by Pamela Crane
Waiting to fall into the black abyss of unconsciousness, I think back to my day of reckoning. It’s been almost four years now since Winnie—she and Burt lost the titles of Mom and Dad long ago—last set eyes on me, and yet I remember her parting words with the clarity of a pithy epitaph on a tombstone … which they were, in a way.
“It’s your fault Carli’s dead,” she had said. And Burt, his mustached lips trembling, stood idly by offering no defense. “I know you were jealous of her.” Her voice was cold but calm, an icy winter breeze that snatches your breath. “You’ve always resented her, and I know you pushed her in the road when that car was coming. You killed your sister. I can’t prove it, but I just know it. And I told the police the same. I can’t even stand to look at you anymore.”
And the police believed her. She saw me do it, she told them. And Burt mutely agreed. And soon even I believed it was true.
So it was best I leave, taken into the custody of professionals. Get help. Fix me, please. But the guilt, that everlasting plague that gnaws at your flesh until you’re a walking corpse, burrowed its teeth in me. I couldn’t leave my own psyche. I couldn’t start over. I abandoned my sister. My family abandoned me. It was a sadistic cycle set on my destruction. But I’ll have the last laugh.
I withhold my tears. I feel more courageous this way.
The world begins leaning, heaving and groaning, its heaviness jerking me in wide circles. I feel a shiver of disconnect as the memories crawl out of their crypt. They’ve been asleep so long, awakening to say their final good-bye.
It’s a forsaken place, one’s deathbed. An uncertain journey, like being lost in a mist. I wonder if I’ll ever have consciousness again in a better place, or if it’s lights out forever. As the drugs course through me, I feel my skin shaking over my bones in frenetic waves. Nausea clenches my stomach, threatening to purge my poison. I roll up in a ball, gripping my abdomen as if holding in the contents. Life slips into slow motion, blurring in and out, until I close my eyes.
The annals of my memories flip in random sequence. A fatal thump that shoots Carli’s body across a sea of green. Sobs stabbing the suburban tranquility. A swarm of curious, well-meaning neighbors—cranky Mrs. Finch, Carli’s classmate Benny from next door, babysitter Becky—invading our yard as waves of red lights strobe across our horrified faces. An ambulance carries my sister away, with Winnie gripping her motionless hand while crying into Carli’s lifeless chest.
The last of my consciousness drips into a sea of unknowns as I embrace the darkness.
Chapter 9
Ari
Thirteen days until dead
The fifth season of American Horror Story had made multiple rabbits run across my grave—my grandmother’s quaint Southern expression for the willies. I flicked off the TV during a particularly intense scene and caught myself checking the corners of the living room for spooks. The cranky sofa—a curbside deal—groaned as I rose to make a grilled cheese sandwich. My mind was restless, which made my stomach grumble. Josef Alvarez was an albatross that suffocated my thoughts, drilling question after question into my skull. Clearly his specter wasn’t going to let up tonight.
Tina had left the case file with me after I dropped her off at her Duke Manor apartment following the meeting. I’d almost invited her to stay with me until we blundered into a junior league drug deal going down between two punks—one black, one white—in the parking lot. The encounter left no doubt Tina could take care of herself.
“Dudes!” she hailed them. “This is where I live. How about taking your dope deal somewhere else, like good little boys.”
I shot Tina a WTF look. “Are you crazy?” I whispered. “Don’t antagonize them.”
Ivory spoke up. “You bitches mind your own business, ah-ite?”
Tina was unfazed. “But it is my business. Like I said, I live here, and I don’t like to see douche bags effing up my neighborhood.”
That pissed Ebony off. “Bitch, you gon’ be sorry you said that.”
We stood in the glow of a streetlamp. The two punks sauntered out of the shadows toward us. The light revealed them to be fifteen, sixteen tops. Ebony kept his hand cupped on his package, which was easy because his pants were on the ground. Ivory tried his damnedest to project cool menace—no small feat for a guy with a mullet.
