Heartless

by Alison Gaylin

  She averted her eyes as she walked by. She had real problems with the Day of the Dead stuff now—not so much the papier-mâché masks and candy skulls, but the skeleton marionettes. . . . It was the rib cages.

  Most of Jordan’s rib cage had been removed with either bolt cutters or a saw. She’d seen it on the ground, about ten feet away from his body—the sternum, half ribs branching off it, caked with dried blood. Like he’d been dissected.

  Had Carlos Royas really done that? Would he have even known how?

  Naomi reached the end of the sidewalk and headed right. The road she was on now was almost all residential, save for a few small hotels. It was called Calle Parque because it bounded the eastern edge of El Parque de las Lavanderas.

  This was why she had taken the long way home. Even though Naomi had told herself she hadn’t been thinking about it—that she’d just felt like a little bit more of a walk— she knew that a small, dark part of her brain needed her to go past Carlos Royas’s park. It was the same part of her brain where she stored her anger and her sorrow and her pain, where she crammed all the stuff she didn’t want to look at so she wouldn’t have to cry because crying hurt Vanessa. It made Vanessa say things like, “How can I make the pain go away?” As if she could do that. As if Naomi’s pain was that small, that fixable.

  Carlos Royas used to hang out in Parque de las Lavanderas with his friend Alejandro during siesta every day, stretching out on the grass or leaning against their tree, smoking cigarettes and waiting for business.

  Alejandro still did. At least, that was what Naomi had heard.

  The park was bordered by thick oak trees and jacarandas, so you couldn’t really see it unless you were in it. At the far edge, though, was the break in the trees where the town had set up the long, basinlike sinks for washing clothes, some with hoses running out of them, some with actual faucets. None of the lavanderas were here—it was too late in the day—but several of them had left their washboards behind, neatly stacked against the porcelain, waiting for morning. Naomi walked past the sinks and cut into the park, past a series of barbecue pits and picnic tables.

  Weird, this place. It wasn’t as noticeable when the lavanderas were here, but largely emptied out for siesta, you could really sense it. Bad energy. Naomi usually found that expression incredibly irritating—Vanessa and her friends used it to describe everything from un-feng shuied living rooms to rude hair stylists. But here . . . it fit. The street dogs that lay sleeping on their sides looked a little meaner. And the occasional groups of people who passed—mostly kids her age—never spoke or even smiled. They just stared.

  A lot of missionaries used to hang out here—American teens with big, happy grins and driven eyes. Naomi could spot them a mile away, and even if you were just passing through, even if you were in a hurry, they’d run after you with their Jehovah’s Witness pamphlets, asking you what your religion was and if you liked your life. Well, since about a year ago, the missionaries had stopped coming to the park. The Catholics often complained about them, but there had been no town ordinance, no police crackdown or anything that Naomi had known of. You would still see those kids in other places—the biblioteca, the jardín. But El Parque . . . it was as if the Jehovah’s Witnesses had given up on it. The bad energy had won.

  Naomi was hitting the southern edge of the park—Carlos and Alejandro’s “office.” Interestingly, this was the prettiest part. The jacaranda trees were full and healthy, and there were thick-trunked palms, swollen with coconuts, clusters of bright impatiens planted over their roots.

  Alejandro was nowhere to be seen.

  Funny how everyone had a safe place. Naomi had lots of them. There weren’t assigned desks at her school but she always picked the same ones in each class. She went to the same bathroom all the time and used the same stall. She and Corinne had their table at El Borracho and the jardín bench she’d shared with Zoe was the one she always chose. Alejandro and Carlos had their safe place, too. It was the second jacaranda on the southwestern end of the park. They would either lean against it, or sit on the grass in front. She wondered if Jordan had had any safe places. Was he haunting them now?

  She touched Carlos and Alejandro’s tree and closed her eyes, and even though they were both still alive, it was as if they were haunting it. When she breathed in deeply, she thought she could smell their cigarette smoke.

  Naomi opened her eyes. She did smell it.

