“Who the hell was this guy?” She didn’t think he was speaking to her. “Damn, I want a look at the lost-and-missing file.”
Across the stream, at the top of the bluff, the state CSI van had pulled in. A figure emerged from the driver’s side. The chief pointed. “Knox, get over there and help Morin with his gear.”
She thudded down the hill, picked her way across the stream, and climbed up to the van. Sergeant Morin of the NYSPD shook her hand, looked at her chest, stuttered a hello, and had her take one end of a footlocker-sized box. They staggered down to the stream, heels digging into the crumbling earth, the flesh at the back of Hadley’s neck creeping and itching the closer they got to the body.
“Do you know if anybody moved him?” Morin asked.
Her eyes involuntarily went to the John Doe. “The chief thinks he might have rolled. . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Dr. Scheeler glanced up at her. “Uh-oh,” he said.
“No.” She shook her head. “It’s not that. His hand.” She could only see one. The other was rubber-banded inside a brown paper bag. “The tattoos. The symbols on his fingers. I saw two guys with the same tattoo. Last night.”
VIII
The barn was on the edge of a pasture ringed with woods, the last things left, he guessed, from a long-ago homestead that hadn’t worked out. From his side, a half-hidden trail led down the mountain, over the stream, and onto the McGeochs’ land. On her side, a rutted sheep-churned path broad enough to admit a hay cart. Leading, he guessed, to her home.
The barn stood beside an oval fire pond levied up around a creek some long-ago summer. From inside the open doorway, Amado watched the sluggish trickle, water in through one bank, out through the other.
The first time Isobel had brought him here had been a few hours before dawn, the night they met. She had left him there, to sleep away the morning, and when she’d returned that afternoon, they had found a fox skeleton against the cut-stone foundation. The skull, smooth and yellow-white, was their signal. Right now, it hung on a nail on the pasture-side door, letting her know, if she saw it, that he was here. Waiting for her.
It was a pole barn, straight up and down, designed for one thing: to store hay against the hard, long winter. The doorways, front and back, were set hay-wagon high, and he had to haul himself up to the edge and then climb a stack of square bales before getting to his feet. Then he could either climb again, to sit on one of the massive beams transversing the barn, or spread out the quilt she had left on the mound of loose hay in the corner. He usually chose the beam or sat cross-legged on the hard bales. The soft mow and the quilt were too casual, too . . . sexual. No need to chase temptation.
This had been her special place before she had ever shown it to him. She had a crate filled with books, CDs, a CD player, and water bottles. He knew she smoked here, too, though she never did so in front of him; there was a lingering smell of marijuana above the green and dusty scent of the new and old hay.
He balanced on the beam and peeked through the small off-center window that looked out over the pasture. His rib cage lifted, expanded, when he spotted her making her way across the field, stepping over sheep droppings and swishing at early daisies. It was stupid, he knew. Stupid and dangerous. At home, if she had been one of them, he could have courted her, met her brothers, taken her to his parents’ home. Here, they couldn’t even be seen together.
No, it was more than that. Here, he couldn’t let himself think about her in that way. She was anglo, a North American, part of a family that owned, as near as he could tell from their halting conversations, an entire mountain and the rolling farmlands around it. And she was tangled in darkness and violence. If he hadn’t gotten that message on the night they met, he would have figured it out today, when Raul had stumbled across a murdered man halfway between her property and the McGeochs’. No. She was out of bounds, for more reasons than he could count.
It wasn’t as if she were a great beauty. She was too pale, the bones in her face too square. It was, he guessed, because she reminded him of girls he had admired at home. She was rounded, womanly, but tough. A hard worker. Quick to smile, but not cheap and available, like so many of the women up north. And she needed him, needed his strength, in some way he hadn’t yet identified.
She vanished from his line of sight, to reappear in a moment at the back door, swinging a paper sack up onto the hay before lifting herself over the edge of the doorway. “Amado?” She blinked in the dimmed light. “I have lunch. Um, la comida.”
