Assumption, page 4
“Did you like her?” Jenny asked Ogden.
“Yes,” he lied.
“She was a fine person, I’m sure,” Eva said.
Ogden stood, looked at his watch. “Okay, I’ve been dirty long enough. If you ladies will excuse me?”
Ogden got up after a restive night and drank orange juice from the carton. He looked out his window at the landscape. He deeply loved the place, the mountains, the desert, the rivers, the fish, but he felt like a failure remaining there. It had been different for his father, he thought. The man had come there from someplace and carved out a life. He’d worked house construction and driven cats and plows in the winter and seemed happy with that, while instilling in his son the notion that there was more out there.
He dressed and drove toward town. He decided he would go over a few things at Mrs. Bickers’s house with Jenny and then ask her to sign a receipt and claim to need her driver’s license number on it. The sky was clear and cerulean and he felt lighter.
He arrived at the station to find Jenny waiting.
“You’re up early,” Ogden said.
Felton watched the two of them from his desk.
Ogden saw that Paz wasn’t in yet. “Well, let’s go have breakfast and then we can go to the house.” He felt himself intentionally say the house instead of your mother’s house and wondered what difference that sort of thing made.
Felton cleared his throat. “So, you’ll be 10—?”
“I’ll be at breakfast,” Ogden said.
Ogden drove them to the bowling alley that served the best Mexican food in town and breakfast all day. They sat in a booth. There were a few other people eating and one lone fat man bowling at the far end. A lot of folks didn’t go to the bowling alley, because it was a bowling alley. It was what it was; that was all you could ask of anyplace or anything, Ogden thought.
They ordered.
Ogden got right into it. “Did your mother have anything of value that you know about? You know, like gold bricks between her mattress and box springs, diamonds in ice trays. That sort of thing.”
Jenny shook her head. “Never saw anything.” She looked over the lanes. “You know, I don’t think my mother was ever really happy to see me. It was as if she worked to tolerate me.” She glanced at Ogden and then back at the fat man down the way. “She just didn’t feel like a mother to me. You probably don’t know what I mean. She wasn’t anything like your mother.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You have your mother. I had my grandmother.”
The food came.
“Looks good,” Jenny said. They’d both ordered simple bacon, eggs, and toast. “I love breakfast.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Do you think she knew her killer?” Jenny asked.
Ogden felt like a phony, a fraud. Who was he to be playing investigator? He was just supposed to go through the woman’s papers. “I don’t know.”
They sat without talking for a while and Ogden realized that he had nearly inhaled his food. He set his fork down. “I guess I was hungry,” he said.
“I guess I wasn’t,” she said. She pushed at her eggs and then ate a bit of toast.
“Robbins was your mother’s maiden name?”
Jenny nodded.
“Who is Lester G. Robbins?”
Jenny thought. “Lester?”
“The name was in your mother’s address book.”
“Where does he live?” she asked.
The waitress came and poured Ogden more coffee.
“Where does he live?” she asked again.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Just a name in her book.”
It was nearly nine when they walked into the house. Ogden paused before closing the door just to look at how bright and clear the day was. The snow on the street had already become slushy, but the yards were still beautiful. Most of it would be gone by late afternoon. “It never lasts long,” he said.
Jenny looked at him.
“The snow. Around here, it falls and then the sun takes care of it pretty quickly.”
Jenny sat at the desk and looked at the pile of papers. “Where do I start?”
“I’ve been through it all,” he said. “I do have a couple of questions. I didn’t find any insurance policies. Do you know if she had any?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you’re the only child?”
Jenny looked as if she was contemplating being offended by the question. “As far as I know.”
“Then I guess you’re the new owner of a parcel of land ‘herein referred to as the southeast quarter of section 22, southwest quarter of Section 23, T16R71W in Plata County.’ ”
“Oh yeah?”
“Nearly a hundred acres as far as I can see from the deed.” Ogden handed the paper to her. “Can’t say I know where it is, from that description.’ ”
“I guess that’s a good thing,” she said.
