I Shall Not Want

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  Her big brother stepped into the hallway beside her. “Should I call Mom?”

  “No! G’back inside, you two. I just startled the Father some.” He ran one hand over his bald scalp. “Din’t mean to scare you. We got here when you was meeting with the vestry. Din’t want to interrupt.”

  “No, no.” She looked down at the mess on her clerical blouse. “I was going to put this in the fridge.” She looked at the sexton. He was in his usual work clothes: baggy, stained twill pants and a plaid shirt. He had a backpack in one hand, and even from several feet away she could smell cigarette smoke. “What are you doing here?”

  “Honey told me ’bout the Mexican boy disappearing. I figgured it was time for me to get back on the job.”

  “With the kids in tow?” Another thought occurred to her. “Has your doctor—” the bag of chips was beginning to cut into her wrist. “Let me get rid of this, hmm?” He followed her down the hall into the semisubterranean kitchen. She laid the sandwich platter and the chips on the wide center island. “There are some sodas left in the meeting room. Would the kids like lunch?”

  “Don’t want to be no bother.” He waved his hand in the vague direction of her upper body. “Better take care of that stuff on your shirt, there. ’Fore it stains.”

  She grabbed a dishcloth and turned on the cold water. “Has your doctor given you the okay to go back to work?”

  He grunted. “Somebody’s got to. This place ain’t gonna clean itself, y’know.”

  She looked up from scrubbing the mayo off her blouse. “Does your granddaughter know you’re here?”

  Mr. Hadley shifted from foot to foot. “Long as I’m watching the kids and they ain’t parked in front of the TV like she axed, I don’t see as it makes no never mind where we are.”

  “Mr. Hadley—”

  He lifted the backpack and placed it next to the sink. “I found this in my closet. Figgured it belonged to the Mexican.”

  She recognized it now. Amado had been carrying that bag when she had come to pick him up at the McGeochs’ farm. Before the choir concert. Before the Christies invaded her church. Before Russ—

  She dropped the dishcloth in the sink. The mayo was gone, but now she had an enormous oily wet spot on her midsection. “I suppose the police will want to see it.”

  “I s’pose they will.” Mr. Hadley unzipped the bag and held it toward her, opened wide.

  “Holy—” She inhaled. Inside, a monstrous .357 nestled between wrapped stacks of currency.

  “Oh, dear lord.” She thought of the young Latino’s nervous eyes. The way he’d scrub at his half-grown mustache when she spoke to him. “What did you get yourself into?”

  III

  He wished he had kept the gun. It would have felt good, riding heavy against the waistband of his jeans, raising a bruise as he toiled up and down the forested hills, making his way to the Christie farm. It was a form of communication those hijos de putas could understand.

  Amado paused and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. The air was sticky with the scent of pine. Only an hour past dawn and already hot beneath the forest cover. Raul thought he was a liar, with his stories of cool mountain mornings and evenings where you needed to wear a jacket. Those were past years. This year was different.

  He wished he had never come back to this place.

  He wasn’t sure how he was going to get them to admit what they had done with Octavio. He wasn’t even sure they were there. The policewoman who had come last night, asking questions while her partner searched the bunkhouse and the barn and the outbuildings, had said other police were talking with the Christies at the same time. She had said they should call if Amado showed up. Everyone looked straight ahead and pretended they didn’t know the real Amado had swapped names and papers with his brother. She had said they should watch out for anyone suspicious and should stick together in pairs. She didn’t know much about dairy work.

  He had two utility knives in his pockets. A farmer’s tool. Sharp enough to slash through tangled leather straps, sturdy enough to pry a stone out of a hoof. He was a farmer, not a fighter, but he knew he could hurt the Christies badly enough to make them talk. If they didn’t kill him first.

  He hiked up the last rise—the same stretch of woods he had stumbled through a month ago, fleeing with gun and money and Isobel’s kiss and the sounds of her beating in his ears. He wondered, for the hundredth time, if he should have stopped her brother and taken her away. To save her. To save Octavio from this stupid mix-up he had created. One lie, to keep Octavio from deportation. And now it might be the boy’s death warrant.

