Healing Sands (18 page)

“I've done multiple looks to account for possible weight gain and loss,” Tess said, “although she couldn't have gotten too much thinner without becoming emaciated.”

She clicked a series of progressively bloated Belindas into view, then reversed the process until a skeletal version appeared. They all looked the same to Sully. All condescending. All dangerous.

“Now, I can use Photoshop to paint any changes right on the image,” Tess said. “I have it set up in grids so we can do specific areas at a time.”

Sully shook his head. He could feel Tess watching him, but he kept his own gaze riveted to the screen, unable to look away from the proverbial train wreck.

“You told me you don't know anything about her lifestyle,” she said, “but if you've come up with any details since we talked, we can put those in.”

Her voice brushed against him, and Sully tried to focus.

“How about jewelry?” he said. “Someone told me she wears a lot of Native American stuff.”

“Good.” Tess's fingers nudged the keyboard, and within moments Belinda Cox was adorned with clay beads and turquoise baubles. They were jarring against her too-white skin.

“Freckles,” Sully said.

Tess frowned. “Those usually fade with age.”

“Nobody told her that. According to my source, she's still covered with them.”

“She should have worn sunscreen,” Tess said and sprinkled brown spots across the nose and forehead. “Anything else?”

Sully felt a small sizzle of energy. “How close do you think this is to what she actually looks like today?”

Tess pushed the glasses up and sat back in the chair, pulling her long legs up into a bow. She'd kicked off her shoes, and she curled her fingers around her toes.

“A computer can't perform exact transformations,” she said. “The critical task is to maintain the look of the person.” She swept her hand across the screen. “Particularly around the eyes. Most things about our appearance do change with age, but we usually maintain a certain recognizable manner of expression.” Tess glanced at Sully and smiled with her lips together. “I'm not trying to skirt the question. This should make it possible for you to recognize this woman, if you don't expect every detail to match.”

Sully nodded and went back to the screen. Tess was right. Belinda Cox still had the same manner of expression—the expression she'd shown his Lynn when she went to her in the agony of depression. The look Cox had when she told Lynn she needed to repent so she could be a good mother. The countenance that brought bile up his throat.

“I can give you an image with glasses, shorter hair, longer,” Tess said. “We can experiment as much as you want.”

She spoke with the calm of soft water, and she was watching him again, eyes exploring as if she were looking to see what her next words should be. Sully let go of a breath he hadn't been aware he was holding.

“I think we're good,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I don't know how much longer I can look at her.”

Tess unfolded her legs. “I didn't think she was somebody you were crazy about. Shall I print this out for you?”

Sully nodded and watched her hands flow over the computer until a gentle whir signaled that Belinda Cox was coming out of the printer.

“Sun tea?” she said.

“I'm sorry?”

“Would you like some sun tea? It's probably the last batch for the season.” Tess waited, eyebrows up.

“Do you have sugar?” Sully asked.

She got up and sailed across the office to the kitchen, hair swaying across her back as she moved. “Do we have a sweet tooth, Dr. Crisp?”

Sully followed her into the kitchen, where she waved him to a well-stuffed red-checked chair that would have seemed incongruous amid anyone else's stove and refrigerator.

“How did you know I was a doctor?” he said.

Tess dropped ice cubes into two tall glasses that looked as slender as she did. “I checked you out. I wasn't going to invite you into my home without making sure you aren't a serial killer.”

In spite of his darkened mood, Sully grinned. “I don't think most of them report that as their occupation.”

“You forget that I work with the police department.” Tess filled the glasses with a golden liquid that already had Sully's mouth watering, and she nodded toward a set of French doors. “Let's sit outside—there's a heavenly breeze.”

Sully was ensconced on a sage green padded chaise lounge on a back porch drenched in sunset light before he fully realized that their business was complete and Tess had moved them seamlessly into a social conversation, complete with minty ice tea and a breeze that chattered in the cottonwoods. He was okay with that.

