Enter by the Narrow Gate

by David Carlson

  “I see a ring,” the photographer called up. “It’s a pinky type. Looks like a horse head.”

  “Look again,” Worthy called down. “I think you’ll find it’s a unicorn.”

  The photographer moved in closer to the hand. “Damn, you’re right.”

  Worthy rose and sighed deeply. The only question remaining was whether Captain Spicer would let him stay until they found Victor.

  His thoughts were interrupted by something on the body that didn’t look right. The hand with the unicorn ring glistening in the floodlight seemed too large. Of course, he consoled himself, Ellie’s entire body would be bloated. He’d have to remember to tell Arrol VanBruskman to prohibit his wife from ever seeing Ellie.

  The digger’s voice floated up from the hole. “I see the side of his head.”

  The comment drifted past Worthy like a bird until he caught the mistake. “Don’t you mean her head?”

  There was no response from the pit. Worthy edged closer to the hole, his shoe kicking sand into the pit.

  “Then your girl has a peach-fuzz beard,” the digger called back. As he started over the edge of the pit, Worthy felt a hand on his arm.

  “Wait like the rest of us,” Choi ordered.

  With legs hanging over the hole, Worthy waited while Choi motioned for the winch to continue its work. The steel cables tightened, lifting the cross inch by inch toward an upright position. Despite the deafening roar of the generator, Worthy could have sworn he heard the sand as it rained off the figure. Suddenly, a gust of wind, the first relief of the day, blew the sand directly into his eyes, forcing him to look away. When the tears cleared, he opened his eyes to see the men behind him, standing open-mouthed.

  Wheeling to face the crucified figure, Worthy lost his balance and fell sideways into the pit. A shot of pain radiated down his shoulder as he rolled over on the pit’s floor, falling into the hole left by the cross. Through the floodlight’s glare, he found the thin chest, then the slumped head, and finally, the face with the empty sockets and the swollen, sand-covered tongue. He heard Sera sob. Everything began to swim uncontrollably before his eyes, but just before passing out from pain, he recognized the face staring down on him from the cross. The identity of that face could not have been plainer if Victor Martinez had raised his lifeless head and introduced himself.

  Chapter Twenty

  Father Fortis rushed to the edge of the pit and stared down at Worthy. The scene below him, his friend lying beneath Victor Martinez’s outstretched body, seemed to be out of a nightmare. The smell of the exposed corpse knocked Father Fortis backwards, and he fought an urge to vomit. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sera trembling as she hovered at the edge of the grave.

  Both jumped into the pit at the same time to attend to Worthy, still unconscious and lying in the hole left by the cross.

  “Not this way, not this way,” Sera moaned. “Oh, God, not this way. The poor mother ….”

  “We shouldn’t lift him,” Father Fortis cautioned as he noted the strange angle of his friend’s arm. He could hear the policewoman’s teeth chattering.

  “We’ll take care of him,” a voice said from behind. As the two were helped out of the pit, two others in uniform knelt at Worthy’s side. The first raised one of his eyelids while the other took his pulse.

  Father Fortis and Sera watched helplessly as the cross, still holding Victor’s body, twisted like a mobile above Worthy’s unconscious body. With each swing of the cross, the smell of death wafted over those nearest the pit. A stretcher was passed down into the pit, and Worthy’s limp body was lifted from the grave.

  As the stretcher made its way through the crowd, Worthy regained consciousness and lifted his head. “But she’s here. She has to be. The unicorn …,” he moaned, before passing out again.

  Sera huddled like a trembling bird beside Father Fortis. “I have to tell Victor’s mother. I have to go now,” she muttered. Father Fortis edged her toward the spot where he’d left Father Linus. But where was the old monk?

  “Man down!” a voice shouted ahead of him. “Need medical!”

  Father Fortis and Sera ran toward a group huddled over someone on the ground. A ball of fear rose in Father Fortis’s belly as he sensed, even before he saw, that it was Father Linus.

