Double Homicide

4

Katz put on as much speed as the dark, winding roads would allow, and they made it back to the headquarters at Camino Entrada by 4:45.

After logging Olafson’s computer into evidence, they did some preliminary paperwork on the case, agreed to meet for breakfast at nine at the Denny’s down the block from the station, and headed home. Two Moons had the Crown Vic because this was his month for take-home, and Katz made do with his grubby little Toyota Camry. Given the state of his social life, he didn’t need better wheels.

Darrel Two Moons drove to his house in the South Capital district, took off his shoes at the door, and withstood an instant of chilled feet as he unlocked the door and stepped into his living room. Nice room; he always liked coming home to it. Seeing the kiva fireplace. The old twisting vigas lining the coved ceiling. Genuine old wood, the color of molasses. Not the faux-aged logs he’d noticed at Olafson’s mansion.

Who was he kidding? Olafson’s place was unreal.

He took off his coat, got a raspberry Snapple from the fridge, sat down at the kitchen table, and drank.

Looking through the arch at his living room. Pictures of Kristin and the girls and him taken at the Photo Inn at the DeVargas Center last Christmas.

Just about a year ago; the girls had done some growing since.

His castle.

Right.

He loved his house, but tonight, after hiking through Olafson’s spread, the place looked tiny, maybe even pathetic.

A hundred-and-eighty-grand purchase. And that had turned out to be a bargain, because South Capital was booming.

A working cop able to move into the north side courtesy of MetLife insurance and the last will and testament of Gunnery Sergeant Edward Two Moons né Montez, United States Army (ret.).

Thanks, Dad.

His eyes started to hurt, and he gulped the iced tea fast enough to bring on some brain freeze.

By now, the place had to be worth close to three hundred. An investment, for someone who could afford to sell and trade up.

A guy like Olafson could trade little houses like playing cards.

Could have.

Two Moons recalled Olafson’s crushed skull and berated himself.

Count your blessings, stupid.

He finished the Snapple, still felt parched and got some bottled water, went into the living room, and sat with his feet up, breathing deeply to see if he could catch a hint of the soap-and-water fragrance Kristin left in her wake.

She really loved the house, said it was all she needed, she never wanted to move.

Fifteen hundred square feet on an eight-thousand-square-foot lot, and that was enough to make her feel like a queen. Which said a lot about Kristin.

The lot was nice, Darrel admitted. Plenty of room out back for the girls to play and for Kristin to plant her vegetable garden and all that other good stuff.

He’d promised to lay down some gravel pathways, hadn’t followed through. Soon the ground would freeze over, and the job would have to wait until spring.

How many more d.b.“s would he encounter by then?

Soft footsteps made him look up.

“Hi, honey,” said Kristin, squinting and rubbing her eyes. Her strawberry-blonde hair was ponytailed, but strands had come loose. Her pink terry-cloth robe was cinched tightly around her taut waist. “What time is it?”

“Five.”

“Oh.” She came over, touched his hair. She was half Irish, one-quarter Scots, the rest Minnesota Chippewa. The Indian blood expressed itself in pronounced cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes. Eyes the color of sage. Darrel had met her during a visit to the Indian Museum. She’d been working there on a summer internship, doing clerical work to pay for a painting course. The eyes had snagged him, then the rest of her had held him fast.

“A case?” she said.

“Yup.” Darrel stood and hugged all five feet of her. Had to bend to do it. Dancing with Kristin sometimes nipped at his lower back. He didn’t care.

“What kind of case, honey?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Kristin’s green eyes focused. “If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t have asked.”

He sat her on his lap and told her.

She said, “Did you tell Steve?”

“Tell him what?”

“That you’d had an encounter with Olafson?”

“Totally irrelevant.”

Kristin was silent.

“What?” he said. “It happened a year ago.”

“Eight months,” she said.

“You remember?”

“I remember it was April because it was the week we were shopping for Easter.”

“Eight months, a year, what’s the diff?”

“I’m sure you’re right, Darrel.”

“Let’s go to bed.”

The moment she hit the mattress she popped right back to sleep, but Two Moons lay on his back and thought about the “encounter.”

