SECRETS IN THE SAND

We found the body when I was sixteen. It wasn’t really scary, more of a hushed, respectful moment. New Mexico is Indian territory and even a teenage girl such as myself was aware of the many Indian ruins. To find a skeleton on our property where we had found arrowheads was a natural extension in my mind. People from long ago had obviously been here. Now here she was, buried near where she had ground corn and watched her husband chip away at black obsidian to make arrowheads.

The only problem was that I was wrong.

We found the body because dad was digging in the arroyo at the edge of our ranch to force water to bubble to the surface. The cows needed a place to drink, but it was so hot and dry that even the last trickle had faded to nothing more than wet sand. When dad decided to rest, he jammed the shovel in the dirt just above the stream bed. It made a funny crunching sound. He climbed the bank, dislodging more sand from under his boot. Sand continued downhill, revealing a jawbone and eye socket.

“Wow,” I whispered. Being a rancher, dad knew the difference between a human skull and an animal one. I guess I did too.

The archaeologists came first. They did not grumble even though the only way to get back into Gallinas Canyon was by foot or very sure-footed horse. It didn’t take them long to determine that a more modern inspector was required.

The coroner, a bald, heavyset guy, did nothing but complain. Dad took the sweating man in as far as the truck would go, but that left a rough half mile walk in the hot July sunshine.

I do believe the little round man thought he would be the next corpse. Every few steps he cursed and panted for air. "Can you bring it out to this point?" he asked halfway in.

When we finally reached the bones, he snapped pictures. Flapping his hands, he ordered dad to move sand and sift this and that. "Be careful though," he reprimanded before we even got started.

Dad looked at me. I think dad considered deepening the grave and shoving the man in.

It wasn’t until school started that we finally heard the death was being treated as suspicious. The skeleton, though old and parched looking to me, was that of a modern woman in her early twenties according to the coroner’s office. Cause of death: unknown.

The police took a sudden interest in all the comings and goings on ranch land that was miles from any paved road and home to only cattle.

The questions were ludicrous really. "How many people have access?"

Anyone who wanted could walk through the Gila Forest or up the several miles of broken dirt roads that led back to the property.

"Well, who could she be?"

Bones tell many secrets, but these had not been engraved with initials.

I thought that had the bones belonged to one of our thirty-five cows, dad would have known instantly which one was beneath the sand. But no one would bother to bury a cow, and someone had taken the time to bury the woman. Her bones were bleached too, so she must have been left exposed to the sunlight before being buried. I felt terrible that the bones weren’t all still connected properly. There were bits of black hair attached to the skull so I thought her a mummy of sorts.

The coroner, before the police ordered him not to give out details, told us that my "Indian" was definitely female. She had given birth at some time, and she was between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five when she died.

I did not know any such people, at least not any dead ones.

The last deputy to go out there asked, "Ya think a hunter might’a shot her by mistake?" He stood ready with his pencil to jot down dad’s answer.

Since we had no answer, we gave none. The deputy jotted something down anyway, thanked us and walked back to his jeep.

Dad and I stayed by the stream. We both looked at the spot where she had rested. I had been glad to come along because I thought the deputy would have answers rather than more silly questions. But he hadn’t been very curious about the woman, her child or why she might have been buried there.

Hikers were not abundant in the Gila forest. Her dark hair made me want to believe that she had been from nearby, Indian or Hispanic. I hoped she had not been alone and that her companion had tried to rescue her. Perhaps he had left her to go for help only to discover that he could not find her once he tried to come back. That would explain how the bones had become whitewashed by the brutal sun. Eventually her companion had found her, although too late, and he had buried her.

Most of her bones had been in the grave, so I supposed that whoever made the grave had not carried her far. Perhaps he had lucked across the quiet stream and gnarled trees that were such a treasure in the desert landscape.

"There weren’t any bullet holes in the bones," dad said. "Probably not a hunter."

"I didn’t see any," I said. We walked back to the truck. The coroner hadn’t said anything about bullet holes either.

