The rocks almost covered her now. All that remained was to find one more big one to place gently over her beautiful face.
By the moonlight she found it, kneeling to pry it from the pine needles, her broken nails clawing at the green moss on its surface. She panted with the effort, lowered on her hands and knees, the breaths coming hard. She let her head hang for a moment. The sleep would come if she let it.
But Sandra deserved to be covered, her sad profaned body defended from any more violence in this world. She would do that for her. Then she would run on until she, too, dropped to lie under the tall trees to wait for release.
Until then she would do what she must. She would carry Sandra with her in her heart. She would not leave her alone in this place. Together they had run, together they’d been free, if only for a while. Together they would lie to watch the moon cross the firmament, to let its light bathe them and cleanse them of all of it; the oppression, the defilement, the hopelessness. They would warm each other in the hard cold and then go hand in hand, up the moonlight, home.
One
Evening comes early up in the Jemez. Even in late October when leaves still blaze on the aspens and snow has yet to fall, afternoon turns to evening somewhere around four o’clock. Sunset comes softly there, not the fiery glory of a desert sky, but muted colors tinted canyonred and forestgreen, drifting down in a soft, diluted glow.
That evening blush now filtered through the needled branches of the ponderosas, danced golden off the aspen leaves and fell, softly, gently, onto the dead woman’s face.
Mercedes turned from the woman’s body as the flash of the investigator’s camera bleached the tight blue skin of her face.
“Any idea who she is, sergeant?”
The cop beside her shrugged. He pointed to the woman’s cheap brown street shoes. “Sure didn’t belong out here.”
“How long has she been here?”
“Less than twenty-four hours, probably. The animals hadn’t gotten to her. Couldn’t have been long. The autopsy ought to tell.”
“Any sign of struggle?”
“Nothing.” He shrugged again. “Walked in here on her own, judging from the tracks. Thing is, they disappear in those rocks. No telling where they go from there.” He sighed, his breath turning to steam in the brisk afternoon.
“What would she have been doing up here dressed that way?” She didn’t expect any good answer.
Mercedes Elena Espinosa had covered enough crime scenes to know that lots of questions live on.
She had driven twenty miles of highway and jolted over seven miles of dirt forest road before turning her Jeep onto the rutted tracks of a fire trail through yet another couple miles of deep pine and aspen forest. It took an hour and a half from town. The dead woman apparently had not arrived in a vehicle; the cops found no tracks between there and the forest road to the east. To the north lay a steep bluff that stretched several miles east to west, blocking the way for all but the elk, deer, coyotes and mountain lion. To the south was wilderness, miles of it; to the west, more of the same. No vehicles and every indication that the woman walked from the south. What could she have been doing out here?
The bruises on her arms and face told of a beating. The wrists and ankles showed restraint marks, old ones. No obvious causes of death were evident.
“What do you think killed her?”
“Hard to say. Could have been a combination of things. She’d been roughed up at some point, looks like. Could have been that, exhaustion, the cold.”
“What about the guys who found her?”
“The hunters? Naw. A father and son from El Rito. The kid was just eight. Stumbled onto her, was all.”
They watched the investigator take his final shots of the body. Mercedes felt a tingling at the base of her neck and shivered. The woman was an Anglo, about Mercedes’ age, maybe thirty, a blonde from the looks of her eyebrows, but it was difficult to say for sure. Her head was shaved to the skin.
She looked small and fragile, almost peaceful, crumpled in the pine needles as though she had simply gone to sleep.
The woman’s face was not intelligent, nor that of a beauty. It was bruised and streaked with dirt where she must have rolled over before taking her final breath. There was an age to it that great anguish could have caused.
She wore a thin cotton dress with a flowered print, the kind that could be had by the dozens in bargain stores. It was not a winter dress nor even near suitable for hiking the high mountains of northern New Mexico. Over it, she wore a thin, button-up pink sweater, frayed from age, smeared with dirt. She wore no stockings or socks; she had no coat or gloves or hat. This was not the dress of a woman out for a walk in the mountains in October.
“What’s the shaved head about?”
He shook his head. “God knows. People do some strange things to themselves.”
