The Drum Within

by James R. Scarantino

  Rivera said the FBI had an expert who could tell them if Fremont had tied her own bootlaces. Aragon saw a defense lawyer having the expert remove his own shoes and tie the laces, pass them hand to hand among jurors. Sitting there maybe with holes in his socks, wiggling his toes, until the lawyer told him to put his shoes on, lace up, stand on a table so the jurors could see. The jurors would try it at night. They’d see what she was seeing right now: you couldn’t tell the difference. What did Dr. Shoelaces know anyway?

  But she saw something else. She could never find a pair of boots that fit right. Always her heels wanted to slip and slide, guaranteeing blisters galore by day’s end. Javier had shown her a way to snug her heel by cinching the laces before they threaded through the top eyelets.

  She wanted to see a photograph of Fremont’s boots before they were taken off her feet. She’d call Rivera when she was back in Santa Fe.

  She programmed a waypoint on Javier’s GPS to record the location of her campsite. She might not know where she was going, but she had better know how to get back. This country was folded up like crumpled newspaper. She could pass within a hundred feet of the truck and miss it if she was in the wrong drainage.

  She carried a daypack with protein bars, a jar of peanuts, the one unspoiled orange from her refrigerator, and a liter of water. She wore her .40 caliber and the Mini-14 slung over her shoulder. In these vast spaces, the only weapon that made sense was a rifle. But she wasn’t going to leave her sidearm behind in the pickup truck.

  It took three hours of climbing in and out of arroyos and crawling under barbed wire strung a century ago to find the first private inholding on the Bureau of Land Management map. It was a sandy field with a windmill and earthen stock tank. The windmill was too rusted to turn. The tank was dry. There was no sign anyone had been here in years.

  She climbed a ridge and used the rifle’s scope to scout the country ahead. Movement behind a clump of brittle grass drew her attention. With the cross-hairs on the hindquarters of a coyote, she judged the distance at a quarter mile. Javier could make this shot, maybe even without the scope. She would need a tripod, a favorable wind, and a ton of luck. But with a pistol, she could outshoot him at everything from stationary firing to combat shooting. He had given up trying to beat her.

  She lowered the rifle and moved downhill. Leafless cottonwoods two canyons away suggested water. She cross-referenced the BLM map and found the symbol for a spring inside the outlines of private land.

  The trees were farther away than she had guessed. When she arrived she found the ruins of a corral and packed earth that showed no tire tracks. The spring had dried up. Though it had been cold in the morning, the sun was now blazing. She squinted at the jagged spires of Ladron Peak and longed for a little relief from the sun. She cursed herself for forgetting sunglasses.

  Sunglasses. Cynthia Fremont’s face in the beam of her flashlight, pale goggles of white skin in a red face.

  Naked, drugged, sliced open, but wearing sunglasses to protect her eyes from the sun’s blinding glare.

  It wasn’t about the killers not wanting to see her eyes. They didn’t want her staring into the sun. Just as Fremont had been laid out carefully in the trunk, some degree of compassion for the young woman fit into a broader picture of merciless pain and agony.

  She gobbled a protein bar, chugged water, and set out for the next square of land on the map. Across a mesa, down a rocky slope into an arroyo, back up a steep ridge to a stretch of rolling land dotted by cactus and clumps of juniper. A turkey buzzard floated overhead. Farther above, a plane crossed the blue sky. Higher still, sunlight flashed off something in the low atmosphere. It could be a satellite. The elevation here approached two miles above sea level. The air was thin, the sky perfectly clear, zero humidity.

  “You idiot.”

  She had been so angry at the suspension she had not been thinking clearly. Instead she had charged off to do a Lewis and Clark to find where Geronimo may have done his killing, one mesa, one canyon, one gully at a time. There would never be a substitute for legwork. They would always have to eyeball the ground up close. At least the sweep of her search could have been narrowed by using satellite imagery.

