Not Forgotten

by George Lee Miller

  I got the strange feeling that I was being watched. The shooting put me on edge. It was the same feeling I used to get on patrol in Afghanistan. The extra shots fired in my direction still bothered me. Maybe the killer was simply covering his escape, but the fact that he was still out there didn’t make me feel any safer. A dust-filled wind rustled the cypress limbs and sent me into a sneezing fit. I needed to find the nearest pharmacy.

  The place described in the police report was underneath the Travis Street bridge where the river ran through a canyon of buildings and parking garages. I had passed the spot a dozen times since that night in July when she entered the water. Below a tile mural of the Alamo, I found an Our Lady of Guadalupe candle, along with a bundle of plastic roses and a white cross held upright in a Folgers coffee can filled with rocks. It was a shrine to honor her death. For the Catholic Hispanics it was known as a descansos, a common sight along the highways in South Texas.

  A young woman wearing black yoga pants knelt in front of the candle. I stopped a respectable distance away and watched while she finished her prayer and crossed herself. She used a paper clip to attach a five-by-seven photo of Marissa to the coffee can, then stood and walked to the flagstones lining the river. She pulled what looked like a bracelet from her wrist, held it to her lips, then tossed it in the river.

  “Tragic,” I said loud enough for the young woman to hear.

  She glanced over her shoulder, startled. Her eyes were wet with tears.

  “Sorry to scare you. Was that a present for Marissa?” I pointed to the place in the river where whatever she’d thrown had sunk.

  “Did you know her?” she asked, wiping her face with her fingertips. Her eyes lingered on my forehead scars. I remembered to smile.

  “Unfortunately, no,” I said, “but I know her mother.”

  Her eyes darted across the river to an older couple walking a toy poodle. She seemed nervous.

  “I’m Nick Fischer,” I said, smiling a little bigger.

  “It’s her birthday. First time we…” She paused to take a deep breath, still looking at the spot where she had tossed the bracelet. “First time we haven’t been together.” She turned her focus to me. “Beth Renfro,” she said.

  I recognized the name. She was the friend Marissa was with that night. I offered my hand. She didn’t take it. I realized I was still holding the paper towel I was using to wipe my runny nose.

  “Were you good friends with Marissa?” I asked.

  “Yeah. We went to high school together. We kinda lost track when she went to college, but she always came home in the summer.”

  “Do you know what happened to her?”

  “She drowned in the river,” she said without hesitation, like she’d rehearsed the line.

  “How do you know?”

  “I was with her that night. We were drinking and dancing. It was a party night.”

  “Her mother said she didn’t drink,” I said.

  Beth looked taken aback, like she wasn’t expecting to be questioned. “Are you a cop?” She acted like she wanted to walk away.

  “Just a friend of the family,” I said, stifling another sneeze.

  “There’s a lot of things her mother didn’t know.”

  “Like she was pregnant?” I asked. Beth hesitated, weighing her options for a response. When she didn’t say anything, I added: “Did she have a boyfriend?”

  “Not that I know of. She didn’t talk about it. But, again, she’d been gone. Other than Facebook, we didn’t really keep in touch.”

  “Did she dance with anybody in particular?”

  “No.” Her answers came quickly.

  “Did she leave with anybody?”

  “I told the police everything. No one saw her leave.”

  “What time did you notice she was gone?”

  “Around midnight, I guess. We wanted to leave before the bars closed. When I looked around for Marissa, she was gone. The detective said they found her shoe here. It had a broken heel. She always liked high heels.” She chewed on her bottom lip. She wasn’t going to tell me anything more about Marissa.

  “Thanks for your help.”

  She immediately turned and walked away. I blew my nose and watched Beth’s ponytail dance from side to side as she broke into a jog.

