The Drum Within

by James R. Scarantino

  “Silviano Mares,” Fager said. “Not guilty. The jury returned in three hours.”

  “The drunk driver, your paying client,” Goff said, eyes narrowing. “How about the family, the dead kids, remember them? The father who killed himself?”

  “Actually, no I can’t.”

  “What I thought.”

  “The Shelbys,” Bronkowski told Fager.

  “If you say so.”

  “I better go now,” Goff said.

  He stood up so fast he knocked his chair over. He slammed the chair back into place at the table, once, twice, like he wanted to drive its legs through the floor tiles.

  Fager ignored him. He was staring at the aerial photos of the graveyard. Bronkowski said, “What the fuck?” Lewis scribbled “Shelby” on a napkin. Aragon’s phone rang. It was Rivera. They had found the knife that cut Cynthia Fremont open.

  Outside, after the meeting broke up, Fager and Bronkowski sat in the Mercedes talking it over. Bronkowski was eager to check out the ranch. He had been curious about the property since it turned up in his research into Geronimo’s bankruptcies.

  “We need something like that.” He nodded at the Ford F-350 with Aragon at the wheel backing into the street.

  Fager said, “She knows what we’re going to find. She needs us to pass it to the FBI. Down the road, when Marcy’s deposing you and me, or taking her shot when we’re on the stand, we explain how we just happened to stumble across evidence no cops had been able to find.”

  “We’re that good.”

  “We are.”

  “So you’re okay being used like this?”

  Fager activated the ignition, adjusted the mirror. “Does Hertz rent Jeeps?”

  “Got it. That crap Goff pulled, I don’t see why we need him in this.”

  “That was the last meeting I’m in with him at the table.” Fager steered away from Juanita’s onto Airport Road. “Shelby, huh? I remember his eyes, the father, when I was done with him. I came back to the table thinking I’d gone too far. I didn’t know he killed himself.”

  “Out in California,” Bronkowski said, wondering about the baby-blue BMW parked in the dirt lot next to the restaurant, a woman’s head ducking down as they drove past. “I got Goff’s treatment at our last meeting. Looked it up later. Daniel Shelby moved back where he lived before Santa Fe, where he got married. Did it there.”

  “How?”

  “Shot himself.”

  “I remember Marcy’s eyes, too. I turn around after I pass the witness, she’s lit up. Behind me Shelby, Daniel, in pieces on the stand. I hurt him, worse than I knew, and Marcy’s turned on. I suppose

  I showed her how to get away with doing that to people, judges holding them down while you break bones, this power we have as lawyers. She came away from that trial inspired.”

  “You don’t need to be feeling guilty about Marcy,” Bronkowski said. “You were doing your job. And she was just a lawyer in your shop, not your daughter.”

  “Right, I got enough to feel guilty about.”

  They waited six back from the light at Cerrillos. Bronkowski noticed the BMW again, two lanes over, out of place among pickups and chopped Civics.

  “I don’t get this,” Bronkowski said, “lowrider Hondas.”

  A woman was driving the BMW. Long hair. Rings on the fingers holding the steering wheel. Too much glare on the windshield to see her face.

  “I didn’t mean that—that you need to feel guilty about anything.”

  “Maybe I do,” Fager said, and pulled into the intersection when the light changed.

  Bronkowski looked again for the BMW, but it had dropped behind them.

  Thirty-Three

  Marcy wanted to know what Walter Fager was up to.

  Montclaire followed him and Bronkowski to the Mexican dive on Airport Road. She got out of her car and walked by the cantina’s front window. Fager was talking with detectives Lewis and Aragon, and a fat slob she didn’t recognize. She called Marcy and was told to stick with Fager when the meeting ended.

  His Mercedes turned onto Cerrillos toward downtown. When he pulled into his office lot, she continued into the alley where she could watch his car. Fager and Bronkowski were loading a video camera and a case of plastic water bottles into the trunk. They got back in the car. She caught him on Paseo de Peralta and followed him to the hills, where he had a house.

