SMOKESCREEN
A Fernando Lopez Mystery

Smokescreen
      Based on the novel by James C. Wilson
      Copyright 2021 by James C. Wilson
     
      Contact: James Clois Smith Jr., Sunstone Press / (505) 988-4418
     
      LOGLINE: A Santa Fe City Councilmember is assassinated at the beginning of the annual Santa Fe Fiesta, which sends Detective Fernando Lopez on a dangerous journey to find his killers in the midst of cultural and ethnic divisions that have roiled the city. His investigation becomes more dangerous when a series of young women are found dead near a mysterious compound south of the city.
     
      ACT 1: Friday
      At dusk a lone gunman carrying a sniper’s rife moves along the bottom of an arroyo toward a park where a huge crowd cheers to the sound of drumbeats. He creeps up to a tree-line looking down on the park and the 60-foot marionette named Zozobra or ‘Old Man Gloom’ that is about to be burned to kick off the annual Santa Fe Fiesta. While the puppet thrashes its arms, the gunman sets up against a tree and takes aim at his target on the stage below. Suddenly late arrivers flood the entire area around the park. The gunman packs up quickly. City Councilmember Tito Garcia will live another day.
     
      ACT 2: Saturday
      Next morning Detective Fernando Lopez arrives at the station only to find a crisis awaiting him. Tito Garcia, a prominent City Councilmember has just been assassinated at his home on Upper Canyon Road. Garcia is credited with saving Fiesta because of his work negotiating a settlement between Hispanics and Native Americans to end the Entrada, the Fiesta procession that celebrates the Reconquest of Santa Fe by Don Diego de Vargas in 1692 twelve years after the Pueblo Revolt that drove the Spanish out of the city. Hispanics support the Entrada as part of their history, while Native Americans consider it a celebration of genocide.
     
      Lopez heads up to Garcia’s home. He finds Forensics already gathering evidence and removing the body. He does an initial investigation of the scene and determines the shot that killed Garcia came from the foothills surrounding the property.
     
      When he returns to the station he finds another crisis developing on the Santa Fe Plaza. A hot-head by the name of Ruben Ortega has commandeered the podium from the usual Fiesta activities and is denouncing the Pueblo Indians and their supporters, accusing them of murdering Garcia and promising to hold the Entrada Tuesday at noon. Lopez and officer Antonio Blake remove him from the podium. Ortega threatens revenge.
     
      Later, Lopez interviews Tommy Baca, who had been Garcia’s assistant in his business of mediation and conflict resolution . When asked, Baca explains that Garcia had received tons of hate mail over his work negotiating an end to the Entrada and from others unhappy with his work as a mediator. Apparently Garcia had a lot of enemies. Baca allows Lopez take much of the hate mail with him to read through carefully.
     
      Act 3: Sunday
      Over coffee Lopez reads through Garcia’s hate mail and then drives up to Garcia’s house on Upper Canyon Road, where Garcia’s sister has come from L.A. to arrange his funeral. Lopez searches Garcia’s office, finding a threatening note in the wastebasket: “Remember our agreement if you don’t want to end up like the others.” He also finds women’s clothing in Garcia’s closet, which surprises him since Garcia was a bachelor. As he walks to the guesthouse at the rear of the property he notices someone running away from the guesthouse and climbing up the nearby trail into the National Forest. He tires to follow, but loses the runner, returning to the guesthouse where he finds more women’s clothing.
     
      Back at the station Lopez finds a Santa Fe Country Sheriff in his office. The Sheriff, Jodie Williams, demands that he help solve the murder of two young women whose nearly naked bodies were found alongside Highway 41 south of the city. Lopez finds her brusque, angry manner off-putting but sexy at the same time. She tells him that the last body was found earlier that day by a hiker who claims to have seen some sort of compound among the hills. Lopez agrees to meet her tomorrow afternoon to search the area. Then, leaving his office, he drives to the morgue at Christus Saint Vincent Medical Center and views the body of the latest victim.
     