He’d dropped over at the Indian Museum to see a show that included a couple of Kristin’s watercolors. Pictures she’d done the previous summer, sitting in the garden out back. Flowers and trees, a nice soft light. Two Moons thought it her best work, had pressed her to enter the juried show.

When she made it, his chest had swelled.

He made half a dozen visits to the show, using his lunchtime. Taking Steve twice. Steve said he loved Kristin’s work.

During the fifth visit, Larry Olafson bounded in with a middle-aged couple-an all-in-black couple wearing matching nerd eyeglasses. East Coast pretentious art types. The three of them walked through the show at breakneck speed, Olafson smiling-more like sneering- when he thought no one was looking.

Uttering snide comments, too, to his too cool friends.

Darrel had seen and heard when Olafson reached Kristin’s watercolors and said, “Here’s exactly what I mean. Insipid as dishwater.”

Two Moons felt his chest swell in another way.

He tried to cool himself down, but when Olafson and the couple headed for the exit, he found himself springing forward and blocking them. Thinking this was a bad idea, but unable to stop himself.

Like something had taken him over.

Olafson’s smile faded. “Excuse me.”

“Those pictures of the garden,” said Darrel. “I think they’re good.”

Olafson stroked his white beard. “Do you, now?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Then I’m happy for you.”

Two Moons didn’t speak or move. The all-in-black-couple shrank back.

Larry Olafson said, “Now that we’ve had our erudite discussion, would you kindly get out of my way?”

“What’s wrong with them?” said Two Moons. “Why’d you put them down?”

“I didn’t put them down.”

“That’s what you did. I heard you.”

“I’ve got a cell phone,” said the woman. “I’m going to call the police.”

She reached into her purse.

Two Moons stepped aside.

Olafson passed him and muttered, “Barbarian.”

Darrel had felt like an idiot for weeks. Thinking about it now made him feel stupid.

Why had he even told Kristin?

Because he’d come home in a foul mood, ignored the girls. Ignored her.

Talk, she was always telling him. You need to learn how to talk.

So he’d talked. And she said, “Oh, Darrel.”

“I screwed up.”

She sighed. “Honey… forget it. It’s no big deal.” Then she frowned.

“What?”

“The pictures,” she said. “They really are insipid.”

He found that he’d been grinding his teeth at the memory and willed himself to relax. So he didn’t like the victim. He’d worked other cases where that happened, plenty of them. Sometimes people got hurt, or worse, because they were bad or stupid.

He hadn’t told Steve the story. No reason to then. No reason to now.

He’d work this one hard. For some reason, reaching that decision made him feel better.

Gunnery Sergeant Edward Montez had been all army, and Darrel, his only child, raised on bases from North Carolina to California, had been groomed to follow.

At seventeen, living in San Diego, when he found out his father was going to be sent to Germany, Darrel rebelled and went over to the nearest Marine Corps recruitment office and enlisted. Within days, he’d been assigned to basic training in Del Mar.

As his mother packed suitcases, she cried.

His father said, “It’s okay, Mabel.” Then he trained his black eyes on Darrel: “They’re kind of extreme, but at least it’s the military.”

“I’ll like it,” said Darrel. Thinking: What the hell have I done?

“We’ll see. Make sure you learn something from them besides killing.”

“Like what?” Darrel rubbed his newly shaved head. The loss of his shoulder-length hair in ten seconds and the way it lay on the floor of a barbershop in Old Town still freaked him out.

“Like something useful,” said his dad. “A trade. Unless you’re planning to spend the rest of your life jumping to attention.”

Midway through his hitch, his mother died. Mabel and Ed Montez were both chain-smokers, and Darrel had always worried about lung cancer. It was a heart attack that got Mom. Only forty-four, she’d been sitting in the front room of a noncom housing unit outside of Hamburg, watching Wheel of Fortune on U.S. Army cable, when her head pitched forward and she never moved again. Her last words: “Buy a vowel, stupid.”

The Marines gave Darrel compassionate leave for a week, then he returned to the base in Oceanside. He was a lance corporal by now, training grunts, earning a rep as a tough DI. The little crying he did, he did in private.

His father quit the army and settled in Tampa, Florida, where he lived off his pension and got depressed. Half a year later, he called Darrel and announced he was moving to Santa Fe.

