recliner flanked by a Walmart lamp with a plastic shade and a handmade maple magazine rack. Though sensing that the effort would prove futile, Moon called again for the lady of the house. He was rewarded with the expected nonresponse.
Over the stale scents that inhabit any old, lived-in house, the Ute’s nostrils picked up something that commanded his attention. Or was it two somethings? No, three. He raised his nose, sniffed in a larger sample. The strongest of the scents was both familiar and oddly sweet. Roasted meat?
Yes. Pork, he guessed.
I bet she’s cooked up a big breakfast for me, then wandered off somewhere.
Moon recalled that there was a root cellar under the kitchen.
She’s probably gone down there to get a jar of preserves.
The second, more stringent aroma, was kerosene. No surprise. Loyola cooked her meals on an eighty-year-old kerosene stove.
But what was that underlying, peculiar odor? He took another sniff.
That smells a lot like . . . burned hair.
The lawman drew his sidearm and took five long strides across the living room, a shorter one into the kitchen’s twilight. The firearm hung heavy in his hand.
What he found there shall not be described in any detail.
Suffice it to say that the aged woman, whose body was on the floor, had expired in a localized fire. That the blaze had apparently started when a kerosene lamp had been knocked off the kitchen table. That Loyola’s gray hair was mostly burned off.
That her roasted flesh smelled
sweet.
Feeling himself about to retch, Charlie Moon sprinted out the back door, off the porch, and into the edge of the apple orchard. He tried vainly to fight off an attack of dry heaves, and the nightmarish image and scent.
Sufficient for the day was this horror. Sufficient for a lifetime.
His lungs needed a breath of fresh air—his face, beams of heavenly sunshine.
Which blessings were promptly granted.
WITHIN THIRTY minutes of the tribal investigator’s terse cell-phone call, three Ignacio PD units and a La Plata County sheriff’s pickup had arrived. The four official motor vehicles delivered a total of seven uniformed cops.
While Moon was telling the town cops and the sheriff about the grisly scene in the old woman’s kitchen, they were joined by SUPD Officer Danny Bignight, who had gotten the word, as the Utes say—from the
talking drums
. Barely a minute later, a state policeman pulled up, with La Plata County ME Wilson Schmidt’s gray van trailing so closely behind that it might have been towed by the trooper’s low-slung Chevrolet sedan.
After a preliminary examination of the corpse and its immediate surroundings, the medical examiner’s tentative finding was that Mrs. Loyola Montoya had probably suffered a stroke or heart failure and collapsed. In the process of falling, the elderly woman had knocked a lighted kerosene lamp off her kitchen table, which had started the blaze. An autopsy would be performed on the blackened body and a detailed, official investigation made into the cause of the fire, but it was unlikely that these routine procedures would shed any new light on the widow’s final misfortune.
The tribal investigator reported Loyola’s complaint about “witches” and what he had discovered upon arriving at her home. While waiting for those with jurisdiction to show up, Moon had waded the creek and found evidence of a recently abandoned encampment. Judging from a quick examination of tire tracks and footprints, he estimated that four vehicles and at least ten persons had been camping on land owned by the Blue Diamond Natural Gas Company. An effort would be made to track down those trespassers who had hounded the unfortunate woman, but most of the lawmen were in agreement with the ME’s preliminary opinion—that Mrs. Montoya had died of natural causes.
The two Indians saw the matter from somewhat different perspectives.
SUPD Officer Danny Bignight had considerable respect for modern forensic science and didn’t
Over the stale scents that inhabit any old, lived-in house, the Ute’s nostrils picked up something that commanded his attention. Or was it two somethings? No, three. He raised his nose, sniffed in a larger sample. The strongest of the scents was both familiar and oddly sweet. Roasted meat?
Yes. Pork, he guessed.
I bet she’s cooked up a big breakfast for me, then wandered off somewhere.
Moon recalled that there was a root cellar under the kitchen.
She’s probably gone down there to get a jar of preserves.
The second, more stringent aroma, was kerosene. No surprise. Loyola cooked her meals on an eighty-year-old kerosene stove.
But what was that underlying, peculiar odor? He took another sniff.
That smells a lot like . . . burned hair.
The lawman drew his sidearm and took five long strides across the living room, a shorter one into the kitchen’s twilight. The firearm hung heavy in his hand.
What he found there shall not be described in any detail.
Suffice it to say that the aged woman, whose body was on the floor, had expired in a localized fire. That the blaze had apparently started when a kerosene lamp had been knocked off the kitchen table. That Loyola’s gray hair was mostly burned off.
That her roasted flesh smelled
sweet.
Feeling himself about to retch, Charlie Moon sprinted out the back door, off the porch, and into the edge of the apple orchard. He tried vainly to fight off an attack of dry heaves, and the nightmarish image and scent.
Sufficient for the day was this horror. Sufficient for a lifetime.
His lungs needed a breath of fresh air—his face, beams of heavenly sunshine.
Which blessings were promptly granted.
WITHIN THIRTY minutes of the tribal investigator’s terse cell-phone call, three Ignacio PD units and a La Plata County sheriff’s pickup had arrived. The four official motor vehicles delivered a total of seven uniformed cops.
While Moon was telling the town cops and the sheriff about the grisly scene in the old woman’s kitchen, they were joined by SUPD Officer Danny Bignight, who had gotten the word, as the Utes say—from the
talking drums
. Barely a minute later, a state policeman pulled up, with La Plata County ME Wilson Schmidt’s gray van trailing so closely behind that it might have been towed by the trooper’s low-slung Chevrolet sedan.
After a preliminary examination of the corpse and its immediate surroundings, the medical examiner’s tentative finding was that Mrs. Loyola Montoya had probably suffered a stroke or heart failure and collapsed. In the process of falling, the elderly woman had knocked a lighted kerosene lamp off her kitchen table, which had started the blaze. An autopsy would be performed on the blackened body and a detailed, official investigation made into the cause of the fire, but it was unlikely that these routine procedures would shed any new light on the widow’s final misfortune.
The tribal investigator reported Loyola’s complaint about “witches” and what he had discovered upon arriving at her home. While waiting for those with jurisdiction to show up, Moon had waded the creek and found evidence of a recently abandoned encampment. Judging from a quick examination of tire tracks and footprints, he estimated that four vehicles and at least ten persons had been camping on land owned by the Blue Diamond Natural Gas Company. An effort would be made to track down those trespassers who had hounded the unfortunate woman, but most of the lawmen were in agreement with the ME’s preliminary opinion—that Mrs. Montoya had died of natural causes.
The two Indians saw the matter from somewhat different perspectives.
SUPD Officer Danny Bignight had considerable respect for modern forensic science and didn’t
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