“Maybe it’s a pretty place. Maybe there’s a house on it.” While she studied the document, Ogden slipped the address book into his jacket pocket. “I’ll get some wood for the fire while you look.” He walked through the house to the back and out the kitchen door. Ogden had had little interest in the old woman when she’d been alive, so he was amused at how much her death was affecting him. Perhaps it was as simple as a mystery to pass the time in a boring, sleepy village. Maybe it was some kind of sublimation for a stalled life, a life he was not pursuing. Or perhaps he just wanted to catch and stop a killer. Anyway, he thought he needed the address book.
He took the wood back in and got the fire going. He sat on the sofa and glanced through a People magazine while Jenny sifted through the papers. He looked around the house at the tacky pictures on the walls, the assortment of knickknacks. Then it hit him. Everything in this house could be bought at the local roadside gift shops. He walked around the front rooms. Several cheap ceramic storytellers were scattered about. A couple of bad landscape paintings of the gorge and the mountains were on the walls. A couple of saddle blankets were tossed over the backs of chairs. There was nothing that made him think of the Pacific Northwest or Montana or any other place where the old woman had supposedly lived. He noticed a photo on the table on the other side of the room and went to it. There was the old lady, not much younger, recognizable, standing with a man of about fifty in front of a landscape that could have been local terrain, but also parts of California, Arizona, or Utah.
“Excuse me,” Ogden said. “Do you know this man?”
Jenny walked over to the picture, leaning close to Ogden for a good look. He could smell her shampoo or some fragrance and he didn’t like that he liked it.
“He’s a big guy,” Ogden said.
“I’ve never seen him,” Jenny said.
He took the picture from the wall and took off the back of the frame. There was nothing written there, so he put the disassembled mess on the table. “You can go on back to the papers,” he said. “I’m going to look around again.”
He looked through all the drawers in the bedroom, the kitchen cabinets, and the refrigerator again. He found so much nothing that it left his head spinning. He returned to the front room and fell with a thud onto the sofa.
“Anything?” Jenny asked.
Ogden shook his head.
“At least she didn’t leave a lot of bills to be paid,” Jenny said.
The phone rang. Ogden answered. It was Felton, saying that the sheriff wanted Ogden up on Plata Ridge right away.
“What’s up?” Ogden asked.
“We got us some more bodies.”
It was fairly easy to find the dirt road that lead to the ridge from the highway because of all the traffic it had seen in the last hour or so. It was muddy and deeply rutted. Ogden could feel his heart racing and he wondered why and realized the answer to that was obvious. Nothing makes people more interesting than their being dead. Sad, but true. He really didn’t want to see dead people. It made him feel queasy to see dead people, but damn if it wasn’t interesting. The sky was so blue that it was almost ironic.
He saw the collection of vehicles and the superfluous twisting flash of a blue light atop one of the rigs. There was a white panel truck parked in the middle of it all and outside it were four covered bodies. Ogden got out and stood next to Warren Fragua, the only Native member of the department. He told Ogden that the sheriff was on the other side of the van.
Paz was leaning into the bay of the van, looking around floor to ceiling. Ogden stood behind, but he was staring at the bodies. “What happened here, Bucky?”
The sheriff turned around. “We got us a bunch of dead folks. Couple of cowboys come up here looking for strays and found this. Looks like they lit this little stove to keep warm and smothered to death.”
“But?”
Paz looked at him.
“There’s a but in your voice.”
Paz cracked his jaw. “Looky here.” He pointed to the stove. “We didn’t find any food.”
“You just said they lit the stove to keep warm.”
“Look at the stove.”
Ogden did. It was a typical ten-dollar hibachi from a hardware store. The two grills were sitting over the cold ashes. “Why put the grills on if you’re not cooking? But if they were stupid enough to light it in the first place.”
“Just bothers me,” the sheriff said.
Ogden looked at the stove, put on a glove, and removed one of the grills. Then he removed the glove to push his fingers into the ashes. “There aren’t a lot of ashes,” he said.
“We’ll have to get somebody who knows the science to tell us if there was enough fuel to kill them.”
Ogden followed Paz over to the bodies. “Do you know who they are?” he asked.
Paz pulled a Baggie of carrot sticks out of his pocket. “These three, we don’t know. But this one.” He knelt down and pulled back the cover from the face. “Fragua recognized him as José Marotta. His mother called this morning to say she hadn’t seen him for a few days. All of nineteen years old.”
