Assumption (14 page)

“Owned by a retired doctor in Dallas, named Douglass. His wife told me he hasn’t been up there in seven years.”

“You believe her?” Paz asked.

Felton nodded. “She says he’s had a couple of strokes.”

“Did you ask her if they ever let anybody use the cabin?” Ogden asked.

“I did and she said they didn’t.”

“Okay, Ogden, you see what you can dig up on Caitlin Alison. Check the Irish consulate, the State Department, Google her.”

“Well, good luck on that,” Ogden said. “Might as well run a check on Princess Leia.”

Felton left the room.

Bucky stood and came around the desk, sat his wide bottom on the edge of it, pounded his thigh with a fist. “I’m a fat old man who doesn’t like mysteries. You two can’t stop me from eating a cheesecake in the next hour, but you can go figure this out and help me sleep at night. So, get out there and show me how smart you are.”

“No pressure,” Fragua said.

“A shitload of pressure,” the sheriff said.

Warren followed Ogden out and to the front door. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Back up to that cabin,” Ogden said. “I’m going to turn it upside down and see what I can find.”

“Don’t mess it up for the lab guys.”

Ogden shook his head. “You know better than I do that they won’t find anything.”

“Want me to come with you?” Warren asked.

Ogden shook his head. “One of us ought to get some rest. Besides, you’ve got a wife and a kid. I’ve got a dog and a bonsai. Which reminds me, will you stop by and feed my dog?”

“You got it. Purina and one of your power bars, right?”

“Just the Purina.”

Ogden drove through the dark back to Questa, past the now-­deserted diner where he’d had lunch with Caitlin or whatever her name was, and up the treacherous dirt lane, which was at least somewhat less muddy by now. Had it not been for the reflective tape he and Fragua had left stretched all around he might not have found the cabin in the dark. He grabbed his flashlight and went first to the blue Bug. He looked at the flathead screwdriver all by itself in the glove box, then at the folded blue tarp and spare in the forward boot. He wore gloves and found himself trying to disturb things as little as possible, in deference to science. He peeked under the mat on the driver’s side; there was none on the passenger side. There was dried mud on the backseat. He shone his light on it. It was white clay.

Inside the house, he was even more lost. Everything was like it should be in a cabin that had been forgotten for seven years. It was a nice enough place, he thought, wondered how much the old man in Texas might want for it. Especially now that it had been the scene of a homicide. He looked through the cupboards, the medicine cabinet, the closet that didn’t have a door but a blanket stapled to a dowel. There was nothing in the closet but some fishing gear, including a vintage Gary Howells bamboo rod. For a second Ogden toyed with the idea that people were killing over the rod. He put it all back and walked around the cabin again, trying to stay on his own tracks, again in deference to the techs who would be coming up at some point. He went back outside into the muggy dark. His flashlight was less useful out there, the beam diffusing into the trees and mist. He walked the perimeter of the house, then widened his circle until he was weaving through the fir trees. About twenty meters, back into the trees directly behind the cabin, he found a woman’s black and tan leather handbag.

The bag contained a hairbrush, a set of house keys, a car key for a Volkswagen, and a vinyl wallet complete with twenty-­seven dollars and an Illinois driver’s license. The name on the license was Carla Reynolds. The picture on the license looked nothing like the woman whom he found, who had just died, but in fact looked very much like the photograph of Fiona McDonough that Caitlin Alison had waved in his face. The key did fit the Bug parked in front of the cabin.

As Ogden drove down the mountain he told everything to Paz over the radio.

The sheriff listened, but said nothing

“Did you get any of that, Bucky?” Ogden asked.

“I got all of it. Do you believe in luck?”

“Not really. Why?”

“Well, your blue Honda Civic showed up on the side of the road with a blown water pump.”

“Where?”

“Camel Rock.”

It was midnight when Ogden drove back through Plata on his way to Camel Rock on the other side of the pass. He’d decided that today was easily one of the worst in his life, a mix of embarrassment, failure, and shame. Fear would have been on the list had he known enough to feel it; instead, he was simply mad. He was exhausted, but he was not sleepy. The road seemed exceedingly long, but he was acutely aware of every curve, every set of headlights that flashed past him, and every set of taillights he passed.

