Caleb’s eyes narrowed at the dig. He’d once been Albuquerque’s top detective, but he didn’t feel like justifying himself to her.
“First impressions, Dr. Vasquez?”
Ted straightened and turned on her professional face, despite the exhaustion and grief in her eyes.
“Body temperature suggests death around two in the morning. Cause? Well… as you can see, that’s both obvious and odd.”
For the first time, Caleb truly turned his eyes on the body.
Not Alma. Just a body.
A body that had succumbed to massive blood loss from the gashes ripped across her chest and abdomen. It was as if a giant claw had swiped from shoulder to hip, tearing into everything it met. Deep. There were three… Or four? One claw mark was shallower. It was an injury that looked like it had come from a giant paw.
“That looks like an animal attack.”
“I know.”
What had a paw that big? Caleb squinted and moved closer. He looked around the room, immaculate save for the blood spray. What could have made that kind of wound?
“You get bears around here?”
She stuttered. “Bears?”
“Yeah.”
“Um… some. But none that Alma was going to risk around her china cabinet.”
“You’re right. She’d never let a bear in.” He glanced at the kitchen door. He’d examine it later, but there were no obvious signs of break-in.
“She knew him. Let him in.”
“Him?” Ted’s voice sounded weird. “This looks like an animal to me.”
“Would she have let an animal into the house?”
Animal? Human? The wound looked animal; the scene looked human. There were a few signs of struggle, but nothing extensive enough to have been put there by an animal big enough to make those wounds. There was blood splatter on the walls and over the floor, but not as much as he would have expected considering the size of the slash marks.
“She was moving when she was killed,” he murmured. “Trying to get away.”
“It looks like it.”
There was that itching at the back of his mind again. Something about this scene…
It was wrong. Just wrong. His instincts screamed it. There was an element missing. A blind spot he couldn’t angle his eyes into. A lens out of focus. He blinked as he looked at the body again.
“She’s naked.”
Ted looked nervous and glanced away. Embarrassed by the sight of her friend’s grandmother or something else?
He muttered, “Why was she naked?”
Ted cleared her throat. “Maybe she sleeps in the buff. Been known to do it myself on occasion.”
“No evidence of clothes?” Had the killer undressed her?
“Not that I’ve seen. And no cloth in the wounds that I can see. You might ask Jeremy.”
“No… her body doesn’t look like he undressed her after death.” If he had, there would have been smears on the skin, evidence that someone had forced limp arms through cloth. The angles of her body would have been unnatural and bent. The victim had fallen on her side, but it looked like she’d been left alone to bleed out without being further molested.
Caleb walked around the body, measuring, taking it all in, and locking it in his memory. “She wasn’t sleeping. Jena was coming over and she was expected.” He glanced around. Where was the laundry room? There, over by the kitchen door. It was possible that the old woman had been on her way to get clothes from the dryer. When he’d lived in the big empty house in New Mexico, he’d done the same, wandered to the laundry room after a shower to get a favorite shirt or pair of jeans.
“Tell me about the cause of death.”
She sighed. “Here’s where we get obvious and odd at the same time. The wounds, obviously, are what killed her. They’re deep, almost three inches, and clean. Something strong. Cut over her ribs starting at the shoulder and then into her gut. She bled out. I’d say animal, but the wounds are… too clean. That’s the odd part.”
“Not like an animal attack.”
She shook her head. “Not like any I’ve seen. I stitched up Steve Quinn last August when he got into a scuffle with a mountain lion. The wounds were similar, but not like this. These are… Well, you can see.”
Ted crouched down, careful not to disturb anything. He squatted next to her and his eyes immediately went wide when he saw the slashes. “What the hell…”
The slices were raw and bloody, but just as Ted said, clean. Like an animal, but too smooth. The flesh looked like it had curved into the valley the weapon had left, distorting the edges of the skin. Even—impossible to think—healing partially.
“There’s no way,” he said under his breath. “No way.” Alma Crowe would have been dead in minutes. There was no way her body would have been able to heal, even a little bit. It was impossible. There had to be another explanation.
“Not an animal, unless it’s something we haven’t seen before.”
He turned his head to her. “And you’re sure you’ve never seen anything like this before?”
The flinch was so minute that even he barely caught it. “Nope. New to me, too.”
She was lying. Why was she lying? He tucked the information away to examine later.
“Right. You going to send the body to San Bernardino?”
She nodded quickly. “I don’t have the facilities to handle this here.”
“Do what you have to.”
He made quick work of examining the rest of the scene, hoping that he wasn’t letting some vital piece of information slip his observation because he was distracted. He was leaning outside the kitchen door an hour later, gathering his thoughts.
Who had Alma trusted enough to let in before dawn?
Why was she naked?
What had made those wounds?
It wasn’t an animal; that was for sure. The scene was too clean. An animal wouldn’t have attacked like that, then left the body alone.
Knives? How would the tracks between slashes remain so even if it was a knife? She’d been alive when the blades had gone through her flesh. His mind rebelled at the implication, but Caleb forced his way through it. No mercy had been granted Alma Crowe, and if she’d suffered the terror of having her life taken by a monster who would carve an old woman up over and over again, then she deserved to have someone relive the experience with her, even if it was just in his imagination.
