Forty-Four Book Eleven (44 series 11)

by Jools Sinclair

  Then I slipped the knife into my back pocket, under my shirt.

  After I finished in the kitchen, the woman asked me to take out the trash. She pointed at four or five large black bags by the back door.

  “Sure,” I said.

  The bags were heavy and I would have to make two trips. The door let out into an alley where two dumpsters sat under a street light. I scanned the area and quickly walked the bags over, leaving them by the first container. I reached back and felt the knife in my pocket as I went back for the rest of the trash.

  I picked up the last two bags and ran over to the dumpster, setting them down and quickly flipping open the lip. I was immediately hit by the horrible stench of food scraps left out to rot in the sun. I started tossing the bags in one at a time. Right before I threw in the last one, I saw something mixed in with the trash.

  My Dodgers cap.

  A few weeks and another lifetime ago, I wouldn’t have thought twice. I would’ve left the hat. But not now.

  I reached in and grabbed it.

  As I scrubbed it with the dishwashing soap back at the sink, I felt a slight twinge of anger toward Lupe. This was probably her doing. But it didn’t matter. I was learning.

  And I was leaving.

  I stood under the trickle of the showerhead for a long time, the lukewarm water dribbling off my hair and shoulders, and scrubbed extra hard in the places where he had been. When I stepped out I brushed my teeth. Twice. I looked in the mirror and saw that I had rubbed my neck raw.

  I went over to the mat and stared up at the dark ceiling, the knife in my hand, trying to think of happier times. It should have been easy. Ninety-nine percent of my life had been better than this. But all I could think of was the one percent. The day my mom passed away. The day Jesse and I had died. The day Nathaniel murdered his brother.

  And today.

  I stayed awake for as long as I could, but then finally drifted off into a restless sleep.

  Soon I was sinking through the water like a stone, dropping down, down, down, leaving the last shafts of sunlight near the surface far above. Once again I hit the bottom, unable to move my arms or legs, unable to scream or cry out. And through it all, a terrible sobbing echoed in my ears, the gut-wrenching pain of someone in complete and utter anguish.

  CHAPTER 20

  I wasn’t exactly sure why, but the next morning I was on my way to Hatch again.

  It wasn’t what Samael had said, because he really hadn’t said anything. Stay? I needed more than that. I needed a reason. And he seemed unable or unwilling to give me one.

  One more day, I told myself. A few more dollars. What the hell.

  As we bounced along in the dark, I took out the Walkman. I went with the Eagle’s Desperado, letting Don Henley’s gravelly voice bring me to the edge of sleep while the lyrics from the title track worked their way into my mind. By the time the first side of the cassette ended, I had made another decision.

  I was going to call Kate.

  It was selfish, I knew that. I had nothing to offer her, no words of comfort. But I wanted, I needed, to tell her how sorry I was and how much I loved her. I needed to say goodbye.

  The day dragged on slower than all the others combined, but I put my back into it and filled my bucket repeatedly, collecting tokens at a record speed. At least for me.

  As I picked chiles, my mind drifted back to the dream.

  I was in a body of water, maybe a lake, but it wasn’t in the lake where I had died. And it wasn’t how I had drowned. In my death I had drifted down to the bottom gently. I didn’t sink like I was wearing cement shoes the way I did in this dream. And in my death, there was no sobbing. There was no one else there. I died in that frozen lake all alone, and I held my breath, knowing that if I gasped for air, it would be for the last time.

  I didn’t know who it was in the dream. I had seen hundreds of ghosts since leaving Bend and it could have been any one of them. Or someone new. But whoever it was or whatever it meant or how persistent or troubling, I couldn’t get involved. Not now. My ghost business was boarded up, closed for the season. Gone fishing.

  Like Jesse always said, every ghost had a story. But it was like what they told you on an airplane: If traveling with a small child, place the oxygen mask on yourself first. There was a reason they said that. If you didn’t take care of yourself first, you’d be dead. And then you couldn’t help anyone else.

  Right now, I just needed to keep breathing. To survive. Make sure that I woke up each morning.

  Halfway through the day I stood up, drank some water, and looked around at the other workers in the field, the man with the cowboy hat by his pickup truck, the dirt road that led to the small town.

  What the hell was so important here?

  Samael had made a point of telling me that I had to stay here. Not so much that I had to avoid capture, but that I had to stay in these fields.

  He had to be delusional. What other explanation could there be? He wasn’t trying to help me remember anything. He wasn’t David’s angel of memory. He probably wasn’t an angel at all.

  I got back to work and thought of Ty.

  I looked down at my dirty, bare finger and swallowed hard. I missed him so much. I had been such a fool. We had everything and, there at the end, I had actually questioned it. I had been an idiot for doubting our relationship.

  Why had I insisted on making everything such a big deal? Why all the drama? Ty didn’t make it such a deal. He seemed to understand my feelings for Jesse and it was okay. He hadn’t judged me. He just wanted to be with me.

