The Drum Within

by James R. Scarantino

  She called out to Donna, saying she wanted to buy another card, and hide the camera in a different spot in her apartment, catch her boyfriend breaking in, catch his face when he can’t find the camera where he hid it. Donna let her have the card for free.

  She got back on the road. For the rest of the drive to Santa Fe she talked with Lewis, who said he was working at home tonight. Aragon wanted them to think through why Tasha Gonzalez was not buried near Geronimo’s ranch in the graveyard, if that’s what it was, but was dumped miles away in an irrigation ditch. They didn’t have an answer but concluded that Rivera and the FBI were the key to their next moves. The charge on her cell died before they settled on how to make the approach.

  She wanted food and a shower but drove into old Santa Fe onto the narrow winding streets off Canyon Road. Again she had trouble finding a place to park Javier’s big truck. She found space in a church’s lot four blocks from Geronimo’s gallery. Music poured down the street from somewhere nearer the mountains. Geronimo’s section of Canyon Road was dark and quiet.

  She walked past his gallery to determine if he used external surveillance cameras. Her scare earlier today was still with her. Unlike the camera hidden in his ranch house, there should be no reason to disguise an outside camera. You wanted people with the wrong ideas to know they were being watched. She saw nothing to make her pause.

  A stout adobe wall along the side of the gallery separated Geronimo’s property from the business next door. The wall was decorated with flower pots, metal frogs, and blackbirds, as well as a grab bag of terra cotta figurines. Between coyotes rearing back to howl, ceremonial Indian dancers, parrots, bears, and turtles, Aragon saw at least three storyteller figures. She took one with her as she moved into the deeper shadows between the buildings.

  She positioned the storyteller at a window into Geronimo’s gallery, then settled the camera inside and aimed it through the glass. From the moss and cobwebs on the junk along the wall she doubted the camera would be discovered. If Geronimo found it, let him enjoy the thought he was being watched with the very camera he had set up inside his ranch ninety miles away.

  She returned to the truck and drove to Lewis’s house, knowing he was at work in his home office, the Dodge Caravan parked inside his garage.

  “What’s this?” Aragon asked about the small photographs taped on the inside of the minivan’s windshield.

  “I pulled the reports on missing women from Santa Fe County going back twenty years,” Lewis said. “That’s them.”

  She had never worked missing persons. She only met women like this when they turned up dead.

  “Something’s been bugging me,” she said. “We heard Geronimo saying he was set off by Linda Fager looking at him. But he didn’t take her eyes. He took the little bones from deep in her ear.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t use the eyes. They don’t keep. Bones he could clean, shellac, hang onto forever. We’ve got to get back in his ranch, learn if those bones you saw are human.”

  “Rivera,” she said, steering them to what they needed to discuss. “This can’t come from us. How does he take it upstairs that he’s launching a multiple homicide investigation on what a suspended Santa Fe cop saw while trespassing on the private property of America’s premier Indian artist?”

  “Native artist. Remember. He’s evolved.”

  “But what if Rivera goes upstairs with photographs that the bereaved husband of a murder victim took of graves, and turns over maps and GPS coordinates showing the location on federal land? This bereaved husband takes photos of the embalming table inside Geronimo’s house and the knives in the drawer and hands them to the FBI. Rivera can ask his boss, what’s a guy like Geronimo, arrested for killing one woman in Santa Fe, digging around inside her head, what’s he doing with surgical knives, an embalming table, and graves a shout away?”

  “I get the picture. ”

  “Will it stand up? You’re the reader. Read anything on this?”

  “A little. Because Fager’s not law enforcement, there’s no Fourth Amendment violation, no suppression of evidence remedy. Geronimo can sue Fager all he wants, wipe him out. But we get to use the info handed to us on Fager’s dirty spoon. It’s actually called the silver-spoon doctrine, this exception to illegal searches.”

  “And if it goes bad, it’s on him, he pays the price. He’d probably be disbarred. Walter Fager serves the cause of justice, one way or another.” She bounced a fist off her thigh. “I’m feeling it. It’s coming together.”