“Would it indicate a religious order, a cult, maybe?”
“Could. Hard to say. Maybe she had cancer and walked out here to die. Maybe she had lice.” He said it carelessly, as though speculating on a scene in a movie from the comfort of his living room. Cops. Mercy fought down the urge to tell him what she thought of his coldness.
“Was there anything in her pockets?”
The cop consulted his list. “Some Kleenex, an empty weenie can and this.” He dangled an evidence bag containing a tiny white-blond curl of hair, tied by a fine blue ribbon. “It was wrapped up in tissue.”
“A weenie can?”
“You know, Beanie Weenies, or whatever they’re called.”
“Why in the world….”
“Didn’t want to litter, maybe.”
“Is it her hair?”
“Maybe. Pretty short, though, and a lot whiter than her eyebrows. You ask me, it looks like a baby’s hair. DNA will tell us if it’s hers.”
“Strange….”
“Naw. People carry the damnedest things in their pockets. It’s amazing what shows up.”
Mercedes watched the body as the ME and a deputy carried it toward the white stateowned Bronco with the Medical Examiner’s seal on the door. She tried to connect the cold corpse with a baby. The hands, wrinkled and old before their time. They could have changed diapers, maybe lots of them. The face? It could have loved, but probably not happily.
It was time to go. Mercedes had her photos and most of her story. There was nothing else to get here. Still, she lingered, watching as the cops wrapped up and prepared to leave. This was incomplete. It felt as though she had unfinished business here.
The story meeting had dragged on for an hour, reporters and editors around the conference table, hashing out news of the coming week. With each story idea came opinions, tidbits of supporting information and the ever-present wisecracks. The editors, enjoying the exchange, did little to keep the meeting moving.
Mercy usually enjoyed these sessions and was interested in hearing about the other reporters’ work. Northern New Mexico in the early 1980s had an abundance of grisly crimes as well as a grand kind of graft that was never far below the surface of even the simplest government or political actions. The people of the region took their issues seriously: politics, environmental problems, development, education; these were apt to stir hot debate among members of the varied cultures there. It made for lively reporting.
Today, she found her mind drifting. A dead woman’s face in the pine needles of the forest floor, so far from anywhere.
“Mercy?”
She laughed briefly to cover her embarrassment, realized she’d been staring out the window and had no idea what was happening. “Sorry, what was the question?”
The news editor peered at her over his reading glasses. “The dead woman in the mountains. Where are you going with the story?”
“I’ve got a lot of questions on that one. Why she was there to begin with, of course. But also the way she’d been beat up, the indications of long-term abuse, restraints, the shaved head… it looks to me like the work of some kind of cult, maybe. Like she’d been held captive somewhere and escaped. According to the autopsy, she was five months pregnant.”
“The police get anything more on her since your first story?” The question came from the paper’s owner and publisher, Bill Jamison, a hands-on editor who lived and breathed for local news.
“DNA showed that the lock of hair she was carrying was from a child of hers, most likely an infant. Still no ID, though. I don’t think they’re terribly interested.”
Jamison turned to Pete, the long-time news editor. “Any cults or groups around here that shave their heads?”
Pete shook his head. “I can’t think of any. It might be some kind of initiation thing at one of the New Age places, maybe a religious order of some kind out of Santa Fe or somewhere around here.”
“I’d pursue that angle,” Jamison told Mercy. “Could be a lot more to this.”
She nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. I’m going back this weekend, poke around a little more where she was found.”
The evening was cool as Mercy slid open the patio door from her apartment living room, stepping around Simon Cat, who slid past her ankles to prowl into the little walled space that had become their private retreat. She set her cup of tea on the table by the wicker chair, easing herself into it with a sigh of pleasure. The privacy of the little patio was something that had drawn her to this apartment just months earlier when she moved her few belongings in and claimed it as her own.
She scowled when the phone rang in the living room, moving through the door to answer it, then smiling and carrying it with her back to the patio, stretching the cord through the door and sitting again while Lalah greeted her with a complaint about the difficulty of reaching her these days.
