As he looked up to a wall covered with photos of mountain scenes, his eyes rested on what could only be a santo of the Virgin Mary. It looked much like the one in the morada. The female figurine looked down as her feet rested on a crescent moon.
He felt a sudden tingling in his temples. Then the strength of his legs seemed to flow onto the floor. His stomach followed, producing a wave of nausea. He stumbled to a chair and fell as much as sat in it. The ringing in his ears made it impossible to understand Sera’s words from the other side of the room. Yet he must have uttered a sound, perhaps a grunt, for Sera and the art teacher stopped talking and looked his way.
Worthy waved them off, as if he had simply slipped. From some of his past cases, the ones that had earned him his commendations, he knew that in two or three minutes the jumbled puzzle pieces in his mind would begin to slowly connect as if on their own. He accepted the dizziness as part of the sudden awareness that the picture emerging was nothing like what he expected.
He looked up at the wall. Yes, that was in fact a santo. He looked down at the blocks of wood in vises and ascertained that the penciled outlines were indeed of the same Virgin Mary. The past, always the past, he thought again.
In a moment, he could make out the teacher’s voice again. Without understanding how he knew, he was certain that the man was protecting something. But was it his son, Victor, or the Penitente Brotherhood? He breathed slowly. A picture was coming together. Several of the missing pieces of the puzzle of Victor, Ellie, and so much more were in this room.
Worthy felt strength flow back into his legs. Yes, he knew what he had to do. And in that moment, he knew that Sera might hate him for what must come next.
As he waited for a break in the conversation between Mr. Muniz and Sera, he recalled a memory from a weekend at the family cabin in northern Michigan. Saturday mornings in the early fall, before the sun rose, he would leave Susan and the girls asleep to don fishing waders and walk the shoreline. In the pre-dawn light, he would cast the fly methodically beneath overhanging trees, hoping for a rise from a late-season bass. One such Saturday morning before Susan had demanded the divorce, he’d come upon his old neighbor sitting at the end of his pier, nursing a cup of coffee.
“You’re about three weeks too late,” the old man had announced. He held out a second cup to Worthy and explained that he’d missed the annual rollover, when the upper layers of the lake became cooler than the darker waters below. The old man explained that when the lake “rolled over, the warmer water rushed to the surface.” Everything swimming in the water was caught in the rush. “Right now, the fish are too damned confused to know which end is up,” he’d said.
Like those startled fish, Worthy’s thoughts swirled as he looked from the blocks of wood to the santo to Mr. Muniz’s fading tattoo. The only things missing on the santo, he thought, were the seven swords between the Virgin’s breasts.
He cleared his throat and pointed to the wooden pillars. “Do all your students carve these?”
The art teacher shook his head. “No, those are from an advanced summer school class.”
Worthy noted Sera’s confused look and counted slowly to five before asking, “Did Victor ever carve one of these?”
Sera shook her head at him, then stopped and gazed down at the floor. It was a moment that Worthy had experienced too many times, one that always seemed to present him no choice but to push forward, even though he knew that he was cursed with being the only one in the room who saw the picture emerging.
Mr. Muniz, broom in hand, ambled toward him. “Victor was too busy with his college prep classes and the school newspaper to take my class.”
“But he knew how to carve, right?”
“Of course. Actually, his grandfather was ….” Mr. Muniz gripped the broom tightly in both hands and stopped.
“I think you were going to say a woodcarver,” Worthy said.
Sera joined the two men and stared blankly at Worthy. Does she see it? he wondered.
“Is your son, by any chance, working at the school today?” she asked.
Worthy breathed a sigh of relief. Yes, she must have figured out where their interview was headed.
“He’s down in the gym, cleaning the locker rooms,” Mr. Muniz replied.
“Can we talk to him, please?” she asked.
Without responding, Mr. Muniz set the broom against the wall and left the room.
Standing in front of Worthy, Sera whispered, “Care to tell me what’s going on?”
