Jarilla Man

DNA from a human skull found in the Jarilla Mountains matched that of a femur found more than thirty miles away near El Paso. Charlie Enis rested his head on his hand and stared at the computer screen in disbelief. He rechecked the details of work by the student who did the analysis. There was no error. The skull and femur were from the same person with a probability exceeding 99.99%. His mind filling with questions, Charlie made his screen flash through additional passwords to access a reference database.

A History Of Blood

Something black, about the size of a sombrero, shimmered on the sand. Its crinkled, shiny surface casting a thousand glints, pulled Newt’s attention off the path. The same stuff was scattered on surrounding creosotes and weeds. Running shoe tracks from the south lead to the spot, stopped, turned and went back along their original path.

Spider’s Good Luck

It was probably cooler in hell. The sun’s fiery stare made mirages shimmer off the broad span of interstate streaking away in the distance. Mountains were a flickering blur of brown and splotchy green flame against a flawless blue sky. Air whipping through the windows of the old Chevy pickup felt like it came from a blast furnace.

The Nail Dream

On the way out of Albuquerque, a golden oldies radio station started playing Bob Dylan’s With God On Our Side. Teresa, her mind zoned far away, was resting her head against her hand, her elbow propped against the open window of our old Ford Truck. The wind streamed and whipped her long hair making it look like black fire. From the corner of my eye, I saw her slowly turn and stare toward Dylan’s sarcastic, atonal lyrics. After awhile she said, “Do they? Do the whites have God on their side?”

A Little Bird Told Me

An innocuous article in a national magazine triggered the deaths of three men. Describing successful businesses on Indian reservations, it mentioned that, besides a prosperous gambling and hotel business, the Mescalero Apaches also offered elk hunts. John Charles Lawton, III, read the article. His face red with anger, he tossed aside the magazine, crossed a small library filled with books, floor-to-ceiling, and dropped in a banker’s chair in front of a glowing computer screen. Pounding a web-site address for hunting and sports gear into his computer, he mumbled over and over, “Damn those stupid Indians! Damn ’em!” Within an hour Lawton ordered over $20,000 worth of high technology spy equipment, a set of ghillie camouflage, a sniper rifle, a silencer, and airline and rental car reservations for El Paso, Texas.

The Long Shot

After Santos’ wife died, he stayed drunk for two years and wandered the highways of New Mexico. He expected to die somewhere in the desert, his death a metaphor for what life had become without his woman, but it wasn’t his time. Finding odd jobs along the way, he kept from starving and his supply of whisky steady. One evening in a crowded Las Cruces bar, a bodyguard for Max Gutierrez muscled Santos aside to order a beer. Having fought the North Vietnamese, worked on cattle ranches, been a deputy sheriff with a few shoot-outs against bandits and drug runners to his credit, the old man was fearless. He didn’t take an insult from anybody. Whipping off his hat, he offered to go a bare knuckles round with the bodyguard twice his size and half his age. Max, delighted and entertained by Santos’ brass, stopped the brawl sure to bring unwanted attention and offered him a job as his gardener. For reasons he never quite understood, Santos liked Max and accepted the offer while still glaring at the grinning bodyguard. In the brilliant El Paso sunshine, Santos came back to the land of the living while making flowers bloom around Max’s mansion.