  I wondered why she had lied. I also wondered what present she had tossed into the river on Marissa’s birthday. I stood for a long moment contemplating the place where I’d seen the object drop into the murky water. This time of year, with the late summer drought, the water was less than two feet deep, yet it was still too dirty to see the rocky, moss-covered bottom. In the winter the river was diverted so that certain portions could be drained for cleaning.

  A man with a salt-and-pepper beard shuffled out of the shadows. He knelt on the flagstone edge of the River Walk and stared into the murky water. I thought he looked vaguely familiar, then I remembered the picture of the man in the newspaper clipping Mrs. Luna had shown me. He wore the same Army cap and camo jacket. I hadn’t noticed him before; he must have been standing behind the bridge support waiting for Beth to leave.

  Suddenly, the man stepped into the water and waded to the center of the river. The water came up to his knees. I knew what he was looking for. I watched him fish with both hands in the water. In a few moments he came up with a bracelet and smiled, exposing missing teeth.

  “Hey!” I yelled at him. “Leave that alone.”

  He turned toward the opposite bank and sloshed toward the flagstones.

  I jumped in the lukewarm water and splashed across toward him. “That’s not yours,” I said.

  “The lady throwed it away,” he mumbled when I caught up to him. “It’s mine now.”

  I could see it was gold and consisted of three bands connected by a lopsided heart shape. I dug in my wallet for a twenty-dollar bill and held it out to the man. “Here,” I said. “I’ll trade you.”

  The man quickly snatched the money and handed over the bracelet. I climbed out of the river and examined it more closely. On the inside of the heart the initials M. L. were engraved.

  The man climbed out of the water and hurried off, holding the twenty above his head.

  “Hey,” I called.

  The man kept walking. He seemed afraid I would change my mind and take the money back. I took out another twenty and waved it in his direction.

  “Wanna make another twenty,” I said. That got his attention. The man swiftly made an about-face and waited for me to catch up. “Were you on the River Walk the day after the Fourth of July?” I asked him.

  He scratched his salt-and-pepper whiskers with a wet hand. “Maybe,” he said.

  “There was a dead girl found in the water. Were you there?”

  His eyes lit up. “Davy Crockett,” he said.

  “That’s right. A kid dressed in a coonskin cap found her.”

  “No, it was Davy Crockett. I seen him. He shot her dead.”

  “Shot her? I thought she was already dead.”

  The man held out his hand for the twenty I was holding. I handed it over.

  “He shot her with his flintlock,” he shouted for emphasis.

  “A toy gun?” I asked.

  He flashed a toothless grin. “She looked like a raccoon.”

  I looked at him, waiting for him to explain. When he turned to go, I asked: “Why did she look like a raccoon?”

  “Both eyes was black,” he said. “She wearin’ a mask.”

  I watched him shuffle away and wondered what he would spend his money on first. I also wondered why the autopsy I read hadn’t mentioned the fracture to the base of Marissa’s skull which would have accounted for two black eyes.

  Chapter Eleven

  There was a ticket tucked under my washer blade when I got back to my pickup. Turns out the space was only free until eleven thirty a.m. I checked my watch. Eleven thirty-seven. The meter maid must have been waiting on the corner. Luckily, it was only
the class C twenty-five-dollar variety. I tossed the ticket with the others in my glovebox. I would need that five grand Mrs. Luna had offered me just to keep parking in the city of San Antonio.

  I cranked up the a/c and waited for my sneezing fit to subside. Then I took Commerce Street west and headed for Marcus Lopez’s law office. My plan was to catch Sylvia on her lunch break and share the news that I was on a murder case. It was too soon to say it was murder, but I wasn’t satisfied with Peterson’s conclusion, and Marissa’s friend was less than convincing.

  Why would someone want Marissa Luna dead? The obvious answer seemed to have something to do with her being pregnant. The bracelet, if it was hers, might have come from the father. But would he give her an expensive bracelet and then kill her? Maybe it was a peace offering that she couldn’t accept? How did it end up with Marissa’s friend? Obviously, she didn’t share it with the police. The question was, Why, and was she involved?