He dropped down from the beam. “Oh!” She clapped her hand to her chest and said something in English too rapid for him to follow. He held his hand to his ear. “Eh?” he said.
“Eh?” She laughed.
“Lunch,” he said. “I am hungry.”
“¿Yo hambre?”
“Tengo hambre,” he corrected. He grabbed the quilt and snapped it open, letting it float down on the hay bales to make a picnic cloth. She opened the sack and removed paper napkins and sandwiches and corn chips and apples. They sat on opposite sides. Not touching. The sandwich was delicious, real bread stuffed thick with meat and cheese. He wondered if she had made it for him or taken one that was meant for another of her family. He wondered if she felt the high, hard bars that kept them apart. He wondered what she thought of him when she was alone.
“Por qué . . . you . . . here now?” she said, around a handful of corn chips. “No work por la día?”
“Hide,” he said. He swallowed the last of his sandwich. He didn’t know if he was bringing trouble to her door, or if he was helping her avoid it, but he had to tell her about the dead man. It was too near to her land and too soon after her flight through the woods to be coincidental.
He spoke in Spanish, wanting to tell the whole story before trying to pick out the words and concepts he could convey to her in English. He told her about the smell, and the way it seemed to linger inside his nostrils all the way back to the barnyard. He told her about the surprise of seeing his brother Octavio’s lady priest, and Mrs. McGeoch’s near collapse, and about rounding up the men—again—and having to deal with their whining about the heat and boredom of the ancient farmhouse they bunked in. He told her about hiding in the woods until the last possible moment, watching the black truck roll up and disgorge two policía.
All the while, she listened intently, though he doubted she understood one word in ten. And when he finished, she tilted her head to one side, looked at him as if she knew exactly what he’d been going through, and said, “I’m sorry. Lo siento.”
He took a deep breath. “I find a dead man,” he said in English. “By the water.”
Isobel went very still. No surprise. No horror. Instead, her eyes, usually as brown and deep as rich coffee, went flat. As if she was looking in, rather than out. “By the water,” she said. “Where? ¿Dónde es?”
He didn’t know the English word, so he made rippling, winding motions. “El arroyo.” He arched his hand up and over, representing the mountain, then traced the water’s course along the imaginary edge of the property.
She drew her knees up and bent her head forward. Her face disappeared behind a curtain of hair. “¿La policía?” she asked, after a while.
“Yes.” He felt sick at the thought she had something to do with the bloated thing he had seen that morning, but he had to curl his hands into fists to keep from taking her by the shoulders and drawing her near. She looked up at him. Her eyes shone with tears. She said something low and rapid he couldn’t make out, and he realized, at bottom, it didn’t matter what she had done, he would still help her in any way he could.
“I help you,” he said.
She shook her head.
“Please,” he said.
She smiled, just a little, and the change in her expression broke the water in her eyes so that tears rolled down her cheeks. She said something else—he caught the word “man” and the word “good”—and then reached out and took one of his hands in hers.
He s
queezed it. “I help you,” he insisted.
She looked at him for a long moment. Finally, she nodded. “Okay.” She rose, tugging him up with her. She released his hand, scooped up the empty paper sack, and walked across the bales to the open doorway. She jumped to the ground with an easy grace, and he followed her as she slipped around the corner. She stopped, dropped the sack on the grass, and traced the edges of the clapboards where they butted against the stone foundation.
Isobel tugged one of the peeling boards. “Help me,” she said. He stood beside her, wedged his fingers into the narrow gap between one board and the next, and pulled. Once, twice, and a four-foot section of board came off, reeling him backward. She plunged her hands into the narrow slice of darkness. There was something odd about it, a space where there shouldn’t have been any more than a few inches to the interior lathing, but before he could get close enough to study it, she hauled out the biggest, ugliest pistol he had ever seen and thrust its butt end toward him.
He dropped it. “¡De qué joder!”
