And I figured I owed it to the man whose death had brought about all of these changes to make sure his twelve year-old granddaughter, who fancied herself twenty-two, knew that her grandfather had loved her very much. And that he died a hero. Besides, I was starting to think I might not mind spending a little time with her mother, when things eventually settled down. Whoever would have thought I would potentially find what I was missing right where my father had left it for me.
There was just one little problem.
I couldn’t let the case go. There were too many inconsistencies, too many questions and too few answers. Too many coincidences. As far as the Bureau was concerned, this one had been tied up with a big bow, but there was still one glaring hole right at the heart of it.
The mixed metaphor.
Ban had thought of himself as the Coyote.
Coyote is the master of deception.
But it had been the legend of I’itoi that had been the theme of the endgame, which had captured the attention of the entire world.
Don’t be too quick to lay this at the feet of I’itoi. There are many gods of mischief out here in the desert.
Which was exactly what I feared.
And with each day that passed without the recovery of Antone’s body, I feared it even more.
FORTY
By the fourth day following the breaking of the story, I’d had enough of cameras to last me several lifetimes. I’m pretty sure the feeling was mutual. I was too close to the story and it was in everybody’s best interests to let me fade into the background, lest they inadvertently humanize the Monster. The bogeyman was no longer frightening when you turned on the light to find that he looked just like anyone else. Everyone else. The world needed him to remain a monster for fear we might look at him and see a reflection of ourselves.
The victims, however, needed to be humanized. They needed to be seen as somebody’s children. As husbands and fathers or wives and mothers. The whole of mankind needed to be made aware that the world was poorer for their absence from it. At least, the ones we were able to identify.
The first victim, whose skin had nearly drained from his bones, was identified by a rather conspicuous tattoo of La Santa Muerte, the patron saint of sinners, which covered the entirety of his chest. His name was Juan Valarosa, and was a known member of the Mexican gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS, 13. He was currently wanted in Arizona for the trafficking of both controlled substances and human beings. His profile read like the resume of a coyote. The DEA was hopeful it would be able to use the news of his death to draw out known associates who could be coerced into leading it higher up the chain.
The young woman was portrayed as a good little Catholic girl searching for a fresh start in life. That the bruising on her shoulders suggested she’d been carrying an extraordinarily heavy load and her remains tested positive for tetrahydrocannabinol, THC, and methamphetamines had been withheld from the press. Even I would never have known about it had I not been working with the ME on the process of identification. Nor would I have otherwise been there when the fingerprints of the third victim matched prints found at the scene of an arms deal gone bad in Houston that had cost an undercover DEA agent his life. These facts would never see the light of day, though. John Q. Public couldn’t afford to think, even for a second, that the Monster might actually have been doing something that could be perceived as beneficial to society.
Despite his repeated attempts on my life, I was starting to have my own doubts.
Agent Brian Matthews broke the pattern. At least superficially. There would undoubtedly be books written about the heroism of the lone agent who struck off into the night to face the Monster. And while there was an element of truth to the story, a tiny element anyway, the papers weren’t privy to his personnel file, which I’m sure was now confetti at the bottom of a shredder in some back room. Agent Matthews did have an exemplary record, with one minor blemish. A blemish that, were I not an investigative agent, I would never have bothered to uncover. For, while the DHS had taken full responsibility for the incident and compensated the reservation with the new Tribal Council Building, the identity of the agent involved had been withheld, for obvious reasons. Withheld from the media, not from the other law enforcement agencies involved. Namely, the tribal police. It was, however, a blemish that had led to an extended leave of absence and the derailment of a career that appeared to be on track for bigger and better things. A blemish caused by an overzealous agent playing cowboy out in the desert while chasing down a bad guy like it was the Wild West all over again. He had run down a modern day Jesse James in the Jesus Malverde mold, in fact, and made a bust that had led to the confiscation of more than three-quarters of a million dollars in marijuana. Unfortunately, it had also led to the death of a school teacher whose vehicle just happened to be in the way when they launched across I-86. The teacher’s name?
Eloise Maria Antone.
Which brought me again to Chief Raymond Javier Antone, and the reason I was currently standing inside his house. The CSRT, under the oversight of Interim-Chief Louis Abispo, had performed a fairly cursory examination of the house. They’d confiscated Antone’s maps, opening whole new worlds of underground fun for the forensics agents to explore, once they recovered from the shock of Ban’s talisman cave, anyway. I’d been more than happy to absolve myself of every bit of knowledge I had about the underground warrens. After all, best they hear that I was down there from me. Besides, between all of the crime scenes and caves and the corpse pit under the trailer, they were going to have their hands full for the foreseeable future without having to run down all of my prints and tracks.
They’d left the tables in the middle of the room covered with fingerprint powder, but the place otherwise looked just as it had the last time I was here, which was one of the few facts I had kept to myself. The CSRT had undoubtedly found exactly what it was looking for in here, while I had broken in once more in hopes of finding something no one had thought to look for. And even then, I wasn’t quite certain what that could possibly be. All I knew was that something was really starting to eat at me and I was beginning to think that regardless of how long or how hard anyone searched, Antone’s remains would never be found.
I needed to know why I felt that way. My instincts had served me well so far; I’d be a fool to ignore them now.
It’s about time. We’ve been expecting you.
I remember thinking at the time that he hadn’t been referring to me as a federal agent, but to me specifically.
I wandered through his house. Leisurely. As though I were an out-of-town guest merely killing time while I waited for him to come home. Looking for signs of his life, for what he had been doing during the previous years. This wasn’t a home; it was a way station. This was where he satiated his biological functions and plotted his subterranean investigations. Little more.