Wild Penance

18

Deputy Sheriff Jerry Padilla looked at me with a lecherous grin. “Did Roy know you were doing this thing tonight?” A toothpick bobbed in the corner of his mouth as he spoke.

I shook my head.

“You’re gonna have to let him know, or somebody else will. Your name will be in my report. Word will get around, especially about something like this.”

“Yeah, I know.”

We were sitting at one of the small round bar tables in front of the stage at the Gecko. The audience members and everyone in the show had been questioned and then sent home. Padilla and another deputy had taken statements from Wynetta and the rest of the models, leaving me until last.

Bennie had announced that the club would be closed indefinitely and left the keys to the front door dead bolt on the bar. “Holler at me when you get ready to leave, kiddo,” she had said, her voice thin and strained, on the verge of tears. Then she had taken a bottle of Dewar’s into her office.

“Can you think of any reason why someone would’ve wanted to kill Nora?” Padilla asked.

“Jerry, I don’t even know Nora. I just met her today. I knew her as Number Seven. I was Number Six. I don’t do this all the time, you know. They just needed someone to fill in because one girl sprained her ankle. Is Nora going to be okay?”

“Don’t know, Jamaica. The EMT said they’d need to do an MRI. They rushed her to the head trauma unit in Albuquerque. Whoever did this meant to put her lights out for good. She had a real bad blow to the head, and she was unconscious for a little while after it happened. I’m no doctor, but I know that’s not good.”

“Have you figured out exactly what happened?”

“Well, you know most of it. A steel bar mounted with four of those big stage lights dropped on her as she was exiting the stage. I went up in the rafters and looked around. Two cast-iron pipe clamps that should have held that mounting bar in place with no problems had been tampered with. It looks like someone took a pipe wrench up there and loosened them, had the whole thing ready to go with a quick twist of the fingers. After he dropped the bar, the bad guy must have scooted out the stage door when the lights went out, or maybe during all the commotion after it happened.”

“It would have been easy for someone to slip out. It was pandemonium backstage.”

“So, let’s see… you were out on the stage when this happened,” he said, tapping his notebook with the end of his pen.

“Yes. There was a big crash, like something heavy had fallen or had been knocked over, then a lot of shuffling. I didn’t know what it was until after Ernie dropped the curtain and I could get backstage.”

“This Ernie-where was he while you were onstage?”

“He has a sound and light console on one side of the stage.”

“Who else did you see backstage?”

“Just Wynetta and all the other models… oh, and Bennie brought me the wig.”

“Wig?”

“Yes. A black wig.”

“Now, why would a woman with beautiful blonde hair like yours want to wear a wig?”

“Wynetta had her own ideas about my hair. I think it’s a little too wild for her taste. Anyway, she wanted me to wear the wig. I guess a black-haired one was all she had.”

He shuffled back through a few previous pages in his notebook. “Okay, let’s see, how many people knew you would be switching places with Nora in the show?”

“Nobody. I mean, it happened at the last minute. I had a… I had a costume emergency. I was supposed to go sixth. Wynetta is the one who pushed Num-I mean, Nora out in my place and told me to go seventh.”

“So, Wynetta is the only one who knew about the switch? Nobody else?”

“No. It happened right at the last minute.”

“Yeah, that’s what… let’s see…” Thumbing through the notebook again, “That’s what Ernie said. I guess it took him by surprise.” He found the page he was looking for, flipped the previous ones under, and looked over what he had written. “Okay, well, Nora can’t talk, and nobody we talked to knows of anything much going on with her.” He put his finger next to something he had jotted on the page. “Wait a minute. Nora has long blonde hair.”

“Yes.”

“She’s about your height, too-what are you, five-five?”

“I’m five-six. Yeah, I guess she’s about my height. Why? Do you think… you think someone…”

“Let’s look at this another way, Jamaica,” Jerry said, shifting his weight in his chair. “Do you know of any reason why anyone would want to kill you?”

My mouth fell open. I looked at him.

He widened his eyes, as if to emphasize the question.

“Not unless someone knows I was a witness-”

He cut me off. “No one knows but the investigators on the task force, and we’ve all been working together for years. I trust every one of them. You haven’t talked to anyone about it, have you?”

“No, not a soul.”

“Have you had any problems on the job, any significant incidents?”

I put my elbow on the table and dropped my forehead into my hand. I was starting to develop a screaming headache. “Not at work, no. But there is one thing, although I don’t see how it could have anything to do with this.”

“Why don’t you let me decide about that?”

“My book-I’ve been working on a sketchbook. It was stolen. On the same day as the… the thing at the gorge.”

“I saw a report that you had a book stolen. I thought it was just some book you bought, or maybe one from the library. It sounded like vandals broke into your car and didn’t find what they were looking for.”

