The Drum Within

by James R. Scarantino

  “That was hard,” he said.

  Fager started the car and eased to the corner near Geronimo’s gallery. The crowd had grown. A jazz vocalist and ensemble had replaced the drum circle. Geronimo embraced a woman in a flamboyant printed dress while people applauded something.

  “Why are they smiling?” Fager asked, but it didn’t sound like a real question.

  “I’m with you, you want to handle this the other way,” Bronkowski said so quietly he wasn’t sure Fager heard him. “The way I said before.”

  Fager drove slowly, working his way around the blocked-off street, then farther up Canyon Road. Brown adobe walls narrowed then pulled back where the road dead-ended at the Audubon Center at the edge of the forest. Fager turned the car around in the parking lot and finally spoke.

  “If I were to kill Geronimo, I’d do to him what he did to Linda. Nothing less. I’d want him to know what was coming. Let him see the boxcutter up close. You could hold him down. We’d drive staples into his face before I peeled it off, not do him the favor of killing him first.”

  Bronkowski had been with Fager in Bosnia. Back then it had been a K-bar in Fager’s hand, the blade against the cheek of a Serbian militiaman the Muslims had left alive because he might know radio codes.

  “And the minute Geronimo turned up missing,” Fager went on, “they would be after us. Being criminals would dishonor Linda. No, I want Geronimo to see his world destroyed. Then spend his life in a cage with animals who eat him alive, spit him out, and start over every day, chewing on something new. What did you learn talking to that monster?”

  “He’s making a fortune selling crap.”

  “So why the bankruptcies? Why does Marcy hold mortgages on everything he owns?”

  Fager retraced his route back into town. They crossed a two-lane bridge over the trickle of the Santa Fe River and approached the district around the plaza. Stars sparkled in an indigo sky. Santa Fe was beautiful at this hour, but Bronkowski couldn’t see any of it. He saw the perfect teeth in Geronimo’s mouth, an honest-to-god twinkle in his eye, the silver tip on his boot—just the left boot, what was up with that? The grotesque statues, the glitzy crowd, tittering, sharing the thrill of being next to the guy who killed Linda.

  The man’s smooth fingers in his hand.

  “Something else,” Bronkowski said. “It may sound like bigoted bullshit, but every Indian at the VA center, even guys who were Green Berets and Special Forces, they give you the dead fish. Their hand just lies in yours like it’s asleep. Geronimo shook my hand for real.”

  “He has to live in the white man’s world.”

  “Indian vets do, too. They’re tough guys. But they don’t crush your hand.”

  “So Geronimo’s a fake Indian?”

  The pink castle of the Scottish Rite Temple, a little Moorish and King Arthur at the same time, slid by as Fager headed north to his house in the hills. The building, taking up almost a whole city block, was up for sale, for millions. The city’s next boutique hotel, they could keep the color.

  Bronkowski said, “If you’re not buying what he’s selling, the Indian act, the art trip, you see a guy dripping bullshit.”

  “I represented a Basque once. A sheep rancher. Shot his neighbor, a Southern Ute, rustling ewes with a horse trailer. The Basque was dark and swarthy, as they used to say. He looked like an Indian, face wrinkled by sun and wind, the big black eyes, black hair. The Ute, he had blue eyes. Geronimo’s bio says he came from country where there’s Basques, the ranchers, and seasonal help.”

  “No Basque galleries on Canyon Road. Better to be Indian, if art’s your gig.”

  “Now give me the hard stuff, Bronk. You read the preliminary autopsy? You didn’t answer me before.”

  Bronkowski took a breath and decided not to soften it.

  “He dug out the little bones inside Linda’s ear. The inventory of stuff seized from him listed a baggie with small bones, probably from birds, the cops thought. And pieces of a snail shell. I thought it was stuff he used in his art. Like the cops I didn’t put it together right away. I researched those little ear bones. One looks like a tiny snail.”