  She tried to reach Lewis but the mountain blocked the signal from the cell towers along the interstate corridor.

  She explored empty land for the rest of the day, finding nothing useful, but wasting not a minute. As her feet covered the miles, her mind worked through every piece of information they had on Geronimo. She walked step by step through the Tasha Gonzalez investigation looking for what may have been missed. Instead of dusty hills and cholla cactus, she saw Thornton and Judge Diaz taken down in twenty different scenarios, all imaginary, but as detailed as any case file that had been worked by a corruption task force.

  The sun was moving toward its bed below the western skyline. She checked the GPS. She would have to move quickly to get back to her truck before dark.

  She swallowed the last of her water just as she reached the canyon where she had parked. Another set of tire tracks headed in and had not come out. She slipped the Mini-14 off her shoulder and hid it behind a boulder. With her pistol in hand she moved forward, hugging the canyon wall, sprinting between cover. Up ahead she saw the rear bumper of a pickup blocking hers. Inside the cab a man wearing a large cowboy hat sat at the wheel, a bolt action rifle in the rack behind his head. She moved to the driver’s side. The window was down.

  She heard snoring.

  “Wake up.”

  An elderly Hispanic man under the sweat-stained hat lifted an eyebrow.

  “You’re on my land,” he said in a voice as dry as the landscape.

  She relaxed and lowered her gun.

  “I didn’t mean to trespass. I’ll pull out of here immediately.”

  “I saw your lights on the road last night, then they disappeared. I was worried for you. I don’t mind you being on my land. I just wanted to know you’re okay.”

  Aragon holstered her pistol. The old man had not reacted to the sight of a weapon in her hand.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  Aragon showed her badge and identified herself.

  “Is this about the sign?”

  She remembered her headlights picking out a street sign in the middle of the desert on her drive in last night.

  The old man said, “My boy brings a sign from Albuquerque when he visits. They stay up until the county blades the road.”

  “This is about something more serious than stolen street signs.” Without giving him the background, she said she was inspecting all the parcels that went with the Secret Canyon Ranch. “I want to see if there are any buildings on those lands.”

  “You’re on the wrong side of the mountain.” He pointed with a brown hand missing the index finger. “Up the river there’s a big house with electricity. Pretty nice place. Some Indian goes in there sometimes.” He turned his head to her truck. “Is this your camp?”

  “All the comforts.”

  “I don’t see a campfire. How did you eat?”

  She told him about her cold burger for breakfast.

  “My wife’s making tamales for dinner. Tomorrow, I show you the way to that house.”

  His name was Fermin Bustamante. He backed out of the canyon, then took a dirt road leading into empty country. Aragon followed in his dust and didn’t see the ranch until he slowed at a cattle guard marked with coyote hides and another Albuquerque street sign, this one saying “Lomas Boulevard.”

  The ranch had once been a busy cattle operation with loading facilities and hay barns. But the pens were empty. Tumbleweeds clogged the squeeze chute. Dogs of all sizes and colors rushed from the shade by the house to greet Bustamante’s truck, then broke away to surround her as she drove into the yard. He whistled and they came back to him. She grabbed Javier’s six-pack from the cooler behind the seat and follo
wed Bustamante to the mud-colored ranch house under a rusted tin roof.

  They entered through a hand-made wooden door and two-foot thick adobe walls. Cooking smells triggered memories of her grandmother. Bustamante went deeper into the house and returned with a little woman, dark and weathered with white hair loose about her shoulders. A stained apron was tied around her waist.

  Fermin introduced his wife, Flor. She took the beers and returned to the kitchen. Fermin stoked a Franklin stove while Aragon admired family photographs on the mantel. She would ask about what appeared to be nine children during dinner.

  Pillows covered with dog hair surrounded a cowhide chair. Next to the chair was a small table with a telephone atop magazines about cattle and horses.

  “May I use your phone?”

  “Help yourself,” Fermin replied as he shoved a split log into the firebox.

