Dead mountain, p.16
Dead Mountain, page 16
“Where did the results come from—what lab?”
“No idea. The file folder had no ID on it, no cover information. And then, just like that, the report was suddenly withdrawn—classified. No one would answer my questions, even though I had a security clearance, of course.”
“Can you be more specific about the withdrawal of that report?”
“A day after the results came in, two spooks showed up. Very polite. They spent some time in our lab, some more time in the evidence vault, and then they came up to me and my team and asked that we give them all the files pertaining to the tests and their results. Next thing I know, the thing was classified at the highest level.”
“So who were the spooks? You must have asked for identification.”
“No badges of any official governmental branch, just generic IDs, which we confirmed with Justice. They were the real deal—no question.”
“But word about the radiation leaked out anyway,” Corrie prompted. “How did that happen?”
“We investigated that leak and got nowhere. I’m pretty sure it didn’t come from the FBI. Maybe Justice, maybe the military. Too many people had already seen the results to put the genie all the way back in the bottle.” He paused. “Have you learned any more about the radiation in your own investigation?” There was a curious tone in his voice as he asked the question, edgy, almost sarcastic.
“The results were a precise match to the tests done on the original samples fifteen years ago.” This information had, in fact, just come in, along with the additional toxicology tests on Tolland and Wright—which had been depressingly devoid of anything interesting. “Let’s move ahead to the following May, when two more bodies were found.”
Gold nodded. “Lynn and Luke.”
“Your reports describe the condition of the bodies in detail but offer no solid conclusions as to what happened.”
“No viable scenario presented itself to us. It was clear that the two, who were better clothed than the first four, had tried to dig a cave for warmth in an area of deep, drifted snow near the top of a ravine. What wasn’t clear—what, to be blunt, we had no answer for—was why they were crushed in such a traumatic fashion.”
“Avalanche?” Corrie asked.
“We looked into that, of course. We called in a local expert on winter mountaineering; it’s in the reports. Avalanches require a slope of at least twenty-two degrees to form, and the slope above the ravine was fifteen. In addition, they were at the very top of the ravine, where avalanches don’t usually form. We had the expert review the topography—he ruled it out. In the absence of an avalanche, we were unable to determine how they’d been crushed like that, with no broken skin. Any more than we knew how some of them suffered third-degree burns.”
“So your final report read,” said Corrie.
“Let me just correct you there, Agent Swanson. There was a last report, as I said—but it wasn’t final. It was interim. The pressure to solve this case was incredible. God knows there were plenty of half-assed ideas floating around. I could have chosen the least crazy hypothesis and written it up as our presumptive official theory. But that’s not the way the FBI works. At least, not how it’s supposed to.”
“So when you found no theory that fit, no answer that could explain the circumstances, you—as the lead investigator—gave no answer at all,” Sharp said.
“Exactly.”
And so the case was left open, Corrie thought. And that only further fueled the controversy. And led to Gold’s fall from grace. At least he was honest.
Aloud, she asked, “Did you survey the ravine area, where the two bodies were found?”
“We collected evidence, of course.”
“I mean a survey of the archaeological kind, subsurface.”
“Pointless,” said Gold. “Even in May the ravine was still full of snow. You saw the photographs. Our ERT did a meticulous job collecting evidence.”
He stopped speaking and shifted in his chair, the chanting outside filling the silence. In his eyes, Corrie saw lonely despair; defiance; anger; and frustration.
“I have no more questions,” she said, closing her notebook.
Ten minutes later they were back in their SUV, the small band of protesters taking up positions on both sides of them now, chanting energized by their departure. The strophe and antistrophe of their chorus faded as they accelerated away, the front door of the house closed and the blinds shut tight.
