Wild Penance

by Sandi Ault

  “The book that got stolen?”

  “Yes.” I went on, “It was a Spanish name-it was unusual. I’d never heard it before. I couldn’t remember it.”

  “So this priest, he’s the one you mentioned Saturday night?”

  “Yes. He’s the one who knew about my book, what was in it. In fact, he was the only one who had ever actually seen what I was sketching and writing. He hadn’t really read the whole thing, just a few things I sent him. And he looked at the maps and the drawings in the book, just scanned it, really.”

  “And, let’s see, what was his angle?”

  “You mean, why was I consulting him?”

  “Yeah. Was he some kind of expert or something?”

  “Yes. He had written a book about the Penitentes. I read it and looked him up. He hadn’t wanted to see me, but I persuaded him. I only met him the one time. The Catholic Church evidently did not look kindly on his research.”

  “Oh? Who told you that?”

  “He did. And another priest that I met in Agua Azuela just this morning.”

  “This priest in Agua Azuela, is he working on the same stuff?”

  “On the same stuff? Oh, no. No, he just held mass there. No, he said-well, actually, he told me that Father Ignacio was… that the Church did not approve of the work he was doing regarding the Penitentes. And then he said he thought my book was ill-advised.”

  “Well, that makes two of us. So, this priest-what’s his name?”

  “Father Ximon Rivera.”

  “Father Rivera. So, he knows about your book, too?”

  “No. Well, he didn’t. I mean he didn’t until Regan announced that I was writing it.”

  “Regan?”

  “Regan Daniels. She’s a friend of mine.”

  “Regan Daniels,” he said, as he wrote the name in his notebook. “So, let’s see, she’s the woman from Agua Azuela you mentioned, and the priest from Santa Fe-that’d be the late Father Medina-they were the only ones who knew what the book was about.”

  “Right.”

  “So you don’t think she could have had anything to do with your book getting taken?”

  “No. No, absolutely not. First of all, she is a friend of mine. And she’s the only local elder who has given me direct, firsthand accounts of Penitente rituals she has observed. She’s been a valuable resource. She’s told me dozens of stories.”

  “Do you know if she knew Father Medina?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, really. I’m just seeing if there’s a string that ties all this stuff together, but if there is, I can’t see it. So you called Father Medina to try to arrange to see him again, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But the receptionist told you he wasn’t there?”

  “Yes. No. Actually what she said was that he wasn’t available right then. That’s what she always said when I called. The only difference…” I closed my eyes and replayed the conversation in my mind.

  “The only difference?”

  “Well, she hesitated before she said it. For more than a few seconds. And then when I told her I didn’t have a phone and couldn’t leave a number, but I really needed to talk with him, she covered the phone up and talked to someone else.”

  Jerry was taking notes on his notepad. After a few seconds, he looked up. “And then what happened?”

  “She just said she would leave a note that I called, and she hung up on me.”

  Padilla looked up at the ceiling and he tapped his pen on his notepad repeatedly, beating out the rhythm of his thoughts. Finally he stopped tapping and said, “Okay.”

  “Father Ignacio, when I met with him, he said something was going on with the Penitentes. He said someone was… let me think, how did he say it? He said someone was trying to ‘steal their power.’ And I think he was… I don’t know, expecting something to happen. He kept watching the door. He told me it wasn’t safe. He said no one trusts anyone, and no one would trust me.”

  “He did, huh?”

  “Yes. He kept checking the door, like he was afraid he was being followed. When I asked if he was expecting somebody, he just said, ‘Perhaps.’”

  Padilla bit the end of his pen. “Is that right?”

  “He said the Penitentes had been betrayed by traitors.”

  The deputy’s eyes had thinned to two narrow cracks, his nose wrinkled almost in distaste. He didn’t speak.

  “Jerry, what do you know about this crucifixion thing and Father Ignacio?”