Worthy’s heart sank. He thought she’d understood, but clearly he had been mistaken. He brought a finger to his lips. “I’ll explain later. Make sure you ask Alonzo about—” He stopped when a crew-cut teenager in a black No Fear T-shirt swaggered into the room.
“Either of you seen my dad?”
Sera introduced herself and Worthy before explaining where the boy’s father was. Then she added, “Alonzo, we’re looking for Victor Martinez.”
There was a moment of silence before Alonzo asked, “Why?” The boy stuffed his hands in his back pockets and stared sullenly at the policewoman.
“A college friend of his ran away several weeks ago. Maybe you saw the story in the paper or on the news. We’re hoping Victor can help us find her.”
Mr. Muniz reentered the room, and father and son held each other’s gaze before Mr. Muniz picked up the broom again.
“Alonzo, would you like to sit down?” Sera asked.
“I’m okay.”
“All right, then. Would you tell us when you last saw Victor?”
The boy shrugged. “Maybe February or March.”
Despite his pulse beating like a hammer in his neck, Worthy sat silently, watching and waiting.
“Do you remember if that was before or after Easter?” Sera asked.
The sound of sweeping stopped abruptly, and the boy’s shoulder flinched as if he’d been poked by his father’s broom. “I said March. Easter’s in April.”
Worthy tried unsuccessfully to catch Sera’s eye. You have to push back, he thought. The kid’s trying to intimidate, and you have to beat him at his own game.
Sera’s voice remained calm. “Did Victor ever talk about troubles he had back at the college in Detroit?”
The boy’s eyes flitted again to his father before returning to the floor. “Why would he?” Alonzo mumbled. “I didn’t see him much after he came back.”
“Your father said the two of you were close. We were hoping—”
“Look lady, I said I don’t know nothing.”
Worthy rose from the chair. “Lieutenant Lacey, let’s talk outside for a moment.” His voice sounded clipped in his own ears and he suspected the others also perceived it that way. Just as well, he thought.
Although surprised, Sera followed him out into the hallway. Worthy shut the door behind them. “This isn’t working,” he said.
His partner’s eyes narrowed. “What isn’t?”
“Your soft approach. You have to make this kid jump. And that’s not going to happen until we get the dad out of there.”
Sera turned away, staring down the long hallway. “So now I can’t handle this, is that what you’re saying?”
He searched for something to say that would narrow the gulf between them. He folded his arms across his chest, his eyes on the mural of the fishermen spearing a fish. “Can’t you see how he keeps looking over at his dad?”
Sera’s cheeks flushed. “If we ask the father to go, the boy will have a perfect right to follow him right out the door.”
“Not if you tell him to sit his ass down,” Worthy said.
Sera’s head jumped back as if hit. “God, Chris, the boy hasn’t done anything. No, I won’t do that.”
“Dammit, he knows something important, more than you can apparently see right now. If you won’t get the old man out of there, I will.”
Sera turned her back to him, but said before opening the door, “With your superior insight, you are obviously way ahead of me. Please show me
how it’s done.”
Through the opened door, she called in, “Mr. Muniz, may we speak with you out here?”
“Dad, don’t,” Alonzo challenged.
Worthy leaned back against a locker, willing the adrenaline to ease from his head and chest. The boy’s macho act would collapse in a second if she just stood up to him.
Mr. Muniz stepped into the hallway. Sera closed the door and waited for Worthy to speak. Worthy waited her out and finally nodded to her.
“Alonzo is a good boy, Mr. Muniz,” she began. “I think he’s scared, but I can assure you he’s done nothing wrong. Now we need to speak to him alone.”
No, no, no, Worthy thought. You don’t ask. You tell him.
To his surprise, Mr. Muniz nodded his head as if he’d expected the request and shuffled down the hall. The two reentered the room, Worthy standing in the doorway. He would let Sera lead, if she would in fact do that.
Alonzo remained where he was, head down. His hands reached deeper into his back pockets. Sera took his arm and escorted him toward a chair by one of the tables.
Sitting next to him, she repeated the question. “Do you know why Victor quit college?”