  But I knew now that I had been selfish from the start. I had sucked Ty into my darkness, subjecting him to evil and ghosts and death. That wasn’t Ty’s destiny or who he was. He belonged with someone happy. Someone who rode horses, went shopping, and took yoga classes. Someone normal.

  I couldn’t call him. No matter what I said, he would take it the wrong way. He would take it as a sign of hope. And that would be wrong.

  Sometimes giving someone hope was the worst thing you could do. Because hope was often nothing but a lie. The cruelest lie.

  Maybe I would write Ty a long letter farther down the road. I would tell him how much I loved him. How I thought of him every single day.

  And then I would burn it, and let the ashes scatter in the wind.

  CHAPTER 21

  I tried to call Kate after I cashed in my tokens, but then I realized I had never activated the disposable I had bought in Las Vegas. When I read the sticker on the back I found out I had to call from a separate line to get it working.

  “For the love of—” I muttered. “What’s the point of that?”

  I would have to call from a payphone when I got back to El Paso. And I would have to remember to buy the next one from a different company. I decided to call from the bus station on my way out of town. I probably wouldn’t have been able to get a signal out here anyway.

  It seemed odd, standing there holding the phone. My phone had been such a big part of my life before. Now, besides this particular one being useless, at least for the moment, it seemed wholly unnecessary to have one.

  I walked back from the food truck and saw that everybody was standing around the bus, listening to Jake. Lupe stood next to him, interpreting in Spanish.

  “These fields will be picked clean by the end of the day tomorrow. So this job is done tomorrow, comprende? But if any of you are interested, there’s a farm a few miles north of here that needs help. They got basic living quarters, so you can sleep there. No commuting back and forth from El Paso. You’ll get to work a few more hours a day. The man wants to get the fields done in the next two weeks, so he’ll be expecting long hours. If you’re interested, just bring your stuff with you tomorrow when we send the bus in the morning.”

  From what I could gather, most of the workers had planned to follow the crops to California, but they seemed happy at the chance to extend the season and earn some more money here before moving on. At first I didn’t think it
applied to me. I was getting out, after all. But as the idea rolled around in my brain, I liked it. It would get me out of El Paso, which was my main concern right now. And another two weeks of work might net me an additional four hundred dollars. Maybe a little more. It would also buy me some time to think about where else I could go and what else I could do.

  The more I thought about it, the more I liked it.

  I accidently brushed up against Lupe when I got on the bus.

  “Back off, mensa,” she said.

  “Lo siento,” I said, apologizing in Spanish.

  I had just learned the phrase the other day and was glad to be able to use it. But she wasn’t impressed.

  “Please tell me you’re not going to the other farm, llorona. Or do you like it out here?”

  “I haven’t decided,” I said.

  She looked over, her eyes narrowing in the sun.

  “You haven’t decided if you’re going or if you like it? Listen, why don’t you just get yourself a manager position at the Walmart? I hear they’re hiring white people. Why are you hanging around here with us Mexicans?”

  “Because I have nowhere else to go.”

  I tried to say it with some toughness in my voice but it came out more like Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman.

  She shook her head.

  “Well you sure as hell don’t belong here, weepy.”

  “I don’t belong anywhere,” I said, holding her gaze for a long moment and then walking past her.

  CHAPTER 22

  As I neared the back of the bus, I saw that my usual seat next to Ernesto was taken. I grabbed my backpack and headed up the aisle and saw that there was an opening next to the old woman. I sat down.

  Lupe was in front of us and turned her head when she saw me but didn’t say anything. The old lady nodded and smiled at my hat, pointing to it.

  “Bien,” she said. “Ahora sí.”

  Now that I was close to her I could see that she was even older than I had thought, with deep wrinkles in her face and neck, shriveled from years in the sun. And after working all morning, her energy was so slow, barely there, her eyes just slits. Most people kept to themselves, neither going out of their way to help someone or to throw away their Dodgers hat, but the old woman was different. There was a kindness that radiated from her even when she was at her weakest. They all called her Abuelita and whether or not she was actually their grandmother, she treated them all like family.

  She sat there asking Lupe a few questions in Spanish as we made our way through Hatch. Lupe stared straight ahead the whole time. At one point Abuelita turned toward me, still speaking in Spanish, and then Lupe said, “She wants to know your name, weepy.”

  “Callie,” I said.

  But the old woman stared at me and then shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “Ese no es su nombre.”

  “My grandmother says you’re a liar,” Lupe said, shaking her head too, and I could feel the color washing out of my face. “Anyway, she already has a name for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Dolores. It means pains or sorrows. Of course, I think you’re more like la Llorona, on account of how you’re crying all the time.”

  “Lupe, no.” The old woman seemed to get mad at that, speaking in a low hushed tone as if she didn’t want people hearing. “Con eso no se juega.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Ah, she has no sense of humor. She said not to mess with that stuff. You know, that… business.” She made a face and rubbed at her eyes, pretending to cry. The old woman said something else. “She wants to know how much you made today.”

