Assumption, page 5
Morning came with a bright new layer of snow. Ogden sat at the edge of his mattress, his brain still tethered to the remnants of a dream. He was on a dirt bike, chasing a man on another dirt bike. It was a sort of game, he thought, since they we were both laughing and tossing glances at each other. They were riding over rugged terrain, bouncing high and sliding through turns. Finally, Ogden stopped and the other man came back to him. The other man had a bad face. Together they studied Ogden’s badly warped front wheel. It seemed a common enough thing and so Ogden lifted the bike and carried it. The dream logic began to disintegrate as his eyes opened more fully and all sense was gone by the time he sat up.
He rubbed the back of his neck and stared out the window. The sky was clear now. The bad weather was over. The brilliant cerulean lifted his spirits and also let him know that it was late. He found his watch on the floor by his shoes. It was nearly eight. Still, he took his time showering, shaving. There were a lot of things wrong with his little place, but the shower was not one of them. The water was good and hot and the pressure was strong. He dried, got dressed, and walked out into the cold.
As Ogden cleared the ice from the windshield he thought of his business that morning. He had to go question the Marottas and go through the dead son’s room. That wouldn’t be pleasant, but at least Warren Fragua would be there with him. He hoped that the dead man he had recognized as the one in the photograph would be identified. Was there a connection between Mrs. Bickers and the Marotta boy? How could that be?
The incompetent highway crews had done a good job of transforming the hazardous roads into deadly sheets of ice and had done a brilliant job of dumping endless strands of salt and sand down along the center of the lanes where no tires touched. Ogden parked and entered the station just behind Fragua. Once inside he was shoulder to shoulder with Fragua and staring at the pointing, chubby finger of Bucky Paz. “I want you two to go to Fonda’s Funeral Home right now.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Somebody broke into the place last night and walked away with José Marotta’s body. Seems Fonda got there this morning and the boy was gone.”
Fragua and Ogden turned to leave.
“By the way,” Paz said. “That van last night was stolen from Taos. Reported five days ago.”
Ogden drove. The accumulation of so many dead people was unusual for the Plata Sheriff’s Department and the only place to put them was the same place a single body would have been put, Fonda’s Funeral Home. From there the bodies were to go to the forensic pathology lab down in Santa Fe.
“I’ll bet Fonda just misplaced him,” Fragua said. “Put him in the wrong drawer or something.”
“Why would anyone want a dead body?” Ogden looked at the sky to the west. Clouds were gathering. “Maybe the kid swallowed balloons filled with dope and the dealers want it back.”
“You’ve been watching television again. I told you, just tie flies every night and your mind won’t get polluted.”
“You watch television all the time,” Ogden said.
“That’s why I can speak with such authority.”
Ogden slammed on the brakes to avoid an empty pickup that fishtailed through a stop sign. Fragua braced himself with a hand against the dash.
“That was close,” Ogden said.
Fragua nodded. “It’s like tying flies.”
“Everything for you is like tying flies.”
“True, but listen. You’ve got to tie things down in the right order or it won’t work. You can’t go tying down the tinsel after the body or tie the tail on last and expect it to look right. Everything works in the same way, step at a time, but the right step.”
“You’re telling me this right now because?”
“Don’t know.”
Fonda was a big square man, not tall, but wide shouldered with large features, huge eyes and nose, giant hands. He was angry, but like the funeral director he was, he was unflapped, cool. “What can I tell you,” he said. “I came in this morning and the boy was gone.”
“Any sign that someone broke in?” Fragua asked. He and Ogden followed Fonda into the back room where there were two tables with bodies lying on them and one without.
“No, I can’t see that anyone broke in,” Fonda said. “But look around. This place has a hundred windows. I didn’t check them all. This is a funeral home; who expects a break-in? All I know is that he didn’t get up and walk out of here.” He looked at the bodies on the slabs. “Get your clues and go. It’s bad for business to have you here.”
“How do you figure that?” Ogden asked.
Fonda didn’t reply.
Ogden watched as Fragua walked past the bodies to the empty table. “Mr. Fonda, you’re the only undertaker in town.”
“Just do what you need to do and go,” Fonda said.
“Was anybody working here last night?” Ogden asked.
Fonda answered, “No.”
“Does Emilio still work for you?” Fragua asked. “What’s his last name?”
“Vilas? Yes, he still works for me.”
“When will he be in?” Ogden said. Ogden realized he didn’t like being in the room with the dead people.
“He was supposed to come in this morning, but he called in sick. Now, if that’s all.” Fonda walked out of the room.
“Charmer,” Ogden said.
Fragua ran his finger along the rim of the empty table. “Well, so do we check out the hundred windows?”
“If it’s that easy to get in, why bother? Hell, they probably came in through the front door.” He looked around the room again, scanning, looking for anything that seemed out of place. He realized that everything was out of place. “Think we should dust for prints?”