“Jesus.”
“The other poor bastards are Anglos. There’s something else, Ogden.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t like the way they died,” Paz said.
“Okay.”
“They were piled up like they knew they were dying. They didn’t die in their sleep, that’s a cinch.”
“Maybe they woke up, realized they were in trouble, and then were too weak to get out.”
“Five bodies in two days, Ogden. I don’t like it. I don’t like it one little bit.” Paz looked at Ogden. “How was breakfast?”
“Fine.” Ogden tilted his head as he looked at something under the van.
“What is it?” Paz asked.
“State police guys go through the van for prints already?”
“Yeah.”
Ogden was on his back on the ground now, examining the undercarriage of the truck. “Did they check under here?”
“I don’t think so. What is it?”
Ogden used his pencil tip to poke at something hanging from the exhaust pipe. “You might want to call them back. I think this is a piece of duct tape.”
Paz grunted. “What’s that mean to you?”
“I don’t know, but it’s strange.”
“I’ll have him check it out.” Paz stepped back. “Get up from there and go look at the other faces. Maybe you saw one of them around someplace.”
The sheriff left Ogden standing next to the bodies. He looked to the west, at the distant hills. A football field away from him was the Rio Grande Gorge. He was always amazed at how that big ditch pulled him toward it, just so he could stand there and realize how far away the other side was. He went back to the bodies and pulled the cover from the first face. He didn’t know him. The second, however, he recognized as the face in the photograph with Mrs. Bickers.
“Bucky!”
Paz came over.
“I’ve seen this guy. I’ve seen his face. He’s in a photograph with Mrs. Bickers. It was on her wall.”
“Please don’t tell me shit like that,” Paz said. “Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. And he’s tall like the man in the picture. I’d put him at six five, maybe.”
“Daryl,” Paz called to a deputy. “Take a Polaroid of this guy for Ogden to take with him.”
“Fuck,” Paz said. “Now we’ve got some kind of goddamn conspiracy.” He blew out a breath. “Warren!”
Fragua came over. “I want you two to ride into town and break the news to the Marotta boy’s mother. Take Ogden’s rig. I’ll have Daryl drive yours back, Warren.” He looked at Ogden. “Warren knows the family and he’s good with people. I want you to ask the questions.”
“What kind of questions?” Daryl handed Ogden the Polaroid.
“I don’t know, Ogden. Use your damn imagination. Probing questions. Find out what the boy might have been doing up here. Find out anything. Connect some goddamn dots, and some-fucking-body needs to find me a doughnut.”
Ogden went back to the bodies and looked at the remaining face. He was relieved that he’d never seen it.
Warren Fragua was always eating piñon nuts and today was no different. Ogden liked Fragua because he knew more about fly-fishing for trout than anyone he had ever met. Ogden found himself wishing that they were headed down to the river instead of to the Marotta family’s home.
“Do you eat those all the time?”
“Lately. Better than a cigarette. They’re healthier than those overpriced power bars you eat.”
“Do you know these people well, Warren?” Ogden pulled out onto the main highway. There was light traffic. Ogden put on his sunglasses and nervously adjusted his rearview mirrors.
“I like those shades,” Fragua said. “What kind are they?”
“Convenience store specials,” Ogden said.
“I like them.” Fragua crunched on a nut. “You look cool.” He looked out the window. “I arrested José when he was sixteen for stealing a car. Not a great kid, but not too bad. He and his old man fought like crazy, but that’s not strange.”
“No trouble since then?”
“Not caught for anything, anyway.” He cracked another nut. “I guess the sheriff doesn’t think this was an accident. You don’t think so either.”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“Best place to be, not knowing what to think,” Fragua said. “Been tying any?”
“I tied some beaded nymphs the other night,” Ogden said. “Zug Bugs, Tellicos. A couple of grasshoppers and a little black beetle, used that fake jungle cock. You?”
“Not yet. Waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“Waiting for the moon to speak to me. For the spirits tell me what flies I’ll need.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“I’m waiting for some feathers to arrive from Cabela’s.” Fragua looked at the passing chaparral. “I hate having to tell people bad things. I’d like to look at it as just a part of the job, but it’s so hard. Especially when you know them.”
