Healing Sands Read online

  HEALING SANDS

  HEALING SANDS

  A Sullivan Crisp Novel

  Nancy Rue and

  Stephen Arterburn

  © 2009 by Nancy Rue and Stephen Arterburn

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee. by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Published in association with Alive Communications, 7680 Goddard Street, Suite

  200, Colorado Springs, CO, 80920, www.alivecommunications.com.

  Page design by Mandi Cofer.

  Thomas Nelson books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business,

  fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail

  [email protected].

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rue, Nancy N.

  Healing sands / Nancy Rue and Stephen Arterburn.

  p. cm. — (A Sullivan Crisp novel ; no. 3)

  ISBN 978-1-59554-428-5 (pbk.)

  I. Arterburn, Stephen, 1953– II. Title.

  PS3568.U3595H4 2009

  813’.54—dc22

  2009036772

  Printed in the United States of America

  09 10 11 12 13 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Dale McElhinney, who has the heart of Sullivan Crisp

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Reading Group Guide

  About the Authors

  CHAPTER ONE

  I did not, as my ten-year-old son described it, “freak out over everything” back then. It took something big. The problem was, something big happened daily. At times hourly.

  That particular hour it was a waste-of-time photo shoot. I told my editor at the Sun-News that before I even pulled away from the movie set at White Sands. I was still ranting about it into my Bluetooth as I pulled out onto Highway 70 and headed across the Chihuahuan Desert toward Las Cruces, straight into the eyeball-searing sun.

  “Why anybody wants to make a film in the middle of a gypsum dune field is beyond me,” I said. “Two hundred and seventy-five miles of nothing but white.”

  “I know shooting there in the middle of the day is a nightmare,” Frances said. “I thought they were going to let you take inside shots of rehearsal.”

  “Evidently, ‘they’ didn’t know what they were talking about. Or they just said that to get us there, with no intention of giving me access to the set.”

  I took a long drag out of my water bottle and attempted to stick it back into its holder on the console. I missed and the thing tipped over, still open, onto the floor on the passenger side. Right into my unzipped camera bag.

  “So—what happened?”

  “After they discussed it to death,” I said, “they finally decided I could interview Darnell Pellington.”

  “Who?”

  “Exactly.” I kept my eyes on the highway and groped on the floor to retrieve the bottle. “He’s one of the co-stars.”

  “You were supposed to get—”

  “I know, okay? I wasn’t going to break out the 400 and do the paparazzi thing.”

  The typing stopped, and Frances sighed into the phone. “So what did you get?”

  “Ten minutes in Darnell’s trailer while Ken interviewed him. In light so low all the people tromping through needed miners’ helmets to see where they were going.”

  “So you’re telling me it was a bust.”

  I finally got my hand on the water bottle and fished it out of my bag, empty. “Look, I’ll send you what I got as soon as I can get Internet access. There’s probably something salvageable.”

  Frances gave me the short grunt she delivered when she could take the time to laugh. “I’m sure it’s more than just salvageable. Anyway, no big deal. It’s just a secondary story.”

  Oh. That made me feel infinitely better. I abandoned my attempt to assess the damage to my camera and focused ahead on San Augustin Pass, rendered invisible by the afternoon sun on my Saab’s dirty windshield.

  “At least you got to see White Sands,” Frances said. “That your first time?”

  “Yeah,” I said. And hopefully my last. Everyone had raved to me about the mile upon mile of pure white sand in the middle of a New Mexico desert, its unique beauty, blah blah blah. Personally, if you’ve seen one sand dune devoid of vegetation, you’ve seen them all. I’d been too busy crawling around with a light meter on the floor of what could have passed as a FEMA trailer; I couldn’t exactly appreciate the splendor. Besides, the silence out there made me nuts.

  “Well, sorry about the assignment,” Frances said. “You’re on till three?”

  “Yeah. I’m headed back to the paper now.”

  “I’ll see what else I can come up with.”

  That was Frances Taylor’s version of good-bye. I climbed the pass and fumed.

  If she gave me another city official’s daughter’s wedding or the fiftieth fiesta of the year, I was going to have an embolism. I’d lost count of how many times in the last six weeks I had questioned the wisdom of taking this job instead of . . .

  There was no instead of. Photography was all I knew, and I was lucky to get a position when most newspapers were downsizing. It wasn’t the kind of photojournalism I was used to, but it served my only purpose: to be close to my boys.

  The Saab chugged over the pass that cut through the gargoyle peaks of the Organ Mountains. As I began the drop into the Mesilla Valley, I punched in Dan’s number. I was in a borderline foul frame of mind already. What better time to call my ex-husband?

