Toward the Light

by Bonnar Spring

  Essential business accomplished, Luz went back to the menu. Insurance and Bookkeeping. Curious about the idea of insurance on a drug business, Luz tried that next. The top-level folder contained several files, with names in all-caps initials like “LD” and “MCK.” Picking “SPG” at random, Luz double-clicked. That folder contained dozens of jpegs, but the contents were displayed as alphanumeric file names. Rather than opening each file to see the image—which could take all afternoon on this old computer—Luz selected “large icons” from the view menu. The jpegs were groups of men. She switched to “extra-large icons”—and gasped. Men, yes. Armed, bloody. A grisly form on the ground.

  Cesar called out, “Luz, what’s nine times seven?”

  “Sixty-three,” Luz shot back, her attention riveted to the screen. The photos in the file appeared to be a series, some taken before the captive had been stripped and mutilated. When he’d been alive.

  And after.

  Insurance. Insurance of the sort designed to keep someone in line. Luz waited for a wave of nausea to pass. She closed the folder.

  Her index finger hovered over the remaining file folder, Bookkeeping. Queasy or not, she was here to evaluate the damn thing. No retreat; she double-clicked, then opened the only file, a spreadsheet containing a grid of banks, account numbers, deposits and withdrawals—another bonanza of information for law enforcement. The column at the far right, with a header reading acct.holders, caught her attention. Luz’s elbows crashed to the desk and her chin collided with her balled fists as the last prop supporting her collapsed.

  Along with several anonymous-sounding corporations and a few names she didn’t recognize, Roberto Benavides and Evan McManus controlled accounts in six banks in Colombia, Belize, and the Cayman Islands. Evan working with Bobby Benavides?

  She blinked twice. The information was still there, still damning.

  People did horrible things for money—but Evan? Evan, who drove a car so old it was practically an antique and shopped at the Guatemalan market? Evan, who haggled over the price of a pair of sneakers? It wasn’t possible that he was sitting on a pile of money so vast she couldn’t begin to imagine it. Was it?

  Another devastating thought exploded on top of that one: It wasn’t only Evan’s name on the bank accounts—it was cadmium, the poison. Used in paints, the doctor said.

  No, wait. She was getting confused: Evan couldn’t have been involved in poisoning her last summer in New Hampshire. He was in Guatemala; Richard was there. There had to be some mistake. She was missing something … Her head hurt too much to think.

  “Luz,” called Cesar. “I’m all finished.” His chair scraped back; his feet hit the floor with a plop.

  She ejected the drive and laid her forehead on the desk.

  One last goodbye in a day of endings. She checked Cesar’s math, and they played two hands of Go Fish, Cesar winning both so easily he whined that Luz was babying him. Pasta for dinner. A monosyllabic Luz brushed off Cesar’s cheerfully manic wheedling for information about his grandfather’s surprise.

  Luz’s thoughts returned to New Hampshire, to a time before she got sick—not sick, before Richard started to poison her. She had a job; she enjoyed Portsmouth, a small city with art galleries and coffee shops, parks along the river, the ocean nearby. She’d considered finding a new apartment after her mother passed away, her own place, a fresh-start kind of place. Then she got sick—no, then Richard began killing her.

  The notion that Evan was in business with Bobby Benavides ached like acid in her gut. If he was, Luz would start over. Pick a city, any city. Stick a pin in a map. Turn it into an adventure. She could still do that. Soon, she would be done here.

  She’d be on her own. Again. A stranger in a strange land. Again. Guatemala, which she’d endowed with magical properties as her homeland, was no more her country than the windswept shore of the Atlantic Ocean in New Hampshire. From her experiences in New Hampshire, however, Luz knew precisely how to disconnect when loss and loneliness threatened. She was just out of practice.

  She hugged Cesar goodbye when the night nurse arrived and walked away.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Evan stacked the breakfast dishes and cleared the table in one trip. He dumped everything into the sink, squirted soap, and blasted a jet of hot water over them. It was Tuesday already, three tense days of rubbing elbows with his increasingly irritable uncle, three endless days since Luz’s Saturday morning discovery of the sugar circle. He hadn’t heard a word from her since then. Come hell or high water—his father’s old battle cry—Evan was going to see her today.

