I walked the outside edge of the steps where I knew the treads had maximum structural support, giving the unrepaired hole I’d left the day before a wide berth. I rapped smartly on the door, and it fell away under my knuckles.
I tightened my grip on my handbag. An unlocked door didn’t seem very Maria-like.
“Maria? Are you home?”
No answer.
“Is anyone here?” I called.
I hesitated. If the door was open, I was invited in, which seemed to be a trend for me lately. I glanced at my watch. I had fifteen minutes before I needed to leave for my doctor’s appointment. Plenty of time to run through and scan for information. Or to find and question the little boy and possibly other people that didn’t like to answer Maria’s door. I just wouldn’t touch anything, I’d be silent as Sacajawea, and I’d hurry.
I stepped into the first room, remembering my father’s lessons from long ago. I imagined leaves and twigs and rocks under my feet, and I placed each foot down light as air, and did it again. And again. And again. If I was less than silent, the sound of the wind muffled my indiscretions. I tiptoed around the living room. It was a dump, with ratty, dirty furniture that smelled as bad as it looked. The walls were bare except for stains and pockmarks.
My silent feet moved on to the kitchen. White linoleum, white counters, white cabinets, white sink, white refrigerator, white microwave, black oven, and a silver range top crowded the box-like space. Dirty dishes teetered in the sink, far too many for one woman, or even a woman with a family. These were dishes for a party of ten. The trash bulged up on its lid as well.
I stepped out of the kitchen. The little house couldn’t have many more rooms. Two bedrooms and a bathroom, I’d guess. Suddenly a loud thrumming interrupted the silence, and I reached in my handbag, groping for my Glock. Frantically I searched the small purse then remembered. I’d left it in the glove compartment of Wallace’s car, and wherever it was now, it didn’t do me a lick of good. I listened more carefully to the thumping thrum, and then almost laughed aloud. The sound wasn’t coming from the house. I was frightened of my heartbeat and a ringing in my own ears.
I moved quietly to the back of the house and stepped into the left bedroom. Sleeping bags were rolled and stashed against the walls. One, two, three, four, five of them in a rainbow of colors. A double bed sat in the middle of the room, but it was stripped bare, its sheets nowhere to be seen. The only other furniture was a desktop and a funny little machine in the back corner, like a printer, sort of, but smaller. I walked closer to it. It said Zebra ZXP Series 3 on top. Some ID cards lay by the desktop—Hispanic faces and names—and I compared the output hole in the Zebra thingy to the cards. They matched.
I scanned the room again. The closet accordion door was closed. I opened it. It was crammed full of clothes arranged by men’s, women’s, and children’s wear in descending sizes. Holy crap, was Maria helping out the entire undocumented community? Food, bedrolls, clothes, IDs? Excited now, I resumed my search, but the dense silence was shattered with a terrifying ringing noise. Not my ears this time. Spit. My phone. I fumbled in my handbag. My display read Wallace. I pressed accept.
“Wallace,” I whispered, “Meet me at Maria’s ASAP. She left her house open, and I’ve found—”
Something incredibly, unpleasantly hard cracked into the back of my head. I felt myself crumpling, my phone tumbling, and my cheek landing on the carpet as the lights went out.
***
I returned to the conscious world with another loud ringing in my ears and two blurry faces peering down at me in front of a white background that hurt my eyes. “Where am I? What happened?”
The two faces turned to my left. A third face appeared, this one above a police-blue uniform. It said, “Emily Bernal?” It sounded like a he.
“Yes?” Each word, his and mine, was an anvil strike on the wedge that was cracking open my skull.
“I’m Officer Wilson. Do you know a Maria Delgado?”
A light brown mustache floated above his upper lip, bobbing up and down like a prairie dog from its hole. My eyes locked onto it.
I spoke carefully, trying not to hammer the wedge. “Sort of.”
Talking hurt so much. I lowered my voice, and he leaned the mustache further toward me. It smelled like garlic and onions.
