Sacred Ground (25 page)

Angela had come only to rest. She knew now that she was going to run away, she was just going to keep riding until she found a safe place in the wilderness, far from Navarro and his cruelty.

Finally, all the tears and sobs that she had been forced to keep inside, burst forth in a fury of weeping. As she collapsed to the earthen floor and cried as if her heart would break, she prayed to the Virgin Mary, and after a while a voice whispered in her mind:
You cannot run away, daughter. You have duties now which you cannot shirk. But there is courage within you, the courage of those who came before you.

Sitting up, her tears subsiding, Angela pondered this. And she realized she couldn’t abandon her mother. It would not only cause her mother pain, but running away would only bring shame upon the family. Possibly, Navarro would cast Lorenzo and Luisa out.

In the silence and solitude of the cave Angela felt her thoughts and emotions suddenly settle down, like birds once excited now coming to roost for the long, dark night. It left her with a strange and unexpected clarity of thought.

She knew what she must do.

Returning to Sirocco, who was nibbling greenery at the cave’s entrance, she unsheathed a knife from her saddle, returned to the silent darkness and, taking hold of her long braid, severed it at the base of her skull. Feeling the rope of hair lying like a quiescent snake in her hands, and the cool air on her bare neck, Angela thought: I have taken away his power.

As she buried the braid in the cold earth of the cave, she experienced no moment of triumph, no feelings of victory, for she knew Navarro would punish her for what she had done. But she had needed to commit this one act of defiance in order to save her spirit, because she knew it would be the last act of defiance she would ever be able to commit against her husband, and the memory of this moment, she knew, would sustain her in years to come.

Chapter Eleven

The men who gathered in the posh executive board room on this crisp morning exuded a relaxed confidence. Comfortable with their power and secure in the knowledge that they ran the show, they wore expensive suits and discussed golf scores. Three were talking on personal cell phones, two exchanged stock tips, Sam Carter was giving instructions to the woman who would be recording the minutes of the meeting, while a seventh man, his long white hair plaited into Indian braids, sat stoically looking out the window of this thirtieth-floor conference room high above prestigious Century City. On a mahogany sideboard stood a silver coffee urn and rows of china cups in china saucers. There were crystal glasses filled with water and a slice of lemon, and platters of cold cuts, bagels, fresh fruit. The napkins were linen and the forks and spoons silver. It was an atmosphere of wealth and clubbiness, and as Sam Carter consulted his watch and saw that everyone was here, he felt extremely pleased with himself. It was he who had called this meeting, and he had no doubt as to its outcome. Handshakes and off-the-record promises practically guaranteed it.

“All right, gentlemen I think we can get this meeting under way. I’m sure we all have appointments for this afternoon.”

Wade Dimarco, who was to present his proposal to build a museum on the Topanga site, said quietly next to Sam, “We’re not going to have any trouble from Dr. Tyler, are we?”

“Erica is my employee, Wade, she does what I say.” Besides, Erica knew nothing of this meeting. Sam had made sure of that. By the time she found out, it would be too late. “Don’t worry,” he added as he clapped Dimarco on the back. “I can almost guarantee we’ll all be walking out of here today having arrived at a very amicable agreement.”

As they took their seats, with Sam instructing the members to consult the printed agendas that had been set before them, there came a knock at the closed door. The seven men at the conference table were surprised to see a woman enter, her manner and attitude businesslike. Sam and Wade Dimarco exchanged a glance and Harmon Zimmerman looked instantly displeased, while three of the men stared blankly at the stranger, and Jared Black smiled.

Erica ignored the smile. “I trust I am not too late, gentlemen,” she said as the door closed behind her. “I was not informed of this meeting until a short while ago.” She wore a navy blue business suit that consisted of a tailored jacket over a white silk blouse, a skirt that stopped at the knees, and sensible pumps. Her glossy chestnut hair brushed her shoulders in a soft pageboy.

Without invitation she took the only available seat, at the opposite end of the oval table from Sam. Several of the men rose politely. Sam glowered at her. “This is Dr. Tyler, my assistant. She is here to
observe.
”

Erica folded her hands on the table and tried not to let her anger show as Harmon Zimmerman started off the presentations. She avoided looking at Sam for fear she would lose control and say something she would regret. She avoided looking at Jared for the same reason.

Harmon Zimmerman represented the homeowners and backed up his analysis of their situation with charts and graphs that he passed around, a flurry of paper to support his case. None of the report pages reached Erica. The men had not expected an eighth member sitting in. The white-haired man with Indian braids, seated on her right, shared his materials with her.

