Dead Mountain, page 8
During those middle and high school years, she hadn’t realized how much anger was building up inside her—directed in an unfocused way on Medicine Creek and Kansas and the whole world—until one afternoon when she’d passed the Wagon Wheel Tavern. Inside, she could see the local sheriff at the bar. He was drinking a rum and Coke, though no one would ever admit there was any rum in the red plastic glass, and eating an éclair. And no doubt talking trash about her father, as he did at every opportunity—or so his son, the local bully, informed her: how her dad was a no-good easy rider who, when he’d grown tired of banging his hag of a wife, had hopped a freight train out of town.
Without waiting, without thinking, she’d deviated from her intended path, crossing the street to where Sheriff Hazen’s dusty cruiser was parked. She didn’t know a lot about cars, but she knew how to let air out of tires. She was on the last one when Hazen came out of the tavern.
Ten minutes later, after struggling and biting his finger, she was sitting in the lone holding cell of the jail, her body still shaking from the slam of the cell door.
Metal on metal. Just like the two corpse lockers.
She sat in the cell for hours. For a while, the sheriff’s son came in to mock her, but eventually he got bored and left. She wondered if it was even legal to keep someone her age locked up so long. But she did her best not to show her fear, consoling herself with the knowledge that her mom—who had a mean streak as long as your arm—would let the sheriff have it for making her come into town after work to bail her daughter out of jail.
Finally, she heard voices out in the main office: it was her mother and that new deputy, Tad Franklin. The sheriff must have gone home for the night. Five minutes later, the deputy appeared, unlocked her cell, and led her out into the office. Her mother stood there waiting, her face dead and expressionless. As soon as she saw Corrie, she turned and walked out of headquarters, letting the screen door bang loudly in the Kansas night.
Corrie trailed after her as they walked toward the AMC Gremlin. “Mom,” she began, “that sheriff keeps bad-mouthing Dad and—”
Her mother turned—faster than Corrie thought possible—and smacked her across the face. Hard. Corrie sprawled into the dirt. Tears sprang into her eyes, as much from surprise as from pain.
“I just had to pay forty bucks to spring you loose,” she said, standing over Corrie. “That’s two weeks of food money.”
You mean drinking money, she thought, but said nothing.
“Which means two weeks of you getting your own food. And if you mention that bastard father of yours to me again, you’ll get the beating of your life. Now get your ass in the car.”
Thirteen-year-old Corrie, ears ringing and one hand instinctively rising to her aching cheek, stood up and got into the car. And in the present day, Agent Swanson rose from the desk and—after a final walk around the lab—snapped off the lights and locked the door behind her.
16
TOM GARDINER SAT in the Barcalounger, in the far corner of Adele Mastrelano’s living room. Her house had by now a comforting familiarity, like that of a favorite in-law’s residence: the high-ceilinged entranceway in fashion when the Briargate subdivision was first developed; the Native American décor, domesticated for suburbia; the World Book Encyclopedia and Folio Society books lined up on the shelves, along with the fading family pictures. A few more pictures had been added, Gardiner noticed: mostly of Ralph Mastrelano, Adele’s husband, who’d passed away eighteen months ago after a long struggle with colon cancer.
The potluck food was now spread out on the long dining room table, and through the living room columns Gardiner could see people lining up to get plates. In recent years, these meetings—now just annual—had become increasingly ritualized. People brought the same dishes: ranch lasagna, cheddar bacon jalapeño poppers, Lady Bird Johnson’s Pedernales River chili. Now, with every meeting, there was almost always some recent death to console or retirement home transition to talk about. After dinner, the ritual would begin: the lighting of the candles, the naming of the victims—followed by those still missing. And always, a period of silence and prayer after each name.
Gardiner looked around the dining table, instinctively checking for anyone missing or for any unexpected additions. As always, he found himself doing this in the order their children were found. Besides himself and Adele, there were the Marchenkos, Dmitri and Ann, as always dressed in black. Next, Terry Van Gelder, once an outgoing high school math teacher, now a widower. Then the Hightowers, Fred and Doris, always sitting alongside Ray Martinez. Their children, Luke and Lynn respectively, had been found in May of the year following the tragedy, the bodies lying on top of each other in a ravine, with horrible and inexplicable injuries. Doris Hightower never spoke, and Gardiner wondered if this was some sort of stroke or product of grief, or if she merely chose to be silent at their meetings.
Now his eye moved to Paul Tolland Sr. and Cosmo and Cassy Wright. Fate had dealt most harshly with these three—fifteen years of not knowing, not having a body to bury. Torture. Paul, a dental surgeon, was now widowed. Cosmo and Cassy, plump and sad, both retired.
And then finally there was Melody Ann O’Connell, a real estate lawyer. The odd one in the group. She had joined the group four years ago, the widow of Harry O’Connell, who himself had been widowed after the tragedy and remarried her. That made Melody Ann technically the stepmother of Rodney O’Connell, the ninth victim, although she had never met the young man. Melody Ann was a powerful personality who had quickly become the most active, most organized, and most vocal of the Manzano Families Memorial Association. She had given the group its official name, gotten it 501(c)(3) status, drawn up bylaws, and made it official. While she could be abrasive, a lot of the families felt that after all this time a little abrasiveness was needed, and they were all grateful for her organizational abilities, even if they felt little affection for her as a person.
