The Bone Fire: A Mystery (8 page)

Mai Bhago Kaur had been up since 3:00
A.M.
Before the dawn. At the time when the soul could best hear its own thoughts. Now she sat with the children. She was reading to them from a book called
Sikh Traditions for Children.
She knew they were trying to listen to the stories about the ten gurus. She could see it in their eager faces.

Mai Bhago breathed deeply and lengthened her spine as she sat in sukasana pose, her legs crossed and her buttocks firmly on the ground. She could hold the pose for hours if necessary. Or all day. Her first yoga teacher had been strict, forcing her to keep a pose for a half hour at least. That teacher hadn’t understood the holy nature of yoga or that it wasn’t about being harsh, but that had been almost thirty-five years ago. Back when she was still in Los Angeles. Back when she was still poisoning her body with cocaine, alcohol, and red meat. She used to love the feel of cocaine, the way it made her feel energized and so intellectual. The high never lasted, though. Now it was the hours of meditation she did every morning that gave her that high and more.

Mai Bhago wondered if cocaine had changed much in the intervening years. Maybe it was no longer the drug of choice for movie stars and TV personalities. It was a movie producer who had introduced her to it. He was casting for
The Outlaw Josey Wales,
and she was dying to work with Clint Eastwood. So she tried a little line of powder when he asked her to. She found out one week later—after
spending her days and nights with the man and his friends—that he wasn’t a movie producer and he’d never even seen a Clint Eastwood movie. He was simply a person taking advantage of her. She left him without drama, but it would be another five years and tens of thousands of dollars gone before she left the cocaine.

She shifted slightly as she tried to concentrate again on what she was reading. A few of the children started to giggle and she stared at them purposely until they quieted down again. She turned the page and read outloud, “Guru Gobind Singh was the tenth guru . . .”

The line officer radioed Gil, asking permission for the crime scene tech to access the area. Gil agreed and waited until Adam Granger’s white van pulled up on the now empty street. The officers had done their job well—Gil could see no one in the area other than a few cops.

Adam got out of his van holding his work case. He adjusted his tall white turban, which must have been jostled in the process of getting out. Adam was a Sikh, one of the thousand or so that lived in the area. Most resided in the Hacienda de Guru Ram Das Ashram in Española, about thirty miles to the north, but some, including Adam, lived in Santa Fe.

Gil had known Granger for years. Their daughters were on the same soccer team. Adam had left the ashram when he was sixteen, dropping his Sikh name and the religion’s ways. He had been tired of being known as a White Sikh—which was what some India-born Sikhs called the Anglo Westerners who lived in the ashram. Those Sikhs considered everyone at the ashram pretenders. Over the years, however, Adam softened his rebellion and decided to wear a turban again to show his faith. His parents didn’t seem to mind either way. Gil had met them once at a state soccer championship. They stood out in their white clothes and turbans, watching their granddaughter with beatific smiles on their faces.

The men shook hands, and Adam said, “Let me see it.” They walked over together to the statue, where Adam let out a low whistle, saying, “Now this is messed up.”

“How fast can you do this?” Gil said, knowing that they were
running out of time. They couldn’t keep the street closed for much more than a half hour before arousing suspicion from the public and the press.

“It’s pretty straightforward,” Adam said, taking his camera out of his case. “There’s no use processing the area because of cross-contamination. It’s really just a fingerprints and photo job. I can do the paperwork later. Maybe about fifteen minutes.”

Gil left Adam to do his work. He wandered into the quiet enclosed courtyard of the Santuario and sat on an old wooden bench. Yet another statue of Mary—this one of her image at Lourdes—was in a niche in front of him. A few late-summer roses were still blooming on the dozens of bushes that ringed the cool courtyard. Gil closed his eyes and said a vicious prayer. It was one of pure vengeance, tempered only by his request for justice. Gil had grown up expressing his most primal emotions through prayer. He remembered as a teenager confessing to God the usual things on a boy’s mind, their conversations rife with lust and longings. Gil had never understood those people who said that prayers must be pure and clean. He saw God as the only one who would understand his deepest, darkest, and most disturbing emotions. It was God who created them.