  She squeezed between the trees and then she was out of the park, on the sidewalk of another, slightly poorer residential street. Standing about five feet away, his back to her, was Alejandro. He was smoking.

  His dropped the cigarette to the sidewalk and stubbed it out with his motorcycle boot. Both he and Carlos wore too many clothes—black pants and boots on the hottest days. It was uncomfortable to look at them. Alejandro, in particular, was always sweating, and Naomi thought it was a high price to pay just to look tough. But Alejandro didn’t seem tough now, with his drooping head, his big, round shoulders so tense they nearly touched his ears. He looked like a sad boy hiding in black.

  “Alejandro!”

  He turned and looked at her. His eyes went huge.

  Alejandro spoke English, but Naomi used her Spanish anyway. “¡Necesito hablar contigo!” I need to talk to you.

  Alejandro just stood there, gaping.

  There was a time, during Naomi’s first few weeks in San Esteban, when Alejandro had had something of a crush on her. Lots of boys did back then—because of her tallness and newness and Americanness and mainly, she thought, because of her aunt. But with Alejandro it was more than that. He had brought her a plant once—strode right up to her as she was walking into Santa Beatriz, and as the girls around her giggled, he had handed it to her—a potted white violet. You lost your mother, he had told her in English. I lost my father. We are the same in our sadness.

  “We are the same in our sadness,” she said now, very softly.

  “No.” He backed away. “Not anymore.”

  She’d planned a lot of questions in her head on the walk over. They all fell out and splattered on the ground.

  Just ask if Carlos really killed Jordan Brink.

  She heard herself say in Spanish: Why did Carlos lie about killing Jordan Brink?

  Whoa. She hadn’t planned that one. Alejandro’s eyes got even bigger and a look of terror crossed his face. “Go home,” he told her.

  And then, without warning, he turned and fled.

  Zoe returned to Warren’s house to find no Warren, no Guadalupe and no note from either. What she did find— though she couldn’t figure out which one of them had put it there—was an enormous bouquet of red roses and greens in a round, cut-crystal vase. It had been placed at the center of the coffee table in the living room and it made Zoe smile. Until she took a closer look at the greens. They were maguey spines.

  Okay, okay . . . It’s a coincidence. The maguey is an indigenous plant and Patty Woods is a crazy woman and Naomi is suffering from post-traumatic stress and you . . . you, Zoe Greene, are in serious need of a siesta.

  She moved through the stunning garden and up the two flights of stairs, determined to forget the day, to escape into sleep, to wake up to Warren and escape in other ways. Zoe moved faster and faster, the bright flowers and thick plants rushing by in a blur, and by the time she rounded the corner of the second flight, it was as if she had a plane to catch. She started toward the bedroom, but then whacked her bad wrist into the banister, sending waves of pain up her arm and down her entire left side.

  “Damn.” She stood at the top of the stairs, clenching her teeth and cradling her wrist in her good hand, tears seeping from the corners of her eyes. She wanted this whole day back so badly. If she could just rewind to this morning, take an extra five minutes to go through her suitcase and find a better pair of walking shoes, none of this ever would have happened. Where was Warren right now, anyway? Why wasn’t he home?

  Warren and Vanessa are in the same club. A club they don’t want us
to know about.

  Zoe shut her eyes. She made herself remember the concern that flooded Vanessa’s flawless features when she talked about her niece, the way Warren had looked at her just last night—that healing gaze. I’ll always protect you, always keep you safe. He had said that to her, and she had believed it, and she wasn’t going to let a traumatized young girl turn it all on its head. Zoe had been safe for five years—hadn’t gotten involved in anything dangerous and therefore hadn’t ruined anything. She’d kept her conscience clear. She had found a hot, compelling man and he’d taken her on vacation. And vacation was where she was going to stay.

  I’ll always keep you safe. She replayed the words and pictured Warren’s eyes, his touch . . . until what Naomi had said faded, until it got filed in the back of Zoe’s mind—in that crowded place with all those other things she didn’t want to think about.

