Unfortunately, it was not Hector Trujillo or his brothers who found Charlene’s corpse. If they had, the news of Ruby’s death that raced through Zamora could have been avoided. Instead, it was the oldest villager, toothless and half-blind, out loading his wagon with wood. He came across the partly naked and battered body of a young woman in a shallow grave.
After the old man reported the information to Elaine, she delivered it to the police inspector. Heaving up the words with genuine grief, she whispered, “They found Ruby’s body in the woods.”
The inspector moved swiftly to the circle of Spanish farmers camped at the side of the road, beer cans and rosaries in hand and heads bowed in prayer.
“Who saw the body?” he asked gruffly.
“Myself,” the eldest in the group admitted. Weathered in the cheeks like buffalo leather, his tongue thumped against his gums.
“Where?”
The old man pointed north. Another described the fire road that led to the meadow with the spring-fed pond.
“Get an ambulance up here,” the inspector shouted to an assistant. “Radio the sheriff to come back.”
Through the window, Kate watched the commotion. After Elaine entered the house and repeated what she knew to David Tanner, Kate saw him blanche. She felt Elaine’s hand settle heavily on her shoulder.
“What?” she turned to David.
Quicker better, he thought. “They found a body.”
“No!” she moaned, flinging Elaine aside.
“No!” she defied God.
“No!” The word spreading infernal darkness, poison, lamentation, and grief over the land.
“No!” she refused to believe.
“No!” she pleaded to every deity invented by man: Tara for compassion, Buddha for detachment, Kali for destruction, Jesus for salvation, Yahweh for revenge, and the mysteries who govern the physical laws of the universe.
“No!” The mantra of a madwoman who rejected witness, rumor, and report until she had bona fide proof.
Kate streaked across the yard, tackling the inspector.
“I’m coming with you! I’m coming too!”
David ran after her. “Let me go, Kate. You stay. I’m going.”
He was crying as he propped her against the car, kissing her hand, trying to break the terror down into something small and tender.
Kate flung open the door of the patrol car. She challenged them to refuse her.
“I’m here,” David said. “I’m here beside you.”
Three miles north of Zamora, two state police cars and the sheriff’s truck turned onto a seldom used and barely maintained fire road. The ride was slow and bumpy. They parked and began to walk along the road. Fine mocha-colored dust coated their shoes and clothes.
Kate was the first to spot a limp female body. Even at a distance, she could see it wasn’t Ruby. She fell to her knees and began to vomit.
“It’s not Ruby,” she managed.
She tottered to her feet and threw herself against David.
“It’s not Ruby.” She couldn’t stop saying, “It’s not Ruby.” Today, someone else would have to suffer the loss. Not her, not yet. “It’s not Ruby.”
They walked toward the body. The sheriff gestured for Kate to stay away.
“What do you think, David?”
The doctor bent down. He delicately touched the bones in the face and glanced at the reconstructive surgery in the pubic area. She hadn’t been dead long.
“Drowned probably,” he said.
“By herself?” the sheriff puzzled, pointing across the meadow to the spot that marked the center of the plush green hollow. “Over there?”
“The blow to her face was hard but probably not fatal. My educated guess is it knocked her out. Maybe she was drunk or stoned, fell down, injured herself, got up, fell in, unable to lift her head. Or she was punched and pushed.”
“Assuming it was foul play, why drag her over here?”
“Less of a chance of finding her in a grave.”
“Are you sure she drowned?”
“Not positive,” David said. He picked a few tiny sprigs from Charlene’s blond hair. “Villagers come here to get watercress.”
Sheriff, inspector, evidence team, and doctor made a sweep of a large circumference around the pond. Two bottles of champagne, a crushed box of crackers, a bloody bandanna were recovered. There was also a footprint in the mud by the pond.
Kate sat beneath a juniper. She had been taken into the pit, singed by hellfire, shown a hole nothing could fill. And then spared. By that miracle alone, she’d been given a second chance. She had been given the right to live again.
“What do you make of it, doctor?”
“No idea,” David said weakly.
Information on the license plate confirmed it was not a rental car but a private vehicle registered to Robert Russo, resident of Tesuque. Russo didn’t know the current whereabouts of the car although he confirmed his cousin, Charlene Russo, had borrowed it for a weekend trip with a friend. He hadn’t heard from her since she left. He knew nothing about her companion, neither name nor gender. He had no reason to report either Charlene or the car missing. He refused to answer questions about Charlene’s sexual identity or questions about the company she generally kept. He tearfully mentioned she had moved to Santa Fe to take care of him because he was sick. He was so sick he could barely walk. The inspector had to wheel him into the morgue in Santa Fe to view the corpse. Identification positive.
A trace turned up Russo’s car in a parking lot on Second Street in downtown Albuquerque. Within walking distance of both train and bus stations. An officer was dispatched with a photo of Ruby Ryan to nearby restaurants, shops, hotels. The car was held as evidence for murder, assault, and kidnapping. A policeman was posted on the floor of the hospital where Tory Mason had been admitted.
David and Kate returned to the Ryan place. The police and sheriff deputies had left, the villagers gone home. They were alone.
“If Ruby ran away, where would she go?” David asked.
“If she had money?”
“Money for a bus, train, plane, where would she go?”
Kate disappeared into Ruby’s inner sanctum. She lifted a floorboard where Ruby kept her valuables: money, a silver ID bracelet that belonged to her father, a locket Kate gave her, a cameo of Kate’s mother.
“Did you find something?” David asked.
“Her cash and her dad’s bracelet are missing.”
“Forget kidnappers. Take away Troy, the corpse, August, the car. Where would Ruby go?”
A filament of hope flickered in Kate’s brain. She wrote out the names and phone numbers of her sister in New Haven, Ruby’s best friend in Tucson, and Marnie Ryan, Edwin’s first cousin.
David made three uncomfortable phone calls. He explained that Ruby was missing. Telegraphing the word missing to each coast underscored the magnitude of the problem. Ruby could be anywhere.
They both jumped when David’s mobile rang.
“Dr. Tanner,” a voice crackled over the line. “This is Marnie Ryan, Kate’s cousin. I got your message about Ruby.”
“Marnie, is she there?” He turned over the phone receiver so Kate could listen too.
“She isn’t here but you should know that Quinn is at the old place in Idaho. He’s spending the summer there.”
“That’s exactly where Ruby would go,” Kate’s heart quickened.
“Can you give us the number in Idaho?”
“There’s no phone but I have a number for the grocer. I’ll call him. He might be willing to drive over to the house. He knew the kids when they were little. He might be willing to help.”