“This is her house,” I said. “I, um, I was meeting her here.” I hoped he could see how painful this was for me and would stop.
But the mustache kept bobbing. “Did you see her?”
“No.” Ouch.
“How’d you get inside?” The mustache did a hippety-hop. It almost made me giggle, but even the thought of giggling hurt.
“Door was open. I called her name and came in. And, sir, my head really hurts.”
“Sorry.” The mustache didn’t stop, though. “What happened next?”
“My phone rang. Something hit my head.” I gestured at him and behind him at the other faces. “Then, this.” My voice faded on the last word.
His eyes narrowed into slits that further emphasized the furry creature on his upper lip. Maybe not a prairie dog. A mole? No. Possibly a rat? Yes, I’d seen plenty of rats in the barn behind our house, and they jumped around like this thing did.
“Did you ever see Ms. Delgado?”
“No.”
I winced. I reached up to touch my head but missed and got nothing but air. I put my hand back on my leg.
The rat loomed over my face, blocking out the glare behind his head. “Did you see anyone else?”
“No.” I closed my eyes. No more rat.
“So Ms. Delgado was alive last time you saw her?”
“Yeah, yesterday. What, she isn’t now?”
“Ms. Delgado is dead.”
My eyes flew back open. “What happened? Where is she?”
“Blunt force trauma to the head, like you, but apparently you got lucky. She’s across the hall.” He wrote something on a notepad he had in his left hand. “I’ll let the paramedics get back to you.” And he and the rat disappeared.
I felt a little irritated. I was a victim, but he had pumped me for information as if I were a suspect. But then my bleary brain got smarter. I was a suspect. I’d never been one before. How weird, in a not-good way.
The two faces I’d first seen moved back into the tunnel of my vision, a white man with longish brown hair and a black woman with short dark hair. Behind them, a third face appeared. Things darkened and took shape. A popcorn-textured ceiling with water stains. The open closet full of clothes. The edge of a mattress. Floppy sand-colored hair streaked with highlights.
“Wallace . . .” I reached a hand toward him.
He couldn’t get past the paramedics, and I let my hand drop.
“Way to scare me to death, Emily,” he said. “I nearly had a heart attack trying to get here, worried about you, only to find Maria dead and you looking dead.”
“You called the ambulance?”
“911 the second I saw you.”
I tried to smile. “Thank you.”
The woman spoke. “Excuse me, ma’am, we need to ask you some questions, and then we can let you speak to your friend.” Her voice flowed like warm honey. Alabama? Mississippi?
Wallace shot me a thumbs up.
The woman resumed. “You appear to have been struck in the head with a heavy blunt object. You lost consciousness, and you have a concussion, which is why your head hurts. You probably feel a little foggy and nauseous, too?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll feel like that for a while. Anyway, we just got here right before you woke up, and, because your vitals were steady, we let the officer go first, before we could do a complete exam on you. There’s a fair amount of blood around your torso.” She put her palms on my abdomen and probed gently in a search pattern. “Do you recall why?”
I looked at her blankly.
“Do you remember being shot, or stabbed, or sexually assaulted?”
Oh God. My girly parts. “I was about to
go to my doctor’s. I had a tubal pregnancy and hemorrhaged and lost the baby yesterday. I’d just started bleeding again, right when I got here, before I got knocked out.” To my dismay, I started to cry, which made my head hurt worse. “And they said if this happened they might have to remove my tube and I can’t lose this tube or I can never have a baby because this is the only tube I’ve got.”
Wallace crouched beside me, and a shocked expression flitted across his face. He grabbed my hand. “I didn’t know you’d lost the baby. Why didn’t I know? You poor thing.” He turned to glare at the woman. “She needs to be in the ER, not laying here with her reproductive organs spilling out. Or do you want to be responsible for the babies this gorgeous creature will never have?” He jumped to his feet, clapping. “Come on, people!”
And unbelievably, the paramedics snapped to attention. Wallace hovered nearby. I beckoned him closer. He put his ear near my mouth, and I spoke in a rush.