  “Yeah.”

  They sat in silence, eyes on the faces of the missing women, thinking how close they might be to some answers.

  Lewis broke the silence. “Rivera called. He’s interested.”

  Aragon smacked his shoulder. “You’ve known all this time he’s interested in Geronimo.”

  “In you. They’ve confirmed the celestial burial angle you brought them on Fremont. They’ve got another expert working the case, a Buddhist expert from the Smithsonian. FBI can’t use a local who had tea with the Dalai Lama. They need a white guy with a Harvard degree. And they expect a translation on the prayer flags soon.”

  “What does any of that have to do with me?”

  “He had a question about you.” Lewis didn’t finish, but raised his eyebrows and waited for her to notice.

  “What? Oh, I see. He asked if I was a lesbian.”

  “Wrong. He did ask about your hair and why. He never asked if you like men or women.”

  “The hair was his way of asking.”

  “Really, it was about your hair. I told him why you cut it short, so it can’t be grabbed in a fight.”

  “And he said, what, a catfight?”

  “No. He said, ‘makes sense.’ Hey, he’s a nice guy. Federal paycheck. Handsome. Smart. For you they have to be smart.”

  “So I should call him?”

  “I saw you look at him. Other people might be talking, but you have your eyes on him.”

  “He reminds me of someone. That’s all.” Aragon dialed Rivera’s number on her cell.

  “Ask him out. When was the last time you … ” Lewis stopped when he heard Rivera’s voice coming through her phone.

  She said, the phone by her mouth, “Listen, a question for you. Yeah, this is me. Those knife wounds on the Fremont girl, on her thighs. They run towards her waist, right? I know its Saturday. One working day ’til Monday. The Eldorado’s bar. Tomorrow at eight? Bring photos of Fremont’s boots. Yes, on her feet.”

  She hung up.

  “Which direction was she cut?” Lewis asked. “What kind of pick up line is that?”

  “One that worked.”

  “Hey, I think you’re an interesting person. I’d like to hear about your job. What say we grab a drink? Or, I saw you looking at me across the room. Let’s try it a lot closer. That’s how normal people hook up.”

  “Normal people don’t think about dead girls in sleeping bags and pieces of nice ladies stapled to walls. Normal people couldn’t sleep with that on their mind.”

  Aragon flattened a palm over photographs taped inside the windshield.

  “Fourteen of these women are buried by that salty river. Let’s find out who they are.”

  Twenty-Seven

  The scream of a ladder truck woke Bronkowski hours before he wanted to get up. He smelled smoke in the air when he went for the newspaper. Waiting for Mr. Coffee and his morning fix he watched the news out of Albuquerque. Another crack mother left her baby alone with her stash. A pit bull mauled a jogger. Johnny Depp dropped a couple thou at the Man’s Hat Shop downtown. The store’s owner, standing outside on the sidewalk so you could see the sign, said, “I thought he was another homeless fella come in to stay warm. Then someone said, that’s Tonto. He’s got the long hair, you know. I never sold so many hats to one guy.”

  “Mighty big doings down in Duke City,” Bronk
owski said.

  An alert flashed across the bottom of the screen. A fire in Santa Fe was threatening a development on the hill above West Alameda. Cameras showed fire brigades dousing trees in the Santa Fe River Park to prevent flames from jumping to the east side.

  He came alert without the caffeine. Laura Pasco lived on the hill above West Alameda.

  From his car he called Goff to see if he could get details about the fire through his contacts at the police and fire departments. Goff did not answer. He left a message.

  The streets approaching Pasco’s address were blocked by pumper trucks and police barricades. He parked behind a fire-rescue van and approached a uniformed officer handling people trying to reach their homes.

  “I have to find someone. She lives in there. I need to know she’s alright.”

  “San Isidro Catholic Church on Agua Fria,” the officer said. “Evacuees are there.”

