“Some deaf people would say it doesn’t matter. They don’t want to communicate with us anyway.”
“Sounds a bit extreme, but I suppose everyone has the right to determine who they interact with.”
“That’s fine for adults, but what about children who have that decision made for them?”
“Are you saying some parents of deaf children won’t let their kids play with hearing kids?”
“Yes. And some refuse to authorize medical procedures that would allow the child to hear.”
“Wouldn’t that fall under some child welfare law like those current cases where states are prosecuting parents for child abuse for refusing medical care to their dying children because of their religious beliefs?”
“Being deaf doesn’t kill you, Hubie. Look at it this way. Suppose there was some sort of high-tech headphone thing that would filter incoming sounds and only accept English words. And suppose someone had made Martin wear one of those from the time he was born. He never would have learned his tribe’s language. Letting a deaf child have an implant so that he can hear reduces the likelihood that he will learn to sign, so it’s like taking away his natural language.”
“Signing is not a natural language.”
“You said anthropologists think we signed before we spoke. So signing is more natural than speaking.”
“Hmm. Maybe so. Why didn’t your parents have Mark get a cochlear implant?”
“The Food and Drug Administration didn’t approve cochlear implants for children under two until 2000. Mark was already four and progressing brilliantly in oral training.”
We were silent for a minute or two.
I asked Susannah if she thought Ximena would have wanted an implant.
“Maybe. She liked poetry. Maybe she would have enjoyed hearing it.”
41
An hour after Susannah left, someone knocked hard on the door.
I buzzed in Charles Webbe with the fancy gizmo Tristan gave me. I asked him if he was looking for Native American pottery.
“No. I’m looking for you. You hear that Harte Hockley was arrested for the murder of Ximena Sifuentes?”
“Susannah told me she heard it on the radio, but there were no details.”
“There’s one detail you’ll find interesting. The primary evidence is his fingerprints.”
“Let me guess—on a straw.”
“On two straws. I guess they learned a lesson when they tried to make you a suspect. One straw is not enough.”
“So it might be said that the second straw was the one that broke the case’s back.”
“I wouldn’t say it. I don’t pun. And I don’t think Hockley did it.”
“Why not?”
“You’ve heard of the Holy Trinity in murder cases, right?”
“Sure. Susannah is a big fan of murder mysteries, so I know about motive, means and opportunity.”
“Hockley had the means and the opportunity, but so did everyone else in northern New Mexico. She was in the gallery alone for hours with no way to protect herself. Anyone could have walked in there and cut off her air.”
“What about motive?”
“The theory is he was having an affair with Ximena. She threatened to tell his wife. So he killed her.” He stared at me for a few seconds. “You buy that?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Two reasons. First, Hockley doesn’t strike me as someone who would have an affair with a student. But I don’t know him well and could be wrong about that. I’m more certain of the second reason. I don’t think Ximena would have been involved with a married man.”
“You told me you hardly knew her.”
“That’s right. But I met her parents today, and I read a notebook full of poetry she wrote. I’m virtually certain she was not having an affair with Hockley.”
He nodded. “You still have her notebook?”
I found it and gave it to him. He read the first few poems. Then he asked if I had any coffee.
I brewed the New Mexico Piñon Coffee he likes.
While Charles sipped coffee and read, I walked to the Golden Crown Panaderia on Mountain Road just east of Old Town and bought some cuernos de azucar.
I came back and brewed more coffee.
I fed Geronimo.
Charles finished the coffee, the cuernos and the notebook.
The furrows in his brow seemed even darker than his skin. I asked him what he was thinking about.
He held up the notebook. “I’m wondering if this could be introduced in court as evidence.” He sighed and put the notebook on the table. “Maybe it won’t get to court.”
“Is there any evidence they were having an affair?”
“There’s an allegation and a photograph of the two of them embracing. The embrace doesn’t look intimate. It could just be a friendly greeting. The allegation is the problem.”
“Who made it?”
“I’m going to tell you because I need your help. But you are not to tell anyone. Except Sharice.”
“Why can I tell her? Do you also need her help?”
“No.” He smiled. “I give you permission to tell her because I know you will, and I don’t want you to feel guilty about it.”
When I didn’t say anything, he said, “People who sleep together share their secrets.”
I nodded.
“The person who made the allegation is Jollo Bakkie.”
“And the cops bought that? Don’t they know she hates Hockley? She even gives bad grades to students who like him. The woman is a nut case.”
“She has a written note from Ximena asking Jollo to help her break up with Hockley.”
“Why would Ximena put something like that in writing?”
Charles just stared at me.
“Oh. Of course. Jollo doesn’t know sign language, so Ximena would have to write to communicate with her. How do the police know the note is genuine?”