  She dialed Lewis’s number. He was glad to hear from her, said Donnelly from Professional Standards wanted an interview. Lewis was holding him off with the excuse that the police union’s attorney was in Washington and would not return for a week. He passed along a message from Rivera. The Forest Service had sent horseback teams into the wilderness searching for Fremont’s killers. So far, they had encountered only day hikers and a Boy Scout troop that had illegally dug a latrine trench too close to a waterway.

  Aragon reported on her day. He cut her off when she brought up Google Earth and said he had already wasted hours until his wife suggested something better. He had spent the afternoon viewing footage of aerial surveys conducted by the Game and Fish department. He had found a building on one of Geronimo’s parcels. It was an old but well-kept ranch headquarters to which had been added a new wing with a metal roof. The Game and Fish Cessna had flown low enough that the camera picked up outlines of the septic field. A bleached elk head hung over the front door, just like the one above the entrance to Geronimo’s Santa Fe gallery. A broad, shallow stream lined with tamarisk and reeds flowed within a hundred feet of the house.

  “It’s called the Rio Salado.”

  A charge of electricity rippled across her back. A river named Salt. Salt in Tasha Gonzalez’s hair. Aragon was bone tired, but doubted she would sleep tonight.

  Twenty-Four

  Bronkowski worked on filling the gap in time between the register receipt for Geronimo’s book purchase at Fager’s Finds and the moment he fled detectives Aragon and Lewis. In files Goff supplied, he found Aragon’s observation that Geronimo had the sour smell of beer on his breath. He knew all of Santa Fe’s bars and thought the classy Staab House, a Victorian mansion turned into a bar and restaurant, would be Geronimo’s first pick in the neighborhood of Fager’s Finds. But his inquiries there of the evening manager and her service staff found no one who remembered seeing the artist on the night of the murder.

  He walked to the next upscale watering hole on his list and struck out again. He was wondering if he would have to expand his search to restaurants when he heard country music drifting down the alley that led to the Howling Coyote Saloon. He decided to give it a shot. Peanut shells crunched under his heels as he made his way to the bar and asked for the manager. The bartender pointed him to a hallway leading to a small office, where he found a man in a patterned golf shirt, hair full of gel, punching numbers into an adding machine.

  “Excuse me,” Bronkowski said, his bulk blocking the entryway. “I’m a friend of the family of a woman murdered a few days ago.” He showed a photo of Cody Geronimo. “I’m wondering if you remember this guy being here.”

  “You’re not with that bitch?”

  “Which bitch would that be?”

  “The one looks like a woman in pantyhose commercials when I was a kid. That one has a mouth on her.”

  “She was asking about this same man?”

  The manager was about to say something then turned his attention back to his adding machine.

  “I got work to do. Ask for Laura. She couldn’t stop talking about serving the guy. She’s the short brunette with a gallon of ink on her neck.”

  He saw her distributing bottles of beer around a table of middle-aged men and women wearing shirts about rafting the Rio Grande Gorge. He caught up to her as she counted loose change from her apron. When he showed her Geronimo’s photo he caught the recognition in her eyes, followed by a forced flat expression.

  “He had a beer. Ordered another, but left before I got the order in.” She swept coins into her palm, jiggled them a little, shoved them in her apron.

  She was in her early twenties, dressed in a tank top. The hair on one side of her head had been cut short to reveal tattoos of vines curling around her ear. She avoided his eyes.

  “Tony,” she shouted past him to the bartender. “Tap another Fat Tire. Those last were flat tires.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Look.” She smoothed her apron. “I’m busy here. He had a beer. Ordered another but left. That’s all.”

  “Where was he sitting?”

  “He was at the bar.”

  “Why were you serving him? You wait tables.”

  “Two Negronis and a G and T,” she yelled louder than necessary. “Pronto!”

  “Linda Fager was a wonderful woman.”

  The waitress finally faced him. “Who?”

