Dragonfly Bones (20 page)

“There's a lot of holes in what you're telling me.”

“This wasn't random violence,” Brittles said. “Somebody knew exactly what information they wanted, figured out who was most likely to tell what. None of this happened quickly. Whoever did it was very cool, very calculating. He started with this one, slicing him up, letting him talk, and letting the other guy shrivel with fear. Probably whoever did this promised the second guy that he'd not be tortured or killed if he could get the first guy to talk.

“Please,” I said. “Just…leave it.”

But he couldn't.

“Torture requires patience,” Brittles said. “You can't hurry it, you always got to make your head control what your hands are doing. You play games with the clock, judging how many minutes to torture and maim, how many minutes to stop it and let the victim hope it's all over. You have the patience to judge the victim's hope, rising up a curve, and just when it peaks you cut him again. I like old movies. You like movies. We've watched hundreds of hours of movie violence. But the only true violence you see on film is what happens to machines or animals.”

“
Apocalypse Now,
” I said.

“The water buffalo. Body almost completely chopped in two with one mighty swing of the…the, I don't even know what the person used.”

“Enough.
Enough,
” I said, hands over my ears.

“It's getting dark, it's getting late. Don is going to call when he's got more data. For now, let's go back to my place.”

Too fatigued to think of anything else, I followed him mutely out the door. A small lime-green Volkswagen was parking beside our car. A bumper sticker on the back said
WHAT WOULD JESUS DRIVE
?

“What the hell does that mean?” I said rudely to the young couple in the car.

“Jesus wouldn't drive an SUV,” the girl said with a huge smile.

“Jesus,” I said to myself.

27

I
poured myself some pinot noir, looking at all of Brittles's books. The only light in his study came from a west-facing window, and the falling sunlight lit up the room like a movie set. Rows and rows of books were highlighted against the walls, arranged by subject matter, standing exactly vertical, held together by all shapes and sizes of Mexican ironwood carvings serving as bookends. On another wall, an elaborate rack made of mesquite ribs held five wooden flutes, one of them distinctly different in design and texture from the others.

“That's my shakahashi,” Brittles said from the doorway, toweling off after his shower. “Japanese. A bitch to learn.”

“Show me.”

He dropped the towel, walked nude into the room with no self-consciousness about his body. He raised the flute with both hands from its place in the rack, motioned me with his head to follow into the living room, where he sat cross legged on a three-foot-square soft velvet cushion. Expecting him to raise the flute horizontally, I was surprised that he held it vertical, his lips at the top so that he blew across the opening there, producing a mournful, delicate, elegiac sound that wavered in tone and intensity. He held the one note, then moved his fingers on the holes to play a sequence of notes in a minor key until suddenly he made a squeak.

“Sorry.”

“More. You aren't even done by half.”

Hesitating, he put it to his lips, not playing for a moment. I thought he was thinking that we had no time for this, or that he wanted to get me in bed again, but as he slowly moved his lips on the flute, caressing his cheeks with the mouthpiece, I saw he was just trying to decide what to play.

The piece lasted four minutes, although I swear he played no more than half a dozen different notes and repeated sections again and again.

“Now your turn,” he said.

“I can't play that thing.”

“No. Your turn to do something.”

“Do something?”

“Sing. Dance. Recite a poem.”

“What do you think about hiphop?” I said finally.

“Just do it.”

I sorted through different raps I'd written, not trusting to reveal myself yet with my latest rap about my life.

“Okay. Here goes.”

“Something more personal,” he said. “About you. With this.”

He knelt in front of me with his flute, blew a single note, sustaining the note by breathing somehow through his nose while he played.
Who
is
this man?
I thought, picking through all my raps to find the perfect one for him.

Setting aside the shakahashi flute, he sat on my lap facing me, kissing my neck, slowly removing my blouse, moving down…but if you've done it with a lover, you know what happens, there's nothing more I need to tell you.

And yet…and yet…after he fell asleep, I went into the living room and watched the night sky. Brooding about why I was there and not with Rich. I mean, casual sex is one thing, and the first time with Brittles I'd mostly put out of my mind. But tonight our relationship had moved light years beyond casual.

I spent hours comparing the two men. Rich's interest in Indians pretty much had to do with old bones and artifacts. Brittles
lived
as an Indian. An unfair comparison. On the few occasions when I talked with Rich about my attempts to find my daughter, he seemed to think it was more comforting to push me toward believing that it would be best if I never found her. Brittles liked her. He liked the two of us together. Not quite so unfair a comparison.

One thing seemed irrevocable. My Tucson house was never my home.

Brittle's house
felt
like the home I'd been searching for.

Not the actual house, but the
kind
of home I wanted.

The kind of home I'd make for my daughter.

With all these conflicting thoughts in my head, I didn't fall asleep until the wine finally made me drowsy. I laid my head sideways against the chair back, pulled up my legs onto the chair, and the last thing I remember before I fell asleep was the wonder of that flute and the magic.

