“Hi, Judith,” I said. “Isn’t this house amazing?”
“Yes. Big. And very expensive,” she said. “Lots of people from the reservation have worked on it.”
Something about Judith whispered to me of ancient things, of traditions that lived on in more than photographs. She looked timeless in turquoise and silver dangling earrings and a matching neck cuff that looked as old as the land around us. Her low, thick ponytail was fastened with a large clip, and it, too, was silver, with round pieces of turquoise set within etched scrolls.
“Did you know Paul before he became a client?” I asked her.
“No, he’s not from around here—the Mescalero reservation, I mean, or Tularosa. But my brother worked construction here. At this house.”
“Oh really? What does your brother do?”
“He’s an electrician.”
The teenage cocktail waiter returned with my drink. “Here you go, one club soda with lime. And for you, ma’am?”
My phone chimed. While Judith gave her order, I checked the text. Wallace, in a group text to Nadine and me: Nadine and I visited Harvey today.
I typed a quick reply: Any sign of Valentina?
Wallace: No. He swears he’s never met Sofia or her, and that he lost track of Spike when they got out of prison.
Me: Impossible. He was seen running away from the hotel the night Sofia shot Spike.
Harvey’s denial made me want to dig deeper with Wallace. What did you ask him? What did you see? How did he explain that tattoo? But I reminded myself that I could count on Wallace and Nadine to handle it. I had to.
Wallace: We’ll take another pass at him.
Me: Thank you, guys.
I needed to stay off the phone at a work function. I slipped it in my pocket and returned my attention to Judith, who stood gazing up at the rock face. Without turning toward me, she started talking again.
“I used to come out here with my friends when I was a girl,” she said. “There were fences, but we didn’t care.” The wind blew a wisp of hair from her clip and it fluttered to the side of her sharp cheekbones. She pointed to the top of the rocks. “When we first came out here, we convinced ourselves we’d seen Mountain Spirits dancing up there. Who knows, maybe we did.”
She tucked the hair behind her ear. The sun reflected off her earring. “It became our place. We started to dance when we came here, like them, facing the Sacred Mountain.” She pointed north to the white-capped Sierra Blanca Peak in the distance. She turned to me and smiled for the first time since I’d met her, then returned her gaze to the rocks.
You know of the Mountain Spirit dancers?” Judith asked.
“Yes. Mickey told me about them,” I said.
She nodded. “I was always the clown, painting myself white, wearing the nose and the ears. I liked scaring the little ones.”
How to say this nicely? “I’ll bet you were good at it.”
“I was.”
“I was a clown, too. A rodeo clown.”
As I looked at her profile, images ran through my head, of my recent dreams of the Clown Dancer, and of something else. A crude drawing in Crayola, a man in a skirt, an oversized crown of sticks on his head, his skin crayoned white. Animal ears and nose. Was Valentina’s drawing of the Mountain Spirit Dancer’s clown? If she had come to the U.S. through southern New Mexico, it could be. That brought up interesting possibilities. But maybe I was just projecting my thoughts onto her picture.
“We have that in common.” She sighed. “I worked for Jack when he was with the DA in Las Cruces, did you know that?”
“I didn’t.”
“Yeah. I moved to the city when I was younger, but I always wanted to come back here.”
“I can see why. It’s magical, spectacular.”
“That day when the bomb went off, I was there. Before it happened, I saw the Dancers, I saw the Clown. They were in front of the building, by the flags.”
She’d lost me, lost me in a way so profound I didn’t know how to ask what she was talking about. She wasn’t making sense. Was she crazy, or was I missing something? It felt important, game-changing even, so I didn’t dare interrupt.
“The Clown took the Dancers to the parking lot, to Jack’s car,” Judith said. “And I followed them. Then he cried, the Clown did. I didn’t know what he meant, so I looked around, to ask someone else, but I was the only one there.”
I held my breath, literally. Judith’s eyes had teared up, and I didn’t think it was from the wind. I stayed silent.
“Nobody else saw them. And later, when it happened, I knew they had been real, and what the Clown had been trying to tell me.”
