The Burnt House

31

D AYBREAK BROUGHT A crystalline sky against a backdrop of deep violet mountains, a scene so crisp and infused with pure colors that it almost looked artificial. Decker took an early-morning walk around the Plaza, a green square in the center of town. All around were one-of-a-kind boutiques that specialized in regional arts, crafts, and clothing. He saw the Indians setting up their wares on the sidewalk under the portico fronting the old courthouse, placing handmade silver jewelry, pottery, and sand art on worn, wool blankets. By the time he got back to the hotel, Marge and Oliver were waiting in the lobby. Peter Devargas had called about twenty minutes ago. He was ready whenever they were ready.

Breakfast with the grieving couple was a somber affair, but that didn’t stop anyone from eating. The meal included scrambled eggs, trout hash served with salsa, beans, rice, and the ever-present corn tortillas served steaming hot. Fresh grapefruit juice and piping-hot coffee were the beverages of choice. When there was nothing edible left to consume, Sandra got up to clear. Everyone did their share and the dishwasher was loaded in record time.

The group adjourned to the living room, the detectives sitting three across on the couch while Sandra curled up in a chair opposite the sofa. She was dressed in a caftan, her gray hair long and loose. Devargas was in jeans and a work shirt. He leaned against the wall, staring out at a large cottonwood tree that dominated the front of his house. Cathie and her parents, Tom and Lucy Ruiz, would come by later in the afternoon.

Marge started out by addressing Sandra Devargas. “Thank you for talking to us at such a difficult time. It would be helpful if we had pictures of Beth and Manny.”

“As many photographs as you can give us,” Oliver added.

Peter spoke. “We got lots of Beth. I’ll want them back.”

“Of course,” Marge said. “Pictures of Manny would be helpful as well.”

“That’s too bad because I burned them all,” Devargas answered.

“Why do you think he was responsible for Beth’s death?”

Peter turned around and faced the detectives. “The boy was a snake in the grass.”

Decker turned to Sandra. “What did you think about Manny?”

She didn’t speak right away, assessing her thoughts. “He was charismatic, good-looking, the star of the football team.”

“He was a running back.” Devargas addressed the men. “Fast on his feet and quick with a line or a comeback. Girls fell for it and for him.”

“He did have his share of dates,” Sandra said.

“All the attention made him cocky.” Devargas spoke with bitterness. “Here, he was a big fish in a tiny pond. When he got to Los Angeles, he wasn’t so special anymore. To me, he was only special in his own mind.”

“Tell the truth, Peter. He had a lot of local fans.”

“Well, I wasn’t one of them.”

“That may be, but you weren’t a young girl with a free heart.” She sighed. “I think L.A. took him down a notch. In the beginning, they were both miserable. I thought that it would give them motivation to move back to Santa Fe, where they were loved.”

“She was loved,” Devargas corrected.

He was sounding more and more like Farley Lodestone, Decker thought. “Did they ever consider moving back to Santa Fe?”

Sandra shrugged. “If they did, they never told me. Then, of course, they disappeared…”

“She disappeared, he cut out.” Devargas glared at the detectives. “That boy is somewhere out there. If you people are worth a tenth of your salary, you’ll go out and find him!”

“If he’s out there, that’s exactly what we’ll do,” Oliver said. He turned to Sandra. “Do you think that Manny was responsible for Beth’s death?”

“Sometimes yes, but sometimes no,” Sandra answered. “I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.”

“How did they support themselves?”

“Beth worked as a waitress and Manny took on odd jobs.”

“The boy was a damn janitor.”

“There is nothing disreputable about honest labor, Peter.” She looked at the detectives. “He worked as a janitor, but he also took on odd jobs-carpentry mostly. He was good with his hands.”

“They were fighting all the time,” Devargas said. “There was never enough money.”

“At first, there was tension,” Sandra agreed. “Later on they got along much better.”

“How so?” Marge asked.

“Well, maybe they just adjusted. She and Manny had steady jobs, but I think what really helped was joining the church. It gave them friends with common interests and spiritual guidance.”

“It wasn’t like a church,” Devargas snorted. “It was more like a whacky cult.”

“She was raised Catholic.” Sandra stepped in. “But over here, Catholicism is often mixed with our tribal customs. I’m Santa Clara Indian, so our children were always taught several ways of honoring the Holy Spirit. We’re more tolerant of unconventional worship. So it was natural that Beth would be comfortable in a service that might be a little different.”