In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, Gardiner’s life had been a blur of confusion, followed by endless, unrelenting anguish. It was in that early period—after the first three were found—that the families had come together in an ad hoc group. His own wife, gone these five years now, had been instrumental in organizing this support group. It was after her death that Melody Ann arrived on the scene and made the group official.
What a fifteen years it had been. The investigation had started with a roar of promises, furious activity, proclamations of progress, pressers and releases, news programs, and eventually documentaries and a made-for-TV movie. The FBI were everywhere, Agent Gold’s serious, careworn face ubiquitous on television. And then came the long, slow, gradual trickling down of the investigation as it stalled and cooled and finally iced over.
The Manzano Families Memorial Association had not, however, given up. Under Melody Ann’s leadership they gathered petitions, wrote letters, went en masse to the state capitol, and created a web page with biographies and photos of all nine students. They collected donations to help fund the cause and keep the search alive. But over the years, their raw grief and anger had faded into sorrow, and the get-togethers had become solemn reunions rotating among the three or four houses closest to the university and the mountain range that had taken their children.
On this evening, however, things felt different. People had now helped themselves to food and taken their places on the living room sofas, and Adele had brought in more chairs and trays to accommodate the rest. Instead of getting a plate for himself—Gardiner never had an appetite at these affairs—he looked around, taking an almost subconscious count. Twelve people, including himself. Originally the number had been more than double that, with siblings and other family joining in solidarity. Among those twelve, though, the small talk that usually went around the room—the murmuring, occasional sobs, infrequent laughter—was missing tonight. People just seemed to push food around their plates in silence. It was, Gardiner knew, the return of the old specter, thanks to the recent news: still vague and uncertain, but promising renewed investigation and grief to come. Right now, it seemed nobody had the heart to rake off scars only partially healed.
“Well?”
A woman’s voice had punctuated the silence. Melody Ann’s.
“An hour has gone by, and I can’t believe everyone is just dancing around the subject. It’s as if a ghost were sitting here and we’re all pretending not to see it.”
“We” was an interesting term to use, Gardiner thought. Three years after the tragedy, Harry’s first wife, Ruth, had fallen down the basement steps after one too many and broken her neck. Harry had quickly remarried—to Melody Ann—and then just as quickly died too, taken from this earth by a massive heart attack, which to Gardiner was just another expression of his grief.
There was silence for a moment.
“What are we supposed to say?” This was from Paul Tolland, whose son was among the missing, perhaps now found.
“Anything. Everything. I mean, you must have heard about what’s been found. And the FBI’s surely going to reopen the case. You’ve all heard that!”
Of course they’d heard. It had been all over the news. Two bodies had been discovered in a cave several miles from the site of the tent. An FBI agent had just confirmed this much, but she’d given no further details other than they were probably victims of the tragedy. There was the brief television spot at the cave where the discovery was made—but no further details, which simply added to the agony.
Suddenly confronted by this development, everyone appeared paralyzed . . . everyone, that is, except one.
Melody Ann O’Connell put her plate down and went on. “I look around, and . . . what? It seems like we’re half-asleep.”
When nobody said anything, she continued. “I mean, I don’t want to be the one to bring this up, but—why aren’t we, of all people, hearing anything? Why haven’t they been in contact with us? Doesn’t it seem suspicious?”
You love bringing this up, Gardiner thought. She was just the type—with her braying Long Island accent, botoxed face, too-skinny limbs, and frosted blonde tips—to be the center of attention. She hadn’t lived it; she was late to the party. He tried to be charitable, telling himself she’d been incredibly helpful with both her time and legal expertise. And she was a fighter. They needed a fighter.
Terry Van Gelder said in a low voice, “We’ve been through this before. We can’t do anything but wait.”
At least Terry tried. But it made little difference.
“Of course we’ve been through it before,” Melody Ann went on. “They’re expecting us to wait. They’re counting on our passivity.”
Van Gelder, whose daughter had been found near the campfire, said nothing.
“Look, for quite a while now I’ve wondered why the case was shelved so fast—given it was never solved. Anyone else had those thoughts?”
There was a vague murmuring.
“Maybe they didn’t want to solve the case. Now two more bodies turn up and they have to do something. Or at least look like they’re doing something. Am I right? Harry told me about Agent Gold, that guy in charge of the first investigation. Sounds like a Mister Do-Nothing to me. He may be gone, but the FBI’s the same.”
Gardiner had heard this before from Melody Ann and didn’t really buy it. Although he didn’t think Agent Gold, for all his promises, had done a very good job, he’d always considered him an honest man. But now a tiny doubt crept into his mind, which he quickly pushed away. Over the fifteen years, members of the group had floated, discussed, and argued over a hundred theories. They were drowning in theories, paralyzed by theories—not one of which seemed to fit the facts.
