Thomas Blackhorse's Arc

Chapter 15 of 17

The deputies came and took Pablo one way and Juanita the other. Thomas rode with Juanita to Gallup. She sat cuffed in the back of the cruiser and watched the fence posts go by. She said nothing for forty miles. Thomas had her in custody. He still did not have the girl. At the station they put her in a small room with a metal table. Thomas sat across from her. He set a photograph between them. A worn gray book bag with a faded name tag on the underside, Delgado written in sharpie. The bag his young witness had pulled from a locker at the ranch. "That's the bag," he said. "We have it. We have the ledger. We have three people who put you in the school hall that spring. You go away for the rest of your life. The only thing left to decide is whether Maria buries her daughter or spends the rest of her life not knowing." Juanita looked at the photograph. The cut on their jaw had dried black. They smiled a little. "Maria never wrote back," they said. "I sent one letter. One. I wanted to meet the girl. She never wrote back." "That's not why you did it." "No." They shrugged against the cuffs. "But it's why I kept it." "Kept what." They did not answer. Thomas waited. He had learned to wait. "You want a map," Juanita said. "I don't have a map. I have a place. I'll walk you to it. Not him. Not the deputy. You." "No deals." "No deal. A walk." They leaned forward. "You bring Maria. She stands where I show her. Then I'm done talking forever." Thomas left the room. He called Ray. Ray said the DA would allow a supervised site visit if Juanita signed a statement first. Thomas called Maria from the hallway. He told her what Juanita wanted. Maria was quiet a long time. "I'll come," she said. Her voice was flat, the way it had been for eight years. "Not for her. For my girl." He went back in. He pushed a pad across the table. Juanita wrote three lines and signed. Thomas read them. A confession, short and clean. No location. Just the act. He walked down the hall to the desk. The young woman from the casino basement on was still sitting there,looking sad and alone, the one who had carried the book bag out of that locker. He asked her one question. "Did she ever leave the ranch at night. Alone. With a shovel." "A shovel?”, she asked. At that moment, Pablo Delgado was escorted in by the deputies. His eyes meet Thomas’ and then cast down to the young woman he was talking to. His breath catches in his chest. “It can’t be, can it?,” he says as tears start to swell in his eyes. The young woman turns at his voice, “Daddy?” Thomas, looking back and forth between the two of them quickly puts all the clues together… if this was the missing Delgado girl… then Juanita had lied, or there was more going on than he realized.