Had she been drugged somehow? He’d wait for the toxicology report, but the position of the body implied flight. Then there was that blood spray. So small. So contained. Not as if a grown woman had struggled at all. More as if…
A child. That’s what it had reminded him of. The blood spray matched a small victim, the blood pooling on the floor a larger victim.
The tickling at the back of his mind grew irritating. Ted was lying. And Caleb was putting off talking to Jena.
He sighed and walked around the house to the front porch, glancing down to make sure that there was no blood on his clothes. Then he glanced at Jena’s car pulled up the side of the house and frowned. Caleb turned the corner just as the light was peeking over the horizon. Jena was still waiting outside the house that her grandmother had been murdered in, sitting next to Jeremy, staring out into the slowly lightening day. His arms ached to scoop her up, put her in his truck and drive far, far away from here. Far enough away that she would forget her sadness and laugh again. But Caleb knew better than anyone how useless running was.
He came up to the porch and nodded at Jeremy. “Ted needs to take some pictures. She may need your help.”
“Sure thing, Chief. Jena?”
The woman gave a slight nod and leaned away from him, then turned and rested her back against the porch railing to face Caleb.
“Hey.”
Her voice was hoarse when she answered. “Hey.”
“How you holding up?”
“How am I supposed to hold up?”
He knew better than anyone there was no answer to that. “
Someone staying with the boys?”
She blinked back tears. “Yeah, I called Ollie. He came over and took them out to his place.”
“Good.” He paused. “Jena—”
“I came out here at two thirty or so. I know it probably sounds weird, but Grandma liked to go use the mud pools by the springs. There’s two that you can soak in. She claimed it was good for her health. Kept her young and all that. So every now and then, when the moon was bright, I’d take her to the canyon and we’d go. She liked going at night. That’s why I was here so late.”
Too smooth. She’d practiced that one a few times.
Caleb pulled out his notebook. Then he sat down across from her and propped one knee up on the steps, quickly running through the standard questions about when she’d arrived: What had she done? Had she touched the body at all? Did she notice anyone suspicious hanging around? She answered just as quickly, as if she knew what he was going to ask and was expecting it. He closed his notebook and looked at her.
“So she was expecting you.”
“Yes.”
“But she wasn’t wearing clothes. Not even a sign of them at the scene.”
Her eyes glinted in surprise, then anger, as if she was irritated that he’d gone off script. “She probably hadn’t put on her robe yet. You don’t wear clothes in the mud pool.”
Lying. Every inch of his gut told him. That itching in the back of his mind begged to be scratched. Why the hell was she lying to him?
“And you weren’t wearing clothes when you came.”
That surprised her. She looked up, alarm coloring her features for only a moment before she answered.
“I had borrowed this old dress from her. I was returning it. Do you think I killed my grandmother or something?”
“No, I don’t.” He didn’t just think it. He knew it. Knew the woman sitting across from him—who had obviously adored Alma—could never have killed the woman. He knew Jena was devastated. And it killed him to have to question her when he wanted to be comforting her. “I don’t think you would ever hurt your grandmother.”
“I thought this was an animal attack.”
“It might be.”
“Then why all the questions, Caleb?”
Caleb, not “Chief.” He sighed. “Jena, I’m trying to get an idea about what happened tonight. There are a lot of things that don’t add up. And your dress is only one of them. I’m trying to figure out who would’ve known that Alma and you were going out tonight. Who might have known that she’d even be awake at that hour. Who she would have let in wearing nothing at all. There was no sign of a break in, so—”
“There were scratches by the kitchen door. Did you see them?” Her voice was raised in challenge.
“Scratches?”
“Yes. Fresh ones down at the base of the door and the threshold. It was obviously an animal.”
“I’ll take another look. But something about this doesn’t seem like an animal attack to me.” She looked away. That tickle became a thorny, spiky burr, boring into his skull. She was hiding something too. He let out a frustrated puff of air and shook his head, muttering, “This damn town.”
“I guess old women never got killed in Albuquerque, huh?”
He managed not to glare at her, conscious of the terrible shock she’d been through. “Yeah, Jena. People get killed in Albuquerque. Old women, children, all sorts. And I’ve worked a lot of murder scenes, all over the place. So when I say something about this whole thing seems wrong to me, I’m not talking about the fact that someone or something killed Alma. I’m talking about the fact that everyone—you, Ted, even Jeremy—is lying to me and I can’t tell why or about what.”
She seethed in quiet fury. “I want to go home.”
“Fine. I’ll have more questions for you later, but I’ll take you home.”
“I have my own car, thanks.”
“You don’t need to be driving right now.”
He stood and held out a hand; she ignored it and stood on her feet, walking toward the side of the house.
“I need to get my car home.”
“Why don’t you just leave it for Ted? Driver’s seat is already scooted up for her height anyway.”
She froze, but didn’t turn around.
