Canyon Sacrifice (9 page)

“She's wearing her sweats, the ones she had on last night,” Janelle said, turning to Chuck and Clarence. “Her favorites.”

Clarence stepped to the edge of the girls' sleeping platform. “With the stripes? The blue ones?”

“She slept in them. She and Rosie were tired, didn't want to change.”

“There's a jacket and pants, right?” Clarence pushed Carmelita's empty sleeping bag aside. He and Janelle began rummaging through everything on the platform.

“What's this?” Janelle asked, dropping the pajamas and picking up a piece of white paper previously hidden by Carmelita's sleeping bag.

She squinted at the sheet of paper in the dim light. Her hand and the paper shook. Two words were penned on it in large, plain block letters: “NO COPS.”

Clarence snatched the paper from Janelle's hand and flipped it over. Other than the two large words, it was blank. The three of them stood around the piece of paper in stunned silence.

Rosie chose that moment to poke her head from her sleeping bag. “Uncle Clarence!” She kicked her way out of her bag and leapt into Clarence's arms.

Clarence handed the sheet back to Janelle and clasped Rosie to him. Looking over her shoulder at Janelle and Chuck, he unleashed a string of Spanish curses.

Rosie leaned away from him. “What did you say?”

“
Nada, bambina
.” He put a finger to her lips. “
Nada importante
.”

Chuck took another look at the paper in Janelle's hand. It had to be some sort of prop made by Carmelita while the girls played in the camper yesterday afternoon. But a glance at Clarence told him otherwise. Clarence's face was drained of color, his eyes haunted.

Chuck turned to Janelle—the look in her eyes matched her brother's. Janelle knew what Clarence knew. Her eyes told Chuck something else as well: Carmelita had been kidnapped.

A hole opened inside him, black and bottomless.
Carmelita. Kidnapped
.

Janelle dropped the sheet of paper to the girls' sleeping platform, put a fist to her mouth, and ducked outside. Chuck and Clarence, carrying Rosie, followed. Janelle bent double at the side of the camper and vomited, her hands on her knees. Chuck rested a hand on her back, his own stomach churning.

“What's wrong,
Mamá
?” Rosie asked.

Janelle straightened and swiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She looked at Clarence, who looked straight back at her. Only then did she turn to Chuck, her eyes steely with determination.

“Tag,” she said grimly. “You're it.”

Chuck stared at her, bewildered.

“Miguel,” Clarence said, his voice hard.

Janelle kept her eyes trained on Chuck.

“Miguel,” she repeated.

N
INE

9 a.m.

Chuck waved his hands in front of him and took a step backward. “Wait a minute. Wait just one minute.”

Janelle had told Chuck little about Miguel Gutierrez, the father of Carmelita and Rosie. Chuck knew only that Miguel was a small-time drug dealer a few years older than Janelle, that he'd hooked up with her while she was a community college student, that the two had never married, and that Miguel had disappeared from the lives of Janelle and the girls shortly after Rosie's birth five years ago.

“What is it the two of you know that I don't?” Chuck demanded. Rosie's eyes darted from her mother to her uncle and back. Chuck reached over to rub her shoulder, but she ducked away from him and buried her face in Clarence's neck. Hurt, Chuck turned to Janelle. “Talk to me,” he said, his words clipped.

“He always made threats,” Janelle said. “From the very first. ‘I'll kill you if you leave.' Then, after Carm was born, ‘You leave me, you'll never see your little girl again.' I was so scared. Of course I never left. How could I?” She looked plaintively at Chuck. “It was Miguel, finally, who left us. He swore Rosie wasn't his. He was broke all the time. People were after him.” She paused. “It was so good when he was gone.
Mami
and
Papi
were, like, the best. These last five years, I've finally gotten to know what it's like to be alive.” Her voice cracked. “And then you . . .” She raised a hand toward Chuck's face, but he backed away from her.

“How long's it been since you've seen him?” he demanded.

“The day Rosie was born.” Janelle lowered her hand, her face pale.

“You haven't
seen
him,” Chuck urged.

“He calls. Out of the blue. Usually when he's wasted.”

“Any more threats?”

“Yes,” she said softly, her eyes downcast.

“When was the last one?”

“A few weeks ago.” Her voice was barely audible.

“What'd he say?”

Rosie reached from Clarence's arms for her mother. Janelle traded Clarence the sheet of paper for Rosie and balanced her youngest daughter on her hip. “
Preciosa mia
,” she whispered in Rosie's ear, tears streaming down her face.

“
Preciosa mia tambien, Mamá
,” Rosie replied mechanically, wiping away her mother's tears with the flat of her hand.

Chuck asked Janelle, “You were with him for what, four years?”

“Three. Just three.”

“You had one baby with him, then you went ahead and had another.”

“I was different back then. A different person. I blamed
Mami
and
Papi
, but it wasn't their fault. They worked so hard. But they were all over me, like every minute. I needed space, my own life.”

“And this Miguel,” Chuck muttered, “he gave you that.”

“I was nineteen and pregnant by a drug dealer,” Janelle said. “And I was so sure I knew what I was doing.”

“So you just kept doing it,” Chuck said, stone-faced.

“I'd been so sheltered.” She glanced at Clarence. “We'd been so sheltered. I quit college. I'd only been going part time anyway. I was going to make my own way in the world. At least, that's the way I thought of it. But I knew it wouldn't last. It couldn't.”

Clarence said, “Not in the South Valley.”