  She couldn’t stay close on empty residential streets. She swung around his block and came up on his house from the other direction. The Mercedes was in his gravel drive. She parked in the driveway of a neighbor who appeared to be away from home. Twenty minutes later Fager came out dressed, for the first time in her memory, in something other than pinstripes. He wore jeans, heavy boots, and a Carhartt jacket. Bronkowski appeared with two knapsacks. She ducked out of sight. She heard a noisy diesel engine, tires on gravel, then the quieter sound of a car on a paved road. She counted to ten then followed.

  They drove through Santa Fe, south on Cerrillos, and pulled into a Hertz office. Parked in the lot of an adjacent business, she watched them at the counter. They came out and headed to the back of the lot. Soon, a Grand Cherokee rolled by with Bronkowski at the wheel and Fager riding shotgun.

  She was glad she had nearly a full tank as the Grand Cherokee continued south onto the interstate. At Albuquerque she checked in with Thornton. Marcy sounded nervous and told her not to lose them. When they emerged on the south side of the city, the rugged pyramid of Ladron Peak came into view. She knew where they were heading and why.

  She began to worry about keeping the tail without being seen as traffic thinned. She dropped back. At the Bernardo exit she saw light glinting off a vehicle on the dirt road leading to Ladron Peak. The road bent back on itself after it crossed a deep arroyo. The Grand Cherokee appeared at the head of a rooster tail of dust thrown up by its wheels. She left the interstate and hit the gas.

  Montclaire drove a BMW 3 Series rear-wheel-drive coupe. She remembered the road to Geronimo’s place. It got worse with every mile. Ruts jerked her car from side to side. A few miles later she got stuck in sand washed across the road.

  She got out. Her spike heels sank. The tires were buried to their hubcaps. The plume of dust from the Grand Cherokee grew small in the distance. She had no water, no food. The wind cut through her shirt and she had only a thin leather jacket in the back seat.

  The sound of a chugging motor approached. A 1960s flare-side Ford pickup rolled down the slope toward her. She saw the outline of a cowboy hat and a rifle rack through the windshield. The truck braked and a weathered Hispanic man got down.

  “Two pretty ladies on my ranch in two days. This one has hair.”

  She was ready to throw that hair over her shoulder, cock a hip, and turn on the charm to get this old man to use the winch on the front of his truck to pull her out, or drive her into the nearest town, if that’s what it took. His eyes were telling her she looked pretty damn good standing in tights next to her German car, the wind pushing her blouse between her breasts.

  Instead she asked, “This woman without hair? Was she about this tall?” and held her hand at shoulder height.

  Montclaire raised her eyes to the rearview mirror and waved to the old man in the pickup on her rear bumper. He flashed his lights to say goodbye then fell back as he slowed to turn around. Her tires reached hardtop. The interstate was just ahead. She stopped at a cell tower and called Marcy.

  “Get the biggest retainer Cody can pay.”

  Together they saw how the pieces fit. The meeting at the Mexican restaurant, Fager and Bronkowski heading straight for Cody’s ranch, Aragon orchestrating it all, accomplishing more on suspension than she could have gotten done with Dewey Nobles in the way, where they could reach her.

  Marcy told her to get her own Jeep and video camera, a sleeping bag, and enough food for a couple days. She was retu
rning to Cody’s place.

  “I don’t feel comfortable being out there alone.”

  “You won’t be lonely,” Marcy said. “Every cop in the state is headed your way.”

  Thirty-Four

  Aragon dropped the phone into her lap when she changed lanes. “I’m impressed, again,” Rivera was saying when she got it back to her ear. She was on her way to return Javier’s truck and retrieve her car. She and Rivera had been talking since she reached the interstate.

  FBI pathologists had confirmed she and Lewis were right about the confused lividity at Cynthia Fremont’s hairline. She had been carried for hours, postmortem, her head hanging face-down between her arms. They were also right about two people laying her out in the Volvo’s trunk. Two sets of prints found on her boots, and thumb prints on her shoulders and upper arms matched latents lifted from the trunk lid. Those people had been in the car with Fremont driving, her prints on the steering wheel, theirs on windows and arm rests.