S
pider picked cotton for half an hour. Back and thigh muscles aching from continually stooping over the waist-high plants, removing the fluffy boles and stuffing them into her sack. Father Micah was in charge, picking himself. Some of the staff stood by, carrying water, some food, making bathroom runs every twenty minutes back to the main complex. Her sack filled, Spider brought it to one of the trucks. El Ratón stood on the wooden bed, about four feet high, hands on hips, watching her struggle to heave the bag up. Reaching down a hand, he took a bag and in one fluid motion threw it to the back of the truck. A red and gray motorcycle burred in the distance, slewing around a turn and braking quickly beside the truck.

“That's enough,
amiga,
” Luis said, taking off his helmet and holding up a cell phone shut. “I got a call. You checked out just fine. Leavenworth,
amiga
. What you doing in a bad place like that? Caught stealing credit card numbers, maybe? Sending lists through the mail, some federal fraud stuff? That you,
amiga
?”

For the first time since she came to the camp, Spider was afraid. But the rest of the day passed without anything happening, except that Luis gave her a ride on his motorcycle back to the main complex, dropping her off at her dorm.

“So what now?” she said.

“Tomorrow. We gonna clean some brush tomorrow. Chop
some weeds, pick up some trash. Tomorrow, we gonna tell you more. Give you a test.”

“You'll tell me about joining the Rapture girls?”

“
Quien sabe?
Just wear old clothes, bring gloves, wear a hat. Tomorrow you'll be out in the sun all day.”

He revved the throttle, popped the clutch, and roared away.

But at three in the afternoon on the next day, Spider still waited, all the other girls in her dormitory off picking cotton. She thought of exploring the main complex, of trying to find the private rooms that Jennifer had told her about. Bad move, she thought. Wait it out. Wait for the test. Wait for Luis.

To her surprise, Father Micah came to get her at three-thirty.

“Some of that discipline duty,” he said with a broad smile.

“Picking up trash?”

“That's part of it.”

“Why not early in the morning?”

“You mean, why not in a cooler part of the day? Three o'clock, that's when it's hottest. That's when discipline really means something.”

He let her sit with him in the front seat of the truck. Several boys and girls sat in the back, Luis and El Ratón standing just back of the truck cab, their hands beating out rhythms on the metal roof. Another truck driven by a staff woman carried another dozen boys and girls. Father Micah drove south, leading the small convoy through Coolidge, stopping at a wide expanse of desert. He passed out heavy-duty plastic trash bags and some tools. Everybody seemed to know what to do without asking. Some picked up hoes, others took short-handled weed whackers, two others followed behind the laborers stuffing the trash bags.

Unlike the day before in the cotton fields, Luis and El Ratón now worked with everybody else. After two hours, one of the trucks was filled with trash bags, dead branches, some cacti leaves and stalks, and separate bags for paper and plastic litter. Luis and El Ratón jumped into the back, fixing the
wooden tailgate and chaining it solid. Father Micah started up the truck, motioning Spider to sit with him. Reluctantly, she climbed into the cab.

“Where we going?” she said.

“End of the line. The place where we dump all the trash.”

“How's that done?”

“Paper and plastic gets recycled. Brush and dirt gets processed.”

“Processed?”

But he'd shifted into third gear, the transmission so noisy that talking was impossible. She slouched against the door, trying to look casual, wondering if she should just open the door, jump out, and run.

After ten miles or so, Father Micah turned onto a dirt road, slowing for fifty feet until he stopped in front of a twelve-foot-tall chain-link fence, topped with razor wire and surrounding a large warehouse building. Luis jumped down, took keys from Father Micah, and opened the gate, closing and relocking it after the truck went through. Luis jogged behind the truck to the warehouse, using more keys to unlock the main door, punching a button so an electric motor wound the door up. Father Micah turned the truck around and backed inside. The door went back down, Father Micah shut off the truck engine, and he and Spider got out of the cab.

“Our moneymaker,” Father Micah said, gesturing at a huge machine in the middle of the concrete-slab floor.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The CBI Magnum Force 4000. Fifty feet long, weighs thirty-seven tons, cost half a million. Paid for by Pinal County, leased to Rapture Warriors Camp as part of a contract to continually clear all brush in Pinal County.”

Luis and El Ratón unstaked the tailgate. Luis started throwing down the trash bags, the few containing paper and plastic going into a pile that Father Micah carried to huge mounds of similar trash bags in one corner of the warehouse. El Ratón started piling all the other bags at one end of the
huge machine, next to a ten-foot-wide bumper rail.

“What is this thing?” she asked.

“Woodchipper,” El Ratón said. “Chops things up.”

“Not just a woodchipper,” Father Micah said. “Grinds up everything into mulch, which we sell to landscaping companies in Tucson. Luis, get her going.”

