“Dorothy Bronwin,” the librarian said. Her bright red lipstick bled into the cracks around her mouth. Her hair was too black to be real. She didn’t get up from her desk, so it was hard for Claire to judge how tall she was, although the size of her upper body indicated she was a large woman. There wasn’t an uncluttered surface in the office to sit on, which left Claire standing and towering over Dorothy, not a position she wanted to be in.
“Did you ever encounter a homeless woman who called herself Maia and spent some time here?” Claire asked Dorothy.
“That’s the woman who died in the basement of Zimmerman?”
“Yes.”
“She came here sometimes. She was quiet and kept to herself.”
“Was there some kind of altercation with a man a couple of weeks ago?”
“I wouldn’t say it was an altercation—more of an argument.” Dorothy swung around in her desk chair to face Claire. “How did you know about that?”
“The man involved told me. His name is Bill Hartley and he’s a ski instructor in Taos.”
“Did he say it was an altercation?”
“Not really. He said he raised his voice and was asked to leave.”
“That’s right.” Dorothy put her elbows on her desk. “Well, if he told you all about it, then what can I do for you?”
“I don’t know that he did tell me all about it,” Claire said.
“Maia died of an overdose in Zimmerman, right?”
“Apparently.”
“Does it matter now what happened here?”
“It might.” Dorothy was making her work for every tidbit of information. Claire believed that was the price she paid for being a university librarian. It was annoying but she felt she had to continue.
“The man raised his voice. A security guard asked him to be quiet or leave. He apologized and left, but then he came back and the argument started all over again. The guard was new to the job and she called me. This sort of disruption happens all the time here.”
“It happens at Zimmerman, too,” Claire said.
“Well, you have more security at Zimmerman. Here we have a couple of guards and we have me.” Dorothy laughed. “I will say that this man was a better class of troublemaker than we usually get. He was clean, sober, sane. I thought he might be someone from Maia’s past. When I told him I would have to call the police if he didn’t leave, he apologized and left. That was the end of it. I never saw him again.”
“What were they arguing about?”
“He was telling her there was something she had to do. No matter how hard it was, she had to do it for the sake of the other girls. He was very insistent.”
“Was Maia afraid of him?”
“I don’t know that she was afraid, but she certainly wasn’t happy about the encounter. She was in tears when he left. What was it that he wanted her to do? Do you know?”
“Go back to Taos and testify against a man who abused her when she was twelve years old.”
“No wonder she was in tears. Is the abuse what put her on the street?”
“I believe it was.”
“Figures.” Dorothy’s fingers returned to her keyboard, skirting the edge as if they were anxious to continue typing. “I hope she testified before she died and put the son of a bitch away.”
“She called the Taos County DA and agreed to talk to her, but she died before she ever got to Taos.”
“Well, that makes her death even sadder, doesn’t it? Why did this Bill Hartley get involved?”
“His daughter had sex with the same man but she was too old for it to be a prosecutable offense. Maia was Bill’s best hope of putting the abuser in prison.”
“He’ll probably do it again,” Dorothy sighed. “They always do.”
“Did Maia come back to the library after that encounter?”
“You know, I don’t remember seeing her, but homeless people come and go and we don’t pay much attention to them until something bad happens, do we?”
“I’m afraid not,” Claire said. “Do you ever see Ansia here?”
“She used to come to the library, but she caused too much trouble. She has wild mood swings. She’d fall asleep at a table, snore, and disturb everybody, then she’d wake up and become belligerent. And the smell! Whew!” Dorothy held her nose. “We had to get tough and not let her in. I haven’t seen her for some time.”
Claire handed Dorothy her card. “If you do see her, would you tell her I’d like to talk to her?”
“Sure. You may not want to take any advice from me,” Dorothy said, pushing herself out of her chair and standing up. She wasn’t any taller than Claire was. It was her bulldog attitude, not her size, that gave her the power to evict the troublemakers. “But here it is. It’s not a good idea to start caring about drug addicts and street people who have gone over the edge. They’ll break your heart every damn time.”
“I’ll remember that,” Claire said.
Before she left the library she walked around the second floor, where the periodicals were kept. There were enough magazines on display here to fill dozens of waiting rooms. She wouldn’t mind spending an afternoon on this floor escaping through magazines. She saw a large window on the far side of the room facing a parking garage. The garage’s blank wall was decorated with large Xs painted in primary colors. Two chairs sat in the window facing out. Claire believed that was where Maia would have wanted to sit when she came to the main library.
******
On the drive back through downtown Claire thought about what had transpired between Bill Hartley and Maia. It could have been fear of him or returning to Taos that had caused her to OD. Maia had called Allana Bruno and said she would meet with her. Of all the people Claire had spoken to regarding Maia, the one with the most credibility was Allana Bruno. Although she might not have told her everything, Claire believed what she had said. But something more ominous might have happened, something Allana Bruno didn’t know about, between the time Maia made the decision to go to Taos and the time she took the China White.
