“Do me a favor,” Connolly said. “Let’s drive down to San Isidro.”
“There’s nothing to see there. They’ve been all over it a hundred times.”
“I know. I just want to be able to picture it in my mind. Indulge me, okay?”
“For a change.”
It was slow going over the Cerrillos bridge, with the streets still filled with pockets of celebration parties, but they thinned as the road headed south, past gas stations and quiet houses. There were a few cars in the alley next to the church and, inside, the glow of candles and the sound of voices. Mills idled the car across the street, watching Connolly study the building.
“Seen enough?”
“Let’s go in for a minute. They must be saying mass. They do this every night?”
“No, we checked. Probably a celebration. For the war.”
“Not very many cars.”
“People walk. It’s a neighborhood church. Only the tourists drive out here.”
Connolly frowned, brooding, then shook the thought away and entered the church. It was crowded inside, rows of women with shawls over their heads and men holding hats. The small lights of votive candles licked against the whitewashed walls, and the reredos, intricate and dark during the day, glowed now as if it were simmering on a low flame. At the altar end of the narrow room, carved wooden saints, crude and bright with paint, looked down on the congregation like primitive Aztec gargoyles. A priest was speaking in Spanish at the lectern. Connolly felt he had literally stepped back in time. The faithful had gathered like this for centuries, fingering rosaries, praying for rain, while the rest of the world went to hell. But these were the people who had beat the Nazis too. In the room there must be Gold Star mothers. He wondered if they sent telegrams in Spanish or if the bad news was the piece of yellow paper itself, the army messenger. From the outside their lives seemed timelessly simple, hoarding squash and chiles, sticky candy on name days, but they had driven tanks and thrown grenades at scared, frozen teenagers who were trying to kill them. All those mad northern people who wanted-what? More room to breathe, or something like that. Now a victory in Europe. And they had walked here. Only the tourists drove.
Connolly stepped back out the door, feeling like an intruder. San Isidro had nothing to do with them. He asked Mills to head for the Alameda, trying to imagine that other drive as they passed the quiet streets. It was dark in the ribbon of park along the river, but a few people were out strolling, lit by passing headlights. He saw one couple kissing against a tree. Mills parked the car by the murder scene without being asked, and they sat looking at the bushes.
“There are people,” Connolly said finally. “Why bring him somewhere where there are people?”
“There weren’t,” Mills answered. “It was late. It was raining.”
“But he couldn’t be sure.”
“Maybe he drove around until the coast was clear.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s a park. You mind your own business, especially at night. Look at those guys.” He nodded toward a man walking unsteadily, propping up a drunk friend under his arm. “Who’s to say he isn’t dead? Who’s going to ask?”
“You have an answer for everything,” Connolly said.
“Let’s go home, Mike. There’s nothing here.”
But Connolly, not yet satisfied, asked that they drive the back way to the canyon by the west gate.
“Retracing steps?” Mills said as they climbed the road to Bandelier.
“I can’t see it. Look, we figure the car’s here because the guy needed to get back to the Hill, right? Then why leave the Hill at all? You’ve seen the church. If you were meeting somebody, there are a hundred places on the Hill that would be better. Why go all the way to Santa Fe to a public place?”
“I thought the idea was they didn’t want to be seen together. You know.”
“That was the idea. It’s wrong.” Mills looked from the wheel, surprised. Connolly ignored him. “They could just go into the woods for that. Or for anything.”
“If the other guy was already on the Hill.”
“Exactly. That’s what doesn’t make sense. He was. He must have been. There’s no other explanation for the car. So why go all the way to San Isidro to meet somebody who’s just down the street?”
“I give up. Why?”
“He wasn’t meeting Karl.”
Mills drove in silence for a minute. “Want to run that by me again?”
“He was meeting someone else. Someone off the Hill. It’s the only way it makes sense.”
“But Karl’s the one who’s dead.”
“He wasn’t supposed to be there. It was-a surprise.”
“You don’t know any of this.”
“No, I’m guessing. But follow me. Tonight I stood there in that alley next to the church and I thought, no one in his right mind would pick this place to kill someone. Open like that. A Mex neighborhood. But no one did pick it. It must have been an accident-an accident that it happened there, I mean. But it happens. Then what? Everything has to be done in a hurry. You have to take some risks, even. All along we’ve been trying to follow Karl’s moves. How would Karl see it? What would he do? Like he was the criminal. But all that stops in the alley. It’s the other guy we ought to be thinking about. What would he do? Tonight I was trying to imagine how he saw it.”
“And?”
“I had to get rid of a body. I had to get rid of a car. And I had to get home.”
“I’d say you did a pretty good job.”
“I was lucky too. Nobody saw. The one thing I couldn’t imagine, though, was Karl. If I’d wanted to kill him, I would have done it somewhere else. Why go to San Isidro to see him? Answer: I didn’t.”
Mills thought for a minute. “But he was there anyway. Another accident?”
“No. He followed me.”
“Now you’re really guessing.”
“Why not? He was security, wasn’t he? He was used to tailing people.”
“There isn’t much of that. We go with people. Guards. We don’t usually tail them. That’s FBI stuff.”
“But Karl might. He was capable of that, wasn’t he?” Mills hesitated. “Yes,” he said finally.
Connolly looked at him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“He did tail people, didn’t he?”
“I guess so. He knew things-where people went, things like that. He liked knowing things. He’d say something once in a while. How else would he know? I guess he must have been following them. I never thought about it before.”
“Yes you did.”
“All right, I did. But it wasn’t official, so what was it? I figured it was just Karl. He liked being the sheriff. You learn not to pay too much attention to things like that.”
“That’s a hell of a thing for a security officer to say. You’re supposed to pay attention.”
“Yeah, well, how did I know he was going to get himself killed, for Christ’s sake? I just thought he was a nut like the rest of them.”
“The rest of who?”
“Security. They’re all a little nuts. Maybe you too. How do I know? Look, I didn’t ask for this assignment. I don’t get shot and I keep my head down. You stick it out and there’s always somebody ready to chop it off. You never know what anybody’s up to. For all I knew, Karl was FBI-he sure acted like it. So you don’t look too closely. Just keep your head down and stay out of the way.”
“He wasn’t FBI.”
“You know that for sure?”
“Groves would have told me.”
“Yeah.” Mills laughed. “Just like he told Lansdale about you, right? You’ve got the head of project security sitting there in Washington and his boss puts an outside man in and he doesn’t know what the hell is going on. He’s a little nuts already. Now how do you think he feels?”
“I don’t know,” Connolly said quietly. “How does he?”
Mills looked ahead at the road, saying nothing.