When the Devil Doesn't Show: A Mystery (19 page)

It was almost 1:00
P.M
. by the time Kristen heard the drummers. They were in a procession with the dancers being led out of the kiva by a Catholic priest, who was there to bless the dancing grounds. Each drummer went to the center of the plaza and came up to a fire ring, which surrounded only the cold remnants of an old fire. They dropped in ash taken from the kiva fire, making the sign of the cross after they did so. Then they stood in a line and began drumming.

The dancers—about two dozen men and women—stood in three lines in the center of the plaza. The male deer dancers wore white shirts over white wraparound leggings tucked into ankle-high moccasins. They had straps of bells tied around their knees that jingled with each step. They wore headdresses of deer antlers and evergreen, with feathers hanging down that almost completely covered their eyes. Some of the men held canes about three feet high in each hand and used them to walk, making them look like they moved on four legs—like deer.

Another group of men, portraying the hunters, raised their feet up high, tomahawks in hand. All the female dancers wore black one-shoulder pueblo dresses with white wraparound leggings and turquoise squash blossom necklaces. The female steps were daintier, more like a shuffle on tiptoe. There was little noise except for the drummers and the sound of the dancers moving their feet to the beat across the unpaved plaza. Kristen watched her mother’s brother patrol the dancing grounds, picking up any lost feathers or evergreen branches. All were a sacred part of the dance and had to be disposed of properly. Kristen had performed in the dances when she was younger. The drumming and the jingling bells were rhythmic, almost trancelike. If she had the time, she would still be dancing, but her job took up most of her time. For a dancer, there were always ceremonies to prepare for, and eagle feathers or deerskin to hunt down for costumes.

Over near where the elders were standing, Kristen watched as the war chief, in his cowboy hat and bolo tie, pulled the governor off to the side for a private conversation. A moment later, the governor looked up and surveyed the crowd before his eyes rested on Kristen. He signaled for her to approach.

She walked around the outside of the dancing ground as the men watched her. “Good morning, Governor,” she said.

He nodded at her and, as was traditional, waited for his thoughts to settle before he spoke. When he did, his Pueblo accent, with its low pitch and quick stops, was thick. It was an accent Kristen had never had and one that was dying out. “There is something which we need your help with,” he said. “George Gonzales has not called his wife in some days. She is worried.”

“Yeah, he’s probably just down in Albuquerque trying to buy some heroin,” Kristen said too quickly, without using the right amount of deference or formality. She would probably hear about it from her mother. The men showed no reaction, but she flushed and said, “I am sorry, Governor.” Kristen had spoken like a police officer—like an outsider—when she was supposed to have spoken like a pueblo member. “This must be a distressing thing to the family, going such a long time without hearing from him,” she said. When speaking to an elder, it was considered polite to restate what had already been said. It was a way of showing agreement and acknowledging that there was common ground.

He nodded and said, “That is true.”

Kristen nodded as well but didn’t speak right away; instead, she did as was expected—she stopped to consider her words. After a few moments, she said, “It would be a good thing to help the family to ease their worries.”

The governor nodded and said, “This would be a good thing.”

With the matter decided, she said good-bye. As she turned to walk away, she wondered if George Gonzales was the missing man Joe and Detective Montoya had been looking for.

*   *   *

Lucy was getting antsy during the drive to the lab, so she distracted herself as she usually did—by looking at the sky. It was sunny, as always, however, this was not the strong, confident sun of summer, but the weak, thin sun of winter. This was a run-and-hide sun, which couldn’t overpower any cloud. The desert gave way to forest as she got closer to Los Alamos. The two-lane winding highway was lined by signs that switched from warnings of elk crossings to others listing the designation numbers of the various laboratory tech areas—16, 51, 10—all in seemingly random order. Lucy drove past structures that made no sense; they were in the middle of New Mexico forest: domed black huts with antennae pointing in every direction and cement buildings with no windows or doors.

She approached the center of the town, with its wide streets neatly plowed. In the sixty years since the city of Los Alamos had been founded, the hard edge of newness had worn off, but it was still unmistakably modern—at least by Northern New Mexico standards. Here, there were no faux adobe homes or any effort at painting everything in earth tones. The houses could have been picked up and set down on any Midwest street and not seemed out of place, but then, everyone from Los Alamos was from somewhere else. They were from back east or farther West, such as California or Oregon. Under the snow, most of the houses even had real grass in their front yards, something that was frowned on in Santa Fe.

