He looked at the withered field of corn and saw again Gloria Dominic’s body as he had seen her the morning of her death. The perfectly sculptured body lay on the white satin sheets, frozen in the grip of death, the blood drained from her body. It was the same image that off and on had appeared to him all summer because, as Lorenza and Rita said, Gloria’s spirit had come to live in his. Her revenge was not yet complete. She wanted those who killed her punished.
The souls of those who died a violent death could not rest. They became wandering spirits, roaming the river, the acequias, the cemeteries, the dark roads at night.
La Llorona was such a spirit. A woman who had committed the worst of sins: killing her children. She was doomed to search the river where she had thrown the bodies. La Llorona, the wailing woman, a story that made children shiver. Was the story a warning to children that even in parents lay the awful possibility of infanticide? All the stories and cuentos carried a message, and maybe that’s what the story of la Llorona taught.
“The limpieza will help,” Sonny whispered.
“A limpieza takes the bad spirits out,” Concha agreed.
Don Eliseo studied Sonny. Sonny was respectful, he took time to talk and listen to the old stories, not like his sons and daughters who were spread out all over the city and were too busy to visit.
“So, la Tamara Dubronsky will go free,” don Eliseo said. “And somebody murdered la Veronica?”
“Yes.” Sonny nodded and looked at the wrinkled face of the old man. Don Eliseo’s eyes were crystal brown, as bright as the morning sun he worshiped. The light of eighty years had filled don Eliseo, filled his spirit, and it shone on his face and in his eyes.
Sonny finished his wine and got up.
“Raven,” the old man said.
“He’s back.”
“Póngate la cruz,” Concha whispered, and again made the sign of the cross.
“Come to claim what’s his,” don Eliseo said.
The old man knew Sonny was wearing Raven’s Zia medallion. Raven’s cult and the Dubronsky woman still had a claim on Sonny, and it was not yet resolved.
“Yup,” Sonny replied. “I have to get him before he gets me.”
“You can do it, Sonny,” don Toto said.
“Pero con cuidao,” Concha cried out. “That Raven is a brujo, he can fly. Those brujos have a lot of power.”
“And I don’t,” Sonny said.
Concha glanced at don Eliseo.
“Did the curandera speak of the coyote?” don Eliseo asked.
Sonny smiled. Ah, the old man knew. He had told Sonny he had the coyote spirit within.
“Sí.” Sonny nodded.
“Pues, ten fé. Trust her,” don Eliseo said. “She’s young and strong—”
“Not like us gastados,” Concha said.
“You have to trust her, Sonny,” don Eliseo repeated, “but it’s not gonna be easy. Raven is a brujo. He can fly.”
“You never know if he is a man or a raven,” Concha said.
“Some fly through the air like balls of fire,” don Toto whispered, and took a swig of wine.
They believed. They had heard many stories of men followed by balls of fire out in the llano or in the forest. Men who swore they had seen the leaping fireballs following them.
Yeah, Sonny thought, they knew.
“Bueno, I better get some rest.”
“Stay and eat lunch with us. I’m cooking chile con carne,” Concha said.
“The best in the West,” don Toto said, smiling.
“Gracias,” Sonny answered, “but I have a few things to do. Adiós.”
“Adiós,” they called, and Sonny walked across the dirt road to his place. He entered the warm house and turned on the swamp cooler. Even in October, the warm sunlight pouring through the kitchen window had heated the small house. On the way to the kitchen he paused in front of the credenza and looked into the mirror. He pulled the medallion from beneath his shirt and let it hang free.
Raven had returned to free Tamara Dubronsky, and to do that, he had to kill Veronica, but Tamara was too damn smart to tie up with him again. Raven had returned to get Sonny.
Or maybe Tamara had hired a mafioso, or someone local, to get rid of Veronica, and then had the raven feathers planted just to throw Sonny off guard.
