The Drum Within

by James R. Scarantino

  The man inside the crisp suit was coming apart, a little at a time.

  The small flicker of doubt in his mind faded when he saw reporters on the edge of their chairs. They were eating this up. A heck of a story. A criminal defense lawyer now feeling the same pain and helplessness he and his clients had for years inflicted on others.

  “Do you now understand why so many people hate you?”

  Bronkowski was startled by the reporter’s directness. The calmness of Fager’s answer suggested he had already asked himself the same question.

  “I always understood why people hated me. What I never understood is why one woman loved me so much.”

  Bronkowski left while Fager was still going. He had an appointment with John Pitcairn about his overnight work on Estevan Gonzalez. On his way to his car he saw a VW van with young people in sandals and fleece jackets lounging inside on a mattress. The van was covered front and back with bumper stickers about wolves and whales, global warming, and keeping some place called Otero Mesa wild. These were the people Fager had hired to gather petition signatures. They were perfect for collecting names at coffee shops, St. John’s College, and the farmer’s market. Fager just might pull it off and force the DA to empanel a grand jury.

  Pitcairn’s research had turned up more on the instant millionaire.

  A DWI bust six years ago showed Estevan Gonzalez living in a trailer park in Pinedale, Wyoming. The booking form described him as unemployed. A public defender handled the guilty plea. Estevan forfeited his 1989 pickup. Last year he registered two new Cadillac Escalades, no auto loan noted.

  He had recently registered with the Wyoming Department of Motor Vehicles a Can-Am trike, a Pleasure Way motor home, and a classic 1962 Corvette. Again, no loans noted. Pitcairn’s initial review had missed Vista Verde LLC, of which a Dolores Gonzalez was president. Her husband Estevan was VP and treasurer. The company owned a gas station and convenience store and the RV park in Pinedale where he had formerly resided. Just two blocks off the square in Jackson Hole, a Mexican restaurant called Sí Señor was also theirs.

  This on top of the other businesses Pitcairn told him about last night.

  “Still can’t see where he’s getting his money,” Pitcairn said as he worked his ornate Italian espresso machine, steam curling around his head, fogging his glasses. He used a pencil from his pocket protector to stir in sugar. “He hasn’t taken out mortgages or loans, just assumed existing debt when he bought a business. That mansion in Teton Village with its own movie theater? Cash purchase. You want an espresso? You can’t get it like this at Starbucks.”

  “How many of those you drink a day?”

  “And night? About twenty.”

  “I like my joe in something bigger than a thimble.” Bronkowski turned back to the report. “I don’t see the kind of cash flow he’d need for all this. It’s gotta be the art business where he really gets his money.”

  “A gallery in Jackson Hole? I haven’t found it. Maybe an investment through a holding company.”

  “He’s holding an investment, all right, here in Santa Fe. By the balls.”

  Bronkowski could not prove it, but was sure Estevan Gonzalez was blackmailing Cody Geronimo. A trip to Jackson Hole to nail it down would be a waste of time. A guy who could cash in on his sister’s murder was not going to talk just because a PI from Santa Fe rolled up his Teton Village driveway in a brown Camry. Maybe a tip to the IRS about his sudden and unexplained wealth would get something going. That would take years and there was no way to steer the tax man’s questions to an old murder of a Mexican maid.

  He drove from Pitcairn’s place to the Berardinelli funeral home. The lot was full. He continued down the street until he found a space. Before he left the car he pulled a tie from the glove compartment and knotted it under his collar.

  The service was underway when he entered the private chapel. Fager was up front, talking quietly. Far more people had turned out than Fager had anticipated. They were not here for the grieving husband. They were Linda’s friends. Unlike Walter Fager, she had friends.

  He was surprised to see Marcy Thornton near the back, in a black pants suit, wide-brimmed black hat with a short, lacy veil. Even black gloves pulled almost to her elbows. Her eyes locked on Fager and never once drifted to the closed casket or the images of Linda projected on a screen behind him.