“This wasn’t just unconventional worship, this was a damn cult,” Devargas kept insisting. “They were all gonna live together in a commune, probably get stoned on pot and have orgies.”

“Peter, you don’t know that at all.”

“I know that Manny smoked pot all the time.”

“Not all the time.”

“Every time I saw him, I smelled it on his breath. We tried to warn Beth about him, but she wasn’t having any of it.”

Sandra had no comment to his pronouncement. Decker was writing notes as fast as he could. “Why do you think the church was a cult?”

“Because it was the seventies,” Devargas said. “That’s what the young rebellious kids did. They got together, smoked pot, and had orgies-”

“Peter, that’s just not fair. There were lots of wonderful young people back then. They just had something to say.”

Devargas snorted. His eyes shifted between Decker and Oliver. “You two would be about Beth’s age. I bet you remember the wild times.”

“I do indeed, but I wasn’t part of it,” Decker said. “I was in ’Nam, then I joined the police force.”

“Times two,” Oliver said.

Devargas gave them a begrudging nod of respect. “Then you know that these communes were excuses to take drugs and have lots of sex. Beth wasn’t that type of girl, but she was smitten by that boy.”

Decker asked, “Did this church have a name?”

“Church of the Land…some crap like that,” Devargas spat out.

“The Church of the Sunland,” Sandra corrected. “After all, it was California.”

“Did you ever attend church services with your daughter?” Marge asked.

“No, we didn’t,” Devargas said. “We weren’t interested.”

“I did once,” Sandra admitted. “It was an alternative service, but I thought it was very nice. The church rented a storefront and there were about thirty congregants.”

“Do you know specifically where they rented space?”

“It was in San Fernando,” Sandra told them.

Decker said, “There’s the San Fernando Valley and the city of San Fernando, which is surrounded by the San Fernando Valley. You wouldn’t happen to remember a street name.”

Sandra thought long and hard. “I believe it was Becker Street.”

Marge said, “Becker Street’s in Foothill Division.”

“What a memory,” Decker said. “You said things got better between them. Did Beth tell you that things were getting better?”

“Yes, she did,” Sandra answered. “I remember that about a month or so after my visit, Beth called me up very excited-it sounded like my old cheery daughter. The church had a small plot of land in the back of the rented space and the plants were thriving. That gave her an idea. What if they pooled their money to buy acreage in central California, and tried their hand at organic farming? She thought a collective farm would be a wonderful way to serve God and make a living. I was happy because it seemed to me that the kids were finally developing some much-needed focus.”

“The scheme was phony as a three-dollar bill,” Devargas said. “And if you didn’t know already, guess who was in charge of the money?”

Decker asked, “Who elected Manny to be in charge of the money?”

“He probably elected himself.”

“Then the kids disappeared…” Sandra crossed herself and looked at her lap. When she looked up again, she was dry-eyed. “We tried to track down some of the church members and talk to them. We thought that the disappearance might be related to the money that Manny was keeping for the church.”

“Of course it had something to do with the money!” Devargas said. “When Manny and Beth disappeared, so did the money. We tried to meet with the church members, but they were mad and wouldn’t take our phone calls. The few that would talk to us accused the kids of stealing.”

“We were getting nowhere over the phone, so we finally decided to visit in person. By the time we got there, the church storefront had been locked and cleaned out.”

“When you arrived in L.A., how long had the kids been missing?” Decker asked.

“Two weeks at the most,” Sandra said. “The first few days that Beth didn’t call, I thought that maybe she was just busy. We didn’t speak every day. By the end of the first week, I was worried. That’s when we started calling the people in the church.”

“I read the missing-persons file,” Marge told them. “It was thinner than I would have expected, so it may not be complete. But I sure don’t remember reading anything about the Church of the Sunland and any cash that Manny was holding for the group.”

“I read the file also,” Oliver said. “There was nothing in there about that church or any church.”

Marge said, “Did you tell the police your suspicions about the church?”

“’Course we did,” Devargas said. “I told them about the church and the money and everything. I even gave them the name of that friend of Beth’s.”

“She was the one person who returned our phone calls,” Sandra said. “When it became clear that the kids went missing, she was distraught.”

“More like distraught over the missing money,” Devargas said.

Marge got excited. “Do you remember the friend’s name?”

“She had three names,” Devargas said.

“Alyssa Bright Mapplethorpe,” Sandra told them. “I remember her saying that she was a distant relative of Robert Mapplethorpe, the artist.”