In my mind she had not died alone or without friends, but at my high school with everyone talking of nothing else, it soon became obvious that no one was missing a sister or cousin. No one knew of an infant or young child that was missing a mother. Every now and then someone would talk about a girl that went away to have a baby. The whispers would start, but even if that were the case of my "Indian" girl, no one knew of a woman that was still missing.

As the school year wore on, I visited the grave site on weekends when dad went out to the ranch. Sometimes I sifted the sand like the coroner had showed us, hoping for a clue that we had not found before.

That she had been buried without clothes or jewelry finally occurred to me. More and more, her "companion" took on a sinister image. If he truly cared about her, why had he not left her clothing and jewelry?

The coroner said he did a dental search, but apparently found nothing. Now that it had been so long and no one had missed her, I began to fear that she had indeed been a stranger to the land where she ended up.

Had she been tricked into coming here? Had she died of thirst? Had whoever buried her even known her?

The person had to have known her. There had to have been guilt. Why else remove all her belongings and yet take such care with the burial?

That it was a male, I was somehow certain.

At dinner one night, I asked dad if he had heard anything more about the bones. He shook his head, but I could tell he had been thinking about her too. "Maybe she read the old ways of some Indian tribes where the grandmothers wandered away to die in peace to avoid being a burden."

I did not like this idea. My "Indian" was too young to wander away.

"I asked the coroner if there were signs of disease," dad continued.

I waited expectantly, but dad just grunted and kept on eating. "Too lazy to run any more tests," he finally said.

I thought the disease was with the living, those that didn’t seem to have any need to fill in the answers to all the questions. Somewhere, someone knew the story. There must be at least a solitary person that cared. Even if that person was only her child, even if the child had been given up for adoption, surely someday the child would wonder what happened to his mother.

The trail would be cold because the bones had no answers to offer.

I spent many days hiking through the nearby forest. Once, very close to the grave site, I found a bracelet. I kept it just in case. The copper band was formed from two twisted lengths, looped around and around. It had no initials, dates or other marking. It probably wasn’t hers.

After almost a year, I thought to search newspaper stories going back two and even three years before we found the bones. I looked for missing person articles as far away as California. It was impossible. Unless the person that buried her came forward, the mystery woman would remain unknown.

Right before I started college, a new coroner, Tim Gomez, was hired. I got him interested enough to check the local hotels to see if a mysterious guest left luggage or perhaps did not pay.

There were too many deadbeats to make any real headway.

As far away from civilization as she was, she must have been a camper. From the roadside trails in the Gila Forest it was anywhere from two to six miles to the ranch area. I know because I walked the trails. I wondered if it was a beautiful day, that last day she spent on earth. Most times I imagined that she did not see the end coming. I pretended she was happy, that she carried lunch and that she did not suffer.

Tim, the new coroner, told me that had we found her sooner, finding the cause of death would have been easier. I thought it was a hint of a miracle that we found her at all -- a chance strike of a shovel, the loose dirt, the shallow grave.

During Christmas break my first year of college, I visited the coroner’s office again. Since he knew no one else was interested, Tim talked freely. "See how only some of the bones are bleached by the sun? The rest are discolored and were likely under something -- clothing or rocks--before they were moved and reburied in the shallow grave."

"When did she die?" I asked again.

"Hard to say. I’d guess about a year before you found her. It would only take one summer in the hot sun for the bones to bleach. Then, sometime after the bleaching, she was buried."

Though he couldn’t ballpark the death any closer than the old coroner, I began to get another idea now that I had started college.

There was a whole season in late August when students arrived from all over the country to begin the college semester. I was one of these students, although I lived at home.

During the summer, the students disappeared and no one thought twice about it. Sometimes, the students didn’t come back even if they were pre-enrolled. Dropout was so common, no one took notice. There was no way for me to really check my theory because I didn't have access to the enrollment lists. I told Tim my idea.

"It might be worth a look," he said. He was earnest and sincere, but the policemen would be the same ones as before. They likely had better things to do than go through piles of university records.

As I hiked later that day, I considered what Tim said about her body being mostly covered while it decomposed, but it didn’t help. There were rocks all over the New Mexico mountains; granite boulders and sandstone. Every other bend in the mountains had a place where she could have been loosely hidden with her legs and an arm out in the sun. An animal might have squirmed beneath a quickly constructed mound long enough to gnaw at a bone, but been unable to drag the treasure away.