She was still digging around inside the gap. He stared at the gun, horrified. She dragged something else from the interior and turned toward him. She had a hard-covered writing tablet in one hand and a cell phone in the other. She followed his gaze to the gun. Her eyes widened. Whatever she said was unintelligible to him, but he got the gist of it. He grabbed the thing awkwardly, trying not to touch the trigger, the barrel, or the grip. He wound up pinching it between two white-jointed, sweat-slick fingers, as if he were holding a dead rat that weighed eight pounds. He eased the gun into the sack. He had no idea if it was ready to fire or not. He didn’t even know how to check to see if it was loaded.
She dropped the notebook on the grass. Considered the sleek, flat cell phone in the other. Finally, she shoved it into her jeans pocket. Reaching back inside the space, she emerged with a large padded envelope, the kind of thing used to post books or small presents. She pressed against the sides, popping the top open and tipped it upside down over the paper bag. With a mixture of fascination and repulsion, he watched as brick after brick of American cash thudded into the sack.
She bent down, retrieved the writing tablet, and stuffed it into the mailer. She put it back into her hiding space. Picked up the board and fitted it over the gap. Wedged it back into place.
The sack was still dangling, open, from his nerveless fingers. Isobel took it and rolled its edges down until it resembled an oversized lunch bag. She held it out to him. “Hide,” she said.
God almighty above. He looked at the unremarkable brown paper sack in his hand. Looked at her face, full of desperation and fear and hope. “Isobel,” he said. He cradled her cheek in one hand. How could he ask her what he wanted to know? Did you kill that man? Is this your gun?
“Amado.” Only a whisper between them. Then she stepped toward him and not even that remained. Slowly, shyly, she wrapped her arms around him. He dropped the sack. Cupped her face in both hands.
He didn’t know what made him tear his eyes away from her, toward the woods at the other end of the pasture. An instinct for self-preservation forged during two illegal crossings, maybe. Whatever it was, he looked—and saw a burly, blond Anglo framed in the footpath’s opening. Even from that distance, he could tell the man was related to Isobel.
“Mierda,” he whispered.
Isobel whirled. Inhaled. Turned to him. “Go,” she said.
He shook his head. He wasn’t about to leave her to face her family alone. “No. You come.”
“Please! Go! Vamanose!” She glanced back over her shoulder. Said something fast and full of despair. She pushed at him. “Please, Amado, please. Go. No come back. I okay.”
“No!”
She dragged him around the corner of the barn, out of sight of the approaching man, and pinned him in place with her body. “You no come back! I okay. He—” She struggled to find a word, then sliced her finger across her throat. Then she leaped over all those high bars and good reasons keeping them apart as easily as she jumped from the haymow and kissed him.
Time stopped in an endless moment of soft and wet and the taste of coffee and corn chips. His breath caught and his eyes fluttered shut, and then she pulled away and shoved him toward the woods. He tucked the sack under his arm and ran, his mind fogged, until the thrash of branches and the sawing of his own breath alerted him to the fact that a blind man could follow the noisy trail he was making. He stopped, chest heaving. Wait. He had to make sure she was all right.
He doubled back toward the barn, slipping between hemlocks and birch trees. He stayed low, sticking to shadows and scrub brush. He spotted a deadfall pine, moldering into the forest floor, and he dropped belly-down next to it.
He could hear them, faintly, the big man bellowing and Isobel yelling. He was demanding, she was defying—that Amado got from the pitch of their voices. Then—oh, God—there was the meaty sound of flesh hitting flesh. Isobel shrieked. He heard it again. He was up from his hiding place, up and moving, his hand flailing at the paper bag, reaching for the gun, when he heard her, over the sound of his thudding feet.
“Amado!” He skidded to a stop. She wasn’t calling his name. She was . . . naming him. He moved closer, tree to tree to tree. He could hear her, sobbing. “Amado, okay?” she said. Then more—between the weeping and the English, he couldn’t make it out—but he heard her say “McGeochs” clear enough.
His fingers curled around the butt of the gun. Through the leaves, he could make out the top half of the barn. He dropped the sack and fell to his stomach again, crawling through the underbrush until he could see.