  “Judy Diaz ordered everything returned.” Fager’s voice flat, showing no pain or anger. “I’ll e-mail Mascarenas a motion to order Geronimo to place that baggie in court custody, if it hasn’t already been destroyed. I could go civil. Judge Santiago would give me an ex parte order before Diaz was any wiser. I want you to get with Goff. I’m sure Aragon banked a copy of the tape with him. We need it. If Geronimo’s recorded saying the bones came from Linda, that establishes my standing for a replevin action.”

  “Replevin? You going numb on me, buddy?”

  “It’s a question of derivative taint for the prosecution, but a property interest of the estate in a civil action.”

  “Damn it, Walt. Listen to yourself. You’re analyzing pieces of Linda like loose change hacks take from a guy’s pocket when he’s booked in. This is gonna kill you from the inside out if you don’t cut loose what’s really going on in there.” Bronkowski throttled down. “I’m worried, real worried, ’cause I don’t think that’s something you can do.”

  An uneasy silence filled the car. Fager stared straight ahead as he drove. Bronkowski rolled down the window to let cold air wash his face.

  Fager said, “Call Goff tonight.”

  Eleven

  The New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy requires female candidates to meet half the physical strength requirements for men. Aragon hated that. As if the critters coming at you were going to weigh half as much, or try half as hard to kill you. Fifteen pushups in sixty seconds is what the state wanted of women. On her first test as a cadet she was at fifty-one when the instructor ordered her to stop.

  Next time, before class started, when she couldn’t be accused of disrupting the lesson plan, she dropped and did an even hundred.

  The apprehension test had been her favorite. Candidates started from a standing position wearing a ten-pound belt to simulate a fully equipped gun holster. At the whistle they dashed thirty feet, jumped across a four-foot barrier, ran twelve-point-five feet, hurdled a three-foot-high and four-foot-wide barrier. Then pushed a police car thirty feet to where a victim extraction took place, the victim being a one-hundred-ninety-pound dummy strapped inside the car. The candidate had to release the dummy from its seatbelt and drag it twenty feet across the finish line. All in forty-two seconds or less.

  Fun.

  Aragon showed off by carrying the dummy on her back and finishing five steps ahead of the first man.

  At Brazos Gym, an old-school weight room, no juice bar or Body Flow classes, York barbells without any plastic or rubber, this was upper body day, with triceps thrown in. Aragon and Lewis drove from home to SFPD’s main office, switched into their assigned car and arrived in time for a 6:00 a.m. start. The place was already busy and smelling of sweat. After moving through separate routines they convened at the weight bench. Aragon was up to benching one-hundred-eighty pounds in three sets of fifteen reps. She did the last set with hands inches apart, using the strength in her wrists and forearms to hold the bar steady. Lewis spotted, but knew she wouldn’t need him.

  Then came her turn to spot for Lewis. He went heavy and forgot about high reps. She helped him put three hundred and fifty pounds on a bar weighing forty-five pounds. These lifts would be his personal best.

  Lewis had just enough air in his chest to get the bar back onto the rack.

  “I’m fried. Let’s do our real job.”

  They showered in their respective locker rooms. Aragon was out first and checked text messages. Her brother Javier wanted her to join his family on a mule ride in the mountains. He was always trying to get her out of Santa Fe. Rivera wanted them early to brainstorm on Cynthia Fremont, off the record, away from the ears of competing agencies. She appreciated the show of respect.

  “Lotab
urger?” she asked Lewis when he joined her.

  “What, to cancel out the last hour?”

  Lewis drove them to Whole Foods. Aragon waited in the car and read his notes on Tasha Gonzalez. He returned with smoked salmon bagels, fruit salad, and French Roast coffee. Aragon tucked his notes under her leg. She pulled the plastic tub with the fruit salad from her bag and turned it around in the sunlight slanting through the windshield.

  “I like fruit better after an animal’s turned it into red meat and gotten rid of the parts it can’t use.”

  “You think a taco salad is actually a salad.”

  “I get salad every day. The onion, lettuce, and tomato on my Lotaburger. Green chile for vitamin C. Makes a complete meal.”

  “You’re one of those people who puts Lotaburger in restaurant reviews on Urban Spoon.”

  “Four stars. You can get fruit if you want. A slice of lemon in the iced tea.”

