Barren

by P. R. Morris

Deputy Anna Cortez stared at the small adobe ranch house painted the same color as the gravel that formed the front yard. In the exact center, on a flattened red rock, sat a weatherworn statue of the Virgin. Her blue mantle was chipped down to the white plaster and her nose was gone, leaving a pale streak in the middle of her face. The incessant dust formed permanent tears beneath her eyes. Not a thing grew in the yard--not even the ubiquitous yucca plants.

“Looks like one of the track houses on the rez,” her training partner, Sgt. Moore said as he cut the engine. “Only without all the kids running around.”

Anna merely nodded. Her cousins lived on the reservation and children were all over the place, along with the swing sets and chalk hopscotch markings on sidewalks leading to the houses. There was none of that here. She looked down at the open folder on her lap.

Murder and fire were horrendous enough, but one more element of the crime filled Anna with anger and disgust, not at the poor victimized girl but at the killer.

Consuela Lopez had been pregnant.

Someone had drugged her and stuffed her in a crevice in the red rocks of the Mesa Verde, then set her on fire. But whoever had done it didn't understand how flames burned, and the girl's body had only been partially charred.

Moore opened the car door. “Since this is your first homicide investigation, I'll ask the questions. You observe. I might have you take a look around the house. You spot anything, we'll call forensics in.”

A Hispanic man of about fifty answered Moore 's knock on the door. He introduced himself as Roberto Lopez, Consuela's father. His face was pale, his eyes red-rimmed and pained. Behind him hovered his wife, her hair more gray than black, and her face so lined with her sorrow Anna found it hard to look at her. Mr. Lopez directed them into the living room where Moore took a seat on the edge of a brown Barcalounger and the couple sat on a couch covered with an Indian print throw. Anna took up position behind Moore , careful to keep her stance casual and non-threatening. She discreetly took out a small notebook and pen.

“I know this is a difficult time for you,” Moore began. “But anything you can tell us about Consuela's life will help us find who did this to her.”

Mr. Lopez nodded slowly. Mrs. Lopez gave a loud sob and hid her face in her apron.

“Who were your daughter's friends?”

“Just girls from school. No one special. No one who came here,” Mr. Lopez said.

“What about you, Mrs. Lopez?” Moore looked at the woman still hiding her face in her apron. “Did Consuela mention any friends to you?”

“No one, like I said.” Lopez replied for his wife. “Consuela liked to stay home. She only went to school and church.”

Moore just nodded. “What about boyfriends? She was seventeen. Most girls her age have boyfriends.”

“No. No boyfriends.” Again it was Lopez who answered.

“Are you sure? Didn't she mention anyone? Maybe not an actual boyfriend, but someone she knew, or maybe had a crush on? Maybe someone she didn't mention a lot because she was embarrassed? Mrs. Lopez?”

“Maybe,” Roberto Lopez said, shaking his head and struggling to keep from crying. “A couple of times she mentioned a boy from the reservation. Just a fucking rez. rat boy. He'd get her in trouble, I told her. Remember the Bible, I told her. She only talked with him once. She said she would obey me.”

Moore leaned forward, his hands on his knees. “Did she mention his name?”

“No.” Mr. Lopez gave one quick shake of his head. “No name. Just a rez. rat.”

Anna was just one generation removed from the reservation herself, and she resented the derogatory term he used. Not that she hadn't heard worse from her classmates in high school and college. Non-native Americans tended to look at her as either some ignorant bimbo or romanticized her heritage. She didn't have much patience with either view. But she made a note of the father's exact words.

She looked around the room, taking in the Sacred Heart picture hanging on the wall, and the statue of the Virgin of Guadeloupe on top of the television. The place was spotless, and precisely organized, from the books in the bookcase beside the arch leading to a hallway, to the magazines on the coffee table. Mrs. Lopez noticed her looking at them and she leaned forward, nervously squaring the already perfectly symmetrical edges. Then she ducked her head and curled into herself, once again hiding her face in her apron.

“Mrs. Lopez, was Consuela into drugs of any kind?” Moore asked.

Her husband answered. “No. My daughter, she never do drugs. Never. I would know. Her mama would know. No drugs!”

“Did you know that Consuela was pregnant?”

“No!” Lopez said vehemently. “Consuela was a good girl. She did not have sex with boys! She always listened to me, to her father! No bastards in this house!”