Ogden exited the freeway and swung around past the casino. Under the absurdly bright lights of a Valero gas station, Ogden saw a state trooper’s car. The blue light on his roof was idle and the trooper was leaning on the front fender drinking a soda through a straw. Ogden parked beside him and got out.

“So, you had yourselves a murder up there,” the man said.

“Seems so. Did you find anything?”

“I was waiting on you before I opened it up. The way I see it, this is a part of your crime scene.” The trooper gestured that the car was all Ogden’s.

Ogden opened the driver’s side door and shone his light around. He sat behind the wheel. The seat was pulled up close, so Caitlin must have been the driver. He looked at the dash, opened the glove box and found it empty, except for some paper napkins and a service manual. He came out and put the beam on the partially raised hood. “You said it was the water pump?” Ogden asked.

The trooper pointed at the ground under the car. There was a pool in a depression of the concrete.

“I suppose you’re right.” Ogden knelt and looked at the mixture of coolant and water as if it might tell him something. He stood. “Let’s pop the trunk,” he said.

“Let’s use the key,” the trooper said. “It was still in the ignition.” He tossed the keys to Ogden.

“Okay,” Ogden said. He walked to the back of the car.

“What’s wrong?” the trooper asked.

“Oh, just everything.” Ogden opened the trunk.

“That’s not good,” the trooper said.

“That’s kind of the definition of not good,” Ogden said. He moved the hair from the face of the bound woman.

“You know her?”

“Her name is Caitlin Alison. Well, at least that’s what she told me and the sheriff.”

Ogden looked across the parking lot at the lights of the casino. Maybe there was a one-­armed bandit with a one-­handed killer sitting at it. He watched as the trooper called the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office. This one would be their case. A good thing, Ogden thought. He didn’t want to investigate the murder he had, much less another one. But he would do just that. Both of them, tied together as they were. He imagined the man with one hand was well on his way to Albuquerque in the back of a pickup or in the passenger seat of a big rig, or lying dead someplace himself. Still, the casino was close enough he could see it. He wouldn’t bet that the man was there, but he had to look.

He walked over to the trooper. “Listen, I’m going to go up there and look around for the guy who was with her.”

“I don’t think you need to be here,” the trooper said. “They’ll know where to find you.”

“Sadly,” Ogden said.

The trooper laughed.

Ogden walked across the lot of the casino. It was a sad casino, he thought, as if someplace there was a casino that was not sad. It was only a few years old, but poorly designed; shoddy building made it look old, run down, even at night with the abundance of neon lighting masking the scars and flaws. There were consistent jobs for locals there, but no prosperity. He walked passed a couple of men who might or might not have been guarding the big double doors. He stepped up to them and looked at the beers in their hands.

“You guys work here?” Ogden asked.

“I do,” the shorter of the two said. He looked at Ogden’s uniform, seemed to know he was from another county.

“Did a guy come through here with only one hand? White guy, brown hair, my size.”

“You see a guy with one hand?” he asked his friend.

The friend shook his head.

“I have to say,” the man said, “I don’t really look at hands.”

“You should,” Ogden said. “That’s where people usually hold their guns.”

The men laughed.

“I’m going in to look around,” Ogden said.

“Look all you want.”

Inside, the harsh lights did nothing but highlight the sagging spirit of the place, the human drainage, as his father had called it. He wandered through the aisles of slot machines, the cigarette smoke, the sour smell of alcohol wafting from half-­empty plastic cups and stale clothing, out of pores. Ogden looked at hands. He had never really looked at hands before either. They were all so different and everyone had two of them, except for two Indian Korean War vets; one had one hook, the other had two. He stopped by the security office and knocked. A round woman opened the door.

“Do you have cameras at the entrances?”

“Yes.”

“You think I can take a look at the last four hours of tape?”

