The Shadow of Venus (5 page)

“I never saw her at all until I unlocked the door on Tuesday morning and found her in that corner, cold and dead as a stone with the needle on the floor.” Paul's words were firm and definite, but his eyes wandered, circling the room.

“Did you see any of the staff in this part of the basement last week?” Celia asked.

“I saw one guy a couple of times, but I don't know his name.”

“What did he look like?” Celia asked.

“Tall. Skinny. He has a white streak in his hair.”

“Could his name have been Seth Malcolm?”

“Coulda. I didn't ask him.”

“Was he in this room?”

“I didn't see him here. When I saw him he was in the hallway. He said he was going to the stacks.”

“When do you lock the door?” Claire asked him.

“When I go home at night and over the weekend. It's left open during the day.”

“Do you need to lock it? There doesn't seem to be anything of value in here,” Claire said.

“I do it to keep the riffraff out.”

Celia thanked him for his help and asked about the health of his wife, Marisa.

“She's doin' okay,” he said. “I'll tell her you asked about her. She'll appreciate that. Anything else?”

“That's it for me,” Celia said.

“Me, too,” said Claire.

Claire heard the keys jingle as Paul turned and walked away. She and Celia went in the opposite direction and entered the elevator.

“What do you think of Paul Begala?” Claire asked her friend.

“I don't know him that well,” Celia said. “I knew his wife, Marisa, better. She used to clean at night, but she got MS and she can't work anymore. It must be very difficult for Paul to care for her. He's supposed to tell me if he finds something out of the ordinary like a door that should be locked but isn't. Only he never does. I hear from the guards from time to time that something is out of order, but never from him.”

“Do you think he was telling the truth when he said he never saw Maia before?” Claire asked.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he's the one who let her in. Maybe he even had sex with her. Having a sick wife could send a man looking elsewhere. Better him than Seth Malcolm, anyway. I'd hate to think
it
was a graduate student or one of the library staff.”

“A grad student familiar with
Ancient Sites
would know that the illustrations in the book are valuable.”

“True. It's also true that his work gave Seth a legitimate reason to be in the basement.”

The elevator arrived and they stepped in and rode it to the main floor.

“If Paul or Seth let Maia in, he violated library policy,” Celia said. “It could cost Paul his job and Seth his fellowship, but it doesn't change the fact that she died alone of a self-inflicted overdose, does it?”

The elevator door opened.

“I guess not,” Claire said.

Chapter
Six

W
HEN SHE GOT HOME THAT NIGHT
Claire went to the bookshelves in her bedroom to see what she had on the mythology of the constellations. She wasn't good about identifying them in the sky and even had trouble locating the Big and Little Dippers, but the Milky Way was easy. She knew that the Plateau Indians considered it to be the tracks of the dead and that it was bright enough to cast a shadow in areas removed from ambient light. Venus was easy to identify when it was the first planet in the evening sky, and Mars appeared brilliantly red when it was close to the earth. She had observed the conjunction last year and she followed the phases of the moon but that was about all Claire could identify in the night sky. She knew for sure she'd never be able to locate Venus in the daytime.

She turned on all the lights in her house to confuse the moths and divert them from the reading lamp in her bedroom. She pulled some books off the shelves and sat down to read about the stars. Claire learned that over thousands of years many cultures had observed the movement of the constellation Pleiades and created similar mythologies involving not having a home on earth. Often the planets were siblings, usually girls but sometimes boys. As Seth had said, in Greek mythology they were the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione: Electra, Maia, Taygeta, Alcyone, Merope, Celaeno, and Asterope. The sisters were pursued by Orion, the hunter, after he saw them walking in the woods and fell in love with them. When Zeus saw the sisters were in danger, he changed them into doves, who flew away into the sky.