  “What’s up?” he said, in lieu of hello.

  The hair on the back of my neck, I wanted to say.

  “I thought I’d come by and see the boys when I get off work at three.”

  His silence was long and, in my view, calculated to set my teeth on edge.

  “Alex will be here,” he said finally. “He’d probably like to see y
ou.”

  “Which means you don’t think Jake would.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  I could imagine Dan running the back of his hand across his forehead to wipe out me as much as the dust of whatever thing he was creating. I knew he wasn’t smearing off sweat, despite the eighty-five-degree September heat. Dan Coe never got worked up enough to perspire.

  “Look,” I said, “how is Jake going to get past this thing he has about me if we don’t spend any time together?”

  “I can’t force him.”

  “He’s fifteen—you’re thirty-nine. Who’s the grown-up here?”

  “So I make him see you. You think that guarantees he’s going to talk to you?”

  “If he doesn’t see me, that’s going to guarantee that he won’t. ”

  “I wish you’d just give him some time. Wait him out.”

  I squeezed the steering wheel. That was Dan’s solution to everything. You’re going broke? Give it time. You see that your marriage is disintegrating? Wait and see.

  “I think it’s a good idea for you to see Alex today, though,” Dan said. “He starts soccer practice after school tomorrow, so a lot of his free time’ll be taken up after today.”

  “He’s playing soccer?” I tried to imagine my sprite of a ten-year-old doing anything athletic. All I could conjure up were his wiry arms and legs and his enormous brown eyes. And the charm-your-Nikes-off smile I missed. So much.

  “He played last year too,” Dan said. “He’s good. So is Jake.”

  The message was clear: if I had been around for the last twelve months, I would have known my boys played soccer, and now loved tamales, and . . .

  “Look, I’ve got to get back to work,” Dan said. “You want me to tell Alex you’ll be by?”

  “Tell him I’ll take him out for Chinese. Jake too.”

  “They hate Chinese,” Dan said.

  I bit back a Since when? I knew the answer. Since I’d left their father and they’d chosen to live with him. Since I had become mama non grata.

  My phone beeped. “I have another call coming in,” I said. “I’ll be there around three thirty.”

  It was Frances.

  “Okay—get over to Third Street,” she said. Her tone brought me up in my seat. “It’s in about the worst zip code in the city, but—”

  “What’s going on?”

  “A Hispanic kid was mowed down by a white guy in a pickup truck—looks like it might have been a hate crime. If that’s the case, it could be A-1, three-column, possibly four, so shoot looser than you would otherwise.”

  “I’m on it,” I said.

  “You know where it is?”

  “Yeah,” I lied and veered into the parking lot of an abandoned pottery shop. “I can get there in ten.”

  When she hung up, I punched the address into the GPS I’d dubbed Perdita, which means “lost.” Frances had a tendency to make assignments sound bigger than they were, probably because nothing much happened in a city whose marketing hook was “One of America’s Top 100 Retirement Towns.” My six months in Africa had made me something of a cynic about what we Americans consider picture-worthy.

  With a map on Perdita’s screen, I pulled back out onto 70 and pushed the speed limit toward town. This could be a chance to do what I loved, which was to make pictures that moved people to think, got them to feel unexpectedly. Or at least wake up from a siesta long enough to see that life was not all about prizewinning jalapeños.

  “God,” I said, “give me the story I’m supposed to tell.” It was what I prayed en route to every assignment. I wasn’t always sure God particularly wanted me to tell the story of the Chile Festival or the mayor’s son’s confirmation, but it worked often enough to keep me showing up.

  Frances had exaggerated about the zip code, I decided, as I pulled in behind a Las Cruces Police Department cruiser. What qualified as a bad part of town here would have been upscale to some of the people I’d photographed. The address was a few blocks over from the Downtown Mall, a six-block interruption in Main Street, which, except on Wednesdays and Saturdays when the Farmers and Crafts Market convened, was little more than a ghost town. This was Thursday.

  The area that surrounded me as I climbed out of the Saab was just as ghostly and a little more run-down. Every other storefront stared vacantly onto the street, while the rest listlessly advertised shoe repair and beer/cigarettes and homemade Mexican food. The only one with clean windows and a freshly painted sign was an establishment that promised to cash paychecks.

  As I crossed to the passenger side to pull out my camera bag, I still couldn’t see where the actual accident had taken place. An ambulance was parked on the corner. Its lights flashed in alarm, and its engine waited impatiently at high idle, yet there was no sign of the paramedics. I had more gear in my trunk, but for the moment I decided to take only my bag from the floor. The bottom was damp, but the camera itself was dry. That bottle, thankfully, must have been emptier than I thought.

