Shame
Authors: Alan Russell
ALSO BY ALAN RUSSELL
Multiple Wounds
No Sign of Murder
The Forest Prime Evil
The Hotel Detective
The Fat Innkeeper
Exposure
Political Suicide
Burning Man
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2006 Alan Russell
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer
PO Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612186108
ISBN-10: 1612186106
To good friends:
Penny Travis, whose big heart and good soul have always been there for me;
Terry and Norman Glenn, with whom I have had the pleasure of sharing wonderful food and even more wonderful food for thought; and
Wadestein, who on a weekly basis lectures me on his theories of plausible deniability.
Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without, and know we cannot live within.
—James Baldwin,
The Fire Next Time
INTRODUCTION
November 3, 1985
T
O THE CASUAL
observer, the 225 square miles of New Mexico’s White Sands National Monument are a wasteland. Few places on earth are as dry as the Tularosa Basin. It is that very dryness that allows the gypsum to dominate the landscape. In a wetter climate the gypsum would dissolve, but in the Tularosa Basin the crystal granules come together to form nature’s ever-changing monuments.
From a moving car, White Sands appears to be almost devoid of life. Trees are small and sparse, mostly Rio Grande cottonwoods, and plants have a difficult time scrabbling out a foothold in the shifting dunes. And those few plants that do raise their heads in the sheltered low areas between the dunes are often buried as the ephemeral dunes give way.
The dunes have swallowed more than plants. Hernando de Luna was a follower of Francisco Coronado, engaged in his expedition to find the Seven Cities of Cíbola and Gran Quivira. Struck down by the Apaches in 1540, de Luna fell among the shifting white sands.
Manuela de Luna was a newlywed in the first blush of love who could not accept the news of her husband’s death. The lovely
bride left her home in Mexico City in search of her beloved conquistador. It is said she was also lost among the white sands, and over the centuries many have claimed to have seen a beautiful Spanish woman walking among the dunes, the long train of her white wedding dress trailing behind her. The native people call this the Legend of Pavla Blanca and believe she looks for her husband still. Manuela appears, they say, just after sunset, gliding along the whipping eddies of sand.
Almost as ghostlike as Manuela are the predators that stalk in the White Sands, their passage usually detected only in the powdery gypsum—the serpentine markings of the three species of rattlesnake, as well as footpads of fox and coyote. These ghosts also leave behind remains of the vanquished: cast-off fur, bones, and scat easily seen atop the spectral white dunes.
Park Ranger Nolan Campbell spotted the body of Alicia Gleason while driving on rounds. At first he doubted what he saw.
“Sometimes you see things out here,” Campbell said, “and you rub your eyes, and they usually disappear, but she didn’t. She wasn’t Pavla Blanca, or any mirage.”
Alicia hadn’t just been dropped in the desert, but had been put on display. Two miles from the entrance to the park, her naked body had been propped at the base of a fifty-foot sand dune. She was naked, her legs spread, a message written on her flesh. Everyone wondered at the word:
SHAME
. The just-concluded decade of the sixties was supposed to be a time for people to lose their shame. There was no place for shame in the Age of Aquarius. That was an emotion that belonged to the Puritans and Cotton Mather.
But everyone who saw Alicia’s naked and dead body felt shame. They also felt fear. A terrible predator, hitherto unknown, had announced his presence.
When Alicia was discovered in the morning, the gypsum hadn’t settled on her, but around her. After her body was
removed, a picture was taken of the outline it had left. Nature had silhouetted her body better than any coroner’s chalk. One detective was moved to tears, saying it looked as if a snow angel had been left behind.
—Excerpt from the book
Shame
by Elizabeth Line
May 4, 2012
T
HE FRONT DOOR
was slightly ajar, opened just a little more than a crack. Caleb Parker raised his finger to the doorbell yet another time. He had already walked around the manicured pathway to the back, had checked for Mrs. Sanders at the swimming pool, the tennis courts, the gardens, and the stables. Out in the corral he had found three horses, the same three he remembered from his visit two months earlier. It didn’t look as if Mrs. Sanders was out riding.
If it hadn’t been for the open front door, he would have been sure she wasn’t home.
It was a beautiful house, even by Rancho Santa Fe standards. There was no moat protecting the palatial estate, but there were signs all around the property warning of alarm systems and armed response. A rose showing its thorns, Caleb thought. A fortune had been spent on security.
Which again made him wonder why the front door wasn’t shut tight.
Earlier that morning Caleb had talked with Mr. Sanders on the phone. Sanders had persuaded him to make the time to come right over to cut down an acacia tree. It was playing havoc with
his wife’s allergies, Sanders had told him. “My wife will be waiting for you with bated—if not wheezing—breath,” Sanders had promised.
Caleb pushed the doorbell again. He could hear the chimes sounding throughout the house. A minute passed, but still there was no sound of footsteps, nothing to indicate that anyone was home.
Except for the opened front door.
Caleb reached out with his right hand, rapped with his knuckles, causing the door to open several inches, enough for Caleb to get a look inside.
“Hello,” he called. “Anyone home?”
Caleb wondered if he might have set off one of those silent alarms, wondered if at that very moment guards were being dispatched to the house. But he wasn’t afraid of burglar alarms so much as the alarms going off in his mind. Caleb sensed that something was very wrong. He could feel it. Standing at the threshold, he was afraid to go forward and afraid to retreat. Scents from inside reached out to him, the beguiling aroma of freshly cut flowers and potpourri, but he still didn’t feel reassured.
“Hello,” he shouted again, willing his voice to be loud and strong.