“One bitch for me, one for you,” said Ivory. “What’s your pleasure, ladies? Doggie style?”
“Or mebbe y’all be likin’ two in the pink, one in the stink,” Ebony added.
They collapsed on each other in idiotic laughter. Recovering, they started circling us like buzzards.
I wasn’t prepared for this, but Tina was. The look on her face said she was afraid of nothing. “You punks have no idea how disgusting you are. Do your mamas know you talk like that to ladies?”
“I don’t see no ladies,” said Ivory, “just a couple hos what need a good drillin’.”
They were only a yard or two from us now. I started to yell, but I wondered who’d come to our rescue in this neighborhood. I’d made up my mind that when either one of them got close enough, I’d serve up a swift kick to the nuts. Meanwhile I looked at Tina. Her expression said I’ve got this.
Standing her ground, she reached inside her purse and displayed the grip of a pistol. “There’s more, gentlemen. Want to see it?”
The punks took a step back.
“Be cool, mama! Put that shit away,” said Ebony. “We vamoosin’. Come on, man.”
Ivory couldn’t resist a parting shot. “You skinny ugly hos couldn’tve taken our snot rockets anyway.”
“True that,” said Ebony. His hand left his crotch long enough to shoot us a bird.
When they’d disappeared down the street, I found the tongue that I thought I’d swallowed.
“Damn, Tina. You’re a regular Dirty Harriett!” I shot a glance at the grip, still sticking out of her purse. “You got a license to carry that thing?”
“Don’t need one.” She whipped it out. It was a replica .38 special with an orange stripe on the barrel to indicate it was non-functioning. “Looks real, doesn’t it? Actually I hate guns, but a girl has to look out for herself. These punks are all talk and attitude. Usually all I have to do is show ’em the handle and they take off with their tails tucked between their legs.”
“Too bad, the white dude was kinda cute,” I deadpanned. “But the black dude probably has a bigger … uh, snot rocket.”
I’d expected hilarity to ensue, but when a cloud passed over Tina’s face, I knew I’d struck a hidden nerve.
“There’s nothing funny about it, Ari,” she muttered. Then she made a feeble excuse about being tired, shoved the case file at me, and beat a hasty retreat for her apartment.
I had a newfound respect for Tina after the encounter; she was definitely no shrinking violet. Perhaps we had more in common than I realized. We were a couple of streetwise bitches—and I use the term affectionately—that had seen and done it all. Me in juvie and the foster home system, and Tina in the mean streets she’d heretofore only dropped vague hints about. Obviously it had something to do with some hang-up about men, or with sex in general. I knew she’d come around eventually and didn’t dwell on it.
As I rounded the blue peninsula—a lasting tribute to the pastels of the 1990s—jutting out of my kitchenette wall, a cockroach scuttled at my feet, harrying me back two steps. The damn things were as large as mice, and just as fertile. But it wasn’t on account of poor housekeeping, since I kept my one-bedroom apartment OCD neat. Juvie life had trained me to keep my things orderly, lest they end up amongst your roommate’s possessions without you knowing. Truth was, I lived in a cesspool of a neighborhood where police sirens serenaded you night and day and overgrown grass littered with fast food wrappers attracted vermin. Being on the first floor, my place was an accommodating hideaway for a myriad of critters.
After slathering two slices of bread with a heart attack’s worth of butter, I cooked up a grilled cheese sandwich in a cast-iron sk
illet I’d been preheating. Mmmm. Tastes so good, it makes you want to slap your mama—another of Grandma’s witticisms, and not a bad idea, considering what a bitch Winnie was. One of these days, I vowed to learn how to make a decent meal that a decent man—like Tristan—would appreciate. But today wasn’t that day. Today something else plagued me.
The brown folder with the gruesome details of Josef’s death lay in front of me. I heaved myself up into a lone stool and flipped it open, careful not to grease up the paperwork.
A photocopy of a typed formal police report.
Copies of several crime scene photos.
A preliminary autopsy report.
A copy of a suicide letter.
I hadn’t expected Teen Cop to be so generous.
