Page 77 of Badlands

“I’ve been thinking about what you said over coffee this morning,” she told Corrie. “About the FBI’s tenet that if a person disappears from the public record, it means they’re probably dead.”

Corrie nodded. “What about it?”

“Remember my telling you that a mutilated body came washing out from the Gallina River about a dozen years ago?”

“Sure.”

“The body was in pretty bad shape, but the mutilation kind of resembled the petroglyph I showed to Bastien just now.”

“No shit.” Corrie thought a moment. “How common is this symbol?”

“To actually see a representation of this symbol is very, very rare. Most Indians around here won’t evendiscusswitchcraft, for fear of somehow bringing it upon themselves. But that’s not what I’ve been thinking about. I’ve been wondering if maybe that body that washed down from the upstream canyons might have been Oskarbi’s.”

She watched as, with admirable speed, Corrie followed her line of reasoning and put the pieces together. “Wow. When was the body found?”

“Twelve years ago. Around the time Oskarbi supposedly went back to Mexico. And I looked up old newspaper stories about it—the body was never identified.”

“Wow,” said Corrie. “This is amazing work, Nora.” She paused, her brow creased. “The local sheriff’s department would have investigated the death. The autopsy must still be filed away somewhere. You know who could look into the possibility that the body was Oskarbi’s? Sheriff Homer Watts.”

Taking out her phone, Corrie dialed the sheriff, brought him up to speed, told him of Nora’s theory, listened for a moment, then thanked him and hung up. “He’s on it,” she said. “Gonna look at the evidence file and autopsy ASAP.”

“Thanks,” Nora said. Then: “Do you have anything else to do this afternoon?”

“Just some paperwork on the case.”

“Would you mind if we swung by Edison Nash’s house? I’d like to see if the housekeeper knows where they might have gone camping.”

“You’re still worried?” asked Corrie.

“I’m more worried than ever.”

46

AS THEY DROVEup to Nash’s house, Corrie gazed up at it with a laugh. “They just get bigger and bigger.”

“There’s a ton of money in this town,” Nora replied. “I grew up here, and I watched it pour in. It’s still pouring in.”

They parked and walked up to the heavy antique mesquite gates in the wall surrounding the house. Corrie pressed the bell. After a wait, she pressed again.

A voice crackled over an intercom. “Who is it?”

“Special Agent Corinne Swanson, FBI.”

A silence. “Is this joke?” came the voice.

“No, it’s not a joke.”

A few moments later, the gate was unlatched and opened, and a battle-axe of a housekeeper stood before them, arms crossed, like some medieval guard. “You really FBI agent?” she demanded, staring at Corrie with an openly disbelieving look.

Corrie held up her badge.

The woman stared at it. “Oh.”

“May we come in?”

“All right.”

They followed her across the inner courtyard and into the house. Nora remembered it from her earlier visit, the walls and surfaces crowded with Native American artifacts.

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