Now Santacristina circled the dancers and took both of her hands in his. "It is good to see you," he said, kissing her lightly on both cheeks before turning back to the dancers. "It's called a romeria, a traditional Basque dance. The energetic ones in the center are the dantzaris. We are a dancing people; my Maria loved to dance, as did her mother. In fact, I fell in love with Elena the first time I saw her dancing."
Marlene looked up at Santacristina as he watched the dancers. His mouth was turned up in a smile, but the amber eyes were sad and lonely. And why not, she thought, he's lost the two people in the world he loved the most, both of them far too young.
When the song ended and the dancers took a break, Santacristina gently touched her arm and led her back to a room off the main hall. On the way, they passed a table around which men were smoking cigars and playing cards. They were tough-looking men, young and old alike, and dipped their heads when they saw Santacristina.
Closing the door of the room, Santacristina turned to her and said, "So, you have some news?"
"I do," she replied. Several days earlier, Fulton had been digging into Huttington's background at her request to "see if there are any reports of domestic violence toward his wife or other troubles at home."
There were no such reports. But while he was at the police department, he'd asked to see the police reports regarding any crimes around the time of Maria's disappearance. What he was looking for were such things as a rash of burglaries, or reports of a serial rapist-something that might indicate that perhaps Maria had surprised a burglar or been targeted by a sex offender. Again, the line of inquiry had come up negative, but he had discovered one unexpected bit of news.
"Two days after Maria disappeared, Huttington called the police to report that his Cadillac had been stolen," Marlene now told Santacristina. "He claimed he'd left the keys in the ignition and the car parked outside of his garage."
When Marlene called and told the same story to her husband, he'd pointed out that a possible scenario was that Maria took the car to embarrass her lover. "She might have thought that he would have had to reveal his affair with her. Then she runs into a bad guy who carjacks the Cadillac and takes her someplace to kill her."
It was a valid point, but Marlene could tell that Butch didn't believe it. He was just being his usual thorough self and trying to keep her mind open to all the possibilities. It was one of his strengths as a prosecutor.
"The majority of stolen cars eventually get found and identified by the vehicle identification number, even if they've been stripped down for parts," Marlene told Santacristina. "However, there's been a national BOLO for the Cadillac since it was reported missing, and there's been nothing. Same thing with the national crime computer concerning Maria; no one has applied for a job using her Social Security number, used her credit cards-or applied for others-no one has been pulled over for a traffic infraction or showed up at a hospital fitting her description or matching her fingerprints. It's the lack of anything at all that indicates to me, and Detective Fulton, that the missing car and your missing daughter are connected."
As she talked, Santacristina had walked over to the window, where snowflakes were fluttering against the pane like moths trying to reach the light inside. "Maria would not take his car, not even to embarrass him," he said. "She did not run away and leave me and her friends, and her cat, to wonder what had happened." He tapped on the window. "She is still out there somewhere, waiting for me to find her and lay her to rest next to her mother."
Even though Santacristina had his back to her, Marlene knew he was crying again. Her eyes were filled with tears also when she walked up and placed a hand on his shoulder. "We'll find her, Eugenio. Somehow, we'll bring her home to you."
Santacristina hung his head and then turned to her. "Marlene, I have to tell you something, something about my past. It is a hard thing, but you need to know before you continue helping me."
"You don't have to tell me anything, Eugenio," Marlene interrupted. "I have far too many skeletons in my closet for me to be passing judgment on anybody else. I think I understand the character of the man you are."
But Santacristina clapped his hands on Marlene's shoulders, guided her to a chair, and made her sit. "You are a true friend," he said. "But I need to get this off my chest, or I cannot allow you to go any further."
Marlene started to protest but saw the look on his face and closed her mouth. "I'm listening," she said.
"Good. To start, my name is not Eugenio Santacristina," he began. "My name is Jose Luis Arregi Katarain, and I am not who I pretend to be-a simple shepherd with an immigration problem, although that is what Barnhill believes. The real reason why I avoid stirring up too much attention, even with my beloved daughter missing, is that I am wanted by the government of Spain and have been for more than twenty years."
As a young man, he'd joined a Basque separatist organization known as the ETA. "For Euskadi ta Askatasuna, which means 'Basque Fatherland and Liberty.' I don't know how much you know of our history, but culturally and linguistically we are not Spanish, though we have always lived in the mountains between Spain and France."
Basques had dreamed for a long time of an autonomous country of their own and hoped they might get it when they fought on the side of the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War prior to the outbreak of World War Two. The enemy was the fascist forces led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco, and the Basques felt that right was on their side. However, the Basques and the Republic went down in flames when Hitler's Nazi Germany came to the aid of Franco, using his enemies' cities for trial runs of the Nazis' technologically superior weaponry.
After World War Two, Franco, who when he saw the way the tide was turning had declared Spain to be neutral, was kept in power by the governments of the United States and western Europe. They appreciated his strong anticommunist sentiments and were willing to overlook his early alliance with Nazi Germany.
For his part, Franco never forgave the Basques for opposing him and suppressed, often violently, any public expressions of Basque culture or nationalism, including outlawing the display of the Basque flag. "We were forbidden to speak our language in public or teach it to our children in our schools. Our children had to be baptized with Spanish names only. Those who protested were arrested and disappeared into the dungeons of Franco's secret police, and often never seen again."
The ETA had been created in 1959 by young student activists as a discussion group seeking ways to promote Basque traditions despite the oppression. But the discussion groups soon evolved into a Basque nationalist movement; then when Spanish forces reacted violently, it became an armed rebellion.
"My father was a professor at the university in Navarre, a Basque state," Santacristina said. "He was convinced that with a reasoned, pacifist approach, the world would see that the Basques deserved a homeland of their own. He wrote many papers and was featured in prominent magazines. But one night, men wearing masks and uniforms kicked down the door of our house and took my father away."
As he spoke, Santacristina/Katarain had returned to the window, where he now etched a name in the frost on the pane: Luis. "His body was found the next day; he'd been shot in the mouth and left in an olive grove. The Spanish government, of course, denied any involvement. They blamed it on the ETA, saying that his peaceful nationalist views were anathema to more violent revolutionary aspirations, so his own people had killed him. But the men who kicked in our door were speaking Spanish, not Euskara. We knew better."
The year was 1971. "The same year I joined the ETA," he said, "which was portrayed by the government-controlled media as terrorists, responsible for bombings and assassinations."