Authors: John Fortunato
“I spoke with Professor Trudle at UNM,” he said. “He told me about the dig at Jones Ranch and that you were there when the congressman and your sister visited. Tell me what you remember about that day.”
“I've played it over in my mind so many times. Down to the clothes I wore. Nothing stands out.”
He flipped open his notepad and took out a pen. “Tell me what you remember.”
She took a deep breath. “I have to go back about two months before the visit. That's when my sister called me. At the time, I was doing graduate work in anthropology at UNM; only later did I get into paleontology. She told me about a bill Arlen was working on to protect Native American artifacts and asked if there was someone at the university he could talk to for some background on the issue. I gave her Professor Trudle's name. Two months later, we had the theft at our dig site, and Professor Trudle asked me to tell Arlen. I called my sister. The next day, he and my sister came out to look at the site.” Sierra paused. “She surprised me. I didn't know she'd be with him.”
She stared at his notepad.
“You okay?” he asked.
“You're the first person in twenty years to take what I'm saying seriously.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don't remember any of the other agents taking notes. All they did was ask about Arlen and Faye, and how they got along, if she ever talked to me about him.”
“Some investigators don't take notes during an interview, but make them afterward,” Joe said.
“No, that wasn't it. They were so damn convinced that he was guilty and my sister was his lover. You'd think we were talking about Bonnie and Clyde.”
Joe wasn't about to argue with her. He'd started to feel the same way about the investigation. Over lunch, he'd reviewed Sierra's statement from back then and had not seen any mention of the dig site or Sierra's contact with Faye about the theft. Sierra had been mentioned only as Faye's sister. But the omission didn't mean the original agents were unaware of the connection. During an investigation, a lot of work is performed and a lot of people interviewed, but not everything makes it into a report.
“You're sure they visited the site the next day?”
“Yes.”
“What time?”
“Early. Ten o'clock maybe.”
If their disappearance had been planned, it had been planned the day before.
“How did she know where to go? The dig site doesn't sound like it was easy to get to.”
“I gave her directions over the phone. We didn't have e-mail back then, and I didn't have access to a fax to send her a map.”
“Where did you call her from?” Joe asked, looking for some clue as to who might have known about the visit.
“I drove to Gallup and used a pay phone in front of the courthouse. No cell phones back then, either.”
“Who knew about the congressman's visit?”
“Hmmm. I never thought about that. I guess it was me, Lawrence, of course, Arlen, Faye, and Steve Mercado. He was another grad student working at the site. He's a professor now at UNM. Oh, and Nick, Arlen's driver.”
“I notice your refer to the congressman as Arlen.”
“I worked on his campaign. Even danced with him at his election party. He was a nice man. Not a bad dancer, either. I knew Nick, too.”
Another omission from the file.
“Don't get offended, but I need to ask. Was the congressman a womanizer? Did you get any sense of that when you danced with him?”
“You're starting to sound like the others.”
“All I'm asking for is the truth. You're an attractive woman.” Joe realized belatedly what he'd just said, but he continued on without a pause. “When you danced with him, or spent time with him, did he ever make a pass, or in any way indicate he wasâ”
“No. Even when we danced, it was at a distance. You never met him, I'm sure, because if you had, you would know better. He was always a gentleman.”
“I know you don't like the question, but I need to explore the possibility of another woman, and I don't mean Faye.”
“I never saw anything that made me think he was stepping out on his wife. And Faye never said anything like that.”
“Let's go back to the dig site. They arrive. Then what?”
“Then Steve and I head into Gallup to get water and supplies.”
“What kind of supplies?”
“Is that important?”
“I don't know.”
“I think it was gas for the generator,” she said. “Yeah, I remember now. After the theft, Professor Trudle kept the site lights running all night, and that meant that the generator ran all night, too, so we needed gas. Also, I wanted to clean up. We used the showers at UNM-Gallup.”
“So, when you and Steve went to Gallup, Professor Trudle was left alone with the congressman and Faye?”
“And Nick.”
“And Nick. What do you know about Nick?”
“I think Faye said he was a writer. I didn't know him well. Only to say hi. His father called me after they went missing. He accused me of knowing where Nick was. He said that my sister was involved in the scandal with Edgerton and that they had pulled Nick into it. He was an old man and wanted to blame someone.”
“How did he get your number?”
“You don't have any idea how big the media coverage was back then, do you? That was my fifteen minutes of fame.”
He thought about his conversation with Gillian only the week before. “What were your fifteen minutes like?”
“The first two weeks, I had reporters camped outside my apartment. They were at my parents' house, too. And I received so many phone calls. Some threats, some support, mostly crazy people. My parents received calls, too. And some letters.”
“Did any of the calls or letters have details about the disappearance?”
“My sister was either sunbathing on some South American beach or she was abducted by aliens. One person said that Edgerton was secretly an intergalactic ambassador. I don't know if people like that ever realize how much their foolishness hurts.” She wiped at her brimming eye with the back of her hand and then picked up the accordion folder next to her and placed it in front of Joe. “Here are the letters and some newspaper clippings. I thought they might help.”
He took his time going through the material. She waited patiently. He asked more questions about the case, about her sister, and about the congressman. When he felt he had covered everything, he asked for her opinion on what had happened. An opinion often provided good insight into how that person's mind worked. If she mentioned the Illuminati, he was out of here.
“I think someone killed them. I don't know why. Maybe because of that casino bill he was working on. Maybe because of some other bill. Maybe it was random. I don't know. But I do know my sister is dead, because there is no way she would just run away and cause me and my parents to worry all these years.”
“Is there anyone you suspect?”
She didn't answer right away. “I always thought Faye's boyfriend, Bobby Lopez, could have done something to her. He always seemed a little ⦠controlling. The jealous type. He works for the Albuquerque Police Department now. I saw him last year. We had some vandalism here. The creep actually hit on me.”