  The old monk lay prone on the ground, his legs twitching violently as he clutched at his chest.

  “Cardiac, cardiac!” someone called out. “Get the cart!”

  Sera weaved as she stumbled back toward Father Fortis. “His poor mother,” she muttered again.

  “We need a blanket here,” Father Fortis called to one of the men running by.

  “What the hell for? Oh, sorry, Father.”

  “I think she’s going into shock.”

  “Shock over here!”

  Personnel split into tight circles of action, as if the group had come under attack. Off to the side was the only still figure, Lieutenant Choi, conferring with a fellow officer.

  Out of nowhere, a uniformed woman appeared with a blanket and covered Sera’s shoulders before leading her away toward one of the vans. The ambulance holding Worthy and Father Linus already had its lights flashing. Father Fortis stood alone in the horror of the day and in the beauty of the evening light. He said a prayer for the dead boy, for the boy’s family, for Sister Anna, for Father Linus, and finally for Worthy. My God, he thought, the evil of this case is going to swallow us all.

  At the far end of the canyon the moon was rising like a balloon freed from a child’s arms. Fiery contrails of airplanes crisscrossed in the deep blue sky above. He thought of the people flying high above in those planes, perhaps munching pretzels and sipping complimentary sodas as they looked down on the scene.

  They probably think we’re a small town, Father Fortis pondered, or a Little League game being played underneath the lights. They wouldn’t hear of the strange story of the crucified boy until the morning papers arrived.

  A crucified boy, he thought. I can’t believe it. Victor Martinez had died a horrible death, and judging from the state of the body, not recently.

  Father Fortis sat on a rock and felt the heat of the day still radiating from it. His friend Worthy had pictured the boy as crazy, roaming the hills for moradas, vandalizing and then finally killing. All that had been wrong. No, he corrected himself, not completely wrong. Based on what he knew, Worthy had predicted what they’d find at an abandoned morada, and he’d been right.

  Yes, something had been right in the theory, even if the body was the wrong one. La Muerte, the death figure found with the body, proved Worthy’s point—there was a link between the vandalism, Sister’s Anna’s murder, and now the boy’s horrible death.

  An officer approached him, explaining the logistics of getting him back to the monastery. Father Fortis stared at the sandwiches and water bottle left for him. Was there nothing for him to do but eat sandwiches and wait for a ride? He glanced around at the flurry of activity. Victor’s body, still attached to the cross, was being carried as if in an ancient procession, while others were tearing down the equipment. No, there would be nothing for an outsider to do but sit and try to make sense of it all.

  He thought of something Worthy had told him once, back in Ohio. He’d asked Worthy the question that had haunted him ever since they first met. “Why would anyone want to work on homicide cases?”

  He would never forget his friend’s unexpected response. “Murder is a lot like falling madly in love,” Worthy had said. “Two people traveling on their own separate journeys bump into each other. There’s a passionate meeting, an encounter, except with murder something goes horribly wrong. You see, Nick,” he said, “when I kneel down over a body, I’m standing at a kind of intersection. People—sometimes my own captain—think my first job is to find the killer. But how can I do that until I know what led the victim to that spot, that meeting? Once I understand why the victim was there, I usually have a clue as to why a killer met them at the same spot at the same time. That’s my job,
and I won’t apologize for enjoying the challenge.”

  Yes, two bizarre paths led to this place, Father Fortis thought, looking back on the morada. Nine months before, Victor Martinez had accepted a college scholarship and left this world behind. At college, his path had crossed that of a very rich, but fragile, girl. The death of a friend had rocked Victor and brought him home, but the peace he so desperately searched for had eluded him. Worthy’s conviction that Victor had drifted from Colorado to Chimayó searching for forgiveness still made sense. From there, the boy had come to this lonely morada and met his end on a cross. That was one journey.

  But what of the other journey? Sister Anna’s killer had intersected with Victor Martinez at this morada and killed him. Similar ritualistic signatures had been left at both murders. Didn’t it all add up to the killer being a Penitente or a group of them? Father Linus’s nightmare had come true. No wonder his heart failed when he saw the boy on the cross.