Chapter Twenty-four
ON MONDAY SOPHIE ROYBAL SURPRISED CLAIRE by calling to say she was in town for a few hours. It was noon and she asked if Claire wanted to meet her for lunch. The timing of the call made Claire suspect that Sophie was going through the motions, all the while hoping Claire would be unavailable.
But she was available. “Where can we meet?” Claire asked.
“Outside the bookstore?” Sophie said. “I need to buy a textbook and I can get a used copy there.”
“How will I know you?”
“I have long black hair,” Sophie said.
Long black hair wouldn’t distinguish anyone at UNM, but Claire let that go by, hoping she’d find some other way to identify Sophie.
She put a copy of Summertime in a folder and held it under her arm as she stood waiting outside the bookstore. As soon as Sophie came through the inner door with a bookstore bag in her hand, Claire knew who she was. Sophie was defined by her hair, a waterfall of thick black curls that tumbled down her back. It was hair men would want to smell, touch, bury their faces in. Sophie’s full hair was an attention-getting contrast to her slender, graceful figure. She wore a thigh-length skirt that emphasized her slenderness. It was easy enough to imagine strangers approaching Sophie Roybal and telling her she looked beautiful. She moved with the reserved self-assurance of a woman who was accustomed to admiration but remained indifferent to it. Claire began to think she’d gotten the wrong impression about Sophie Roybal; there was nothing in her manner or appearance to suggest this confident young woman had ever been abused.
It wasn’t until she walked up close that Claire saw any sign of “a girl who.” Sophie’s features and complexion were perfect. She had nothing to emphasize or conceal. Even though she needed no makeup, she wore far too much—mauve eye shadow, purplish lipstick outlined in an almost black shade, blush that was a bright slash on her cheeks. It reminded Claire of the overdone clown makeup in Lisa Teague’s p
aintings.
“Are you Sophie?” she asked.
“I am.”
“I’m Claire Reynier.”
“Hi,” Sophie said.
“Did you find the textbook you wanted?”
“Yes.” Sophie glanced at her watch. “How about the Olympia Café for lunch? It’s right across the street.”
The Olympia Café was crowded and noisy at lunchtime and Claire avoided going there, but she agreed. They ordered gyros at the counter, found a booth to sit in, and waited for their number to come up. A man stood at the counter yelling out numbers as the orders were filled, not necessarily in numerical order: sixty-four, fifty-eight, sixty-seven. Conversation with Sophie was difficult enough without the numerical interjections.
“June called herself Maia when she was in Albuquerque,” Claire said, trying to get a conversation going.
“Oh yeah?” Sophie replied.
Two academics in the adjacent booth argued about physics. It seemed far too complicated to try to explain why June called herself Maia in the noise and confusion of the Olympia Café, far too confusing to introduce Summertime here. “Did you ever see her when you came to town?” Claire asked.
“No. I didn’t even know she was here until I heard she had died.”
“Sixty-six,” the owner yelled.
Claire tried again. “I met June twice, once at a reading at the library, once beside the duck pond. She talked me to about the stars.” Claire paused. “She told me I looked beautiful.”
Sophie smiled. “She used to tell me that I looked beautiful, too. You could tell her she was pretty forever, but she would never believe it.”
“Did you live at the commune?”
“For a while.”
“What do you do in Durango?” Claire asked.
“I’m getting a degree in anthropology at Fort Lewis College.”
“That’s good.”
“It beats hanging out in Taos,” Sophie said.
“Seventy-two,” the man called. “Seventy-four.”
“That’s my number.” Sophie jumped up and went to get her gyro. Heads turned as she walked through the restaurant. Heads turned again as she walked back. There was a pause in the beat of the argument in the adjacent booth. Igniting the fantasies of men was the blessing of being young and beautiful, but it was also the curse, Claire thought. She was struck by the difference in the demeanor of the dramatic Sophie and the subdued June who had dressed and acted as if she wanted to disappear. June hid her essence behind the faded clothes of a homeless person while Sophie hid behind her beauty.
“I brought your order, too,” she said, putting both gyros on the table.
“Thanks,” Claire said.
Eating made conversation even more difficult. Claire gave up and concentrated on her gyro. When Sophie finished she took out a compact and lipstick, redid her lips, then closed the compact with a decisive click.
“Ready?” she asked Claire.
“Ready,” Claire said.
As they got up and walked through the restaurant and out the door Claire despaired of accomplishing anything. Had Sophie come all the way from Durango to say nothing? There had to be something she was willing to reveal, but Claire didn’t know how to get her to open up.
They stood on Central. Sophie extended her hand and said, “Nice meeting you.”
The picture of the girls was still in the folder under Claire’s arm, unseen by Sophie. It was about to become the perfunctory end to a perfunctory meeting when a homeless woman walked down Central pulling her belongings behind her in a shopping cart. She stopped and stared into a parked car’s side-view mirror, rearranging her hair.
“Addicts look into car mirrors to find veins in their eyeballs that they can use to shoot up,” Claire said. It was a grim fact of street life that she had learned from Detective Owen and one way to get Sophie’s attention.