The woman laughed. “We only keep two hours of tape before we loop it through again.”

“Okay, can I see that?” he asked.

“If the cameras worked, I’d let you take the tapes home and watch in your living room.”

“Oh.”

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“This is security?”

“Yeah. What are you looking for?”

“A man with one hand,” Ogden said.

“About your size?” the woman said.

“Yes,” Ogden said, incredulously.

She looked at the clock. “He came in about two hours ago.”

“Is he still here?”

“He might be,” she said.

“Might be?”

“Well, I’m the only one that stares at those damn monitors and since I’m standing over here having this little conversation with you, I ain’t exactly watching the monitors, am I? So, who knows who walked out that door?”

“I see. Where was he the last place you saw him and when?” Ogden looked back at the gallery.

“I watch them enter, I watch them exit.”

“No one watches the tables?”

“This ain’t Las Vegas.”

“I’m going to look around, thanks.”

The woman disappeared and left Ogden staring at the door. He turned and walked back through the aisles of slot machines to the restrooms. The man was in the building or had just left it or had left it awhile ago; Ogden trusted the security woman’s eyes. He was on edge now. His fingers were twitching. He went into the men’s room and washed his face. He waited long enough to count an even number of hands and then left. He went back to the entrance and looked out at the parking lot. The guard was still there.

“I’ve got twenty dollars for you if you help me search this place for a guy with one hand.”

“Okay.”

The twitching fingers were short-­lived as two turns through the casino yielded nothing. The man had slipped out. Ogden had no idea which way to go. Had he boarded a bus, hitched a ride, gotten into a car with someone he knew? None of his guesses really mattered; all that mattered was that the man was good and gone and Ogden didn’t know where to search.

He walked back to the blue Honda. It was now an involved crime scene. The whole gas station was taped off and cops were everywhere. Ogden told the lead investigator all he knew while he watched the coroner pull out Caitlin’s body. The photographers recorded every angle of the scene. No one had seen the car abandoned; it had merely been sitting there too long. Ogden told the Santa Fe County deputy about the man with one hand and she wrote it down and said thanks. Ogden climbed back into his rig and drove north toward home.

The lab techs from the State Police had done their jobs at both scenes. The Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department shared all they had with Ogden. Nothing usually comes to not much of anything and so it was. There were some hairs found at both scenes, a few were not from the victims, but there was not enough for a DNA match even if they had had a sample from a suspect. As usual, fingerprints offered no help. All the blood in the cabin was from the first woman and all the blood in the car, backseat, and trunk was from the second. Ogden took this hollow news along with his hollow belly upstream, driving slowly through the pass. He stopped at an overlook and stared at the gorge as it snaked north through the dark. It was nine and he still hadn’t slept.

“So, what now?” Eva Walker asked. She put a bowl of green chili and some tortillas in front of him.

“I don’t know. I keep telling all of you that I’m not cut out for this work.”

“Pshaw.”

He looked up from the food he hadn’t touched. “Pshaw? You haven’t said that for a long time.”

“Trying it out again. Shame about that young woman.”

“I guess,” Ogden said. “I’m thinking she was no Girl Scout.”

“Still,” his mother said.

“Still.”

“So, what now?” she repeated.

He looked at her. “I think that whatever reason brought those people here is still here. I don’t think they found what they were looking for. They didn’t find Fiona McDonough—rather, Carla Reynolds.”

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t.”

The old woman nodded. “You need a nap.”

“I need a nap.”

Ogden walked into what had been his bedroom growing up and stretched out across the single bed. He looked over at the table where he had tied flies when he was a boy, remembered how he’s struggled with the feathers and hair when he was learning. As difficult as it all was, he knew it would come, that he would get it. But none of this business with the bodies and the one-­handed man and the missing cousin would ever come to make sense. This, he believed. He did believe, however, that whatever Caitlin, dead or not, and the man with one hand had come to find was somewhere up that mountain road. If it was important enough to kill for, it was important enough to return for. He shut his eyes and drifted off quickly.

Ogden walked into the station the next morning.