She turned to me again, tears now streaming down her face. “Being here, it forces me to remember. I still feel guilty—I didn’t understand what the Clown meant, and I should have. I could have saved Mrs. Holden and the children from the bomb. I could have kept them out of Jack’s car. They would be alive today.”
A chill ran through me, and my mouth hung open uselessly. Jack’s wife hadn’t left him and taken the kids. They were dead. Dead. Judith looked into my eyes, and I realized that she needed me to respond.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
She backed away. “Please tell Jack I was here,” she said. “I just don’t think I can stay. Because of the memories.”
***
In the wake of Judith’s revelations, I couldn’t stay either. My mind reeled, sifting through her words for the facts. A car bomb at the courthouse? Jack’s wife and kids dead? It was so much worse than anything I’d imagined about Jack’s past. Losing your whole family to a car bomb—one I had to assume was meant for him since it was in his car at his workplace—how did you ever recover from that? I choked on a sob and took off from the patio toward some outbuildings in the distance. I needed a place to hide, a place to think, a place to mourn Jack’s family. My rapid walk morphed into a slow, blind jog.
Loss was everywhere. My loss. Sofia’s. Valentina’s. And now Jack’s loss—his loss swallowing mine up whole in its immensity. Mickey had mentioned Jack not smiling for five years. I wondered if Jack fled to Amarillo after the bomb, had lived in his office shrine for this whole time, hiding from everything but his memories, only for me to come along and defile his sanctuary. My jog sped into a blind run, until I planted my booted foot on a rock, stumbled, and went down on my hands and knees.
“Oomph.”
I lifted my palms. Dirt and rocks and blood. I rose and lifted my skirt. More rocks, dirt, and blood. There was a gaping hole in my black stockings on my right knee, but my long, black skirt would cover it. I brushed off my knees and let go of the fabric. Hair fell around my face, and I probed for the bobby pins that held my back-teased strands in place. I pulled one out and re-secured it. That would have to do. The fall had sobered me a little, and I started walking again, aimless but still generally toward the three green metal buildings now only a hundred feet away.
When I reached them, I walked to the back of the first one, out of sight of Paul’s party. I crouched with my back against it. Breathe. You can’t make sense of this unless you breathe, and think. Maybe it was time to ask for help, too. Like from the Big Guy. But I was really rusty. Sure, I muttered pithy little prayers now and then, but when was the last time I’d truly meant it? I didn’t really need to ask myself that, though. I knew exactly when. My senior year at Tech. When Christmas and my birthday passed without hearing from my father, I quit religion cold turkey. In retrospect, I could admit that God probably wasn’t the one to blame, but it was easier at the time. In the ensuing years, my problem was more organized religion than Him, but the result was the same either way.
Ever since then—and especially lately—I’d done a little too much of the why me and the not fair instead of just being thankful for what I did have. I probably didn’t deserve to ask for help now, but I was going to give it my best shot anyway. I pressed my hands together and closed my eyes, but all that came out of me was why me,why this, why anyone, you have to make it b
etter. I tried again, softly, under my breath.
“God, I don’t understand all this.”
Long moments passed, silent except for my deliberate breaths. In. Out. In. Out. The rhythm hypnotized me, and underneath my closed lids, my eyes fluttered. Just as I faded out, I realized with a sudden clarity, a certainty, that things in my life were as they should be, that I was where I should be. I closed my eyes again.
“Thank you for bringing me home and to a new career and new friends, and a chance to help make a difference in things that really matter. And I promise I am going to find a church, just not that Believers one or any church that Melinda Stafford would consider attending. Amen.”
Men’s voices interrupted me, close and moving my way. I looked harder at the outside of the building where I’d taken refuge. It appeared to be a warehouse of sorts. To my right was a huge roll-up door, open about halfway. The voices came from inside the building. Instinct took over; I stood and crept to the edge of the door, craning to hear.