Joe asked a few more questions about the boyfriend. When he'd finished, she asked, “Will you call me when you identify the body?”
“Yes.”
She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “Please find my sister, Agent Evers.”
“Sierra,” a man's voice said.
They both turned. In the doorway stood the ponytailed man Sierra had been talking to at the security desk. Joe had pegged him as a bohemian. But now, he got a better look. Not bohemian. Ponytail was the guy on the cover of every romance novel, only he didn't have a torn shirtâyet.
Ponytail spoke. “I'm sorry to interrupt, but if we don't leave now, we're going to be late.” He stared at Joe.
Joe thought the guy was going to lift his leg and mark his territory right then and there.
“That's fine, Ms. Hannaway,” Joe said. “I have enough here to work on.” He shoved the letters and envelopes back into the accordion folder. “I'll make copies and get the originals back to you.”
S
EPTEMBER
30
T
HURSDAY
, 8:35
P.M.
J
OE
E
VERS
'
S
A
PARTMENT
, A
LBUQUERQUE
, N
EW
M
EXICO
Joe reclined on the couch, feet up, a beer within easy reach. The Edgerton file was spread out around him, along with an empty bean burrito wrapper.
Sierra suspected Faye's boyfriend, Bobby Lopez, so he started with him. Lopez had served six years with the 101st Airborne Division and was part of Operation Urgent Fury, the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983. In June 1987, he received an honorable discharge and returned to Albuquerque, his hometown. According to his interview, he'd met Faye at a Veterans of Foreign Wars event. They started dating. Three months later, he moved in with her. He was unemployed at the time. The day Faye disappeared, he was at home watching soap operas and
The People's Court.
Not much of an alibi. He was familiar with firearms and had tactical training. Joe wrote “Bobby Lopez” on his legal pad and jotted a few notes.
He spent the next hour going through the file, identifying everyone of interest to the investigation. He added their names to his list. He planned to conduct a follow-up interview with each of them. He hoped they were all alive. Time had a way of thinning out witness lists in a cold case.
By his third beer, he had eight names written on his sheet. Not many. All of them had been interviewed by the BIA agent who'd headed the case, Malcolm Tsosie.
Joe had transferred to BIA from the old Immigration and Naturalization Service, INS, long before it was rolled into Homeland Security after 9/11. During Joe's first year with BIA, Malcolm had been put on suspension, so they'd never met. Back then, Joe had been assigned to the Mescalero Apache reservation and was living in Roswell. He'd spent little time in Albuquerque, where Malcolm worked. Like Joe, Malcolm had also left under a cloud. If he remembered correctly, Malcolm had been investigated for excessive force. He'd been on the Laguna reservation, interviewing a victim, when the victim's neighbors began fighting. A domestic. Malcolm and another agent attempted to break it up. The irate husband punched Malcolm, so Malcolm hit the man on the head with an expandable baton, putting him in a coma for eight days. When the man came to, he had no recollection of the incident, but Malcolm had already come under investigation by then. Apparently, it wasn't his first violent encounter. Rather than face a review board, Malcolm had quit. No retirement. Nothing. Malcolm was roughly Joe's age, so he was likely still working. Dale might know how to find him. They'd been partners at one time.
Reading the original investigation reports proved disappointing. All the interviews seemed to focus on Edgerton's affair and the investigation of casino gaming corruption. The day Edgerton went missing was the same day the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, later renamed the House Committee on Ethics, announced it was opening a probe into allegations of bribery and corruption by Edgerton and Ellery Gates, a congressman from Oklahoma. Gates was mentioned in a number of the news stories about Edgerton. The congressional probe had focused on their joint sponsorship of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Bill and a number of significant money transfers to offshore accounts and to Gates's reelection campaign fund. As Joe had learned the day before, the source of the money was the nonprofit group Indigenous Peoples Self-Governance Foundation, which turned out to be a front funded by three international gaming corporations and two Oklahoma tribes. The corporations wanted favorable access to gaming on tribal lands. The tribes wanted less oversight. Both goals were compatible. A three-year investigation resulted in an opinion of corruption against Edgerton, but he was never found, so he never responded to the charges and never faced punishment. Ellery Gates, however, did face his peers. He was expelled from the House and fined by the IRS for failing to pay taxes on the income. No prison. Lucky bastard. The evidence against him was solid.
But now, after finding Edgerton's vehicle and a skeleton, Joe wasn't so sure the congressman had run off with the money. The case appeared much more sinister.
Joe read over his notes.
1. Bobby Lopez: boyfriend of Faye, former military, unemployed at time of disappearance, now police officer (jealousy?)
2. Grace Edgerton: wife (jealousy?)
3. Kendall Holmes: Edgerton's chief of staff, now senator (congressional inquiry? involved in bribery?)
4. Ellery Gates: traveled to New Mexico day of disappearance, involved in bribery, powerful, now living in Texas (protect himself in bribery inquiry?)
5. William Tom: director of Navajo Antiquities, later president of Navajo Nation (theft at archaeology site?)
6. Hawk Rushingwater: real name Dwight Henry, American Indian Movement, radical, sent vague threats (make example of Edgerton? prove himself?)
7. Dr. Lawrence Trudle: UNM archaeologist, last to meet with Edgerton, had artifacts stolen (motive unknown)
8. Sierra Hannaway: younger sister of Faye Hannaway (motive unknown)
The list was interesting but incomplete. He added another name.
9. Indigenous Peoples Self-Governance Foundation: bribed Edgerton and Gates, any one of the corporations or tribes (protect themselves in the investigation?)
He looked at his list again. Several good leads, but Stretch was right: Look for the simple motive. Bobby Lopez fit that nicely. Jealousy.
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