Gil made the sign of the cross. Then he took a deep breath. He had used the prayer as an outlet for his rage, but he couldn’t allow himself that luxury again. Now he needed to be persistent, controlled, and methodical. That was his advantage. That was how he had solved every case in his ten-year career. It would work in this case as well.

He dug his cell phone out of his pants pocket. He looked at the time—10:20
A.M.
—before he speed-dialed his mom at home.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hi, Mom. I was just calling to see if you checked your blood sugar yet.”

“Hi, hito. Oh, no, I haven’t had time.”

“De veras?” Gil said, exasperated. “Mom, you’re going to be sitting through Mass at the cathedral for at least an hour. If your blood sugar isn’t high enough you could pass out.”

“Okay, okay, hito,” she said. “I’ll go find the machine . . .”

Joe walked into the courtyard, oblivious that Gil was on the phone. He started to pace in circles around the perimeter of the courtyard.

“I want this guy, Gil.”

“Joe, I’m on the—”

“I mean I want this guy. I want to stomp on his head and cut his balls off. No, wait. First I want to cut his balls off, then—”

“I’m on the phone,” Gil said again, then, into the phone, “Mom, I’ve got to go, I’ll call you back.”

“I think your Aunt Yolanda is here,” she said.

“Mom, okay, so I—”

“Goddamn asshole,” Joe yelled.

“Who’s that yelling?” Gil’s mom asked.

“Just a crazy man,” Gil said. “I have to go. I’ll call you later.” He hung up and turned to face Joe.

“Did you have to yell every swear word you know while I was on the phone?” Gil asked.

“It wasn’t every swear word,” Joe said, his rant over. “I think I left out ‘hell’.”

“Do you feel better?” Gil asked.

“No,” Joe said. “I feel like I want to kill the guy.”

Gil sighed. He felt the same way, but he couldn’t afford to. He had to keep whatever he was feeling tamped down because one of them needed a level head. Clearly that was not Joe’s forte.

“Okay,” Gil said. “Let’s just talk this through and throw some ideas out there.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “Give me what you got.”

“First off, I think these new bones clearly belong to the same body as the skull.”

“I’m with you there—”

“If this is Brianna—”

“It is—”

“And she was killed last year—”

“Which I hope to God she was because the alternative creeps me the hell out—”

“Then she’s been dead for a while. Why do this now? Was there some stressor on the killer? Maybe something set him off.”

“Like what?”

“A divorce or a loved one dying . . . I don’t know,” Gil said.

“That sounds about right. But why put her bones on display with all the weird doll heads?”

Gil looked over at the small statue of Our Lady of Lourdes, considering. “All right, well, I know it’s going to sound strange, but I think this might be an act of remorse.”

“Dude, this is straight-up evil. The son of a bitch is taunting us. I’m thinking pedophile serial killer.”

“Maybe . . . but I don’t think so,” Gil said. “I think this is someone who feels guilty for killing Brianna. Why put the skull in Zozobra, which is burned to ward off evil? Why put bones in this holy place, in front of Mary? She’s the mother of Jesus, the protector of children.”

“If he’s remorseful, why make it all so creepy? I think he did this for us, for the police.”

“I just don’t see that,” Gil said, shaking his head. “I think it’s more likely that he’s mentally ill and he made the display as part of some elaborate delusion. Like he knew killing Brianna was wrong and he is presenting her to Mary as a way to make amends. This display took time and skill. It isn’t for us, it’s for God. It’s an offering.”

It was Joe’s turn to shake his head. “I’m not buying the guilty conscience thing. This is just fucked up beyond belief. To me that means a serial killer.”