A deep voice spoke. “Mr. Johnson said the police don’t have a clue that’s Alejandro they found dead at Wrong Turn Ranch. And I haven’t heard any talk about the stupid bastard taking his silver mine story to the Apaches. You may have dodged a bullet, this time. But we need to make an example out of him to the others, because this can’t ever happen again. Or next time we’ll be making an example of you.”
A higher, thinner voice answered. “Alejandro was our only problem. The rest of ’em are scared shitless. Once they see we got the girl back—and what we do to the little brat—they’ll be back down in that mine diggin’ Apache silver for all they’re worth—with their mouths shut.”
Their words had frozen me in place, once again forcing me to decipher the truth from half the story. While I didn’t have enough to get the full picture, I got the gist. Making examples out of people, problems with a terrorized labor force, silver belonging to the Apaches, a recovered little girl, them knowing who the dead guy was at Jack’s place: trouble that all added up to bad, bad stuff here on Paul’s ranch.
I had to get out of there, and I had to get to Jack. I gathered my skirt in one hand and placed my feet one in front of the other gently and carefully, but quickly. As I crested the side of the building back toward the house, I broke into a run. An arm snaked out and grabbed mine, jerking me to a stop.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa now,” the higher-pitched man said.
I yelped and clawed at the hand cuffed around my arm, at the fingers biting into my flesh. I couldn’t get the hand to budge, so I turned to face the body at the end of the arm.
Two white men stood beside an open side entrance that I hadn’t noticed on my blind flight out here. They both grinned, but not in a friendly way. The man holding my arm was tall and thin, with dusty clothes and limp hair that bore the imprint of a hat brim.
The other man—the man with the deeper voice—was thicker and paler and he had a shaved head. He wore pressed jeans and a checkered shirt and spoke first. “Sorry, miss. You scared us. We aren’t used to strangers out here where they aren’t invited. You here for the party?”
I swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes.”
Tall guy loosened his grip on me some but didn’t let go.
“Didn’t you see the ‘no trespassing’ signs?” He pointed back toward the house. A metal pole with a rectangular sign jutted up from the ground. It did say No Trespassing in black letters against a white background.
My heart galloped in my ears. I struggled for composure, for the bravado that had always sustained me, like when I faced down a drunken two-hundred-pound Neanderthal from the Tarleton rodeo team who had mistaken my decision not to knee him in the balls the first time he’d groped me as weakness. He didn’t get a third chance.
I straightened my shoulders. “No, I didn’t. I’m so sorry. I was looking for a private place to make a call.” I held up my phone.
Tall guy snatched it from me. “Let’s see.” After a few swipes and taps, he said, “Huh. Nothing here.”
I had to convince them I was harmless. “I know. I’ve got man troubles. I got out here and lost my nerve.” I lifted my shoulders in a “silly little me” gesture.
“What’s your name?” tall guy asked.
“Emily. I’m a friend of Paul’s.”
“Ah, shit, Tanner, she’s that nosey Texas woman he told us about. The one that works for the lawyer.”
Tanner, the thicker, paler man, narrowed his eyes.
I forced out a hollow laugh. “That’s me! See, I’m his friend. I’m sorry I came out here, guys, really. I won’t do it again.”
Inside, my heart twisted. Paul was dirty, and he was talking about me to his henchman—and not in a nice way.
Tanner thwacked my phone against his palm a couple of times. And then I heard a child’s scream, high-pitched, soul wrenching. My face reacted before I could steel my features, and I knew how I looked. Scared. Horrified. Concerned.
Dangerous.
“Fuck,” Tanner said.
He ripped off his snap front shirt, revealing a plain white T underneath it. He whipped the shirt over my mouth, muffling me, as he reached into his pocket and pulled something oblong out and jammed a sharp point at one end of it into my arm, all in a series of deft motions.
“Whaaa—”
I felt myself crumpling to the ground, but not before my eyes locked on Tanner’s left arm. At his tattoo.
“East Side . . .” I whispered. But before I finished my thought, the world went black.