“So, tell me, what do you think went on out there?” Ogden asked.
Fragua shrugged. “We’ll know more when the state cops send us their report. Who knows, maybe the Marotta kid got picked up hitchhiking and they stayed out there to smoke some dope. Maybe they were transported there by aliens.”
“That’s more likely.”
“Turn here,” Fragua said. “They live down this road about a mile across the creek.”
Ogden followed Fragua’s directions and they found the house, set back away from the road, the snow around it disappearing quickly. They walked up to the porch and stomped their wet boots. The stomping was more or less a knock. A young woman opened the door, then closed the door. It was opened again, this time by an older woman.
“Mr. Fragua,” the woman said, half-smiling, seeming to see something in his face, and falling back a step. “We haven’t seen you for a long time.” She stepped back and allowed the men to enter.
“It’s been awhile. You been busy?”
“Yes, yes, very busy.”
Ogden closed the door.
“This is Deputy Walker.”
Ogden nodded to the woman.
She briefly acknowledged Ogden and looked back at Fragua. “What’s wrong?”
“Where is Mr. Marotta?”
“He’s at work.”
“It’s José,” Fragua said.
Mrs. Marotta sat on the sofa. Ogden looked to see the young woman at the kitchen door. Fragua sat beside the boy’s mother.
“I called the police because he didn’t come home for two nights,” she said. “He’s never been gone for two nights. You have him in jail?” She shook her head. “What has he done? Do we need money?”
Fragua rubbed his left temple. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but there’s been an accident.”
“Oh god,” the woman said. The woman at the kitchen door disappeared.
“José is dead.”
With that the woman who had disappeared into the kitchen ran out and clung to her mother.
“I must call my husband,” the woman said, blankly. She was crying, but made no sound.
“We’re very sorry,” Fragua said.
Ogden was waiting for her to ask what had happened, but the woman was too broken up. He touched Fragua’s shoulder and asked with his eyes what they should do. Fragua shrugged.
The young woman looked quickly at Ogden, then away.
“You call your husband, Mrs. Marotta,” Fragua said. “You can come by the station anytime and the sheriff will talk to you, if you want that. I’ll come back by tomorrow.”
Fragua stood and Ogden moved to the door, stepped out first. Outside the brisk, fresh air was like a drug. Ogden couldn’t get enough of it into his lungs.
Ogden walked into his home and looked at his walls and furniture and unwashed dishes in the sink and breathed easier. He peeled off his hat and coat, went to the gas heater, and turned it on high. He took off his shoes and slipped into the moose-hide moccasins his mother had given him last Christmas. He then turned his attention to the collection of feathers and patches of deer and calf hair and spools of thread on his desk. He sat behind his vise and secured a size 10 hook, imagined a trout on the Chama rising for the Green Drake he was about to tie. He recalled his father spending the cold winter nights reading and tying flies for the next season. Ogden finally asked his father to teach him to tie, not so much because he wanted to fish, but because he thought the flies were beautiful. He was ten at the time and he still remembered watching his first colorful streamer develop in front of him. He recalled the way it felt to trim the deer hair on his first grasshopper, the pieces of feathers, how much fun it was to dub the muskrat fur onto the thread with his thumb and index finger. He hadn’t even put the first winds of thread around the hook and he already felt better. As he dubbed a mixture of yellow rabbit and tan-red fox fur onto the olive thread he recalled his father. He no longer felt sad when he thought of him. In fact, thinking of him helped Ogden relax. They had been close, for some reason not having the conflicts his friends had had with their fathers. He wondered if his present profession would have caused a problem between them, in spite of his mother’s assurance. He wondered because he himself had a problem with it. He felt out of touch with his time, didn’t feel like people his age. He wasn’t like a lot of people who became cops, didn’t want to be like them, but then Fragua and Paz weren’t like that either. They weren’t hard men; some wouldn’t even have called them tough, but they did their jobs. Ogden wanted only to do his job. He worked the grizzly hackle around the body and turned his mind again to trout. He looked away from the vise and saw that his bonsai tree was browning.