  I hung the camera and my press badge around my neck and slung the bag containing another lens over my shoulder. Only when I got around the ambulance did I see that there was an alley behind the row of stores. A police cruiser blocked it, but I walked past like I belonged there. It was always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

  A quick scan told me I was the first photographer on the scene, although even as I maneuvered my way around a line of reeking trash cans, I saw the van for the only local television station cruise past. Right now the police were too occupied to notice the media, but they would once the TV cameras got hauled in. I had a few opportune moments.

  The alley was lined with one of those thick adobe walls New Mexicans loved, and I pulled myself up onto its rounded top. I squatted to maintain a low profile and surveyed the scene.

  It was hard to tell what the damages were, with people in uniforms swarming like ants around what I made out to be a faded blue pickup truck. Its fenders were dented, but the rust in the creases told me that hadn’t happened today. Even the bumper hanging off the rear looked as if it had settled into its off-kilter position some time ago.

  The swarm of officers sorted itself into two groups. One concentrated on the cab of the truck, the other hovered on the ground behind it. That clump suddenly rose as a gurney came to life and was pushed off through the gravel in the direction of the ambulance with a sense of urgency that pulled at my camera. I took a shot I knew I wouldn’t use. The paramedics around the gurney shielded the form they carried, and I didn’t even try to get a glimpse of the face.

  The siren wound up, a sound that never failed to slit my heart, and I turned my attention to the truck again. The group around the cab was intent on whoever was inside. Two policemen stood in the bed, plastered to the rear window. Three more manned the front from the alley, and one guarded each of the two side windows. I snapped a few shots and zoomed in on the officer on the driver’s side, who was talking in that too-calm manner I’d seen negotiators use when they were trying to defuse a hostage situation. Whoever the perpetrator was, he wasn’t giving up easily.

  With the victim gone, the area behind the truck was momentarily clear. I slid from the wall and got as close as I dared. What I saw sucked the air from me. Blood spattered the tailgate and clung to a clump of dark hair on the bumper. The ground was soaked with more of the same.

  It didn’t matter how many horrendous crime scenes I saw, I was always surprised at how cruel human beings could be to each other. The only way I kept going was to remember my mission: to keep people from becoming desensitized to violence.

  I took one shot before I shivered away from the bumper and focused on the gouges that had been dug into the dirt-and-gravel alleyway by the truck’s tires. There was something aggressive, even brutal about them, as if the driver had used his pickup as a weapon. I managed to get several pictures before I heard the inevitable.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to step behind the tape, ma’am.
”

  I clicked once more before I lowered my camera.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “There wasn’t any tape when I got here.”

  “There is now.”

  The officer’s face was so grim, I didn’t argue but dutifully followed his pointing finger to the yellow tape he’d just strung across the entrance to the alley. When the action was as important as his expression suggested, the reaction would be more so. The better pictures were always of the moments after.

  He lifted the tape for me, and I ducked underneath. By then the TV crew was calling out inane questions, and Ken Perkins from the Sun-News was right in there with them. I looked for another vantage point from which I could take readers where they themselves couldn’t go.

  The question was, where? The wall was too obvious now, so I took stock of the back entrances to the stores that formed the alley. People were stuffed into the doorways of some, including the restaurant several doors from the corner. If I joined them, I could get a full frontal of the truck, and none of the officers seemed to care that the doorway folk were technically in front of the tape.

  Nor did those folks themselves care when, after hurrying through the now-empty restaurant, I squeezed my way among them into the back opening to the alley. The aura of fear and shock surrounded them like a shell of ice.

  I was farther away from the truck than I’d been before, which meant switching to a longer lens. The group of cops still flattened against the vehicle didn’t seem any closer to extricating the driver, so I had time.

  The brittle conversation among the people I was crunched in with took place in Spanish, of which I knew little beyond Como esta usted? Fortunately, their faces were telling the story.

  Two round-cheeked girls about Alex’s age clung to the doorframe, their brimming dark gazes volleying between the truck and the adults they stood with. The hands of a sturdy middle-aged woman shook as she pressed them to her mouth. Another rocked her body, eyes squeezed shut. A square man in a stained white apron showed no emotion at all except in the tightened stare that never wavered from the faded blue truck.

  I opted against the longer lens and stepped back from them, quietly raising my camera. This was the reaction. I cursed the click of the Canon as I shot their pain and their prayer, but none of them even flicked an eyelash at me. I was glad. I wasn’t sure that even in English I could say what I wanted to about the shock they were trying to claw through.