  It was almost certain those people were men. Fremont had sex inside the tent by the lake only hours before her estimated time of death. Thanks to Aragon’s instincts, they had found the tent in time to preserve traces of semen and lift prints from its plastic floor that matched friction ridges in latents from the car. DNA matched the semen in the tent to what had been found inside Fremont. The DNA so far had not matched any samples on record.

  More good stuff because they found the campsite so quickly: Rivera’s crew made casts of three sets of boot prints. One set matched the boots on Fremont’s feet. Another belonged to a very large person. They were Redwing Irish Setter boots, size fifteen wide. The remaining set of boots, size nine, were made by a company called Oboz. It sounded exotic, but a few inquiries revealed they were sold all over the country in a variety of retail outlets.

  “Nice work,” Aragon said.

  She was impressed. Again. It would have taken months to get those sorts of results from a New Mexico crime lab. And now Rivera had the knife, found by divers in the lake. He’d sent a photo to her phone.

  She had never seen anything like it.

  With its serpentine blade the knife could have been a stage prop. The long handle was black, made of stone, topped with a brass knob. Yet another Smithsonian expert was tasked to tell them more.

  “On Linda Fager to get a prelim autopsy, Rick had to call in favors, then get chewed out for being too aggressive.”

  “Nice thing about working for the federal government,” Rivera said. “It’s called resources. The SAIC in South Carolina had two agents visit Fremont’s parents today. They haven’t talked to her in over a year and had no idea she was in New Mexico. They thought she had gone to India or Tibet. We know the coffee shop where she hung out, thanks to a cup sleeve recovered from the car. I’ve got my youngest agents dressed like hippie drifters talking to kids in parks. But still five of my people are on chairs fighting boredom.” He paused. “I have to block out time to think how to deploy all the resources I’m expected to use. Hard to handle that kind of pressure.”

  “Nobody will be bored after Fager calls.”

  “I bet you can tell me exactly what he’s going to say.”

  “Hey, I’m good, right?”

  “Maybe too good for your current employer.”

  She left the interstate and headed into Pecos, where there was

  a gas station at the crossroads. She would return Javier’s truck with a full tank.

  “What are you saying?”

  “You might consider changing teams. You’ve got the qualifications we need.”

  “I’ve got the demographics you need. Latina. Female. Those boxes get checked before anybody asks whether I know my job.”

  “You’d have your pick of the whole country.”

  “I’ve already picked. My war is here, Tomas. I know these trenches.” The gas station was coming up. “You need mules, call me.”

  “That’s some sharp turn in the conversation. What are you talking about?”

  “Let me know when you hear from Fager. Adiós.”

  She lined up the pickup at a pump. The gas station was part of the village’s only store. It stocked everything from groceries and band saws to salt blocks for livestock. After topping off the tank, she moved the truck closer to the door and went inside. She wanted to replace the six-pack she had passed along to Fermin Bustamante.

  Beer was at the back, next to milk. She pulled out a six of Bud and returned to the front, to the single cash register. Two young men smelling of sweat and wood smoke were ahead of her. The cashier rang up cans of corn and beans, and a small pile of Clif bars. One man was wiry, about five-six, arms so caked with dirt they looked like sleeves. The other was twice his size, almost as big as Lewis and wearing a down vest that made him even bigger. He wore leather boots laced up his calves. As the cashier scanned each can, they dropped it into a bright red nylon bag with a circular logo that seemed familiar. Aragon got only a glimpse: black, red, blue, and white, wavy letters spelling out Big Agnes. She thought of a girl in a mummy bag, empty cans for corn and beans found at a campsite next to a mountain lake. A Clif bars box in the trunk of the Volvo.

  Aragon kept her eyes on the young men as they exited the store. She gave the cashier a ten and left without change.