  Father Fortis unwrapped the sandwich and saw that it was cheese. The bread was cold from refrigeration, and he pressed it to his eyes.

  He pictured Father Linus sitting next to him, defending his beloved Brotherhood. Was there still a chance the old monk was right? If the killer wasn’t a Penitente, it would have to be someone who knew the Brotherhood’s secret rituals and haunts. But why would an outsider hate a group of pious old men? Hadn’t someone recently told him that the Brotherhood would probably expire on its own in a few years?

  He took a long drink from the bottle. Who’d told him that? It took him a moment to remember that Father Bernard had been overheard saying those words to Brother Andrew. But the killer seemed unable to wait for these old brothers and their moradas to simply fade away. Whoever he was, the killer seemed to be in a hurry, as if time were running out.

  In the fading light, he saw movement on the ground and looked down to watch ants swarm over his food wrapper. We’re like these ants, he thought, each of us on our separate journeys, bumping into one another, trying to find some way home. What a sorrowful lot we must be to God as He watches all the misery we put ourselves through.

  An officer called from the road and motioned him toward one of the cars. Father Fortis’s feet and legs began to cramp, no doubt from standing on rocky ground for over six hours.

  Stars were just beginning to peek through the band of turquoise in the western sky. Out here somewhere, in these darkening hills and canyons, Father Fortis prayed, Ellie VanBruskman was still alive and waiting for someone to find her.

  Worthy hobbled sheepishly across the hospital parking lot toward the waiting car.

  “Get in, lefty,” Sera called from the driver’s seat.

  Easing himself into the passenger seat, Worthy carefully arranged the seatbelt over the sling. “I didn’t expect to see you. Someone told me you went into shock,” he said. “You okay?”

  “Better than you. What do they say about your shoulder?”

  “It’s just dislocated, nothing broken. They kept me overnight and worked on it this afternoon. I’m to give it a rest and have it checked again back in Detroit. Just don’t make any sudden stops.”

  “No, I think we’ve had enough surprises,” she agreed as she pulled away from the hospital.

  Worthy sat quietly, wondering if he needed to apologize. He’d been so sure about Victor and Ellie. So sure and yet so wrong. He’d warned Sera at Acoma about the other side of his reputation, about his being a “flake.” Maybe now she’d believe him.

  As if to counter his thoughts, Sera said, “Cortini and Choi are pretty jazzed about yesterday.”

  “Jazzed? You mean entertained, don’t you?”

  “No, I mean impressed. Of course, they didn’t have to drive out to Acoma to tell Victor’s family. God, that was awful.”

  “It must have been,” Worthy said, feeling somehow at fault. But why would Cortini and Choi be impressed? “Jeez, you have no idea how stupid I feel,” he muttered, adjusting the strap on his sling and sending a twinge down his arm.

  “Why stupid? Come on, Chris, think about it. You predicted that we’d find a body at an abandoned morada, and you also said the body would link Victor with the nun’s murder. Cortini is calling you a genius.”

  “It’s kind of him not to mention that we found the wrong body and that I have no idea where Ellie VanBruskman is.”

  “I might have a chain in the trunk that you can whip yourself with,” she said.

  “Sorry. I’m not very good company.”

  “Then stop it. We’re here,” she announced, as she turned off in an alley and parked behind a small cement block building next to some railroad tracks.

  “Which is where?”

  “Believe it or not, Chris, I’m taking you to one of the best restaurants in Santa Fe,” she said. “It’s not the kind in the fancy guidebooks, which makes it even better.”

  They walked into a crowded and noisy anteroom, where parents stood guard over small children playing on the floor. Sera excused herself to wend her way toward the hostess in another room, leaving Worthy alone. Several children stopped playing to stare up at his sling. Streams of Spanish flowed around him, and he realized as he looked into a far room of tables that he was one of only two or three Anglos in the place.