  He found Pasco at a tent behind the church’s bell tower, a blanket around her shoulders, steam rising from a Styrofoam cup in her hand. Her feet and legs were bare.

  She saw him and said something to a bearded man with workingman hands. He stepped toward Bronkowski, the big hands in front, jaw forward. He was dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, also nothing on his feet. Bronkowski let the man come to him.

  “Go away,” the bearded man said.

  “I wanted to see if she was okay.”

  “She’s got nothing to say to you. Don’t bother her again.”

  “Was her house in the fire?”

  “Our house. What we’re wearing is all we’ve got left.”

  “I’m sorry, but I need to ask. The table Laura told me about?”

  “Didn’t you hear me? Get your fat ass out of here. The fire started in my workshop, where that damn table was. I cut the power at night so there’s no chance of an electrical spark, all the solvents and paints I had back there. That building exploded, got us running for our lives down the street. No way that was an accident. I’m wondering if you didn’t start it. You or that bitch who got to Laura first. Now nobody gets the fucking thing.”

  “You had fun,” Marcy Thornton said and Montclaire had to agree, the two of them talking on the cheap cells Marcy had told her to buy. Burners, the clients called them. You could learn some things from them, stupid as they were, not needing to hire Marcy if they had any real brains.

  “I thought of Diego Gavilan, how he bought the gasoline, the cans, the safety flares in a Walmart, not thinking it put everything in his hands on the store’s security video.”

  “And left the gas cans with his prints in his car at the end of the driveway,” Thornton said. “First place the fire inspectors looked. They hadn’t pulled Diego’s girlfriend out of the ashes before he was arrested.”

  Montclaire sat in her robe on the flagstone patio of her home watching the fire spread in the valley below. A cup of hot chocolate warmed her against the morning chill. A fist of orange flame shot into the sky above a bank of black smoke. A barbecue propane tank had exploded.

  Laura Pasco. Stupid girl, talking to Bronkowski.

  Marcy had told her, whatever you think. Whatever you decide.

  “Run it by me so I know if we have anything to worry about,” Thornton said.

  “Pasco drives an orange Mazda. It was like a match burning in the night, flashing beneath the street lights.” Montclaire was more excited telling it than trailing Pasco from the bar because now she knew what was coming. “She was easy to follow. She turned into the driveway of a little house over there off West Alameda. To the side, under trees was

  a garage with its door open. I saw paint cans, benches, vises, tools on a pegboard, things like that. From the street I could smell it, like nail-polish remover mixed with lemon oil. A guy with long black hair and a beard was bending over a wood table, on its back, screwing on a leg. It was a two-person table. Pasco called it a two-top.”

  Another fireball shot into the sky. Another propane tank. More sirens. A black cloud of smoke—asphalt shingles burning—rolled over the city.

  “Like a match burning in the night,” Thornton said. “That orange car under the lights gave you the idea.”

  “We pay, she gets a hook in us. How do we explain paying fifty grand for a lousy bar table?”

  “Never going to happen now.”

  “I was going to use gas cans, but then I’d be on video somewhere buying them. I bought the biggest thermos bottles I could find.” Montclaire’s chocolate was growing cold. She moved inside to the microwave. “I went to the truck stop by the casino in Pojoaque. I got the gas all the way on the other side of town, at the station where St. Francis goes under I-25. I was filling my car and bent down to fill the thermoses. Nobody around. The cameras were inside the station, on the other side of my car.”

  “How’d you get the gas out of the Thermoses? I don’t like that. You could splash yourself.”

  Montclaire squeezed the cell between her shoulder and ear and put her cup in the microwave, set it for a minute and watched the cup rotate on the glass plate. “I bought an aluminum bucket at the Walmart down on Cerrillos. I drove back to Pasco’s house, the lights were out. I walked around the block, nobody awake, no dogs started barking. I stayed in the shadows to the side of the garage. The garage door was down, but the regular one on the side had a dog door. The fumes were really strong, so I knew it wouldn’t take much. I emptied the Thermoses into the pail, tipped it through the door, set the fire and ran. I threw the Thermoses into different dumpsters five miles apart, the pail into a recycling bin behind Whole Foods. Oh, and I was wearing gloves. Forgot that part.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t use flares. They don’t burn completely. That was another thing Diego did wrong. The fire inspectors checked purchases for flares all over the county for a week before. Dumbshit used his debit card.”