“I took an undergrad course in poli sci at Levittown Tech,” Melody Ann went on. “And the professor gave a lecture on the subject of propaganda and social influencing. This is how they do it: they keep saying the same things again and again. We don’t know much at this time. Information is still coming in. The investigation is making progress. Sorry, the details are confidential. How often have we heard that?”
Gardiner could hear some low murmurs that sounded like agreement. He also wondered if, despite her shrillness, she wasn’t right.
“And now and then,” she said, “they drop a little crumb of hard information to deflect or mystify.” She paused. “We’re only people. But they’re a machine. They don’t get tired.”
“Tired of what?” Fred Hightower asked. Everyone was listening now.
“Of keeping their secrets. Of manipulating us into believing their lies. Whatever. That’s the method and it works every time. If you don’t know what questions to ask, you exhaust yourself guessing. That’s why we have to start with simple questions and demand answers. For example: Why haven’t we been contacted yet? Not just over the last fifteen years . . . but the last fourteen hours. Does it seem right that the press is given this information first? That we find out what’s going on from a television screen?”
Now everyone was nodding and agreeing.
“These questions we need to ask,” she went on, arms stretched wide, skeletal fingers spread. “They’re not hard. They’re easy. And we deserve answers—let’s be honest, we’ve earned them.”
Gardiner chewed this over. He was reluctant to admit it, but again she had a point. Two more bodies found—their own children’s, almost certainly—but no notification. At least he’d had a body to bury. He knew what Paul, Cosmo, and Cassy—and, at least indirectly, Melody Ann herself—must be going through right now.
As more people began to express agreement, Melody Ann raised her voice over the noise. “And when they refuse to answer those easy questions—and they will—we escalate to the hard ones. Was it really a couple of drunk kids who found these two bodies? How could ordinary people stumble by accident on something the government, the military, has been searching for now a decade and a half? Is it sheer ineptitude? Or is there something else going on? Something . . . perhaps intentional?”
Now she moistened her throat with a drink of water. The word “intentional” had quieted the group. And into this quiet she spoke again, in a low voice.
“The FBI are covering something up. I’m certain of it—and so are you. As a group, we now need to focus on a single goal: to learn the truth of what that something is.”
17
GO PAST THE church and keep heading straight,” said Stan Morrison, fiddling with his phone while sitting in the passenger seat of the Institute car Nora was driving. They were navigating a warren of dirt streets in the old section of Isleta, just now passing the iconic whitewashed church in the center of the pueblo, one of the oldest mission churches in America.
“In half a mile, Tribal Road 40 crosses a bridge, and it’s on the right.”
His directions brought them to a modest stucco building with a dirt parking lot, surrounded by bare cottonwood trees—the office of the governor. She parked in front and they got out. It was a cold, sunny fall morning, and a steady wind blew skeins of dust along the ground.
They went inside. A friendly receptionist in the small waiting room directed them to the back, where a short hall led to a conference room. Even though they were early, the Tribal Council had already assembled and were seated around an oval table.
As they entered, the council members rose and came forward. Darren Tenorio introduced everyone in turn and they shook hands. The council consisted of only six people in addition to the governor, and they all soon took their seats again, along with Nora and Stan Morrison.
“Welcome to Isleta Pueblo,” said the governor as he sat down last. He spoke in a soft voice. “We appreciate you coming and answering our questions. Councilman Tenorio said you were supportive yesterday at the cave.”
“I was glad to help,” said Nora. “I’m sorry it was even necessary.”
The governor nodded and opened a file in front of him, sliding out a piece of paper and holding a pen, getting ready to take notes.
Nora was curious how this would proceed. The meeting seemed informal and friendly—that was the Pueblo way, she’d learned in previous dealings—but she knew the subject was one of the utmost seriousness.
“Please tell us the full story,” said the governor. “It would be helpful to hear it firsthand, from an unbiased source. So if you don’t mind, start from the beginning.”
“I’d be glad to.” She told the story of the drunken frat boys, the car accident, taking shelter, the vandalism, the discovery of the bodies both ancient and recent, and the involvement of the FBI, while the Tribal Council listened in respectful silence and the governor jotted down some notes.
She tried to keep it succinct. “And that,” she concluded, “is where we are now.”
The governor turned to the group. “Does anyone on the council have questions?”
Polite hands went up.
“The two recent bodies in the cave,” one councilwoman asked. “How certain is it that they’re from the Dead Mountain incident?”
“The FBI seem to be almost a hundred percent certain.”
“The newspaper report indicated violence.”
“That’s correct. One body had a knife sticking into its chest.”
This caused a brief silence.
“Was it a murder?” another asked.
“I can’t say until they’re autopsied, but it seems likely.”
“And these two hooligans—will they be prosecuted?” This was from the governor himself.
“I don’t know. It’s up to Sheriff Hawley—that’s his jurisdiction.”
This was met with a chilly silence and several frowns.
“How much longer will the cave be roped off and considered a potential crime scene?”
“That’s hard to say. It may be a while.” She hesitated. “It’s a real problem that the media found the location of the cave and tried to gain access. Mr. Tenorio and I were able to turn the first group away, and the FBI is setting up a bigger perimeter, but I imagine others will be back sooner or later.”
