In the bathroom, I stand in the tub, peering out the window and trying to imagine how Martin escaped after killing everyone in his family. Did he have to go out the window because the UPS guy was knocking at the front door with that package from Babies“R”Us? By sitting on the windowsill in the bathroom, he could have leaned over and grabbed hold of the metal rungs on the telephone pole before climbing down to the alley, like he did after I found him hiding here.
In the kitchen, I get started with what I had planned on helping Mrs. Castillo with in the morning—I fill a big trash bag with all the rotten food that is stinking up the refrigerator. I tie the bag in a big knot and haul it with me into the hallway. I leave the trash bag near the back door before I head upstairs to the in-laws’ apartment.
After I look around, I do the same thing there—empty the rotten food out of the refrigerator, even though a bag of mush in the produce bin makes me gag. Holding the garbage bag, I give one last look around the small apartment. Everything is as it was the first time I came in. There is nothing to find. No clue. Disappointed, I lock the door and head downstairs with the trash bag.
I’m halfway down the stairs when I realize there was only one thing not like the other. It was so slight that I nearly missed it. I rush back to the apartment and jimmy the lock with the bump key again.
This time I head straight for the coffee table. I thought it was strange that the cops didn’t search and confiscate everything in the in-laws’ upstairs apartment, but I guess they gave it short shrift, since it wasn’t the crime scene. Now that I’m here again, I think Khoury’s men lied to her about even coming into this apartment. I wonder if it had to do with the cover-up, someone not wanting the crime solved at all.
Unlike everything else in this extraordinarily tidy apartment, a stack of magazines on the coffee table was slightly askew, ever so slightly off kilter. As if someone tried to stack them in a hurry. Or as if there is something other than a magazine underneath. I scatter the magazines and unearth it. A small black journal.
The first entry is dated March.
I sink onto the couch and open it, holding my breath. On the first page of the Moleskine, it offers a reward if found. It belongs to Maria Martin.
My heart speeds up, and I flip to the first entry, which is preceded by a quote. “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”—Nelson Mandela
It is followed by a space before her first entry:
“Joey left today. I think my heart will break from missing him, but at the same time I feel so free, as if a great weight has been lifted from me, and this makes me so guilty. Isn’t a wife supposed to want to be around her husband? But sometimes his attention is overwhelming. If I go visit his parents in their apartment upstairs, he calls me on my phone and says he misses me and to come back down to our apartment. If I’m in the shower too long, he comes in and sits on the toilet to talk to me. He gets jealous if I talk to the clerk at the grocery store. Isn’t that proof of his love?
“I know it stems from his love of me, but it is stifling sometimes. Are all American men like this with their wives? I am looking forward to some time alone. I guess I’m just not used to being married yet. And not used to the American way of life. I love his family, but they are always asking me questions, making me feel inadequate, telling me how I do everything wrong. I can’t help it, I want to be as American as them. I really do. Don’t they know that I have dreamed of living in America my entire life? That I don’t want to do things the way my mother does. America is a dream come true. Land of the free. Where the Federales can’t come into your house and kill your father and rape your mother.”
Mrs. Castillo was raped? I remember the sadness in her eyes, the weariness that I assumed stemmed from the grief of losing her daughter.
I read on.
“My mother told me not to marry Joey. She is old-fashioned. She doesn’t understand love. I see how other women look at Joey when we are out. They look at him and look at me and wonder why he is with me. I know I am so lucky to have him. He says he never knew what love was until he met me. My heart is so full of love for him. I will make up for the love his parents never gave him. And even so, after all that, he takes care of them. Even though they never loved him, never wanted him, he pays for their rent so they can live in a safe neighborhood. He is a true man. He knows what honor and love truly are. I am so lucky. My mother doesn’t understand because my father was not like this.
“He is so frustrated that we have not been able to have a baby yet. He will lose that anger when I have his baby inside me. It might even be inside me right now. I didn’t want to say anything to him before he left because I couldn’t bear him thinking I was pregnant if I was only late. I could never do that to him. He has enough evil to deal with without heartbreaking news from me. But I am going to see the doctor next week. They will know for sure. I will call him, and he will be happy, and he can leave his frustration behind.”
I read as fast as I can, flipping ahead. Skimming, I stop cold on a name.
“Abequero came over again.” I freeze, then read on.
“I know that Joey would be upset if we were alone, so I always invite Mama and Papa Martin to come, too. Otherwise it looks bad. It’s not proper for me to be alone with Abe. I don’t know why he doesn’t bring his wife. Maybe because she doesn’t like me. Or at least that is how she acts.”
Abequero. Abe. Mrs. Castillo said it sounded like a girl’s name. Abe. Pronounced like “Abby.” This is the good friend.
I skim ahead, looking to spot Abequero’s name again.