An unwanted baby. It twisted Anna's heart. Why did God let some women have children they didn't want, and denied those who desperately craved to be a mother? All Anna had been hearing lately was that she needed to have children--by a Ute man of course. The tribe was anxious about maintaining its bloodlines. Her parents, though they'd left the reservation, were insistent she help maintain her heritage by creating the next generation. She hadn't told them the truth. She still hadn't come to grips with it herself. To be barren, to be less than whole--guilt and depression haunted Anna's mind like the ghosts of the children she would never have. But Consuela's parents, these supposedly good, religious people, could only focus on what they considered the shame and betrayal of their daughter. The baby was nothing to them, less than nothing.

Anna studied the mother. Slowly Mrs. Lopez lifted her head and looked at Moore .

“My Consuela a good girl. Go to church all the time. Not a whore!”

“Maria!” her husband barked. She ducked back behind the apron.

Anna noticed a framed picture of the dead girl. It was obviously a school portrait. She looked into the smiling face, so different from the half-burned corpse she'd seen.

“Mind if my partner takes a look around?” Moore asked.

The father looked like he wanted to object but then thought better of it. He gave his wife a slight shove and waved in Anna's direction. “Show her,” he said.

Mrs. Lopez rose quickly from the couch and hurried over to Anna. “What do you want to look at?” she asked, not quite meeting Anna's eyes.

Anna wanted to put the woman at ease so she decided to start with an area of the house that was usually outside a wife's purview. “Let's start with the garage.” She followed Mrs. Lopez into a kitchen painted a bright chili red with yellow accents. It was neat and painfully clean, nothing out of place.

The garage was as precisely organized as the rest of the house. Jars of nails were arranged according to the size of their contents. Tools hung from a pegboard behind a workbench. There were two gasoline cans on one of the shelves. Gasoline had been used to start the fire, but spare cans in a garage were hardly evidence. Since gas was the most common of all accelerants, there was no way to trace the source. Anna pulled on the latex gloves she carried in her back pocket and lifted one of the cans down. From the corner of her eye she saw Mrs. Lopez wince. The can was empty. She put it back on the shelf.

Mrs. Lopez rushed forward to move it a quarter of an inch, back to precisely where it had been before Anna removed it.

“I'd like to look at Consuela's room,” Anna said.

Mrs. Lopez merely nodded and led her back through the kitchen and living room to a bedroom at the back of the house.

It was a typical girl's room done in pink and lavender. A large wooden crucifix hung over the bed. Frilly striped curtains in the same colors as the room hung at the single window. A student desk, painted pink, sat right under it. The whole room seemed too young for a seventeen-year-old, and oddly, too sterile. Anna's sixteen year-old niece's bedroom had pictures stuck everywhere, on the edge of her mirror, on her bulletin board, on her desk--pictures of friends, rock stars, movie stars, her current boyfriend. Wouldn't a teenager who was all hot and heavy over her boyfriend have a picture? She would have to hide it from her parents, most likely, but it had to be somewhere.

The window looked over the backyard, another expanse of the gravel used in front, to the chain link fence that separated it from the house behind. There a lawn, not precisely green and lush, but still a lawn of grass and a small flowerbed, contrasted starkly with the Lopez's enclosure. Anna realized Consuela could have climbed through it to escape this too clean house, find some time away from overly protective parents. Maybe even to meet her boyfriend.

Turning her attention to the desk, Anna began sifting carefully through the geometry homework on top, then the contents of the drawer. Nothing except a crumpled up picture. It was a family portrait. The face of Consuela's mother had been torn out . Was this an example of a teenaged girl venting adolescent angst against some restriction her mother placed on her? Or was it more?

Why was the room so impersonal? Where was Consuela's personality?

“Did Consuella keep a diary?” she asked the mother who hovered in the doorway.

“No.”

Next Anna investigated the closet. There wasn't much in it considering the girl's age. There were two plaid skirts and white blouses, the uniform of the local Catholic girl's school, hung on wire hangars, along with a couple of cheap dresses and a frilly pink party dress. Pink satin pumps rested between a pair of saddle shoes and well-worn flip-flops. Anna stretched and looked on the top shelf. A pale green sweater was bunched in a corner. When she went to lift it down she found a box behind it. Within it were a long black skirt made out of cheap costume nylon with a matching blouse, white stage make-up, and black lipstick.

Mrs. Lopez ran into the room and snatched the box from Anna's hands. “These are not hers. Somebody give them to her.”

“Who?”

Mrs. Lopez shrugged, clutching the box even closer to her chest. “I don't know. Somebody at school.”

