Wild Penance

4

After our walk out onto the bridge, Agent Ebert and I returned to the parking area, where he introduced me to two other members of the crime scene task force. The Taos Pueblo police detective was most concerned about where the body had fallen in order to determine whether he had jurisdiction, which seemed unlikely after some discussion. Deputy Sheriff Jerry Padilla was someone I had worked with before on two separate incidents requiring arrests on BLM land. Padilla listened to Agent Ebert’s briefing, then spoke to me. “Jamaica, you probably want to scoot on out of here before the media arrive from Albuquerque. It’s a good thing for you it takes so long for them to get here from down south. Come on, I’ll walk you back across and you can get your vehicle from the rest area. I’ll tell the officer over there to let you drive back through. You’ll be the first car on the bridge since we shut her down.”

“So the forensics team is done on the bridge, then?” I said.

Padilla’s leather holster squeaked as he walked. “Yup.”

“How long will it remain closed?”

“Oh, I suspect shortly after you drive through we’ll open her up to vehicle traffic only. No pedestrians, though. Not until the incident is terminated and the body has been transported to OMI-the Office of the Medical Investigator down in Albuquerque. We’ll keep a uniformed officer here, right through the raft retrieval tomorrow, to keep pedestrians off the bridge until it’s all done.”

“Thanks for letting me get out of here before the press-”

He cut in: “We determined that we’re not going to release your name as a witness until we have more information on this crime. Matter of fact, we’re not even going to say we have a witness right now. Until we know more about who did this and why, we are going to keep a tight lock on things, and we want you to do the same. We don’t want you to discuss this with anyone who’s not involved in the case until we give you the go-ahead to do so. Might be good if you didn’t mention it to anyone outside of the task force, if you can swing that.”

“My boss knows. I had to tell him why I would be late.”

“Well, I’ll tell him what I told you, and let’s keep this thing under wraps. If the bad guys don’t know you saw them do the deed, they won’t be out looking for you. And they won’t know we’re out looking for them.”

At the BLM, behind the counter in the main lobby, Rosa Aragon served as receptionist, answering the phones and greeting visitors. Rosa was the river ranger who’d been rescued last fall after a dramatic search of the Rio Grande Gorge that brought the attention of national television to Taos. A chopper sweeping the gorge the morning after she had gone missing finally spotted her brightly colored gear spread out for maximum visibility on a sandbar. This was sixteen hours after her raft had capsized, smashing her against a rock and fracturing her leg in three places. A crew went in at once and got her.

As I had mentioned to Agent Ebert, I was part of that search and rescue mission, because it was one of the BLM’s own. But instead of finding Rosa, I discovered the fresh remains of a suicide jumper who had hoped to make the media with his last earthly act. He leaped into the gorge and landed headfirst, smashing his head in two like a burst watermelon. Unfortunately, since it no doubt happened in the wink of an eye, no one was actually observing the bridge at the moment he made the jump (or at least no report was made). His body then washed rapidly downriver, unobserved, and found its way into some reeds just in time for me to come upon him while patrolling the banks of the Rio Grande near the Orilla Verde Recreation Area, as part of the search mission for our river ranger.

Since then, Rosa had been putting in clerical time until her leg healed. I had been putting in time hoping the haunting nightmares and Technicolor memories of that jumper’s broken-up corpse would one day leave me. They hadn’t yet. After today, they’d have company.

“Roy in?” I asked Rosa.

“He’s in his office. But you missed all the fun. He had this forest ranger guy in here with him this morning. Eeeee! That guy was cute.”

“I missed all the fun, huh?”

Rosa winked. “He was really good-looking, I’m telling you.”

I headed back to Roy’s office and knocked on the door, even though it was open.

The Boss looked up from the list he had been making on a notepad. His thick mass of short, silver-blond hair was mussed from his recently removed hat. “Hey, there. Come on in. Have you had lunch?”

I walked in and slumped into a chair in front of his desk. “Lunch? I haven’t even had breakfast.”

“You want to go get something to eat?”

“I don’t think so. I doubt I could eat right now.”

Roy got up and closed the door. He stood beside his desk and looked down at me in the chair. “You want to talk about it?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about it. There’s a special task force investigating, and they’re not going to release any details, including that there was a witness. So you’re not supposed to talk about it either.”

“Padilla called me and told me that. I’m not going to say a word, unless you need to debrief with someone.”

“I think I’m better off trying to put it out of my mind, Boss.”

“Okay, then. Maybe that’s a good idea. Let’s talk about something else. But before we do, I just want to make sure you know that if you need to take some time off-”

“No, I’m good. I’ll be better off if I stay busy, keep my mind occupied.”