“I want to die,” the entry begins. “He will not stop. He says it will make our love stronger. It will make our marriage last forever if I just do this. But I would rather die. I can’t take it anymore. He talks and writes of nothing else.”
What does he want her to do?
“He would have never said any of this before. Oh why, oh why, did he have to go to Iraq? It is not fair. He should never have believed them. It was not his fault. He was following orders. I know he will never forgive himself. I try to tell him this, but he won’t talk about it anymore.
“And he has changed. Now, he is different. Now, he is cold. Where is the man I fell in love with?”
I can’t figure out what Joey Martin is asking her to do. Something so horrible she would rather die? Flipping back a few pages, I find what she is referring to.
“He called me and told me he knows I want to have sex with him.”
Him?
“I told him no, I would never break the sacred vow of marriage. Never. He told me that it is okay. That Abequero is his friend. And that it is okay if we have sex because I was a virgin when we met. He says I will never know how special our love is unless I am with someone else.”
The next day:
“He called again today. He says it is the only thing that will make him happy if I make sex with Abe. I wish Abe had gone to Iraq with Joey and none of this would be possible. If only Abe hadn’t broken his arm that day, he’d be with Joey and maybe talk some sense into him. Joey sounds crazier every day. Now he says having sex with someone else will show me I did the right thing to marry him.”
He wants her to have an affair with his best friend, Abequero. Mother Mary and Joseph.
I flip ahead to the next week.
“I want to die. Every letter he writes. Every time he calls. He begs me. He says it is what an angel told him God wants me to do. He said it is in his dreams that I do this. I am losing my mind. Who can I tell this to? That my husband wants me to have sex with another man—his friend—and he says it is what God has told him is right? He is not right in the head after what happened. It has changed him. But he won’t admit it. He says he is the same. He is breaking my heart. I want to tell him I have his baby, but the doctor says to wait until I am twelve weeks
along and we know for sure it is safe and the baby will live. The doctor says it is too hard to tell a man in war he will be a father, only to tell him later he will not.”
Sitting on the couch, reading Maria’s journal, my heart goes out to her. Alone in a new country with a husband who’s mentally losing it? What happened to him in Iraq? Something horrible that has made him turn on her. No wonder she was so confused about how to handle her husband’s crazy request. The next page skips forward a few days.
“I told my mama. I drove to San Juan Bautista and told her I was having a baby and that Joey wants me to have sex with his friend Abe. She cried and told me to leave Joey. To stay with her and we would hide from him. I told her I could handle it my own way. I would handle my own husband. She pulled at me, snagging my sweater as I tried to leave, and we argued. I told her she couldn’t control my life anymore. That I was a grown woman. She said something mean then. She told me that Joey didn’t really love me or he would’ve never asked me to do that. How dare she talk about my husband’s love for me? Of course he loves me. Why else would he act so crazy? Then I said something I deeply regret.
“I told her I would do whatever it took to keep my husband alive, something she had not been able to do. Now I want to die more than ever. She will never forgive my cruel words. I am a horrible, horrible person.”
The next entry is two days later.
“I told Joey it will happen tonight. His parents are visiting some friends in Pinole and will be gone all night. Abe’s wife is out of town. In Los Angeles for shopping or something. I told him I will go to Abe’s place tonight.”
She’s going through with it?
The next entry is not dated.
“Everything is worse than ever. I told him I was pregnant and he still won’t change his mind about me sleeping with Abe. I dumped a bottle of aspirin into a glass of orange juice, but I couldn’t make myself drink it. Not with this baby inside. I felt the baby move. Suicide is a sin, I know, but I don’t care. I don’t care what happens to me anymore.
“Before I drank the juice, I called my mama and asked her to forgive my cruel, heartless words. She said she forgave me the minute they came out of my mouth. How did I ever get blessed with such a mother? Her words make me remember that if I kill myself, I kill my baby. I cannot do that. I want my baby to live. If I can be half the mother to my baby she is to me, my baby will be blessed.”
The sentence “I want my baby to live” grows blurry. When I turn the page, the rest of the journal is blank. It ends on those words, only halfway through. I look at the date. I do the math. She was probably three months pregnant.
Why did she stop journaling? What happened? Did she have sex with Abe?
Maria’s mother knows more than she is saying.
Chapter 43
I’M AT THE Mission apartment early Tuesday morning.
Mrs. Castillo is waiting at the end of the hall in front of the door to the apartment. She wears boots and a silver wool cape that matches the streak in her hair. She wilts as I thrust Maria’s diary in front of her. The look on her face—resigned, not surprised—tells me she knew about this journal the whole time.
“Did you want me to find it?”
She purses her blood red lips and gestures toward the closed door to Maria’s apartment. “I couldn’t go in there by myself. I couldn’t see where it happened. But I knew Maria had hidden the journal somewhere. I thought it might be hidden with the letters.” She looks down as she says it.
“How did you know that the cops didn’t have it already?”
