“I understand you knew the deceased,” she said as she showed me to an interview room.
“Yes, I had met him. Once.”
“Well, I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, closing the door and gesturing for me to take a seat at the table.
I sat down.
Christine sat down opposite me. “But when you witnessed the scene that morning, you didn’t know who it was, correct?”
“That’s right, I didn’t know who it was.”
“Okay, then. For the purposes of this interview, I think it would be best if we tried to proceed as if you didn’t know who the deceased was, even now. It will keep you more detached, and you will be able to retrieve the information from your memory without emotions clouding the data. Do you think you can do that?”
“I think so,” I said. “I’m still kind of in shock about it, and I don’t know why, but I haven’t been able to feel much of anything since I heard.”
“That happens a lot. Now, tell me what you saw that morning,” she said, poised to take notes on the legal pad on the table in front of her.
“I saw movement on the bridge. A big, light-colored truck or van had stopped in the middle. Two people with hooded coats or jackets were moving around. One of them may have walked to the rail and looked over. Then they went to the back of the van or the truck or whatever it was. They were there a long time-or at least it seemed like that-they were doing something at the rear of the vehicle. I thought it was either base jumpers or bungee jumpers getting out their gear.”
“And what happened next?”
“They wrestled something to the rail pretty quickly, before I could tell what it was. And then I saw it happen.”
She looked up from her note taking. “Yes? Saw what happen?”
“I saw the body on the cross, falling into the gorge.”
“Tell me about that.”
I shook my head. “I saw a man on a cross plummeting down into the void.”
“Close your eyes, Jamaica,” Christine said.
I did as she said.
“Now try to run the tape as if it were in slow motion. What do you see?”
I sat for a few moments trying to get myself focused. Then I saw the cross falling, only it was so fast, I almost missed it. I shuddered.
“Take a deep breath,” Christine said. “Now center yourself and keep breathing big, deep breaths.”
“Are you trying to hypnotize me?”
“No. I just know we all store more data in our brains than we often utilize. Let’s see if we can call this memory file up and examine it a little more closely.”
I tried again, and this time, when the cross started to tip over the rail, I managed to replay the scene slowly. “Okay,” I said, my eyes still closed. “Okay, maybe I can do this.”
“Now tell me about the man on the cross.”
“He has a rope around his chest.” I opened my eyes. “Wait, Christine. I don’t know if I’m saying what I saw as the cross was falling or if I’m adding to that what I saw from the bridge through the field glasses when the cross was still partly on the bank of the river below me.”
“Let’s try again, then,” she said. “Close your eyes and take three long, deep breaths.”
I did as she said.
“Now, just picture the cross falling and see if you can hit the pause button in your mind.”
“Okay,” I said, “okay, I think I can do this.”
“What about his face, his head?”
“I can’t see his head. It’s like he doesn’t have a head. All I see is the pale body against the cross.”
“What about his body?”
“It’s lean. There’s a white… wrap or something around his lower torso.” I was quiet for a few moments.
“Do you see anything else?”
“His skin-it’s light. But it’s not white.”
“Can you look at his body carefully? Do you see anything else?”
I drew in a sharp breath.
“What do you see?”
“He has a wound. In his side.”
“Which side?”
“The left side.”
“Where on the left side?”
“Kind of, maybe at the bottom of the rib cage, I think.” I reached a hand and felt under my own rib cage, and then I started to lose concentration and I shook my head.
“Take another big, deep breath, Jamaica,” Salazar said. “Look again at the scene you witnessed that morning. Can you look at the bridge and tell me who is there?”
I inhaled and exhaled, my eyes still closed. “It’s too dark. I’m too far away.”
“But you can see the body on the cross?”
“When I first see it, they have tipped it over the rail, so it is in front of the rail and the fence. And it’s so… shocking to see.”
“Just try to look back up at the bridge now; don’t force it too much, but try. What do you see?”
I shook my head. “I don’t see… they’re gone. The truck or the van is gone, it’s…”
“It’s what?”
“It’s almost dawn. There are stars in the sky and I can make out the silhouette of the mountains against the horizon because there’s a faint purple glow just at the top.”
“Okay,” she said, “you can open your eyes now.” She made more notes on the legal pad. Then she straightened and looked at me. “We know he wasn’t killed by the fall from the bridge.”
“I know,” I said without thinking.
“You know? How do you know?”
“I… I can’t remember.” I tried to cover. “I think I heard it from someone on the task force, I’m not sure.”
“The OMI hasn’t said anything about that to anyone! I’m furious that it has gotten out. Somebody has a big mouth-that could possibly blow it for the investigation.” She shook her head back and forth and let out a big breath of consternation.
“Christine, that wound in his side. I never saw that through the field glasses from the bridge.”
“Yes, you may not have been able to see right under his rib cage from the angle you had up on the bridge. But when you saw the cross falling, the body was more directly in front of your line of sight. Sometimes you have more data in your memory bank than comes immediately to mind, but with some work-”
“But I don’t think I saw the rope around the chest that time. I think that was from looking down through the field glasses. So I sort of have the two memory files mixed up.”
“Actually, that’s not uncommon either. You did well, Jamaica. Really.”
“So, the ropes, the cross, the black bag over his head-was this a Penitente crucifixion, Christine?”
“It certainly looked that way.”
“But I’ve been studying the Penitentes. This can’t be them.”
“You’ve been studying the Penitentes? Are you on the team investigating the stolen icons?”
Stolen icons? Team investigation? I remembered Father Ignacio mentioning icons being stolen. “I’m working on a related matter.”
“I don’t have anything official about sharing information with you.”
“I know,” I bluffed. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you about this either. It could compromise our case.”
“Get the BLM to write me a memo.”
“Oh, come on, Christine. This whole thing will be over before I could get the BLM to write you a memo. You know that.”
She studied me carefully.
I studied back-alert, looking for signs, a predator watching for a hint of weakness in my quarry.
A hint of fatigue had begun to show in her face. She took a few moments to make up her mind. “Well, you better keep a tight lid on this, or heads will roll. And I’m going to find out where the leak is and personally put a cork in it. So if any more information gets out, it will be you I come looking for next. Do you understand me?”
I didn’t want to be on the wrong side of her if I didn’t have to. “I’m not even able to pry my own lips apart, Christine. I had them hermetically sealed last week.” I smiled, trying to lighten things up between us.