“Harvey Dulles has the tattoo Victoria described and my friend Nadine says he’s at the Polo Club daily. I got an anonymous email telling me Sofia talked about a man named Antonio. I couldn’t find anything on him, but that must be critical. And, of course, I’m sure you noticed Maria is running some kind of underground house here and—”
“Shh. I’ve got it, and I’ll fill in the police. You’ve done good. Worry about you for a change.” He kissed my cheek. “I’ll be right behind the ambulance.”
A swell of emotion surged up through my chest and lodged in my throat. “Don’t tell anyone else about me though, okay?”
He saluted me crisply.
Five minutes later, I was in the ambulance, speeding toward the ER with the sound of a siren battering my skull.
Chapter Twenty
I awoke to a familiar, white-tiled ceiling and pink curtains around my bed. Even as my eyes opened and took in the room, vivid images remained in my mind, and their resonance shot white-hot panic through me. A slim, short Native American in a clunky headdress and tall buckskin moccasins stood pointing after a bald man running with Valentina under his tattooed arm. Tall evergreen trees loomed behind them.
“Go after her,” the Indian said, the words a little cloud of fog in the air.
I stopped to look at the Indian again. I couldn’t help it. It was just so odd. The Indian’s body was painted white and he wore a mask that looked like it was made of real animal hide, down to the animal ears protruding in front of the headdress.
“Go,” the Indian shouted, and this time I ran, but it was too late. A bull thundered between us and barreled straight at me.
“Valentina!” My voice came out hoarse and thin. I tried to sit up.
A hand pushed my shoulder down. “Emily, you’re in the recovery room, at the hospital. It’s okay.” I knew the voice, but its words made things worse.
“Wallace, the Indian tried to send me after Valentina, but now I can’t see her. Where is she? Where did she go?”
“You’re dreaming. You need to be still so you don’t hurt yourself.”
I rolled my head to face him, pleading. “But it was real. She was here. She was . . .”
My voice trailed off as I tried to explain to Wallace where I’d seen her, but the images had slipped away. I didn’t know where she was anymore. Valentina was gone. I dropped my head to the pillow.
He lifted my hand and squeezed it, then held on. “It was a nightmare,” he said. “It’s okay. You’ve just woken up in the hospital from surgery.”
I didn’t want to be in a hospital. I didn’t want surgery. I nodded and tried not to cry. It had been so real. I wanted it to be real.
A very short man with coarse salt and pepper hair on either side of a smooth cranium and face appeared behind Wallace. He looked Indian, as in from-the-country-of, and he had just the slightest hint of curry on him, like he’d lunched at My Thai. It cleared some of my haze.
“Ms. Bernal, you’re awake,” he said. “Good. I’m Dr. Patel, and I performed your surgery today.”
His cheerful voice and distinctly Indian accent seemed surreal in Southwest Hospital in Amarillo. “Thank you.”
“Well, I am pleased to report the operation was a complete success. Your hemorrhaging was getting much worse, quite dangerous to you, actually, and we were able to stop the bleeding.”
“My tube?”
His head bobbled right to left to right almost imperceptibly. “Yes, well, unfortunately we had to take out most of the tube to secure your recovery. There’s still a bit left, possibly enough that you might be able to become pregnant later, possibly not. I wish I could provide you with a more precise prognosis, but I can’t. There is reason for optimism, however, and I urge you to embrace it.”
Wallace squeezed my hand again. “This is good news, Emily,” he said. “The most important thing is that you will be fine.” He repeated himself, emphasizing the words: “The most important thing.”
I nodded, and I thought I heard myself say “Thank you” to the perky-voiced doctor as I stared at his blue scrubs. But, inside, I saw myself standing with my back to the edge of a swimming pool in a hotel where I’d seen a dead man sinking. I felt my body fall backward and hit the water. It was so soft and warm slipping over my skin. I sank below the surface and realized I couldn’t breathe, but I wasn’t scared.