In some of the myths there were only six stars or siblings. One of the stars was faint and best seen by averting the eyes and not staring at it directly. In all the myths there was an explanation for why the sisters or brothers left the earth. Often they were fleeing danger. Sometimes they danced or played too hard until they were lifted off the ground and spun into the sky. Sometimes they were happy in the sky. Sometimes they longed to return to earth. In a Kiowa myth Claire read that the girls were playing with a brother and amusing each other by pretending he was a bear. Then the brother turned into a real and voracious bear and the girls fled in fear to the sky. Claire saw that myth as a dramatization of the dangers of incest.

Another version featuring incest made Claire stop, put down her book, and stare at the wall. In this version Coyote committed incest with his daughters, forcing them to flee to the sky and turn into stars. Incest would explain why Maia became homeless, why she took her symbolic name and hid behind a pale facade, possibly even why she turned to heroin. Claire felt she couldn't put Maia to rest until she
found
out who she was, where she came from, and whether she had been pursued by Coyote, the predator, or Orion, the hunter. If someone had harmed her, that person had to be caught and punished.

Claire turned off all the lights and went to bed. She lay awake listening to the moths batting their wings, staking their claim on the warmth left behind in the bulbs.

******

After Celia had her meeting with Detective Owen and showed her the records, she sent the policewoman down the hall to Claire's office. Detective Owen seemed tired to Claire when she poked her head through the doorway. Even her upswept hairdo had begun to droop.

“Celia Alegria said you wanted to see me?” Detective Owen said.

“Yes,” Claire replied. “Come in. Have a seat.”

“Have you found any more missing illustrations?”

“No,” Claire said. “I don't know where to begin looking. To examine every valuable illustrated book in the library is an impossible task. It would help if I could narrow down the field. Did Celia tell you that the dead woman called herself Maia?”

“Yes, and that Seth Malcolm gave you that information and may have let the deceased into the basement. I'll be talking to him.” Detective Owen eased herself into the visitor's chair as if her joints hurt.

“Have you discovered where she got the drugs? Would the dealer be able to tell you anything about her?” Claire asked.

“We haven't found the dealer. The autopsy established that most of the needle tracks and the scars on her arms were old. She didn't have the tracks between her toes of a long-term user. It looks like she used for a while, kicked, then started up again. It doesn't appear she was selling illustrations for drugs on a regular basis, if that's any help to you.”

“It is,” Claire said. “Have you seen any more deaths from China White?

“No.”

“Does the word ‘coyote' have any meaning in the drug world?”

Owen gave a weary shrug. “Only the meaning it has everywhere else. Coyote is the smuggler who brings drugs or people across the border.”

“Maia told Seth she once stayed at the Hope Central Shelter.”

“We're looking into it.”

“Do you think it's possible Maia was her real name?”

“Possible, although many women on the street use fictitious names; they don't want to be found.”

“I did some research on the name,” Claire said, “and found that in Greek mythology Maia is one
of
the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Orion, the hunter, pursued the girls. When Zeus saw they were in danger, he changed them into doves, who flew into the sky and became the constellation Pleiades.”

“Maybe you should start looking through the library's astronomy books,” Detective Owen said. “We have a better chance of recovering stolen artwork if we know exactly what we're looking for.”

“I thought I would start with archeoastronomy. In many of the Pleiades myths girls are fleeing abuse. It's possible Maia was abused, was hiding from her abuser, and he found her.”

“Many women on the street have been abused,” Detective Owen said. “And many of them turn to prostitution. They need to do it to get money to buy drugs. But then they need to be high to prostitute themselves. It's a vicious cycle. Sometimes their abusers do track them down, but it doesn't end with the woman dying alone with a needle at her side, I can tell you that. Trust me, when the woman is found under those circumstances she was stabbed, shot to death, or beaten to a bloody pulp.”

Claire tried to match Owen's matter-of-fact way of relating horrific events, but she couldn't do it. “If someone abused Maia, he must be found and punished,” she said with an intensity that startled both herself and the detective.