“People kept disappearing,” Janelle said. “The ones Miguel worked with. Prison, back across the border. One day they'd be playing with Carm on the floor of our apartment. The next, it was like they'd never existed. There were so many close calls.
The pressure was always on. One day, when I was pregnant with Rosie, I looked at Carm, really looked at her—she was a toddler by then, just learning to walk—and I knew what I was doing was wrong. Just like that, like flipping a switch. I waited until Rosie was born. Miguel came to the hospital. Refused to touch her. His phone rang, some deal he had going. Rosie was in my arms. Carm was with my parents. I told him to get out, and he did.”

She looked straight at Chuck, her eyes shining. He looked straight back. This was why he'd fallen so hard for her. Just as she'd been as a new mother, she was her own person today. Stubborn, strong-willed, devoted to her girls. God, she was beautiful, even now, even in the midst of all this.

The muscles in Chuck's jaw loosened. It finally made sense, what had attracted Janelle to him. It was the same thing that had drawn her to Miguel: Chuck presented her and the girls with a new world, one far different than the circumscribed world of Albuquerque's South Valley. Maybe, just maybe, she wasn't as different as she claimed from the impulsive coed she'd been eight years ago—except this time around she'd done a far better job of choosing her man.

Chuck pictured Carmelita's pride-filled eyes, so like her mother's, when she'd returned to camp from her trip to the bathroom last night.
Carmelita
. That's who this was about, and seconds were ticking by.

“You said he threatened you the last time you talked to him,” Chuck said to Janelle.

“He needed money. I told him to forget it.”

“That was it? Nothing more specific?”

“He said he'd get me, the girls. But he always says that.”

“Why do you still speak to the guy?” Chuck asked, an edge to his voice.

“It's safer,” she said flatly. “For the girls.”

“Okay,” Chuck said, backing off. “This Miguel, do you have
any pictures of him? On your computer, your phone?”

“I got rid of them when he left. Every single one.”

“Is he fat?”

“Not really. Or he wasn't, anyway, last I knew.”

Clarence tapped the collar of his shirt. “He has matching tattoos. Chinese letters running along each of his collarbones.”

“One side says ‘peace,' and the other, ‘beauty,'” Janelle said bitterly. “He got them right after we met, to impress me.”

Clarence looked at Chuck. “Why are you asking? Think you saw him?”

“I don't know a damn thing at this point,” Chuck said.

Clarence held the “NO COPS” sheet of paper up before him. “The only good thing about this is, if it
is
Miguel, then Carmelita's okay.”

Janelle nodded stiffly. “He wants money. He won't hurt her.”

Chuck looked from Janelle to Clarence and back. Janelle had just said Miguel had threatened the girls in the past. How could she and Clarence be so sure of Carmelita's safety now? There had to be something else going on here.

“Carmelita?” Rosie asked in alarm.

“Hush, baby,” Janelle told her. “Your sister's with her father.” Then she rounded on Chuck, bristling. “You're the one who made her so independent last night. She woke up this morning, went off to the bathroom on her own—”

But Chuck was having none of it. “Maybe if I'd known. Maybe if you'd told me.”

Janelle looked away. She spoke under her breath. “I didn't want to think about it.”

“Did he know about us?” Chuck asked her. “That you'd taken the girls to Colorado? Could he have followed us here?”

“He always knew what was up. He knew about the time Carm broke her arm when she was four. He kept tabs.”

“Was he still dealing, last you knew?”

Janelle shifted Rosie on her hip and shrugged. “He said he'd moved to prescription drugs mostly. Said it was easier. I don't think he's capable of anything else.”

Clarence growled, “Except kidnapping his own daughter.”

Gravel crunched on the campground road. Chuck turned to see Robert Begay's white Suburban headed their way. Chuck, Janelle, and Clarence faced the Suburban as it rolled to a stop at their campsite, Janelle sliding Rosie from her hip to stand next to her.

Chuck studied Robert as he stepped out of his car. Yesterday the chief ranger had refused to acknowledge Chuck. Now here he was, with Carmelita having just gone missing, showing up for a personal visit. What was going on?

Chuck knew Robert to be the product of two worlds,
Diné
and
bilagáana
, Navajo and white. The chief ranger had been raised off the reservation in suburban Phoenix and had graduated from Arizona State University. His brown face, high forehead, thick lips, and dark eyes bespoke his full-blooded Navajo ancestry, while his straight-ahead manner of speech and willingness to tackle park problems head on, rather than in the communally circuitous way of the
Diné
, were products of a life lived in the
bilagáana
world.

Robert's badge gleamed on his chest. He retrieved his wide-brimmed hat from the passenger seat of the Suburban and adjusted it on his head. After checking his reflection in the driver's side mirror, he approached the campsite. At Chuck's introduction, Robert touched his brim at Clarence and tilted his head to Janelle and Rosie. He spoke to Chuck, his tone inscrutable. “You were at Maricopa Point yesterday.”

Chuck gave Robert a tight smile. “Is this some sort of interrogation?”

“You could say that.”

Chuck swallowed. “You saw me out there,” he said evenly.

“Mind telling me why you showed up?”

“Mind telling me why you're asking?”

“A man is dead. Another, gone from the park for a good long time, just happens to appear at the scene.”

“You're saying you're just doing your job.”

Robert did not reply. His eyes were still and watchful.

Because Chuck's work at the Hermit Creek latrine site had overlapped with Robert's first months as chief ranger at the park, Chuck knew him to be smart, capable, and unfailingly professional. Moreover, Chuck had heard Robert's stature among the park's staff had only risen in the two years since.

Chuck chose his words with care. “You know me, Robert. Curiosity's part of my job description. My wife and girls and I passed Maricopa on the shuttle. I doubled back to see what was up.”

“You knew the overlook was closed.”

“I was looking for Podalski, to ask about a personal tour of the park. We're here as tourists.”