  Did they come after him because they thought he was the brown-skinned man kissing their sister? Or had Isobel crumbled and told them a man named Amado had the gun and the money, sending them after Octavio in a stupid, deadly mistake? Either way, he was to blame. For losing his mind and pretending he could be with an Anglo woman. For agreeing to keep her secrets, even when he wasn’t sure what they were. For handing a bag full of death over to Octavio. He had counted the money. It was more than enough for someone to kill for. And he had given it to the boy with no more warning than to keep it private. What could be safer than a church?

  What had he been thinking?

  He heard something ahead of him. He froze. A ting-ting sound, like sweet small bells. The skritch-skritch of squirrels running up a tree. Bleating. He relaxed until he remembered Isobel’s family raised sheep. If they were grazing in the old wood-ringed pasture, would one of the brothers be there? He reached inside his pocket and gripped the handle of the utility knife. One man, he could take on and hope to succeed. Unless there was a dog, too.

  He slunk to the edge of the pasture like a wolf. There were perhaps fifteen or twenty sheep mowing the grass, their coats half-grown from a spring shearing, belled to make them easier to track. No shepherd. No dog that he could see, although that didn’t mean there wasn’t one napping in the shade of the pole barn.

  A fox skull hung beside the hayloft door. Facing him. He almost turned and retraced his steps, but he was a man, and a man didn’t run from a woman. He emerged from the underbrush and headed for the barn. Maybe she had news of Octavio. Maybe she wanted the gun and the money back. Maybe she needed his help again. Maybe she found herself thinking of him in the quiet moments of the day, pausing at the sight of hay in the cow barn, drifting away when the men discussed their women back home. . . .

  He jerked himself into the moment. The knife handle was slippery in his hand. He ought to stab himself in the thigh. Perhaps that would keep him focused. He reached the door. Hauled himself up over the lip. Heard her whisper, “Amado?”

  For a split second, he worried about a trap, but then she bounded across the bales toward him, arms outstretched, hair streaming behind her like a pennant. She flung herself at him, arms wide, and all he could do was embrace her, teetering, and then he lost his balance and the two of them toppled backward onto the hay.

  She was speaking, a torrent of English like choppy water pouring over him, and he could hear relief and fear and apology in her voice. He rolled to one side, letting her slip off him, and the motion seemed to make her aware of where they were, chest to chest, arm by arm, legs entangled. She said something, fast and low, and scrambled out of range. When she turned again, her cheeks were pale pink.

  He sat up. Marshaled his thoughts. He couldn’t afford to let sentiment mess up his judgment. “Your brothers,” he said, “take Octavio.” He rose to his feet. He wasn’t any taller than she, but he was strong. Very strong. “Where?” he demanded.

  She shrank back. He felt like a slug, but he continued to glare at her. “Where?”

  “Octavio?” Another flood of English, this time questions.

  He held up one hand. He didn’t want her to know the relationship between Octavio and himself. Anything she knew, her brother might beat out of her. “Octavio work at”—he sketched a cross in the air—“la iglesia.”

  “The church?”

  “The church, yes.
Your brothers take him.”

  “Mi familia,” she said, “no take him. No.” She spread her hands open. “I ask. They no take him. Yo promesa.”

  “You promise? You promise?” He spat on the hay next to his work boot. “Your brothers lie.”

  “No.” She should have been offended or angry, but instead her face softened. She stepped toward him, tentatively, as if he might snap and slap her like her abusive brute of a brother.

  Mother of God. What sort of man was he, frightening a woman who had learned to expect the side of a hand? He reached out to her. “Isobel,” he said. She came to him, no reluctance now, and he held her as he would hold a child, his anger and misery leaching away as he murmured, “Lo siento. I am sorry. Lo siento.”

  After a few moments, she pushed away from him. He released her instantly. She faced him, her lips pressed firm, her eyebrows knitted, the face of someone trying to put something complex into simple, understandable words. “La policia ask for . . .”—she frowned—“Octavio?”

  “Octavio.”