  Fager was talking about Linda saving his life when he was lost. This was the time period after Bronkowski had found him in a scummy hot springs in T or C, the rundown desert town so blazing hot he didn’t understand why anyone wanted to sit in boiling water. Fager disappeared again. He went to living in the mountains and coming into town only for food and booze. Then he had seen a place on the map called Hell’s Hole.

  “Sounded like my kind of place.” Fager making a weak try at brightening the mood. “Twenty-two miles from the blacktop inside the Gila Wilderness. Towering old trees with a river pouring into a deep chasm in the rocks. A tent was there. Clothes on the river bank. A woman, red hair and pale skin, breaking the surface of the water, laughing at the expression on my face. I felt myself coming up from the deep with her.”

  Bronkowski had heard how Walter met Linda. This was the first he’d ever heard Fager tell how it made him feel.

  “I was messed up after getting out of the Army. FUBAR.” A few men in the room nodded, probably other veterans. “Linda fixed me, gave me reason to live, talked me into law school, dragged me here to Santa Fe.” Fager paused, blinked, cleared his throat. “Now it’s up to me to … ” He couldn’t finish. “Thank you for coming. Linda would be touched to know so many people cared about her.”

  The funeral director started recorded music to cover Fager’s faltering. Josh Groban singing “You Raise Me Up.” Bronkowski’s cell vibrated in his pocket. He stepped outside. It was Goff. He returned the call, learned Goff was passing along a message from Aragon for Fager. She wanted to meet him personally tomorrow. She had something too important to pass through his PI.

  “And about that fire,” Goff said. “Laura Pasco, seven months left on probation for meth possession. The guy with her, she’s on the lease, supposed to be living alone, he’s got a prior for heroin with intent. Nine homes destroyed, eight others can’t be lived in ’cause of water and smoke. The fire marshall says they found precursors, hydrochloric acid, ether, phosphorus, in the ruins of the garage. Pasco said it was her boyfriend’s workshop, where he built and fixed furniture.”

  “You can use that stuff in woodworking. I’ve heard of ether to age wood. Hydrochloric acid for cleaning tools. I don’t know about phosphorus except it’s in wood.”

  “No record the guy was paying gross receipts tax for anything that came out of his supposed home business. No city permit for commercial activity. Zoning’s got complaints about odors. The fire started on the cement floor in the garage near the dog door, someone poured in gasoline. Could be someone didn’t like Pasco’s boyfriend cooking on their turf.”

  That was the end of Pasco as a witness. Her evidence meant nothing without the table and proof of Linda’s blood where she saw Geronimo wipe his hand. Nobody would believe her about Lily Montclaire looking to buy a banged up bar table for tens of thousands of dollars.

  Josh Groban was done singing when he returned to the chapel. Recorded organ music was being piped in. Fager stood at the door shaking hands, receiving hugs and pats on the shoulder from Linda’s friends. Bronkowski had forgotten to sign his name in the book Fager would probably not look at. He scribbled his signature then worked his way close to Fager. Marcy Thornton came last in line, the veil lifted from her face, her black-gloved hand now on Fager’s elbow.

  “My condolences.”

  “Thanks for coming, Marcy.”

  “You know, I’d be a burned out public defender pulling a lousy forty-K a year, wearing the same clothes to court all week, living in a one-room apartment with rent-to-own furn
iture, if you hadn’t inspired me.”

  Thornton nodded at Bronkowski.

  “Hey, Bronk. Next time I’m in Malibu we’ll have to do lunch.”

  She withdrew an envelope from her purse and handed it to Fager. She gave them her back and left the chapel.

  Fager turned the envelope over in his hand. Bronkowski saw a return address for the Disciplinary Board.

  “I don’t think that’s a sympathy card,” he said as Fager opened the envelope.

  “It’s a disciplinary complaint, for communicating directly with Cody Geronimo knowing he was represented by counsel. It’s about our visit to his gallery, you playing the dude from Malibu.”

