by Nancy Rue
“Read the sign,” said Officer Number Two and sauntered off.
NO TOUCHING, KISSING, REACHING ACROSS THE DIVIDER, it said. At the other end, a skinny man with missing teeth and an infested-looking goatee was following those rules with a man in a suit who was taking notes. It made me wonder if Uriel Cohen had been to see Jake. She’d said she would when I talked to her the day before and begrudgingly apologized for sending her packing. She told me it happened all the time. It was all routine for her.
For me it was all surreal. I flattened my palms against the spasms in my thighs as the door before me slid open and Jake stood there, blinking, as if he’d just stepped out of a dark closet. The deputy had to point him to the bench. I stood up but was frowned back to my seat. Jake sank into his place and stared at the divider between us.
“Jake?” I said. “Son, are you all right?”
He clearly wasn’t. All the progress he’d made in our week together had been erased in less than seventy-two hours, leaving him unwashed, pulled in, and bleeding from his cuticles. The one thing that hadn’t disappeared was the shame and it yanked me from my own paralysis.
“Look at me,” I said.
“I can’t.”
“Then just listen. I love you, Jake, no matter what you did or didn’t do. Miguel’s death doesn’t change that. Nothing changes that. Do you understand?”
Jake did look at me then. I was crying—and he had never seen me cry.
“They won’t let me hug you in here,” I said, “but I would if I could. I should have done it a long time ago. I should have been there for you no matter how hard you tried to push me away. But I’m here now. Your dad and I aren’t going anywhere—no matter what you tell us about what happened—and you have to start talking now, Jake.” He planted the heels of his hands against his forehead and rocked back and forth. “She said there was a bomb.”
“Who said?”
“That lawyer.”
I clenched the edge of the table. “Uriel Cohen told you about the bomb?”
“It’s real, Mom,” he said, still rocking. “That’s why I can’t talk. Because it’s real.”
I sat still. “You know who planted it? You know who wrote the note?”
“I can’t tell you. I was gonna tell you everything before she told me that. Now I can’t.”
“Jake.”
“Just let it go, Mom. Please. Or somebody else’ll get hurt.”
“It was the same person who made you run over Miguel, wasn’t it?”
“I can’t—”
“Jake.” I leaned as close to the divider as I dared, and even then the deputy took a step forward. “Was it Ian?” I whispered. “Did you do it for him?”
Jake pulled his hands from his forehead and searched my face. “No, Mom,” he said finally. “I didn’t do it for Ian.”
I stopped breathing. Jake couldn’t lie, and he was telling me a truth I didn’t want to hear. I was still staring at him when the deputy tapped him on the shoulder.
“Time’s up,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Jake stood up, but he didn’t take his eyes from mine. They were waiting for something. Something I’d promised him only moments before.
“I still love you, no matter what,” I said. “I love you, and I’m not giving up on you. Do you believe me?”
The deputy took him by the arm, pulled him toward the barred door. Still Jake watched me. As the door slid open, he nodded.
Sully had already pulled into the plaza in the center of Old Mesilla when he realized he’d left his cell phone on his desk at the clinic. He glanced at Tess, who was tucking her hair up into a ponytail. The only person he wanted to talk to anyway was right here with him. Unless Porphyria called, of course. But Porphyria knew he was on what was hopefully the final leg of his journey and wasn’t expecting a call from him until tomorrow.
“You’re turning green, Crisp,” Tess said.
“Maybe I’m hungry,” he said.
She surveyed him with those eyes. “On the off chance that you’re not lying right now, let’s go to the Café don Felix. That’ll be a good place to start asking around anyway.”
She turned to open the passenger door, but Sully touched her arm. “Listen, thanks.”
“For what?”
“For coming with me. I’m a little nervous about this.”
“Crisp, you are not a little nervous. You are scared to death. I don’t need to know the details, but it’s quite obvious that if you do find this woman, it isn’t going to be pretty. Maybe you should tell me what my role’s going to be when this goes down.”
At least he’d thought that much through. “All I want to do today is locate her,” he said. “Then I’ll come back alone and—talk to her.”
Tess nodded, never moving her eyes from his. “I don’t know what she did to you, but I wouldn’t want to be her.”
“You could never be her,” Sully said.
Tess nodded as if she didn’t see him turning red from the collar up.
“I’m glad,” she said.
The Café don Felix was on the southeast corner of the plaza and oozed as much natural charm as the authentic old Mexican square itself. It had a good feel, which Sully needed. He was sweating profusely, and not just from the promise of jalapeños that arose from the salsa a little girl of about nine placed on the table between Tess and him.
“What can I get you?” she said. She had enormous blue eyes and wore a miniature apron with straws and an order pad in the pocket.
“Tell us what’s good,” Tess said. There was no wink to Sully, no isn’t-she-cute in her voice.
“All our tortillas are homemade and served hot, and our burritos and chimichangas are the best in Dona Ana County.” The girl pointed to the list of Mexican entrées on a white board. “I personally like the gorditas. They’re small, but very tasty.”