“Detective Khoury. She was going to go back to the apartment that day to look for it. I think that is why she was killed. I come from a country where you can’t trust the policia. The Federales are all crooked. America is supposed to be different, but it is not. Who am I to trust?”
“You didn’t tell me any of this.” I wave the diary around a few inches from her face. I’m angry. “You didn’t tell Khoury. Did you know I didn’t even find it here? It was upstairs, in her in-laws’ apartment.”
She shrugs. “Did you read . . . did she write about . . . everything?” Mrs. Castillo closes her eyes, as if she is in pain.
“You mean, how Joey messed with her head and forced her to have sex with Abequero? That’s why he killed her, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Castillo wearily leans against the hallway wall.
“He wasn’t always like that. He wasn’t.” She closes her eyes, shaking her head. “He even helped me get my green card to come to the U.S. because Maria missed me so much. He was different then. Until he went to war. There something happened. Something awful. Maria wouldn’t tell me, but she called me, crying. She said something went horribly wrong in Iraq and that Joey had tried to kill himself. She begged him to come home so she could help. He refused. He didn’t call or write for a month. When he did, it was as if something had changed.”
“You should’ve gone to the police with this,” I say, angrily waving the journal around. “Why didn’t you? Now Detective Khoury is dead and Lucy is in the hands of a murderer and you could’ve stopped it.”
She reels back from my angry words, as if I have slapped her. Seeing her face, I soften for a second. “Is it because you didn’t want people to know Maria had an affair with Abequero? It wasn’t her fault. Joey drove her to it. That is mental, emotional, and psychological abuse.”
Mrs. Castillo doesn’t look up, just shakes her head.
I take her arm and lead her out of the building. “I’ll come back here and get what you want out of the apartment. But first you and I are having breakfast, and you’re going to tell me everything.”
I drag her into a Starbucks a few blocks away from the apartment building and settle her in with a hot tea, while I order a cappuccino.
“Tell me what she told you that day on the phone when you said you forgave her as soon as the words came out of her mouth.” I take a sip of my coffee and watch her expression.
She looks up in surprise that I know about that conversation.
“That was in there?”
I wave the diary at her. “It’s all in here. All except parts of what she said when she called you that day. That was the last entry in her diary. What happened next?”
She raises her head slowly and meets my eyes. “You did not know my Maria. She did not sleep with Abequero. She told Joey that she would so he would stop asking her about it. But she will not betray her morals and values because he asked her to. She told him it would happen that night, but it didn’t.”
“What happened? Why is she dead?”
“I don’t know why she is dead. I only know what she told me about that night.”
She tells me the story.
Maria was in her pajamas, curled up with a blanket, drinking milk and watching TV, when the phone rang.
It was Joey.
She was caught. She was not at Abe’s apartment.
Joey didn’t even say hello. “It’s a good thing you were home, you slut. I was just testing you. You fucked him before, though, didn’t you? That one time I came home and he was there. You fucked him, didn’t you? That is how you got pregnant, isn’t it? That baby is his. I had a doc do some tests over here. He said the chances of me getting someone pregnant? Yeah, I got a better chance of winning the Nobel Prize.”
“No!” she cried. “I swear. I have never been with anyone but you. That doctor is wrong. I swear. We can do tests when you get home. We can show that I am right. You have to believe me.”
The line was silent, then his voice came across in a menacing whisper.
“You think you are safe in your cozy little apartment I pay for? I almost got leave last week. I almost got to come home. And I was going to come home and surprise you with Abe. I was going to kill you and kill him and that bastard baby inside you. Just like I kill all these ragheads. It is so easy. Easiest thing I’ve ever
done. And if you think I wouldn’t kill you . . . you are wrong.”
She pleaded and begged and even said, “Wait. Wait until the baby is born and we will do the DNA tests. Don’t kill our baby, Joey. It is our baby, I swear to the Virgin Mary and all the Saints. The baby is yours.”
“How can I believe you?”
“We will go to the doctor together,” she told him. “We will do the DNA tests. You can pick the doctor. You will see I’m not lying. If we do tests and the baby is not yours, then I will kill myself for you. You will see. I promise.”
Tears drip down her face as Mrs. Castillo finishes her story.
“She begged me, asked, ‘What do I do, Mama?’ Every letter he writes. Every call he makes. He begs her to do it. What else could she do but tell him yes, it will happen. Even if she never was going to go through with it. She finally said she was, so he would stop.”
Lucy is ten months old.
I ask Mrs. Castillo if the DNA test was ever done.
“I don’t think so. He has only been home once in the past eighteen months, and it was when Lucy was born. He seemed so happy then. I think he wanted to believe she was his. But then that woman—that wife of his friend said Maria and her husband were sleeping together.”
“Carol Abequero?”
“Yes, that is the name. And his name was Abe.”
“When did this happen?”
Blessed Are Those Who Weep Page 19