“Why there?”

“We’re Santa Clara Indian.”

“So?” Darrel had been made casually aware of his heritage. As an abstraction, something historical. The few times he’d asked his parents about it, they’d inhaled their unfiltered Camels and said, “Be proud of it, but don’t let it get in the way.”

Now his dad was moving because of it? To New Mexico? Dad had always hated the desert; when they lived in California, you couldn’t get him to Palm Springs.

“Anyway,” said Ed Montez, “it’s time.”

“For what?”

“To learn, Darrel. If I don’t start learning something, I’m gonna shrivel up and die like a moth.”

The next time Darrel saw his father was when he finished his Marine hitch, decided he wanted more hair on his head, and didn’t re-up.

“Come out here, Darrel.”

“I was thinking L.A. ”

“Why there?”

“Maybe go to school.”

“College?” said his dad, surprised.

“Yeah.”

“What you want to study?”

“Maybe computers,” Darrel had lied. He hadn’t a clue, knowing only that he wanted the freedom of sleeping late, meeting girls who weren’t hookers or Marine groupies. He wanted to have some fun.

“Computers are good,” said his dad. “The talismans of our age.”

“What?”

“Talismans,” said Ed Montez. “Symbols-totems.”

Darrel didn’t answer.

“It’s complicated, Darrel. Come on out, you can go to school here. UNM’s a good place, got a nice campus, and there’s all sorts of scholarships for Indians.”

“I like California.”

“I got no one,” said his dad.

When Darrel got off the plane in Albuquerque and saw the old man, he nearly fell over. Ed Montez had gone from Crew-Cut Noncom to Big Chief Whatever. His gray-streaked hair was center-parted and hung down past his shoulder blades, held in place by a beaded band.

His mop was a lot longer than Darrel’s own tresses had been when his dad had ridden him about looking like “a hippie bum.”

Dad’s civvy clothes had changed just as radically. No more golf shirt, pressed slacks, and spit-polished oxfords. Ed Montez wore a loose-fitting linen shirt over blue jeans and moccasins.

Wore a wispy chin beard.

He hugged Darrel-another change-took Darrel’s carry-on, and said, “I changed my name. I’m Edward Two Moons. Maybe you should think about a change.”

“Genealogy,” the old man explained as they made the one-hour drive to Santa Fe. So far the terrain was flat and dry, lots of empty stretches paralleling the highway, the occasional Indian casino.

Just like Palm Springs.

Seventy-five-mile-per-hour speed limit. Darrel had no problem with that. His father was doing ninety and so was everyone else.

Dad lit up and blew smoke around the cabin of the Toyota pickup. “Aren’t you curious?”

“About what?”

“Genealogy.”

“I know what it means. You’ve been looking into your roots.”

“Our roots, son. On the drive over from Florida, I stopped in Salt Lake City, went over to the Mormon place, and did some serious studying. Found out some interesting things. Then when I got here, I did some more and it got even more interesting.”

“Like what?” said Darrel, even though he wasn’t sure he cared. Mostly, he was sneaking sidelong glances at the old man. Edward Two Moons? When he talked, the chin beard vibrated.

“Like our lineage goes straight back to the Santa Clara Pueblo. That’s on my side. Your mom was Apache and Mohawk, but that’s another story. I still got to look into that.”

“Okay,” said Darrel.

“Okay?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I thought,” said Ed, “that you’d be curious.”

“You always said it was in the past.”

“I’ve come to appreciate the past.” His father jammed his cigarette into his mouth, reached over with his right hand, and grasped Darrel’s wrist. Held on. Weird. The old man had never been one for touch.

“We’re related to Maria Montez, son. Straight line all the way back to her, not a doubt.”

“Who’s that?”

“Maybe the greatest Indian potter ever.” Ed let go, flipped his hand over. The palm was gray, coated with some kind of dust.

“This is clay, son. I’ve been learning the ancient art.”

“You?”

“Don’t be so surprised.”

The closest his parents had come to art were Christmas cards taped to the walls of temporary housing.

“We move around,” his mother had explained. “You put holes in the plaster, you have to patch them up. I may be dumb but I’m not stupid.”

“The process is really something,” his father went on. “Finding the right clay, digging it up, hand-shaping-we don’t use no wheels.”