“Fix me up with an order of those, would you?” Sully said.
She lowered her chin at him. “You’re going to want two—unless you have rice and beans on the side.”
Sully knew he couldn’t eat any of it, but he couldn’t disappoint that face, either.
“How about if you make it two, and we’ll share,” Tess said. “With some french fries.”
“Oh, those are good too,” Mini-server said. “And what can I get you to drink?”
Tess shot a glance at Sully and said, “What do you have that’s disgustingly sweet?”
“That would be our fruit punch. I know because my mom won’t let me drink it.”
When she had skipped off, Sully let go of the grin he’d been holding back. “She was about half-cute.”
“She’s amazing. That girl is going places.”
“You’re good with kids.”
“You’ve seen me with one kid, Crisp.”
“I can tell, though.”
“And you want to know why I’ve never had any of my own.”
Sully paused, a chip midway between the basket and the salsa.
“We’ve already established that you’re translucent,” Tess said, but she laughed. “I’ve never had any kids because I never found anyone I wanted to have them with.”
Sully liked that answer. A lot. It made him able to eat the gordita Mini-server brought, as well as half the french fries. The only thing the child couldn’t do was handle the bill, for which they had to go to the woman at the register, presumably her mother.
Tess widened her eyes at Sully and nodded toward the woman.
Sully was immediately nauseated again. It was time to do what he’d come here to do.
The woman counted out his change and smiled. “Anything else I can help you with?”
“Well, yeah. We’re actually looking for someone, and we heard she works around here.”
“She’s probably been in, then.”
“Her name is—she’s known as Zahira.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. I don’t know everyone’s name—I’m better at faces.”
Sully hesitated. He suddenl
y felt like someone posing as an FBI agent. “Belinda Cox?” he said.
She shook her head, and her eyes drifted to the woman coming in the front door. “Sorry. But I bet Angelina knows her. Ange—” She motioned to a robust woman with gray hair twirled to the top of her head and held in place with chopsticks. “These folks are looking for somebody named Zahira.”
Angelina’s eyes hardened. “She a friend of yours?”
“No,” Sully said.
“She’s not a friend of mine, either, just so we’re clear. She has a—well, I don’t know what to call it—a place down on Guadalupe Street. I don’t know what it was she was doing in there. She called herself a healer.”
“Oh, was that The Dark Mind?” the owner said. “I thought she was a psychic.”
Angelina grunted. “Psychics try to pump you up with this great future you’re going to have. All she talked about was how Satan was out to take everybody down.”
“You actually went in there?” Café Lady shuddered. “I thought it was kind of creepy.”
The front door opened again, and she picked up a stack of menus and left Sully and Tess with Angelina, who just seemed to be getting warmed up.
“So you say her place is on Guadalupe?” Tess looked at Sully. “I know where that is.”
“It was there,” Angelina said. “Landlord closed her down. She poured wet cement into the toilet to stop evil spirits from coming in through the plumbing.” She crossed her chest with a weathered hand. “I’m serious. He’s a friend of mine. Now, he could tell you stories.”
“So she’s left town?” Sully said, heart sinking.
“Not yet. She’s still in her house, which unfortunately is right across the street from mine, on Calle de Santo. Looks like she’s trying to sell it, although who knows what she’s done to that place. It’s got an eight-foot concrete wall all the way across the front yard.”
“Listen, thanks,” Sully said and edged toward the door.
“If you’ve come to get her out of town, more power to you,” Angelina said heartily. “This is a sweet little place. We don’t like her kind here, if you know what I mean.”
Unfortunately, Sully did.
As they crossed the patio, Sully could feel Tess looking at him curiously. He’d have been beyond curious if he’d been her. But at the moment, everything he ought to tell her was caught in his throat with the gorditas and the anxiety.
When they climbed into the Mini Cooper, she simply said, “If you turn right here and then right again, we’ll be on de Santo. You can do a drive-by.”
Could this woman get any more perfect?
He did what she said, slowing down after he made the second right.
“The way she was pointing, I think she meant it was beyond the plaza,” Tess said. “A house with an eight-foot wall in front of it shouldn’t be hard to miss.”
The neighborhood was quaint and clean, its pastel adobes warm and inviting in the afternoon sun. Some of them had hay bales stacked with pumpkins and gourds on their porches. Others beckoned with padded wood benches and windows reflecting fireplace flames from within. Belinda Cox didn’t belong here, just as Angelina said.
“There,” Tess said.
She pointed to a long, high wall on the right, which had been sloppily stuccoed and was interrupted only by a burnt-orange door sporting carved sunbursts. It might have been striking at one time, but the sun and the brutally dry air had blistered it beyond repair. A few feet of straggly weeds separated the wall from the road, so that if Sully had wanted to pull over and stop, even the Mini Cooper would have stuck out in the road.
“Looks like Angelina’s going to get her wish,” Tess said.
Sully nodded at the For Sale sign planted next to the door. A slat that read Pending hung from it, and it gave Sully a renewed sense of urgency.
“I’ll wait here if you want to try to see her now,” Tess said.