      Act 4: Monday
      Lopez questions Michael Roybal, the hiker who found the body of the young woman yesterday. Roybal says he discovered the body while hiking up a trail to the top of a hill from where he saw a compound that looked like a camp or school. Several young women were visible walking around the camp, which he described as scary, not a friendly place.
     
      That afternoon Lopez and Blake drive out to Apache Canyon to pay Ortega a visit. Ortega and his posse deny any involvement in Garcia’s murder and refuse to cancel their plan to stage the Entrada because it’s part of their history.
     
      Later Lopez he meets Williams on Highway 41. They hike to he hill overlooking the mysterious compound Roybal had reported seeing. The compound looks more like a prison than a school. Soon a security guard confronts them. He calls himself the Foreman and identifies the compound as the Three-Hills Treatment Center, where rich young women from the Dallas and Houston areas are treated for drug and alcohol addiction. He tells them a man named Robert Warner owns the center. Then the Foreman tells them to get off the property.
     
      Act 5: Tuesday
      Ortega and his posse stage the Entrada at Noon and all hell breaks loose in downtown Santa Fe. Supporters of the Entrada march along with Ortega, while those opposed to the Hispanic procession throw stones and charge the marchers with clubs. In the melee that follows dozens of people are injured, including Ortega and Lopez himself. The injured are taken into the historic Palace of the Governors to triage.
     
      Retreating to his office, Lopez goes through Garcia’s hate mail again and comes across a letter from A. J. Hoke, a neighbor of Robert Warner’s, who had written Garcia asking him to take his complains about Warner to the next city council meeeting. He accuses Warner of illegal activity. Lopez telephones Hoke to arrange a meeting.
     
      Act 6: Wednesday
      Lopez drives down Highway 41 to Hoke’s ranch. Hoke tells Lopez that armed men at Warner’s compound have been shooting his animals. Hoke explains that he fears young women are being trafficked for sex at the compound and tells a story of how one young woman trying to escape the compound came to his door and asked for help, and how the Foreman caught her on his porch and beat the woman nearly to death.
     
      After leaving Hoke’s Ranch, Lopez decides to take a closer look at the Warner Compound. He parks at the edge of Warner’s property and observes young women being guarded by men wearing khaki uniforms. While he watches a helicopter descends on the helipad behind the huge main house. Suddenly one of the guards spots him from afar and shoots at him. He hurries back to his car and is followed by an ATV. Shots are fired at his car as he drives off.
     
      Back in Santa Fe Lopez discovers that the Pueblo Indians, in response to the staging of the Entrada by Hispanics, have taken over the Palace of the Governors in a re-enactment of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. Lopez hurries to the Plaza where supporters from both sides are gathered, facing off. He is told that Henry Ortiz, the head of the All Pueblo Council of Governors is in charge of the occupation. He asks to speak to Ortiz and is granted entrance. The two elders talk about how to resolve the impasse. They agree that if Ortega and his posse agree to never stage the Entrada, then the Pueblos will leave the Palace and never occupy it again.
     
      Act 7: Thursday
      Lopez receives a call from Baca, Garcia’s assistant. Baca is hysterical and asks for help, claiming he’s being followed by two of Garcia’s killers. Baca is in hiding at Buffalo Thunder casino hotel. Lopez drives out to Buffalo Thunder, a few miles west of Santa Fe. He finds Baca in his room with a beautiful young woman who he introduces as Ana. Baca explains that Ana was one of the women being held against their will at Three-Hills and confesses that Garcia knew what was going on at Three-Hills and agreed to keep quiet about it when Warner offered him Ana for however long he wanted. Then Garcia had a change of heart and decided to reveal what was going on at Three-Hills, which was why he was killed. His assassination had nothing to do with the Entrada. Lopez realizes Ana was the young woman he saw fleeing Garcia’s guesthouse.
     