“The handwriting expert says it is. Needless to say, there are plenty of papers around with Ximena’s writing on them. One of the challenges of being deaf—hard not to leave a paper trail.”
“What does the note say?”
He showed me a photocopy of it. It read, “Hockley has been after me since I was a freshman. I fended him off for two years. But last semester, I gave in. It was great at first—exciting and new. Obviously something I’d never done before. But now he’s making too many demands on me. I want out. But I don’t know how to tell him. And I don’t want to hurt him. Can you help me?”
“It’s torn,” I noted.
“You thinking part of the note might be missing?”
I nodded.
“Me too. But it’s a complete story as-is. I don’t think Hockley’s attorney could prevent it being entered as evidence, and I don’t think he would get far trying to speculate there was more to the note that would undermine what it clearly seems to say.”
“So how can I help you?”
“I need information about the art department that only an insider can get.”
“I’m not an insider. I’m just a first-semester adjunct teaching one course.”
“You may be more of an insider than you think,” he said. Then he gave me a big smile. “According to rumor, you sent their former department head to prison.”
42
Visiting hours for Level I and Level II prisoners at the Central New Mexico Correctional Facility in Los Lunas are from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.
Unless you know an FBI agent who knows the right people and sets up a visit on a Tuesday morning.
Los Lunas is thirty miles south of Albuquerque on Interstate 25. Unfortunately, that is not quite far enough to prevent it from becoming a bedroom community for Albuquerque.
If you’re a language buff and
thinking it should be Las Lunas because the Spanish word for moon is feminine, you are right. But the town is not named after moons. It’s named after the Luna family that settled it.
The prison is on the east side of the freeway and is easily spotted because of its two parallel fences enclosing acres of bare sand on which not a single plant grows. Weed B Gon must be delivered there in tanker trucks.
Even though Charles had paved the way for my visit, it took half an hour to complete the required paperwork and be briefed by a corrections officer on the rule for visitors.
Frederick Blass was a Level I prisoner—lowest of the security levels—but I was still not allowed to be in a room with him. We faced each other through a polycarbonate window and talked via microphones.
I remembered Frederick as a leading man. Sort of a contemporary Errol Flynn. Tall and handsome with a high forehead, intelligent eyes, strong chin and sharp nose. He combed his wavy black hair casually back with no part. He had the voice and posture of an operatic baritone.
His penthouse on the top floor of Rio Grande Lofts looked more like a gallery than a residence, and he entertained there lavishly.
But the thing I remembered most about him was his sartorial flamboyance. The first time I ever saw him, he was wearing blue suede shoes. Likely the first man to do so since Elvis made them popular.
The man on the other side of the polycarbonate window wore black slippers. Shoelaces are on the contraband list. His shirt was faded blue cotton. “Blass” and “264983” were stenciled on it.
His hair was white and cropped short. The intelligent eyes were still there, but the glow of the raconteur was gone, replaced by a gaze that seemed to reflect wisdom.
“It’s good to see you, Hubie.”
“I thought you wouldn’t want to see me.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because if it weren’t for me—”
“I’m not here because of you. I’m here because of me. Or, more accurately, because of the man I used to be.”
“You’ve changed?”
He nodded.
“This probably sounds weird,” I said, “but even though your fancy clothes have been replaced with prison dungarees and your hair has gone white, you look good.”
“That’s nice to hear from someone on the other side of the glass. It’s scary when someone in here says it.”
“It must be horrible.”
“The first few months were bad. I survived. Now I flourish.”
“How so?”
“I teach. Not to a bunch of vapid youngsters like I did before. I teach hardened criminals to paint. They love it. The warden loves it. He says it’s therapeutic. Maybe it is. What I see is guys who have always been losers, always done the wrong thing, finding out they can do something creative rather than destructive.”
“What about your own art?”
“You saw my art. It was postmodernist crap. I knew what the collectors and critics liked, and I gave it to them. Calculating. But then that’s who I was.”
“And now?”
“I strive for authenticity.” He smiled. “Like Sartre.”
“Can I see your work?”
He held up a pencil sketch of Susannah dancing with a man out in the countryside. Only the jacket and the back of the man’s head were visible. She was looking out from the picture.
“It’s been almost five years since I saw her. Does she still look like this?”
I swallowed hard and nodded. He’d somehow managed to capture her impetuous and vulnerable side simultaneously. And the way he held the paper—gently, the way a Buddhist monk might hold a rice-paper lamp—told me he was still in love with her.
“If I mail this to you, will you give it to her for me?”
I nodded.
“And tell her I’m sorry?”
I nodded again.
“She always insisted you weren’t her boyfriend, but I never completely believed her. When I tried to frame you, I rationalized it by saying I was eliminating the competition. I was a sick puppy. I hope you can forgive me.”
“I did that the day you came here. I figured you had enough grief.”
