Excerpts

Chapter 1 MONTE DOBRA Sunday, September 4, 2016 Today I went back to the pool, Father. My godmother forbade me to look for you. It was the only rule I could break that would really hurt her. We both knew what Bluebeard would do if he knew someone was sniffing around. I was horrified to read the headline in El Periódico Cántabro today. Horrified. Twenty-Three-Year-Old Woman Found Dead on Monte Dobra Summit The Mysterious Suicides of Young People Continue The body of G. T., aged 23, from Santander, has been discovered on the summit of Monte Dobra. She is the third young person who has been found dead on a mountain along the Cantabrian coast. According to the police, all three died from hypothermia, after they removed their clothing and spent the night in the open. None of the bodies showed signs of violence. Could this be a trend, or a copycat phenomenon? No link has been found between the victims. Yet again, investigators are at a loss. All three deaths have the same strange characteristics: the victims are young, barely out of their teens; they climb to the top of a mountain in Cantabria and take off their clothing; and they are found dead from exposure the next morning. Investigators have been unable to discover any clues or motives, despite close scrutiny of the victims' lives. No surprise there. How could someone who doesn't want to see what's in front of their face notice anything? After a tortuous search, I managed to find a photo of the young girl. She looks like me. You said she had died. You looked me in the eye, Bluebeard, and told me she was dead, damn you. But you kept her. I swore to my godmother that I wouldn't go near you, that I wouldn't search for you, but today I'm going to break those promises, because you have no idea the anger that's spewing out of me, choking the guts you putrefied. And yet, I still miss you, Father. I miss how attentive you could be, how you convinced everyone that I mattered to you--before that last summer and everything that happened between the village and the cliffs where I lost my first life. I used to close my eyes and try to become part of your audience, to pretend that I believed in your public persona, as if there were a parallel universe in which you were a good father who loved me the way a father should, rather than the way you did. But it was pointless. I could never make myself believe it. I'm smoking and drinking more than usual now, Father. Yesterday I got into a fight. I have to reinvent myself all over again. I have to put my life in order. I have to become another person, anyone at all--anyone who isn't me. I'm back, Father. 2 THE SIERRA OF AIZKORRI-ARATZ Thursday, November 17, 2016 So who exactly was Annabel Lee? I must have been almost sixteen when Ana Belén Liaño appeared in Cabezón de la Sal, a small town near the Cantabrian coast. It was the first day of the summer camp where Lutxo, Asier, Jota, and I--the core of the San Viator cuadrilla--had decided to spend what would become the best July of our short and still-uncertain lives. She had long, straight black hair that hung to her waist and bangs that covered her eyes, keeping her from seeing the world clearly, although her ideas were so well defined that not even adults questioned them. At first her attitude annoyed me, then it intrigued me, and by the third night, I couldn't get to sleep because I was obsessed with the mixture of groans and whispers coming from her sleeping bag a few bunks away. I was already, you might say, devoted to her cause. At an age when most of us weren't sure what we were going to major in, much less what we wanted to be in life, Ana Belén Liaño was already an expert graphic novelist. Known as Annabel Lee, after the character in the Edgar Allan Poe poem, she had already acquired a following in a certain world: erotic, gothic, postapocalyptic . . . Really, she could have turned her hand to any genre, but her creative influences were Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Lord Byron, and William Blake. She was tied to her black Staedtler felt-tip pen, her forearms often covered with sketches--improvised scenarios that could occur to her at any moment. While we were washing the tin mugs we used for breakfast, for instance, or when Saúl Tovar, the summer camp director, spoke to us of rituals and ancient remains as he drove along the northern coast to magical places like San Juan de Gaztelugatxe in Vizcaya or Deba beach in Guipúzcoa. Annabel Lee stood out in other ways. She seemed to be in a fog, her answers always vague, and we could never quite figure out her mood. She was very protective of her solitude, caring for it as old widows care for their cats: all day, at the exclusion of all else. We knew she was more fascinated by her savage interior world than by the transition to adult life. She seemed almost ageless, neither child nor adult. After four days and three nights, I was hopeless. I didn't know much about heartache then. Annabel took my poor heart and let it grow accustomed to her silent, disturbing company, and then she spat it out. I still have no idea how it happened. I don't know what made her dismiss my love with such . . . ​I was about to say indifference, but it wasn't that. Annabel could be warm; she just seemed to function on a different plane. She and her phantasmagorical creations moved through a parallel universe that occasionally coincided with ours but often didn't. That's why her death didn't seem real; it felt more like an alternate ending to one of her stories. You tend to think that people who live in that kind of fantasy world won't ever disappear or grow old. I always thought she would live forever. I just hadn't wanted to know anything about her--not after the way that summer had ended. As soon as we reached flat ground where we could park, I got out of the squad car. A freezing wind whipped my face, bringing me back to reality. Estíbaliz's five-foot frame was almost blown up the mountain. She removed strands of red hair from her mouth and led the way. After all the rain over the past few days, the path leading to the tunnel was muddy. The weather forecasts were calling for hail, and the thick heavy clouds that the north wind was sweeping toward us made that seem a definite possibility. "Are you ready for this, Kraken?" asked Estíbaliz, concerned. "The DSU authorized you to come along as an expert, but she doesn't know you knew the victim." And I'd prefer to keep it that way for now, I typed. She gave me a knowing wink. That's me, keeper of conjugal peace. "I think that's best for now," she agreed. "Let's go, it'll be dark in a couple of hours. Is there anything I should know about the victim? Anything about her that could be important, given the way she died?" Not that I can think of, I said with a shrug. What I didn't say was I'm