La Arca was now empty. I closed the lid and stood up. Then I gently turned the box over. On the bottom, carved into the wooden base, was the signature of its maker and the date it was made: Pedro Antonio Fresquíz-1831.
At the library, I had learned about the santero from Las Truchas, probably the first native-born santero in Nuevo Mexico. As Father Ignacio had promised, this man-the one from the legend Theresa Mendoza had told me-and the sacred tract by Padre Antonio José Martínez, who was the first New Mexico Penitente to become a priest, had come together at last. Padre Martínez had virtually risked his life to defend Los Hermanos against the decrees the Church issued condemning the brotherhood when he printed this sacred document. This tract was his opus, and that source of power Father Ignacio had mentioned that someone had been trying to steal from Los Penitentes. It was their credo. And this sacred ark was probably the last work of art Pedro Antonio Fresquíz had made before he died. Its value alone-without the tract by Padre Martínez-was inestimable. Only a few pieces of his work remained in existence, and their distinctive style was prized by collectors of religious iconography the world over.
I rotated La Arca back to an upright position and studied the beautiful, passionate carving, the deep, stainlike colors of the cedar wood’s variegations on the lid of this portable shrine. I began to replace the contents, one by one-beginning with the Martínez tract in its silk cover. Then the aging documents and the cloth binder with its ledger of names. Then the silver cross with the ruby, and the carved-bead rosaries with their crucifixes. And the priceless cuaderno.
I turned then to the piles of photographs. I had seen photos like these in some of the books I had looked to for research into the brotherhood. Sadly, most of them were overexposed, not very clear, taken from a distance-showing Penitente rituals and processions. And even a few of crucifixions.
The figures in the older pictures seemed unreal. The stark light of New Mexico’s midday sun shone on the harsh faces of rocks, making the black-clad figures in coats appear to be shadows, and the black-hooded, white-trousered Penitentes hard to make out against the strata and the bare ground.
The newer photographs, those with the rickrack edges, were clearer. There were several of the ritual reunion of Christ with his mother. There was a series showing the stations of the cross. Many of processions. And eight pictures in sequence of the same crucifixion. They looked like they were hastily shot, the frames not well composed, some of them askew. They were taken from a considerable distance-probably in secret, from behind a rock-and then seized later. A few onlookers, also dressed in black, appeared in several of this series, tiny and hard to make out. I scanned these. Then I saw the face.
It was a face I had seen in countless photographs, a face that, surprisingly, had remained very similar over the years.
I quickly began to unpack La Arca again. I removed the cuaderno-and the rosaries and silver cross-looking for what was beneath them. There! I picked up the cloth-bound ledger and scanned the most recent dates. I found what I was looking for: Arturo Vigil, 1954-muerto.
“Kerry, get ready, okay? I have to go.” I carefully restored to La Arca all her treasures. All but one.
37
I asked Kerry and Jerry Padilla to wait at the bottom of the drive. “Promise me you’ll wait here for my signal.”
“I don’t feel right about it, Jamaica,” Padilla said. “How do I know you’ll be safe?”
I pulled my Sig Sauer pistol from its holster. I held it up to the deputy and raised my eyebrows at him. Then I tucked the pistol into one big pocket of my jacket, the photo into another. I patted my gun pocket. “I don’t think I’ll need this, but just to reassure you…”
I walked up Regan’s drive. The Toyota was in the garage. I went to the house and looked in the windows. No sign of life. I peered up the path to the casita. The Land Rover was not there, of course. There were big boot prints in the drifts leading from the rear portal up the slope toward the shrine. I followed them, crunching softly in the snow as I walked.
I could hear her voice as I approached. She was crying and groaning and singing under her breath, all at the same time. I came up the high side of the rocks and looked down at her back, her head draped in a black lace mantilla, which settled in folds onto her thick sweater. She was wearing some kind of soft pants and the same unlaced boots she always wore around the place. “Regan,” I said, my voice firm.
She turned around slowly. Before her, on the shrine, lay the rosary I had found by the corral-the one with the crucifix with the name A. Vigil engraved on the back. A dozen or so lit candles in red and green glass jars surrounded the wooden piece and a carved santo-Saint Anthony.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” she asked.
“Andy? Yes. He tried to kill me.”
At this, she broke into a full-throated cry, “Ah-h-h-hhhh! My little Antonio! My baby brother! Look what they’ve done! Look what they’ve done!”
“Regan, I want you to come with me,” I said. I stepped aside, motioning her toward the path that passed by the rocks. She didn’t move.
“First they killed my father,” she said, shaking her head, the mantilla edging back off the crown of her head and sliding down her hair. “Now, little Antonio!” She began whining, as a nervous dog might.
“Your father was Arturo Vigil. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“You saw him crucified, didn’t you? That wasn’t just some daring adventure you and your friend took, like that story you told me.”
“Yes!” she screamed. “Yes, I saw it happen! I was there! They tried to keep us at a distance. I didn’t know for sure that it was my father, but I found out the next day. They killed him! They killed him, and they killed my mother, too! She died of a broken heart within the year. No one would do anything about it. No one would even investigate it. I tried to talk to everyone, but no one would listen to me-I was a child!” As Regan’s facade-her tightly controlled persona-ruptured, and the terrible truth she had been concealing spilled out, it seemed to be taking her substance with it. Her large, bony frame and lean, sinewy flesh seemed more pronounced, as if she were slowly desiccating, becoming a skeleton. Her face was skull-like, with the thin tissue of her amber skin stretching over a pronounced forehead and jaw. She tore each word off with her teeth. “Then, Antonio decided to get revenge. It made him crazy, you see. It made him crazy! He was just a little boy, but the next year, he put the poison on the whips and two men died. It served them right-they killed our father!” Her voice was hysterical, breaking from low to high pitch, shaking. Her whole body was trembling.
“They held a council. They agreed to suppress the crime from the authorities, but made Andy go away; that was his punishment. He was supposed to go away and never come back. Our tía abuela in Los Angeles took us both in. We had to live on her charity. When she died, we had no one. We had no home. We had no family. We had nothing.” Her voice had calmed a little now, the poison spilled. Her chest heaved with a deep sigh.
“I want you to come with me now, Regan,” I said again, and I stepped back to offer her room to move onto the path.