  “Did a bad man shoot you?” a voice called from the floor. He looked down to a boy no taller than his knee, with eyes as black as Sera’s. A woman said something to the boy in Spanish, but he continued to stare up at Worthy.

  Worthy bent down. “No, I slipped and fell into a hole.”

  The boy bent down and pulled up his pant leg. “I fell down and skinned my knee. Want to see?”

  “Ouch. That must have hurt.”

  He stood up and saw Sera’s smiling face. “It looks like the two of us have something in common. We’ve both fallen,” he explained. “He hurt his knee, while I mainly hurt my pride.”

  His shoulder started to throb, and he thought about the pain pills in his pocket. “How long is the wait?”

  “We get the next table.”

  Worthy winced. “That should make us popular.”

  “They won’t mind,” she said, rising to her feet. “They can see you’re injured.”

  In less than two minutes, Sera’s name was called, and Worthy excused himself repeatedly as he threaded his way through those waiting. No one gave him the icy stare he’d have received in Detroit.

  They were seated at a small table near a corner fireplace. The air, thick with the smell of chili peppers and deep-frying, made Worthy’s mouth water. On the walls hung soccer banners from Mexico.

  “I have some big news,” Sera said as she sat down. The table wobbled on one leg, and she folded several napkins in half and reached down to steady it. “Choi is sending me to Colorado.”

  “Why?” he asked, but he could guess.

  “To find out what we can about Victor. You know, where he stayed when he was up there, that sort of thing.”

  “When he met his angel,” Worthy added. “I’d assumed that was all an hallucination, like the devil he said was chasing him in Detroit. A devil and then an angel. I don’t suppose they could have been the same person.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t see how. This angel seems to have been the opposite of whoever was chasing him back at the college.”

  He looked into the fire. “So, the two of us won’t be looking for Ellie.”

  “Sorry, Chris, I can’t. We’re more than a little short-handed right now. Choi has everyone else headed south. The way he figures it, the killer is moving down the state. The first vandalism was up north across the border, the nun died near the monastery, and then Victor’s body was found farther south. He’s got everybody checking the known moradas south of here.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “I’d say two or three days. Not so long. What will you do?”

  “Go back to Chimayó, I guess.”

  She stared at him. “Chimayó? Why?”

  “It was the last place Ellie visited. I’
ll take the new photos, the ones with the black hair, and ask around. But I’ll need your car.”

  “My car?”

  “I can’t drive St. Mary’s Jeep with this arm. I need an automatic.”

  “Welcome to La Choza,” the waiter said. “Great food but shaky tables, as I see you’ve discovered. We blame the trains. Are you ready to order, or do you need more time?”

  The waiter looked college age, clean-cut, and cheery.

  Sera blushed. “Sorry, I guess we’re not quite ready. Could we have a minute?”

  “No, that’s okay,” Worthy interrupted. “You order for both of us.”

  Sera cleared her throat. “Hot or mild?”

  “You decide,” he said.

  “Okay. You heard him,” she said to the waiter, switching to Spanish to order.

  To Worthy’s relief, they managed to eat the chicken enchiladas, refried beans, and Spanish rice without ever mentioning Victor Martinez or Ellie VanBruskman.

  “It wasn’t too hot?” she asked, as they walked out to the restaurant.

  “It was hot, but I got used to it.” He wondered if the same could be true of New Mexico in general. Detroit and its urban landscape now seemed a miserable second to Santa Fe and its surrounding scenery.

  As they strolled toward her car, Worthy said, “The kid who waited on us reminded me of Victor, at least as I’ve imagined him. They must have been about the same age. I like to think Victor was that confident and outgoing when he started college.”

  “Before things fell apart,” Sera added.

  He stood by the door of the car. “When I rolled into the grave and realized it was Victor, I thought I’d never get that image out of my mind. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe for Victor it wasn’t … I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t so bad.”

  They both got into the car but Sera didn’t start the engine. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, more than anything Victor wanted to be put on a cross, and in the end—”