Worthy leaned over the table toward his partner. “Victor wouldn’t have hesitated to kill Ellie,” he whispered, “because by the time the two of them met up, he’d planned to kill or had already killed Sister Anna.”
Chapter Eighteen
Flashlights in hand, Worthy and Father Fortis walked the dark road leading away from the monastery.
“Let me see if I understand you, Christopher. You’re actually saying that Ellie VanBruskman is dead, and that Victor Martinez killed her soon after he killed Sister Anna? I … I honestly don’t know what to say.”
Worthy looked out at the hills in the distance, with the blanket of stars rising above them. He thought of Sera, down in Santa Fe, having put her son to bed and now reconsidering every claim of his theory. No doubt she was cursing him.
Sera had reacted to his accusations against Victor as he should have expected, sitting mute for a moment before saying she’d lost her appetite. They’d cancelled their order and left the diner. In the car she’d remained silent, even after he told her where Lieutenant Choi should focus the search. Perhaps that was why he had roused Father Fortis for this late-night walk. He needed to share his thoughts with someone who had some faith in him.
Off to the right, he heard the river wash noisily over the rocks. Beyond that were the canyons. Maybe there were even more moradas out there. The more sites, the longer the search would take. But he knew what they’d find.
Now began the hardest part for him, the waiting. He knew that he’d sleep poorly, battle heartburn, and generally find everyone irritating until what he knew must happen finally did. He was especially irritated by Father Fortis’s skepticism.
“Christopher, what I find the hardest to accept is how different your description of Victor is from the lost boy I’d been picturing. Just this afternoon, when I went to see Brother Andrew, I was struck by how much the two of them have in common. They’re both young and both have some connection with the Penitentes. Most of all, both seem so fragile. I can’t imagine Victor killing Sister Anna any more than I can Andrew.”
“Fragile people can do a lot of damage, Nick.”
“Maybe so, maybe so,” Father Fortis said. “But don’t they usually do that damage to themselves? Take Brother Andrew, for example. It turns out that he was the one who took Sister Anna’s journal from my room and spied on me from the balcony. And because he was so afraid I’d discover his infatuation with Sister Anna, he tried to kill himself. You see, he tried to harm himself, Christopher, just himself.”
The two walked the sharp rise in the road in silence before Father Fortis continued, “What about how bright a student he was, his loving family? And what about the kindness he showed Ellie back in Detroit?”
Worthy bent down and picked up a handful of gravel. “That was all before his breakdown at the college, Nick.”
Father Fortis grunted. “And so he suddenly turned into a killer?”
Worthy heaved one of the rocks through the darkness toward the river, waited to hear the splash, and threw another.
“Why do I get the feeling that you’d like to throw one of those rocks at me, Christopher?”
Worthy lobbed one of the rocks into the air and caught it. “No, you’re too close to be a challenge. I like to aim at things farther away.”
“Then I’d better try to keep up with you,” Father Fortis said with a laugh.
“It’s just hard for me to understand why you and Sera don’t see my point. Of course Victor didn’t become a killer overnight. But he did begin to lose touch with reality. He left Detroit because he couldn’t deal with the death of the Pakistani kid. That’s not my imagination. That was confirmed by Ellie’s psychiatrist and in a way, by the Catholic chaplain.”
“Fair enough,” Father Fortis conceded.
“For some reason, Ellie blamed the college for that, but the chaplain said that Victor blamed himself. And that guilt began to destroy him. First he said he was being followed by someone back in Detroit. Then, what’s the first thing he does when he comes back? He heads up to Colorado, where his father’s side of the family is from. Why? According to his high school buddy, Alonzo, he went up there to find a Brotherhood that would let him hang on the cross.”
“The boy must have been in real trouble, I grant you that,” Father Fortis said. “But to kill Sister Anna and then his best friend from college? Do you have any evidence that Ellie even found him?”