As I sank, I whispered, “My baby and Valentina, both lost. And now I can never have another one. Just like my mother. Everything, lost.”
Dr. Patel’s singsong voice pulled me up, up, and out of the water. “Ms. Bernal, I need to verify that you understand what I just told you?”
I wanted to slip back under, and it irritated me that he interrupted. I spoke in a short voice. “Yes, yes, I understand.”
“You’ll need to see your own obstetrician in two weeks. The name was in your file, so we alerted her office about your situation and told them to expect your call.”
“Thank you.”
“You should stay here perhaps another half hour, then our staff will check you out to whoever will be driving you home.”
Wallace raised his hand. “That’s me.”
Heaven, I thought. Home is Heaven. Do you hear that, God? I’m going to Heaven.
“Very good. I’ll be sending you with a prescription for pain medication, if you need it. Please rest for twenty-four hours. After that, you may resume your normal activities, but please refrain from strenuous ones, including sexual intercourse, for several days.” He perched a pair of wire spectacles low on his nose and lifted an electronic tablet, his finger poised above it. “Do you have any other questions for me, Ms. Bernal?”
Water lapped against my chin again.
“No,” I whispered, before I let myself sink to the bottom.
***
I sat in the front seat of Wallace’s Altima and counted the Vicodin he’d picked up for me at the Target Pharmacy on Soncy Road. Six pills. I had enough to stay zonked for two days if I wanted to. Which I did. I looked at the clock on the dash: Five p.m.
Wallace buckled his seat belt. “It’s too soon for one now.”
“I know.” My phone dinged, so I checked my texts.
Nadine: Harvey is here. Thought you should know.
Spit! And I was basically an invalid, unable to do anything about it. But not without a friend, one who was completely mobile.
“Wallace,” I said, “remember how I told you that my friend Nadine said Harvey Dulles is a regular at the Polo Club?”
“Vaguely. There’s been a lot going on.”
I watched him watch me out of my peripheral vision. Had I only met this amazing human a few days ago? Here he sat with his best Salvage jeans covered in my blood, driving me to Heaven through a brownout, halfway to New Mexico. And with me about to ask him for another favor.
A knock on the window startled me. I turned and saw the person craning for a clear view into the car.
“Gah,” I yelped. Out of the corner of my mouth, I gave Wallace the scoop. “ADA Melinda Stafford, who’s been a burr under my b
lanket since we were kids.” My voice dripped pique.
“Oh God, I hate that bitch,” Wallace said.
“Well, put on your happy face, because I know from excruciating experience that she’s not going anywhere.” I pressed the button to lower the window. Nothing happened.
“Let me turn the key.”
He did, and I tried again. The window slipped into the door.
Melinda wrapped her French manicured claws around the doorframe and leaned so far in she was almost in my lap. The wind and dirt followed her.
“Emily, I thought that was you,” she said. “How are you?”
“Fine. How are you Melinda?”
“I’m fantastic. I heard about you on the news just now. You’re famous.”
“I guess.” I conceded.
The Maria Delgado murder would be topping the hour tonight on the local stations. Jack had texted me that a camera crew and reporter had shown up at the offices. He hadn’t asked any questions other than if I was all right, for which I was grateful. And thank God I’d missed the reporters. Wallace and I had heard some coverage on the radio when we’d driven from the hospital to Target. They’d pronounced my name wrong—then again, everyone around here said BUR-nal instead of Bare-NAHL.
“So, that’s interesting that you’re working with Jack Holden.”
My headache was coming back. “Yep.”
She flicked lint I couldn’t see from the sleeve of her charcoal gray suit jacket. “Is he dating anyone? I’ve got this campaign fundraiser for my boss, black tie, and I need a date. I’ll bet Jack looks yummy in a tux.”
I heard a noise like a strangled cat from the driver’s seat. Melinda did, too, and she finally seemed to notice Wallace.
Heaven to Betsy (Emily #1) Page 20