Chapter Twenty-five
I opened my eyes but saw nothing. The smell of dust filled my nose. My eyes adjusted to the darkness, but still I could barely see. Everything looked so indistinct. I shook my head, trying to fix my vision, but all it did was make me nauseous and create blurry after-images of the things I couldn’t make out anyway. Where was I?
“Lady?”
A little girl’s voice, clear and close. I turned my face toward the sound and saw a darker blob near what seemed to be the floor.
“Yes, hello.”
“You okay?”
I tried to reach toward her, but couldn’t move my hands. I pulled harder and realized they were fastened together with something rough. “I’m okay, but I can’t see you very well. And I’m tied up.” I closed my eyes again.
“I see you, but the mans tie my hands. When I first here, I no can see. The bad man stick me. It make me sleepy and sick.”
Her voice was heavily accented with the sounds of Mexican Spanish.
“Yeah, me, too.”
I closed my eyes for a moment and focused on calming down. I needed to be in the moment, be aware. To think things through. Like, how does a blind idiot who’s gotten herself knocked out for the second time in a week free herself and a little girl out of hand bindings? I shifted my feet and groaned. And foot bindings.
“Sweetie? Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yes.” She stopped speaking then said, “I’m scared.”
“Me, too, but that’s okay. My name is Emily. What’s yours?”
There was a long pause.
“Sweetie, are you there?”
“I call myself Betsy.”
Her English grammar came out as a literal translation of the way it would be said in Spanish. How formal, how cute, how painfully sincere. My heart leaned toward her and I wished I could hug her. Heck, I wished she could hug me.
“Betsy. Okay, well I’m starting to feel a little bit better, and I’m going to need your help getting us out of here. Can you help me?”
“I try. How?”
“I’m figuring that out right now. Are your feet tied up?”
“Yes.”
“Can you roll over to me long ways?”
“Roll like log?”
“Exactly, like a log.”
“I can!”
I heard the sound of a little body rolling across the floor to me, and I smiled, despite our circumstances. The kid was charming. I opened my eyes again and realized my vision was cle
aring. I saw her small body and long black hair.
“I’m here!”
“Very good. I want to untie your hands. Can you roll behind me and put your hands against mine, so I can feel the knot in the rope they tied yours with?”
“I try.”
Her bright little voice sounded so can-do. I smiled. She pushed the rope around her wrists into my hands.
My fingers worked it as I talked to her. “So, Betsy, tell me about how you got here and where you’re from.”
I found the end of the tough twine and worked my fingers to the knot. I needed to loosen the piece across the top into a loop, then push the stiff twine back through.
“From Mexico with Mama and Papa. We hide in a truck with chickens and lizards.”
The twine was so tight that I couldn’t get it to budge, and I had no leverage. I pushed and pushed and was finally able to wedge my thumbnail between the strands. I wiggled my thumb back and forth, up and down, back and forth, up and down. The twine strands gripped each other as if with pinchers. Was it loosening? I couldn’t tell. Back and forth, up and down. Finally, I felt the tiniest of gives and gave a little gasp.
“What?”
“Hold really still. I think I’m getting it.”
Back and forth, up and down. Another tiny slip. Back and forth, up and down.
“How you get here?”
“By being really dumb.”
Back and forth, up and down. I now had the whole tip of my thumb in the loop, thank God, because I couldn’t keep doing this much longer. My thumbnail was about to come off. I put my wrist into the movement as I answered her.
Now I worked the end of the twine through my hard-won loop. I felt the knot. At least two more. I ignored the pain in my thumbnail and started wedging my nail in again.
“You pretty, Miss.”
I grunted. “Thank you, sweetie. I can’t wait to see you once we are both untied. My eyes have started working again.”
And were adjusting to the dark of the room, lit only by waning light from two high windows, too high, I saw, for me to reach.
Five minutes later I got my thumb tip through, and gritted my teeth in agony. I didn’t want to see my poor thumb. I could feel the shredded skin on either side of my nail with my forefinger. It felt like hamburger. After another three minutes, I had one loop left to go. I switched to my left hand. It was slower, but at least I had the hang of it.
Heaven to Betsy (Emily #1) Page 26