      Leaving Ana in the hotel room, Lopez and Baca search the hotel and casino for the two killers. They find one of the men parked in a car behind the hotel and realize they’ve left Ana unprotected in the room. They rush back to the room only to find that a gunman dressed in khaki has taken Ana prisoner. The gunman makes Lopez drop his gun and tries to take Ana out of the room. Ana bites the gunman, who then struggles with Lopez until Ana shoots the gunman in the back. Outside the other man escapes, but Lopez escorts Baca and Ana safely back to Santa Fe.
     
      Returning to his office, Lopez discovers that Hoke’s wife has filed a missing person’s report for her husband. Mrs. Hoke won’t speak to anyone but Lopez, so he and Blake drive out to the Hoke ranch to interview her. She tells them that Hoke went next door to the Warner compound to settle matters. He took a shotgun with him. She fears that Warner’s men have killed her husband. Before leaving the ranch, Lopez and Blake drive around the ranch finding dead livestock rotting in the sun, killed by high-powered rifles. They find Hoke’s truck parked at the entrance to Warner’s compound.
     
      Act 8: Friday
      Overnight someone shoots up the front of the Palace of the Governors and leaves a note pinned to the front door “Get the Indians out by five this afternoon or ….” Police employ added security to the Plaza area while Lopez and Blake join Sheriff Williams, who has secured a search warrant to search Three-Hills. At Three-Hills they encounter a woman wearing a white jacket who claims to be Joan Novak, the unit psychiatrist. Novak tells them Ana is delusional, that the ranch is a treatment center as the Foreman claimed earlier and that all the young women have been treated and released. They find the barracks empty.
     
      Later, Lopez and Ortega meet to discuss a truce in the Entrada wars. Ortega agrees to the peace plan: he will not hold another Entrada if the Pueblos leave the Palace and agree not to occupy it again. Ortega tells Lopez that a group of young hot-heads attacked the Palace last night, not his posse. At five o’clock the three of them go down to the Plaza, where the hot-heads are threatening to attack the Palace. To promote peace, Lopez gets Ortega and Ortiz to meet and shake hands out front of the Palace. Immediately after they shake hands, the leader of the hot-heads fires bullets at the peacemakers. The leader, Ricky Lucero, is immediately overwhelmed by police and taken to the station for booking.
     
      Act 9: Saturday
      Lopez learns from Ana that the young women at Three-Hills have been taken to a safe-house, a Japanese tea-house built on the Warner property. Once again Lopez joins forces with Williams and a contingent of police officers raid the Warner compound. They rescue the young women held at the Japanese tea-house and then raid the ranch itself, where they capture the Foreman and Novak, who turns out to be a nurse hired to get the women ready for sex. Warner tries to escape in his private helicopter, but the copter spins out of control when Williams opens fire. The blades of the helicopter graze the side of a hill behind the helipad and the copter crashes, exploding into a thousand pieces and killing Warner.
     
      Act 10: Sunday
      Lopez accompanies Forensics as they work to exhume three graves found next to the tea-house. He expects to find Hoke’s body in one of the graves, but all the bodies turn out to be female. Lopez walks out on the mesa behind the tea-house and, noticing buzzards flying overhead, finds the decomposed body of Hoke.
     
      Act 11: Tuesday
      Lopez attends a Memorial Service for Garcia at the historic Saint Francis Auditorium in downtown Santa Fe. The speakers include Baca and Garcia’s sister, Delores. They celebrate his life as a peacemaker. After the ceremony Lopez meets Williams for coffee and the two of them bemoan the fact that the justice system won’t go after the rich men who came to the ranch to have sex with the captive women. Lopez is strangely attracted to Williams, which confuses him.
     
      AUTHOR’S NOTE: Opening credits, Visual: a lone gunman carrying a sniper’s rifle moves slowly through the darkness to the edge of a park where a huge crowd has gathered to kick off Fiesta at the burning of a 60-foot puppet known as Zozobra. As drums beat and the crowd cheers, the man takes aim at one of the people on the stage below. Title Card: the burning of Zozobra (‘Old Man Gloom’) in Fort Marcy Park, Santa Fe, New Mexico.