“Mrs. Lopez, did Consuela ever sneak out at night?”

“No! She a good girl. Good Catholic girl. She only go to church, to church groups. Then she come home.”

Right, Anna thought. Bet that's what she told you when she and her friends went partying dressed as Goths. Probably met the boy from the reservation during one of those “church groups”. What other secrets did you have, Consuela?

Moore 's voice and the father's answers were clearly audible through the open door.

“Consuela was always a good girl!” her father repeated. “She always honor her father!”

Mrs. Lopez cast a furtive look over her shoulder in the direction of the living room.

Anna half-listened as she began on the dresser. T-shirts, underwear, fishnet stockings, three pairs of jeans.

The bottom drawer was warped and didn't quite close all the way. Anna removed the drawer and checked behind it. More black clothing, but this time it was sheer and lacy. The kind of lingerie sold in a Frederick 's of Hollywood catalogue.

Anna lifted the baby doll style gown, then the matching thong panties. The scent of old sex clung to them. Had Consuela managed to meet the boy after all? Have sex with him? Had she defied her parents? Risked her father's wrath? But there was no other indication of the boyfriend. If there was a boyfriend. Anna looked again at the ruined portrait. A nasty suspicion began to form in her mind. The empty gasoline cans, the too-young furnishings of the room, Consuelo's anger directed at her mother as seen in the torn photograph. If she was right, oh God, if she was right! Anna forced down the bile that rose in her throat.

“Aiyee!” Mrs. Lopez shrieked, dropping the box. She leaped forward, trying to snatch the nightgown away.

Somehow, Mrs. Lopez managed to pull the panties from Anna's hands and run to the living room with them.

“When!” Mrs. Lopez flew at her husband. She began beating him on his head with the thong. “You swore on the Holy Mother!”

He held his arms over his head. “Get this crazy woman off me? She's crazy!”

Anna captured one of Mrs. Lopez's arms behind her back, bending it until the woman was forced to stand on her toes. But Mrs. Lopez still kept beating her husband on his head with her free hand. Anna slipped her handcuffs from her pocket, caught the woman's other arm and cuffed her wrists behind her back. The panties dropped to the floor behind the couch.

“You swore on the Bible! The Bible!” Mrs. Lopez continued to shout..

Anna walked Mrs. Lopez across the room and gently pushed her down in a chair. Then she retrieved the thong. “Mr. Lopez,” she said slowly, holding up the underwear. “We can compare DNA samples from the baby, these panties, and you.”

“It would be much easier on you if you just told us what happened,” Moore said, positioning himself between Lopez and the door. “Did you have sex with your daughter? Did you kill your daughter?”

“No! Not after. I swear!” Consuela's father looked wildly around the room, like a cornered animal seeking escape. “She was mine. I gave her life. She should honor me! Obey me! It is in the Bible!”

“Not after what?” Moore asked, keeping his voice calm.

“Not after I promise God. I confessed. I repented. I did my penance. I was absolved of my sin. Nobody but the priest knew.”

Anna watched as Lopez seemed to shrink. His whole body sagged, and his head was down. She had to strain to hear what else he said.

“But then she told me she was pregnant. She was going to tell everyone in the church!” He lifted his head, his hands raised as if he were beseeching them to understand. “No one would respect me! She was supposed to honor me and obey me!”

“Mr. Roberto Lopez,” Moore said as he put the cuffs on the man. “I am arresting you for the murder…”

“A baby! A baby!” Mrs. Lopez shrieked. She struggled to get out of the chair. Anna kept her in place with gentle pressure on her shoulder. “I didn't know. She just come from confession. She never say nothing to me, but I know, I know Roberto could not stop.” Her face contorted with hate as she looked at her husband and spat in his direction. “A baby!” she wailed. She turned her head away, and looked toward the statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the picture of the burning Sacred Heart. The rage faded from her eyes, replaced by a strange, beatific softness. “It's okay. I save them both. Baby not born in sin. The fire burn away sin. She and the baby are with the Holy Mother.”

Anger and nausea, held in check only by her rigid self-discipline, roiled within Anna. She went through the motions--calling for a squad car, giving Mrs. Lopez her Miranda. She felt as if she were in a fragile glass bell jar. One step out of the required routine and she would shatter. As she escorted the wife out of the house, she looked at the Virgin Mary in the yard. The lines she had learned as a child came back to her.

Hail Mary, Mother of God, Blessed art thou amongst women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb.