bad place.” He carried his rifle with him and went to a brown plastic tub, took off its lid, rummaged around, and came back. He held something between his fingers and offered it to me. “Take this,” he said, gesturing for me to open my palm. He had completely forgotten his fear of Mountain and was now standing just a few feet from the wolf.
I opened my hand.
Kuwany dropped a stub of root into my palm. “You better take some of this, or you’ll get ghost sickness.”
I looked at the little stub of woody tuber. “Osha?” I asked.
“You know how to do it?”
“Yes.”
He set his rifle down and picked up the blackened enamel coffeepot that was sitting on a rock beside his fire. He poured some of the dark liquid into a brown-stained, plastic coffee mug. “Take a bite of it now. Wash it down with this.” He handed the mug to me. “Then you better keep the rest of it.”
My medicine teacher from Tanoah Pueblo, Anna Santana, had taught me about osha and its many uses, including protection from ghost sickness. As I had been trained, I pressed the root to my forehead and closed my eyes—a gesture of both invitation and listening to the wisdom of the plant, which helped it to work its healing power. Then I bit off a piece from the end and chewed the fibrous chunk so it would release its medicine from the pulp.
Kuwany watched me intently.
When I had softened the chaw, I took a big slurp of the coffee and swallowed the gob, which had tripled in size. “Thank you,” I said, swallowing again.
“If that cougar was living where you said, it could be a ghost.”
“She wasn’t living there. She was living at the ruin up the slope, near the canyon rim. She just came in the school while we were there. We spent the night there during the storm.”
Kuwany’s eyes bulged. “You spent the night in that place?”
“We had to have shelter from the blizzard.”
The shepherd picked up his coffeepot and threw the rest of the liquid into the fire. With his boot, he spread the embers out and kicked dust on them. “I got to move the sheep,” he said. He went to the plastic tub and put the coffeepot inside.
I poured my coffee on the fire and offered Kuwany the mug. “Thanks for the coffee and the osha.”
“You keep the mug,” he said. “I don’t need it.”
“No, I’m all done. It’s empty.” I set the cup down and started to go.
“Children died out there,” he said to my back as I was walking away.
I turned to look at him.
“They got treated so bad that even some of those ones that lived, their souls left their bodies and couldn’t never get back in, even after those kids came home. Some kids tried to get away, but they never made it home. That place is evil. We don’t go near it. I bet that wasn’t no cougar. I bet it was a ghost.”
“You believe the children who died are ghosts now?”
“No. Not the children. The soul-eaters. If I see a cougar or a wolf around here”—he looked down at Mountain—“I’m going to kill it.” He picked up his rifle from the ground and turned and walked toward the sheep.
I arrived late for a meeting at the BLM. Roy was in the middle of briefing the field staff on the growing problem of all-terrain vehicles—ATVs—on BLM land. “Folks, we’ve been directed to crack down on this problem,” he said as I came in the room. I took a chair in the back, moving as quietly as I could.
Mountain, who had just drunk voraciously from the bucket we kept for his water dish, plopped down on the floor beside me and gave a loud groan. Everyone laughed.
“Jamaica, I’m giving you a mandate as the Taos field office’s resource protection agent to find and cite anyone illegally using an off-road vehicle on BLM land. I want to send a message to the public that it won’t be tolerated. It’s doing irreparable damage to the environment, and we’ve got to put a stop to it.”
A terrible smell began to migrate upward from where Mountain lay on the floor. Several people wrinkled their noses, others waved their hands in front of their faces, and one woman said, “Phew!”
Roy got a whiff of the stink and said, “Eddie, that would be the aftermath of your deer sausage from that buck you got. That dog-gone wolf ate the whole log in one sitting. I didn’t even get to try a bite of it.”
After the meeting, I put a call in to Department of Game and Fish agent Charlie Dorn to report the wounding of a female cougar with dependent cubs. Since the shooting had occurred on the Tanoah reservation, neither Dorn nor I had jurisdiction, but if it had happened elsewhere, Charlie assured me it was a violation of the law, even for a hunter with a lion tag. I offered to talk to any nearby private landowners about setting humane traps for the lions so we could rescue the injured cougar and her cubs. Before I could do that, I needed to find out who the landowners were.
Roy came up to me as I was filling out an incident report on the events of the previous day and night. He fished a slip of paper out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. “That’s your cell phone number. Better turn it on and plug it into your car charger. I gave that number to that FBI gal, Langstrom. She’s going to call you after she gets the medical examiner’s report.”
It was late in the afternoon by the time I got to the Taos courthouse to investigate ownership of the lands abutting the Pueblo Peña parcel.
As I was entering the courthouse, a man wearing an army camouflage uniform brushed past me on his way out, bumping into my sore shoulder. He rushed on without turning back, and I stopped inside the door, wincing as I clutched my upper arm to quiet the pain. I noticed a couple waiting in the lobby. She wore a strangely mismatched ensemble: a blue baseball-style jacket over a beaded white dress and heels. He looked uncomfortable in a suit that was much too large for his slender frame. They glanced up eagerly when I came in, but then gave each other a look of distress, as if they had been expecting someone else.
My map had indicated that the segment of public lands where the Pueblo Peña ruin and the abandoned Indian school were located was landlocked on three sides. With the help of the county clerk, Nina Enriquez, I learned that a fenced federal training area abutted the south side of the section, the Tanoah Pueblo reservation lands bordered it due east, and a large spread owned by fifth-generation rancher Scout Coldfire and his wife, Lorena, rimmed
the north. To the west, the canyon and the high desert beyond was all public land, most of it remote and inaccessible. Nina, who had been about to close the office for the day, looked up the Coldfires’ phone number for me before she locked the door to count the day’s revenue. “Boy, am I ready to go home today,” she said. “I had people in here all afternoon, one after the other. One guy had me look up five or six different properties because he was looking for an easement. Another one didn’t understand why we raised his taxes when he added two thousand square feet to his house.”
As I was leaving the courthouse, the woman in the white dress, still waiting in the lobby with her beau, came up to me with a frantic look on her face.
“Our friends did not arrive. It is almost time for the courthouse to close, and we cannot wait any longer. Please, miss, will you be a witness for us?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but could not think how to reply. I was exhausted from a night without sleep; my arm and shoulder hurt from the bruises, scrapes, and splinters I’d received from being thrown by the horse; the bump on my head where the stirrup had smacked me was throbbing. I still felt disturbed by the nature of the crime I’d discovered, and I’d managed to put in a full day of work without complaining once. And I had another obligation to meet that evening before I could get into my Jeep and drive home to my little cabin, the request of this couple notwithstanding.
My hesitation only upset the bride-to-be more. Tears welled in her eyes. “Please, miss?” she said, so softly that I read her lips more than heard her words.
Judge Valerio opened the door from a small courtroom. “Jamaica! I didn’t know you were here. How are you?”
“I’m okay, Judge Valerio, thank you.”
He turned to the young man and woman. “Well, are we going to have a wedding or not? It’s time to go home.”
They looked at me.
“Can I get some water and take Mountain a drink first? He’s eaten some salty meat and he’s really dehydrated. The water I keep for him in my car is frozen.”