“Do you know what happened to Alyssa?” Oliver said.

“No, I’m sorry I don’t know,” Sandra said. “I might have her old phone number.”

“That’s a good place to start,” Marge told her.

Oliver said, “Do you remember anyone else from the church?”

The elderly couple thought a moment and both shook their heads no.

“I’ll tell you what I do remember,” Devargas said. “That the police didn’t consider it a crime if two grown people pack up their belongings and move somewhere else. People do that all the time, they told me. I told them, ‘Well, maybe people do it, but my daughter wouldn’t do it…worry her mother like that.’ That’s when I told them about Manny and him being in charge of the church money.”

“It’s coming back to me,” Sandra said. “I remember the detective saying that if Manny stole money from the church, then the church needed to file a complaint and then they could investigate a crime.”

“I knew that the church would never file a complaint,” Devargas said. “First off, the church didn’t exist anymore. Second off, with all the drugs and sex that was going on, I knew they wouldn’t get the police involved. For all I know, they were buying the land to grow marijuana.”

‘Peter, you’re making things up.”

“I’m not saying it’s true, but you can’t say it wasn’t.”

“We hired a private detective to find Beth,” Devargas said. “What a waste. He found some of the old church members, but they were no help at all. They just accused Beth and Manny of stealing and cutting out.”

“I was hoping he’d find Alyssa,” Sandra said. “But that didn’t happen. I called her number up a month after the disappearance but the line had been disconnected.”

“Who was the private detective that you hired?”

“Caleb Forsythe,” Devargas told him. “He died about eight years ago. He didn’t do much. Just poked around a little here and there and then asked us for a check.”

“In fairness to Forsythe, by the time we contacted him, the case was months old.”

“We wasted a damn lot of a time waiting for the police to do something.”

“Eventually, they did look for them,” Sandra said. “The case was on the evening news. They asked the public for their help. It did jump-start the investigation. The police got many phone calls, but nothing ever worked out.”

“This must have been a month or two after they disappeared. I’m sure my baby had been long gone by then.” Devargas suddenly turned away and went back to his window, his eyes fixed on the front yard’s sprawling cottonwood. Sandra crossed herself and sighed.

Oliver asked, “Do you know how much money Manny was responsible for?”

“Around five thousand, maybe more,” Devargas said. “Five thousand’s a lot of money to me right now. Back then, it was a lot of money.”

“Yes, it was,” Decker agreed, “but even in the seventies, it wasn’t a fortune.”

“Crack addicts rob little old ladies for their fifty-dollar Social Security checks.” Devargas sneered. “If Manny developed a bad habit while he was out in L.A., five thousand to him might look like he hit the jackpot.”

Decker said, “Cathie told me that Manny’s mother died a while back and his father was incarcerated.”

Devargas spoke in hushed tones. “The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“Martin Hernandez murdered two men in a robbery,” Sandra said. “It was a terrible, terrible thing. Still, when Beth started dating Manny, I tried not to let it influence my opinion of the boy.”

“Christian charity.” Devargas snorted. “Our big mistake!”

“You don’t blame the sons for the sins of the fathers. Besides, his mother, Clara, was a gentle soul. Even you have to admit that, Peter.”

“That’s because she was drunk most of the time.”

“She started drinking after the kids disappeared, Peter. Different people cope in different ways.”

Devargas was silent. He wasn’t about to give ground to anyone.

Sandra said, “Clara and I didn’t have much to say to one another, although we did bond in grief. She had a hard life. Her husband and her other son, Belize, ended up in prison. Manny was her last hope. After he disappeared, she did become a drunk and a recluse. Five years after the disappearance, she passed on. She probably died of a broken heart.”

Decker said, “Would either of you know where Martin Hernandez was incarcerated?”

Sandra said, “He’s in Santa Fe Correctional. The prison is a fifteen-minute drive from Santa Fe on the highway.”

“Maximum security?” Decker asked.

Sandra nodded. “He’s serving out a forty-five-year sentence.”

Devargas said, “Parole was denied four times. Somebody has some good sense.”

Sandra said, “If he lives long enough, he’ll walk out in three years a free man.”

“Tragedy of our justice system,” Devargas growled out.

It was a pity that Decker couldn’t introduce Farley Lodestone to Peter Devargas without engendering conflict of interest. They’d have an instant friendship forged in loss and cynicism. “What happened to Manny’s brother, Belize?”

Both of them shrugged ignorance.