  They unfolded the wrappers around their bagels.

  “Jesus,” Aragon said with her first bite. “Who eats fish for breakfast?”

  She threw the sandwich out the window and dug a MaxMuscle protein bar from her gym bag. She snapped off half in one bite and chased it with coffee. She gobbled the rest and dug under sweaty socks for a second. Maybe she still had some of her brother’s elk jerky in there, too.

  “Top of the first page you wrote ‘Ladron,’” Aragon said, bringing his notes on Tasha Gonzales from under her thigh.

  Lewis stretched it out, rolled the “r,” gave it his best Spanish accent. “Lah-drrroanuh. Ladron Peak. Off by itself on the way to Socorro. It means robber.”

  “Senorita Aragon knows what ladron means. Tasha Gonzalez wasn’t found anywhere near there.”

  “It’s where Geronimo once had a big ranch. Before bankruptcy. Tasha Gonzalez was found between here and there.”

  Aragon dragged a flat palm across her buzz cut, stopped with her finger pointing up, getting what Lewis left unsaid. “You’re thinking he killed her on the ranch and dumped her on his way back to Santa Fe?”

  “Not thinking anything. Just gathering data.”

  “I still want to find that bar where Geronimo went after killing Linda Fager. I hit three places last night. Three strikes. Lots of bars within a mile of that bookstore. I’ll try another three tonight in the opposite direction. If we had an open file, with us leading the investigation, and ten other detectives assisting, we’d have it by now.”

  They weren’t far from the FBI offices. Lewis drove east on St. Francis almost to the interstate, then turned into one of the business parks ringing Santa Fe. The FBI occupied a territorial-style building appearing more like a Spanish colonial hacienda than federal office complex. It even had gabled windows and a corrugated tin roof.

  In his text Rivera said to come to the basement. This would be the first interagency meeting since Cynthia Fremont was discovered in the trunk two nights ago. They found a large, cold room with a conference table and file cabinets still on hand trucks. A nylon tent had been set up at the far end, along with a compact gas stove, aluminum pots, plastic water bottles, and a collapsible stool near the unzipped door. The Cynthia Fremont camp, dismantled, transported, reconstructed. Spread on a conference table Aragon saw something that flew from many Santa Fe homes, a string of pastel prayer flags.

  One wall was covered with photographs of the camp as it had appeared next to the lake. Other photos showed Fremont in the trunk and the Volvo from different angles. A map of the Santa Fe National Forest had been tacked to the wall. Red string connected pins on the map.

  String tied to a pin very close to the campsite location ran to photos of a rocky ledge high above the lake. Four poles had been erected around a flat rock. The prayer flags on the table had flown between those poles. Close-ups showed dried blood caught in cracks and depressions in the rock.

  Rivera entered the war room carrying a pot of coffee and a stack of Styrofoam cups. His black hair and high forehead made Aragon think again of Miguel. When he smiled she saw a boy who never had the chance to grow into a handsome man.

  Rivera said, “You got the lake right. Saved us days of searching. Maybe you’ll nail something else.”

  Lewis and Aragon helped themselves to coffee.

  “What did you find inside the sleeping bag?” Aragon asked.

  Rivera tapped a stack of photos. They showed a young woman’s pale, naked body, with lacerations down the top of each thigh. A deep cut into the right quadriceps. The wavering line of a superficial laceration crossed her abdomen. Close-ups of her wrists showed lengthwise incisions following the direction of blood vessels exposed in the wound tracts.

  “Do you have a tox screen yet?” Lewis asked.

  Rivera answered without consulting anything. “THC, alcohol, and extremely high levels of acetaminophen and acetylsalicylate. Almost enough to knock her out.”

  “The second one,” Lewis followed up. “Acetyl … ”

  “Aspirin. Also semen in anus and vagina, deposited within twelve hours of death.”

  “They could have dumped her up in the mountains,” Lewis said. “There wouldn’t be much left after a few weeks. But they carried her miles to the car, with their autograph inside her. Is that careless, or arrogant?”

  Aragon turned back to the photos. Small wounds were scattered randomly around the body.

