High White Sun

by J. Todd Scott

  Ben started to take a step off the porch, and the dog rose like he was going to follow him. His muzzle was wet, dripping, from his bowl of water, but after he looked up, back and forth between Mel and Harp, he settled back down again in Mel’s shadow.

  “See, even the dog here agrees. I’m good.”

  “If she’s up there, do you think she likes what she’s seeing? What you’re doing to yourself?” Mel could have pointed to the bottle, but didn’t.

  “She didn’t like it when she was here, but she was a forgiving woman, and she always knew me, understood me. Like no one else before and no one ever will, warts and all.” Ben coughed, looked away, so Mel couldn’t see his eyes and what might be in them. “The way you and Chris know each other. That’s special, don’t ever forget that. Hold on to it, hold on to each other, goddamn tight. Even if you don’t understand why, just do it for this old man.”

  She bent down and picked up the dog and held him. He was still in her arms, unmoving, watching them both. But she could feel the beat of the dog’s heart against her own.

  “I will, Ben. We will. And thank you for the dog. Jackie would approve. His coat is so white. I’ve never seen anything like it. He’s beautiful.”

  “Wait until he’s full-grown . . . just wait. And there’s a reason they were bred for white coats like that, although it has nothing to do with beauty.”

  “Why is that?” she asked.

  “That white color helped those Hungarian shepherds tell their dogs from the wolves . . .”

  28

  They met at the bar he’d mentioned before, the one in Artesia. America arrived before him as the sun was setting—the sky going blue to purple to black—but it was still too hot to sit outside on the porch, even with fans and misters. She found a tall table inside the bar itself and waited with a water, the ice inside melting as she watched. He finally showed up without his suit, just jeans and boots and a button-down shirt the color of morning fog. He’d left his gold watch and his glasses behind as well and his hair was not quite as slicked back, as if the Santino Paez she had met in his office had been replaced by this new one; similar in a lot of ways, but not quite the same.

  And somehow, in the dark and nearly empty restaurant, this one looked so much more real and so much more natural than the other.

  * * *

  • • •

  THEY TALKED ONLY IN SPANISH.

  It had been a while since she’d talked so much, for so long, in her native tongue. She’d gotten in the bad habit of starting her sentences and thoughts in one language and then finishing them in the other, and Ben liked to joke about it—how he needed a damn Spanish dictionary just to hold a conversation with her, and how she always seemed to have one foot on the other side of the river. Maybe that was also true for Paez, the two sides he showed the world as different as the clothes he chose to wear. It would be nothing that Ben could understand, so she didn’t blame him, but perhaps she and Paez were not so unlike as she’d wanted to believe.

  He ordered for them both, got her a glass of sangria and a michelada poured with a Pacífico for himself. His drink showed up cold and dark and bloody at the table, smelling of salt and tomato and lime. He drank it slow, letting the foam settle and spiking it with a little extra pepper, talking about everything but the reason he’d asked her to meet with him: his years in law school, some of the cases he’d worked, his last trip to San Antonio. He told her how someone in his family owned a small place in a village outside Mazatlán, La Noria, and how he used to go there in the summers. He used to fish in the sea with his cousins, and once saw the eyelike spots of a massive manta ray only an arm’s length away as it cut beneath their small boat. On the water one night he’d also heard the call of blue whales, or so his cousins had claimed, an eerie whistling and cry that had made them turn down their little radio so they could hear only that. He was sixteen years old and they’d sat silent and shared a bottle of tequila and the sea itself was as large as the world and warm as blood.

  She told him she had spent some time living by the ocean, and once you’d heard the sound of it, really listened to the surf and the tide, you never forgot it. It was like a massive heartbeat, reminding you of how small you would always be.

  They clinked their empty glasses to the sea and he ordered them another round.

  Perhaps not so unlike after all.

  * * *

  • • •

  “AZAHEL AVALOS KNOWS YOU,” he finally said. “He knows of you.”

  “He told you this?”

  Paez shook his head, pushing his empty salted glass away. “Not in so many words. He’s heard about you from the people he works for. And they are powerful people. He’s afraid of them, and I think he probably should be.”

  “Should I?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Should you?” He looked at her close. “You’ll have to ask him that yourself.”

  “Because he’s willing to talk?”

  “Yes, at least for the moment.” Paez folded his napkin over and over again. “But there is a problem.”

  She laughed. “There is always a problem.”

  Paez didn’t join her, just kept folding his napkin smaller and smaller. “You need to understand this is not an official proffer. He will never, ever do that. Anything he tells you is not in exchange for consideration on his charges, and the district attorney cannot be present. He’s willing to talk, but only to you.”

  “Why? If it’s not to help with his case, what does it matter?”

  “Mr. Avalos is under the impression that you are someone important and that you are in a unique position to help him. That you, and only you, will understand his situation. He feels somewhat abandoned, and that certain people have not taken a greater and immediate interest in his problems.” Paez put aside his folded napkin and revealed a tired smile. “I imagine he is not very impressed with his current lawyer.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “I’m no one . . . just a deputy.”