In the fall large flocks of crows returned to eat at the city dump during the winter and to roost in the cottonwoods of the river at night. All winter the huge flocks rose in the morning to scavenge, and returned at dusk to sleep in the bare trees of the river. They did not hunt prey; they ate roadkill and trash. What if the four feathers were simply dropped by one of the river crows?
No, he knew better. The feathers were a message for him. Raven took Veronica up in the balloon and pushed her. He knew that, and Howard knew that, and even Chief Garcia knew that, but there wasn’t a shred of evidence—unless Raven had shown up with the bail money, using Gloria’s money to get Veronica out of jail.
No, for crying out loud! He was too smart for that. He would show himself when he wanted to, not before.
But the murder would certainly disrupt the balloon fiesta. There were thousands of people in town for the event, seven hundred pilots registered, and the gruesome death would not be good publicity. First day and someone had fallen out of a balloon. It would be on the six o’clock news, and in tomorrow’s paper it would be plastered on the front page.
He had read in one of Ben Chávez’s novels that in the old days witches were buried in caskets woven from pliant cottonwood branches, so their bodies would rot quickly into the earth. They were not buried in the camposanto, the sacred ground of the church cemetery, but along the river bottom, in the wet clay.
Standing in front of the mirror, Sonny remembered stories he had heard as a child, stories his grandparents told when he went to visit them in Socorro.
Witches had to be killed with a bullet marked with a cross, bullets blessed with holy water by a priest. His father had told the story of the man who was haunted by an owl. He tried to kill the owl, but nothing worked. For months the man could not sleep, he could not rest. He was near death when he finally scratched a cross on the bullet and had the priest bless it with holy water. With that bullet he shot the owl when it came at night.
In the morning he found blood at the foot of the tree where the owl had perched, but no owl. He hurried to his compadre’s home, and he and his compadre followed the trail of blood to the house of an old woman who was known to be a witch. She had put curses on many of the people of the valley. The man had exposed her, and she had turned her wrath on him. They found her dead, killed by a bullet marked with a cross.
“Stories,” Sonny said to himself, “just stories.”
He touched the medallion around his neck. Wearing it had become an obsession. He had kept telling himself that he would turn it over to the DA. After all, it was state’s evidence.
He remembered what Tamara said the morning they arrested her. She told him to keep the medallion and wear it, because he was the new Raven.
“Raven cannot die. He will return, and your only hope is the medallion.”
What the devil did she mean? That the medallion gave him power over Raven? If so, Raven had returned for it.
How in the hell did I get mixed up in the world of haunted souls? he wondered.
Perhaps he had always been involved in it. The stories of people changing into animal forms, flying, the brujos—even the simple warning not to awaken someone asleep too abruptly, because the soul was not in the body but flying about. The soul could fly and bring back what was known as a dream. It needed to return quickly to the sleeping body.
“Go wake your father,” his mother said, “but walk softly and whisper to him.” And he would enter the bedroom and call softly “Papa, Papa …” until his father stirred.
“La vida es un sueño,” don Eliseo had quoted Calderón de la Barca, “so we are always dreaming, and our soul is the greatest dreamer. It loves to fly about to gain the k
nowledge of the world. Did you ever go to a place you thought you had seen before?”
“Déjà vu,” Sonny answered.
“Qué?”
“It’s French. To explain the feeling we have been there before.”
“Sí, de-je-voo. I like that word. The franceses have a way with words. Imagine, even their babies can speak French!” Don Eliseo slapped his thigh and laughed. “You get it? The French babies are so smart they can speak French.”
“I get it, I get it.”
Sonny studied his image in the mirror. Damn, he was thirty, face it, thirty-one at the end of the month. When the kids came calling “trick or treat” at night, he would be celebrating the passage of one more year. So what, what’s one year, he thought. I’m still número uno stud, in perfect health.
You handsome cabrón. He grinned, and flashed his white, even teeth. Lean and muscular, with dark curly hair; women liked him. His eyes were dark brown, sometimes dark as coffee beans, depending on his mood. So he hadn’t been feeling well. Lorenza’s cure would fix that. He wanted to believe.
