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Photo fourteen was of Jasper, the Laguna Pueblo man who sold bread halfway between Tohatchi and Gallup on Saturday afternoons. It had been years since I had seen him.

Photo fifteen was the WELCOME TO GALLUP sign with an elder holding a wrinkled dollar bill in his left hand and a cane in his right, trying to hitchhike somewhere. Sixteen was of the man getting out of my mom’s car. In the background you could see the yellow and blue squares of the Indian Hospital on the top of the hill.

The next photo was of me sleeping at the desk in my room, my face pressed against some homework, hands flat. I had no idea how she’d taken it without waking me, but she hovered above me, catching the perfect symmetry of light circles coming from the lamp bulb and the serpentine coils of hair that spread out from the top of my head.

A huge lump in my throat rose when I saw image eighteen. It was the one she took up on the canyon that day we played hooky. The next picture was the one I’d taken of her, the backdrop nothing but the blue of sky and white of clouds. The next photo was one we took together, the frame skewed, the background asymmetrical, but the smiles balanced it. I could finally see myself in her—the smile, and the face in the same identical shape.

Image twenty-one was of Grandma and me standing out in front of the house Mom died in. You could see the exhaustion on our faces. The bare space called out my mother’s name; you could see my own extended arm with the cable release in hand. Image twenty-two was of Grandma’s house the second I came home, her perfect fence, her newspaper mailbox.

Twenty-three was the picture I took of Grandma sitting at her table, capturing the curtains floating, her coffee mug steaming, her smile, her pin curls, and the scarecrow clock ticking.

I pulled twenty-four out and stared at it for a long time. It was the white house that had terrorized my dreams for years, consumed in flames. Trails of flame bled deep into the stars, the eyes and mouth of the house billowing with fire. The smoke coiled at the corners.

The bathroom door closed behind me as Grandma came up and touched the small of my back. She gasped when she saw all the photos spread out on the kitchen table, all in order by the image number. She kept her small handkerchief over her mouth and cried and laughed at the photographs that my mother and I had taken. When she came to the last one, she hugged me until I couldn’t breathe. We went to bed that night in silence, leaving the pictures on the table.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

OMAX 40X-I600X Lab Binocular Biological Compound Microscope

I HAD A few months of “vacation” coming up, but Erma was never going to let me rest.

I had no idea how I was going to change her report, especially now that I had no access. No one cared about what had happened to her, and that was the tragedy. Garcia wasn’t going to help me. He had called that case before we had even finished picking Erma off the freeway. I was going to have to find out how he was connected to her on my own.

I thought of Dr. Blaser, the medical examiner who had been at Erma’s scene. He was a forensic pathologist and had worked for the Albuquerque Police Department as a field deputy medical investigator for years before coming to the ME’s office. He was in his sixties and liked to wear Grateful Dead shirts under his lab coat. He always narrated his autopsies like crime novels and tried to make you smile if you had to be a part of it. When I had the chance to work with him in the field or in the lab, I always learned something new, and he was eager to teach me. I knew if anyone would be straight with me, it would be him.

I tried to call him, but it went straight to voicemail. I would have to go to his office. I’d had to visit the Office of the Medical Investigator on a regular basis since I started. I hated it.

I managed to get my car to whine and rattle to a start and sat in the garage listening to my police scanner, letting the beast warm up.

“I’m thirsty.” The voice of the ghost child spoke in the passenger seat.

“Jesus!” My heart raced in my chest. They always managed to sneak up on me.

“I’m thirsty,” the little boy said again.

“Get used to it, kid. You’re dead.” Erma’s voice was different today, weaker—like it was two spots off from a radio frequency.

“Erma.” I looked at her in the rearview mirror. “I’m working on it.”

“Not good enough.” Erma moved toward me, draping her arm over my shoulder. “I need you to work harder. I need to know that nothing is going to happen to her.”

I put the car into gear and pulled out into the light, where pools of melting snow stood on every corner. The boy peered out the window.

“You had a job, Erma. What was it?”

“I was the manager of the Apothecary on Central, that new bar right off the freeway. I was about to take over as a part-owner with Matias. Everything was about to change.”

“Who is Matias?”

“He was my husband—well, common law. You know. Living in sin. Well, sometimes.”

“So, off and on?”

“I don’t think that has anything to do with this.” Erma sounded annoyed, as usual.

“Well. Do you want help or not? It doesn’t hurt you to share what you know. You’re dead. What are you afraid of? Your boyfriend?”

“Matias is dead.” Erma’s voice scratched.

I was pulling up to OMI, a four-story battleship in blue, silver, and orange right off the freeway. The new building’s glass was blinding in the morning light. Luckily, security buzzed me right in since I had been there before. I was glad that news of my suspension hadn’t spread further than the crime lab.