  Zoe started for the bedroom, but stopped when she caught something in the corner of her eye. It was on the tall wall at the street-facing end of the rooftop patio, and it was practically hidden by the climbing roses—a small door, about two feet by one, built high into the wall. A safe? Impulsively, she tried the knob, but it wouldn’t open. She noticed a tiny lock, but there was no key in sight. That was fine with Zoe. If there was one thing she really didn’t feel like doing right now, it was unlocking hidden doors.

  Zoe opened her eyes to see the skylight glowing a deep, velvety purple. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sleeping, but it must have been a while. She flipped on the switch on the bedside lamp and grabbed her watch. Seven thirty p.m. She got out of bed, and hurried downstairs. The lights were still off. One by one, she checked all the rooms. Empty. Warren still wasn’t home.

  Zoe hadn’t seen Warren in more than twelve hours. Who leaves a visitor alone for her entire first day in town? Maybe Warren had been home looking for her while she was at the doctor’s, but if that was the case, why hadn’t he left a note? Zoe wasn’t sure whether to be worried or angry, but worried was winning out. She sprinted back upstairs to the bedroom, grabbed her cell and, with her good hand, pecked out a text message to Warren: Where R U? Then she called him, left a message on his voice mail.

  Warren didn’t have a landline here in San Esteban—no computer, either. So this was pretty much all she could do, outside of heading over to the police station and using her crappy high school Spanish to file a missing-person report about twenty-four hours too early.

  Maybe Vanessa knew where Warren was. But that wasn’t of much help because she had no idea how to get hold of her. She vaguely remembered that Vanessa lived on top of a hill—but how to get to that hill from Warren’s house was a completely different matter. She should have exchanged numbers with Naomi, but she’d been in a hurry to leave town and put the day behind her. Plus, to be painfully honest, she really hadn’t wanted to set herself up as Naomi’s confidante.

  Did Vanessa have a Web site? Zoe could call Steve, get him to send her an urgent e-mail, Zoe’s name in the subject line. . . . God, that was a little overinvolved, wasn’t it? Why not just check that writing desk in the corner of Warren’s bedroom, see if he had an address book? Get a grip, Zoe. He hasn’t been gone that long.

  Warren’s desktop was mostly bare, save for a copy of the local English-language paper, the Amigo. On the cover was a piece about a street dog adoption drive, another about a Saints Festival. . . . Zoe checked the date: It was today’s paper. So Warren had come back at some point—unless, of course, Guadalupe had picked up the paper.

  Naomi slid open the top desk drawer. She saw a stack of expensive-looking stationery, another stack of blank postcards and some stamps. Great. Letter-writing supplies. She tried the other drawers—nothing but a stapler and pencils and a hole puncher and boxes of legal-sized envelopes and checkbooks and five or six ballpoint pens with no advertising on them and a penlight and a pack of peppermint gum. Yeah, she knew this was his second home, but never in her life had Zoe seen a desk that was this maddeningly generic. All it needed was a Bible and a room service menu and she could have been in a hotel.

  She was about to go downstairs, see if maybe Warren kept a list of important numbers in the kitchen, when she recalled something she’d seen in the top drawer, but hadn’t thought much about. She’d been looking for phone numbers after all, but now that she saw how devoid of the personal his desk was, the object took on more significance.

  She slid the drawer open again, and there it was, next to the stack of postcards. A small silver key. The type of key that would fit the safe she’d seen on the street-facing wall of the roof garden.

  Zoe wasn’t the type of person to sneak into the personal spaces of those she was close to, even in her days as a nosey reporter. Getting a story was one thing, but with lovers, if you found yourself picking locks, it was probably time to move on.

  She’d never had a lover like Warren Clark, though. And it was nearly eight and he hadn’t returned her messages and she had no idea where he was. If he’d wanted her to respect his privacy, he should have tried leaving a note.

  She took the key out of the top drawer and the penlight out of the second side drawer, and without mulling over the issue any further, she walked out to the rooftop garden, pushed aside the climbing roses so she could get to the lock, and tried the key. It fit. She opened the door onto a small, metal-lined safe, about twice as deep as a medicine cabinet. She saw no papers inside, no address book or PDA. What she did see was a thick stack of pesos and a men’s silver Tiffany watch. She turned it over and shined the penlight. It bore the engraved initials NLD. Nicholas Denby?