  “Matches burn completely. I lit a book and flipped it through the doggie door. The sky was orange before I was back to my car.”

  Thornton said, “My smart, tough girl. You paid cash?”

  “You just said I was smart. We didn’t spend much of Cody’s fifty grand. A few bucks.”

  “We don’t give change.”

  Through the phone Montclaire heard a faucet running and the sound of a medicine cabinet closing. Marcy was talking to her from her bathroom at home. Outside her own house she heard sirens. She went to the door to watch fire trucks racing into Santa Fe from the direction of Espanola.

  She had been up all night and should be tired. But she was just hungry. Really hungry. The microwave beeped, she took out her warmed chocolate. A hair dryer came on at Marcy’s end. She wondered how long Marcy expected her to wait.

  The dryer went quiet and Thornton spoke. “Never let a client think the job was too easy, so they must have overpaid,” she said. “I’ve had clients complain about getting charges dismissed before trial, thinking they only get their money’s worth if they roll the dice with a jury. I’ll tell Cody we needed every penny, that he left us a real mess but we took care of it. He won’t complain. You have no idea how terrified that man is of the people he’d meet in prison.”

  “I’ll bring the fifty, minus expenses, after I eat.”

  “Cody’s already said goodbye to that money. You say hello.”

  “All of it?” But Marcy had hung up.

  When she saw her modeling career shriveling up, like the skin on an old lady who’d spent too much time in the sun, she worried if there would be any kind of life for her when it was done. Nothing new. No more excitement. No more adventure. No more money.

  The hell was I thinking? She finished her chocolate and made herself a Beauty Bonanza Smoothie for breakfast.

  Twenty-Eight

  In his library Walter Fager was surrounded by words of the law, ghosts of people he once knew and trusted. Friends he’d used and abused. None were answering his call now that
he needed them.

  Hell, it had never been the words that mattered anyway. What mattered was what they triggered: his client stepping through the courthouse doors, going home to his own bed. Or swallowing hard as the bailiff led him back to his cell.

  Geronimo’s reaction to hearing “guilty,” that’s what mattered.

  Fager had spent almost every hour since Geronimo was released searching for the right words, pouring them into motions and briefs Mascarenas could use—if he’d get off his ass. But the words slept on pages churned out of his printer, scattered on the floor of his office, bullets that would never be fired.

  Fager straightened his tie. Local television and courthouse reporters were waiting in his conference room. He would announce his petition drive to bring to justice the man who had butchered his wife and was mocking the legal system every second he remained at liberty. Later this afternoon would be more words at Linda’s memorial service. Words that did nothing, changed nothing, accomplished nothing.

  What mattered was Linda, ashes in a pot.

  And maybe real bullets in a gun pressed between Geronimo’s eyes. Maybe Bronk was right.

  Fager gathered the stack of petitions and went to face the media. He killed the lights in the library on his way out, thinking maybe it was time to convert the room to something else.

  Bronkowski stood in the back of the conference room to watch Fager’s performance. Robbie Weldon passed out copies of Fager’s prepared statement. An enlarged photograph of Linda in a sun hat, smiling, surrounded by Santa Fe’s historic plaza, rested on an easel next to the chair Fager would use.

  Fager entered, haggard but hard and determined. He was dressed in a navy pinstripe with a brilliant white shirt and deep red tie. Bronkowski checked the shoes and saw ceiling lights reflected in polished leather.

  Fager settled into a seat at the conference table, sipped water, and read his single-paragraph statement. As a rule, that should be the extent of a Walter Fager press conference. But he took questions and went off script. Bronkowski worried that Fager had dropped his guard.