“You’ve forgotten all your old pals, I guess, now that you’ve retreated to the boonies.”
In a short while she’d been caught up on the latest gossip from the big newsroom on the fourteenth floor in the downtown of the nation’s capital.
“And you, my dear? Several new loves by now, I imagine.”
Mercy took time to sip her cooling tea. The quick, cheery answer that first came to mind faded before it could become words. The evening silence somehow became noisy. Simon Cat rubbed against the leg of her jeans.
“Mercy? What is it, darlin’? Are you still there?”
“I might have made a mistake.” Her words hung in the still air of her patio as though they needed a soft evening breeze to brush them away. From the hollow of the phone line where they’d been spoken, only silence.
“I’m not sure yet.” Mercy added the words as though to push away the others, the unpleasant taste of them.
“I won’t say it.” Lalah’s voice was a comfort even if her words were grating.
“I know. You told me. I’m still not sure, but….”
“It’s not like you remembered it?”
“No, it’s exactly like I remembered it.” Mercy laughed. “And it really is home. My home, and great to be here. In some ways. No place I’ve ever been feels as… comfortable.”
“But?”
“My friend the editor. Don’t use any more words than you have to.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
Mercy sighed. Her gaze took in the adobe wall of her patio, the branches of the pinon tree that overhung it. She breathed deeply of the scent, a scent as basic, as essential to her as that of, say, a horse or green chile being roasted, smells that were as much a part of her as the land itself, the Spanish colonial architecture, the red rocks of the terrain, the spreading burn of the sunsets, the snow on the mountains to the north.
“Okay, it’s just that I expected to work on stuff that would make a difference here. This is a magic place, Lalah. It’s unlike anywhere I’ve ever been. In some ways it’s like it isn’t even a part of the U.S., like it’s a distant country of its own, unlike any other place in the world. The blend of cultures, the food, the art, the music… I don’t know, you have to experience it. No one who has not been to northern New Mexico can understand. And no one who has can fail to feel it. It’s a magic place, Santa Fe, Taos, the northern villages, even Espanola in all its roughness. Even it’s magic, a beautiful mess.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that despite all that, there’s so much here that’s desperately wrong. The open graft in local government. Oh, my gosh. Stealing from the public funds is not just common. It’s expected, honored even. Don’t get me started on the politicians here. And the crime. The drugs. The tendency toward violence, especially among my own people, the kids I grew up with, their parents. Shootings, stabbings, theft. Spousal abuse. The burglaries, Lalah, they’re an everyday occurrence in some areas. I don’t know what it is, what the reasons are, what causes it. I can only think it has to do with drugs and alcohol use, which is horrendous. The deaths from drunk driving alone are, well, they break all kinds of records.”
“So, you’re saying the crime is worse there? Worse than D.C.? Worse than Chicago? Or any other big city?”
“Not worse. Unexpected. So… unnecessary. There’s no reason for it. People are poor, yes, many are, but the lifestyle’s not bad, it’s not hellish like the inner cities. It’s such a paradise in so many ways. Not big city at all. That’s the thing. This is anything but big city living. Santa Fe? Even growing like it is, the influx of people from other parts of the country, it’s still a sleepy little town. We grumble because it is growing, but it’s just an overgrown village, really. Albuquerque, yes, it’s starting to have a bigger city feel, growing fast with the university and all, but to compare it to D.C., or the cities of the East would be ridiculous. It’s simply nowhere near that kind of place.”
“So why the crime?”
“Exactly,” Mercy cried. “Why? And so much of it within families. Abuse, drunken brawls at weddings even. Young people stealing from their grandparents to buy drugs. Even the village churches have to lock their doors. I want my work to count here. I want to help do something to change that. We have to preserve something. I want to help preserve something, whatever makes this place so….”
“Magic?”
“Now you’re laughing at me.”
“Not really, Mercy. It’s just that you’re always looking for a cause. Don Quixote in heels.”
Mercy had to laugh. “Now you’re making me laugh at myself. Oh, Lalah, you’re so good for me. Maybe that’s the real problem. Maybe I just miss you and everybody.”
