Shame

INTRODUCTION

    November 3, 1985
    T O THE CASUAL observer, the 225 square miles of New Mexico’s White Sands National Monument are a wasteland. Few places on earth are as dry as the Tularosa Basin. It is that very dryness that allows the gypsum to dominate the landscape. In a wetter climate the gypsum would dissolve, but in the Tularosa Basin the crystal granules come together to form nature’s ever-changing monuments.
    From a moving car, White Sands appears to be almost devoid of life. Trees are small and sparse, mostly Rio Grande cottonwoods, and plants have a difficult time scrabbling out a foothold in the shifting dunes. And those few plants that do raise their heads in the sheltered low areas between the dunes are often buried as the ephemeral dunes give way.
    The dunes have swallowed more than plants. Hernando de Luna was a follower of Francisco Coronado, engaged in his expedition to find the Seven Cities of Cíbola and Gran Quivira. Struck down by the Apaches in 1540, de Luna fell among the shifting white sands.
    Manuela de Luna was a newlywed in the first blush of love who could not accept the news of her husband’s death. The lovelybride left her home in Mexico City in search of her beloved conquistador. It is said she was also lost among the white sands, and over the centuries many have claimed to have seen a beautiful Spanish woman walking among the dunes, the long train of her white wedding dress trailing behind her. The native people call this the Legend of Pavla Blanca and believe she looks for her husband still. Manuela appears, they say, just after sunset, gliding along the whipping eddies of sand.
    Almost as ghostlike as Manuela are the predators that stalk in the White Sands, their passage usually detected only in the powdery gypsum—the serpentine markings of the three species of rattlesnake, as well as footpads of fox and coyote. These ghosts also leave behind remains of the vanquished: cast-off fur, bones, and scat easily seen atop the spectral white dunes.
    Park Ranger Nolan Campbell spotted the body of Alicia Gleason while driving on rounds. At first he doubted what he saw.
    “Sometimes you see things out here,” Campbell said, “and you rub your eyes, and they usually disappear, but she didn’t. She wasn’t Pavla Blanca, or any mirage.”
    Alicia hadn’t just been dropped in the desert, but had been put on display. Two miles from the entrance to the park, her naked body had been propped at the base of a fifty-foot sand dune. She was naked, her legs spread, a message written on her flesh. Everyone wondered at the word:
SHAME
. The just-concluded decade of the sixties was supposed to be a time for people to lose their shame. There was no place for shame in the Age of Aquarius. That was an emotion that belonged to the Puritans and Cotton Mather.
    But everyone who saw Alicia’s naked and dead body felt shame. They also felt fear. A terrible predator, hitherto unknown, had announced his presence.
    When Alicia was discovered in the morning, the gypsum hadn’t settled on her, but around her. After her body wasremoved, a picture was taken of the outline it had left. Nature had silhouetted her body better than any coroner’s chalk. One detective was moved to tears, saying it looked as if a snow angel had been left behind.
    —Excerpt from the book
Shame
    by Elizabeth Line

1

    May 4, 2012
    T HE FRONT DOOR was slightly ajar, opened just a little more than a crack. Caleb Parker raised his finger to the doorbell yet another time. He had already walked around the manicured pathway to the back, had checked for Mrs. Sanders at the swimming pool, the tennis courts, the gardens, and the stables. Out in the corral he had found three horses, the same three he remembered from his visit two months earlier. It didn’t look as if Mrs. Sanders was out riding.
    If it hadn’t been for the open front door, he would have been sure she wasn’t home.
    It was a beautiful house, even by Rancho Santa Fe standards. There was no moat protecting the palatial estate, but there were signs all around the property warning of alarm systems and armed response. A rose showing its thorns, Caleb thought. A fortune had been spent on security.
    Which again made him wonder why the front door wasn’t shut tight.
    Earlier that morning Caleb had talked with Mr. Sanders on the phone. Sanders had persuaded him to make the time to come right over to cut down an acacia tree. It was playing havoc withhis wife’s allergies, Sanders