Erica barely listened to what Zimmerman had to say, she was so angry. Sam and Jared had conspired to keep this meeting a secret from her.

The morning after the Dimarco cocktail party, Erica had been surprised to see Sam showing Ginny and Wade Dimarco around the camp. There had been other people with them, one man taking pictures, another jotting notes on a clipboard. Erica had asked Sam what it was about, and he had said, “They’re just curious, like everyone else.” The Dimarcos weren’t the first notable persons Sam had taken on a tour of the site; it was something of an honor to be granted access to a project that was off-limits to the general public. However, what made the Dimarcos’ visit different was that not once did they go inside the cave. Wasn’t the cave the whole point? Erica had started thinking, and when she reviewed the night of the Dimarco cocktail party, when she had left so abruptly, she saw something she hadn’t been aware of at the time. Sam and Wade Dimarco with their heads together like conspirators.

That was when her suspicions had been born. Sam was up to something. In the days that followed, he acted a little too cheerful, a little too spirited, as if to cover up nervousness. And then, just that morning, Erica had seen Sam leaving the compound, dressed in his best suit and whistling merrily. A few minutes later, Jared had also driven out, dressed to the nines and carrying a briefcase. Luckily, the temp secretary was still at Jared’s RV. Explaining to the woman that she had lost the address for the meeting and that she hoped she wasn’t going to be late, Erica had learned that Jared and Sam were headed for a building in Century City where the secretary’s law firm was offering the use of their conference room for a meeting.

While Zimmerman outlined the loss of income to the homeowners because the excavation was holding up litigation against the builder and insurance companies, Erica finally looked at Jared. And she wondered: the night of the Dimarco party, when she was binding his injured rib and he was telling her about his wife’s tragic death, had he known then about this secret meeting? As he was drawing her into a false confidence, had he already entered into a covert alliance with the men in this room? Because Erica had a strong suspicion of what they were up to here today.

Barney Voorhees, the developer and builder of Emerald Hills Estates, was next, with a slide show of maps and surveys, grants and deeds and permits, all proving he had developed the canyon properly and legally and that it wasn’t his fault City Hall hadn’t had sufficient soils and geological surveys on file. He, too, argued that the continued excavation held up any progress toward a resolution that would be financially satisfactory to all concerned. The archaeologists, he stated bluntly, were bankrupting him.

Next, the man from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management erected an easel and gave a well-prepared presentation, complete with graphs and charts, speaking as Zimmerman and Voorhees had in dollars and cents, recommending that the state of California cease the archaeological work at Topanga and instead develop a conservation and protection plan for Emerald Hills Canyon.

When Wade Dimarco’s turn came, he impressed them all by dimming the lights and causing the center of the table to rise, so that each member was faced with a monitor. His ten-minute video was a masterpiece of computer modeling and special effects, as the audience was taken through a virtual tour of the museum he proposed to build at Emerald Hills. The narrator used the phrase “revenue to the taxpayers of California” more than once. Again, the implication was there: the sooner the excavating of the cave was stopped, the sooner the new Indian museum could bring profits to the state treasury.

The next to speak was Chief Antonio Rivera of the Gabrielino tribe, whom Erica recognized as the man Jared had brought to the cave in the early days of the project, hoping he could make a tribal identification of the painting. Of advanced age, his face mapped with a million lines and creases, coppery and weathered with small, alert eyes, he spoke softly and solemnly about the holy places of the American Indian. He spoke in the curious hybrid accent of LA’s barrios: the result of growing up in a Spanish-speaking home and neighborhood laced with years of watching American movies and TV. Chief Rivera handed out folios containing color photographs of sacred sites around the Southwest, all of them in various stages of neglect, decay, and vandalism. “Because no one protected them,” he said sadly. “My people are poor, and we are few in number. These were our churches.” He lifted with a shaking hand the photograph of a cluster of boulders engraved with mystical petroglyphs defaced by obscene words in spray paint. “The cave in Topanga was our church. The stone walls, the earth floor, sacred symbols painted there are all holy to us. We would like our church back, please.”

Jared spoke next. The Indians he represented wanted the project stopped so that they could get their ancestor properly and respectfully buried in a Native American cemetery. His handouts consisted of a petition containing thousands of signatures, and letters from tribal leaders calling upon the good consciences of all religious men, Indian or white.