  Traffic was heavy, and I waited through two lights on South San Saba Street watching a group of teenagers on electric scooters zip around pedestrians in Milam Park. When the light finally turned green, a woman in a white Range Rover cut me off making a U-turn. I honked, and she gave me the middle finger. The heat put everybody on edge.

  I found a grocery store a few blocks from Sylvia’s office building and made a quick stop to grab a little token of my affection and a package of antihistamine. She always said she didn’t want me to spend money on flowers, but she never seemed to mind when I did. I bought the only bouquet of yellow tulips I could find. They weren’t the freshest I’d ever seen, but yellow tulips were Sylvia’s favorite and they came with a red vase. I found my miracle drug and got in line behind a guy who just remembered something else his wife wanted him to pick up. He wondered if I minded waiting while he went to look for it.

  “Why should I mind?” I asked him, sneezing into my hand. “Shopping for half-dead tulips is the highlight of my day. Why not make it last?”

  He gave me a nervous laugh and shuffled toward the canned goods aisle. He seemed to think I was joking. While Sylvia’s tulips wilted a little more, and my nose ran a little harder, I remembered one of my dad’s favorite Johnny Cash songs about a guy in Folsom Prison who killed a man in Reno just to watch him die. I wondered if he’d made up the lyrics while standing in a grocery store checkout line.

  Marcus Lopez’s law office was a four-story neo-Spanish colonial-style building, complete with a faux bell tower and a Spanish-tile courtyard featuring a koi pond in the center. Its west side location was surrounded by a vacant lot, abandoned businesses, and a car body shop. Behind the building stretched neglected tract houses with dirt front lawns enclosed in hurricane fencing. Marcus had grown up in one of those houses and had acquired most of a city block that he was preparing to demolish and turn into apartments provided he got approval from the city. Sylvia said he chose the location to remind him of his roots, but I knew he did it to show off to his old west side neighbors.

  I parked behind the building and waited a few minutes for the wonder drug to take effect. When my sinuses started to clear, I found my way to the rear entrance. Every blank space was covered with election posters featuring Marcus Lopez’s smiling face. I skipped the occupied elevator and took the stairs to the third floor, where Sylvia had her office.

  Staring at the dozens of political signs plastered with Marcus’s smug face reminded me of the storm cloud building over my love life. If he was elected, Sylvia would probably go to Austin to serve in his new cabinet. I understood. It was a career move. If she went, I would have to move to Austin with her or settle for seeing her only on weekends. Austin was only sixty miles north, but I was trying to build my own business in San Antonio. Her argument was that I could be a private eye anywhere, which wasn’t necessarily true. I did have a contact in Lubbock from the Marine Corps and a few friends in Austin from my time as a deputy, but I liked San Antonio. Austin was fun if you were into hipster bands and liked watching the University of Texas play football along with a hundred thousand of your closest friends, but it was one of those college towns that went wild in the 1960s and never really grew up. The city slogan was Keep Austin Weird.

  San Antonio had history. That was the other reason I’d moved here. Besides having enough people to support my new private investigations business, Texas history began at the Alamo. I understood the sacrifice now that my enlistment was over. When I looked at the Alamo building at night with its adobe bricks bathed in white light, I liked to think the heart of the state still beat and that its soul was still authentic. Maybe I was being naïve and the spirit had left long before my time, but I wasn’t ready to give up hope on Texas or my relationship with Sylvia.

  I caught a glimpse of my profile in the hallway mirror. I was operating on three hours’ sleep. My post five o’clock shadow made me look like a Hollywood producer, but the new black T-shirt I wore was damp with sweat. The scars on my forehead had turned purple in the heat, and my nose and eyes were red from breathing African dust. How could she resist my charm and a bouquet of wilted tulips?