  “Personally serving a disciplinary complaint at the funeral of a guy’s wife. Walt, you taught her well.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Long arms were killing her. She couldn’t reach him and here it came again. A jab slipping past her hands to be stopped by her nose. Fuck that hurt. Her eyes watered but she could see the roundhouse right coming for her jaw. She slipped the punch, moved into him, pounded his floating rib, his kidney, the small of his back as he turned. He gave her a pink smile over his shoulder. Just as she thought he was breaking off, the back of his heel caught the side of her head.

  She went down, lights exploding behind her eyes, legs disintegrating under her. He dove onto her chest, cocked his strongest hand for the kill. But he pulled his punch and rested his knuckles on the bridge of her nose, his hand so big she couldn’t see much except the edges of another pink grin, his mouth guard smirking at her. He got up and toweled off, humming to himself.

  Chelsea, the Krav Maga instructor, stepped onto the mat and handed Aragon a tissue. Aragon tore it in half and shoved a wad into her bleeding nose.

  “Nothing you can do that’s legal against someone with that much size. I know it sucks,” Chelsea said.

  Chelsea, five-two, same as Aragon, trained at Albuquerque’s Jackson-Winkeljohn Gym. She claimed to have sparred with Holly Holm.

  She kicked off her shoes and tugged at the big guy’s elbow, pulling him back onto the mat. “This is what you can do on the street.”

  Chelsea circled him. He dropped into a fighting crouch. The bright pink smirk was gone. Aragon saw uncertainty, maybe fear in his eyes.

  “Hit me,” Chelsea said

  He came with that roundhouse right and was met with a blur of feet attacking his groin, a heel strike to the back of his knee that brought him down, teetering on the bad leg until it gave out. Chelsea was on him from behind with her fingers inside the corners of his mouth rearing him back like a rider on a horse.

  “You okay?” she asked. The pink mouth guard, wet with saliva, was on the mat. The big guy grunted and nodded. She released the reins and he curled into a ball.

  “You’ve got the strength to really hurt a guy,” Chelsea said as Aragon helped her up. “No matter how big. But you’re dead unless you close fast and hit him where no amount of bone or muscle can protect him. I’m talking about more than breaking balls. You can gouge eyes. Eight, ten pounds of applied, lightning-quick pressure, you’ll have an ear in your hand. Crush her to your chest, facing each other,” she told Aragon’s sparring partner, on the mat hugging knees to his chest. “C’mon, big guy.” She tapped her toe on his hip and he crawled to his feet.

  Aragon stood in close, wanting to learn, tasting blood in the back of her throat. He locked his hands across her back and lifted her off her feet in a bear hug. Her arms were pinned to her side. Her cheek was against his. He squeezed her hard and it hurt.

  “What to do? That gun you trust is out of reach. You’ve got teeth, Denise. Use them.”

  Aragon opened her mouth and closed on the soft skin along the guy’s jaw line.

  He let go and stepped back with a hand to his face.

  “Excellent. Now grab her from behind, she’s facing away from you.”

  “I don’t want to,” the big guy said.

  “C’mon, she’s half your size.”

  “She bites,” he said, but stepped in and wrapped his arms around Aragon, his face behind her head. Again he lifted her off her feet.

  Aragon tried kicking his groin but couldn’t connect.

  “Where is the strongest guy weak no matter how he’s covered in muscle?” Chelsea asked, enjoying this. “Not just his nuts. Think.”

  Aragon reached back for his eyes but he turned his head. She got his ear and pulled hard. He dropped her immediately.

  “Great job,” Chelsea said. “Eyes, groin, ears, throat, groin. When they’re bent over protecting their crotch, kick them in the head as hard as you can. Neck up, that’s you’re killing field.” She smiled, the fierceness gone. “You’re growing a pair of shiners. I like a yellow-tinted concealer for dark bruises. Start heavy around the eyes, then cover your whole face lightly. You need a powdered foundation to match your skin tone. If that doesn’t do the trick, there’s always sunglasses.” The hardness returned. “Forget that crap about raw steak and liver. Eat it, don’t put it on your eyes.”