  She found them under trees divvying up the cans, transferring them to backpacks.

  “Guys.” Their eyes went to the six-pack in her hands. She hadn’t planned it that way, but the beer helped her get closer. They were relaxed, ready to hear what she had to say.

  Aragon put the beer on the ground near their feet. She wanted her hands free. The big guy wore Redwing Irish Setters. Javier wore boots like that. So did one of the people who had been in Cynthia Fremont’s camp.

  “You have plans for that?” The wiry one put a foot on the Bud. He wore a light hiking shoe. She couldn’t see the brand name. “We’ll trade for a little weed.” He smiled. “Or we can party and share.”

  She thought about her gun, locked in the glove box in the truck.

  “Party of three,” the big one said, and showed teeth separated by pink gums, reminding her of the pink plastic mouthpiece of the guy who had punished her in the Krav Maga class.

  She pulled her badge case from her hip pocket and flipped it open.

  “I want to ask you about a girl, Cynthia Fremont.” She pointed with the badge case. “That bag you’re carrying.”

  The bag came at her head—seven, eight cans inside—the wiry one swinging with both hands. She spun in the same direction and came around as the weight of the bag carried his arms and shoulders forward, giving her the side of his body. Somewhere in her spin she had dropped her badge case. She drove a fist his into his neck then kicked out a knee. The joint popped loud enough she heard it over his groans.

  The big one had moved behind her as she took down his smaller friend. She felt herself lifted, huge arms locking across her chest. She couldn’t reach his biceps with her teeth. They were too low on her rib cage, across her diaphragm, squeezing her in two. She tried kicking, her heels glancing off thick thighs, his arms forcing air out of her lungs. She threw back elbows, hoping for a jaw or the neck, but only hit his muscular shoulders. He tossed her up an inch while he adjusted his grip and started to carry her into the trees.

  She reached behind with both hands, searching for an eye, wishing she had fingernails so she could scratch his face. She found ears. They fit into her hands like holds on a climbing wall. She banged her head backwards into his face, contracted abdominal muscles, hooked her feet inside his knees for leverage. And pulled, doubling up to put her whole body into it.

  His arms released. She dropped to the ground, bringing him with her. His weight knocked the last air out of her chest. She heard screaming, then she could breathe. The big guy had rolled off her. He was grabbing his head, blood seeping through his fingers.

  She sat up with
an ear in each hand and the wiry guy staring at her with eyes bugging out of his face.

  A woman at the gas pump covered her mouth with a hand. Aragon said, “Call 911. I’m a cop.” She checked the two men, one holding his knee, the other with red hands cupping his head. They were in no shape to run. She sprang to her feet and into the store past a startled cashier. Down an aisle to the frozen food. She laid the ears between bags of frozen peas then rushed outside, prepared to chase the men down if she had misjudged their condition.

  They had not moved. The woman at the gas pump was on her cell phone. Aragon found her badge on the ground and showed it. Then she took off her shirt and crouched by the man without ears.

  She said, “Let me help,” and lifted his hands away to wrap her shirt around his head.

  The ambulance and sheriff’s Suburban arrived from different directions. She had called on her own cell and told the sheriff what to expect, a nearly bald woman, an off-duty cop in a bra smeared with blood, and two guys doing a lot worse. A pair of deputies secured the backpacks the men had been carrying and the stuff sack loaded with cans. An EMT recovered the ears and transferred them to a small cooler. He said she did good to run past the blocks of ice in the freezer by the front door. Plastic bags of frozen peas were the way to go. No risk of frostbite.

  She rode in the back of the ambulance with the wounded. She called Javier to let him know where to find his truck. He would meet her at the hospital with a clean shirt.

  Next she called Rivera, told him she might have the guys he was looking for.

  He said, “I’d like to see how much you get done when you’re not on suspension and flying solo. Think how effective you’d be with our resources backing you up.”

  She said, “The FBI doesn’t have mules, and don’t forget to call me after Fager checks in.”