Evelyn and Lucia waited beneath the pagoda roof, sitting on a bench near two frozen ponds that in summer contained tropical fish and lotus flowers, while Richard went to fetch their car. There was a steep access road for maintenance and gardening vehicles that the Subaru, with its snow tires and four-wheel drive, climbed with ease.
They lifted Kathryn carefully out of the car, laid her on the tarpaulin, and carried her to the Sanctuary. Since the meditation room was locked, they chose the bridge between the ponds to prepare the body, which was still rigid in its fetal position, the big blue eyes open wide in astonishment. Evelyn took off the stone carved in the image of Ixchel, the jaguar goddess, the ancestral protective amulet she had been given by the shaman in Peten eight years earlier, and hung it around Kathryn’s neck. Richard tried to stop her, considering it risky to leave this evidence, but relented when he understood it would be almost impossible to trace the stone to its owner. By the time the body was found, Evelyn would be far away. He contented himself with wiping it clean with a tissue soaked in tequila.
Following instructions given by Evelyn, who quite naturally took on the role of priestess, they improvised some primitive funeral rites. A circle was closing for her: she had been unable to say anything at her brother Gregorio’s funeral and had been absent for Andres’s burial. She felt that by saying goodbye to Kathryn she was also solemnly honoring her brothers. In her village the last moments and the passing of a sick person were faced without any great drama, because death was regarded as a threshold, just like birth. Those present were supporting the person as they crossed to the other side without fear, delivering their soul to God. In cases of violent death, a crime, or an accident, additional rites were needed to convince the victim of what had happened and to ask them to leave and not come back to frighten the living. Kathryn and the child she was carrying inside her had not had even the simplest vigil. Perhaps they had not even realized they were dead. No one had washed, perfumed, and dressed Kathryn in her finest clothes, no one had sung or worn mourning for her, served coffee, lit candles, or offered flowers. Nor was there a black paper cross signifying the violence of her departure. “I feel very sorry for Miss Kathryn, who hasn’t even got a coffin or a place in a cemetery. And the poor little unborn child, who has no toy to take to heaven,” said Evelyn.
While Evelyn prayed out loud, Lucia wet a cloth with snow and washed the dried blood from Kathryn’s face. Instead of flowers, Richard cut a few sprigs from a bush and placed them between her hands. Evelyn insisted they also leave the bottle of tequila, because in vigils there was always liquor. They wiped the fingerprints from the pistol and left that alongside Kathryn. That could be the clinching proof against Frank Leroy. Kathryn’s body would be identified as being his lover’s, the gun that fired the shot was registered in his name, and it could be proved he was the father of the fetus. Everything pointed to his guilt, except for one thing: he had an alibi because he had been in Florida.
They rolled Kathryn into the rug, folded the four corners of the tarpaulin around her, and tied the bundle with the ropes Richard had in the car. Like all the buildings in the institute, the Sanctuary had no foundation, but was raised off the ground on stilts. This left a gap underneath into which they could slide Kathryn’s body. They spent some time collecting stones to block the entrance. With the spring thaw the body would inevitably start to decompose, and the smell would reveal her presence.
“Let us pray, Richard, to join Evelyn in saying farewell to Kathryn,” Lucia asked him.
“I don’t know how to pray, Lucia.”
“Everyone does it in their own way. For me, praying is relaxing and trusting in the mystery of existence.”
“Is that God for you?”
“Call it whatever you like, Richard, but give Evelyn and me your hands while we form a circle. We’re going to help Kathryn and her little one go up to heaven.”
Afterward Richard taught Lucia and Evelyn to make snowballs and stack them one on top of another to form a pyramid, with a lit candle at its center, as he had seen Horacio’s children do at Christmas. The fragile lantern composed of a flickering flame and frozen water cast a delicate golden light, surrounded by blue circles. A few hours later, after the candle had burned down and the snow had melted, there would be no trace left.
Lucia and Richard
Brooklyn
Richard Bowmaster and Lucia Maraz conscientiously collected everything published about the Kathryn Brown case from the moment her body was found in March to a couple of months later, when they were able to consider their life-changing adventure at an end. The discovery of the body at Rhinebeck led to speculation about a possible human sacrifice by members of an immigrant cult in New York State. Xenophobia toward Latinos was already in the air, unleashed by Donald Trump’s hateful presidential campaign. Although few people took him seriously as a candidate, his boast that he would build a wall like the Great Wall of China to seal the border with Mexico and deport millions of undocumented immigrants was beginning to take root in the popular imagination. This made it easy to give the crime a macabre explanation. Details of the discovery pointed toward the theory of a cult: like a pre--Columbian mummy the victim had been wrapped in a fetal position inside a bloodstained Mexican rug, with an image of the devil carved on a stone around her neck and a bottle with a skull on its label next to the body. The point-blank shot to the forehead suggested it had been an execution. And, according to some scandal--mongering newspapers, the body had been left in the Sanctuary of the Omega Institute to mock its spirituality.