The three of them sat with that.Through the window, the late afternoon light stretched across the desert in long amber bars.Somewhere to the south, the land that Devco owned and the land the Navajo Nation owned met at a fence line that had been a battlefield for twenty years—a quiet war fought with shell companies and contract killers and the patient accumulation of money and influence.
“We need to go back to the airfield,” Ben said.
“Yes,” Paul said.
“When?”
“Soon.We’re waiting on one thing—Kari’s case.She’s close to finishing it, and when she does, Marshall becomes an ally we can use.A senior FBI agent from a division that isn’t compromised, with the authority to coordinate a multi-agency response.”Paul looked at Ben.“We do this once.We do it right.And we do it with enough federal backing that Devco can’t bury it the way they’ve buried everything else.”
Ben nodded.He looked down at the table, at the printouts and the legal pads and the closed laptop.Kari was alone in Albuquerque, working a case she’d taken partly to stay safe and partly to stay sane.Ruth was in the back room, weaving.The ankle monitor pressed against his leg, its constant pressure a reminder that the people they were fighting had already demonstrated what they could do to him.
He thought about Anna.Less than two years dead, her research vindicated, her killers still walking free.Not for much longer, if Paul was right.If they could get onto that land and come back with what they needed.
“I’ll be ready,” Ben said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Maria Sandoval had been Gregory Ashford’s private nurse for fourteen months, and she’d been waiting for someone to ask her what she knew.
Kari met her at a diner in Española the day after the search warrant, a neutral location away from the estate where Ashford was now under the supervision of a court-appointed caregiver while the FBI processed the property.Sandoval arrived in civilian clothes—jeans, a fleece jacket, her hair down instead of in the bun she’d worn on duty—and she looked younger without the clinical composure she’d maintained at the house.She also looked tired in a way that went deeper than missed sleep.
"I signed an NDA when I took the job," Sandoval said, before Kari could ask her first question."His family's attorneys made me sign it.But I talked to a lawyer this morning, and she said a federal investigation overrides it.So."She picked up her coffee."Ask me whatever you want."
“When did his behavior start changing?”
“It depends on what you mean by changing.The Alzheimer’s was diagnosed eighteen months ago, but the symptoms started before that—memory lapses, confusion about dates, repeating himself.His children noticed it first.They pushed him to see a specialist, and the diagnosis came back in stages.Mild cognitive impairment, then probable early-onset Alzheimer’s, then confirmed.By the time I was hired, he was already past the early stage.”
“Tell me about the art.”
Sandoval set her coffee down and took a breath, organizing what she wanted to say.When she spoke, she was careful and deliberate, pacing herself like someone who’d been carrying observations for a long time and had thought carefully about how to present them.
“When I started, the collection was already large.He spent most of his days in the gallery—hours at a time, standing in front of pieces, sometimes talking to them.I mean that literally.He’d have conversations with the paintings.He’d ask questions and then pause, as if listening to answers.”She looked at Kari directly.“I’ve worked with Alzheimer’s patients before.Confabulation is common—filling in memory gaps with fabricated details, talking to people who aren’t there.But Gregory wasn’t confabulating in any way I’d seen before.He was building a system.”
“What kind of system?”
"He believes that the artwork contains fragments of the artist's consciousness.Not metaphorically.He believes it the way you believe the table in front of you is solid.He told me that when he looked at a painting long enough, he could feel the painter's thoughts entering his mind.He said it was like receiving a memory that belonged to someone else—vivid, specific, complete.And he believes that by collecting these memories, he can replace the ones he's losing."
Kari thought about the gallery notes—the handwritten cards pinned beside each piece, the descriptions of what Ashford felt when he looked at the work, the language about doors and walking through them.The system Sandoval was describing matched exactly.
“Did it escalate?”
"Gradually.At first, it was just the long looking sessions in the gallery, the conversations with the art.Then he started asking me to take him to galleries in Santa Fe, to exhibitions, to artists' studios.He didn't want to buy anymore.He wanted to watch them work.He said seeing the act of creation was more powerful than seeing the finished piece, because in the moment of creation, the artist's consciousness was fully present in the work."
“He visited their studios.”
“Multiple times.I drove him.He’d ask me to wait in the car while he went inside, and sometimes he’d be gone for an hour or more.When he came back, he was—” Sandoval paused, choosing her words.“Ecstatic is the wrong word.Saturated.Like a man who’d been in the desert and finally found water.He’d sit in the car with his eyes closed and not speak for the entire drive home.”
“Did you ever think he was dangerous?”
“No.”The answer came fast, and Sandoval’s face tightened.“I know what you’re going to say.I know what he did.But you have to understand—I was with him every day.I watched him feed birds in the garden and cry when he couldn’t remember his children’s names.The man I took care of couldn’t plan a meal, let alone a murder.He’d forget where the kitchen was.He’d put his shoes on the wrong feet.”
“The disease fluctuates,” Kari said.Not a question.
"Yes.He has good days and bad days.On the good days, he's lucid, articulate, and capable of sustained concentration.On the bad days, he doesn't know who I am."Sandoval wrapped her hands around her mug."On the good days, he could do anything.That's what I keep thinking about.On the good days, he's still Gregory Ashford—intelligent, organized, determined.A man who built a pharmaceutical company from nothing.Who ran a corporation for thirty years.Who solved complex problems for a living."
“And on the good days, the delusions are still there.”
“The delusions are always there.Good days or bad.The difference is that on the good days, he can act on them.”