Sully shook his head and took his foot off the brake. “I’ll come back tomorrow. How about some dinner?”
“Crisp, we just ate.”
“I know. I just want to sit at a table with you and talk.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do. I can always eat.”
No, she couldn’t, and he knew it. She was just being progressively more perfect. And he wanted to tell her everything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I’d promised I would call Sullivan Crisp at nine Wednesday morning to check in. It was more like 8:45, but I was between assignments and I needed to hear his voice sooner rather than later so I would know I wasn’t crazy. I felt like a different person than I was before Saturday, and I had to make sure that was real before I went on with the plan that had begun to take shape in my mind during the night.
Dr. Crisp was breathless when he answered the phone, as if I’d caught him on the run.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I called too early. If this isn’t a good time . . .”
“No, no—this is perfect.”
I could hear him moving around, but he settled in quickly. I warmed my hands around the cup of coffee I’d just picked up at the Milagro drive-through. Even though I’d parked in the sun in the parking lot and the temperature was in the upper fifties, I was still shivering. That seemed to be my new natural state.
“I thought I was done crying,” I said. “Then I saw Jake yesterday, and I started all over again.”
“How did it go?”
“That depends.” I spilled it all, succumbing to tears again when I related Jake’s statement: I didn’t do it for Ian. “For so long I believed that he didn’t do it. And then I had myself convinced that Ian somehow made him get behind the wheel and run over Miguel. Jake took out all of that at the knees.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.” I shoved the tears off my cheeks with my jacket sleeve. “Jake’s telling the truth.”
“But there’s still the possibility that he didn’t do it at all.”
“Then why didn’t he say that? I know—he’s scared. He thinks somebody else will get hurt—like it’s all on him.”
He let that one sit. I’d figured out that he did that when he knew I already had the answer.
“I know,” I said. “He doesn’t take after anybody strange.”
“I’m sorry?”
“My mother used to say that. It’s like ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’”
“Now that one I know.”
I could hear him grinning.
“Jake might have learned from you to take responsibility for everything and everybody—or that might just be his nature. In either case, Ryan, it’s like anger. Sometimes it serves you—and other people, and God—well, and sometimes it doesn’t.”
“Remind me again when anger has served me well.”
“Whenever you’ve stood up against something that wasn’t right. Jesus never said getting angry was inherently bad. He showed anger himself on a number of occasions.”
I had to admit those were some of my favorite Gospel passages.
“But,” he said, “it never works as a way of being. And neither does a misplaced sense of responsibility, which Jake seems to have.”
I closed my eyes. This was the point where I always hit a wall— where I couldn’t completely buy into what he was selling.
“Talk to me,” he said.
“I’ve come a long way.”
“Absolutely you have.”
“I don’t want to rip up the upholstery in my car right now. I told my son everything he needed to hear. I made it all about love instead of about anger.”
“Yes, you did.”
I knew he could hear me crying, and I didn’t care. “But if you’re saying I have to let this go, I can’t. If he did do it, I have to find out why and how. Otherwise, Jake’s lost—and I can’t lose him again.”
“You don’t have to let it go. I don’t usually do this, but I’m going to give you a direct piece of advice.”
“Please,” I said.
“The only thing t
hat seems to be holding Jake back from telling you what happened is his fear that if he does, he’ll jeopardize someone else’s safety.”
“Right.”
“So if you can get him to let go of that responsibility, he’ll probably let the rest of it go too.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” I said.
“Two things. One, you take the responsibility for him. I suspect he hasn’t been able to be a kid for a while now, just like you at his age. And it sounds like you’ve already made a start in getting him to trust you to be his mom.”
“I hope so.” I wanted it to be so, because Sullivan had just given me permission to go ahead with what I’d planned. Almost. “What’s number two?” I said.
“You show him how to surrender—I’m talking about surrendering to God. That’s what you’re starting to do, isn’t it?”
“I’m working on it.” I wiped my nose. “I guess that’s sort of an oxymoron, isn’t it? Working on surrendering?”
“It’s a start. Why don’t you explain it to me the way you would to your son?”
“You mean pretend you’re Jake?”
“You did great with the sandbox.”
“You are a strange man,” I said. But I clung to the kindness in his voice and closed my eyes. “Just talk to him?”
“Yeah.”
I drew in a breath and tried to see my son, bowed over himself in pain. “Jake,” I said, “I’m doing everything I can to sort this out and help you. I understand why you feel like you can’t talk about it, and I’m trying to respect that.” I stopped. “How am I doing so far?”
“If I’m Jake, I’m already talking.”
I swallowed hard. That was the easy part. I wasn’t sure I knew where to go from here.
Until an image came to me, no longer gauzy and distant, but so sharp it cut through everything. In it, my hands were in fists that slowly uncurled until they lay flat and free. I didn’t see the Humpty Dumpty pieces I’d thought were there. There was nothing. I’d been holding on to nothing.
“Jake . . .” I said. “I can’t promise you I can get you out of this, whether you talk to me or not. But I know God can set us both free somehow, if we just stop trying to do his job for him.”