He remembered Raven’s dark features, the long, sleek hair drawn back in a ponytail, the hawk nose. Sonny’s nose was similar, his chin strong, jutting, with a dimple. He did bear a resemblance to Raven, perhaps looked more like Raven than he did his own twin brother, Armando. In the barrios of the South Valley, where Sonny grew up, he and Raven could pass for brothers.
Sonny fingered the medallion. He’ll come for it. He needs the power of the Zia sun.
The phone rang and startled him. It was Madge Swenson, the director of the balloon fiesta. “Have you heard?” she asked, and Sonny told her he had been at the scene. “I want to talk to you,” she said.
“About the murder?”
“Not over the phone. I need to talk to you.”
“Why?”
“I, I need help. Can you come by? I’m at fiesta headquarters.”
“Do you have a list of balloonists who went up this morning?” Sonny asked.
“Of course we do—” She stopped abruptly. “Are you working for someone?” she asked.
“Only myself.”
“How soon can you come?”
“I’m on my way.”
He hung up the phone. So the very tough and very attractive Madge Swenson was calling. A murder on the first day of the fiesta could spoil a lot of plans.
6
Sonny took a quick shower and put on a fresh shirt. He knew the balloon in which Veronica went up wouldn’t be listed, but there were other troubling thoughts that began to bubble around the fiesta. He needed to know who was in town, who was flying.
On the way to the balloon fiesta grounds, he called Howard on his cellular.
“Howie, anything new?”
“Checked into the bailing,” Howard replied. “Veronica had agreed with the DA to testify against Tamara if the DA would let her out of jail. She was going insane inside, she claimed. The DA agreed, and late yesterday a woman showed up with a quarter million in cash.”
The night she was murdered Gloria Dominic had received a lot of money from Akira Morino. No doubt part of that bankroll had just been used to bail out Veronica.
“So Veronica had one night of freedom,” Sonny said. “Who was the woman?”
Howard chuckled. “Sister Hawk.”
“One of Raven’s women,” Sonny said.
“Sure. The name, address, everything is phony. The DA, of course, is very embarrassed.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
“The chief is having our artist do a composite now, but yeah, it will probably turn out to be one of the women in his group. Or an anonymous that Raven hired off the street. It’s no crime to bail out a person, even if that person gets killed a few hours later.”
“So Veronica spent the night with Raven, enough time for him to induce her into the morning flight. She went with him, trusting him … There’s something else, Howie, something else.”
“Qué?”
“I don’t know, just something bothering me. Any good witnesses?”
“Nope. Garcia’s boys have talked to a lot of people on the West Mesa, but nobody actually saw the fall.”
“Except the anonymous tip.”
“Right, but whoever called hasn’t stepped forward, so we’re at zero.”
“Madge Swenson just called. She wants to see me.”
“It’s bad publicity for the fiesta.”
“Yeah.”
There was a pause.
“You going?” Howard asked.
“I’m on my way.”
“Ah, the plot thickens, Watson. Why is it all the nice-looking women in Alboo-kirk call you? Didn’t you go to school with her?”
“No, she was up at Eldorado. We met when we were seniors, a student exchange. You know, the counselors dreamed up this program for the homeboys from the South Valley to go see how the other half lives. We were supposed to go up and live with a family in the Heights for a week, and some of their kids came down to live in the barrio.”
“And you wound up with Madge’s family?”
“Yup.”
“God loves you.”
“Yeah. It turned out eighteen-year-old Madge was interested in more than homework.”
“Glory be!” Howard exclaimed. “Lots of sex?”
“No—”
“Whaddayamean, ‘No’!”
“She was a nice girl.”
“Ah, say no, please say no.”
“We had fun. I met up with her again a few years ago. I was a security guard at the balloon fiesta two years ago. They needed someone who could fly their chopper—”
“Then you got some?”
“No.”
“Hey, I’m going to start worrying about you, bro!”