“What else did you uncover when you checked me out?” Sully asked.

Tess stretched out her legs on the chaise angled toward his and crossed her ankles.

“Actually, I already knew about you from your books and your radio show and all of that. I just didn't realize you were working here now. Nice office, by the way.”

“We try,” Sully said. “This is great tea—and I consider myself a connoisseur of sweet tea.”

“Being from the bayou and all that,” she said.

She had a cute way of wrinkling her nose. Sully hadn't noticed that before.

“I would think you would have to pay attention to the office environment when you're counseling people,” she said. “That's why I don't see my own clients at the police station. They would let me, even if it's not case-related, but the atmosphere isn't conducive to interviewing distressed people.”

“I didn't think about that,” Sully said. “You're talking to people who've just witnessed a crime. I imagine they're pretty upset.”

“To say the least.” She leveled her eyes at him. “When I have the option, I bring them here.”

Sully stopped in midsip. “Am I that transparent?”

“More like translucent.” Tess nudged an ice cube with her finger. “It's obvious you aren't trying to locate this woman so you can notify her about a high school reunion. And incidentally, you don't have to tell me why you want to find her. I'm convinced you aren't stalking her. I don't think that's your MO.”

Sully set his glass on the small stressed-wood table between them and resituated himself in the chair. “You do a lot of work with the police, right?”

“I actually work with fifteen different agencies, but yes, I do all the forensic art work for LCPD.”

“So—if a police detective were trying to find this woman . . .”

“Miss Freckles,” Tess said.

“Belinda Cox is actually her name.”

Tess put up her hand. “Wait. Now that I know, are you going to have to kill me?”

Sully felt his face relax into a grin. “No. You're safe there.”

“I'm sorry, go on.”

“What would the next step be?”

Tess gave a short laugh. “Whatever the police would do, it isn't what
you
should do, trust me. But let's see.” She brought her knees up and hung her wrists lazily over them. “You said she was going by Zahira?”

“That's what she has printed on her checks, I was told.”

“Just Zahira?”

“That's it.”

“Sounds like she's trying to create an image.”

“Brilliant and shining.”

“I'm sorry?”

“
Zahira
means ‘brilliant and shining.'”

Tess laughed. “You don't think it fits?”

“How did you know?”

Her laugh was longer and lighter this time. “That being the case, I wouldn't just walk down the street flashing her picture around. But you could try the Chamber of Commerce, the Better Business Bureau . . .”

“You really think she'd be registered there?”

“If she's the kook you seem to think she is, there's more than likely been a complaint against her.” Tess shrugged. “You could pretend to file one yourself, and they might tell you she's already been reported.”

“I don't know if I could pull that off.”

“How badly do you want to find this woman?”

She was watching him again, and Sully did feel transparent.

“I'm not sure I can get on with my life unless I do,” he said.

“Then there you go.” She floated up from the lounge. “I'll put that photo in a folder for you.”

Sully watched
her
this time. She padded softly across the porch and slipped inside and yet left herself lingering in the air. He drained his glass and decided to ask for a refill.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

F
rances Taylor was a strange-looking woman. Her skin was deathly pale, a trait I attributed to the fact that as senior photo editor she never seemed to emerge from the cave they called the photo room. She sat in her office, peering at the computer screen and listening to the police scanner. When she looked up at one of us to make an assignment, her eyes bulged from their sockets in a way that made me wonder if her thyroid was on the fritz. The photo room lights were kept low, which made us all tend to speak in hushed tones the way Frances did, only her voice had the exact consistency of fine-grit sandpaper, and it seldom uttered anything unrelated to photos for the
Sun-Times.

I was only vaguely aware of any of that as I sat across the desk from her at 7:00 a.m. on Wednesday.

“Don't get me wrong, Ryan,” she said, supplementing her words with the constant action of thin, heavily veined hands. “I've wanted you to pursue a major feature for the online paper ever since you got here. I know you'll be amazing with an audio/slide project.”