  “Off to the market,” he announced as he hung the dish towel to dry.

  Not even a grunt of reply from the living room where Richard was busy with email.

  “I said, I’m off now.” Evan picked up his satchel and keys.

  Richard stood near the front window, pointing at a rectangle on the floor. “What the hell is this?”

  Luz got off the bus at her usual stop across the street from Dr. Guzman’s office and waited with the crowd of pedestrians for the light to change. A bus going to the airport stopped while she waited. Luz imagined stepping on board. Ready to run. Run from Richard and his unfathomable betrayal. Run from Toño and the guerrillas’ warped idealism. Run without bothering to assuage her doubts about Evan. Run until nothing remained of her memories. Far, far away to a place where, finally, her wounds—another word for the memories she’d held so dear—would heal.

  Once upon a time—yesterday—she believed living long enough to exact revenge was a worthwhile mission. Now, that seemed pathetic. Revenge and hatred were like the revolving door across the street in Dr. Guzman’s building, following each other in a circular parade.

  It wasn’t quite time to leave yet, though. This morning she’d see Dr. Guzman for the tests that would confirm Richard’s treachery. This afternoon she’d take her mother’s ashes to Juana.

  A copy of Bobby’s thumb drive was already in Toño’s hands. Luz hoped she’d done the right thing by giving it to him. The more people who knew about the crimes of the Benavides, the better. And the guerrillas’ contacts were eager to publicize the information. Plus, she owed Toño the last seventeen years of her life; she owed him reparation for the damage her visit to his camp had caused. So when Luz had seen the dark sedan parked near her apartment on her final return home from the Benavides’, she removed one of the CDs from her purse. The man cranked down the driver’s window as she neared and held out his hand. Luz dropped the disk into it without breaking stride.

  As Luz neared the revolving door of Dr. Guzman’s building, a tall man exited the circuit. The shape of the head and the close-cut sandy hair reminded her of Evan, although she was probably overreacting to her uncertainty about confronting him about the drug money. Maybe she’d listen to his explanation, hoping he was innocent, praying her bullshit detector was up to the task of sorting lies from truth. But it was far simpler to disappear without a word. Those words, once spoken, would cement a layer of bitterness over their brief encounter.

  The door still spun gently when Luz reached it, and Evan’s familiar plaid jacket was receding into the crowd. It really was him, but she hadn’t decided whether or not to challenge him, and she was late for her appointment anyhow. She pushed on the door, it accelerated, and Luz found herself once more in the cool, hushed lobby. She drifted up the stairs, her legs strong, all the twitching and tingling gone.

  Dr. Guzman’s anteroom was vacant, so Luz walked toward the office. She smelled it before she saw anything. Sweet and sickly, like watermelon left too long in the sun. It was the smell of blood, the smell of death. Panic started cold in her belly and spread through her chest. The room closed in on her, becoming a dark forest set with traps for the unwary. No one was left to hold her hand this time.

  The ringing in her ears warned her she was in danger of passing out. She put her hands in front of her face in a vain attempt to avoid the smell. Luz trudged toward the desk, the most difficult s
teps of her life. File drawers yawned open; papers on the big desk askew. A delicate red spray decorated the window.

  An outstretched hand held a pen. She moved a pace to the left. Dr. Guzman lay on the floor. On his back. A gaping hole near his heart accounted for the blood.

  Her head swam again. And now she ran—out the door, along the corridor, down the stairs, through the lobby. Through the revolving door. Once outside, she halted, obstructing the flow of pedestrians. As people swerved to avoid bumping into her, a stout woman dropped her large shopping bag and, with little success, attempted to bend to collect the small packages rolling along the sidewalk. A little girl, separated from her mother, began to cry. Luz drifted away.

  Was Evan at the center of the maze of contradictions that refused to make sense?