We?

Darrel kept his mouth shut. They were fifteen miles out of Santa Fe, and the terrain had changed. Higher altitude, pretty mountains all around. Greener, with little pink and tan and gold houses that reflected the light. The sky was huge and blue, bluer than Darrel had ever seen. A billboard advertised duty-free gasoline at the Pojoaque Pueblo. Another one said custom adobe homes were going up in a place called Eldorado.

Not bad, but still not California.

“No wheels,” his father reiterated. “The shaping’s all by hand, which is pretty tough, let me tell you. Then comes the firing and it really gets complicated. Some people use a kiln, but I use an outdoor fire because the spirits are stronger outdoors. You make a wood fire, the heat’s gotta be perfect. If something’s wrong, everything can crack and all your work’s for nothing. You want to get different colors, you use cow dung. Got to snatch it out of the fire at exactly the right time, put it back in-it’s complicated.”

“Sounds like it.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me what I make?”

“What d’you make?”

“Bears,” said his dad. “And they come out pretty good. Look pretty much like bears.”

“Great.” Clay, dung. Outdoor spirits. His dad’s hair- Jesus, it was really long. Was this some kind of dream?

“I live to make bears, Darrel. All those years I didn’t do it was time wasted.”

“You served your country.”

Ed Montez laughed and smoked and pushed his truck to nearly a hundred.

“Dad, are you living in the pueblo?”

“I wish. Whatever land rights we got at Santa Clara are long gone. But I go out there for lessons. It’s not a bad drive. I managed to hook up with Sally Montez. She’s Maria’s great-great-granddaughter. Great potter, won first prize at the Indian Market show two years in a row. She uses dung to get a black and red combo. Last year she got the flu, didn’t have it together, so she only got honorable mention. But still, that’s pretty impressive.”

“Where are you living, Dad?”

“Condo. Army pension pays the rent and then some. Got myself two bedrooms, so there’s plenty of room for you. Got cable ‘cause the dish don’t do well with all the wind.”

Living with his father-his new father-took some getting used to.

Edward Two Moons’s two-bedroom condo on the south side was more honestly described as a “one plus study.” Darrel’s space was an eight-by-nine room walled with bookshelves and filled by a sleeper couch that unfolded to a double bed.

Books on the shelves-that was something new. American history, Indian history. Art. Lots on art.

Incense burner in his dad’s room and for a second Darrel wondered: Dope?

But the old man just liked burning incense when he read.

No ceramic bears in sight. Darrel didn’t ask because he didn’t want to know.

One thing was the same: His dad got up at six a.m. every day, weekends included.

No more one-handed push-ups, though. Former gunnery sergeant Ed Montez greeted each day with an hour of silent meditation. Followed by another hour of bending and stretching to one of a dozen yoga tapes.

Dad taking instructions from women in leotards.

After yoga came a long walk and a half-hour bath, fry bread and black coffee for breakfast, though by then, it was closer to lunchtime.

By two p.m., the old man was ready for his drive out to the Santa Clara Pueblo, where the cheery, corpulent Sally Montez sat in her studio out back of her spacious adobe house and fashioned gorgeous, jewel-inlaid, black-clay masterpieces. The front room of the house was a shop run by Sally’s husband, Bob. He was Sally’s second cousin; Sally hadn’t needed to change her name.

As Sally made pots, Dad hunched at a nearby table, brow furrowed, chewing his cheek as he fashioned his bears.

Families of them, in various poses.

The first time he saw the tiny animals, Darrel thought of Goldilocks. Then he thought: No way. They didn’t even look like bears. More like pigs. Or hedgehogs. Or nothing recognizable.

Dad was no sculptor and Sally Montez knew it. But she smiled and said, “Yes, Ed, you’re coming along.”

She wasn’t doing it for the money; Dad wasn’t paying her a dime. Just because she was nice. So was Bob. And their kids. And most of the people Darrel met on the pueblo.

He started to wonder.

Dad didn’t mention the name-change thing again until six months after Darrel moved in. The two of them were sitting on a bench in the Plaza, eating ice cream on a gorgeous summer day. Darrel had enrolled in UNM as a business major, gotten a 3.6 his first semester, met some girls, had some fun.