29
AS THEY BEGAN the long drive back to the FO, Corrie found herself sharing Sharp’s disinclination for talk. She had too much to think about. She’d been hoping to uncover some nugget, some discrepancy, some clue everyone had overlooked, that would blow the case wide open. But all she’d gotten out of the interview was despair and failure. Gold was—no pun intended—played out. Everything he’d witnessed, everything he’d done, was in the files she’d already looked at. Instead of the revelation she’d been anticipating, she’d had a revelation of a far different kind: what it looked like to be given a monster of a case . . . and remain unable to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.
She had a creeping suspicion that Gold—a hardworking, accomplished, and honorable agent—hadn’t quite been up to it. He’d gone into the case with high hopes, a stepping-stone to greater things. But instead, he had retired under a cloud, and the unfinished business had gnawed at him ever since. And it seemed to her that he had not followed up, or had given up too soon, on some obvious lines of inquiry. Instead of a mother lode, she’d found a sad and disturbing scene—made worse by shrill protesters invading his very place of retreat. Tell the truth, no more lies! It was awful. They were awful. She quickly reminded herself they were the families of the victims—but did that excuse it?
Tell the truth, no more lies! The voices echoed in Corrie’s head as she merged onto I-25 just south of Caballo. But Gold had told the truth—that was the problem.
Could what happened to Gold happen to her now? Or Sharp?
What kind of agent had he been? Competent, honest, but unimaginative. The regimented mindset he’d revealed was unsuited to such an exotic problem. If ever there was a case that demanded out-of-the-box thinking, this was it. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed Gold had searched for answers by asking only the most obvious questions. When normal investigative paths led nowhere, he’d just gone down them again . . . and again. For example, he couldn’t understand why the bodies around the fire were so badly burned on their feet, legs, and heads. To him, it was a mystery. To the public, it was proof of aliens or secret weapons. But to Corrie, the answer seemed so obvious she was almost afraid to voice it.
And Gold hadn’t surveyed the fire pit: something Nora did before Corrie thought to ask her. And she’d recovered a knife with initials on it. Perhaps not a valuable clue, but still . . . Then there was the ravine. Nobody had surveyed that. An avalanche could not have taken place—she felt Gold had reasonably established that—but what other possibilities had he failed to consider? Some weird weather event? Falling rocks? What else could have crushed those bodies so completely?
She drove another twenty minutes in silence, wheels turning in her head as well as on the road. Then she turned to Sharp. “About those burns on the victims . . . ?”
“Yes?”
She hesitated. “I’m not a winter backpacker, sir, but I think I know how they got burned.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Okay, consider this, sir: You have these nine people, mostly undressed, who’ve fled their tent into a storm. They’ve run in the snow almost a mile, then lit a fire. That must have taken a half hour or more. According to Dr. Kelly’s survey of the fire area, it was a big fire.”
“Go on.”
“So by the time the fire is going, they’re already freezing to death. They’ve got hypothermia. Their feet and hands are badly frostbitten. They’re losing their grip on reality.”
“So you think they stuck their feet, hands, and heads into the fire?”
He made it sound so stupid. But she went on. “Well, yes, in fact. Think about it. That fire, big as it was, couldn’t keep them from freezing. The meteorological report says the winds were forty to fifty miles an hour, temperatures ten below zero. They got too close to the fire in a desperate effort to extract warmth from it.”
“And actually burned their flesh?”
“They couldn’t feel it! The burns were on their feet, shins, forearms, and heads. Those are the very areas that were exposed. Those extremities were frostbitten; they were huddling so close to the fire they were too close to the flames, maybe even in the flames, and they were freezing to death at the same time. The first three died anyway, then the rest cut off their meager clothes and went on northward, realizing the fire couldn’t save them.”
“This is a new wrinkle.”
“It seems obvious.” She abruptly stopped. Maybe she had pushed her point too far.
“Obvious? Yet none of our experts drew this conclusion.”
“Agent Gold knew it wasn’t an avalanche that collapsed the tent. He said he’d called in an expert on winter mountaineering.”
“A local expert.”
