Sixteen

Joe Mascarenas was working late, assembling jury instructions on his own because the DA had pulled money out of the paralegal budget. He told Aragon he would meet her at the coffee shop across from the Rail Runner station.

She arrived first and watched her cousin labor as he carried his obese body on its small feet. His face was flushed when he stepped in the door. She had his usual waiting, a twenty-ounce French Roast with whipped cream.

“Did you walk the whole way?” The DA’s office was half a mile down the street.

“Trying to lose some pounds. I take the stairs. Park a block from the office. Carry my files instead of rolling them into court.”

The loose flesh under his chin quivered. It would be a long time before his program showed results.

“I’m always sweaty.” They took seats by a window. “How are you handling Judy Diaz’s vendetta?”

“What’s with her? This is about more than me taping Geronimo talking to his lawyer.”

“We see stuff like this whenever Thornton’s defending. This is the worst I’ve seen.”

“Why didn’t you strike her?” Under New Mexico criminal procedure, each side gets one chance to disqualify a judge for no reason at all. The DA’s failure to use its peremptory challenge had been bothering Aragon.

“Diaz has been wising up. If it’s a Thornton client, she’s making discretionary rulings immediately. That closes the door to our challenge and she’s along for the rest of the ride. We could appeal, fight her up the line. But she’s Chief Judge. She’d involve other judges she got elected and make us pay.” He slurped the whipped cream from the top of his coffee and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ve made a friend in Diaz’s office. This person saw what happened on the Fager case and came to us. She’ll let me know next time there’s a whiff of Thornton’s perfume in chambers.”

“Explain the connection there.”

Aragon sipped at her own coffee. Mascarenas took a long drink before answering. She could see him wrestling with something. He spoke with a foamy mustache.

“They’ve been at it since law school. Their study group met in Judy’s bedroom.”

“You know this?” Aragon leaned forward and used a napkin to wipe her cousin’s face. “Take it to Judicial Standards. A judge banging a lawyer appearing before her. That’s gotta break some rule.”

“It does, but try proving it. We take a shot like that against Diaz and don’t put her down, it’s the DA and every at-will employee in our shop who’s out next election. That’s why you’re getting a paid vacation. Diaz wants a sacrifice to appease the angry girlfriend god. You’re the paschal lamb.”

“What bullshit. The union will back them down. Rick is getting us representation.”

“The union needs Diaz more than they need you or any rank-and-file. Who do you think appoints the mediator when collective bargaining stalls? Who’s been granted power to give union officers administrative leave to run the union? Two little clauses in the contract say it’s the Chief Judge of the First Judicial District. Enjoy your time off and come back ready for the next battle. Fager’s gearing up, something will break loose. I got three motions from him today, a research memo, and a case-strategy outline. He has some good ideas. Diaz and Thornton can’t bar the doors forever.”

Aragon looked through the window at the Rail Runner. It was painted red and orange, with a road runner down its side. Doors opened to commuters heading home. Aragon recognized two police officers boarding for the run south to Albuquerque and Rio Rancho, where cops could afford houses.

“I gotta get back.” Mascarenas pushed himself to his feet, groaning a little as he straightened his back.

“You’re welcome to join Rick and me in the gym. We could help you put a routine together. Hard as you work, the nights you’re at your desk after a full day in court, you need to take care of yourself, cuz.”

“I’m doing what I can.” He smoothed his tie over his stomach. She could see little threads at the bottom where the silk was fraying. “One hour with you, I’ll be so sore I’ll give up completely.”

She watched him waddle out the door and take the steps one at a time. At the bottom he caught his breath then faced his body north and put his legs into motion. He walked half a block then stopped for air. She felt sorry for him and proud at the same time.

Aragon called her brother to borrow his hunting truck. He promised to have it at his place in Pecos, ready to go, with beer iced in a cooler. He was always riding her about not taking time off. Anything to get her away from the job—and out of Santa Fe—he was there for his little sister.

She took I-25 east into the mountains, below the slopes where Cynthia Fremont bled to death by a hidden lake. She exited at Glorieta and wound her way along dirt roads to her brother’s place in the pines. Javier lived in a manufactured house with two wings constructed of repo’d single-wides he’d added for the kids. A hundred yards from the main house sat two more manufactured homes where Lobo Loco Outfitters boarded hunters before Javier and Serena led them into the Pecos Wilderness after trophy elk. His wife was his match in finding the big bulls.

The company’s mules resided in barns below the main house. Javier was inside the pipe coral dragging a wire brush through the coat of a tan jack. He wore a shirt from the Saints and Sinners bar in Espanola, once a biker’s hangout, now a package store on a highway where cops disrupted heroin deals. Javier had washed out of two state agencies but found a living doing what he loved, roaming the mountains and shooting things. Outfitting had paid for a hundred acres in the pines and was building his children’s college funds.

Add a few prison tats and Javier could fit in with the Saints and Sinners crowd, except his drugs of choice stopped at beer and hot peppers. Woolly black beard, long hair as wild as a tumbleweed, big arms like Lewis. Denise always wondered where he got his genes. She’d stopped growing in eighth grade. Javier could wrestle the mule he was grooming.

Serena waved from the porch on the house, her hand slicing smoke from a barbecue grill.

“Detective Aragon.” Javier dropped the wire brush in a bucket of water and climbed out of the corral. He lifted her into the air. His fingers found her ribs.

“You’re assaulting a police officer.”

White teeth gleamed against his dark black beard. She thrashed, but it was pointless.

He swung around and sat her on the corral’s top post.

“I hosed it down good,” he said and tossed the keys to his F-350, four-wheel drive, Super Duty XLT Supercab, with Ruger mud flaps and an I-beam and winch replacing the original front bumper. “You don’t want to sleep in what I’ve been hauling. We can put the shell on before you go.”

“I’ll sleep in the cab if it rains. An entire family could live in there.”

“You wanted a spotting scope and my camera with the telephoto. In the console. You want my Mini-14? Thirty-round clip. Any coyotes within two hundred yards are fucked.”

“It’s not exactly coyotes I’m after.”

“You want my Weatherby?”

Serena called from the porch. “I hope you’re staying for dinner.”

“What’s cooking?” Aragon yelled back. “Smells incredible.”

“Cat,” Javier said.

Aragon wasn’t sure she heard him right.

“A lion won’t be sniffing my mules anymore.”

“What the hell.” She could brag about it to other cops. None of them had brothers who butchered a mountain lion for dinner. “I have to ask. Does it taste like chicken?”

“Not even close,” Javier said, and lifted her off the fence to carry her to the house.

Over beers before dinner, Aragon mentioned how her old friend Buff, now Roshi Larson, said Javier’s place in the woods was his monastery. Serena started calling him “Monk.” He reminded her monks took vows of chastity and silence. How would she like that?

“Deal. Five kids and a husband with opinions about everything,” Serena said and passed a bowl of chips. “After the dishes, I’ll shave your head, make you a hooded robe.”

Driving Javier’s truck back to town, Aragon decided never to mention this dinner around cops. Mountain lion was surprisingly damn good eating, especially the way Serena did it with red chile, onions, oregano, and cumin. On the side, frijoles and papas under melted jack and more of the red. Homemade tortillas. Flan at the end with coffee. That was a meal to beat Lotaburgers.

But if Omar Serrano heard about it:

Yo, Butch. Which way you like your pussy—excuse me—your cat, best of all?

She’d have to break his nose to shut him up.