When Lucy had first started working at the newspaper, she quickly realized that the lab was a different kind of government organization. Most federal and local agencies have at least one worker who will talk to the newspaper off the record, telling them innocuous information along with headier stuff. It was very common, almost a monthly occurrence, for government employees to call the newsroom with stories about corruption or bad bosses. It was why journalists were called watchdogs, because they kept officials in check. But the lab was different. The information released came only from the PR department and it was all fluff about workers building the fastest computer in the world or creating a new walking, talking robot. The only time Lucy had heard of the lab releasing information it shouldn’t have was when, several years ago, it sent out a fax saying it was going to spray a harmless bacterial agent into the air over Los Alamos in order to track how a biological weapon might disburse. When the public found out, there was an uproar, and the experiment was called off. However, a lab spokesperson later said the lab would only conduct the experiment later, but not tell anyone the next time. They were the federal government, after all, and were not required to inform the public about everything.

Yet even though lab employees didn’t approach the media with the usual tidbits, that didn’t mean there wasn’t rumors out in the general public. People still brought up the human radiation experiments the lab had supposedly helped conduct on unknowing subjects back in the 1950s. And people whispered about the Cerro Grande forest fire that thirteen years ago burned more than four hundred homes in the town of Los Alamos but supposedly spared the lab. Why were the Los Alamos firefighters told to expect to get cancer from residual radiation, even though the lab insisted that the fire didn’t reach any of its buildings?

Lucy parked her car at the restaurant and got out. Inside, she went up to the only woman sitting by herself. Dr. Laura Goodwin had blond hair tucked behind her ears and a sharp face. She was not the dowdy female scientist from the movies, where some magic makeover would suddenly make her more attractive. Instead, she was pretty, with an almost elfin look. Lucy shook her hand and sat down, hoping for the best.

Fifteen minutes and some spinach dip later, Lucy had written a total of eight words—Dr. Laura Goodwin’s full name and title, Primary Structural Biosystems group director.

*   *   *

Mateo Garcia looked up from the cash register as the door to the store opened. Willie walked into the shop, a sleeping bag over his shoulders and snow on his woolen cap. Unlike everyone else, he didn’t stomp his feet when he came in, so a trail of melted snow followed behind him on the floor. Likely that was because he was used to living outdoors, up in the mountains, alone. He walked straight up to the counter.

“Tobacco,” he said. His eyes looked a little yellow and his long, gray beard was like a squirrel’s nest.

“How are you doing with the cold?” Mateo asked. Willie said nothing. Mateo reached for a pouch of loose tobacco and asked, “Rolling papers?” Again Willie said nothing, so Mateo put the tobacco in a plastic bag. “Consider it a Christmas present.”

Mateo took a shoebox from under the cash register and thumbed through some papers until he found the check he was looking for. Every month, someone from Charlotte, North Carolina, sent a check, in care of Garcia Hardware, made out to Willie for fifty dollars. Since it had opened more than a hundred years ago, the store had been serving as a bank and post office for locals. Mateo would cash their checks and hold on to their mail. The customers had different reasons for wanting Garcia Hardware to be their bank and post office. Some didn’t want to have to go into town to get cash. Others didn’t want the government to know where they were. Mateo gave Willie a pen and watched as his hand shook as he endorsed the check.

“Do you want any cash back?” Mateo asked. Willie moved his lips as if he were saying something, but no sound came out. It was something a few of the mountain men did. They were unused to talking, and sometimes forgot that they had to speak the words aloud.

The bell on the door rang again and Josh Cordova came in with his oldest son, who was around ten. They called hello to Mateo and went over to the DVD rentals, which Mateo tried to keep stocked with about a hundred or so movies. The bell on the door rang again, and Shorty Anaya came in yelling, “Jesus, it’s cold.”