“All right, then. I got an idea for keeping you occupied, if you’re sure you’ll be all right.”

“I’m all right. Go ahead, shoot.”

“Have you ever rode the section up by Cañoncito?”

“Sure. I did a couple months up there from Pilar to Chimayo last fall during the no-burn enforcement. That was a cold tour of duty, let me tell you, without being able to build a fire when I camped.”

“That’s right, I remember that now. Well, we got reports that there’s been some fence lines cut up there, and there are four-wheel tracks leading into the protected wilderness area. The Forest Service says there’s also been heavy use on the mud path in through the forest from Cañoncito headed toward Las Trampas, and trucks or whatever have torn the road all to hell. Something’s going on in that area. I had Art sweep that section last week, but I think we better go back again and maintain a presence there until we know what’s happening.”

“That’s pretty remote country. Not that I would complain, but are you trying to tuck me back out of sight, by any chance?”

Roy smiled. “Hell, I’d like to keep you out of trouble, Jamaica, but I don’t know what that’s going to take. Lord knows, I’ve tried, and nothing has worked up to now.”

“You can’t blame me for today, Boss. That wasn’t anything but me being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Nobody’s blaming anybody for anything. It’s just that there’s something about you. You’re like a magnet; you draw things to you.”

I raised my feet up and propped my boots on the front of his desk. “That’s ridiculous. I just think I’m more curious than most. I see things that other people miss.”

“Well, go get curious and see if you can find out what’s going on in this case.” He turned and pointed to a map behind a sheet of Plexiglas on the wall behind his desk. “I want you to take a truck and a horse trailer-not your Jeep-and ride the fence from a point several miles north of Chimayo to Cañoncito on horseback.”

“What am I looking for?” I asked.

“Whatever you can find, I guess. Just find out what the hell’s going on. Somebody’s cutting fences for a reason. And I want you to bust anyone you catch driving in that protected wilderness area. We have every trailhead posted for no vehicles, on- or off-road. Whoever is doing this is just spitting in our faces.”

“You know it’s Lent; next week’s Holy Week. That’s right in the heart of Penitente country. Maybe it’s all those pilgrims going to the Sanctuario in Chimayo. Or maybe it’s thrill seekers looking for a glimpse of some Penitente action.”

“I don’t think so. The pilgrims go the highway, always have. And the gawkers usually don’t show up ’til Good Friday, or the night before. Seems unlikely they’d be looking for much action this early, and even if they were, they’d just take the High Road up through Trampas and Truchas.”

“Well, are you thinking poachers or wood cutting or what? You know, even though it’s the first week of April, the temperature still drops below freezing at night. This time of year, anyone who could provide enough firewood to get folks through until spring could make a fortune.”

“Yeah, well, even though it’s still cold at night, it warms up during the day. As a result, we’ve had enough snowmelt to make all those roads up there muddy and impassable, even with an ATV. I think it’ll take a real good rider, so that’s why I’m sending you. We’re going to work with the Forest Service on this one. I met with one of their rangers today. His name’s Kerry Reed. Have you ever met him?”

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

“You’ll like him. I think you two will make a good team. And since you’ve already put in nearly half a shift today, I figured you might as well wait and start tomorrow night. I told Reed that, too.”

“Okay, Boss,” I agreed. I sat up and removed my feet from his desk.

“Oh,” he said, reaching into his vest pocket and pulling out a piece of notepaper on which he had scribbled a few lines. “Almost forgot. Here’s where he’s going to meet you and when. And you two will have to keep any radio traffic to a minimum, not that you can get much signal strength up in that country anyway. But if someone’s up to something, they’ll monitor our radio traffic, so we need to keep things quiet or we’ll never find out what’s going on. Now get on home. You’ve had a tough enough day, no need to hang around here just to pass the time.”

On my way out through the front lobby, Rosa stopped me. “I forgot to tell you before. Some guy called for you. He was asking a lot of questions. He asked for your phone number at home. I told him you don’t have a phone. He wanted to know when he could call you here. I told him I don’t know, you’re not usually here. He said it was personal and he didn’t want to leave a message. You got a new boyfriend?”

“When was this?”

“About an hour before you came in. Sorry, I forgot. I wanted to tell you about that forest ranger guy, and I didn’t think-”

“And he didn’t leave a name?”

“No, I asked, but he didn’t want to leave a message.”

“Did he say he would call back?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t remember.”

“Rosa, you didn’t write anything down?”

“What was I supposed to write down? If the guy don’t want me to know who he is, then I don’t know who he is! I don’t know what to write.”