  “Linda Fager. The woman murdered that night. She loved cats and roses. She loved books. Her husband loved her more than he can say in words.”

  “Yeah, well. I’m sorry what happened to her.” Her feet shifted to carry her back to the floor. He was losing her.

  “Nice ink,” he said to keep her talking. He nodded at her tattoos. “That blue and green woven together. Almost glows.”

  She turned her head so he could see her neck more clearly. He had missed the small skeletons entangled in the vines curling from clavicle to ear.

  “I like it freaky.”

  “Those tats make you look hard.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Harder than you really are.”

  “I’ve got customers waiting.”

  “Just one more second. Since you’re into freaky.” He reached inside his jacket, “Here’s something like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

  He held the photo in front of her face so she could not miss a detail.

  “He had pieces of her with him while he enjoyed the cold one you brought him,” he said to a young woman growing pale. “That really freaky skin art stapled to the wall.” He tapped the photo. “There above her body. That’s her face.”

  She took a step back but couldn’t peel her eyes from the photograph.

  “That wasn’t paint in his hair,” she said so quietly he barely heard her. “He said he hadn’t been painting.” She looked away, then back at the photograph. “Damn. I can’t do it now. Thanks a lot.”

  “Do what? Is there some place we can talk?”

  She blinked her eyes and took a breath.

  “I need a cigarette. Wait here.”

  She served her customers then led him out the front door, a few steps from the entrance. She fired up, dragged hard, kept repeating the same limited set of facts she had given him inside. She lit a second cigarette off the first and picked at a nail. Her eyes kept drifting to the photo, turned so she could see it.

  “Laura, what do you mean that wasn’t paint in his hair? Tell me about that.”

  “Shit. Alright.” She told him: About the dark, wet stuff in his hair and Geronimo’s hand inside his jacket like he had something alive in there. And yesterday a woman willing to pay crazy money for a beat-up bar table.

  Down the street Montclaire, pressed into a doorway, wearing a cowboy hat and glasses, watched Laura Pasco blowing her shot at fifty grand. She had been hanging out in the bar to keep an eye on the waitress and had planned to follow her home after work. She wanted to see this workshop where Pasco said her boyfriend was work
ing on the table before they talked money again. Now she had to worry Bronkowski might get the table before her.

  She watched him showing a photograph to Pasco, saw her go pale and dig cigarettes out of her apron. Montclaire slipped out the side entrance and stood in a doorway as they talked on the street in front of the Howling Coyote.

  The conversation ended. Pasco crushed a cigarette under her heel and went inside the bar. Bronkowski walked off down the street. She decided to follow him. She could return later to catch Pasco heading home.

  As soon as Bronkowski was out of sight, Montclaire ran after him. She pulled up at the corner and saw him halfway down the block. Empty streets made it hard to tail him without being seen.

  When he neared the Capitol she realized he was heading to Fager’s office. She took a shortcut through the Capitol’s grounds and arrived ahead of him. She slipped into her car and watched him approach. Instead of that cheap Camry she had seen him driving earlier, he mounted his Harley, kicked it to life, and roared onto Paseo de Peralta. She pulled out after him. The fact he took his bike suggested he was not going for the table right now.

  He took major roads out of downtown then turned onto quiet residential streets winding past houses on big lots with automatic gates at the end of driveways. He stopped at one gate to speak into a box. A second later the gate slid back and he rode in.

  Montclaire knew this place. It belonged to a man who did computerized investigative work. Thornton used his services. He was not in the furniture-moving business. Cody’s table was safe for another night.

  Montclaire drove back to the Howling Coyote and changed from the cowboy hat and glasses to a straight black wig and turtleneck. She took a seat in the bar away from Pasco’s tables and ordered a Diet Coke. She had two hours until closing.

  Bronkowski rolled up the gravel drive to the rambling adobe home where John Pitcairn ran his investigative services business. Pitcairn had called to report he already had results on the Gonzalez family trace. He worked nights. Midnight was a fine time to meet.