The Bone Fire: A Mystery (11 page)

Gil walked over to Kline and saw Joe coming from the other direction, doing the same. As the two of them approached each other, Joe said, “Hey, there’s a guy
buried over here named Montoya. It looks like he was a senator. Are you guys related?”

Gil shrugged. “Probably.”

“Dude, you are like royalty around here.”

They met up with Kline and Garcia in the middle of the parking lot.

“Well,” Kline said, looking tense, “I don’t know what else to do but to call in the FBI. This is getting pretty far out of our league.”

“I think this is pretty far out of everyone’s league,” Gil said. He didn’t see calling in the FBI as a failure on his part but as a chance to get more manpower. In the past, he had worked well with the agents, who were always helpful and well informed. There might be a problem with Brianna’s family, though. The FBI had been called in on her case before, and their presence led directly to the family filing the lawsuit. If they were to call the FBI in again, what little help the Rodriguezes were giving might dry up.

Gil said as much to Kline, who said, “I agree. At the same time, we are seriously overwhelmed here.”

They all stood in silence until the chief said, “Let me think about it some more. Meanwhile, I’m calling in all off-duty and retired officers for manpower. So let me know what you need.”

“Actually, I have one more thing,” Gil said, turning to Garcia, who was the department spokesman. “I was wondering about our media plan with all of this.”

“There has to be some kind of statement,” Garcia said.

“I think we locked down the crime scenes at the statues quickly enough that we shouldn’t have too much firsthand exposure,” Gil said. “It should make it pretty easy for us to ignore questions about those. The only people who got a good look were the ones who called it in.”

“They were already informed that it would not be in their best interest to speak to the media,” Garcia said.

“Okay,” Gil said. “Then what would you think if we did a statement, not a press conference, and mentioned the skull only? Our exposure at the Zozobra scene is too big. We know those Protectores have already been talking to people. Let’s only mention what we
have to. Once all of this gets out, we are going to have more than we can handle in this investigation.”

“What if the other scenes come up or if the press asks if the skull is related to Brianna?” Garcia asked.

“I think ‘no comment’ about covers it,” Kline said, settling the matter.

Judge Otero sat on the bench, listening to a middle-aged local woman. The case was another domestic abuse. The woman was explaining why she had thrown a plate at her boyfriend.

He straightened his class ring on his finger. It was starting to look worn at the base. He rubbed it with his fingertip to see if that would improve the polish. The stone was blue and on the sides was etched “1971” and “UNM.” He had gotten his degree in engineering from the University of New Mexico. That was ages ago. Before his nineteen years on the bench and his five reelections.

He looked up as the woman stopped talking, saying, “I’ll send you to anger management yoga and meditation class. My clerk will give you the information.” He heard a few snickers in the audience. Before the woman could thank him, he said, “Next case.”

Judge Otero had started sending offenders to yoga and meditation classes after getting tired of seeing the same suspects over and over. Clearly, the usual methods other judges used didn’t work. So he decided to be creative and try something new. Only he didn’t expect the amount of publicity it generated. He had reporters all the way from New York calling him for interviews, and one of the cable news networks had scheduled him to talk about criminal sentences. They had canceled after the Judicial Standards Commission started its investigation a year ago, but he fully expected that they would call again once that was dealt with.

His clerk read the charges of the next case: racing on the streets, no license, no seat belt, and no registration. A young man came forward. He looked to be no more than sixteen, and his mother was with him.

“Son,” Judge Otero said, “do you realize that the punishment for this is ninety days in jail and three hundred dollars? It is an extremely serious offense.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I do, sir, but I want to plead guilty with explanation.”

Judge Otero leaned back in his leather chair and surveyed the boy, who looked like he might pass out from nervousness. The judge felt this pause was necessary—especially in juvenile cases—to make the defendant realize the power of the court. Often, this was the first and last time that a citizen would step into a courtroom, so the judge felt it was his duty to show his authority. Here, in this chamber, was a rare world—a place where only one person made the rules, and not following those rules had serious consequences.