“But he didn’t say anything about calling a doctor who specialized in hypothermia. Or a real expert in avalanches.”
“No,” said Sharp slowly, drawing out the word. “But perhaps you should.”
“I will, sir.”
She couldn’t tell from those sleepy eyes what he really thought. But he did authorize her to hire experts. She made a mental note to find the most qualified avalanche expert she could—the case, and the victims, demanded no less.
“Another thing?” she ventured.
The eyelids rose.
“Do you think we could arrange a tour of Kirtland?”
The senior agent was slow to stir himself. “Kirtland?”
“I’d like to ask the military to give us a tour. I don’t mean the typical visitor’s tour, but a tour of the mountainous area in the east.”
“May I ask why?”
“The radiation contamination, the whole classified business Gold talked about. Kirtland stores the nation’s nuclear weapons. That’s an obvious connection.”
“Another ‘obvious.’ Okay. Now, give me an anodyne reason that I can put on paper . . . one which might stand a chance of getting through military bureaucracy.”
Corrie was silent a moment. “Kirtland’s southern border is about five miles north of the cave where Tolland and Wright were found. You were the first one to tell me that the location of the bodies trend in a beeline north: from the tent, to the fire pit, to where the fourth body was found, to the ravine, to the cave. That direction leads to the southern Kirtland border. I’d like to see that portion of its fence.”
“And look for what?”
“Maybe the ninth person cut through the fence, and there’s evidence of that still.”
“I’m not sure the air force would appreciate being linked to the Dead Mountain investigation. We might not be welcome.”
“We don’t need them to welcome us with dancing girls and champagne . . . just a Jeep and a driver. Present it as routine. Dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.”
“They are likely to point out this seems rather far-fetched.”
“I don’t think it’s random that every one of those victims were heading in the same direction. They left the fire with a goal in mind, some goal we don’t yet know. Maybe it was just the base itself and the hope of finding a patrol. But it stands to reason if the ninth camper, O’Connell, survived longer than the rest—and we haven’t found his body anywhere along the route—he might have made it to that fence and onto the base. He was only one of two with both his boots on and fully dressed for outside.”
“I won’t insult your intelligence by pointing out that had he gotten into Kirtland, his body would have been discovered long ago.”
“But it’s the one place we haven’t been able to search. And that radiation—you’ve got to admit it points to Kirtland. I don’t recall from the files that Gold or anyone else followed up on that possible lead.”
Sharp was quiet for so long that Corrie grew sure he’d nixed the idea. And so it was with surprise that, as they were passing the desiccated whistle stop known as Luis Lopez, she heard him say, “Okay.”
“Okay what, sir?”
“I think it’s a good idea.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. When we get back to the office, let’s schedule a visit with the Kirtland commander to discuss it. He’ll have the final say. And Corrie?”
“Yes?”
“Step on it, will you? I’d like to get back before dinner.”
And while Sharp plumped and prodded his seat like a dog preparing for a nap, Corrie—already going seventy-five—pressed her foot on the accelerator, adding another fifteen miles per hour. She was, after all, in no danger of getting a speeding ticket.
30
WINTER HAD SETTLED in along the Rio Grande. A freezing wind whipped a few stray flakes of snow across the mesa that overlooked the river, flowing sluggish and brown. The mesa top was barren save for a few twisted juniper trees, and the sky the color of zinc. Nora looked around curiously as people assembled for the burial ceremony. While she had attended a number of Pueblo dances, she’d never participated in anything like this, and she knew it was a privilege to be there. Few were in attendance—less than two dozen. Two side-by-side graves lay open, dirt piled up nearby. Next to them stood a folding table covered with a baize cloth, on which were placed two small painted boxes carrying the bones. Laid out next to the boxes were the few artifacts recovered: the broken golden micaceous pot, gleaming dully in the gray light; several spearpoints; and a fetish made of carved shell. A line of Isleta elders in traditional Pueblo dress stood in a solemn row next to the gravesite, along with a singer with a drum, waiting motionless, the wind ruffling their hair and clothing. Nora, bundled in a down jacket, a hat, and gloves, thought they must be freezing, but they showed no signs of cold.