Licking my fingers clean, I leafed back to the police report, which covered the basics:
At 8:47 p.m. on April 7, 2016, a 9-1-1 operator took a call from Tina Alvarez saying her father, Josef Alvarez, had been stabbed. When officers arrived on the scene at 813 Gregson Road, they found a Hispanic man wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans, sitting upright on the sofa with a kitchen knife in his hand, and covered in blood. Dead on arrival. Driver’s license found at the scene preliminarily indicates the decedent was Josef Alvarez, aged 40; positive ID forthcoming. A canvas of the neighborhood produced no witnesses, possibly due to the remote location of the house and the dense tree coverage. No signs of a break-in. A suicide letter was retrieved from the scene, and an empty bottle of tequila and several bottles of beer indicate he had been drinking. Preliminary evidence points to suicide. A tox screen forthcoming.
It seemed pretty cut and dried to me, but if Tina was indeed correct that it was foul play, what did the cops miss?
Next I pored over the autopsy report. It was too technical for my layman brain, and pages long. I really just wanted the gist of it, which I found on page 1 under the opening summary:
Autopsy: DPD940284-37G
Decedent: Josef Alvarez
Identified by: fingerprints, family identification, ID at crime scene
Age: 40
Race: Hispanic
Sex: Male
External Examination: Well-developed Hispanic male with multiple subdural hematomas, one on right forearm and one on abdominal region, demonstrative of a suicide attempt
Toxicology: Blood and vitreous fluid positive for alcohols; blood positive for acidic, basic and neutral drugs (alprazolam)
Cause of Death: Exsanguination due to multiple stab and incised wounds.
Manner of Death: Suspected suicide
Subdural hematomas. Vitreous fluid. Exsanguination. I had no idea what I was reading—just a bunch of meaningless ten-dollar words. Filling in the context, I deduced that he died from bleeding out. But the other fact that jumped out at me was the mention of drugs.
Googling alprazolam, I read all about the medicine and its proper use—to treat anxiety and panic attacks often associated with depression—along with common side effects I recognized from the breathless list at the end of every drug commercial I’d ever seen. If I understood this correctly, they found alcohol mixed with stress meds in his system—a drug commonly found in the vanities of stressed-out moms.
Machismo and panic attacks—not something you associate with a lowlife like Josef Alvarez. Crack or meth, maybe. Xanax, no.
Perhaps the suicide note would shed more light on what happened. I laid out the photocopy in front of me and read it:
Where can I go, the tick that I am, if I bleed my host dry? The bodies are drained and my belly full to bursting. My indulgence has killed me.
I’ve come to the end of my game. Once upon a time my life was a thrill ride. The night was always young as I cruised the streets, ferreting out their secrets in the dark places where demons dwell. Ahead is my graveyard with endless lines of stones where bodies molder into lost memories below. Will I be remembered for anything but the insect that I am? I once was free, living a beautiful lie, dining on the carcasses of others, but fate schemed against me, crushing me, popping the blood from my globular gray belly.
No one will mourn me—only the devil as his handiwork becomes dust. Just a pile of bones and meat. I sold my child’s innocence for a dollar. A buck that bought me this richly deserved death.
The poetry of his words was extraordinary—unbelievable—given his lifestyle. Almost as if they were someone else’s thoughts, someone not quite so wife-beater-and-dirty-jeans. But what did I know? Maybe not everyone is who they seem to be. Or maybe this was the tequila talking.
The note referenced bleeding his host dry, someone he sucked the life out of. If these were indeed his words, then he sure as hell had enough guilt to off himself. But if they were penned by his “host,” whatever crime Josef committed against this person seemed to be the perfect motive for murder.
And I had to wonder what the “I sold my child’s innocence for a dollar” remark meant. Tina had said her father kicked her out. This revelation added another layer to her mystery, one I was hell-bent to solve. But all in good time.