Father Fortis’s disbelief seemed to echo in the canyon. Worthy knew what he knew, but explaining it was a different matter. “Look, the bottom line is this, Nick. We’re going to find Ellie’s body in a morada out there somewhere in these hills. That’s where Victor has been hiding all this time.”
From farther down the canyon, an insane howl rose. A coyote or wolf, Worthy reasoned, out for an evening of hunting. When we find Victor, he thought, the boy could be howling like that. And we better find him soon, before he kills again.
“Back up a bit in your scenario, Christopher. Something is troubling me about what you said about Colorado. You’re saying that Victor went up there to find a morada?”
“Right. His father was a Penitente from up that way. So it makes sense he’d try there first. He had one thought in mind, Nick, to be nailed to a cross. The whole idea is so unbelievably crazy to me.”
“Crazy to want to be freed from guilt? I don’t know. If I were him, I might do the same thing,” Father Fortis replied. “But for your theory to be right, Colorado must not have worked out for him.”
“He probably got the same brush-off up there that he would have gotten a bit later from his uncle in Chimayó. I suspect that’s when he started to hear the voices again, telling him to keep searching for other old moradas.”
Worthy paused to see if Father Fortis was still with him, but only heard his friend’s heavy breathing above the crunch of gravel.
“Listen, Nick, I know how this sounds. You and Sera think I’ve overreached myself this time. All I ask is that you don’t pick at the details. The truth is in the big picture.”
Worthy felt a hand on his shoulder. “No one knows better than I do how good your instincts can be, my friend.”
“Then just hear me out. I know you think there’s a huge gap between Victor hearing voices and suddenly killing a nun and then his only real friend from college. From what I can tell, Sera has the same problem with my theory. Well, I think I can explain that.”
“Go on.”
Worthy took a deep breath. If Father Fortis was having problems with his theory to this point, wait until he heard the next part.
“Victor is Native American on his mother’s side, from a place called Acoma.”
“Yes, you told me that,” Father Fortis said.
“But he’s Hispanic on his father’s side. For me, that difference is very important. One of the brochures I picked up at Acoma talks about a massacre about three hundred years ago when the Indians there turned on their Catholic priests,” Worthy said. “For some reason, the mix of Catholicism and their Native American ways didn’t work. The brochure said that one day they stormed the church, took the friars, and threw them off the mesa.”
“But that was a long time ago. How does that relate to Victor?”
“Picture Victor traveling from morada to morada and getting tired of being turned down. They probably told him he wasn’t prepared or not old enough.”
Father Fortis nodded, his beard bobbing up and down. “From what Father Linus said, they most likely told him the role of Christo had been given out long ago.”
“Fine, fine,” Worthy said. “But for the guilt-ridden Victor, all those reasons would have only frustrated him more. The voices in his head must have gotten a lot louder the closer he got to Good Friday.”
Worthy thought he heard Father Fortis begin to say something, but then stop.
“Victor was probably always a bit of a spiritual schizophrenic,” Worthy continued. “You see, he lived with his mother and grandmother, the Acoma side. He would have kn
own the stories of his people rejecting Christianity, and his high school buddy, Alonzo, said that Victor used to make fun of the Brotherhood.”
“But wait a minute, Christopher. I thought you said that his mother called him a little priest?”
“I know, but that had to be after he came back from Detroit, when he was swamped with guilt. That’s the only thing that makes sense. Alonzo said he came back home a different person, totally obsessed with the Penitentes and his conviction that only they could save him. But time after time, when he reached out to them, they just rejected him. Finally, probably right after Good Friday, he just threw it all off.”
“By killing the nun?”
“Why not? She did die right after Easter. It would have been like the friars on Acoma. One side within Victor turned on the other.”
The two walked silently for a moment.
“And his motive for killing Ellie?”
“Who knows? Maybe he tried to explain to her why he’d killed or planned to kill the nun, saw Ellie’s shock, and had another psychotic break. Maybe the voices in his head told him to kill again.”