“Okay, so let’s look at that,” Gil said, trying to allow Joe to have his say, not wanting to shut him down completely. They were supposed to be acting as partners, after all. “If it is a serial killer, he’s a guy who plans his kill in advance and then disposes of the body in a very thought-out way. That would make him a hedonist killer, who just kills for pleasure.”

“Yeah, that totally fits with this,” Joe said.

“We need to keep something in mind, though,” Gil said. “This is Santa Fe. We only have seventy thousand people. A hedonist serial killer would really need a bigger population to hunt in.”

“Come on,” Joe said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“I feel like we’re talking in circles,” Gil said, frustrated.

“Yeah, me, too.”

Gil rubbed his eyes and said, “Adam should be done now. Let’s go check with him, and then get out of here and get some breakfast. It might make more sense after we eat.”

Joe and Gil sat in Tecolote Café waiting to order. Adam had promised to call as soon as he made it to Albuquerque, where they would compare the new bones to the skull. Gil had called Liz on their way to the restaurant but got no answer, so he left a message. Then he called Ashley’s cell phone, but Rose answered instead, her voice worried. Gil could hear a loudspeaker in the background.

“Mrs. Rodriguez, this is Detective Montoya. Is everything all right?” Gil asked.

“It’s Ashley,” she said. “She kept throwing up after you left, so I drove her to the hospital. I was worried about the baby.”

“What are the doctors saying?” Gil asked.

“I don’t know, they’re talking about giving her an IV,” she said, her voice muddled in concern.

“You know, I’m sure it’s just a precaution,” Gil said. “I’ll call back later to check on you.”

As soon as he hung up, Joe started ranting and
speculating about Brianna. Gil’s head was aching, and he needed some quiet to figure out their next step.

“Joe, please, let’s just stop talking about it for five minutes.”

Joe looked at his watch. “Okay, five minutes starts . . . now. In the meantime, check out the chest on that girl over there. Do you think they’re real?”

“I don’t know,” Gil said, amazed that Joe’d had time to even notice the woman in the few minutes they’d been in the restaurant.

“Oh, come on. Just make a guess.”

“Fine . . . yeah, I think they’re real,” Gil said absentmindedly, looking over the menu, trying to decide between the breakfast burrito and huevos rancheros.

“Are you nuts? Look how perky they are. You haven’t even looked at her.”

Gil sighed and turned to look, knowing that was what it would take to get Joe to cease and desist. He saw a dark-haired woman of about twenty in a tank top and jeans sitting with a man in a baseball cap. The two looked happy, smiling at each other over coffee.

“I still think they’re real,” Gil said, going back to his menu.

“Are you nuts?”

“I just don’t see a girl from Santa Fe getting breast implants,” Gil said. “That’s an L.A. thing.”

“Oh, man, where have you been? Like, statistically, half a million women a year get boob jobs. That’s like five million in ten years. Not all those women live in L.A.”

“If you say so,” Gil said quietly as the waitress came over to give them their coffee and get their order. Joe had decided on pancakes. As soon as the waitress left, he started up again. “Personally, I’m not against fake boobs. I know some guys think they’re too hard, but I’m all about image, you know what I mean?”

“No,” Gil said, taking a sip of coffee.

“Geez, Gil, we’re just talking here. Lighten up.”

“Joe, I just don’t think I have enough personal knowledge about fake breasts to make an informed decision,” Gil said with a smile. His attempt to lighten up.

“Well, I can tell you anything you want to know. I’ve done a lot
of research on the subject. For instance, if you have an experienced doc, they won’t let you go too huge, like some of the porn stars.”

“Okay.”

“Dude, you have to know what I’m talking about. Don’t you ever watch porn?”

“I’ve been meaning to get around to that.”

“You’re telling me you don’t watch porn?”

“I have a wife and two daughters.”

“Every man watches porn. I don’t care if you’re married, single, gay, or straight,” Joe said. Gil didn’t answer, hoping Joe would let it drop. He should have known better. “You’ve never looked at porn?” Joe asked. “Never?”