False Memory

Four stab wounds, one through each kidney from behind, two through the gut from in front. Probably, two guys sandwiched him. No one would ever talk, so no one was ever charged.”
    “Is your mother still alive?” Dusty asked.
    Chase shook his head. “The other three ladies from the school, nice people, all of them—they served four years each. My mom, she was released after five, and when they let her go, she had cancer.”
    “Officially, the cancer killed her, but what really killed her was shame,” Zina said. “Tern was a good woman, a kind woman, and a proud woman. She’d done nothing, nothing, but she was eaten up by shame just dwelling on what people thought she’d done. She lived with us, but it wasn’t long. The school had been closed, Carl lost his interest in the car dealership. Legal bills took everything. We were still scraping by ourselves, and we hardly had money to bury her. Thirteen years, she’s dead. Might as well be yesterday to me.”
    “What’s it like here for you, these days?” Dusty asked.
    Zina and Chase exchanged a look, volumes written in one glance.
    He said, “A lot better than it used to be. Some people still believe it all, but not many after the Pastore killings. And some of the Little Jackrabbit kids... they eventually recanted their stories.”
    “Not for ten years.” Zina’s eyes in that moment were blacker than anthracite and harder than iron.
    Chase sighed. “Maybe it took ten years for those false memories to start falling apart. I don’t know.”
    “In all that time,” Martie wondered, “did you ever think of just picking up and leaving Santa Fe?”
    “We love Santa Fe,” Chase said, and his heart seemed to be in his declaration.
    “It’s the best place on earth,” Zina agreed. “Besides, if we’d ever left, there are a few out there who would’ve said our leaving proved all of it was true, that we were crawling away in shame.”
    Chase nodded. “But just a few.”
    “If it was just one,” Zina said, “I wouldn’t have left and given him the satisfaction.”
    Zina’s hands were on the table, and Chase covered both of them with one of his. “Mr. Rhodes, if you think it would help you, some of those Little Jackrabbit kids, the ones who recanted, I know they would talk to you. They’ve come to us. They’ve apologized. They aren’t bad people. They were used. I think they’d like to help.”
    “If you could set it up,” Dusty said, “we’ll devote tomorrow to them. Today, while there’s still light and before it snows, we want to go out to the Pastore ranch.”
    Chase pushed his chair back from the table and got to his feet, seeming taller than he had been earlier. “You know the way?”
    “We’ve got a map,” Dusty said.
    “Well, I’ll lead you halfway,” Chase said. “Because halfway to the Pastore ranch, there’s something you should see. The Bellon Tockland Institute.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Hard to say. Been there twenty-five years. It’s where you’ll find Mark Ahriman’s friends, if he has any.”
    Without pulling on a jacket or sweater, Zina walked with them to the street.
    The piñons in the forecourt were as still as trees in a diorama, sealed behind glass.
    The squeak of the iron hinges on the spindled gate was the only sound in the winter day, as if every soul in the city had vanished, as if Santa Fe were a ghost ship on a sea of sand.
    No traffic moved on the street. No cats roamed, no birds flew. A great weight of stillness pressed down on the world.
    To Chase, whose Lincoln Navigator was parked in front of them, Dusty said, “Does that van across the street belong to a neighbor?”
    Chase looked, shook his head. “I don’t think so. Maybe. Why?”
    “No reason. Nice-looking van, is all.”
    “Something’s coming down,” Zina said, gazing at the sky.
    At first Martie thought she meant snow was falling, but there was no snow.
    The sky was more white than gray. If the clouds were moving at all, their motion was internal, concealed behind the pale skin that they presented to the world below.
    “Something bad.” Zina put her hand on Martie’s arm. “My Apache premonition. Warrior blood senses violence coming. You be careful, Martie Rhodes.”
    “We will be.”
    “Wish you lived in Santa Fe.”
    “Wish you lived in California.”
    “World’s too big, and all of us too small,” Zina said, and again they hugged each other.
    In the car, as Martie pulled into the street, following Chase’s Navigator, she glanced at Dusty. “What about the van?”
    Turned in his seat, peering through the rear window,