“But would a psychotic have the presence of mind to cover his tracks and leave no fingerprints?” Father Fortis asked.
Worthy took another deep breath. “Maybe he goes in and out of reality, Nick.”
Father Fortis suddenly grabbed Worthy’s arm. “Wait a minute, Christopher. Wait just a minute. Good Lord, you may be right. I remember what was troubling me before. When did you say Victor came back from Detroit?”
“The end of November,” Worthy replied. “Why?”
“The Penitente brothers I met with Father Linus showed me pictures of moradas up in Colorado. They were vandalized about that same time. Could Victor have done that? Hmm, it would help to hear what your partner would say.”
“You mean my partner who was raised in a Penitente family? I appreciate your sharing that bit of information with me, by the way.”
“Christopher, I want to explain that, but let’s turn back. It’s getting cold out here.”
The two turned around and headed back toward the monastery. “Yes, I admit it, my friend. I knew about Sera’s past, but I also knew how you reacted to Father Linus and that painting. All I can say is that at the time her personal connection to the Penitentes didn’t seem to matter.”
Worthy’s flashlight spotted a large pothole and the two men walked around it on different sides.
“So, what do you think, Nick? Have I convinced you?”
“Almost. There is one last puzzle piece that I don’t understand. If you can explain that, then maybe I’ll surrender.”
“What is it?”
“It’s something the old Penitente brothers showed me. In the vandalized moradas in Colorado, all the crucifixes were damaged in a very bizarre way. The body of Christ was ripped completely off, but the empty cross was left hanging on the wall. The brothers had never seen anything like that before. Can you think of a reason Victor would do something like that?”
Worthy looked up at the stars and pondered the question. Which voice in Victor’s head would want him to do that? Suddenly, an answer came. “How about this? You say the body of Christ was ripped from the crosses, but the crosses were left.”
“Yes, that’s the odd part. It has to mean something, but what?”
“All right, think about it this way. What did Victor want more than anything?”
Father Fortis pulled on his beard. “According to his high school friend, to hang on a cross, rid himself of his guilt.”
“Right. He told Alonzo that his angel, that voice in his head, was pushing him to find the right morada. So what would he do when no group up there would give him what he wanted? The big plan he’d hatched in Detroit was thwarted, stymied. It must have seemed as if the Penitentes were fighting his angel, fighting his God.”
“But how does that explain the crosses?”
Worthy stopped and looked at Father Fortis. “Don’t you see? If the Brotherhood wasn’t going to let Victor be nailed to a cross, then no one should be. Not even Jesus.”
Father Fortis turned the flickering beam of his flashlight on his friend. “So the empty cross was like his calling card?”
“Exactly, Nick.”
“And after that, he came down this way, looking for other old moradas.”
“Right. He must have been in a panic on Good Friday.”
“In your theory, it was the end of all hope. No cross, no relief,” Father Fortis mused.
“He probably knew he couldn’t wait another year and try again. Imagine all that rage bubbling up with no place to go.”
“And so that was when you believe he wandered onto St. Mary’s land and found the retreat house,” Father Fortis added.
“To him, it was just another old morada, which it had been once. Maybe he scouted the place before breaking into it. He was trashing it when Sister Anna returned.”
Ahead, the lights of the monastery flickered through a stand of cottonwood trees. Father Fortis stopped and sighed deeply.
“Yes, yes, I am beginning to see it. I wish I didn’t, but I do. That was exactly how the retreat house looked when they found Sister Anna’s body. She must have come back from painting when he was in the middle of destroying the place or just waiting for her.” Father Fortis shivered. “Oh, God, Christopher, how terrible it is if you are right.”