  “La policia ask my brothers.” She mimed a burly man, arms akimbo, holding out one arm in a sign to stop. “No here,” she said in a gruff voice. “No Octavio.” She reverted to her own voice. “I ask my brothers. They—” She held her belly and faked a deep laugh. “Ha-ha-ha!”

  “Risa.”

  “¿Risa? Laugh?” She nodded. “My brothers”—she enacted the big man again, complete with deep voice—“El hombre de la iglesia? Pffft.” She made an elaborate show of who cares? She shifted back to herself. “I ask, me promesa? My brothers”—she dropped her voice again—“Okay. Promesa.”

  She came to a standstill. “Lo siento, Amado.” He could hear the truth in her words. A cautious voice inside him whispered, She may be a brilliant liar, but one thing he had learned, traveling through a strange land, is that sometimes you have to trust. And believe. He wanted to believe in Isobel. He wanted that very much.

  He reached for her hand. The price of belief was losing his only hope of recovering Octavio. Because if the Christies didn’t have him, who did? How could he ever find him?

  He let her draw him to where the old quilt had been spread over loose hay. He sat, then flopped backward, tired of dread and rage and suspicion. Tired of the patron relying on him and the men looking to him and the weight, the immovable, unchangeable weight of responsibility, to his brother in this country and to their family at home.

  Isobel perched beside him, as if uncertain where she was allowed to be. He opened his arms, and after a moment she lay down snug against him. She rested her hand on his chest. He drew his fingers through the ends of her hair. He found himself talking about his parents. About his family’s home. About his fears that he was the cause of Octavio’s disappearance. He opened up his mouth and let every sad, mad, bad thing in his head out, named them all, and let them fly up into the shadows like the swallows nesting above. Finally, he looked at her, into her grave, patient eyes, and confessed his own foolish heart.

  She lay beside him, her hand smoothing across the front of his shirt, until he ran out of words.

  “Amado.” Her lips were a little chapped. He wondered how they would feel. “Te amo.”

  He raised his eyes back to hers. “Isobel?” He hadn’t taught her that. Do you know what that means?

  She sat up. Began unbuttoning her shirt. Her fingers were shaking, but she never took her eyes from his. He lay still, afraid that if he moved he would frighten her off. Make her think he didn’t want her.

  Her shirt fell away. She unhooked her bra. In the rich shadows of the haymow, her skin glowed. She took his hand. Placed it on her breast.

  Now he was shaking. It was insane. He didn’t know this woman. If she brought him home, her brothers would murder him. If he brought her home, his mother would cry. They didn’t even speak the same language. How could he love someone who wouldn’t understand him when he proposed?

  “Te amo,” she repeated, sounding scared and determined. “¿Tu?”

  He could have resisted her bare skin, but her naked faith broke him. He surrendered, gathering her to him, rolling her onto the quilt, stroking her hair away from her face as he whispered, “Querida, mi Isobel, mi corazón. Yes. I love you too.”

  IV

  “Ten thousand dollars,” the chief said. He thrust the last brick into a clear plastic evidence Baggie and sealed it. He braced the edge of the bag against the church’s kitchen counter and signed and dated it.

  “Looks like he was gettin’ a damn sight more’n me for operating the carpet cleaner,” Granddad said.

  Hadley shot the old man a warning look. When Reverend Clare had called in the latest development in the Esfuentes case, Hadley had been riding along with the chief. She had been plenty surprised to find out her grandfather had reported for duty at St. Alban’s. With her kids. She glanced at the other end of the island, where Genny and Hudson, parked on tall stools, were plowing through sandwiches as if they hadn’t eaten since yesterday. Had Granddad forgotten to feed them breakfast? She watched him as he headed to the refrigerator. If his memory started to go, if he wasn’t safe with the kids, she was well and truly screwed.

  The chief looked across the kitchen island to where Reverend Clare was braced against the sink. “You know what this means, don’t you?” She dropped her gaze to the countertop. Nodded. “He never would have left on his own without this.”

  “I know.” She plucked at her black shirt, which had somehow gotten wet and greasy. “Do you think whoever . . . took him . . . was looking for this?” She finally lifted her head and met his eyes.