  Everything she’d learned since her arrival in Guatemala had been funneled through him. Everything except that conversation with Richard the morning he showed up unannounced on her doorstep. Other than that, she only had Evan’s word about Richard’s movements. Evan told her Richard planned to sneak in. He spied. He said Richard stayed in the kitchen. Richard might not have been there at all. Evan could have done everything she suspected Richard of doing.

  The light at the intersection turned red. Luz already had one foot in the street when cars began whizzing past. Flinching, she pulled back onto the curb and conducted a silent war, arguing both sides in turn.

  Evan was a painter, with access to cadmium, but he hadn’t been in New Hampshire last summer. In her apartment here, of course, he could’ve quietly doctored the sugar almost any time. So inventing that story about Richard sneaking in didn’t make sense unless—a crowd of pedestrians, set free by the green light, surged across the street, pushing Luz forward—unless it was a ruse to make Luz suspicious of Richard.

  How could anyone except Richard be responsible for the beginning? Step by step, Richard had maneuvered her to Guatemala, gotten her into the Benavides’ house.

  But Evan had tried to steer Luz away from considering the sugar circle significant. He’d focused on the mail instead—he’d seen the envelope with the bill from Dr. Guzman.

  That shouldn’t matter, though. She’d told Evan about seeing Guzman the night of her first consultation when she was sick from the stomach bug. Plus, Evan had known Toño was hiding at Luz’s. No government soldiers had barged in. Evan had known for days, too, about Juana being the go-between, and Juana had been very much alive, cheerful even, an hour earlier at the market.

  But she’d seen his name linked with Bobby Benavides. She’d seen the hole in Dr. Guzman’s chest. She’d seen Evan leaving the doctor’s building.

  Not his office, though, just the building.

  Back and forth until Luz reached Evan’s street. Without conscious plan, Luz had been walking toward his house. She’d been kidding herself about running away. Oh, she’d go, but on her own terms. Time—past time—to get things straight. Trees lining the center of the avenue cast dappled shade that blurred outlines. She leaned against a tree trunk. The street was empty, quiet except for the rattle of cicadas like static zapping her brain. Then a curtain fluttered at Evan’s house, too deliberate to be a draft. Time to take those last few steps; time for answers.

  Her footsteps clattered on the rough cobbles.

  Evan cracked open the door before she finished crossing the street, frowning and shaking his head. “I wish you hadn’t come,” he said as he took a step back, now almost behind the door.

  He began to close the door in her face. Luz rushed to the top step and smacked the door hard with her fist. “I saw what you did. That poor old man never did you any harm. How could you?”

  “What are you talking about? Go—” He lurched backward, and the door swung open revealing an interior as disordered as Dr. Guzman’s office. Paintings tossed on the floor, Evan’s big easel on its side, a bowl of flowers lying cracked in a puddle of water.

  As she edged toward the threshold, Evan arched his back and bucked his head. He threw out a hand, pushing Luz away. “Run!” he yelled. “Get out of here!”

  The heavy wooden door in her peripheral vision zeroed in on her as it closed. She dodged away from it. Too late. The door connected with her shoulder, and a blow to the side of her head made everything go dark. A strong hand closed on her wrist.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  When her head cleared, Luz was lying on Evan’s living room floor. He looked down at her, so pale his freckles stood out like golden sequins on a ball gown. “Don’t move,” he said. But Evan wasn’t speaking. The figure behind him, a man wearing Evan’s plaid jacket and holding a gun, straightened.

  Richard Clement said, “If you take one step toward her, son, I will shoot your foot.” He squinted at Luz. “You have royally fucked this up, kids. But we are not backing out of this one.” He poked Luz with his loafer. “No, sir—we are going forward.”

  “You killed Dr. Guzman.” It wasn’t Evan after all.

  Richard failed to hide a smile.

  “For heaven’s sake—why?” Not Evan. That house of cards she’d designed and then sent crashing reassembled itself like a high-speed video running in reverse. Richard had manipulated both of them.

  “It’s all your fault.” Richard pinched the bridge of his nose—a beleaguered man with an incipient headache. “You should never have gotten the old man involved. I told him I was your guardian come to pay what you owed him, but he was suspicious from the start. He figured out too much.” Evan had grasped part of the truth, then: Richard had seen the doctor’s bill on her kitchen counter. “And now you are going to help me exactly the way you said.”