not going to tell you everything that happened that summer, Estíbaliz. I'm just not ready. We were in the Aizkorri-Aratz reserve, and we had just reached the tunnel by the Zegama highway that led to the parking lot closest to the summit. Two of the forensic team's vehicles were already there, so we started up the hill. A narrow gravel path led us to the mouth of the tunnel. Estí and I had both climbed this trail a dozen times. We passed through the arched entrance and crossed the sixty-meter cave. On our right were the restored chapel and the small excavation area where a group of archaeologists worked every summer. Daylight was already fading. An increasingly strong wind tossed the green and gold leaves in the beechwoods behind us. I used to enjoy listening to the wind in the beech and oak trees when I slept at my grandfather's house in Villaverde. It was like a concert, where the instruments played themselves. But the rustling didn't relax me now--far from it. The tunnel ended in a wide hole that bored through the rock. Travelers had passed through this natural opening since prehistoric times, and for centuries it had been a landmark for northern pilgrims on their way to Santiago. According to the legend, even Charles V had to bow to pass through the mouth of the cave. I have no idea how tall the monarch was, but I too had to lower my head to cross to the Álava side, the site of the murder. Andoni Cuesta, a forensic colleague of ours, was climbing a few yards ahead on the narrow path, and he pointed out the site. The perimeter had been taped off, and we could only enter through one section. "How are things?" Estíbaliz asked him with a wink. Estí and Cuesta got along very well and often had coffee together when they were on duty. "Tell me you're the one who won the three million euros in the Primitiva lottery, because then you can buy drinks tomorrow." For weeks, everyone in Vitoria had been talking about the winning lottery ticket and who the lucky owner might be. Was it the fifth-floor neighbor no one had seen for days and who hadn't been at the Club Alavés soccer match on Sunday, or maybe it was the brother-in-law who wasn't answering the phone and had inexplicably quit his job at the Mercedes factory? "I wish it were me, that's for sure. But it's not. As for the inspection, we just started. There's still a lot we need to process, and I'd like to get home to give my kids a good-night kiss. The eldest has a game this weekend, and he's already climbing the walls. Actually, if I had won the lottery, I'd buy him the entire Baskonia team, board and manager included, so he wouldn't always be on the sidelines," Cuesta said with a mixture of amusement and concern. He crouched next to his bag to get some protective gear for us. A plump, friendly guy in his fifties with short arms, he was easy to pick out at a crime scene despite the fact that he wore the same white suit as the other forensic techs. Cuesta was methodical; you could count on him to stay at a scene until everything was finished, and I'd never heard him complain. "Put your booties on and be careful where you step. This place is full of footprints. Trying to identify them all is going to be hell." We did as we were told, and then put on the gloves he handed us. Judge Olano had authorized the inspection, but I would have bet my life (and won) that he hadn't bothered to come out to this windswept mountain to supervise the removal of the body. I knew he would send the court clerk to complete all the necessary formalities instead. Following Cuesta's advice, we walked carefully toward a wooded area where we found Doctor Guevara, the forensic pathologist, next to a tree taking notes. A woman's body hung from one of the branches. A few yards away the clerk and Inspector Goyo Muguruza, the head of forensics, were speaking quietly, pointing to a skull-print hoodie that had apparently belonged to the deceased. The clerk, a left-handed man with white hair and a long nose, nodded as he wrote down what Goyo was saying. At the clerk's feet, an open briefcase held everything necessary to preserve the chain of custody for the physical evidence the technicians were collecting. Seeing Annabel like that after all those years, coupled with my aversion to dead bodies, was too much, and I had to turn away to stop myself from retching. Estí covered for me, stepping forward and extending her hand to the forensic expert. "Inspector Gauna, I'm pleased to see you. I see that Inspector Ayala is back with us," said Doctor Guevara, pretending not to have noticed the state I was in. A small woman in her fifties, with smooth cheeks pink from rosacea, Doctor Guevara was like a machine--quiet and efficient. In all the years we'd worked together, she had never complained when I asked her to prioritize an autopsy. She also possessed the rare ability to interact well with all the examining magistrates, regardless of how difficult they could be. "Today he's just here as a profiling expert. He'll be back on the force again soon." Estíbaliz lied as though she had been doing it all her life. "Do you have anything for us yet, Doctor?" I stared at the dead woman. She had been my girlfriend, my first love; she had given me my first night of . . . ​She was tied up at the ankles, head down. Her thick, extraordinarily long black hair swept the stony ground. Some of the strands were still wet, and her bangs left her forehead uncovered for once. Her eyes were open. She hadn't closed them, despite dying with her head submerged in a bronze cauldron full of water. How brave you were, Annabel. Her hands were tied behind her back with a zip tie. No wedding ring, and she was wearing hiking pants and a fleece that gravity had pulled down to expose a swollen belly . . . ​four, five months along? Her linea alba showed some pigmentation. Her ankles were tied to a bough about three yards above the ground. You had to be a real bastard to do that to her, despite all the games she played, despite the fact that she'd spent her life repelling everyone who was attracted to her. What did you get mixed up in this time? I whispered to her inside my head. While Estíbaliz and the pathologist walked over to examine the bronze cauldron, I knelt in front of Annabel and, without realizing it, thought: This is where your hunt ends and mine begins. For a few seconds I felt like myself again, rather than a shadow of the man I used to be. I had an absorbing job and a fresh obsession that I could concentrate on so I wouldn't have to face my shortcomings and the trouble that was building in my life. I could, for example, try to ignore the fact that my boss was pregnant and that she didn't know if the baby was mine or a serial killer's. Excerpted from The Water Rituals by Eva Garcia Sáenz All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.