Where There's Smoke

by Sandra Brown

  “Frisk him, Lara.” She jumped to the ground and ran her hands over the outside of the doctor’s clothing.

  “I am unarmed,” he said with dignity.

  “You’re also a goddamn liar,” Key said. With a nod, Lara confirmed that the doctor wasn’t concealing a weapon, then returned to her place in the jeep. “Get in.”

  Soto did as Key ordered and climbed into the front seat. Key vaulted in to sit beside Lara, digging the muzzle of the gun into the hollow at the base of the doctor’s skull. Father Geraldo put the jeep in gear and they took off.

  “Where are you taking me? For God’s sake, please… I don’t know why you are doing this. What do you want from me?”

  “The truth.” Lara leaned forward so she could be heard. “You know more than you’re telling about my daughter’s death, don’t you?”

  Key nudged the back of Soto’s head with the pistol. “No!” the doctor protested in a high, thin voice. “I swear I know nothing. As God is my witness,”

  “Careful,” Key warned. “There’s a man of God present who tells Him everything.”

  “I cannot help you,” he whimpered.

  “Cannot or will not?” Lara asked.

  “Cannot.”

  “That’s not true. What do you know that you’re holding back?”

  “Mrs. Porter, I implore you—”

  “Tell me,” she insisted.

  Father Geraldo drove down a dirt lane that ended in a remote clearing above the river. The river began as a clear, rushing stream in the mountains, but by the time it had snaked its way down through the jungle and cut a swathe through Ciudad Central, where it swept up garbage and pollutants, it emptied sludge into the ocean. He brought the jeep to a stop but kept the motor idling.

  “Were you on duty at the hospital that day our car was ambushed?” Lara asked.

  He tried to nod but couldn’t because of the revolver. “Sí,” he whispered in fear.

  “Did you see my daughter?”

  “Sí. She was critically wounded.”

  Lara swallowed, remembering the amount of blood gushing from the wound on Ashley’s neck. The carotid artery had no doubt been severed. She closed her eyes in an attempt to stamp out that mental picture. Later she could grieve. Now, she didn’t have the luxury of time. “What happened to my daughter’s body?”

  “Father,” Soto pleaded, rolling his eyes toward the priest, “I beg you to intercede. I have a family to protect. God knows my heart goes out to Mrs. Porter, but I am afraid of reprisals.”

  “You damn sure should be.” Key spoke in a near growl. “El Corazón isn’t here, but I am. We haven’t come a thousand miles to fuck around with you. Tell her what she wants to know, or you’re no use to us. ¿Comprende? In other words, you’re dispensable.”

  Lara didn’t approve of Key’s fear tactics. They had agreed that he would use them only when all else failed, or—and this was doubtful—when they became convinced that Soto was telling the truth and that he didn’t know anything about Ashley’s burial. She was reasonably sure he wouldn’t make good on his implied threats, but hopefully Soto would fall for them before she had an opportunity to put it to test.

  “Padre?” Soto begged, his voice cracking as he glanced fearfully at the murky, polluted waters below. “¿Por favor?”

  Father Geraldo crossed himself, bowed his head, and began to pray softly. He couldn’t have been more convincing.

  “I’m tired of this shit.” Key jumped over the side of the jeep and motioned with his head for the doctor to alight.

  “Cementerio del Sagrado Corazón,” he blurted.

  “Sacred Heart. She’s buried there?” Lara asked.

  “Sí.” The doctor expelled his breath and seemed to deflate like a balloon. “During those early days of fighting, they took most of the casualties there. Take me there, and I will show you.”

  Father Geraldo stopped praying and put the jeep in reverse. Key climbed back in. He had a warning for the doctor: “You’d better not be bullshitting us.”

  “No, señor. I swear it on the heads of my children.”

  The cemetery was located on the other side of the city. It would have been a long drive under normal circumstances. The distance was increased by the circuitous route the priest took. He doubled back several times to make certain they weren’t being followed. To avoid roadblocks and military convoys, he zigzagged through seemingly abandoned neighborhoods where streetlights remained dark and only alley cats were brave enough to show themselves.