“Then I don't see the problem,” I said. “There isn't much going on news-wise right now, so I can start working on it right away.”

“It's the subject that concerns me. With illegal immigration such a hellacious mess, a piece about the lives of Hispanic legals in Las Cruces isn't exactly going to be titillating. They're just a fact of life here.”

“But I see something teeming beneath the surface.”

“Teeming. What? A plot to overthrow the city council?”

“No.” I could barely control the urge to roll my eyes. “It's something more primal. I won't know exactly what it is until I get in there and start to shoot.”

Frances nodded, but I wasn't seeing agreement in her face. “That's the way you've been used to working, I know that. And I have no doubt you'll find something. But is anybody going to care, that's the question.”

“This is what I do—I uncover what isn't obvious to everyone and make them wonder why they didn't see it themselves.”

She sighed. “All right—work on it between other assignments for a week, see what you come up with, and then we'll review. Get some audio too. The only way you're going to sell this is with a multimedia approach.”

“Fine,” I said.

She started to type again before I even stood up.

“Oh, do you know where El Milagro is? I couldn't find it on MapQuest.”

Her hands paused. “El Milagro? That's one of the
colonias
, I think. About twenty miles north of here off I-25.”

“Thanks.”

“Look, Ryan, that whole thing has gotten so much press already, I don't think you're going to uncover anything new.”

“We'll see,” I said.

And if I didn't, I wasn't sure where else I would go.

Once I got beyond the northern outskirts of Las Cruces, there was nothing but unforgiving desert and my own thoughts.

What did Frances mean by “that whole thing”? I should have stopped to look it up, so I didn't waltz into this place looking like an idiot. But I was pushed for time, and besides, I wasn't looking for what the press had already revealed about El Milagro. Not unless they'd ever done a piece on the Sanchez family.

I hadn't been able to come up with an address for any Sanchez that wasn't right in Las Cruces proper. From the looks of what I was passing, there weren't any addresses to
have
up here. So far all I'd seen were tumbleweeds, a few ill-fated structures someone had tried to build with hay bales, and the occasional windowless junked car—most of them dating back to the fifties and sixties.

I was getting concerned about pulling this off. I had my press pass and my camera and the audio equipment, so just making random pictures wasn't going to stir up that much curiosity, I was sure. But how was I going to explain why I was looking for Señora Sanchez in particular? I could say I was doing a piece about what happened to her son, but I couldn't bring myself to do that, on a number of levels. I was just going to have to pray and wing it.

So far no highway signs were alerting me to anything about El Milagro, and I was getting close to the twenty miles Frances indicated. There appeared to be some kind of community off to the west, so I took the next exit and abruptly found myself on an unpaved road that rose up in a dust cloud around me.

I slowed down to let it settle and crept the Saab toward a cluster of buildings at the top of a small rise. The only indications of life were the sparsely spaced utility poles that spoiled the sky. It didn't seem to me that there were enough of them for the number of dwellings that came into view as I drew closer.

Or maybe there were. When I turned into the first road, oddly named Angel Wing Place, I was convinced nobody could be living in the places I saw.

A disconcerting assortment of houses lined that unpaved street and all the other ones I drove down with my chin dropped to my chest. Some were cinder-block shacks with curled-up tin roofs. Others were boxy manufactured homes, vintage 1960 or '70, whose window frames bled trails of rust down their bleached and battered facades. Most were tattered single-wide trailers, some added on to with scrap wood, all attached by orange extension cords to the power poles.

On the sagging porch of a collection of stones and brick that tried desperately to be a house, a woman sat on a kitchen chair, watching two small children splash in a mud puddle. I glossed over the fact that the desert didn't typically have puddles and tried not to stare at the gaps between the bricks and the complete absence of shingles on the roof. I tried not to stare at all. It was, after all, this woman's home.