“Like Tod?” Her friend’s voice had that sly tone Mercy knew so well, the I’m-going-to-get-some-information-now tone.
She thought about her answer briefly. Did she miss Tod? Some things, of course. “Maybe,” she finally said. “A little. But, well, I was able to leave him, wasn’t I? And he didn’t even think about coming with me, did he? So….”
“His loss, baby.”
“Lalah, my friend. What would I do without you to complain to?”
“Write it down, my dear. Write fast. The windmills are coming.”
The sun was a long way from topping the ridge east of the meadow when Mercedes parked her Jeep and horse trailer there Saturday morning. It had taken an hour and a half to make the haul from the family ranch in Tierra Amarilla.
She wasn’t sure what called her back to the scene of the woman’s death on a weekend morning, when she could have been enjoying time off. She could have been doing lots of things with the unusual leisure. But then, riding in the mountains was no great chore. Raised a ranch girl, Mercy too rarely had time for such outings these days. And something beckoned her: that unfinished business.
The cops were calling it an unattended death. Although the woman had been abused, no evidence suggested murder. Pete had seemed only mildly interested.
“Sure, it’s intriguing,” the news editor had told her after the story meeting. “But unless the cops come up with something else, I’m not sure it’s worth a whole lot of time.”
Pete was okay usually. But he had his own ideas about what stories were important. From his cluttered desk in the corner of the newsroom, he lacked at times the feeling for a story that Mercy had. On the scene, she often sensed currents beneath the obvious in much of what she covered. Sometimes the broad view Pete took as an editor seemed to overlook the story’s mood, which spoke to Mercy’s instincts.
Something called her back today, refused to fade even after she had left the scene three days before. Some insistent voice repeated the same questions about the woman: Who was she? Who had beaten her? How did she end up in the wilderness? Why the shaved head?
It was what her mother would call her stubborn streak, this determination to find answers, even years back as a girl on the ranch. “It’s because your father raised you like a boy,” she had accused more than once.
Mercy backed her horse out of the trailer and saddled him, hanging her canteen from the saddle horn and tying her sarape and slicker over the saddlebags where she packed her lunch and emergency gear she carried in the mountains. She considered strapping on her holstered Smith & Wesson .380, but decided it was fine in the saddlebag.
The sun was still below the ridge, but up the hill to the west she could see its light spreading over the pinon and juniper. Its warmth would be welcome when it filtered into the meadow. The morning was chilly.
Her gelding was excited by the outing. He pranced as she mounted, then set off at a strong walk down the trail. The saddle creaked pleasantly; Monty’s shoes clicked on the rocks. Mercy hummed a tune and delighted in the smells of the high country. This morning she wondered at her conversation with Lalah the evening before. Silly of her, really. This was what life was all about. The rest had much good and of course there was great satisfaction in work, friends, family, but this was the sanctuary. The mountains always held her a willing captive. They were where she could go to talk to God; to know that she and her troubles were reasonably tiny; that life had certainly been intended to be rich.
She was on the National Forest and would be the whole ride, according to the map, although a large piece of private land was shown a few miles south of the spot where the body had been found. The private land was surrounded by National Forest, with a forest road leading in. Had the woman come from there?
Mercy thought about being five months pregnant, dressed in almost nothing, trying to get through these forests, maybe at night. The images were disturbing. She thought of the woman’s aged hands, the lock of hair wrapped in tissue in her pocket, the one thing she carried with her on her last walk in this life. Or run. It had to be a run. Why carry an empty can uncomfortably in her sweater pocket, when she could have simply buried it if she didn’t want to litter? Because she didn’t want to take time to do that? Or simply knew she couldn’t leave a trail and never considered more than not throwing it away?
And where did she think she was going, this misplaced Anglo woman who could not have known much of mountains?
Mercy reached the place where the woman died. The clearing felt friendlier in the light of early morning. In the beautiful silence it was difficult to envision a woman dying here, alone, cold, terrified.
She dismounted and tossed the reins over the limb of a pinon, walked to where the body had lain. She stood, feeling again the surge of pity, the sense of wrongness. The clearing was silent. No birds sang. No wind stirred.