After the initial burying attempt whoever left her must have come back, after summer vacation, when he was brave enough. He would have been worried because the first time he concealed her he had hurried, using rocks, a few broken tree limbs -- anything to get her out of sight. During that frantic effort, he wouldn’t have had a shovel. He had probably been too rushed to have taken her clothes then. Perhaps she had worn something with a logo from t he university or a t-shirt from her hometown, and it haunted him. All summer, while part of her bones bleached in the hot summer sun, he sweated, waiting to hear about the discovery of her body.

Had he gone back first thing when school started up again? Or had it taken a few months after his return to get up the nerve?

Did he worry still? Did he come back to check or had he seen the local headlines a year and a half ago when we found her?

For some reason, he had cared enough to not just scatter her bones. This part puzzled me, and I wavered between deciding that he regretted her death to believing that he was just meticulous at his task.

I decided to visit Tim again. He wasn’t surprised to see me. "Haven’t had much time to look at those records," he told me.

"What if I did it?"

He shrugged. "Well...I did some quick looking, but there hasn’t been much spare time."

I smiled. There could be no harm in looking. "I can help."

It took longer than my Thanksgiving break to cull the records of the last four years worth of female students at the local university. Each year there were nearly fifteen hundred female students enrolled in the school. Mercifully, half re-enrolled in a given year and were easy to t rack. Transfer records found a few of them. Very few disappeared; those I couldn't find quickly, I sorted into a file. All had an original home address and next of kin listed on their applications.

The internet or a phone call usually found parents to direct me to a subsequent address. Three ad died, but were not missing.

When the easy ones were done, I still had a long list of sixty-two girls. The very first one on the list seemed to have completely disappeared off the face of the earth. As I looked at her name, my heart fluttered. Could she be my Indian girl?

Patsy Jemez had been a junior three years ago. Surely she wouldn't have quit school when she was so close to finishing. Her original address in Las Cruces, New Mexico yielded no clues. County real estate records showed that whoever owned the house had a different name. When I called, there were renters. Her parents had probably been renters. Maybe they had moved. But why had Patsy never transferred her credits when she was so close to graduating?

I showed my list to Tim and told him about Patsy.

"If she was from Cruces, she probably lived in the dorm. See if she had a roommate. Maybe then you can find people that still know her."

I hadn't thought about roommates. I lived at home.

Patsy's roommate her first year was another girl from Las Cruces. Her second year it was a different girl, and I was in luck. Angela was still a graduate student at the university. It wasn't hard to get an answer.

"Patsy? Oh yes, she got married! Gosh, it's been...two? No, three years ago, in June. That wedding was a riot! She's talking about coming back to school, but it's harder now. One kid already, another on the way."

My heart deflated. I had not thought about how many girls would marry and change their names, making it look as though they had disappeared.

Checking marriage records knocked my list down to a handful or two.

It was cold out when I hiked during Christmas break. I still hadn't finished the list because it was taking longer with each girl. As I walked through the pines, I heard noises of another hiker. I stopped and held my breath, not wanting the white puffs to give me away.

It was silly. I would not likely come face to face with the person that put her in that grave. Even if he did walk through here, I would not recognize him.

The deer ran when my foot slipped against a hard rock, bounding in front of me like a possessed spirit.

I turned back, heading for home. The sound of the sand sifting under my feet was like a ghost. I knew that she did not really follow. It was I that kept trying to follow her.

With four names to go, I found a girl who had not returned after her freshman year. Her original address in Wilson, Arizona did not help me find her. The woman on the phone claimed she had never heard of a Melissa Ann Cotter.

The county real estate records showed the house had been sold two years ago; a foreclosure.

I fingered the copper bracelet. My idea was silly. If she and her family had moved, I'd just waste more time. But...there were no marriage records. Of course, if her family moved, she was probably just married somewhere else in a county I hadn't checked.

Small high schools, small yearbooks. The pictures were online, but grainy. I could enlarge it. But would anyone remember her? If they did, would they admit it?