  “Nothing.” He shook his head. “I don’t know nothing. Like I said, talk to Christine Salazar. I don’t even want to know as much about this case as I do now. Whole idea, a priest-well, the whole thing gives me the creeps.”

  I gave a heavy sigh. “Hey, whatever happened with that guy from the club, Manny?”

  “Not much. Guy seems clean. He’s a decorated veteran, no record. Doesn’t have so much as a smudge against him. I don’t figure him for it. But we’re still looking into it.”

  “But why did he say he was making sure I was all right? Did you ask him about that?”

  “Yeah, we asked him. He said he didn’t think you belonged there. That was all he said.”

  I put my hand to my forehead and closed my eyes, rubbing my temples.

  “Well, I don’t have anything else. I’m gonna get out of here. You try to get some rest, okay?” He tucked his pen and notebook in his pocket and got up. “And you don’t know where that book of yours is now, right?”

  I shook my head no.

  “I think that’s probably a good thing. You be careful, Jamaica. I can’t prove it, but I still suspect that you were the target last night at that club. Until we figure out why they’re after you, or what they want besides that book of yours, I’m afraid that you are going to continue to be the target. You ought not to be alone.”

  22

  Bullet Hole

  The next morning, I checked in at the Bullet Hole for target shooting. Armed federal agents were required to qualify on their weapons quarterly and present their targets and scores to their supervisor. I picked up ear protectors, goggles, and two boxes each of 5.56mm shells for my Ruger Mini-14 rifle and 9mm for my handgun.

  I used the rifle first, my favorite, and ran the target out as far as it would go. I could only load five shells in the magazine at once, with another in the chamber, but it didn’t take me long to spend both boxes of ammo, drawing the slide handle all the way to the rear each time I had loaded the magazine, then moving the safety to off and pulling the trigger until the magazine was empty. I pulled the paper target up for review: I had drilled out a hole the size of a softball in the heart of the poor stiff on the paper, and nailed each of his ears and his forehead.

  I loaded the clips for my Sig Sauer P229 9mm Luger next. Technically, resource protection agents carried a sidearm for protection from animals. We weren’t supposed to use them on people unless it was for self-protection. Mine usually languished in the glove box of my Jeep. I preferred the rifle for range riding, and I was good with it, even though I had only needed to fire mine twice in the line of duty-once to kill a snake, and the other time to scare off a mountain lion. I wasn’t as good with the pistol, but I was getting better.

  I ran out another paper target. Squaring my stance with my right foot slightly forward, the gun in both hands at shoulder height, I painted the body on the target and the area around it with holes. I reloaded and did it again, firing thirteen shots with the semiautomatic without stopping, all of these hitting the body on the target. As I did this, I wasn’t thinking, just aiming and firing, as if I were part of the gun’s mechanism, managing the recoil, staring down the sight. The shell casings shot out to the side and in front of me and littered the floor like peanut shells in a beer bar. I kept reloading the clip and firing until all the ammunition was gone. My hands and wrists felt a little sore from the kickback when I was done. There was a good kind of burned metal smell in the air. I liked it.
>
  I pulled the second target off the clip and noted that I had at least got him three times as often as I’d missed, and I felt satisfied. I headed for the checkout desk to have my targets scored and initialed.

  At the desk ahead of me was a man facing the other way, but I noticed a familiar brown haircut. Kerry Reed turned as I approached and gave me an engaging smile. “Well, look who’s here! It’s that Wild woman.”

  I was glad to see him. “Hi. You putting in the obligatory target time, too?”

  “Me? Nah, I come here to pick up women.” He winked at me.

  “I would have figured you more the type to be out cruising for redwoods,” I joked.

  He laughed. “No redwoods in this state. But you look like you might do in a pinch.” Then he reached for my targets. “Let me see how we did today.” He looked them over approvingly. “Not bad. Not bad. Yeah, those guys are both definitely dead, Jamaica. You got them. You know, I think I’ll try to stay on your good side, not do anything to make you mad. What do you think?” he said over his shoulder to the target master, holding up the two sheets.

