The Bone Fire: A Mystery (2 page)

She tried to keep an eye on the dancer—who was only ankle-high
to Zozobra—but the people in front of her blocked the view. At only five feet tall, she felt like a mushroom in a forest of sequoias. She jumped up to see what was going on, but she only caught a glimpse of the stage. She got jostled by the dad in front of her and could only see the chest of the man behind. On either side, there were just elbows and shoulders. She was in her own private cell with four walls of people. Her foot got stepped on. Her hair caught on someone’s jacket.

She needed to move to see better—and so that she wouldn’t be black and blue tomorrow. She made her way through the crowd, which was surprisingly easy. Most of the people were so intent on the figure ahead they didn’t even notice her passing by. She decided to get to the edge of the field and then figure out where to relocate.

The lights of the stage flashed blue, red, and green on the faces in the crowd. Occasionally, she heard another group start the “Burn him! Burn him!” chant. Every once in a while someone yelled “Que viva!” or “Que viva la fiesta!”

Lucy found the edge of the field, which was lined with booths selling soft drinks and Zozobra merchandise. The image of Zozobra adorned everything from T-shirts to temporary tattoos, shot glasses to earrings. She considered a Zozobra beer mug before her attention was diverted back to the stage by Zozobra’s growl getting louder.

She felt the current of the crowd change from relaxed to anxious. The tension became skintight as the pop, pop, fizz, fizz of fireworks faded into the background. She noticed a patch of short-looking people near the middle of the field and thought it best to join her own kind. She made her way to them, only to realize when she was a few feet away that they were in wheelchairs. Still, she could easily see over their heads.

The stage was now filled with people whirling and whipping torches. Another dancer in red and yellow started a complicated performance near Zozobra’s feet. The monster growled louder. A bunch of little bonfires flared up on the stage as careening fireworks started to go off again and the field boomed with their echoes. Tracers of red, green, and white sizzled into the sky. The crowd was going crazy, but they were drowned out by the fireworks, the music, and the
growling, which was almost a scream by now. Lucy wasn’t sure how long she could take the noise and tension without some release.

It almost surprised her when Zozobra’s execution was delivered by a single flare launched directly into his open mouth. His head caught fire first, his face melting quickly away, while his eyes and mouth became hauntingly backlit by the orange flames. His skull spit sparks up into the night sky as his arms twisted and writhed uselessly at his sides. He was a demon caught in the flames of hell.

The rest of his body caught next as ash showered down onto his dress and fountains of massive sparklers came to life nearby. The brilliant strobes of light bounced off the faces in the crowd like a million camera flashes. Lucy could feel the heat from the flames that licked their way down his body. Zozobra snapped and crackled as the terrorizing flames scorched his dress.

Zozobra kept growling, the crowd kept screaming, and Lucy closed her eyes in a prayer of sorts. She tried to let the anxiety she’d been holding on to for months flow out of her.

Zozobra was a monster, but first and foremost, he represented a new beginning. He was burned every year so the problems of the past would go up in flames with him. He was Old Man Gloom, and the people in the crowd were the victors, the conquistadores. They would triumph over their troubles by burning their past mistakes. Zozobra was one big cleansing fire.

Lucy hoped it was true. She hoped the memory of the last few months would be wiped away in the white-hot fire. She opened her eyes again. Zozobra was a metal skeleton now devoid of his paper flesh. He still hung on his stand, a small bonfire burning at his feet. Fireworks burst into the night; the crowd laughed around her. She heard one of the teenagers behind her say, “That was a good burn.” Lucy hoped it was.

Part of the Zozobra tradition was for people to write letters that were put in the base of Zozobra before he was burned. They threw in old photos, divorce papers, police reports—any worry they wanted to be rid of. She had written a note that had been burned in the fire, as so many other people had.

Her note had been simple:
Release me.

Detective Sergeant Gilbert Montoya of the Special Investigations Team stood on a hill, looking out over the baseball field littered with trash—plastic cups, paper plates, food wrappers. The sun was still coming up, yet he could make out almost everything in the navy blue morning, the faintest trace of crispness in the newly autumn air.

He glanced up at the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to see if any of the aspen had started to turn yet, but there was no flash of yellow. The hillsides still had their swatches of green. Then again, it was only the second week of September. In another month, the color would be there. He turned his attention back to the hill he stood on, which last night had served as a stage.

He walked back over to the pile of ash that had been Zozobra only eight hours ago and looked up at the metal pole that was permanently cemented into the hilltop. It had served as Zozobra’s backbone during all the burnings. The fifty-foot-tall pole, scarred and pitted with
years of fire, still held tightly to the chicken-wire mesh of Zozobra’s skeleton from the night before.

Gil looked down at the huge pile of ash, as did the four other people standing next to him.

The four men were all members of the Protectores de la Fiesta, a group whose job for almost three hundred years has been to guard the fiesta’s tradition and symbols. Gil’s grandfather and dad had both been members before they died. It was an elite group, allowing in only male descendents from one of the forty or so Spanish families that founded Santa Fe.

Growing up, Gil always knew it was fiesta weekend by two things: his mother making tray after tray of carne adovada and his dad and grandfather dressing in the uniform of the Protectores—black pants and a yellow satin shirt with a red sash. The colors of the New Mexico flag.

The four Protectores who had been watching the remains of Zozobra all night were there to make sure no sparks got free and nothing got rekindled. They had been the ones who had prompted Gil’s wake-up call. As the sky had started to lighten, something strange in the ashes had caught their attention. They had raked and pushed the cinders around until they finally figured out what they were looking at—a human skull.

