Timeline

"Do you know why he would have a diagram of a monastery?"

"No, I really couldn’t say. To tell the truth, Dr. Traub got a little strange, the last few weeks. He was quite depressed, ever since his wife died. Are you sure it’s a monastery?"

"No, I’m not. I don’t know what it is. Do you want this diagram back?"

"If you wouldn’t mind sending it along."

"And what about this ceramic thing?"

"Ceramic thing?"

"He had a piece of ceramic. It’s about an inch square, and it’s stamped ‘ITC.’ "

"Oh. Okay. That’s no problem."

"I was wondering what that might be."

"What that might be? It’s an ID tag."

"It doesn’t look like any ID tag I ever saw."

"It’s a new kind. We use them here to get through security doors, and so on."

"You want that back, too?"

"If it’s not too much trouble. Tell you what, I’ll give you our FedEx number, and you can just stick it in an envelope and drop it off."

Jimmy Wauneka hung up the phone and he thought, Bullshit.

He called Father Grogan, the priest at his local Catholic parish, and told him about the diagram, and the abbreviation at the bottom: mon.ste.mere.

"That would be the Monastery of Sainte-Mère," he said promptly.

"So it is a monastery?"

"Oh absolutely."

"Where?"

"I have no idea. It’s not a Spanish name. ‘Mère’ is French for ‘Mother.’ Saint Mother means the Virgin Mary. Perhaps it’s in Louisiana."

"How would I locate it?" Wauneka said.

"I have a listing of monasteries here someplace. Give me an hour or two to dig it up."

"I’m sorry, Jimmy. I don’t see any mystery here."

Carlos Chavez was the assistant chief of police in Gallup, about to retire from the force, and he had been Jimmy Wauneka’s adviser from the start. Now he was sitting back with his boots up on his desk, listening to Wauneka with a very skeptical look.

"Well, here’s the thing," Wauneka said. "They pick up this guy out by Corazón Canyon, demented and raving, but there’s no sunburn, no dehydration, no exposure."

"So he was dumped. His family pushed him out of the car."

"No. No living family."

"Okay, then he drove himself out there."

"Nobody saw a car."

"Who’s nobody?"

"The people who picked him up."

Chavez sighed. "Did you go out to Corazón Canyon yourself, and look for a car?"

Wauneka hesitated. "No."

"You took somebody’s word for it."

"Yes. I guess I did."

"You guess? Meaning a car could still be out there."

"Maybe. Yeah."

"Okay. So what did you do next?"

"I called his company, ITC."

"And they told you what?"

"They said he was depressed, because his wife had died."

"Figures."

"I don’t know," Wauneka said. "Because I called the apartment building where Traub lived. I talked to the building manager. The wife died a year ago."

"So this happened close to the anniversary of her death, right? That’s when it usually happens, Jimmy."

"I think I ought to go over and talk to some folks at ITC Research."

"Why? They’re two hundred and fifty miles from where this guy was found."

"I know, but – "

"But what? How many times we get some tourist stranded out in the reservations? Three, four times a year? And half the time they’re dead, right? Or they die afterward, right?"

"Yes. . . ."

"And it’s always one of two reasons. Either they’re New Age flakes from Sedona who come to commune with the eagle god and got stuck, their car broke down. Or they’re depressed. One or the other. And this guy was depressed."

"So they say. . . ."

"Because his wife died. Hey, I believe it." Carlos sighed. "Some guys are depressed, some guys are overjoyed."

"But there’s unanswered questions," Wauneka said. "There’s some kind of diagram, and a ceramic chip – "

"Jimmy. There’s always unanswered questions." Chavez squinted at him. "What’s going on? Are you trying to impress that cute little doctor?"

"What little doctor?"

"You know who I mean."

"Hell no. She thinks there’s nothing to all this."

"She’s right. Drop it."

"But – "

"Jimmy." Carlos Chavez shook his head. "Listen to me. Drop it."

"Okay."

"I’m serious."

"Okay," Wauneka said. "Okay, I’ll drop it."

The next day, the police in Shiprock picked up a bunch of thirteen-year-old kids joyriding in a car with New Mexico plates. The registration in the glove compartment was in the name of Joseph Traub. The kids said they had found the car on the side of the road past Corazón Canyon, with the keys still in it. The kids had been drinking, and the inside of the car was a mess, sticky with spilled beer.

Wauneka didn’t bother to drive over and see it.

A day after that, Father Grogan called him back. "I’ve been checking for you," he said, "and there is no Monastery of Sainte-Mère, anywhere in the world."

"Okay," Wauneka said. "Thanks." It was what he’d been expecting, anyway. Another dead end.

"At one time, there was a monastery of that name in France, but it was burned to the ground in the fourteenth century. It’s just a ruin now. In fact, it’s being excavated by archaeologists from Yale and the University of Toulouse. But I gather there’s not much there."