  The target master nodded. “Yeah, you don’t want to cross a woman with a gun, let me tell you. You look like you’re getting a little better with that Sig Sauer, Jamaica.” He went back to shelving boxes of ammo.

  “Let me see yours,” I said to Kerry, and I reached for the target on the counter behind him. He moved his body to block my hand, holding the paper behind his back. This put me inches away from him, my arm around him, and I could smell his scent again, like that morning in the truck, a smell like soap and clean air and man. I felt heat from his chest. I looked up into his eyes. Our faces were only three or four inches apart. His breath fluttered against my forehead.

  “Ah, I’m no good with a handgun,” he said, as we hung there in sensual space, inanimate. “I only fired my pistol today. I am much better with a rifle.” He still blocked the target with his body, still smelled good, still emanated warm signals to my flesh. He was smiling that smile again.

  I moved back a step, fortified myself with a little air. “Hey, I showed you my targets, now you show me yours.” I reached out again, extending my open palm between us.

  “Okay.” He shrugged and placed the paper in my hand. I looked at it. He had shot perfectly through the pupil of each of the target’s two eyes, made a third eye in the center of the forehead, nailed one right through the midpoint of the mouth, and engraved a heart-shaped series of dots like a valentine over the target’s chest. Inside the valentine was a single, perfectly centered shot through the middle of the heart.

  I drew in a breath. “Wow! Where did you learn to shoot like that?”

  He took the target from me and handed it to the target master to initial and score. “Army Rangers. I was point man on my squad.”

  “Oh.” I pushed my two papers across the counter next.

  “You’re a pretty good shot, too,” he said, “especially with that Ruger rifle. Where’d you learn to shoot?”

  “I grew up on a farm.” I folded my initialed targets in half, then in half again, and tucked them under my arm. “Well, I gotta go. I’ll see you on the job tonight.”

  “Hey, wait.” He followed me as I went out the door. “How come you act that way whenever I ask you something about yourself?”

  I had been pushing a good stride toward my Jeep, which was parked around the side near the back of the building. I stopped and turned to face him. “What way?”

  “Like I’m about to find out that you were really raised by wolves or something.”

  “What do you mean?” Irritation made my nostrils flare.

  “Well, just like back there.” He gestured toward the door of the Bullet Hole.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I just wondered where you learned to shoot. You’re really good.”

  “I told you.”

  “No, you didn’t.” He let one corner of his mouth turn up in a smile, then tilted his head and raised his eyebrows in a tiny, beckoning gesture.

  I saw the grin start, and for some fool reason I grinned, too. Then I giggled. So did he. “Well, I was raised by wolves…”

  “I knew it!” We both laughed now, and he put out a hand and grabbed hold of my shoulder as he doubled over trying to howl like a wolf but sputtering too much to get it out, clutching his holstered gun with the belt wrapped around it against his abdomen.

  I tried to howl, too, with my rifle in one hand, my handgun in the other, laughing too hard to sustain a decent wail.

  “I knew you would tell me eventually,” he said, as his laughter began to wind down.

  This felt good, really good. “My dad taught me to fire a rifle when I was seven years old,” I said finally, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. “We had a farm. He said everyone who lived in the country should know how to shoot a gun. We had a lot of rattlesnakes. I was there by myself a lot. He wanted me to know how to protect myself.”

  “Seven, huh? And did he take you hunting as well?”

  “No. He didn’t hunt. Oh, I think he did when he was a boy. By the time… well, when I was growing up, he… he didn’t hunt anymore. Anyway, I’ve run off a few coyotes from the compost heap, but my favorite target was soup cans.”

  “I see. Knocking them off of logs, rocks, and fence posts, right?”

  “That would be it.” I pushed the toe of my boot around in the dirt, looking for something to prod.

