Chapter 11

Yirmeyah, Cassie, and I ate our pizza and talked. Having gotten to know them when preparing for their wedding, and being so much like Yirmeyah, I'd become their de facto pastor. Pastors – at least in churches where there's only one pastor – have a disadvantage. The average person in the pew can go to the pastor and talk, but who does the pastor talk to? I've got several elders I can talk to, all of whom know and love me and have qualified themselves to counsel me when I need it. But Yirmeyah has no one but me, and so every once in a while he'll come and talk to me.

It had started after Cassie's stroke. She'd began bleeding during her twin sons' birth, and something – perhaps the dose of anti-hemorrhaging drugs, perhaps an unexpected sensitivity to them, perhaps something else, the doctors never were able to figure it out – caused a clot to form that lodged in her brain. Yirmeyah had been grief-stricken, and terribly angry, and though Cassie had been able to help him some, he'd finally come to see me. I don't know that I ever said anything that helped him, but just by talking it out – and banging on my desk, and shouting at me, and crying desolately, too – he was able to get over it. I hope that if I'm ever in such a terrible emotional state someone will be there for me ... though the fact is that if Cecelia's anywhere around, she'll be the one I'll turn to.

By the time the pizza was done we'd talked out the serious stuff, and had turned to other matters. And after a while Cassie got tired – just sitting up straight, when her left side didn't work well and in fact very nearly didn't work at all, was hard work for her. So Yirmeyah got her up and helped her out the door and up the ramp. I watched – I wanted to help, as always, but I knew that both Cassie and Yirmeyah regarded him as her left side, and while they wouldn't get angry, they just didn't see any need for me or anyone else to help them.

If I ever think I've got it tough, all I have to do is think of people I know who've got it tougher, or have had. The Farleys, who'd watched Darlia the night of the shooting in the parking lot, were an example. Kevin had come to Albuquerque on the run from dope dealers who wanted to kill him, and I'm pretty sure he had himself killed a man back in California. Karin had been pregnant by her ex-husband, terrified of being a single mother and still fragile from his emotional abuse, when she'd met Kevin.

Or there was Alison McGee, whom I'd met years ago when we'd first started a program of witnessing to the prostitutes along Central Avenue. Her father had begun raping her when she was 13 and had kept it up for two years before she ran away – into the only life she could have gotten into under those circumstances. Her first child wasn't her husband's, and he'd had a very hard time with that. For that matter my involvement with her – as a sort of rescuer, twice – might have torn me apart if I hadn't met Cecelia in the middle of it all.

I might have my problems, but I have a wonderful family who would literally walk over broken glass for me. I have more money than I know what to do with – and Cecelia has more, and we have even more jointly, so that we'll never lack for anything we want or need. I have a job I enjoy, and the freedom to work as much or as little as I please. I've got a calling as an elder which I also enjoy, and which I can make time for without much fuss and bother. I live in a very nice house, no mansion but as much as I'll ever want; a Chevy Blazer that I paid cash for and put more cash into getting it in line with my specifications; a place out in the Mojave Desert, the place where I grew up, in fact; the freedom to take a month each year to visit my desert place, and another month to visit Cecelia's parents in Alabama, and however much other time we might want to take just to enjoy ourselves. Darlia's school is wonderful, a Christian institution which graduates students from high school who know more, and more useful things, than most college graduates I've run across.

Yirmeyah had said, jokingly, that I was blessed. But truly I am. I've got friends like the Hudsons, and the Farleys and the Delgados, and a few others. I've got a church that loves me far more than I deserve. I've got so much more than I could ever have imagined or asked for.

Things could be a whole lot worse.

And then came Sunday. Cecelia and I took Darlia to church, and then afterward, as our custom has been since before we got married, we went out to lunch. On a whim I took us to the Garduño's on Academy. The Sunday after our first date I'd taken her to church with me – she having informed me that I'd volunteered to do so – and afterward that's where we'd gone to eat. We've eaten there many times since, and many other places, ranging from McDonald's to the very occasional high priced fancy restaurant, but every time I turn that way after church, Cecelia grins and squeezes my hand where it rests on the gear shift lever.

And after that came Monday, and I went to work – or more precisely, Cecelia and I went to work. It was time to try to find Dog, who was some sort of power in the B&I gang.

We took Darlia over to Sandra's house, and set off on I-40. Usually we both avoid freeways, preferring roads where you can actually see something. If those who build freeways have the choice of a remarkably scenic route that's 500 miles shorter, or the longer boring route, they'll go boring every time – and if they can't, they'll put up walls beside the freeway so that you can't see the scenery.

But this time speed was important – we didn't want to get down there at 4 in the afternoon, with little time to root around – so we got on I-40, and then on I-25. We were pretty much retracing the route we'd followed to Abuela Carolina's house on Friday.

As we drove, Cecelia interrogated me. "Why," she asked, "are we following this particular line of inquiry?"

"'Line of inquiry?' If I didn't know better, I'd say you were a doctor named Watson." I grinned at her. "But it's a valid question – I suppose I should think to explain what and why I'm doing, since you're not an investigator. It's like this. The cops have the manpower and the money ... well, maybe I actually have the edge in money, since I am rich and I can spend my bucks any way I want to instead of having to answer to the city government. But they've certainly got the army, as Wolfe calls it."