Mateo kept an eye on Willie, who had shuffled over to the bread aisle, most likely to get away from the newly arrived customers. The bell rang again, and Mrs. Valdez came in, dressed in her work clothes. She was an HR manager for the tax and revenue department in Santa Fe. Shorty called hello to her. Their properties were next to each other’s. She came up to the counter and handed Mateo forty dollars, while she yelled over to Shorty, “I think your dog tried to eat my chickens.” Mateo grabbed another shoebox under the counter and looked through a collection of jewelry, iPods, and watches. He pulled out Mrs. Valdez’s silver bracelet, handed it to her, then put the forty dollars in the register. He also sometimes was a pawnshop for customers he knew were reliable.

Shorty came over to the counter and spoke to Mrs. Valdez. “Aaron Dominguez, who lives down the road from you, said he saw mountain lion tracks yesterday. Could that be what ate your chicken?” They both looked at Mateo, assuming he would know about the mountain lion incident.

“I haven’t heard that,” he said. “But one of the Pacheco kids saw bear tracks last week.”

“Which Pacheco?” Shorty asked.

“The ones who live up by the canyon, not the ones near the river,” Mateo said. He heard the bell on the door ring again and watched Willie move back out into the night. He pulled the shoebox out from under the counter and wrote the date on a scrap of paper, then added: “Tobacco pouch, $5; Check cashed
=
$50; amount owed
=
$45.” He wrote “I owe Willie” at the top and thumbed through the box once more, pulling out a small white envelope with Willie’s name on it. He put the scrap of paper in it with the others. If Willie ever decided to collect on all the IOUs he had piled up from over the years, Mateo would be out thousands.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

December 23

Lucy was ready to accept that the interview had tanked. None of her journalist tricks was working. Dr. Goodwin answered open-ended questions with one word and looked confused by Lucy’s attempts to be friendly. Even the most basic of small talk left big silences.

“So, I know I already asked this,” Lucy said, “but is there anything you can tell me about Dr. Price? Even the tiniest thing could help with my article.”

“Not really,” she said, again. But this time, after a pause, Dr. Goodwin asked a question of her own, “Why are you asking about Dr. Price?”

“I thought I explained that,” Lucy said. “I want to do an article about Dr. Price and then interview the EMT who went to help him when he passed away.” Lucy thought that mentioning that
she
was that EMT would have been unprofessional.

“Yes, I understand that,” Dr. Goodwin said. “But why do an article specifically about Dr. Price?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why not do one on Dr. Ivanov?” she asked. “He’s dead, too.”

“Who’s Dr. Ivanov?” Lucy asked. “I’m not familiar with that name.”

“He died the day after Dr. Price,” she said.

“Really?” Lucy said, finally having a reason to take the cap back off her pen and get ready to write in her reporter’s notebook. “And how did he die?”

“I shouldn’t talk about it,” Dr. Goodwin said. “I’m sure it’s against lab policy.”

“You know, I totally respect that,” Lucy said, purposely smiling and softening her face. “But it could be a real relief to talk about it.”

“I don’t know,” Dr. Goodwin said.

“I understand,” Lucy said. “But it might help.”

“I’m not sure.”

Lucy knew the best way to break through Dr. Goodwin’s reluctance. She raised her hand, getting the attention of the waiter, and said to him, “We’ll have two margaritas.”

*   *   *

As Joe and Gil sat in the SUV still parked in front of the Escobar apartment, Joe called Melody, the preproduction manager, and asked her about the tattoos. She said the arm in the photo belonged to a consultant hired by the studio.

“We wanted someone who knew the system and who was there during the riot,” she said. “He’s able to give a sense of realism to the whole thing. He’s been a great resource.”

She told Joe the consultant’s name: Pat Abetya.

To which Gil said, “Holy shit.”

Within minutes, Gil and Joe had gotten Abetya’s address from Dispatch and driven to his house, which was actually a mobile home. With off-white paneling and a tin roof, it looked to be at least thirty years old. A four-foot-high cinderblock wall surrounded the property. Part of it had fallen into the driveway and had yet to be moved out of the way. Joe tried to hide their vehicle behind some juniper bushes as best he could while still keeping an eye on the house, but they were hardly inconspicuous with S
ANTA
F
E
P
OLICE
clearly written on the side of the SUV. They had circled the block before parking, looking for the dark SUV they’d seen Hoffman driving, but there was only one car nearby and, according to a records search, it belonged to Abetya.