“Prints? That never leads anywhere.” Fragua yawned, something he did when he was anxious. “Listen, all I know is we have to tell the boy’s parents.”
“Shit.”
“You thought Mama was freaked out last night,” Fragua said. “Wait until we tell that good Catholic lady that her son’s not going to get a proper Christian burial.”
“Shit.”
“Let’s go,” Fragua said.
They didn’t tell Fonda they were leaving.
Ogden drove them into the Marottas’ neighborhood. Small poorly maintained adobes stood in a row; awkward wood-framed additions poked out of most of them. Sheep and chickens wandered through yards and an occasional horse stood in a rough shed. The opposite side of the road was open, a ravine splitting it some thirty yards in. The snow made it all so peaceful.
Fragua knocked. Mrs. Marotta came to the door, her eyes red, dark circles under them. She offered the men coffee.
Fragua sat on the sofa. Ogden wandered away to stand by the window. He looked out at the field across the road and the hills rising beyond it.
“Please,” Fragua said, gesturing for Mrs. Marotta to sit by him on the sofa.
The woman looked even smaller today. Ogden studied her narrow shoulders slumping inward.
“Mrs. Marotta,” Fragua said, “José is gone.”
The woman took Fragua’s hand and patted it, consoled him. “Yes, my son is dead.”
Fragua tossed a glance at Ogden, then looked back at the woman. “I don’t how to tell you this. I’m really sorry. Someone broke into the Fonda’s last night and took José’s body.”
Mrs. Marotta turned her head slightly, as if to make sense of Fragua’s words. She then shook her head and fell over.
“Christ,” Ogden said. As he moved toward her, her daughter came running from an adjacent room. Fragua lifted the woman and got her stretched out on the sofa. Ogden went to the phone, called the paramedics. The girl pleaded with her mother to wake up. Fragua told her to go get a glass of water.
Ogden put down the phone. “They’re on their way.”
“She’s breathing fine.”
The girl came back with the water and a damp rag. Fragua took the rag and pressed it to the woman’s face.
Ogden looked at the room. Clean, tidy, ordered. On the far wall was a crucifix with a bare-chested Jesus wrapped in a skirt. He looked at the fainted woman again. She was slowly coming around. The daughter stood by with the glass of water. Ogden stepped close to the girl and asked if she was all right.
She nodded.
“I’m Ogden. What’s your name?”
“Rosa.”
“Everything’s going to be fine, Rosa.”
Fragua had the woman sitting up now. He took the glass from Rosa and helped the woman take a sip.
“Rosa, will you show me José’s room?” Ogden asked.
She nodded and led him down the hall. She stopped at a door with a paper keep-out sign taped to it.
“You’d better go back out there to your mother,” Ogden said. He entered and took a slow turn around the room. He thumbed through a stack of car and motorcycle magazines on the dresser, then sat down on the unmade bed and stared at the top of the nightstand. He was about to open the drawer when Fragua stepped in.
“She okay?” Ogden asked.
“I think so.”
“They’re Penitentes, you know.”
“You don’t say.”
“Yep,” Ogden said.
They searched the room. Ogden found nothing of interest in the nightstand and moved to the tall dresser. He started in the bottom drawer, peeling past the boy’s trousers, shirts, and sweaters.
Ogden went to the closet and pulled a shoebox down from the top shelf. He took off the lid. “Howdy, howdy.” He tilted the box so that Fragua could see the stack of bills.
Ogden closed the box. They could hear the paramedics entering the house.
Fragua looked at his watch. “I’m glad nobody was dying.”
“Do we take this with us?” Ogden asked about the cash. “I mean these people could really use this money.”
“Yeah, I know,” Fragua said.
Ogden put the box back on the shelf.
“I guess that’s your answer,” Fragua said.
“Let’s get out of here,” Ogden said.
On the way out, Ogden said good-bye to Rosa. He asked, “Can you tell me if there was anything weird or different going on with José?”
Rosa shook her head.
Fragua talked to Mrs. Marotta.
“Who were his friends?” Ogden asked. “Did he hang out with anybody?”
“Just Emilio,” the girl said.
“Emilio Vilas?”
Rosa shrugged.
The deputies left.
Fragua got out at the station and took his rig to find Mr. Marotta. A call to Fonda gave Ogden Emilio Vilas’s address.
Ogden drove to the little duplex on Carson Road. He knocked, but there was no answer. He then knocked on the door of the attached unit. A robed, middle-aged woman with bright red hair came to the door. She was annoyed.
“I’m looking for Emilio Vilas,” Ogden said.
“He doesn’t live here,” she said.
“Sorry to disturb you. Do you know Emilio?”
“Lives next door, but I don’t know him. I’ve got enough trouble.”