  “Well, you sure are good with the rifle. But you could use a little more work with that pistol. Hey, I have a night scope that you might like to use while we’re working together on this night assignment. I’ll bring it with me tonight.”

  “Wow. That would be fun. I never have tried one, but I’d like to.”

  “You know, we should come here together and work on our pistols sometime. And I’ll bring a rifle along just to show you that I really can shoot.”

  “I can’t imagine how you could top that target I saw today.”

  “Let’s come down here some time together and I’ll show you-you’ll see.”

  “Okay, it’s a deal. But I have to go now,” I said, reluctantly.

  “Yeah, me, too. So, I’ll bring that scope and I’ll see you tonight.”

  “You bet.” I turned and went to my Jeep. I opened the door to the driver’s seat and pushed the back of the seat forward, then bent down and leaned in, carefully placing the Mini-14 on the floor alongside my shotgun. When I raised up and pushed the seat back into its upright position, I saw the back of Kerry Reed’s head in his ranger hat as he drove away in his truck.

  I looked around the parking lot, across the road. For a moment there, I had forgotten to watch my own back.

  23

  The Confrontation

  Christine Salazar met me at the sheriff’s office. Like most of New Mexico’s field deputy medical investigators, she worked part-time for the Office of Medical Investigation, or OMI, and most of the time at another endeavor so that she had steady income. After several years as a private investigator, Christine’s other endeavor was teaching science at the University of New Mexico.

  “I understand you knew the deceased,” she said as she showed me to an interview room.

  “Yes, I had met him. Once.”

  “Well, I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, closing the door and gesturing for me to take a seat at the table.

  I sat down.

  Christine sat down opposite me. “But when you witnessed the scene that morning, you didn’t know who it was, correct?”

  “That’s right, I didn’t know who it was.”

  “Okay, then. For the purposes of this interview, I think it would be best if we tried to proceed as if you didn’t know who the deceased was, even now. It will keep you more detached, and you will be able to retrieve the information from your memory without emotions clouding the data. Do you think you can do that?”

  “I think so,” I said. “I’m still kind of in shock about it, and I don’t
know why, but I haven’t been able to feel much of anything since I heard.”

  “That happens a lot. Now, tell me what you saw that morning,” she said, poised to take notes on the legal pad on the table in front of her.

  “I saw movement on the bridge. A big, light-colored truck or van had stopped in the middle. Two people with hooded coats or jackets were moving around. One of them may have walked to the rail and looked over. Then they went to the back of the van or the truck or whatever it was. They were there a long time-or at least it seemed like that-they were doing something at the rear of the vehicle. I thought it was either base jumpers or bungee jumpers getting out their gear.”

  “And what happened next?”

  “They wrestled something to the rail pretty quickly, before I could tell what it was. And then I saw it happen.”

  She looked up from her note taking. “Yes? Saw what happen?”

  “I saw the body on the cross, falling into the gorge.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  I shook my head. “I saw a man on a cross plummeting down into the void.”

  “Close your eyes, Jamaica,” Christine said.

  I did as she said.

  “Now try to run the tape as if it were in slow motion. What do you see?”

  I sat for a few moments trying to get myself focused. Then I saw the cross falling, only it was so fast, I almost missed it. I shuddered.

  “Take a deep breath,” Christine said. “Now center yourself and keep breathing big, deep breaths.”

  “Are you trying to hypnotize me?”

  “No. I just know we all store more data in our brains than we often utilize. Let’s see if we can call this memory file up and examine it a little more closely.”

  I tried again, and this time, when the cross started to tip over the rail, I managed to replay the scene slowly. “Okay,” I said, my eyes still closed. “Okay, maybe I can do this.”

  “Now tell me about the man on the cross.”

  “He has a rope around his chest.” I opened my eyes. “Wait, Christine. I don’t know if I’m saying what I saw as the cross was falling or if I’m adding to that what I saw from the bridge through the field glasses when the cross was still partly on the bank of the river below me.”