  “Birds,” she said. “She was laying out naked.”

  “The ravens that told us where to find the murder site,” Rivera said.

  “Her lips were gone, but she had her eyes. I wonder if she wore glasses.”

  “We found a pair of Oakleys on the rocks where she died. The kind that wrap around the sides.”

  Aragon now understood the goggles of pale skin above Fremont’s sunburned cheeks.

  Lewis had moved over to the campsite reenactment. Inside the tent was an inflatable backpacking mattress, and a lot of space.

  “This is a four-man tent, at least.”

  Aragon remembered the empty packaging for a water filter she had seen in the trunk. She did not see a water filter in the equipment laid out next to the tent.

  Rivera asked, “Any thoughts on the sleeping bag, in the trunk with her inside?”

  Lewis said, “Maybe they carried her in the bag in case someone came along. A body lying by the trail, that’s hard to explain. With the bag they could put her down quickly, lean back, taking a break. Or maybe it was just easier to carry her that way, arms and legs tucked inside.”

  “We’re checking cars parked overnight. The ranger snaps photos of license plates before he heads home.”

  “They moved her at night. Coming out of the woods carrying a dead girl, inside a sleeping bag or not, picnickers would notice something like that.”

  “They didn’t want animals eating any more of her,” Aragon said, still thinking about the ravens who had gotten a start on Fremont’s corpse. “The trunk was like a bear locker you find at campgrounds. Animal-proof. Any other place in the mountains, she’d be food.”

  “So they changed the plan after letting the birds have at her?” Rivera asked. “They went to a lot of trouble to preserve evidence for us to find.”

  “The sunglasses,” Aragon said, “Did the killers not want to see her eyes? People who do this to women want to see the fear, see the light go out.”

  Lewis said, “Cody Geronimo on Linda Fager: ‘She looked at me.’”

  “Your celebrity killer,” Rivera said.

  “Not officially ours anymore.” Aragon saw Rivera’s confusion. “We’ll explain later. Back to those boots. Did they strip her, put on the boots, before forcing her to climb the mountain? They sliced her up but worried about her feet? I’m not seeing something.”

  Rivera said, “The lab’s on that, who tied the laces.”

  “You really have shoelace experts?” Lewis asked.

  �
��Really, yes.”

  “I think you were right,” Aragon told her partner, “about how she was laid out in the trunk, with the tire for a pillow. Somebody cared about her. In a bizarre way. But they cared.”

  Rivera nodded. “Agreed, as a working hypothesis.”

  There he was again, tossing off another word she didn’t hear Santa Fe cops use.

  “A theory good enough for now,” Aragon said. “Any food in the tent?”

  “Empty bags for freeze-dried provisions you can buy at REI,” Rivera answered. “Cans that held corn and beans. Empty Clif Bar wrappers.”

  “How many, the wrappers?”

  Rivera checked a sheet of paper.

  “Three.”

  “There was an empty Clif bars box in the trunk.” She couldn’t remember how many in a box. A lot more than three. “They went back into the wilderness. They took a water filter and the rest of the food. And their own gear. It’s just Fremont got left behind.”

  A pair of backpackers could be emerging right now, tomorrow, any time, out of the woods fifty miles from where they left Fremont. Walking into Santa Fe down one of the drainages, or moving east toward Pecos or Las Vegas. They could hike north into Colorado. There was no way to seal off several hundred thousand acres of wild country.

  They were interrupted by more than a dozen men and women in uniforms of state and federal agencies. Chairs were brought in. Rivera convened the meeting. He made brief introductions, announced the FBI would take lead. The murder scene and the body’s resting place were on federal land. Nobody objected, especially when Rivera described the resources he could bring to bear. He didn’t even have to mention shoelace experts.

  Rivera turned to an agent named Barone who launched into forensics. Cause of death: blood loss, inducing circulatory collapse and cardiac arrest. Weapon: extremely sharp, large, thick blade. “A hunting knife, maybe,” he said. “Something heavy but without a serrated edge.”

  Barone held up an enlarged photograph of Fremont’s midsection.