  Luckily, her overprotective secretary was away from her desk, so I let myself in. Sylvia had a fine eye for decorating. Her office had rustic wood paneling accented with brightly colored paintings depicting blue bonnets, buttercups, and a variety of native Texas wildflowers. There was also a three-panel photo of her favorite yellow tulips. She looked up from her polished oak desk when I entered. I held up the flowers.

  “I came to take you to lunch,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. I set the flowers on her desk.

  “I bet you picked those yourself,” she teased, examining the less-than-stellar arrangement.

  “I guess tulips are out of season.”

  “And you got all dressed up,” she said, focusing on my dirty jeans still damp from wading the river.

  “I can explain,” I said. “I’ve been up since seven thirty, and my allergies are doing battle with the elements.”

  “The dust, isn’t it? You should take an antihistamine,” she said, flipping open a file on her desk. “I can’t go to lunch,” she said. “I’ve got a meeting in ten minutes. You should’ve called.”

  “I’m on a case,” I said. No time to beat around the bush. I might as well come clean.

  “What case?” she asked. I could hear the disappointment in her voice.

  “If I’m gonna go back to school, I’ll need money. My GI bill dried up,” I told her, thinking on my feet. It was the best I could come up with. She thought about that for a moment. For once, I’d come up with an excuse she might actually buy.

  “You have a paying customer?” she asked. “Please tell me it’s not one of your lost causes.” Her faith in me was overwhelming.

  “She offered to pay my full retainer up front.”

  “Offered? You didn’t take the money?”

  “I told her I would look into it first and see if I could help her.”

  Sylvia shrugged. “What’s the matter with you? You talked to her, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I knew where she was going with this. It was a new tactic she was using to point out that my business acumen wasn’t fully developed.

  “And you spent all morning investigating her case?”

  “How else am I gonna find out if I can help her?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you those are billable hours?” She never used to talk like that when we were in law school. We had both volunteered for St. Mary’s Center for Legal and Social Justice. Before I became disillusioned with the idea of becoming a lawyer, we had talked about joining the center full-time after graduation. Only a year of working for Marcus Lopez, and she was talking about billable hours. She checked her watch, reminding me I was on the clock. I thought maybe if I told her the details of the case, she would understand my interest.

  “She was the young woman found by the kid dressed up like Davy Crockett. Happened this year on the fifth of July.” I let her digest that
information.

  “I remember that.” She stood up from her case file. I saw a flicker of the old Sylvia who enjoyed the challenge of a mystery.

  “What can you tell me about this?” I showed her the bracelet.

  “It’s a bracelet,” she deadpanned.

  “Brilliant, Doctor Watson.”

  “It looks exactly like the one you never gave me.” She giggled.

  “It belonged to the deceased.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “I fished it out of the river this morning.”

  “While you were working for free. How do you know it’s hers?”

  “I ran into a friend of hers who was with her that night. I watched her toss it in the river underneath the bridge where the police said Marissa went into the water.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Today was Marissa’s birthday.”

  “You took an offering to the dead?”

  “Actually, I saved it from a homeless guy. He saw her toss it in the river and was gonna make off with it. If it turns out not to be important, I’ll throw it back. Marissa can wear it in the afterlife.” I held up the bracelet so Sylvia could see the engraving. “It has her initials. M. L.”

  “Could be a coincidence. If I remember right, the police said it was an accident,” she said, crossing to the large window that looked west over the vacant lots toward the distant rolling hills covered with cedar trees and new luxury homes that Sylvia couldn’t wait to move into. “You read the article. She was drunk and fell in the river.”

  “She didn’t drink.”

  “What did the friend say?”

  “She lied about that too.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know when someone’s lying. Besides, she was a nursing student with big plans for the future.”

  “Why would her friend lie? You think she’s a suspect?” She tapped her teeth with a Cross fountain pen.

  “Maybe they were in love with the same man,” I said. “Marissa was pregnant.”

  Sylvia stopped tapping and turned to me. “Where’s the boyfriend?” I saw a spark of excitement.