“I had just met Rita.”
“I see. So now?”
“So now I’m curious.”
“Bueno. Cuidado with the hot stuff. I’ve seen her on TV, and she is a bad-looking woman.”
“Ten-four,” Sonny replied.
The cab of his truck was hot. A fly buzzed against the window, reminding him of the murder scene.
He wasn’t stopped by entrance guards as he drove into the balloon field. He could see a row of tents resembling a carnival midway lining the road. Apparently the death of Veronica Worthy had done little to dampen the enthusiasm of the crowd. People thronged the tents, eating and shopping for souvenirs.
At Fiesta Control, in a large building east of the launch field, the atmosphere was more subdued. Shocked balloon pilots stood in line, waiting to enter the building. The police had called in everyone who had been up that morning, and now the last of the very concerned pilots waited to be questioned by the cops.
Garcia’s methodical procedure at work, Sonny thought. Would it turn up a clue? Probably not. Those who had witnessed the murder would have come forward by now. Or were afraid to. The press swarmed like buzzards, eager to get a lead on the story for the evening news.
Madge’s secretary was waiting for Sonny. She ushered him past the crowd and into Madge’s office.
“I’m glad you came.” Madge rose from her desk and greeted him with a firm handshake, a smile, then a soft kiss to the cheek. “It’s been a while.”
“I haven’t been around a balloon launch since I worked for you.”
“You look good,” she said.
“You, too.”
“Thanks for the compliment. I’ve been on a roll, till this morning.” She pointed to a chair for him. “Coffee?”
“I’m fine,” Sonny replied.
“I’ve got the jitters,” she said, taking her cup of coffee from the desk and sipping. “God, things are screwed.”
Sonny studied her. He had enjoyed working with her when he was a security guard for the fiesta. She was a very attractive woman, and she quickly let Sonny know she was interested. Madge was a sexy-looking blonde, toned to perfection, long legs, and the ensuing years had added charm and poise. But today she was troubled; a shadow weighed heavy
in her eyes.
“I’m divorced,” she had told him one afternoon while they had drinks at a Heights sports bar after work. She loved to fly, and she had been taking Sonny up in her balloon and teaching him to fly it.
“I just met someone,” Sonny had replied, thinking of Rita. “I’m kind of a one-woman man nowadays.” That’s the moment he realized he truly loved Rita, because an offer from a woman like Madge came around only once in about a million years.
“I should feel insulted,” she said, “but don’t you know, that only makes you more of a challenge. Maybe one of these days you’ll be free.” She had smiled. She hated to be turned down, but she understood.
But they hadn’t kept in touch after the fiesta, and now two years had come and gone, but a lustful chemistry still sizzled between them.
The secretary came in with a tray of fresh coffee and cookies, placed it on the table, and left.
“Here’s the list of our registered pilots,” Madge said, served him coffee, and nodded at the list on the coffee table. She sat across from him.
Sonny picked it up and glanced at it. There were over seven hundred registered balloonists, so the list would take time to check.
“It was a tragic accident,” Madge said, “but the news media’s trying to make a big deal out of it.”
Sonny looked into her bright blue eyes. Lovely eyes, he thought, but he remembered the old rule Manuel Lopez had taught him: everyone is capable of murder, given the right circumstances, the right motive.
“A big deal?” Sonny mumbled through the cookie he had bitten into. Chocolate chip, his favorite.
“It’s not murder!” Madge replied with irritation. “And the woman who died wasn’t one of our entries! She didn’t go up in a registered balloon. But every year a few mavericks go up on their own. They’re the ones who get in trouble. That’s what happened this morning. It was an accident!”
Ah, Sonny thought, Madge is trying to disassociate the fiesta from the murder. Makes sense. Her job is to run the fiesta, and she’s been doing it so well she’s one of the most powerful women in the city. She can call the mayor’s office direct, and the governor, and she’s got the Chamber of Commerce eating from her hand. But today she’s also got an accident.