  Chelsea had invited her down to the gym in Albuquerque. Female cops in the bigger city had formed a Krav Maga class to learn skills against knives and fists. You could always shoot, but that meant automatic suspension, paperwork, Professional Standards in your face, lawsuits. Aragon was definitely interested. No matter how much iron she pumped, how many miles she ran, she would always be smaller than what she ran into on the street. She liked the idea of bringing down monsters with bare hands. Or teeth.

  The water at her feet ran pink as she showered in the locker room. Before she toweled off she stuffed a dry plug of tissue in her nose. She tucked into Dillard’s at Coronado Mall for the makeup Chelsea recommended. She purchased sunglasses in a less confrontational style than the mirrored pair she wore on duty. The clerk at the register couldn’t stop staring at the bloody tissue in her nostril.

  At home she tried the makeup. The face in the mirror made her glad she had sprung for shades.

  Rivera sat in the back of the Eldorado’s bar nursing a Scotch on ice. He wore a silk purple shirt under a black, narrow-lapel jacket. Aragon knew she looked like hell. At least her nose had stopped bleeding. It would flow again, she knew, with the slightest touch. Like noses bumping during a kiss. Not that anyone would kiss the face she brought to Rivera’s table.

  “What happened to you?” He pulled out a chair.

  “Five left jabs and a reverse spin kick. But it was fun.”

  She told him about her afternoon on the mats.

  “What’ll it be, a drink or shot of morphine?”

  “Iced tea, please. Hold the tea.”

  “Just ice?”

  “Roger.”

  He returned from the bar with a glass of ice, a proper iced tea and a goblet of white wine.

  “I’m just guessing here,” he said.

  She wrapped the ice in a napkin and held it against her temple.

  He handed her a folder that had been resting on an empty chair.

  “You wanted photos of Fremont’s boots, on her feet with laces tied were my instructions.”

  “Thanks. Up or down?”

  “Up or? Oh, the direction of Fremont’s wounds. A little light conversation over drinks.” He drank the last of his Scotch. “Up. The cut started above her knee on the right thigh and continued for ten point three inches. Same pattern on the left, but that wound was only three inches long.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “Bothers you. Why?”

  “Think about it. Fremont’s laying on the ground, you’re the killer, leaning over her, kneeling, most likely over her legs. She’d had sex.”

  “Rough, maybe rape. Go on.”

  “She’s on her back after you’ve ejaculated. You sit back, knife in hand.” She raised her fist. “Probably holding it like this. You’d pull the knife towards you. Pu
shing it away is too awkward.”

  “What if the killer was kneeling at her side? Then he’d be pulling the knife up the thigh?”

  “Any sign of restraints? Ligature bruising?”

  “No. She was doped up pretty good. But not enough to not feel a knife slicing her thigh.”

  “So how did they hold her?”

  “Maybe from behind. There was bruising on her collarbone and shoulders. A strong grip could do that. Remember, we have semen in her anus. Different DNA. You were right about the two people.”

  “That was Lewis. He saw it first.” She paused. “God. Did they cut her while they raped her? The guy in her ass reaching around to slash her thighs?”

  “All wounds were antemortem.”

  The couple at the next table got up and moved to another spot in the bar.

  “Maybe we should take this somewhere else.” Aragon tried the wine. “This is good. Surprising how much energy you burn having the shit beat out of you. I need dinner.”

  “Food’s good here. My treat.”

  “I’ve got something better.”

  He didn’t say anything about the pickup truck she was driving or the country music that blared when she turned the key in the ignition. They swung by a liquor store and he ran in for a bottle of wine. She took them to the nearest Blake’s.

  “I’ve seen these all over New Mexico, always wanted to try one,” he said as they rolled to the drive-up window.

  They ordered Lotaburger combos and asked for two empty cups. Instead of pulling ahead to the next window to wait for their food, Aragon parked in a corner of the lot. They stood outside leaning against the tailgate in the crisp night air. Rivera produced a corkscrew he had bought with the wine. He poured. They touched cups.

  He started with how much he loved the high desert and mountains after years with the Bureau in sweltering D.C. Never married, a brother with Homeland Security, parents in a retirement community south of Tucson. He wanted them to move to Santa Fe to be closer to him and a little farther from the border.