“No, that’s not how it was. Three men broke into my Jeep when I was out running that evening on the West Rim Trail. I came back as they were going through my things. They stole the book-the sketchbook with all the drawings and things I’d written.”

Padilla turned to a fresh page and poised his pen above it. “Let’s see. So three guys broke into your car while you were on the trail out there. And did you say they stole your bag, too? Was the book in your bag?”

“No, they went through my bag, but they just dropped it on the ground outside my car. Everything was still in it.”

“They left the bag? They didn’t take any money?”

“No. No credit cards, nothing.”

“How about your gun? You carry a sidearm, right?”

“Yes. My pistol was locked in my glove compartment, but they didn’t take it either. It would have been just as easy to break into that glove box as it was to use a slim jim on my car door to get it open. And my rifle and shotgun were on the floor in the backseat, untouched. They went through everything, but the only thing they took was my book.”

“What would they want with this book you were writing?”

“That’s the thing. I didn’t think I should mention this when I reported the book stolen because you told me not to talk to anyone about what I had seen that morning.”

“That’s right.”

“The book was about the Penitentes.”

He whistled. “You’re writing a book about the Penitentes? You sure like to stir it up, don’t you? Have you ever heard of the reata?” He was referring to a brutal torture reputed to be the punishment for telling the secrets of the religion. A man is supposedly tied about the waist with two sets of ropes-while his accusers pull one set toward his head, the other toward his feet, and then drag him naked up the side of a mountain, through beds of cacti and over rocky terrain until he is bloody and unconscious, or worse.

“There’s nothing in my book that isn’t common knowledge, Jerry. I don’t know any of their secrets. I’ve just written about what I’ve seen. And I was mapping the shrines, the moradas, sketching them. I tried to talk to some of the locals about the shrines, but most of them wouldn’t even talk with me.”

“Well, you’ve got more guts than most, Jamaica. Maybe someone took your book to find out if you did know their secrets. Did you ever think about that?”

I was struck dumb for a moment. “No. That hadn’t occurred to me.”

“Okay, so this book of yours-who knew you were writing it?”

“No one, really. Except a priest in Santa Fe, and a woman in Agua Azuela, both of whom were helping me, so I think we can rule them out.”

“All right, so let’s backtrack here just a little. Tonight, in the show, who knew you were originally supposed to go on sixth?”

“Well, all the models. And Wynetta, of course. Ernie. And Bennie.”

Padilla consulted his notebook again. “What about this guy Manny Trujillo? Do you know him?”

“Who? Manny? No. Bennie told me he was the new dishwasher. I’ve seen him here twice. But I don’t really know him.”

“Oh, really? Well, Deputy Hernandez found Manny Trujillo hanging around out in the parking lot after everyone else had left. When Hernandez questioned him, Trujillo said he was waiting to see if you were all right.”

“Me? I don’t even know him! We’ve never even been introduced. I just came in looking for Bennie earlier this week, and he was in the kitchen. And then…” I paused.

“And then?” Jerry prompted.

“And then I bumped into Manny when I was leaving after rehearsal this morning. I had just stepped out the door. I’m sure he heard Wynetta yell at me that I would go on sixth. Of course half the county probably heard it-Wynetta yelled it two or three times at the top of her lungs.”

Jerry got up and picked up the keys off the bar. He went to the front door, unlocked it, and swung it open. “Hey, Tony! Did you let that Trujillo guy go home?” There was a pause. “I think we better go get him. I’m almost done here.”

He came back, sat down, looked at me as if he were asking a favor. “Can you think of any reason why this guy Trujillo would have it in for you?”

“No, Jerry. I told you. I don’t even know him.”

“Well, I think we’ll go get Manny Trujillo and talk to him a little more. Why don’t you get back with me if you think of anything else that might help, okay?” He was folding his notebook cover over and putting it in his pocket as he said this. He pressed both palms flat on the table and pushed against it as he started to get up, then stopped in midstoop and sat back down. He leaned forward. Two vertical folds formed like small flesh columns above the bridge of his nose, and his eyes narrowed. He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “By the way, Christine Salazar needs to do a witness interview with you. She was the field deputy medical investigator on the search and recovery crew in the gorge. Get to her as quick as you can, okay?”

“I’ll call her on Monday. Have you had any developments in the case?”

“We don’t have much to go on. Lou Ebert and the state police are working the cargo van angle. Checking at rental places in a four-state area. Checking registration records for owned ones.”

“Do you know who the man on the cross was?”

“Negative on the I.D. But I guess the OMI has determined it wasn’t the fall from the bridge or the trauma from the crucifixion that was the cause of death.”

My mouth came open. “What was it?”

“Better you don’t know any more than you do right now,” Padilla said. “You be careful, Jamaica. With all that’s been going on, if I was you, I’d lay real low.”