“I imagine the keys are in her purse, because I don’t see yours around anywhere. Big leather thing, the boys’ school pictures hanging off the strap.” He stepped closer. “You don’t go anywhere without that purse. But it’s not here, is it?”
She was shaking. Nerves? Anger? “I’m not talking to you anymore.”
He let out a breath. “Fine. I’m still driving you home. You really shouldn’t be behind a wheel.”
“Fine.”
Jena walked to the car, opened the door, and got in. She was silent the whole way home.
He spent all day filling out paperwork. Ted and Jeremy waited at the house for the ambulance that would take the body down to San Bernardino and the sheriff-coroner’s office there. He sifted through Jeremy’s report and filled out his own. On the surface, it looked like Alma had died of an animal attack, as bizarre as it seemed. There were no other signs of struggle or break-in. No theft. No damage to her body other than the four unusual claw marks. But the scene didn’t have the random feel of an animal attacking.
Maybe someone around here bred those crazy giant cats that some people liked to keep. He’d run across a few of them when he was in Narcotics. Sometimes dealers liked to keep them around isolated factories or farms. And he had seen how the damn things could be trained to attack. That was at least one idea that might make sense when not much else did.
In the city, he’d be questioning neighbors and relatives, but Alma’s only relative was Jena, and she lived out in the middle of nowhere.
The only motive he could think of was Alma’s objection to this planned resort of Alex McCann’s. He remembered the man’s determination when they’d spoken the week before.
“I will build a hotel out here. It’s just a matter of time.”
Alex had motive to get rid of Alma. And he was a hothead.
How many people’s jobs were being held up by the old woman’s objection to the resort? He’d noticed the groups of men hanging out at the farm supply and the diner. There were a lot of men out of work. Men who would probably be employed in construction if the resort were built.
Caleb sighed, suddenly realizing he had a few more suspects than he’d originally thought.
He was about to fall over by the time he made it back to his trailer. Jena’s house was dark. He wondered if she and the boys were staying at Ollie’s for a little while. The man had seemed like a solid guy and he treated Jena like a little sister, so the idea of her being over there made him feel a little better.
He wondered if her parents would be back in town soon. His heart absolutely ached for those two boys. He’d seen them with their great-grandmother at church. They’d already lost their dad. How much loss could one little family take? Though he’d been trying to stay emotionally detached as much as he could, in that moment, he knew if Alma’s murderer stood in front of him, Caleb would kill him with his bare hands.
He ate a little and tried to settle down, but he couldn’t relax. Details from the crime scene kept running around his brain. The waning moon was up when he left the bedroom, tied on his running shoes, and started out the door.
Caleb ran up the street in front of Jena’s house, past the park and the springs that were fenced off. He ran farther up the canyon, his eyes adjusting to the darkness and the moonlight, his heart falling into a steady rhythm as he ran out his energy. He followed the floor of the canyon past the springs, up and into the rocks. Jogged through the numerous fingers that branched off and turned him around. It was almost like a maze in there. Only the sound of the springs kept him centered when he got turned around. Finally, he turned and headed back. The worst of his tension had burned off, and he was exhausted again.
When he got to Springs Park, he slowed and began walking
. The desert air should’ve been cool against his skin, but that night, it pressed on him. The moon reflected off the largest of the pools scattered over the park.
Seven springs fed from underneath the desert floor, people in town said. Three were large and fed into one pond in the center of the park. They said the children swam there in the winter, enjoying the warm temperatures even when snow fell. Three more dotted the back of the canyon. Smaller and more scattered, one was more like a mud pit and the others he could see steaming, even at night. Hot. Far hotter than the large springs and more laden with minerals.
His heart began to even out as the wind picked up. Caleb’s eyes climbed to the few petroglyphs carved into the black desert varnish that marked the canyon walls. Luckily, no one had marred the perfection of their outlines. Familiar figures beckoned him closer. Spirals and whorls. Animal figures. The hunchbacked flute player whose song whispered to him on the wind. Kokopelli. He wondered if it was rain he smelled.
Caleb blinked and looked around. He could hear singing. Old songs he’d heard as a child at his grandmother’s feet. He must have been truly exhausted, because he could have sworn he heard Mary Yazzie’s voice and his Uncle Raymond’s low laugh. The smell of a bonfire and fry bread. He shook his head to clear it. No one would know the old songs here. The wind gusted again, and a black slash in the rocks beckoned him from the corner of his eye.
Seven springs… He saw six. Where was the seventh?
The old songs rose on the breeze and Caleb turned toward them. His feet moved of their own volition as he approached the black void in the canyon wall. It was a cave cut into the rocks. As he drew closer, he heard a shuffling in the bushes and a silver animal darted in front of him.
He was Mah-ih, “he-who-roams-about” to his grandmother’s people. The large coyote paused in the path, then turned and looked at Caleb. His pelt was silver in the moonlight, his ears large and tilted toward him. Caleb walked toward the animal, but it didn’t bolt. The coyote walked a little farther down the path, then paused to look at him again. Caleb followed.
The animal darted under a fence that Caleb hopped over. Then there was another path, this one not marked by gravel or concrete.