The boy rubbed a finger over the tabletop, pushing the sawdust into a neat pile. “What’s Victor done?”
Oh, yeah, he knows something, Worthy thought. But this handholding isn’t going to get it out of him.
Sera smiled gently. “I told you the truth before. We just need to talk with him.”
The boy shrugged and remained silent.
Worthy pulled up a chair in front of the boy, making sure that the chair clattered as it hit the linoleum floor. He sat forward, his face little more than a foot from Alonzo’s. “Listen up, Alonzo. I flew out here last night from Detroit, and I am in no mood for this bullshit act.”
“That’s it, I’m out of here,” Alonzo said, rising from the chair.
“Sit down!”
The boy did so, but turned his entire body away from the two of them.
“Ever see those cop shows on TV, Alonzo? Frankly, those shows don’t seem very realistic to me, with that good cop, bad cop routine. You see, in my twenty years as a police officer, I haven’t met that many good cops. But today, you’re in luck. There is one, but only one, in this room.” He leaned in even closer to Alonzo and in a raised voice said, “Do I have your attention, son?”
“Hey, fuck you, man.”
The photo of Sister Anna lying in a pool of blood flitted through his mind as he grabbed the front of the boy’s T-shirt. “You’re not leaving this room until we have some answers.” Worthy hoped that Sera had caught up, but her whispered, “Chris, stop it!” as she grabbed his arm told him she hadn’t tumbled onto anything.
“See, Lieutenant Lacey is a bona fide good cop. But I’m not,” he said, releasing the boy’s shirt. “Let me tell you what I already know.” Taking a deep breath, he said in Sera’s direction as such as Alonzo’s, “I know about Victor and the Penitentes.”
Sera released his arm as if he had some communicable disease. He felt rage surge up into his chest. My God, he thought, she knew all along. Had the uncle told her, or had she known even before that?
“How dare you?” Sera hissed. “Alonzo, you don’t have to answer that.”
Worthy’s eyes bored into Alonzo’s. “Don’t listen to her. She knows you’re not leaving until you tell us everything you know.”
Alonzo caught the tension between the two of them and turned on Worthy. “Hey, man, I know my fucking rights.”
“Chris, you can’t do this,” Sera protested.
Worthy plowed ahead as is Sera had said nothing. “You and Victor talked when he came back. Just tell me what he said about his problems.”
“Fuck you, man,” Alonzo repeated, but this time there were tears in his eyes.
“Stop it!” Sera ordered.
He turned toward her. “Leave!”
She rose and walked hurriedly toward the door. His ears burned. Every hair on his head tingled. He wanted to run after her. He wanted to tell her that it was all a game, that he’d only leaned like this on two or three witnesses in his entire career. But most of all, he wanted to explain that Victor was the key to everything, and that they had to find him before matters got worse.
“God, kid, you’ve put me in a mess of trouble with my partner.” He felt like he was playing a part in a play as he gripped the boy’s wrist and squeezed. “If I say you threw a punch and I had to break your arm, it would just be your word against mine. So I’m going to ask you one more time. What did he tell you?”
Alonzo muttered something through his sniffles.
“Speak up,” Worthy demanded.
“I said, we used to joke about the old ones, their rituals and shit,” Alonzo repeated. “Victor made up jokes about what to say to Penitentes.”
“But he wasn’t doing that when he came back from Detroit, was he?” Worthy pressed.
Alonzo’s hand shook beneath Worthy’s grip, and he released it. “Oh, yeah. It was Brotherhood this, hermanos that.”
“Specifics, Alonzo. Tell me exactly what Victor said.”
The boy glanced toward the door. “He said he needed to find a serious Brotherhood, not some bullshit kind, and it had to be by Holy Week.”
“So why didn’t he talk to his uncle?”
Alonzo wiped away a tear and stared at the wall. “Shit, you have to believe me, man. I had to stop listening to him. He was talking crazy.”
Worthy sat back in the chair. “Victor didn’t look so good in March, did he?”