He gave a moving speech: “As some of you here know, the Native American Heritage Commission was established in 1976 in response to California Native Americans requesting protection of their burial grounds. Ancient human remains uncovered during construction for housing and roads were ignored and left rotting in the sun by the workers. Archaeologists and amateur collectors came along and collected the human remains without any care or concern for what the Native people were feeling or the religious beliefs of these people. In addition to the insensitive wholesale destruction of burial sites, human remains were being warehoused by archaeologists at locations across California for future research projects.”

He swept his dark eyes over the faces of his audience, settling a split second longer on Erica. “The taking of these remains was a continuation of the behavior toward Native Americans between 1850 and 1900, during which time ninety percent of the California Indian population perished from disease, starvation, poisoning, or gunshot wound. Alive, or dead, California natives were not treated with common decency and respect.

“I am here to see that this does not happen in the case of the Emerald Hills Woman. We wish for her immediate removal from the cave for reburial in a designated Native cemetery.”

While Jared spoke, Erica felt her body and her heart react to the sight and sound of him. As a woman she desired him. But her brain rejected him. She was riding an emotional roller coaster, a ride she had sworn long ago she would never take again.
The foster mother, whom Erica had allowed herself to grow very fond of, saying: “We want to adopt you, Erica. Mr. Gordon and I, we want you to be our daughter.” Hugs and kisses and tears and promises. And eleven-year-old Erica spinning dreams and fantasies, giving her hopes wing knowing that she would he part of a real family at last, with a little brother and a dog and a room of her own. No more visits to Dependency Court, no more trying to keep up with social workers who changed jobs faster than the seasons. And then: “I’m sorry, Erica, it isn’t going to work out after all. And given that we can’t adopt you, Mr. Gordon and I think it would be best if you were placed in another foster home.”

The high hopes, she had decided, like falling in love, were not worth the bitter disappointments that invariably followed.

Sam was the last to speak, presenting his own graphs and columns of figures to demonstrate the financial cost of the continued excavation to the taxpayer and projected financial loss compared to historical gain. “It’s a money drain.” He looked at each seated man in turn. “A drain,” he said again, as if he’d finally found the word he’d been searching for.

So Erica’s suspicions were confirmed, the purpose of this secret meeting. Every man in this room wanted the Emerald Hills Project stopped for one reason or another: the homeowners to be handsomely recompensed for their loss, the builder to avert bankruptcy, the Indians to have control of the cave and possibly a lucrative tourist attraction, the Dimarcos to build their self-named museum. She wasn’t sure what Jared’s personal motive was, maybe he didn’t have one, and she told herself she didn’t care. She was here for one reason only and that was what she must focus on.

“Gentlemen,” Sam said, bringing the agenda to a close. “We have heard all the facts presented and we all seem to be in agreement, so I call the question. Is there a second?”

Zimmerman raised a hand, but before he could second the call, Erica said, “Point of order.”

Seven faces turned to her.

Sam frowned. “What is your point of order, Dr. Tyler?”

“I haven’t been given a chance to present
my
case.”

His bushy eyebrows shot up. “Dr. Tyler, you work for the state and I have already presented the case for the state. All sides have been heard. We are ready to take a vote.”

“May I ask where this agenda was published?”

He blinked. And then a flush rose up from his collar.

Erica pressed on: “Surely, Dr. Carter, you are aware that in the state of California, if a commission or an agency is going to take action on something, it must publish the agenda in advance. I found no such public notice in the local newspapers or in the lobby downstairs. Did I miss it?”

He squared his shoulders. “There wasn’t one. This is just first reading. No agenda has to be published for first reading.”

“Then no vote and no action can be taken today. Am I right?”

Their eyes locked across the length of the table while the other participants waited in silence. “Yes,” he said.

“Therefore, I have something to say.”

She rose with dignity and spoke in a strong, clear voice. “This morning we have heard figures and statistics. We have spoken of ecology and native rights, environmental impact studies, financial losses and gains. We have heard from representatives of the people and of the environment. One man” —she nodded respectfully toward Chief Rivera— “even spoke on behalf of the cave. I am here to speak on the behalf of someone who cannot speak for herself. The Emerald Hills Woman.”

“What!” Zimmerman blurted. “Lady, weren’t you listening to
him
?” he said, gesturing toward Jared. “The man said the Indians want the bones back. They’re going to be buried in a proper cemetery.”

“That is not sufficient. The woman in the cave was once known by her people, and by her descendants. She has a right to get her name back. This is what I—”

“It’s a pile of bones, for Chrissake.”

Erica leveled a cool gaze on Zimmerman. “Sir, I did not interrupt you while you were giving your presentation. May I please be afforded the same courtesy?”