As Owen stared back at Claire, she showed no signs of weariness in her feral and alert eyes. Claire hoped she hadn't revealed too much. It was Owen's job to know when startling truths hid behind quiet façades. She studied Claire for a while in silence, choosing her words carefully when she finally spoke. “Sure, we'd like to prosecute every man everywhere who ever abused a woman. It's difficult enough when we've got evidence, a suspect, and a victim ready, able, and willing to testify. In this case we don't have any evidence, we don't have a suspect, and the victim is dead. We don't even know who she is, and the truth is we may never know.”

“What do you do with the body if you don't identify her?” Claire asked.

“Eventually it goes into a pauper's grave.”

“I'll pay for the burial, if you don't locate a family.”

“I'll make a note of that,” Detective Owen replied.

“In all the myths I found involving the constellation Pleiades a group of boys or girls escapes into the sky. Sometimes they're siblings; sometimes they're friends. Since the constellation moves around so much it is identified with the homeless. Maybe someone molested other homeless women or Maia's sisters or girls she considered sisters.” She wished she hadn't used the word “molested.” The word in common usage now was “abuse.” She had to remember to use the word “abuse.”

“If someone … molested … Maia, it's quite possible he also abused her sisters or friends or women she never even knew,” Owen said. “Sexual offenders are a lot like addicts. They tend to keep doing it until they are caught and stopped. It's important for women to speak out right away so we can
catch
the bastards before they do any more harm, but there are many reasons why girls keep quiet, especially in a family situation.”

“If you could find Maia's identity, it might not be too late to stop the pattern.”

Owen leaned back and crossed her arms. “You identify with her, don't you?” she asked.

“I have a daughter.” It was as much as Claire was willing to admit.

Detective Owen stood up. “My advice is not to get obsessed with this. It's our job to ID victims and track down abusers. You need to protect the valuable books in the library.”

In other words, “You do your job and I'll do mine” Claire thought, as Detective Owen left her office.

When Claire got home that evening she let the cat out and made herself a bowl of pasta for dinner. When it was good and dark and Nemesis hadn't come home yet, she went outside and found him rummaging under a rose bush. Claire looked up at the sky and saw that all the stars were in place. Somewhere above her head seven sisters wandered, pinpoints of light in the darkness, huddling together for comfort.

Claire thought about what Detective Owen had said. Abusers didn't stop until they were caught and they couldn't be caught unless a victim spoke up. She would never know how many other girls George Hogan had abused, girls who hadn't spoken out before Claire, girls who hadn't spoken out after. Had his own daughter been a victim? Claire didn't blame herself for not speaking out. She was clear about why she had kept silent. She was only twelve years old when the incident happened. But as time went by and she learned more about abuse, she began to fear she'd protected herself but left George Hogan free to molest other girls, even his own daughter. And why would George Hogan have stopped at molestation? Was that the precursor to rape? It was an issue that would bother her until she knew George Hogan was dead and in his grave.

The coyotes in the arroyo began to bark and howl. House pets weren't safe in the foothills after dark. Claire picked up her cat and took him inside.

Chapter
Seven

T
HE NEXT DAY
C
LAIRE TOOK A BREAK AFTER LUNCH
and walked over to Lawton Davis's office. The UNM campus was full of sculptures, some more successful artistically than others. Claire liked the circle of stone obelisks created by a Korean artist in front of the Earth and Planetary Sciences Building where Lawton Davis worked. She knew him by reputation only as a prominent scholar in the field of archeoastronomy. She hoped his ego wouldn't turn out to be as large as his reputation but knew that was always a possibility in academia.

She found his office number in the directory, walked up a flight of stairs, and knocked on Lawton's door.

“Come in,” he called.

Claire opened the door and found Lawton sitting at his desk. Instead of the usual framed awards and diplomas, the walls of his office were filled with photographs of the night skies, subtly tinted like the photographs taken by the Hubble Telescope. Lawton himself had the comfortable, rumpled look of an old sweater. His gray hair was long enough to rest on the back of his collar. His amber eyes were full of enthusiasm and light. Claire introduced herself.