She moved to where police found the woman’s tracks, observing a woman’s shoe print in the soft dirt. She stared in excitement. The woman who left so few traces had walked this way.
She moved south. Soon there was a heel print, then another track, the other shoe this time, and another. They led from the direction of the boulders the cops had spoken of.
She returned to the clearing and collected her horse, leading him as she traced the woman’s trail to the boulders where the cops had lost them.
She fought her way through thick underbrush around the field of boulders. Maybe she could pick up the trail behind them. She missed them at first, and passed several times before she made them out, barely visible tracks in the dirt and pine needles. The trail became clear in the soft dirt and Mercy mounted, riding slowly.
For two hours she rode, losing the tracks occasionally, dismounting and circling until finding them. The forest was fairly open here, with tall ponderosas and aspen. She was following the top of a wide, flat ridge.
She stopped for a coffee break and studied the map, figuring she had come a couple miles. She was roughly a mile from the private land now, a white splash on the map surrounded by the green of the National Forest.
If the woman’s trail continued as it had, it would soon have her at that piece of private land. Maybe her vehicle was parked there. The woman had taken a walk and gotten lost? But if she had come to hike, she surely would have worn clothing more suitable.
Mercy tightened the saddle cinch and mounted. The tracks led in a straighter line here than they had in the beginning. They appeared further apart. Were these signs the woman had been less fatigued?
Ahead suddenly was the glint of reflected light. A car? She pushed Monty forward and watched as the gleam grew through the trees, took shape. It was a fence; a chain link security barrier, such as companies put around construction yards to keep out thieves. Eight feet high it loomed, hung on metal posts set in concrete. Along the top was barbed wire, three strands.
She stopped her horse, staring in shock. This was not the sort of thing one encountered in the wilderness. This was out of place.
She remembered the tracks. She pulled her camera from her saddlebags and dismounted. They led toward the fence, but something was wrong. They were too close together. Here. There were three in a row. One was different, the flat imprint of a tennis shoe or canvas pump such as nurses or waitresses wear. It was followed by others.
The new tracks led in the same direction and looked the same age as the originals. When had they begun? She was quite sure they had not been there all along the trail. When had they disappeared? And what happened to whoever made them?
She snapped a couple closeup shots of the tracks, mounted and rode toward the fence. So, two of them. Was it possible they had climbed the fence? What was it doing there to begin with? No rancher would build such a thing. It looked like a government fence, or institution’s. The tracks led straight back to it, far apart and deeper than before. No mistake, two people had made them. They looked to have been running, probably women, by the size of the prints. At the wire, each set was deep, as though the women had landed from a high leap.
Up high, caught in the barbed wire, fluttered a piece of cloth, a flowered material. She was sure it matched the dead woman’s dress.
She reined her gelding close, clicking off two photos. The gray stirred. She quieted him. She wanted a closeup, but Monty refused to stand, shifting sideways, pawing the ground.
He snorted and sprang from the fence to the sound of a sudden crashing in the brush.
“Hey you! What do you think you’re doing!”
The voice was loud, uncouth, angry. It roared from a man on horseback, charging into view from the thick woods across the fence. He wore cowboy gear, chaps, a leather coat, a brown felt hat.
Mercy lost her balance as Monty spun. She grabbed for the saddlehorn, pulled herself straight. The man’s horse was at full gallop, charging the fence. She could see his eyes, angry, bright above a thick beard. His right hand gripped a holstered pistol. He was roaring something.
Monty stumbled, recovered, whirled again. Mercy clung to the saddle as the gelding collected, leaped forward. She looked back to see the man’s horse skid to a stop at the fence. “If you ever come back here….”
The rest was lost as she gave Monty his head and they charged through the woods. Mercy ducked to miss the low branches, all semblance of control gone, her only conscious thought to gain distance.
She galloped wildly through the forest, regaining control as Monty finally calmed. She slowed him to a jog, then a walk, then stopped and sat shaking in the saddle, listening. Nothing.
All was quiet except Monty’s heaving breaths and her own sharp gulps for air. Her shaking eased. Her left hand ached. Looking down, she saw she still clenched her camera.
…