  Soy la chica con la pistola.

  “No,” Paez said, trying to get the waiter’s attention for the check, “I don’t think that is true at all.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THEY STOOD IN THE DARK next to his car. Away from the restaurant’s lights, it was difficult to tell what kind it was, although it reminded her of the Nissan that Avalos had driven, just several years older. Lawyers in the Big Bend did not make much money, and a defense lawyer made even less, maybe even less than a deputy. In the distance there was lightning, then a soft roll of thunder, moving away.

  “They say it will rain this week, but I’m not so sure,” Paez said. He hadn’t reached for his keys yet. “There is more to what I said inside. I received a call this morning from someone who is going to help Mr. Avalos. I am no longer just his court-appointed attorney, I’m on full retainer. I’m going to make more money than I ever have, and tomorrow my client will also, surprisingly and suddenly, be able to make his very expensive bond, all of it. He will be out.”

  “It’s a quarter of a million dollars.”

  “I know,” Paez said.

  “Who was it?” she asked. “Who’s hired you?”

  “Come now, you know I can’t tell you that. This conversation already risks far too much.”

  “Okay, but you just said Avalos felt abandoned, that no one was coming to help him?”

  “True. But I said I received this call. He’s not aware of it yet. It seems our mutual employer has a strong distaste for talking on jail phones. Unfortunately, I’ve been a bit delayed in telling Mr. Avalos about his good fortune. Call it a family situation”—Paez smiled at her—“or a prior engagement. Anyway, first thing tomorrow I will have to meet with him and make arrangements to post his bond. I can’t in good conscience wait any longer. He is my client after all, but . . .”

  “But tonight I can speak with h
im?”

  “Tonight, yes, you have a small window, closing fast. He’s afraid of these men we both now work for, but he’s also desperate. They’ve been cautious and patient up to this point, but I think they fear their caution and his desperation might drive him to cut an unacceptable deal, which is why I got that call this morning. Whatever Avalos tells you will never be admissible in court, and he will likewise never acknowledge he’s talked to you after he’s bonded out.” Paez looked to the night sky. “These men are also not the type to come forward, ever, and I can and will deny this conversation took place, or that I was aware you even approached my client. So whatever it is you think you need to hear from Mr. Avalos, for tonight, it will be yours alone to hear. Whatever secrets he has, you have this one chance to get them.”

  “Why help me, Santino? Why put yourself in this position at all?”

  He leaned back against the hood of the car. “I wasn’t exactly lying when I talked about a family situation. My mama is Zamantha Barriga Paez, her papa is Manuel Barriga Rivera, and his brother, my great-uncle, is Octavio Barriga Rivera. He’s in his eighties now, married several times, and was always very popular with women. He had a gift in that regard, I think, and a wonderful singing voice. But all the cigarillos over the years—his favorites were Te-Amos and Mocambos—made that voice disappear, like a bird flying away. One day it just never came back.” Paez snapped his fingers. “He now has one of those tanks to help him breathe, and he lives in Presidio, where some of his many sons and daughters, his great-great-nieces and -nephews, can look after him. They bring him McDonald’s cheeseburgers and the dirty magazines he likes and Don Julio tequila, and even the occasional Mocambo, although he should never have one of those again. There’s one who sees him almost every Sunday. She makes a rice dish he likes, and she’s looked after him better than all the rest.”

  “You’re talking about Vianey Ruiz,” she said.

  “Yes, Vianey Barriga Ruiz. Her mama is Donatella Ruiz Alamo, one of those many women my uncle married, but not for long. He was sixty-eight and she was forty-two. She’s passed now, a hard illness, but she was a good woman, or so I’ve been told. Octavio is going to outlive all the loves of his life.

  “Anyway, like me, like you, Vee often shortens her full family name.”

  America didn’t have to say anything, they both understood. Hispanic names and surnames were always a problem for American driver’s licenses and official records, particularly criminal history checks, and some of the other Big Bend deputies like Buck Emmett and Till Greer still hadn’t figure out how they were constructed. Most of the Hispanics living and working in Murfee had Americanized their names, dropping a part of their family, their history, along the way.

  “I had the chance to talk to Vee after Billy Bravo’s murder. She told me how you helped her, the interest and concern you took in her. I appreciate it.”

  America waited to see if Paez mentioned the gun, but he didn’t. “I was just doing my job,” she said.

  “I think it was more than that. But sometimes here, in this place, for someone like Vee, even that’s enough.”

  “Like you’re doing your job for Avalos.”

  “More or less,” he agreed. “And I’m not happy about this thing with Avalos. When I started as a lawyer, I thought it would be . . . different, somehow. I imagined I’d be helping more people, our people. I wanted to right all these wrongs, balance out all of these injustices and protect the innocent. But I’ve found that there aren’t many truly innocent people left in the world. Most everyone has dirty hands, even bloody, in some cases.” He pulled away from the hood and fished for his keys. “So it seems all I do is help wash it all off. I make it all appear clean, at least for a little while, and try not to look at myself in the mirror because I know I won’t like what I see.”