Worthy’s breakthrough hung like a cloud over Father Fortis for the next two days. His research project with Father Linus seemed such a frivolous activity in comparison to the fate of the three young people. From Sister Anna’s journal, he knew that she had made up her mind to leave the order and become a full-time artist. Ellie VanBruskman had run away in a similar hope of a new start. And less than a year before, a bright young man had left Acoma for a new future at one of Detroit’s finest colleges. How terrible it was that such hopes could be shattered so quickly and finally.
His gloom reminded Father Fortis of how he’d felt in high school during his beloved aunt’s ordeal. She and her husband were having difficulty getting pregnant, and so the impending birth of their child was anticipated as a national holiday in the family. But the week before her due date, they’d failed to find a heartbeat at her checkup. Within an hour, their hopes were destroyed. Not only had their baby died, but she would have to carry the baby until normal labor occurred.
That was how Father Fortis felt living in the knowledge of Ellie’s death, and it didn’t help to have Worthy underfoot. He seemed at loose ends, dividing his time between the library and the cloister, but always near a phone in case Sera or Lieutenant Choi called. When Father Fortis tried to make conversation, Worthy would snap at him or simply not respond at all. Occasionally, he would look out the library window to see Worthy sitting like an anxious novice by the garden fountain, throwing breadcrumbs to the koi.
On the morning of the third day, Father Fortis heard a knock on his door. Worthy peeked in, his eyes bright again as he announced, “It’s nothing much, but I just got a call from Santa Fe. They solved the mystery of the letter.”
“The one Ellie sent her parents?”
Worthy nodded. “We guessed right. One of the cleaning crew remembered finding it wedged behind one of the counters at a branch post office. It had a stamp on it, so the woman dropped it into the mail slot.”
Father Fortis gazed out at shimmering heat rising already from the valley floor. “It fits your theory, doesn’t it? Not good news for Ellie, though. They’re sure it was the same letter?”
“The cleaning woman noticed it was addressed to Detroit. Ellie hid it intentionally, so it would be found, but not too quickly.”
“To give herself a head start,” Father Fortis added.
Worthy walked to the balcony window and fidgeted with some coins in his pocket. “But still no news from Choi on the searches.”
Father Fortis remembered Worthy telling him once that the two worst parts of his work were coming upon the body and waiting for the big break. I
n this case, if Worthy was right, the two toughest moments would collapse into one.
“Have you told Ellie’s family?” Father Fortis asked. “I suppose they’re still considered her family.”
“Hmm? I told them we’re closing in, but I didn’t tell them I know she’s dead. And they didn’t ask, which says something. So—”
Worthy was interrupted by another knock on the door. Father Fortis opened it to Brother Bartholomew.
“Another call for the policeman,” the novice whispered.
“Can I take it in here?” Worthy asked.
Brother Bartholomew explained the process and left the room, shutting the door behind him.
Father Fortis took a deep breath as Worthy dialed the numbers. “This is Lieutenant Worthy. Can I speak to Lieutenant Choi? Yes, yes, fine,” he said.
Father Fortis offered a short prayer for the soul of Ellie VanBruskman as Worthy answered in monosyllables to whoever was speaking on the other end.
“I guess that’s it, then,” Worthy said. “Is Lieutenant Lacey there? Okay, when you see her, tell her I’m on my way. Where? Just a minute.” He took out a pen and began to write. “Off Forest Road 528, ten point four miles outside of San Ignacio. Pardon? Yes, I’ll bring it.”
Worthy hung up, his lips tight. “Get Father Linus. They flew over one of the abandoned moradas with an infrared camera this morning. Something there looks like a recent grave.” He headed for the door. “I’ll meet you at the Jeep.”
“Where are you going?” Father Fortis asked.
“To get a sample of Ellie’s hair I brought back from Detroit. They’ll need some of her DNA.”
Crossing himself, Father Fortis hurried down the hallway toward Father Linus’s room. His legs felt like rubber. He paused to catch his breath before knocking on the old monk’s door, remembering as he did so Father Bernard’s parting comment, “St. Mary’s pain might just be beginning.”
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