I told Tim about my shrinking list. "It isn't going well. I'm not sure it matters." I stared down at the bracelet. "I think I'll look for a roommate again."

'Can't hurt."

Stacey Para, the freshman year roommate, was still at the university. She had skipped a year before coming back so she was only a junior. "I left for summer break before Melissa. We promised to sign up as roommates again, but you know how it is. I didn't come back until a year later myself."

Stacey didn't know what happened to Melissa, but she knew one of the girls that had been a dorm neighbor.

It would have been harder to track down the person who had seen Melissa last had it been a solitary "he" as I had supposed. I should have known that so often when something goes wrong, it is within a group.

"We were drinking, sure," Tina, one of three young women who had been with Melissa, admitted. Too much liquor and a late picnic out in the Gila Forest and suddenly there was confusion about when each person left. "I don't remember, but I think that was the last time I saw her."

There were two male students and three women with Melissa Ann that night. Raul was from Silver City. He was enrolled now and then, but had not graduated. When I asked him about Melissa he said, "I don't think Melissa was there. I don't remember when I saw her last. Maybe class?"

I was deflated again, wondering if it was all a mistake, but Tina was adamant. "Melissa was with us. She stayed behind with Becky and the guys when Cathy and I left."

Right time-frame, close to the right place. "Did she know the others well?"

Tina shrugged. "I think she dated Raul or Andrew, but not really dated. Just hung out with us. Sometimes we all went out, sometimes not. Raul and Andrew were roommates. Cathy was my roommate. Stacey...I don't think she was there that night, but she was usually around."

Stacey had left town before the night of the party.

After the night of drinking, in the ensuing days, all but Raul left for summer break. Raul lived in town.

None of the students I talked to thought it odd to have never seen Melissa after that night. People came and went from the university.

Raul had to be guilty. Who else would know the area and hike back in that far with a body? He could keep tabs on whether she was found. And now he knew she had been found. Would he run?

Tim had more questions than I had answers. "Why hasn't anyone looked for her? What happened to her family?"

I didn't know.

I looked again at the next of kin on the application sheet. She was listed as an aunt at the address that had already been a bust.

Would Raul give me more information? Not likely, not if he were guilty.

Maybe Andrew or Becky would. I hadn't talked to either of them yet.

I looked up Andrew's original information. The screen wavered in front of me, almost like the sun on the hot desert sand. I blinked and checked again.

Andrew was from Arizona, the same small town of Wilson, where Melissa had lived with her aunt.

That...was interesting. If anyone knew whether Melissa had returned to Wilson after her freshman year, it would be Andrew.

Instead of calling him, I went back to the internet. I started with the obituaries, which were hard to find online for such a small town. There were county and cemetery records though, and now that I had a name it didn't take me long.

The aunt was in a fatal hit and run accident less than a month after Melissa's freshman year ended. There was no way for me to know if Andrew had spoken with the aunt or kept her from reporting Melissa missing -- or been involved in the accident. With the aunt dead, there was no one to complain that Melissa was missing.

I wondered if the child belonged to Andrew. If so, what happened to it? She had given birth -- but maybe that was a secret the father of the child wanted kept secret forever.

I showed Tim a printout. My hand trembled just a little bit. "Andrew came back the next s emester, but then he dropped out."

"Hmm. You couldn't find any other relatives for Melissa or the aunt?"

"No. The house was foreclosed on after she died. No one claimed it or paid it off."

"Hmm." He took the printout and reached for the phone.

I had many other questions, but once Tim told the detectives what I had found, they had better ways to hunt for answers. With a narrower area to look, they found dental records-- records that suddenly matched.

"You're sure," I asked Tim the day he called me.

"You found her," he said.

I showed Tina and Stacey the copper bracelet. Tina said, "It might have been Melissa’s, but it was... so long ago. All I can tell you for sure is that it isn’t mine."

Even without the answers, I sleep better at night. Melissa Ann Cotter has a name, and to some extent a face and a past. When she was only bones, it seemed she never had a life.

On Sunday, dad and I took a small metal cross with her name on it and erected it in the sand. Her bones are no longer there, but surely that is where her spirit was, at least for the time that she called out demanding to be found.