“He’s trouble?”
She looked at Ogden as if he were stupid. “Men in general are trouble.”
“So, you wouldn’t have any idea where he is?”
“No. Try a bar. He’s a damn alcoholic.” She closed the door.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Ogden said to the wood.
Ogden decided to check the nearby taverns. He entered three, glanced about, got stared at, got nowhere. In the fourth bar, a man spotted Ogden, made eye contact, looked away, and started for the back door. Ogden chased him, leaped over a chair, squeezed between stacked crates in front of the rear exit, and ran out into the alley. Emilio hit a patch of ice and slid into some garbage cans. He looked back at the deputy, but didn’t get up. Emilio held his leg.
“Broken?” Ogden asked.
“Fuck you. What you want with me?”
Ogden sat, straddling an upset garbage can. “Emilio Vilas.”
“You know who the fuck I am.”
“You hear about José?”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“You two were pals,” Ogden said.
Emilio rubbed his leg.
A rat bolted from the garbage and Ogden let out a short scream. So much for the macho front. “I’m interested in José’s body.”
“What?”
“Somebody stole his body,” Ogden said.
“Yeah, so?”
“They stole him from your place of employment.”
“Sure, man, but I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“So, you know about it.”
Emilio sat up. “So, I heard about it.” He looked up and down the alley.
“Looking for somebody?” Ogden asked. “Do you have any idea how they got into Fonda’s?”
Emilio shook his head.
“Can you walk?”
Emilio pulled himself up and tested his leg.
“Why’d you run?” Ogden asked.
“Not sure.”
“Come on, let me buy you a cup of coffee.”
“I gotta go,” Emilio said.
“No, I really want to buy you some coffee.” Ogden looked at his eyes. “It’s the least I can do. Come on.”
Emilio snatched his arm free of the deputy’s help. Ogden walked him back into the tavern where they sat in a booth.
“Anything to do with drugs?”
“What?” Emilio asked.
“You and José into drugs? Pot? Meth?”
“No, man.”
“Did José ever tell you what he was into? Did he tell you he was in trouble?”
“No.”
The bartender brought two cups of coffee over and gave Emilio a hard stare.
“What’s your problem?” Emilio said to the man as he walked away.
“Cops are bad for business,” Ogden said. He blew on his coffee. “You were about to tell me about José. You two were running buddies, right? What kind of deal did he have?”
“José didn’t have a deal.”
“Emilio, José had a shoe box full of money tucked away in his closet,” Ogden said.
“News to me. Maybe it was from his paper route.” Emilio shook his head. “We were friends. We went out and scored some dope together once in a while, but that’s all I know. Honest. I really didn’t see him that much lately.”
Ogden nodded. He was starting to believe him. “What do you think of your boss?”
“Fonda’s weird as shit, but he’s okay.”
“Weird?”
“He’s an undertaker, man.”
“You gonna drink your coffee?”
“Don’t need it.”
Ogden looked at the front door. It was a bar in the morning; who would be coming in? “You know Emma Bickers?”
Emilio shook his head. “Never heard of her.”
“What was José doing up on Plata Ridge?”
“I don’t know? Ain’t nothing up there but sage.”
“Okay,” Ogden leaned back in his seat. He looked at Emilio over the rim of his mug as he drank. “My name is Walker. If you think of anything, call me. You’ll do that?”
Emilio nodded.
Ogden walked out into the daylight and the biting wind. He got into his car and wrapped his ungloved fingers around the ice-cold steering wheel. He was tired and his back hurt. He needed to go fishing.
Mrs. Bickers’s funeral was a quiet affair. Ogden looked at Jenny Bickers, at his mother, at ice-block Fonda, and at young Emilio who stood several yards away, sweating in the winter air, leaning against the body of a small tractor a shovel handle resting against his chest. There were no other faces. Not even the town woman who showed up at all funerals to just cry. A couple of magpies perched on a fence. Fonda said some words, being ordained in some way, and then the tearless eyes went about their business. Emilio moved toward the grave as Ogden, Jenny, and Eva Walker moved away.
Ogden opened the passenger door of Jenny’s car and let her and his mother in. He walked around and fell in behind the wheel, started the engine. “How are you doing?” he asked Jenny.
“I’m okay.”
“It was a nice service,” Eva Walker said. “It’s nice weather for a funeral.” She put a hand forward and touched Jenny’s shoulder. “I’m just saying the kind of stupid stuff one is supposed to say.”
Jenny smiled. “I appreciate it.”
Ogden thought about his mother standing without him at his father’s funeral.
“The desert is god,” Ogden’s mother said. They were at the stop sign with a flashing red light north of town.
“It is,” Eva Walker repeated.
Ogden pulled into the lot of the Texaco Mini Mart. “I’ll put some gas in your car for the road,” he told Jenny.
