a question of religious freedom.”
“Not when murder’s involved, it’s not,” he said, raising his voice.
Trujillo moved closer to Padilla, who shrank back against the whitewashed adobe wall.
“Now...I want you to tell me the names of everyone who came to the meeting last night. Then I want you to tell me exactly what happened. Everything from sunset to sunrise.”
3
Arms folded across his chest, he sat at his desk studying the peyote button he’d found at Jacoñita. The button looked harmless enough—brown, wrinkled, and no larger than a dried apricot. He knew peyote came from a small, blue cactus that grew wild in parts of southern Texas and Mexico. The cactus produced white flowers, as well as mushroom-like crowns that contained mescaline, a naturally occurring psychedelic drug that produced vivid hallucinations and deep introspection and finally nausea. Members of the Native American Church prized the dried crowns and used them in their all-night meetings. When chewed during the meetings, peyote induced extraordinary physiological and psychological effects such as visions, bright colors, and dramatic changes in time and perception. Some people argued that peyote unlocked the door to a separate, higher reality.
He knew peyote could be a potent drug, because he’d made the mistake of eating a couple of buttons one fourth of July afternoon at Cañjilon Lakes. It seemed like a million years ago—1968, or maybe 1969. The Lopez family—including an assortment of aunts, uncles, and cousins—had gone up to Cañjilon for a weekend of camping and fishing. His cousin Manuel, who was a member of the Native American Church, brought a bag of peyote and shared it with him and some of the older cousins. He could still remember wandering off by himself to lie in the grass and watch the sky change colors like a giant kaleidoscope. He didn’t remember how long he laid there, only the feeling of being incapacitated, unable to move.
Personally, he didn’t care much for the feeling, or for the sense of powerlessness he experienced while under the influence of the drug. The loss of control frightened him.
Manuel made fun of him. Called him a “tight ass” and lectured him on the importance of seeing beyond one’s individuality. Individuality was a prison, Manuel said.
Maybe so, but he wasn’t comfortable with the loss of control. That’s the way he’d always been. Manuel could go fuck himself if he didn’t like it. Which is what he had told him back in 1968. Whenever it was.
The Indians were different, of course. He had no problem with Indians using peyote. He knew the Navajo and Pueblo Indians had used peyote in religious ceremonies for hundreds of years before the Spanish arrived. Predictably, the Spanish tried to stop the practice by persuasion and, when that failed, force. No doubt about it, the Spanish had been heavy-handed in their efforts to stamp out the “pagan” religions of the indigenous peoples, issuing decrees that prohibited religious dances and other ceremonies, and destroying whatever religious masks and icons their searches uncovered at the various pueblos. Talk about stupidity. It always amazed him that people could be so lacking in judgment.
He did not consider himself religious, a fact that distressed Estelle, but even he recognized that the sword was not an effective means of religious conversion. Times had changed, or so his wife argued whenever they discussed this murky subject. But had they really, given the never-ending ethnic cleansing and sectarian violence that still plagued the world? He could trace his family’s presence in New Mexico back to 1630, the year Salvador de Lopez, originally of Valladolid, Spain, came to Santa Fe. A soldier and a blacksmith by trade, Salvador accompanied a mission supply train up the El Camino Real trail from Mexico City to Santa Fe.
He took pride in his family’s history and in the Spanish contribution to the cultural mix of New Mexico. Still, certain things bothered him, especially the religious persecution of the Indians. Today, most Hispanics chose not to remember that their ancestors brought the Inquisition to New Mexico. In 1625 friars acting as agents on behalf of the Holy Office of the Inquisition set up shop at Santo Domingo Pueblo south of Santa Fe. Some of the earliest Inquisition documents surviving at Santo Domingo concerned the “crime” of peyote use among the Pueblo Indians.
Shaking his head, he took the peyote button, protected by a plastic bag, and deposited it safely in his desk.
Already he saw some progress in the investigation. Padilla now acknowledged that Soto had died last night during the peyote ceremony. No big surprise there. By Padilla’s count eight people had attended the meeting—Sammy Tso and Dora Alvarez from San Ildefonso Pueblo, the five officers who conducted the ceremony, and Soto. While Padilla admitted to serving as Fire Chief, he denied knowing the identities of the other officers, only that the four of them—three men and one woman—lived somewhere near Gallup.
Just where in Gallup, Padilla refused to say. He claimed Soto had organized the meeting and that the other officers were friends of Soto’s.
So much bullshit, that last part. But he had to give Padilla credit. He proved to be a tough nut to crack. Not even Trujillo’s crude attempts at intimidation had broken him.
Once again he read Padilla’s statement:
“The meeting ended about midnight, just before Midnight Water Call. Peyote Woman and I stepped outside the teepee to get a pail of water. She came along to bless the water, but it was my responsibility as Fire Chief to bring it inside. When I turned to go back in the teepee, I heard footsteps coming up behind me. That’s when I saw him, the wolfman. He was wearing a wolf mask, with big white fangs and red tongue. I screamed at him to go away and leave us alone.
“‘Get out of my way!’ he shouted, then shoved me through the door of the teepee. The water spilled, and I fell on top of the pail. When I looked up, Michael Soto and the wolfman ran out of the teepee. Everyone was scared. We waited inside the teepee for about ten minutes, until we heard a gunshot. Then Road Chief went out to see what had happened. When he came back, he told us Michael Soto had been shot dead.
“Dora Alvarez started screaming and wouldn’t stop, so Sammy Tso took her home, back to San Ildefonso. Road Chief said a prayer to call off the meeting, and then we took down the teepee and the poles and loaded them on top of Road Chief’s van. The four of them left before sunrise, about an hour before I called you. That’s it, that’s everything that happened.”
Great. A werewolf was all he needed to make the day complete.
He tossed the paper back on his cluttered desk. He didn’t know what to make of the wolfman. Maybe Padilla had eaten too much peyote, so much that he’d experienced visions of ghosts and spirits and men turning into wolves under the light of a full moon. Or maybe, more likely, it was someone wearing a wolf mask. Someone who wanted Soto dead.
He checked the time. Nearly two p.m. Padilla had been waiting in the back room with Sergeant Antonio Blake for two hours now. They would have to release him soon enough, but Padilla didn’t know that. He hoped the wait with Antonio, a former Marine with notoriously gruff manners, would help refresh Padilla’s memory. Spending time with Antonio was like getting a dose of truth serum.
Finally he picked up the telephone. “Antonio, bring Padilla to my office.” He wanted to ask Padilla a few more questions before releasing him.
Antonio escorted Padilla into the office, then folded his arms and waited for instructions. An angry glare was fixed on the stocky ex-Marine’s face.
He noticed the change immediately. Padilla looked unsure of himself, nervous.
“Sit down.” He motioned to the gray metal chairs where Naranjo and Suino had