Alonzo opened his eyes wide and licked his lips. “He was skinny, like he wasn’t eating.”
“Or maybe fasting?”
The boy shrugged.
“Where’d he been before you saw him in March?”
Alonzo wiped his nose with his sleeve. “Up in Colorado. He said he was trying to find the right morada.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Worthy saw that Sera had returned to the room. She leaned against the wall, her eyes red. “Let me guess. One that would give him the big part on Good Friday. He wanted the cross, the nails, the whole bit, right?” Worthy added.
Alonzo’s eyes filled with terror, as if Worthy was reading his mind. “He said a devil chased him out of Detroit. He said innocent blood was crying out from the ground, stupid shit like that. Then he said he’d run into an angel in Colorado. The angel told him to search for some old morada down here. That’s when I stopped listening. I mean one minute he was crying, the next minute he looked like he could … I don’t know ….”
“Harm someone?” Worthy asked.
Alonzo looked up. “Maybe. No, Victor wouldn’t do that. No, that can’t be true.”
Worthy let the protest pass before asking, “Victor told you a devil was following him in Michigan and an angel met him in Colorado?”
Alonzo nodded. “I told you he was out of his head.” The boy looked away as tears started down his cheeks again.
Worthy could hear Sera’s sigh as she walked toward the door again. She’s leaving, he thought in disbelief. I show her why I had to push this hard, and she just leaves? He thought back over the case, wondering where they’d gotten off track. In the car, she’d fought against everything he’d said about Victor. And now this.
But he hadn’t been all that quick himself in seeing the entire picture. That was despite the fact that nearly everyone in Detroit who knew Victor—Professor Stott, the Catholic chaplain, and Dr. Cartwright—had practically handed him the clue, describing how unbalanced the boy was at the end. But for some reason, I missed it, Worthy admitted to himself. And God, why didn’t I take the RA’s story seriously about Victor trying to knife the bully?
He pictured Sera standing alone in the hallway. Maybe all wasn’t lost. Maybe, once the waters had finished rolling over and she saw what he saw, she’d understand that Santa Fe didn’t have two mysteries to solve, a murdered nun and a missing college girl. No, there’d been two women in trouble, but only on
e mystery. And Victor Martinez was the key to it all.
Chapter Sixteen
It wasn’t until after Monday’s meager supper and before the service of Compline that Father Fortis was able to find Brother Elias. The old monk frowned at his guest before admitting him into his room. Looking around at the newspapers and file folders piled high on the floor, Father Fortis wondered if the librarian had thrown anything away since his arrival at St. Mary’s. The room’s peculiar odor seemed to come from the tabby cat that rubbed against Father Fortis’s leg.
“Something I can do for you?” Brother Elias asked, his eyebrows darting up and down. Without waiting for an answer, he shuffled to a table and sat before the laptop computer. The monk rapidly tapped a few keys and squinted at the screen.
How odd, Father Fortis thought, that one of St. Mary’s oldest monks would be so proficient with computers.
“I’d like to ask you about something you said at the meeting with the police,” Father Fortis said.
“Oh, did I say something interesting?” Brother Elias grunted as he pointed toward a chair.
Father Fortis removed a precariously stacked pile of folders before sitting down. The adobe walls of the room were bare except for a simple crucifix on one wall.
“You said that St. Mary’s has enemies,” Father Fortis said. “I’d like to know more about that.”
The old monk glanced from the screen to his visitor. “Why? What business is it of yours?”
“We have some similar problems of our own back in Ohio,” Father Fortis said. It was a lie. The Amish and Old Order Mennonites who surrounded St. Simeon’s had been gracious neighbors, leaving the monks alone. The Amish way of life, monastic in its own way to most Americans, drew attention away from the Orthodox monks chanting and beekeeping farther back in the woods.
Brother Elias turned back to the screen. He was about Father Linus’s age, suggesting the two had probably known each other for a long time. Maybe too long, Father Fortis thought, judging by the friction between them. Linus had been ordained a priest, while Elias had chosen to remain a brother. Or had he been passed over?
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