  “If they were, he hasn’t told them where it is. None of St. Alban’s alarms have been triggered since you reset them Sunday night.”

  “Then maybe he’s still alive.”

  “Maybe.” His attempt at sounding hopeful fell flat. Hadley couldn’t see why, regardless of Esfuentes’s fate, his kidnapper hadn’t come after the cash. If the bad guy had been after the money, he would have been pressing the boy from the start. And if he was what the chief didn’t want to consider—a serial killer preying on young Hispanics—why wouldn’t Esfuentes have told him about the money in hopes of distracting him? “Don’t hurt me, I can give you ten thousand dollars” would have been the first thing out of her mouth.

  Over the sound of her children eating—she couldn’t help herself, she reached over and wiped Genny’s mouth with a napkin—she registered Van Alstyne’s silence. She glanced back at him. He and the reverend were watching each other across an expanse of granite and stainless steel. She’d heard they’d been plastered together at the fund-raiser. You couldn’t tell by looking at them now, all buttoned up in black and tan. Hadley didn’t get repression—if they had the hots for each other, why not just jump in the sack and work it out?—but right now she was grateful for it. If Van Alstyne’s mind was on the rector, maybe he wouldn’t stop to wonder how good a job Hadley could do as an officer when she hadn’t even known where her own kids were.

  Reverend Clare wrapped her arms around herself. The chief’s hands convulsed. He shifted and blinked, as if he had just remembered Hadley was there. “Officer Knox. Did you find anything else?”

  “Granddad says everything left there is his.” She raised her voice. “Including two cartons of cigarettes.”

  Granddad slammed the refrigerator door shut and brought two cans of soda to where Genny and Hudson were sitting. “Can’t just throw ’em away. You got any idea what a carton costs these days?”

  The chief’s mouth twitched up. “Was there anything out of place in the—uh, sexton’s closet, Mr. Hadley? Maybe moved around, so as to hide something?”

  The janitor shook his head. “No, sir. And that bag there wa’n’t hid. Just hangin’ on the hooks where I keep my coat and mackintosh.”

  The chief cocked his head toward Reverend Clare. She shrugged. “I have no idea,” she said, answering a question he hadn’t asked out loud. “I never saw him do anything or go anywhere that might explai
n ten thousand dollars. He worked here, and he went to the Spanish language Mass at Sacred Heart in Lake George a couple of Sundays with one of our volunteers. That’s it. Elizabeth drove him to your sister’s place a few times so he could hang out with the men there, but she always brought him right back to the church or the rectory.”

  “You said he brought the bag with him from Janet’s farm the morning you were attacked.”

  “The bag, yeah. What he had in it, I couldn’t say.” She frowned at the backpack.

  “This much money, I’m thinking drugs.” He leaned on the counter, where bricks of cash lay piled like a bank withdrawal from hell. “But I’d’ve laid good money Esfuentes wasn’t involved with the trade. So the question is, whose money is this?”

  The rector paled. “Oh, God, you don’t think it might be somebody here at the church, do you?”

  He shook his head. “No. I mean, anything’s possible, but given that Mexicans dominate distribution upstate and that Esfuentes came up from Mexico just three or four months ago, I’ve gotta go with that.”

  “What if the money doesn’t have anything to do with selling pot?” Hadley eased down the island, away from her kids. “What if it came from . . . from—” The only other industry she knew that generated large amounts of untraceable cash was porn. She wasn’t going to throw that on the table. “Something else?”

  “Like what?”

  “Maybe it’s money all the men who came north with Amado saved,” Reverend Clare said. “Maybe they gave it to him to store here because they thought it would be safer. Sister Lucia told me many migrant workers don’t put their earnings into banks.”

  “Nice idea, but that hardly explains the gun.”

  Her face fell. “Oh. Yeah.”

  “Speaking of which, we need to get it back to the station and start the forensics workup on it.” He picked up the plastic evidence bags and thrust them into the backpack. He glanced toward the end of the island, where Genny and Hudson were now shoveling birthday cake into their mouths. “Officer Knox, do you need some time to take your kids home?”