Next, I flipped through the pictures, my eyeballs wandering restlessly over images of scarlet blooming across Josef’s chest, pooling along the sofa’s vinyl fabric, sprawling across the carpet. Rivulets of blood wended their macabre way across a coffee table, fouling snack chip wrappers and a bunch of other paper garbage, before eventually settling around the rim of a bottle of Jose Cuervo that sat amid a collection of dirty glasses and empty beer bottles.
I wondered what his liver looked like.
I didn’t have enough ammo to request another look by Teen Cop. They’d read the letter, checked the crime scene, saw all the same evidence I was now perusing, and yet they still ruled it a suicide. What did I know, really? But my vow to Tina was worth something, wasn’t it? I’d made a friend, a real friend. It was a chance to be human, to be supportive, to bring something to the table other than shared misery. I could help her find answers, even if the truth revealed suicide. That’s what I promised. And that’s exactly what I would do.
Chapter 10
Sophia Alvarez
San Luis, Mexico
2004
The sun nestled into the horizon, not yet ready to break the day. But six-year-old Sophia Martina Alvarez was already tiptoeing out of her bedroom, leaving her four-year-old brother Killian curled up asleep at the foot of their bed as the sound of hushed voices in the kitchen drew her down the hallway. Mama and Papa were sitting at the table across from a man Sophia didn’t recognize.
“Buenos dias,” Mama greeted her sweetly like every other morning. But it didn’t feel like every other morning to Sophia. Not without the smell of cooking chicken and cheese chilaquiles, or if Sophia promised her best behavior, a sugary churros treat to start the day.
Waking up to the hunger pangs of the past were long gone. After years of dining on the neighbors’ leftovers and scraps of beans and rice that her madre always frugally rationed, finally they were eating real meals … at least twice a day, sometimes more. And wearing shoes and clothes of her own choosing, not her cousins’ hand-me-downs.
“Buenos dias, Mama,” Sophia replied shyly, eyeing the strange man in her home at such an early hour.
“We have a special guest today,” Mama announced, her words coaxing and smooth. “Josef, how about you explain to Sophia who our friend is while I get some breakfast for everyone?”
Josef waved Sophia on to his lap, settling her against his chest built like a chopping block. “This is George—he’s, well, he’s a friend. He’s going to be watching you for a little while for your madre and me. Comprende?”
Sophia insistently shook her head. “No, Papa, I don’t want a new friend. I have Arturo next door.”
“Aw, sweetie, you can never have too many friends. Mr. George will play with you—all your favorite games. Like el escondite—you can hide and he’ll find you.”
“It’s no fun playing with grownups, Papa.”
“I promise you, George is a lot of fun.”<
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Sophia rolled her eyes in doubt.
“It’s true,” George said, his voice like cool steel. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll play you in a game of piedra, papel, tijeras, and if you win, I’ll buy you any toy you want.”
“For real?” Sophia squeaked, looking to her father for approval.
“Si,” her papa agreed. “Go ahead.”
Despite her tender years, Sophia knew something about Mr. George wasn’t normal. “Mr. George, you’re a grownup, so why do you like playing with kids?”
He rubbed his fingers along his thin mustache, caressing the silky hairs with gentle strokes. His eyes glazed over, like he was watching a long-ago idyll replay in his head. “I find children to be … refreshing,” he finally spoke, the words soothing and melodious, like water tumbling over rocky shoals. “Full of vibrancy and energy. Children make me feel young again. Like I can bottle you up and drink in your vigor all day.”
A clash of dishes stopped George short as Mercedes frantically picked up shards of clay from the floor. “Sorry about that,” she sputtered, wiping at her damp eyes. But the commotion didn’t alarm Sophia as her attention was raptly focused on this charming hombre and his unusual interest in children.
“I don’t know any other grownups who like playing with kids.”
“Now you do. So let’s play—rock, paper, scissors.”
Sophia placed her tiny hand out, dirt rimming her chewed nails, palm down, then George added his own, delicate and fastidiously manicured, across from hers. Together they counted: “One … two … three.”
Sophia tossed her fist downward and shouted, “Piedra!” while George threw his flat hand out, saying, “Papel.”