Brenda Mason resided in a small two-bedroom house on a side street a few blocks from downtown Santa Fe. She rented a room from Sonja Swentzel, a forty-something woman who remained stuck in the sixties. Sonja dressed in long cotton broom-skirts and puff-sleeved lace tops, with rows of colored corn necklaces and faux turquoise beads around her neck. She was pale-eyed and pale-complexioned, with brown hair down to her waist. Unlike Brenda, who was always high, Sonja was a whiny, depressing person. She had glommed on to every assistance program offered by Santa Fe County. Brenda saw her as a malingerer who spent most of her time thinking of ways to scam the State, the County or the City, to talk them into paying for more of her expenses and those of her now full-grown illegitimate son. She had racked up over a quarter of a million dollars in assistance since he was born twenty-five years earlier, and some poor fool she’d selected as a sperm donor was now up to his ass in debt to the State for all those years of back child support she claimed he never paid.
Sonja might be an opportunist, but she was no dummy. She had just never taken advantage of her college education. Instead of using her Master’s degree, she preferred to be on the dole. The City paid the rent on her house, and she rented part of it to Brenda, who took her time paying the rent. Brenda knew it annoyed Sonja that she only stayed there when it was convenient, spending the remainder of the time with Charlie or some other temporary boyfriend.
Brenda pulled into Sonja’s driveway. She reached over to the back seat, grabbed Charlie’s backpack and sauntered up the brick sidewalk. The small adobe house was typical of the area, except that the front door was painted bright yellow—Sonja’s idea of drawing the sun’s energy. Brenda turned the key and opened the door. She was glad Sonja wasn’t home. She went into the bathroom, stripped off her clothes, and drew a bath. As she toweled off, she debated whether to stay home or go out for drinks. On the way home, Brenda stopped at a trendy shop on the plaza and bought herself a skirt, top and a pair of sandals. In the bedroom, she took the new outfit out of the shopping bag and got dressed.
She reached into Charlie’s backpack, grabbed a handful of bills and put them in an envelope for Sonja with a note stating that she intended to move at the end of the month. She emptied the contents of the backpack on the bed, stuffed the bills into a small overnight satchel and hid it under a stack of junk in the closet.
Brenda stood in front of the full-length mirror. Killer extraordinaire, she thought as she checked her makeup. She sat down at her computer, logged on to the local newspaper site and scanned the local news. She erupted into raucous laughter as she read the front page headline about four women found dead in Santa Fe County. Could there possibly be a connection to the recent shootings, the reporter asked the Police captain. “Shit, yeah,” Brenda raised her arm to mimic the pull of a train whistle. “Every one of these bitches slept with Charlie. That’s your connection, asshole.”
When she was twenty-two, a psychiatrist had told her the psychotic episodes would return unless she stayed on the meds. He prescribed Xyprexa and Haldol and told her to see him in a month, but she never kept the appointment; she could buy all the drugs she needed on the street. She moved to Colorado and found a job and an apartment in Denver. Things progressed smoothly until the breakup with Jimmy Fernando. To get even with Jimmy for dumping her, she killed his new girlfriend. That would fix his ass. She packed up all her stuff and moved to New Mexico. When she met Charlie, everything was fine until she told him she was leaving. She had been sure that he would profess his love and beg her to stay. Instead he had told her not to let the door kick her in the ass on the way out.
After the breakup with Charlie, Brenda began parking her car a short distance from the ranch. When she saw the lights go out, she sneaked in through the sunroom door, which Charlie never locked. She had previously drugged the bottle of whiskey he kept in the cupboard. When he and his date had passed out, she lifted the woman onto the little red wagon the old lady who owned the ranch had used for carrying firewood. In the barn, she placed the limp body on the plastic tarp, slit its throat and dragged it down the ramp to the tunnel. Charlie woke up the next morning thinking the woman had left in the middle of the night.
Brenda had discovered the entrance to the tunnel quite by accident while scouring the barn for Charlie’s stash of grass. She spotted a piece of old canvas sheeting under a layer of dirt and figured it might be covering a hiding place. Lifting the edge of the frayed tarp exposed a metal grate over what appeared to be a tunnel. Shining a flashlight ahead of her, she followed the shaft for a thousand feet—she couldn’t tell exactly how far—until it ended at a four-rung ladder. She climbed up the ladder but had a hard time dislodging the boulder over the exit. Finally it gave. Emerging from the other end of the tunnel, she was momentarily disoriented. What a surprise to find herself at the cave at Medicine Rock. From where she was standing, she could see all the way to the barn. Holy shit.
When Brenda killed the first woman, she decided to stash the body in the shaft until she could drag it over and dump it in the old well some distance behind the barn. But she never had that chance. Besides, it looked like nobody had ever been in the tunnel, not even Charlie, and it pleased her that she had found the perfect hiding place.
Initially there was only going to be one victim before Brenda attempted to get Charlie back in her life, but that asshole was never satisfied. He had to have every woman. At least once every couple of weeks he brought a new someone home to the ranch. There were probably more that Brenda didn’t know about, but she couldn’t keep track of him twenty four-seven, however hard she tried.
Brenda stared at herself in the mirror, deep in thought. I’m Scot free; the cops are focusing on Charlie. Right now she was looking forward to having a drink at the bar in Madrid and getting on with life. That fifty grand was going to make life much, much easier.