  “I still don’t understand why Avalos wants to talk to me. If it won’t help his own case, what’s the point?”

  Paez opened his car door, his face barely lit by the dome light. Whenever she blinked, he was here and there and then gone again. “There was a reason he came to Murfee, Amé, something he was sent here to do. And he seems to think you’ll help him finish it, and it has nothing to do with the law or the courts or you being a deputy.”

  “Then what?”

  “He believes your hands are already dirty, too, just like his.” Paez hesitated. “You know what the people whisper, what they say about you and your brother. I want to believe he’s wrong, because I’ve seen how you work and I know what you’ve done for Vee. What you were trying to do. I need to believe he’s wrong, but I guess we’ll only know after you talk to him. And then when all this is over, I hope we both can look at ourselves in the mirror.”

  Then he reached into his car and pulled from the floorboard the gun she’d given Vianey Ruiz, and put it carefully in her hand.

  * * *

  • • •

  PAEZ WAS GONE, but she was still sitting in her truck, thinking.

  The truck she’d bought with Nemesio’s money.

  He believes your hands are already dirty . . . when all this is over, I hope we both can look at ourselves in the mirror.

  Still holding the gun she’d stolen from the department, which Paez had returned to her.

  She searched for the lightning from earlier but it was gone. Now the whole of the sky was a glossy black, like a curtain hiding the possibility of brighter light somewhere behind it, and it reminded her of the photo Duane Dupree had sent to her phone, hours before he’d died.

  The last message she’d ever had from him: A picture of the black hole out in the desert he’d buried her only brother Rodolfo in.

  She put the gun away in her glove box, and found her phone and called Victor Ortiz at the jail, to let him know she was on her way.

  And she tried not to catch her reflection in her rearview mirror.

  29

  He came home to find Mel trying to put his papers back together, a mess of them in her hand.

  He’d left some work on the nightstand, the rest piled on the floor by the bed, and the new puppy had gotten into it. Most of it had been the research he’d printed up and brought home from the department on the ABT and the Aryan Circle and other white militia and hate groups; Southern Poverty Law Center reports and newspaper articles about Thurman Flowers and older stories about Elohim City and the Christian Patriot Defense League. He’d also been reading about the National Decision Model, a risk assessment process designed to deescalate confrontations between the civilians and police that some departments were implementing. It had become the model for policing in the UK, and was slowly making its way to the States.

  The rest had been some handwritten notes about changes he wanted to make in the department . . . and last, a short story he’d started. He hadn’t gotten very far with it, just something that had come to him on the long drive home one night. Chris had loved books and stories for as long as he could remember, and his literature classes at Baylor had been his favorite, but Caleb Ross had been the real writer and Chris still daydreamed about catching his name on the cover of a book at the Barnes & Noble in Nathan. Maybe Caleb’s picture, too, something black-and-white and serious-looking on the back flap of the dust jacket. It’d be good to see how he’d turned out, the man he’d become.

  Chris knew that Mel would remind him, You gave him that chance.

  However, he still couldn’t guess what sorts of things Caleb might write about, what stories he’d want to share. He’d read Caleb’s early journals, now destroyed, but couldn’t bring himself to believe Caleb’s first book would be about a corrupted father and a wounded deputy and the futile search for a boy’s missing mother.

  To the few who knew that story—how it all came to be and how it ended—it still barely seemed real, the truth of it far stranger than any fiction. But Chris still thought about Evelyn Ross all the time, and how he’d never discovered the truth of w
hat had happened to her. How no one had, and maybe no one ever would.

  The handful of pages Chris had scribbled down near the back of his yellow pad was ruined, along with everything else. He’d lost the thread of the story anyway and had no idea where it was going. He never had an ending.

  Just loose words and phrases scattered like the pages themselves on the floor, that didn’t mean anything more.

  Mel was upset, futilely holding the scraps in her hands while the dog Harp had given them watched them both with big brown eyes.

  He told her it was okay and nothing to worry about, as he helped toss it all in the trash.

  * * *

  • • •

  NOW, HOURS LATER, he couldn’t sleep, moving through his darkened house. He’d let the dog out to do his business, shutting off some of the motion-security lights out front because the dog’s wanderings kept setting them off, and the dog had come back in only to follow Chris from room to room, close at his heel—uninterested in the pile of blankets and pillows Mel had piled at the foot of their bed for him to sleep on. She didn’t have a name for him and they didn’t yet have a real dog bed or a leash or a collar or even dog food. Chris had to go to El Paso tomorrow for his meeting and to see Garrison, so Mel planned to head into Murfee early and get all of that.

  But something had made the dog alert, anxious, and he cut from doorway to doorway, staying close to Chris but circling back to the front door, nose down.

  Whining.

  Growling.

  Chris went back to the bedroom and checked on Mel, and then came back with his Browning A5, the shotgun she’d bought him, and went to the front door.