  There was also a silk Day’s End scarf—she had one herself. They were a promotional gift the soap had given out a few years ago—a sort of fifties tourist’s scarf, in pink and green, with a stylized map of Saxon Falls, the town where The Day’s End took place. What’s that doing here?

  Zoe picked up the scarf. There was a gun underneath it.

  Her breath caught in her throat and stayed there. She remembered Warren telling her that guns were illegal in Mexico for everyone but the police. That would explain why he’d hidden it so carefully—but not why he had it in the first place. She picked it up. It was heavy. She held it in both hands and its weight made the wrist pain flare up. She didn’t know much about guns, but from what little she’d learned from her old cop sources, this one was a .45 caliber, capable of taking off a good-sized chunk of someone’s head. The safety was on and it was a semiautomatic, and when she checked the magazine, she saw it was loaded.

  ELEVEN

  Zoe didn’t know how long she’d been standing there dazed, the gun in her hands, but an explosive ringing shook her out of that fast. She froze. It was like an old-fashioned alarm clock, and it was coming from downstairs. Doorbell. It had to be. “¡Momento!” Carefully, she placed the gun back in the cabinet, covered it with the scarf, locked the door. The doorbell rang again and Zoe yelled, “¡Momento!” again. She ran back into the bedroom and slipped the key back in the desk; then she hurried downstairs.

  “¡Momento!” Was that even the right word?

  “Zoe! It’s me! I forgot the key!” Warren. She felt equal parts relief and creeping dread. Stop. There has to be an explanation . The problem, though, was getting that explanation. She remembered the flatness in his eyes, the anger in his voice when she’d mentioned a painted cross in a closet that he had left open. How would he react to the news that she’d taken the key out of his desk, opened the safe where he kept his most personal, private possessions? Like his .45 semiautomatic . And his last visitor’s watch.

  She took a deep breath, told herself to calm down and sound normal, which, given the situation, would have to be pretty pissed off. “It’s about time!”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Zoe opened the door to find Warren, in a white shirt and pale khaki pants, his blue eyes full of contrition. He looked like either an angel or a GAP ad, depending on your point of view, and he held two plastic grocery bags in one hand, a bottle of wine in t
he other. “Hungry?” he said, a little sheepishly. “I brought homemade bread, machengo cheese, Spanish olives, avocados, a roasted chicken. . . .” It was hard to reconcile the demeanor, the look, the grocery list with what she’d seen in the safe, but she tried not to let that show on her face.

  “Warren, where have you been?”

  “What happened to your wrist?”

  “I asked first.”

  “I told you, I bought dinner.”

  “All day?”

  “I came back, but you’d left. I went looking for you, but couldn’t find you, so I went shopping at the mercado—”

  “Why didn’t you answer my text?”

  “Forgot my BlackBerry.” A flicker of annoyance crept into his eyes, and Zoe thought, You’ve got some nerve.

  “Believe it or not,” said Warren, “this is more questions than she’s asked me in four months.”

  Zoe thought, She? The man behind Warren stepped to the side, and said, “She’s right to ask questions.” It was then that Zoe realized he’d been there the whole time: a short American man with graying black hair, strong features and arresting amber-colored eyes. “Zoe,” Warren said, “I’d like you to meet my dear friend, Rafael.”

  “As in Studio Rafael?”

  “My reputation precedes me.” Rafael smiled—a warm smile that surprised her. Zoe remembered Vanessa at the airport asking for Rafael on her cell phone and Naomi talking about how Vanessa took his painting classes “to flirt.” And looking at him now, Zoe thought that it made sense. In a strange way, Rafael was rock star material. He was just a few inches taller than Zoe’s five foot three, and he wasn’t what you’d call classically handsome. But there was something about his face that was like an effective TV commercial—a brightness that grabbed your attention and held it. He’d been Dr. Dave’s minister back in California, and she could see that, too—the preacher’s conviction, the righteous glow. . . .