“Proud of you, son,” said Ed, handing the transcript back to Darrel. “Did I ever tell you the origin of my name?”

“Your new name?”

“My only name, son. The here and now is all that counts.”

His hair had grown another four inches. The old man still smoked, and his skin looked like ancient leather. But the hair was thick and youthful and glossy, even with the gray streaks. Long enough for a serious braid. Today it was braided.

“The night I decided,” he said, “there were two moons in the sky. Not really, it’s just the way I perceived it. ”Cause of the monsoon. I was in the condo, cooking dinner, and there was one of those monsoons-you haven’t seen one yet, but you will eventually. The sky just opens up and bam. Sheets of rain. It can be a real dry day, bone-dry, then all of a sudden things change.“ He blinked, and for a second his mouth got weak. ”You have arroyos turning into rushing streams. It’s pretty impressive, son.“

Ed licked his butter pecan cone. “Anyway, there I was cooking and the rain started coming down. I finished up, sat there wondering where life was gonna take me.” Another blink. “I started thinking about your mom. I never talked much about how I felt about her, but, trust me, I felt about her.”

He turned away, and Darrel watched some tourists file past the Indian jewelers and potters sitting in the alcove of the Palace of Governors. The Plaza across the street was filled with art kiosks and a bandstand with an open mike for amateur singers. Who said folksinging was a lost art? Or maybe that was good folksinging.

“Thinking about your mom made me low but also a little high. Not like in drunk. Encouraged. All of a sudden I knew I was doing the right thing by coming to this place. I’m looking out the window and the glass is all wet and all you can see of the sky is black and a big, blurry moon. Only this time, it was two moons-the wet glass bent the light in a way that created this image. Am I making myself clear?”

“Refraction,” said Darrel. He’d taken Physical Science for Non-Science Majors, pulled a B.

Ed regarded his son with pride. “Exactly. Refraction. Not two totally separate moons, more like one on top of the other, maybe two-thirds overlapping. It was beautiful. And this strong feeling came over me. Your mom was communicating with me. ”Cause that’s what we were like. Together all the time, but we were separate people, just enough overlap to make it work. We were fifteen when we met, had to wait until we were seventeen to get married ‘cause her dad was an alcoholic hard case and he hated my guts.“

“I thought Grandpa liked you.”

“He came to like me,” said Ed. “By the time you knew him, he liked everyone.”

Darrel’s memories of his grandfather were bland and pleasant. Alcoholic hard case? What other surprises did his father have in store?

“Anyway, the two moons were obviously your mom and me, and I decided then and there to honor her by taking the name. Consulted a lawyer here in town, went over to the courthouse, and did it. It’s official and legal, son, in the eyes of the state of New Mexico. More important, it’s sacred-holy in my eyes.”

A year after Darrel moved in with his father, Edward Two Moons was diagnosed with bilateral small-cell carcinoma of the lung. The cancer had spread to his liver, and the doctors said to go home and enjoy the time he had left.

The first few months were okay, just a dry, persistent cough and some shortness of breath. Dad read a lot about the old Indian religion and seemed at peace. Darrel faked being relaxed, but his eyes hurt all the time.

The last month was rough, all of it spent at the hospital. Darrel sat by his father’s bed and listened to his father breathe. Watched the monitors idly and got friendly with some nurses. No tears came, just a deep ache in his belly. He lost fifteen pounds.

But he didn’t feel weak. Just the opposite, as if drawing upon some kind of reserve.

The last day of his life, Edward Two Moons slept.

Except for one time, middle of the night, when he sat up, gasping, looking scared.

Darrel rushed over and held him. Tried to ease him back down, but Dad wanted to remain upright and he fought it.

Darrel complied and his father finally relaxed. Lights from the monitors turned his face sickly green. His lips were moving, but no sound was coming out. Struggling to say something. Darrel looked him straight in the eye, but by now his father wasn’t seeing anything.

Darrel held him tight and put his ear next to his father’s lips.

Dry rasping came out. Then:

“Change. Son. Is. Good.”

Then he sank back to sleep. An hour later, he was gone.

The day after the funeral, Darrel went over to the courthouse and filed papers for a name change.