Sophie cringed.
“That’s how June ended up,” Claire continued. “On the street. On drugs. Dead in a storage room in the library’s basement.”
Sophie’s eyes flashed. “Well, you can blame her mother and Damon Fitzgerald for that. Her mother should have kept that man away from June.”
“We need to talk somewhere, Sophie. In private.” Claire had been struggling to find a secluded place to talk; there weren’t many at UNM. But then she had an inspiration. “I know just the place.” She switched into mother mode, using a tone of voice that would tolerate no hesitation or excuses from a woman young enough to be her daughter. “Come with me.”
Sophie might have been waiting for a firm hand. She didn’t give Claire an argument, following her across Central and into the Center for the Arts. Claire was hoping the Rodey Theatre would be open and empty and was relieved to find that it was. Popejoy Hall was too large for an intimate conversation, Theatre X was too far away in the basement, but Rodey was nearby and it happened to be available. Nothing was in rehearsal at the moment. They sat down in seats in the back row facing the empty stage. Sophie put her knees up against the back of the seat in front of her. Claire’s imagination filled the stage with images of twinkling stars and girls dancing in summer dresses.
“Tell me what happened in Taos,” she said. “It’s important to know how and why June died.”
Sophie wrapped a black curl around her finger and gave it a tug. “What happened is that June slept with Damon Fitzgerald, her mother’s lover.”
“It’s hard for me to understand why she would do such a thing.”
“It wouldn’t be so hard if you had been there. Veronica had her own problems and she ignored June. Maybe June was trying to get her attention or get even, or maybe she was just young and naïve enough to fall for Damon. He was charismatic and had a lot of power in Cave Commune. It meant a girl was special when Damon singled her out, but he went too far when he got involved with June. The commune fell apart after that. Later Veronica was found dead in the Rio Grande Gorge. Put it all together and you can understand why June died.”
“Did Veronica kill herself?”
“Who knows? Her body was so mangled when it was found, no one will ever know. She could have been pushed over the edge. People at the commune blamed Veronica for what happened. Some of them were very angry.”
“Shouldn’t Damon be the one to take the blame?”
“Of course, but Veronica was dispensable. Damon wasn’t. It was convenient to blame her. Damon was the pied piper. There were people at Cave Commune with no lives of their own who would have followed him anywhere. One time we all went rafting in the Rio Grande and Damon jumped out of the raft into the river. The water was snowmelt and freezing cold but everybody followed him into it like mice. Damon was good-looking and charming. Then he discovered the drug Ecstasy. When he started handing that out it made him irresistible. I had support from my family. I got over it. June didn’t.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen. Old enough to know better.”
“Young enough for it to be criminal sexual penetration, which is a felony.”
“But not a first-degree felony. Trust me, I’ve been through all this with Allana Bruno. June was the only one young enough for it to be a first-degree felony. For the rest of us time will eventually run out. But as long as June was alive and willing to testify, Damon could have been prosecuted. There is no statute of limitations when you have sex with a twelve-year-old.”
The darkness of the theater and Sophie’s openness made it possible for Claire to say the words she had kept under lock and key for so long. “Twelve is a dangerous age, old enough to attract predators, young enough to be defenseless. I was molested by a friend’s father at that age.”
Sophie let go of her hair and the curl bounced over her shoulder. “Women tell me stories like that all the time once they find out about me and Damon. Some men—relatives, uncles, friends, strangers, whatever—can’t keep their hands off young women. With men like that, the more forbidden and dangerous the act, the more they are turned on by it. I’m
sorry for your friend. I’m sorry for you. I’m sorry for all of us. But you only get one life and you can’t let the Damon Fitzgeralds ruin it.” Sophie dropped her feet to the floor and sat up straight in her chair. “One thing you can count on is that I’m going to graduate from school. I’m not going to die homeless and drugged out like June did. I may be all Allana Bruno has left now to try to make a case against Damon before the statute of limitations runs out. But do you know what it would be like to stand up in court, face the guy who did it, and tell the whole world about it? Did you do that?”
“No. I couldn’t bear to hurt my friend and my family. I never even told my parents.”
“I suppose you thought you did something to encourage the guy, right?”
“I was afraid that I had.”
Sophie stared at the empty stage. “My family lives in Taos. Why should I have to go to court and embarrass them? I’m doing well in school. I have a life. I have a boyfriend. Why go back to Taos and wreck it all? It’s not even a first-degree felony in my case. Look at me. You know the defense lawyer is going to say that I seduced Damon. And what would he get even if he was convicted? A couple of months in the state pen?” She turned toward Claire and said softly, “Tell me this. Would you testify if you had to do it all over again?”
“I don’t know. I’ll always be sorry that I did nothing to stop the man from molesting or raping other girls. I know now that abusers don’t stop until they are caught.”
“Sooner or later they get too old for it, don’t they?” Sophie’s voice had a hopeful tone.
The Shadow of Venus Page 15