  Lara’s nerves were jangling by the time they reached the cemetery gates. “It’s locked!”

  “But it’s a low wall. Come on.” Key was the first one out of the jeep. He motioned Soto down. “Keep both hands on your head. If you lower them, I’ll shoot you.”

  “You cannot shoot me or you will not know where to look for the girl’s grave.”

  The bluff didn’t work on Key. He flashed a grin that showed up extraordinarily white against his black beard. “I didn’t say I’d kill you. I just said I’d shoot you. For instance in the hand. You wouldn’t be able to change a Band-Aid, much less do surgery.” He stopped smiling. “Now move.”

  The four of them had no difficulty getting over the low stone wall. Soto indicated the direction in which they should go. They didn’t risk using a flashlight. There was no moon, so they had to pick their way carefully around tombstones and over uneven ground.

  The cemetery was situated on a hillside and offered a commanding view of the city with the mountains rising behind it. It had not escaped the effects of war. The grounds were no longer maintained. Very few graves appeared to have been tended since the revolution began. It broke Lara’s heart to think of her daughter being buried in this desolate place that was overrun with weeds and inhabited by jungle reptiles that slithered unseen in the underbrush.

  Ashley won’t be here for long, she vowed silently.

  Indeed, Dr. Soto had reached a shelf of land that rimmed a wide depression. There he stopped. Moving slowly so he wouldn’t incite Key to make good his threat, he turned toward Lara. She was taken aback by the ghoulish appearance of his eyes until she realized that the wavering sheen in them was actually unshed tears.

  “I would not have had you know this, but you insisted,” he said. “It would have been much better if you had not forced me to bring you here. Better yet that you had forgotten what happened to you in Montesangre and stayed in America.”

  “What the hell are you jabbering about?” Key demanded.

  Lara, more mystified than angry, moved closer to the edge and looked down into the depression. It was about twenty yards in diameter, roughly round in shape, and resembled a meteor crater, although vegetation had cropped up in spots.

  Still perplexed, she turned to Father Geraldo. He was staring into the shallow bowl of earth. His shoulders were hunched forward, and his arms hung loosely at his sides. He had a listless grip on his flask, but he wasn’t drinking from it. Seeing the depression had stupefied him and supplanted his preoccupation with rum.

  Key, too, was staring beyond the ledge as though demanding it to offer up an explanation. Then suddenly his whole body twitched as though a string coming out the top of his head had been jerked hard. He dropped the pistol in the dirt and grabbed the doctor by the lapels of his linen suit, lifting him until his toes dangled inches from the ground.

  “Are you telling us—”

  “Sí, sí.” Key had shaken the tears from the doctor’s eyes. They coursed down his face. “Doscientos. Trescientos. ¿Quién sabe?”

  “Two hundred or three hundred what?” Lara’s voice rose in panic. “Two hundred or three hundred—”

  When the answer struck her, she lost her ability to breathe. Her mouth remained open, but she couldn’t exhale or inhale.

  Key released the doctor and rushed toward her. “Lara!”

  The most bloodchilling sound she had ever heard rose above the sepulchral silence of the cemetery. At first she didn’t realize that the wail had
been ripped from her own throat. Spreading her arms wide, she flung herself toward the rim of the depression and would have plunged to the bottom if Key’s extended arm hadn’t caught her at the waist. She bent double over it. He hauled her backward, but she fought him with the abnormal strength of the demented.

  Finally managing to tear herself free, she crawled toward the edge, inexorably, clawing at the earth, uprooting clumps of grass, and all the while making that unnatural keening sound.

  “No! God no! Please no! Ashley! Oh, Jesus, no.”

  Dr. Soto was blathering about the day the mass grave was ordered. It had been dug by bulldozers specifically to accommodate the enormous number of casualties. Morticians couldn’t keep up with the demand, he said. When the morgue had filled to capacity, they’d begun placing cadavers wherever they could find space. Hundreds had died in the streets, where their bodies had been left to decompose. It became a health hazard to the living. There were outbreaks of typhoid and other contagious diseases. The rebel commanders dealt with the problem the most expeditious way they could devise.

