“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.