Gil had been woken up from a sound sleep. He had gone to bed early—just after 10:00
P.M.
He and his family hadn’t gone to Zozobra. In fact, they had never gone together. The year his daughter Therese was born, there had been a gang shooting on the Plaza just after Zozobra burned. Susan had refused to bring their daughters since. Gil had thought about insisting they go this year. The girls were old enough—Joy was twelve; Therese was ten. The girls themselves had pestered Susan every day for the last week, but his wife never budged.

He glanced at his watch again, wondering when the field deputy for the Office of the Medical Investigator might arrive. Gil had called the OMI on his way to the scene and gotten assurances that someone would be there soon. He had already called his boss, Chief Bill Kline, to tell him the news: that thirty thousand people might have watched
while someone burned to death. Kline’s only response was “I’m on my way.” Gil glanced again at the mountains, which were starting to glow with sunshine, then looked back at the ashes.

The skull had been bleached white by the fire.

It was a small skull. The skull of a child.

Gil looked away again.

Lucy woke up with a start from a dead sleep, her fire department pager screeching next to her on the nightstand. She grabbed it, cranked down the volume, and jumped out of bed, stumbling out of the room before she could wake up the man next to her.

Behind the closed bathroom door, she turned the pager volume up to barely audible and heard the dispatcher call out a car fire in an arroyo. She sighed and rubbed her eyes, debating. She wasn’t a firefighter, so she didn’t need to go. Hell, she was only a volunteer medic at the department, so she really didn’t need to ever go. She could just slip back into bed. On the other hand, the bed held its own problems she didn’t want to deal with. Plus, they might need a medic at the fire to run rehab for the firefighters. Should she stay or should she go? Honestly, Lucy would rather deal with a deadly fire than any man in her bed.

“Okay,” she said to herself, the decision made. She turned on the bathroom light and opened the top bathroom drawer. She pushed aside some tampons and pulled out her Breathalyzer. She knew from experience that if she drank a six-pack and then slept for at least five hours, the machine would register a .02. Last night, though, she’d done the unusual. She’d had tangy shots and sweet mixed drinks. Who knew what that’d do to her blood alcohol level?

She pulled out the device, which was about the shape and size of a cell phone, and blew into the mouthpiece. She had ordered the Breathalyzer a month or so ago after seeing too many DWI crashes. Now, if she did decide to have a beer or two, she could be sure the morning after that she was okay to drive. She considered it the ultimate act of responsibility.

She waited a minute, then looked at the digital readout on the
machine. It flashed .07. The legal in New Mexico was .08, so she was good.

She walked back into her dark room, where she stubbed her toe on something in the middle of the floor, yelling out “Oww” before she could stop herself.

“What the hell are you doing out there?” came a voice from the bed.

“You left your shoes in the middle of the floor.”

“Only because you wanted to get my pants off so bad,” he said, chuckling.

The sound made her nauseous and annoyed. She was having day-after remorse, regretting that she’d ever brought him home. It had seemed like such a good idea last night. The alcohol was probably to blame for that.

She’d gone to the Cowgirl after Zozobra, looking for a drink and wanting to hold on to the frenzy of the crowd. She needed to be someplace loud and raucous, but the Cowgirl was quiet. She stood alone at the bar for a moment, looking over the few diners who were finishing up their meals. She had decided to leave when the bartender asked her what she wanted to drink.

She glanced up at him absently. He was studly, in that he was covered in studs. On his dog collar, in his ears, through his nose. She wondered where else.

“Umm, I guess I’ll just have a shot of something,” she said. As he turned to grab an amber bottle, she noticed a tattoo on the back of his shaved head. He poured her a generous shot of who-knows-what and set it in front of her. Lucy downed it in one swallow. It was sweet with a hard edge of alcohol.

“Is that the best you got?” she asked, running a little flirtation up the flagpole to see what happened. She was still geared up from Zozobra and needed to keep the spark going. She was all tension, and, as usual, it came out of her in naughty ways.

“Honey, I got a whole lot better than that,” he said with a smile. He took a clear bottle full of viscous liquid off the shelf, and she watched him mix her a drink. His arms were covered in tattoos.

He smiled, and she noticed he had on mascara and a sweep of purple eye shadow. Which was more makeup then she was wearing at the moment. Interesting. Maybe he was gay or bi? Lucy decided there was only one way to be sure.

“I’ve never slept with a man wearing makeup before,” she said. Might as well get an answer to the gay question before she got too far along in her flirting.

“What makes you think we’re going to sleep together?”

“What makes you think we’re not?”

Gil had been on scene for only a few minutes when Liz Hahn pulled up in the medical investigator van. Liz, from Ocean Grove, New Jersey, had moved to Santa Fe with her partner, Shelly. They had two kids, one of whom was in the same grade as Therese.

Liz called, “Hey,” over to Gil by way of a greeting. She stopped short of approaching the ashes and instead looked around. She flipped open a notebook and scribbled a few quick notes about the initial scene. She took a camera out of the duffle bag she was carrying and snapped a picture of the mountains as they became tinged with pink, then wrote down the time: 7:10
A.M.
“Shelly is a sucker for sunrise shots,” she said before turning the camera to the ashes, clicking away for a good minute.

She went closer to the ashes, carefully crouching down next to the skull. She stared and wrote in her pad, then stared and wrote some more before taking another round of photos. She went back to her truck and got out a small hand rake, which she used gingerly on the ashes for a few minutes, before getting up and going over to the Protectores. Gil heard her ask them how they found the skull and when. They told her the same thing they told Gil—that they had been there all night, they stopped raking the ashes as soon as they saw it, and no one had touched anything since.