  “Lara, stop this!” Key’s hands were on her shoulders, trying to pull her up, but she dug her fingers into the earth and wouldn’t let go.

  “I am sorry. So sorry,” Dr. Soto repeated.

  She understood now why he had been reluctant to tell her about this mass grave. He had feared reprisals, but not from El Corazón. From her.

  “Leave me alone.” As Key tried to pull her away from the brink of the macabre pit, her fingernails left bloody tracks down his forearm. He grunted in pain but only redoubled his efforts to bring her under control.

  “Lara.” Father Geraldo knelt beside her, speaking gently. “God in His infinite wisdom—”

  “NO!” she screamed. “Don’t talk to me about God!” Then in the next breath she entreated the deity for mercy.

  “Who did this?” Key’s hard hands were still bracketing her shoulders but he had fixed a murderous glare on Dr. Soto. “Who ordered that little babies be shoveled into a mass grave? Good God, are you people barbarians? I want a name. Who gave the order? I want that motherfucker’s name.”

  “I am sorry, señor, but it is impossible to know who gave the order for a mass burial. Everything—” Dr. Soto’s next utterance was a soft gasp. He dropped to his knees, clutching his chest, then collapsed onto his side.

  Father Geraldo was into his third Hail Mary when he pitched forward and landed flat on his face in the damp soil near Lara’s right hand.

  In fascination and horror she watched a dark pool form beneath his head.

  “Christ!”

  Key reached for the Beretta he’d dropped earlier but wasn’t fast enough. For his failed effort he got a boot in his ribs and went down with a grimace and a groan.

  Crabbing backward, Lara tried frantically to move away from the gelatinous mess that had once been Father Geraldo’s head. She was yanked to her feet so swiftly that her teeth crashed together.

  “Buenas noches, señora. We meet again.”

  It was the guerrilla leader from the roadblock outside Ciudad Central. Ricardo.

  The military transport truck hit a chuckhole. Lara was thrown against the steel side of the “deuce and a half,” which was the American slang for the tonnage of the truck. They’d been traveling for hours.

  Almost before her brain had registered that they were surrounded by armed men, her hands had been roughly tied behind her. They were still bound, making it impossible to maintain her balance as the truck bounced along. She’d been thrown from side to side so many times, she would be covered with bruises. If she lived.

  That was still open to speculation.

  Father Geraldo was dead. Dr. Soto had died in midsentence. Key was very much alive. Thank God. He had kept up a litany of abusive curses as they were dragged from the cemetery and forced into the truck. Several soldiers had been rifling through their belongings left in the jeep. One had been fiddling with the camera and lenses in the camera bag. Key shouted at him. “Keep your goddamn hands off that!”

  Like Lara, his hands were tied behind him, but he rushed forward and kicked the bag out of the soldier’s hands. The hotheaded soldier cracked the butt of his pistol against Key’s temple. Key staggered and dropped to his knees, but he wasn’t cowed. He looked at the soldier and, with blood dripping from the wound on the side of his head, grinned and said, “Your mother got you by fucking a jackass.”

  Whether he understood English, the soldier interpreted the comment as an insult and lunged for Key. Before he could get retribution, Ricardo ordered the younger man to get them into the truck.

  There was some discussion among them as to whether they should bring the jeep along or leave it at the cemetery gate. Ricardo decided to let one of the guerrillas follow them in it.

  Lara and Key were hoisted into the back of the truck. Their belongings, including the camera bag and her doctor’s bag, were tossed in after them. The soldiers climbed aboard, then lowered and latched the canvas canopy. They could see nothing, but their captors insisted that they be blindfolded. Naturally, Key didn’t submit. It took three men holding him down before they could secure the dirty bandanna over his eyes.

  Lara knew that physical resistance would be futile, but her eyes conveyed the full extent of her contempt before she was likewise blindfolded.