Isobel was curled on the ground, trapped between the barn and the big man. She had both arms wrapped around her in futile protection. She shook with sobs. Her lip was bleeding. Amado brought the gun up and sighted it. The bastard’s back was wide enough; even an inexperienced shot couldn’t miss.
Then Isobel’s attacker bent over and scooped her up. He cradled her tenderly, making soothing noises, stroking her back and hair. She clung to the monster, still weeping, and buried her face in his shoulder.
Amado lowered the gun. He turned away, fighting to keep his gorge down. He knew what that was. He had seen it before. There were a few women in his village whose husbands would beat them Saturday night and woo them Sunday morning. But he was sure Isobel was unmarried. A brother, then? Or an uncle? He stared at the gun in his hand, heavy and unfamiliar, and almost dropped it again. Sweet mother of Christ. Had the bearded giant been hitting Isobel because he had seen her with a dark-skinned man? Or because this was missing?
Hide, she had said. Hide. He bent, scooped up the sack he had dropped, and replaced the gun inside. Slowly, carefully, he threaded his way through the trees. Back toward the McGeochs’ land. To do what she had asked him to do.
IX
The first person Kevin ran into as he snuck into the station that afternoon was the deputy chief. “What the hell are you doin’ here?” MacAuley asked.
“Uh . . . I wanted to get in a little early for my shift.”
“An hour early? Damn, boy, your hair’s still wet.”
“I showered at the gym. I was working out.”
MacAuley’s caterpillar eyebrows went up. “You. Were working out.” He thwacked Kevin on the chest with a manila folder. “I thought you were more into pickup basketball games.”
Kevin shrugged.
MacAuley shook his head and looked upward, to where acoustic tiles covered the hallway’s original plaster ceiling. “God help us all,” he said. He thumbed toward the briefing room. “May as well get back there. You can tell the chief about your stop last night.”
“My what?”
MacAuley looked at him impatiently. “You stopped to pick up Knox, right? Ran plates on a Hummer driven by a guy with tattoos? A corpse cake turned up this morning in the woods off of Lick Springs Road. Matching marks on his hands. Lati-no.” He rolled his eyes. “Not PC to say Mexican anymore. Hunh. Maybe I’ll start calling myself a Hibernian-America
n.”
“I think you mean Caledonian-American, Dep. Hibernian-American would be Irish. Like me.” By the look on MacAuley’s face, that last “like me” might have been overdoing it.
“Get in there, before I go Irish on your ass.”
Kevin hustled into the squad room, grinning to himself. To be rewarded by the sight of her, seated at the big table, studying a series of photos.
“Hey, Hadley,” he said, his voice a pitch-perfect blend of friendly and casual. He had practiced in his Aztek on the way over.
“Hey, Flynn.” She didn’t take her eyes off the pictures.
“You can call me Kevin, you know.”
That made her glance up. “I don’t think so.”
“What are you doing here so early?” The voice made him jump. Oh. Yeah. There was somebody else in the room. Kevin turned toward the bulletin board, where the chief was tacking up rap sheets. “Never mind,” he continued, “Come here and tell me if you recognize any of these.”
Kevin crossed to the board. The sheets had the familiar formatting of the NYS VCAP database. Eight young Latinos stared at him, captured by booking photographers in Brooklyn and Manhattan and the Bronx: defiant, stoned, sullen, smirking. Kevin tapped the smirking face. “That’s the one I had to chase off. He doesn’t have his piercings in this shot”—he touched his upper lip—“but that’s him.” He leaned closer to read the guy’s short list. Fresh out of Plattsburgh, less than four months ago. Three possessions, carrying concealed, auto theft, assault, and assault with a deadly weapon. Possible associate of the Punta Diablos. No wonder he’d intimidated Hadley.
The chief grunted. “Knox ID’d him as well. Anybody else?”
Kevin closed his eyes for a moment. Tried to re-create the moment in his mind: his lights on Hadley’s car, the men, two on either side as he drove up. One pair scuttling for the Hummer before he had gotten out of his cruiser. Leaving his rig twisted frontward some, so the big block of his Colt .44 could make an impression. The littler rat-faced guy squinting at his gun. Panicked.
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