Skip stood next to her, also in a puffy down jacket, hands shoved into his pockets, looking dour. Skip’s attorney, Edward Lightfeather, was beside him. The last to arrive was Darren Tenorio, wearing an Isleta-style shirt with a cowboy hat and leather vest, who came over from the parking area. He greeted her with a nod and a handshake.
“Glad to have you here,” he said.
“Thank you for the invitation.”
Tenorio leaned over and grasped Skip’s hand. “You too, Skip. I’m glad you could come to see us put these remains to rest—especially after the price you paid.”
“Thank you,” said Skip, “I really appreciate that. That bastard Hawley—”
Nora nudged him, hard; now was not the time to go on another tirade about the crooked sheriff.
Tenorio turned to Nora. “This mesa top is our traditional burying ground. Most of our people today are Catholic and they’re buried in the mission graveyard, but we don’t bury prehistoric remains there. Those who aren’t Christians can be buried up here, if they choose.”
“It’s got an amazing view.”
“Yes. You can see the entire pueblo. Isleta was originally built on an island in the river, which is why the Spanish gave it that name four hundred years ago. You can see the scar of the old river channel behind town. Its real name—our name—is Shiewhibak.”
Nora could see where the river had once been, having evidently shifted into its present channel sometime in the past. The dusty adobe and prefab homes of the pueblo were surrounded by irrigated fields, with strips of bare cottonwood trees along the river. The Manzanos rose up in the east, a wall of mountains from north to south as far as the eye could see, their upper slopes covered with fresh snow, peaks lost in the winter clouds. In the opposite direction, to the west, stood layer upon layer of desert mesas in shades of brown, orange, and russet. It was an austere, windswept vista.
At the last minute, a Ford Explorer emblazoned with a sheriff’s logo drove up and a young man got out, wearing a black cowboy hat. Nora immediately recognized, to her surprise, that it was Sheriff Watts. He came striding over on lanky legs.
“Glad you could make it, Sheriff,” said Tenorio, as they shook hands.
“Honored to be invited.” He leaned over and took Nora’s hand, then Skip’s and the lawyer’s, greeting them all.
“What are you doing here?” Nora whispered.
“I’m a friend of the tribe,” he whispered back. “Our office has been able to, shall we say, help them with a few matters.”
With this mysterious pronouncement, the hour arrived, and they fell into silence. Watts removed his hat. The drummer began to beat a mournful rhythm, long and slow, on the painted cottonwood drum tightly covered with hide. After a moment, several singers broke into a high, quavering song that rose and fell in the wind.
After a few moments an elder, wrapped in a woven blanket, with long white braids down his back, came forward and sprinkled pollen and cornmeal from a small painted pot over the two coffin-boxes. The singing rose in cadence and the beat got louder, remaining at the same slow pace. The old man stepped back, covered the pot with a piece of sandstone, raised it up, and placed it back in a leather satchel.
The singing slowly died away as the drumbeat softened, then ended with the shake of a bone rattle.
The elder stepped forward and began speaking in the Isletan language, which Nora understood was Southern Tiwa. It wasn’t so much a spoken requiem as it was a low, repetitive chant, with a funereal intonation. His quavering voice was whisked away by the cold wind, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, but always elegiac. As the chanting continued, Tenorio and three other council members stepped forward and grasped the green straps around each coffin, which they used to raise up and carefully lower the caskets into the two holes, first one and then the other. The few grave goods—including, Nora saw with dismay, the micaceous pot—were then lowered into the graves. Each council member in turn took a silver spade and tossed in a bit of earth from the piles. The elder gestured for everyone else who was present to come forward and add their own spadefuls of earth, as the chanting dirge continued.