“Do you know what he was in prison for?”

“Robbery,” Devargas said.

“How old would he be now?”

“He was two years older than Manny,” Sandra said. “In his fifties.”

“And how old would Martin Hernandez be now?”

“Our age…in his seventies or maybe even in his eighties,” Sandra said.

“You said that Martin will walk out a free man, if he lives long enough,” Decker said. “Is he ill?”

“No, but you know how it is in a small community.” Sandra cocked her head in her husband’s direction. “People don’t forget.”

“No, they sure as hell don’t forget,” Devargas said. “If Martin knows what’s good for him, he’ll live the rest of his life out behind bars!”

DECKER STILL HAD dozens of questions for the Devargases, but the queries would have to wait. Checking his watch, he was shocked to see it was almost one. In eight minutes, they had a scheduled meeting with Fred Bradley, the retired dentist who claimed he still had Isabela Devargas’s X-rays. Lucky for them, Santa Fe was a small town and tourist season with its accompanying slog of traffic had yet to materialize.

Dressed in white slacks, a blue shirt, and white boating shoes, Bradley appeared to be in his eighties: a stooped-shouldered man with thin translucent skin, a gin-blossom nose, and watery blue eyes. He was the friendly sort, living the good life and playing lots of golf. He invited the detectives into his condo, whose living-room window framed a view of a small lake in a nine-hole course. After the detectives were seated, he offered them an array of afternoon refreshments. Soft drinks in hand-Bradley had opted for something harder-Decker thanked the retired dentist not only for his time but for his foresight in saving Isabela Devargas Hernandez’s X-rays.

Then Bradley started talking. At first he spoke about Isabela, but then his conversation meandered into all sorts of unrelated topics. Decker suspected that the man would have gone on for hours about “how it was back then” if Oliver hadn’t tapped his watch and reminded the loquacious Bradley that they had a plane to catch. They thanked him for the X-rays and headed back on I-25 South to Albuquerque.

The hour ride back to New Mexico’s most populated city turned into a two-hour, bumper-to-bumper affair as they hit the rush-hour jam. It was a mad dash to catch the flight, and once they were seated-with Marge in the notorious middle seat-all three detectives let out a uniform sigh of relief. Cathie Alvarez had decided not to go back with them, opting to stay a few extra days to comfort her aunt and uncle.

Beth’s X-rays in hand: mission accomplished although the trip wound up producing more questions than it answered.

“We didn’t even touch on any relative of Hernandez’s family,” Marge commented once they were airborne. “Surely there are some of them still among the living.”

“What good would talking to them do?” Oliver said.

“It would be interesting to get another point of view.”

Decker said, “I have a thought. If Manny Hernandez is still alive, do you think he might have visited his father in prison?”

“Under an assumed name, it’s possible,” Marge said.

“Maybe even under his own name. Beth and Manny’s disappearance was all but forgotten except by a few people. I don’t think the current prison officials at Santa Fe Correctional would necessarily know that Martin’s son Manny went missing in L.A. in the seventies.”

Oliver said, “Santa Fe’s a small town. I’m betting that there are still some old-time guards who remember that Manny and Beth disappeared. He’d have to have rocks for brains to sign the log in his own name.”

Decker said, “We’re still going to have to check the prison logs to see who visited Martin Hernandez. It may lead us to Manny. Most of the current logs are computerized, but they weren’t back in the 1970s and ’80s.” He thought a moment. “The first thing we should do is contact the authorities at the prison, and see if Martin had any recent visitors.”

Marge said, “Who visits seventy-year-old men? His wife? Well, she’s gone. How about children? One was in prison himself, we don’t know what happened to him. And the other one is supposedly missing.”

Decker said, “Which means, in my mind, that if Martin has had any visitors, it’s either the jailbird son or Manny or both.”

“That’s assuming that one or the other or both are still alive,” Oliver said. “We have no idea what happened to Belize Hernandez.”

“He isn’t in Santa Fe Correctional,” Marge said. “I’ve already checked that out.”

Decker said, “Is Manny’s wedding picture the only photograph we have of him?”

“So far,” Marge said. “When we get back, I’ll call up the local high school and ask for his yearbooks.”

“You know what we could use? A current picture of Belize Hernandez. Forensics is going to artificially age Manny Hernandez’s wedding picture on the computer. It’s helpful to know what Manny looked like back then. But if the son of a bitch is still walking the earth, he’d be in his fifties. We need to know what he’d look like now.”