A Flower in the Desert (24 page)

I said, “I wish there was something more comforting that I could tell you. There may be something soon. As soon as I know anything definite, I'll get in touch with you.”

She nodded, smiled sadly. “Thank you.”

Changing the subject, I turned to the paintings on the wall. “By the way, I like your work. Melissa has a couple of your paintings in her bedroom, out in California.”

Another sad smile. “She bought one at the opening, when I first met her. I gave her the other for her birthday, last year.” She nodded to the paintings. “Those are old. My first efforts. I keep them there to remind me how far I've come. And how much farther I've got to go.”

I stepped forward and looked more closely at the paintings. One was a view of the living room in which we stood, painted from the corridor that led into the kitchen. The other showed a view through a bedroom door of a rumpled bed, a lace-curtained window, a patch of shiny wooden floor. Both displayed the same fine detail, the same polished, sensual surfaces as the two paintings in Malibu, and both possessed the same curious sense of ghostly occupancy. But the bedroom scene, because the light was more subdued, the colors darker, seemed melancholy. As though the ghosts skulking around the corner were lonely and morose.

“They're both very fine,” I said. “But I think I like this one better.” I pointed to the bedroom scene.

She had crossed the room to stand beside me. She nodded. “That's a sad painting. I was going through a pretty rough time when I did it.”

“I like it.”

She stepped forward, lifted it off its support, and held it out to me. “Here.”

“I can't take that.”

“Things should belong to the people who enjoy them the most. Please. Take it. I really want you to have it.”

“I can't. Do you give your paintings away to everybody who likes them?”

“Not everybody. But I'd like you to have this. Please, Mr. Croft.”

I smiled, embarrassed. “If you're going to be giving me gifts, you'll have to call me Joshua.”

She smiled. “Joshua, then.”

“Why don't you hold on to it until I find Melissa. I'll take it then.”

“Take it now. Please?”

It would have been been rude to continue refusing. I took it. “All right. Thank you.”

“I'm glad you like it.”

I looked down at it. “Thank you. It's a beautiful painting.” I remembered something, looked up at her. “Listen. There's some other man involved in all this, asking questions, looking for people. He's Hispanic. I don't know who he is or what he wants. But he might be trouble. If he gets in touch with you, could you let me know?” I reached into my pocket, brought out a card, handed it to her.

The concern was back. “What does he have to do with Melissa?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe nothing.” I didn't believe that, but I didn't want her to worry about it. “But if he shows up, let me know?”

She nodded. “And you'll let me know if you hear anything about her?”

“I will,” I said.

I left Deirdre Polk's house at seven thirty. As I drove back to Santa Fe, the rain turned to snow, the first real storm of the season, and the snow turned to slush along the bottom of the windshield, packed there by the wipers. Big fat flakes, streaks of blinding white, came shooting down the headlight beams. The wind lurched at the sides of the station wagon. I put the car into four-wheel drive and slowed down to fifty.

By the time I reached town, around ten o'clock, the wind had died down. The snow was still falling, but softly now, silently. Three or four inches of the stuff lay on the ground.

When I got back to my house, I found a note from Leroy, Rita's distant relative, atop a small black plastic box that had been attached to my telephone.

“
Green light means the line is clear
,” the note read. “
No light means a tap. Leroy.
”

I lifted the telephone receiver off its cradle. The green light went on.

It was annoying, having to worry about a tap on the line. And probably the worry was only paranoia. But paranoia, as I'd often concluded before, can be a useful social skill.

I lighted a fire in the fireplace, poured myself a drink, and sat down on the couch with the names of the two College of Santa Fe professors I'd gotten from the catalogue in the library. Raymond Gallegos taught abnormal psychology, Paul Cavanaugh taught American literature.

I knew one person at the College—Larry Morgan, who taught anthropology. I picked up the phone. Green light. I called Morgan and asked him about the two professors. He said that Gallegos was crazy. I said that most psychologists were. He said that he didn't know Cavanaugh all that well, but that he'd heard he was competent. He wanted to know why I was asking, and I told him it had to do with a job. He agreed to call up both men, explain who I was, and ask them to call me.

Over the next hour, they both did, Cavanaugh first. Each told me that Juanita Carrera had been his student. Both said that she was quiet, reserved, and intelligent. So far as they knew, she didn't have any friends among the other students. Both told me that Stamworth had talked to them at the college, last Friday. Both were curious, wanting to know what all this interest in Juanita Carrera might signify. I told both of them that I didn't know. Cavanaugh had been out of town from Friday until Wednesday, yesterday, and hadn't seen the Hispanic man.

Gallegos had, on Monday. The man had claimed, once again, to be Juanita's cousin.

“It's possible, of course, that he was telling the truth,” Gallegos told me.

“Why?” I asked him.

“Well, we were speaking Spanish, and from his accent and a few of the words he used, I'd say he was Salvadoran. So was Juanita. But it's also possible that he was lying. He was a pretty unsavory character, I thought. Not someone I'd like to meet in a dark alley.”

“What did you tell him?”

“There was nothing I
could
tell him. As I said, Juanita didn't socialize, not with the other students, and certainly not with me. Is she in trouble?”

“I don't know. I hope not.”

“Is this something political?”

“Political?”

“There's a paramilitary organization in El Salvador called ORDEN. A pretty ruthless bunch of right-wing cutthroats. I'm not saying that this fellow is connected to them, mind you. I don't know. But he did have those lifeless gestapo eyes. Was Juanita involved in Salvadoran politics?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, look, let me know what you find out, would you? I like her. I'd hate to think she was somehow involved in that mess down there.”

I thanked him for his help.