“Thanks. So why did you ask to see me?”
“I’m an adjunct in the art department this fall. I’m teaching a course called ‘Anasazi Pottery Methods.’”
His eyes widened. “Did Melvin Armstrong or Junior Prather leave the department? Because there was never enough demand to justify the two of them, much less an adjunct.”
“No, they’re both still there. They greeted me on my first day to tell me they weren’t talking to me.”
“Is Milton Shorter the department head?”
“He’s acting department head.”
“Still acting after all these years? That’s strange. So you wanted to visit me to get tips on how to teach a studio class?”
“Too late for that. I’ve already made every mistake possible. But the worst thing is that one of my students was murdered.”
I told him about Ximena’s death and the ongoing investigation. I told him about the informal and formal allegations leveled at Junior Prather, me and now Harte Hockley. I told him about Charles Webbe.
He told me about all the petty jealousies in the art department, most of which I had seen or at least heard about.
“Why did you start the tradition of serving tea?”
“Well, it wasn’t so the straws could serve as clues. The departmental meetings were fractious. I thought if we spent the first few minutes doing something no one could argue about, it might reduce the bickering.”
“Did it?”
He shook his head slowly. “When I introduced the idea, they bickered about whether the tea would be served to them according to academic rank or alphabetical order. They settled on academic rank in reverse so that the most senior full professor would be served last.”
“I guess that explains why I was served first.”
“And why Jack Wiezga is always served last,” he added.
“He’s retired,” I noted. “Why does he still have a studio? Why does he attend departmental meetings? Why does he get to decide who teaches?”
“He’s the glue that holds the department together. Like the alpha male in a pack of stray dogs. Even mongrels need order in their lives. They don’t all like Wiezga, but someone has to be in charge.”
“Shouldn’t that be the department head?”
“Of course. But the department head is appointed by the dean based on administrative capability. The real power is informal and wielded by the lead dog.”
“So Wiezga is the one who always knows which way the wind is blowing?”
He laughed. “I guess you’ve heard that a lot. It’s sort of the departmental mantra. Let me give you the background. When I first became department head and found myself in a dispute with a faculty member over course assignments, travel funds or what-have-you, they would often defend their stance by saying they knew which way the wind was blowing. I was chatting with Wiezga near the end of that first semester and tried to make a few brownie points by telling him in a thankful tone that he was the only person in the department who never said he knew which way the wind was blowing. He smiled that heavy-jawed smile of his and said, ‘I don’t need to know which way the wind is blowing. I am the wind.’”
43
I divided my time that afternoon between watching my students put the final touches on the works they planned to submit for the student/faculty exhibit and thinking about what Blass had told me.
Sharice was working late, so I met Susannah at Dos Hermanas. Usually, she waits until Angie brings our margaritas before sharing any news, but that afternoon she started talking before I was seated.
“Ximena didn’t die from asphyxiation.”
“The Office of the Medical Investigator ruled she d
id.”
“They’re wrong. She was poisoned.”
“And you know this how?”
“Call it a hunch for now. But it’s based on sixteen years of experience.”
“As a medical investigator?” I asked kiddingly.
“As a murder mystery reader. And hanging around with you has added a bit to my knowledge base.”
“Don’t remind me. So what kind of poison was it?”
“My guess would be cyanide. But we can figure that out after the experiment we’re going to run tomorrow.”
After she explained the experiment, I just stared at her dumbfounded.
“So tell me about your day,” she said.
“I visited Freddie Blass at the Central New Mexico Correctional Facility in Los Lunas.”
Now it was her turn to look dumbfounded.
After I recounted my conversation with Blass, she asked how he was.
“A changed man. Calmer. More reflective. Looks different too. His hair is white and he’s too thin.”
She shuddered.
“One thing hasn’t changed.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s still in love with you.”
“Like I’m supposed to care? He’s a murderer.”
“He was convicted of manslaughter.”
“Only because of a plea bargain. His killing of Gerstner was premeditated. The fact that he set up a possible frame of you proves that.”
“That only proves the thought of killing Gerstner had crossed his mind. It doesn’t prove he was actually going to do it. The actual murder was in the heat of an argument. His attorney said Gerstner attacked Blass.”
“Attorneys are paid to lie.”
I didn’t reply.
“Why are you defending him?” she asked.
“I’m not defending him. He killed Gertsner. He went to prison. Now he’s about to be released. He’s done his time. And he’s a changed man, Suze.”
“They all say that to the parole board.”
44
The experiment required Sharice to assist. It was seven the next morning. Susannah sat on my kitchen table at the back of Spirits in Clay. Sharice covered Susannah’s body with alginate from her hips to her neck. The she wrapped gauze over the alginate.
The Pot Thief Who Studied Edward Abbey Page 19