Judge Otero nodded slightly and said, “Go ahead.”

“I was just getting done eating and it was my birthday and I was only two blocks away—”

“Stop,” the judge said. “I’ll dismiss because it was your birthday, not because it was two blocks. Always wear your seat belt.”

The next case was called as the judge looked at his watch and then over the courtroom. He had only a half hour left of hearing cases until he had to head off to the Plaza for the main fiesta celebration. He watched a redhead in boots play with her hair as his clerk called up a man with a suspended driver’s license charge. Before the clerk finished reading the case particulars, Judge Otero interrupted with “You have a suspended license. How did you get here?”

“I walked,” the man said.

“You better keep walking,” the judge said as the courtroom laughed.

Chief Kline and Garcia drove off, leaving Gil and Joe standing in front of the crime scene. Near them, a goldfinch sang happily in a blue spruce tree. Gil felt like he’d been put into a pot of boiling water and left to drown. He was drifting, being pushed wherever the current took him. The chaos of the crime scenes and the implied violence were hard to wrap his head around. He needed to regain control.

“We are getting nowhere,” Gil said. “All we’ve been doing is rushing from one scene to the next and never having a chance to formulate a real theory.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Joe said. “We need to step back and regroup.”

A half hour later, Joe and Gil were set up in the office conference room with a few stacks of papers that represented Fisher’s case files, evidence logs, and crime scene photos.

They sat before a whiteboard. On it, in green dry-erase marker, Joe had written four headings—
SUSPECT TYPE, PROFILE, MOTIVE
, and
LOCATIONS
.

“All right, so our goal here is not to get locked down on specifics,” Gil said, hoping that it might forestall any disagreements. “Let’s just talk in generalities.”

Joe added, “I think we have to, since we still don’t have any information.”

Liz and Adam had yet to return any of Gil’s phone calls. Kristen Valdez hadn’t discovered any new crime scenes.

Under
SUSPECT TYPE
, Joe had already listed “serial killer,” “pedophile,” and “mentally ill.”

“Okay,” Gil said, looking at the list. “What do all these kinds of suspects have in common?”

“All of them would have committed stranger abduction,” Joe said.

“Good thinking,” Gil said. “So, if it is Brianna, she was snatched by a stranger. That at least gives us a broad profile to start with.” He started to pace a little in front of the whiteboard, feeling the need for movement to get his brain working.

As he began to talk, he thought back to all the research he had read about offenders who committed abductions. “Okay, well . . . killers tend to be in the same racial and social categories as their victims. That means he is a white or Hispanic male, working class. He probably has a history of violence against kids, but this is the first time he’s done anything like this around here or we would have heard about it. That makes him in his early to mid twenties but with a few minor prior arrests. He would need isolation, so that would mean he’s unmarried, lives alone.”

Joe wrote quickly on the board to keep up with Gil. The profile list now had more than a half-dozen items on it.

Gil stopped pacing and looked up at the board, nodding. “That’s a good start,” he said. “Okay, let’s move on to motive.”

“Are we talking about motive for the killing or for making the displays or for abducting her?” Joe asked.

“That’s a good question,” Gil said. “I don’t know. Are they all one and the same? Did he take her with the intent of making displays with her bones, or did that idea come later?”

Joe looked at the board for another moment before he said, “I don’t think we know enough about the guy to say for a hundred percent sure why he took her or killed her.” He hesitated before saying the next part. “I mean, I know this is your area of expertise with all that behavior analysis crap, but I feel we should concentrate on why he made the displays. I think they tell us a lot about him.”

“How so?” Gil asked, already knowing the answer but trying to use it as a teaching moment.

“Well . . . he didn’t hide her body,” Joe said. It was now his turn to pace around the room. “He wanted her to be seen. Not only seen, he wanted her bones to make a statement. He put time into making that necklace and putting all that stuff into the jars, and then writing those notes. This took a lot of thought, a lot of planning.”

“So he’s organized,” Gil said, almost smiling. Joe was finally starting to think like a detective.

“He’s creative, too,” Joe said. “I mean, to him he made something beautiful, something to look at.”