Pretty much a dead end. Except that now I had more reason than ever to worry about Juanita Carrera.

I called Norman Montoya. He told me that, so far, his people had been “unable to locate the item in question.” I thanked him.

Forget Juanita Carrera for the time being, I told myself. You can't do anything more than you've done. Concentrate on Melissa and Roy Alonzo.

I got out the press clippings that Ed Norman had given me in Los Angeles. Until now, I'd only glanced through them. Most concerned the child abuse trials. The reporters had covered them as though they were soccer matches. Melissa Alonzo's doctors testify: one point to Melissa. Roy Alonzo's doctors testify: one point to Roy.

In his battle with Melissa, Roy Alonzo had finally won. He had obtained the right to have his daughter visit him for the weekends, with no supervision. The reporters who followed the trial seemed to think that this was the end of it. Since only the good guys
can
win, he who wins is by definition a good guy.

I wasn't so sure. Granted, most of the people with whom I'd spoken had been friends of Melissa's. Granted, the medical evidence in the case was ambiguous, as it usually is in such cases. But in the accounts of the conflicting testimonies, Melissa's doctors seemed to me humane, concerned, and shocked at the horrors they believed Winona had undergone. Roy Alonzo's doctors seemed sleek, pompous, and dismissive.

Maybe I was letting myself become biased. Talking to Deirdre Polk today, I'd finally begun to get a sense of Melissa as a living, breathing human being, and I found now that I was beginning to believe the story she'd told the court. If Norman Montoya had asked me, that night, for my advice, I would've told him to keep Roy Alonzo away from Winona.

After I finished reading, I got up, made myself another drink, picked up the painting Deirdre Polk had given me, returned with it to the couch.

It was, I thought, a remarkable piece of work. Serene and yet somehow infinitely sad. The surface of the things it depicted seemed to resonate with a wrenching sense of emptiness and loss. Looking into the painting, I found myself imagining that Melissa Alonzo and her daughter were hiding somewhere in that precisely detailed bedroom, locked in each other's arms and shivering, both of them, with grief.

She was a talented woman, Deirdre Polk. I had liked her. I had admired her skill, her honesty, her affection for Melissa. She seemed solid, whole. It seemed to me that she had made her accommodation with solitude, which is perhaps the most important thing that any of us can do, and usually the most difficult.

At eleven thirty, the state police came to tell me that she was dead.

Twenty

I
COULD SEE TWO OF THEM
through the peephole in the door, standing out there under the lamplight in the softly swirling snow. Neither matched the description of the Hispanic man who was looking for Juanita Carrera. One was slightly shorter than the other but both were tall and both wore dark overcoats pulled shut against the cold. Knotted ties showed at their necks. Their faces had that absolute lack of expression that came from too many years of seeing and hearing too much. They didn't have to wear badges on their chests for me to know they were cops.

“Who is it?” I called through the door.

“State police, Mr. Croft,” said the taller one. “We need to ask you a few questions.”

I opened the door, and they stamped their feet, wiped snow from the shoulders of their topcoats with gloved hands, and stepped in, the taller one leading. I closed the door. The taller one said, “I'm Agent Hernandez. This is Agent Green.”

Hernandez was about thirty. A black crew cut, a square red face, broad shoulders. Green was probably younger but looked older because he was balding. A broad forehead, a round face, gray jowls, unreadable brown eyes that were glancing casually around my living room. Twenty years from now he would be able to describe the kachina doll that stood atop my bookcase.

As they peeled off their gloves, I said, “Could I see some identification?”

Still expressionless, they reached into their suitcoat pockets. I examined their IDs. “Thank you,” I told them. I gestured toward the couch. “Have a seat.”

I sat down opposite them in the leather chair.

They were sitting forward, their weight on their feet. Green took from his topcoat pocket a small spiral notebook and a Cross pen.

I said, “How can I help you?”

“You were up in Hartley this evening, talking to a woman named Deirdre Polk.”

“What's happened?” I asked him. I think I already knew. There was a sudden coldness in my chest.

“She's dead,” Hernandez said. Green said nothing. Both watched me.

“Jesus,” I said. I sat back and shut my eyes. In the darkness I saw Deirdre Polk's face. It was concerned, worried, her brow furrowed, her wide lower lip lightly caught between her white teeth. “Jesus,” I said.

Hernandez said, “How well did you know her, Mr. Croft?”

I opened my eyes. “How was she killed?”

Green's dark brown eyes flicked to Hernandez, flicked back to me. Hernandez said, “Could you please answer my question, Mr. Croft.”

I took a breath. “Yeah. I will. I'll be happy to cooperate. But I need to get some bearings here. I hadn't expected this. I liked the woman. How was she killed?”

Hernandez watched me. “She was strangled,” he said.

“Shit.” I took another breath. Suddenly the air in the room was too thin. “Was she tortured?” My voice seemed to be coming from someone else. I wished it had been.

Green's eyes flicked again to Hernandez. Hernandez frowned slightly. “Maybe you'd better start answering our questions, Mr. Croft.”

I rubbed my forehead. It was cold and wet. I said, “You'll want to talk to a Sergeant Bradley, out in Los Angeles. He's Homicide, and he's got the same kind of case on his hands. Same M.O. I'm not certain, but I think the man you're looking for is a Hispanic male, probably a Salvadoran. Medium height, medium build. He has a small, thin mustache. Slicked-back black hair. He's in his thirties.”

Green snorted lightly and produced an almost infinitesimal sneer, as though his contempt were so deep that he couldn't work up enough energy to express it more fully. He looked at Hernandez and spoke for the first time. “I guess we can go home now, huh?”