Luis walked to a far wall and threw two huge red-handled switches. The machine began whirring and groaning. El Ratón slid back a metal guard across the entrance chute, hefted the first trash bag, took out a curved box cutter, slit the bag, and emptied all the brush into the hopper. The machine started grinding. El Ratón and Father Micah emptied trash bags, while Luis beckoned Spider to the other end of the machine, where mulch started to spit out.

“So let's talk,” Luis said.

“Cool.”

“So we've got a proposition for you.”

“We?”

“Some people. Connected to the Circuit. You know what that is?”

“Back East, some girls talked about a circuit of very exclusive houses. Only the best working girls, the best conditions, the biggest payoff. I never knew anybody that went on that circuit, though. But I heard girls made lots of money.”

“How'd you like to meet the woman who manages all the Circuit houses in the Southwest?”

“Sure,” Spider said with a forced smile. “What do I have to do?”

“Well. There's this little test.”

“Take me to the woman. I can pass any test.”

“Here. The test is here. Come on.”

He led her back to the front of the machine, where El Ratón and Father Micah were tossing the last of the brush into the hopper. Luis and El Ratón exchanged looks, and El Ratón brushed dirt off his gloves, standing close beside Father Micah.

“Most of the younger girls, they come from overseas. They don't have to pass the test, because it's all been arranged. Their new identities, where they'll be assigned, everything. But girls like you, who kinda come along by chance, you have to make your bones to get inside.”

“Make my bones,” Spider said. “Uh, if that means what I think it means, like, whoa, dude. Not me.”

“Well,
amiga,
you've got no choice. Come over here.”

He took her hand, the two of them coming up alongside Father Micah.

“What's the test?” Spider said, totally frightened, wondering if she could get to the electric door and raise it enough to slip outside and get away.

“We're gonna throw him in there. You help lift him, you pass the test.”

“Test?” Father Micah said, removing his gloves, wiping sweat from his protecting eyeglasses. “What test?”

“You don't help lift,” Luis said, “you fail.”

Frozen stiff, Spider tried to move away. Luis and El Ratón each clapped Father Micah on his shoulders, placing their gloved hands on his upper arms. Luis looked back at Spider for ten seconds, enough time to see that she'd made half a step backward, horror written all over her face.

“Here's your Rapture, Father,” Luis said.

“What are you doing?” Father Micah shouted. “Put me down. Turn off the machine and put me down.”

Pulling a bulky gun from one of his baggy pockets, Luis held the gun to Father Micah's neck. Blue sparks sizzled and Father Micah's body slumped unconscious.

“Stun gun,” Luis said with a grin. “Lord, Thy will to be done.” He turned toward me, flicking the stun gun at me once it recharged, a small, jagged, glaring white vee of lightning that arced six inches from my forearm.

“Don't
do
that,” I said.

“It's a test. You're at the border,
chica,
you got to decide if you crossing over, if you coming to our side of the line.”

“What test?”

“What test,” Luis mimicked.

“I'm not firing that thing at Father Micah. If that's the test, I pass.”

“He's just another bag of trash. A
heavy
bag of trash. Two people can't lift him into the chipper. You'll have to help us.”

“Whoa, wait, wait,” I said, my hands up in front of me, pushing the idea away. “Not me. No way…what…why are you even saying that?”

Luis crackled the stun gun again, turned to El Ratón.

“I think she just said no.”

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, no, I'm doing that.”

“You just failed your test.”

They grabbed and lifted him.

“Up and over,” Luis said to El Ratón, and they started to swing Father Micah between them. “One. Two.
Three!
”

They tossed him head first into the hopper. The machine, running smoothly with the last of brush already processed, groaned again as Father Micah's body passed through the cutting disks and grinding wheels.

Luis went to check something on the side of the machine. El Ratón turned to Spider, grinned at her, and reached out a hand toward her. She kicked him solidly in the crotch, knocking him against the lip of the hopper and knocking him out. Without even thinking about it, she grabbed his ankles and flipped him into the machine. She ran to the electric door, punched a red button, screaming at the door to move quicker. When it was up a foot she reached to hit a green button, and as the door shuddered to a stop, she threw herself on the floor and rolled underneath before the door banged shut.

Starting for the gate, she saw a green SUV heading down the dirt road. She ran to the back side of the lot, stopped at the fence, quickly pulled off her shoes and removed her jeans. She climbed halfway up the chain links, her toes finding places to grasp, and when she neared the top she tossed her jeans on the razor wire and in one motion threw herself onto
her jeans, some of the razor barbs digging into her stomach and bare legs, and in great pain, thankful none of the barbs held her there, she climbed down the other side of the fence and started running.

An engine revved behind her. Taking a chance at looking back, she saw the SUV slewing around the corner of the fence. She tripped over a teddy-bear cholla and fell heavily, her legs and arms laced with needles. The SUV stopped beside her. Anthony Galliano got out, removed his sunglasses, and dangled one of the side pieces from his mouth.

“That's gotta hurt,” he said. “But I think after what I'm going to do to you, you're going to hurt a lot more before you tell us what we need to know.”