  “I won’t,” Luz shouted, rising on one elbow. Richard kicked her supporting arm, and Luz’s head crashed down.

  “You will if you ever want to see your boyfriend again.” Richard’s hand brushed from the scrapes on Evan’s cheek, along the front of his ripped shirt, and down to bulges where Evan’s belly was taut. A web of wire and lumpy tan rectangles circled his waist.

  The puzzle pieces had been shaken and rearranged too many times over the last twenty-four hours. Toño had tried to kill Cesar’s sister. Richard was cold-bloodedly arranging her suicide. He killed the doctor who discovered his secret, and now he’d turned on his own nephew. From what Luz had learned in Miami, Evan was probably wired with C4.

  “You’re right, Richard,” said Luz. “I’ll go through with it.” With Evan as hostage and a gun pointed at her, there was nothing else to say.

  “An excellent decision, Luz.” Again, that ever-so-slightly harassed smile. “So now it’s time you get suited up, too. I have Evan rigged on remote—see?” Richard rummaged in his jacket pocket and retrieved a small gray box. He lifted the lid and turned it so Luz and Evan could see two red buttons on the face. “In case you’re wondering, it doesn’t matter which one I push. Unlike maneuvering a toy car, forward or reverse amounts to the same thing with explosives.”

  Richard, his mask intact and manner eminently reasonable, nudged Evan with the barrel of his gun. “Have a seat,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable while Luz and I take care of business.”

  Evan shuffled his feet, ping-ponging his gaze from Richard to Luz on the floor, back to Richard.

  “Move.” Richard aimed the gun at Luz’s upper arm. “I won’t kill your girlfriend, but I can make her bleed all over your rug. Can’t miss from this distance, and it’ll hurt like bloody hell but—as long as I bandage her—she’ll be fine for the next few hours.”

  Her last few hours. Her life and Evan’s depended on her ability to think. She had to get herself under control.

  Evan sank into the chair, and Richard turned his attention once more to Luz. “Where’s the thumb drive from Bobby Benavides’ briefcase?”

  “You tell me why you want it, and I’ll tell you where it is.” Luz flung out the retort without thinking.

  Richard burst out laughing. “You are too funny for your own good. Okay—in a word—insurance. I need it to control Bobby’s ambi
tions. He’s done a shitload of things he’d rather not have the folks in his native country know about.”

  “And you haven’t?”

  Richard’s laugh morphed into a tight-lipped grimace. “I’ve been a tad more careful to keep my name out of it.”

  Your name, thought Luz, with sudden recall of the tall pale man who stood, face partially eclipsed by a camouflaged bush hat, on the periphery of those bloody jpeg images forever etched in her memory. Yes, Richard might’ve substituted his innocent nephew’s name for his own, but she’d bet her life that if anyone had been keeping an insurance policy on the other, it was Bobby who’d been documenting Richard’s corruption. He’d had her steal Bobby’s insurance policy on him.

  Luz nodded as though accepting his explanation. “It’s under my mattress.” One lie deserved another. If he insisted on going to get the flash drive, she had bought herself and Evan valuable time.

  Richard squinted, assessing. “Let me give you a chance to reconsider your answer. I’ll kill Evan if it’s not there.”

  Evan flew from the chair and wrapped his uncle in a bear hug. For one wonderful second, Luz thought Evan could bring him down. She rolled to her side, ready to pounce on Richard when he fell. Somehow, the man got his elbows up and, with a powerful upstroke, broke Evan’s hold. The next second his fists jabbed outward, hitting Evan’s jaw so hard he crashed back into the chair, bleeding from a cut on his cheek.

  Richard didn’t even appear winded. “Strike one.” His stony glare turned from Evan to Luz. “The drive?”

  Evan had tried to keep her outside, tried to overcome Richard. She’d tried, too. Without success. Of course not—Richard played by different rules. She and Evan couldn’t win playing his way; they had to find a different advantage.