  “Thirty-four dollars after the bus ticket.”

  Abuelita shook her head and spoke some more.

  “She says you must eat more. That’s why you don’t make any money. You’re too skinny, weepy. No endurance.”

  The corners of my mouth turned up slightly.

  We drove with the windows down and the heat blowing in all around, but it felt good. At least the air was moving. We passed through the little town with its signs and taco stands and garden statues and no end of ristras. That was the name for the strung-together chiles. We stopped at the traffic light next to the park.

  I glanced over at the swings and shuddered. The ghost girl was there again, those black eyes watching me as the light turned red and the bus stopped.

  I saw her better this time. Her small little hands were wrapped around the metal chains, her long black hair hanging off her shoulders. She was wearing a light faded dress but had no shoes on her tiny feet. Her face was pale but her eyes were large and dark, with black circles around them.

  And she was covered in dirt, like she had walked out of her own grave to come find me.

  I began to shake and suddenly heard the old woman next to me. I had almost forgotten she was there.

  “Ay, Dios mío,” she whispered.

  I turned and saw that she was also staring at the swing. She clutched the small cross that was hanging from her neck as we drove past, tears pooling in her ancient eyes.

  “Ay, no. Pobrecita. Que Dios te bendiga.”

  I sat there in shock. While I didn’t understand the words she spoke, I understood their meaning.

  The old woman had seen the ghost, too.

  CHAPTER 23

  I always knew there were other people out there with the same ability but now that I was sitting next to one, it felt strange. Not bad, just strange.

  I wondered if the old woman had always seen ghosts. Or if, like me, her ability had been brought on by a traumatic event. She appeared to be very religious, and yet she also seemed to not be afraid of the ghost. She had blended the two somehow, her faith with that unknown world. But I guess it wasn’t such a stretch. If you believed in a Holy Ghost, maybe it made sense to believe in the lost and troubled and unholy ones, too.

  When I got back to El Paso, Alicia, the woman who ran the shelter, let me use the phone there to activate my burner while Lupe’s friend scowled at me viciously from across the room. I went out to the back, near the dumpsters. Then with shaking fingers, I punched in the number for the newspaper.

  “Kate Craig,” a voice answered.

  I almost lost it and hung up right there but I stayed on the line, desperately fighting to steady my emotions.

  “Ab—” she whispered, stopping herself from saying my name. “Is that you?”

  “Kate,” I said finally.

  “Oh, my God. Damn it. Where have you been? What were…”

  I could hear her muffled tears.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Shit,” she said. “Where are you? Can you call me back on my cell? I want to talk to you.”

  I had used the work number, figuring that was the best choice. The call wouldn’t show up on her personal phone and it kept her from having to lie if someone asked if I had been in touch. Since she worked at a newspaper that did national stories, one call from Texas wouldn’t raise any suspicions.

  “No, I don’t have much time.”

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “It’s best not to get into specifics,” I said. “I’m out here, keeping my head down.”

  “That’s just great. That’s just fucking great!”

  Having her yell at me didn’t feel good, but it was better than listening to her cry.

  “You shouldn’t have run,” she said, bringing her fury under control. “Guilty people run. And I know you didn’t do it.”

  It was good to hear her say those words. I never thought she would have believed me capable of killing Benjamin Mortimer, but still… A weight lifted off me and I just stood nodding, the tears blurring my vision.

  “Are you there?” she said.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m here.”

  “Well?”

  “I didn’t see any other way.”

  “But what’s your plan? You’re just going to be a fugitive until they catch you?”

  I didn’t answer. What could I say? I d
idn’t have a plan.

  “One day at a time,” I said finally, knowing it wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

  “How are you doing? Are you getting enough to eat? What about money?”

  “I’m doing okay. Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, damn it. You just need to come home. Together we can figure this thing out.”

  “Catch me up on the latest,” I said, changing the subject. “You know, on the case.”

  She didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know from what I had learned yesterday. There was all the evidence stacked up against me. What was new was that the waitress had come forward from the restaurant where Ben and I had eaten a few nights before his death. She had called our dinner “romantic.”

  “You see, I can’t come back,” I said. “They’ll just throw away the key. And David’s not helping.”

  “At first I thought the same thing, but I’m not so sure anymore. With all the publicity he’s getting, lawyers will be lined up around the block to take your case. Not just ambulance chasers. The best lawyers. And everyone will have heard of you. It’ll just make it that much harder for the prosecution.”

  “How hard could it be?” I said. “It’s open and shut, Kate. It doesn’t matter who my lawyer is or how many people have heard of me.”

  “I know it looks bad. But we’ll find a way. You can’t just give up.”

  Maybe that’s what I had done. But whatever it was that I was doing, it felt a hell of a lot harder than giving up.

  “How’s Ty?” I asked.

  There was a pause.

  “What do you think?” she said. “He’s not doing too well. Like me, he just can’t understand why you fled. We could have helped you through this. We can still help you through this. It might cheer him up a little when I tell him you called.”