“He thinks it’s art,” Gil said, picking up on Joe’s train of thought, “and an artist tries to convey emotion.”

“What emotion is he trying to show with this?” Joe asked.

“I think it’s guilt,” Gil said.

“I think it’s pleasure,” Joe said. Gil shook his head. Despite all their theorizing, they were right back where they had been all day. Going over the same territory, still at odds.

Gil was tired of it.

Ashley Rodriguez felt the muscles in her stomach tightening in another contraction. The nurse said they weren’t real contractions, but they felt real to Ashley. She was alone in the exam room of the ER, waiting for the doctor to check her. The nurse had told her to wait on the table, but lying on her back was impossible. Her heavy belly
cut off her breathing, as if someone were choking her. She had tried to lie on her side, but within a few minutes, her hip and thigh started throbbing.

She decided just to stand up and walk around the room a little, pulling the IV stand behind her. Her pregnancy with Brianna had been so different, so easy. There had been no false contractions. She had been getting a prenatal checkup when the doctor said something about taking her over to the hospital for some tests. She was quickly taken to an ultrasound room. Blood was drawn. Exams were done. Then the doctor said, “Are you ready to have your baby?” It had taken Ashley by surprise. She was only at thirty-three weeks. She had almost seven weeks left to go until her due date, and she wasn’t in labor, but the doctors seemed so sure. So they gave her something to block the pain, and she had a C-section while she was still wide-awake. As soon as it was over, the nurse asked Ashley if she wanted to breastfeed, but Ashley said that she was too groggy. She really didn’t want the nurse to get mad at her, but she didn’t want to nurse Brianna. Just like she didn’t want to nurse the new baby. She had seen what nursing does to a woman’s breasts, and she didn’t want hers to end up sagging and loose. Plus, if she breastfed, she’d have to pump her breast milk if she wanted to leave the baby with her mom. A bottle was so much easier.

She had been in the hospital for a few days, but Brianna had to stay longer because she came too early and the doctors said her lungs needed some extra help. Ashley spent all day in the hospital, sitting next to Brianna, holding her tiny hand, but at night, she had to go home. Even during those few hours apart, Ashley missed her little girl.

The marker Joe was using on the whiteboard made squeaking noises as he wrote. He was adding items under a heading that now read
MOTIVES FOR DISPLAYS
. He had already put down “guilt” and “pleasure.” They had agreed not to debate the finer points behind each of their pet motives and instead just concentrate on getting all the possible ideas down.

“I guess if he used her bones like this because of his religious
beliefs we should also add ‘faith’ as a motive,” Gil said, “and we should probably think about what Garcia said about a cult.”

“What kind of cult would do this?” Joe asked as he added the new items to the board. “Like Satan worshippers? Or a death cult?”

“I have no idea,” Gil said. The two men looked at the board for a moment before Gil said, “What are we missing?”

“What about a revenge motive?” Joe asked. “I would think if someone wanted Ashley or anyone else in the family to suffer, this would be a great way to do it.”

“That’s an interesting thought,” Gil said as Joe wrote it down, “and that means we should add ‘retaliation killer’ to the suspect list. Did Fisher ever mention anyone in the family who had enemies?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” Joe said, “but I’ll go through his notes again as soon as we’re done here.” The two men stared at the motive list a little longer until they were out of ideas.

“All right, let’s move on to locations,” Gil said. “I guess you can write where we found all the bones.”

Joe wrote the list quickly: Zozobra, Mary, Mary, and Mary.

Gil smiled a little. “That’s not incredibly helpful, but it’ll work for the moment.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “What do all these locations have in common besides the Mary thing? . . . I guess they’re all downtown, and they all have significance to people from Santa Fe. A couple of the places are a little hard to find.”

“Good, good,” Gil said. “We can add that to the profile, that he’s probably a local.”

Joe stared at the board some more, then said, “I feel like we’re missing something about Zozobra.”

“How so?”

“Well, at all the other crime scenes, the bones were left at Catholic sites . . .”