  The road was virtually impassable. The soldiers were unwashed. In the airless confines of the truck, the smell was overpowering. She was thirsty but knew that any request for water would go unheeded. Her butt was sore, as were her arms and legs. The bindings around her wrists were beginning to chafe.

  She wanted to know where they were taking them and why. How much longer until they reached their destination? Did they even have a specific destination? When they reached it, what then?

  She conserved the strength it would take to ask. No one would answer her. They had attempted to communicate only once. Key had been punished for it.

  “Lara?” His throat had sounded as raspy and dry as hers. “You okay?”

  “Key?”

  “Thank God.” He sighed. “Hang in there and—”

  “¡Silencio!”

  “Fuck you.”

  There was a scuffle, then a moan, and Key hadn’t spoken to her since.

  She tried self-hypnosis to remove her mind and body from the present situation. But each time she tried to conjure up mental pictures of a desert sunset, or a rolling tide, or drifting clouds, her focus returned to the mass grave in the cemetery where her daughter would be interred forever.

  Accomplishing what she had set out to do was an impossibility. Why then didn’t she try to escape, and let a soldier’s bullet be her deliverance? Father Geraldo and Dr. Soto had felt no pain. Instant extinction. How lovely.

  Why did she still have the will to survive?

  No, it was stronger than will. It was a resolve to see the ones responsible for such an atrocity punished. Burying the daughter of a U.S. ambassador in such an unspeakable manner violated universally acknowledged human rights. If she lived, she would see to it that the world knew about the disgrace.

  Lara had dealt with many terminally ill patients. Until tonight she had not understood their unwillingness to surrender life. How could one hang on, stubbornly clinging to life, knowing that the situation was hopeless? She’d often contemplated the human spirit’s refusal to accept death. Now she understood that one could survive even the worst possible circumstances.

  The survival instinct was stronger than she had believed. It preserved life, even when the mind had given up. If that were not so, she would have died upon seeing that mass grave and learning that her baby girl was buried there. That innate determination to live sustained her through the long night.

  She must have dozed because she came awake when the truck ground to a halt and she heard sounds of activity outside the truck. She smelled wood smoke and cooking food.

  “Here already?” Key quipped sarcastically.

  She was brought to her feet
and lifted out of the truck. Her limbs were stiff and sore. She stumbled when she was shoved forward, but the fresh air on her skin and in her lungs was welcome. She breathed deeply and tried to work circulation back into her legs.

  Suddenly the blindfold was ripped off. Ricardo was standing close, smiling broadly. “¡Bienvenido!” She recoiled from his rancid breath. “El Corazón is anxious to welcome his special guests.”

  She was surprised at his command of English. “I have plenty to say to El Corazón, too.”

  He laughed. “A woman with a sense of humor. I like that.”

  “I wasn’t being funny.”

  “Ah, but you were, señora. Very funny.”

  Just then a woman dressed in dirty fatigue pants and a sweat-stained tank top launched herself against him. After an embarrassingly passionate kiss during which he openly fondled her, she purred, “Come inside. I have food for you.”

  “Where is El Corazón?” he asked.

  “Waiting inside.”

  Still groping each other, they ambled toward a crude shack and climbed the rickety steps to a shallow porch and a curtained doorway. The other soldiers were being similarly greeted by women in the camp and given bowls of food dished from a communal cooking pot suspended over the campfire. They drank fresh coffee from tin cups. Lara would have settled for a drink of water. Her lip was still tender and swollen.

  Two men with semiautomatic weapons were standing guard over her and Key. When Lara first saw him, she gasped. He was sitting on the ground near her, but the guards stood between them. The wound on his temple had coagulated. It looked nasty and needed to be cleaned and disinfected, probably sutured. She wondered if she’d be given access to her doctor’s bag, but thought not.

  His eyes were ringed with shadows of fatigue, as she knew hers also must be. His clothes, like hers, were filthy and perspiration-stained. It was barely daylight, so the sun wasn’t yet a factor, but the humidity was so high that a mist as dense as fog clung to the tops of the trees in the jungle that surrounded the clearing.