Heartless

by Alison Gaylin

  “But, Robin,” Zoe said slowly, “it’s just a plant.”

  Robin placed her sandwich on the butcher paper it had been wrapped in and gazed at Zoe’s face. “You believe in bad energy, Zoe?”

  “Um . . . I’m not sure I—”

  “I do. Sometimes, after Dave comes back from Rafael’s painting class, I don’t want to be around him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Robin turned to her. “It’s like . . . he picks it up in there somehow, when he paints certain things. It attaches itself to him, possesses him in a way. . . . He brought back that painting, it was worse than ever.”

  “The energy.”

  “Yeah.” Robin took a trembling breath. “You probably think I’m crazy.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Robin slid the sandwich away. Her face grew still, her eyes clouded. “He hung that painting on the wall,” she said. “Then he walked up to me. He touched my face. Dave does that a lot. He doesn’t mean anything by it. . . . He likes to feel the bones—the way they’re connected.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “But this time, he touched my face and it seared. It . . . it was like . . . evil was touching me.”

  Zoe stared at Robin.

  Robin swallowed hard. Then suddenly she spun around to the side. “Hi!”

  Zoe turned to see Dr. Dave leaving his office. His mouth was set in a straight line, his shoulders were slumped and he seemed even paler than usual. If he had been a different person, Zoe might have asked, Who died? But it was Dave—eerie, humorless Dr. Dave, the opposite of his jovial name—and so she stayed quiet.

  He glanced at Zoe. “You’ve met Rafael.”

  “Yes . . . how did you know—”

  “Your wrist. Bandage is gone.”

  “Oh.”

  “Hey,” said Robin, “I didn’t even notice . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Dave was touching Robin’s face. It was such an odd gesture—neither threatening nor intimate nor even particularly friendly. Just a finger, placed clinically on the hinge of her jaw. “Please call the supply company,” he said. “We’re low on muscle relaxant.” He headed for the door.

  “Are you leaving again?” said Robin. “You just got here.”

  He smiled. “I won’t be gone long.”

  After he left, Robin said, “See? Now that time, I didn’t feel anything at all.”

  “Robin?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you ever feel bad energy coming from anybody else?”

  Robin’s face darkened, but she said nothing.

  “Please. I won’t tell anyone. Have you felt it from Warren?”

  “Warren? God. No.”

  Zoe hadn’t intended to ask that question so directly, but Robin’s shock at it provided some relief. “It’s just . . . ever since I’ve been here, I’ve had this sense that . . . something isn’t quite right.” She stared into Robin’s eyes, searched them for any change, the faintest hint of recognition. “I feel like there may be something weird going on that I don’t know about.”

  “Weird?” she said. “Well, there was . . .”

  “What?”

  “I shouldn’t say.”

  “Tell me. Please, Robin. We’re alone, and God knows I can keep a secret.”

  Robin took a breath, exhaled hard. “You heard about Jordan, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “He came in here, Zoe. That day. The day he was . . .”

  “He did?”

  “His cousin Corinne was coming in by bus, and he was on his way to meet her in the jardín. . . . He stopped in to say hi. We used to be friends—I teach an after-school English class for Mexican kids at the biblioteca, and he’d sometimes help out. But I hadn’t seen him since he was sixteen. . . . He came in. He was twenty. A man. Still so good-looking, but . . . troubled. Like he hadn’t slept all night. He shook my hand and . . .”

  “You . . . you felt the bad energy.”

  “Adele even felt it. She growled at him,” she said. “The thing is, this town is so full of good energy, and we do so much to keep it that way. Reiki Master Paul says the town was built on a bed of healing crystals and La Cruz is the conduit, and that’s why it draws so many positive people here like Rafael and Warren and Vanessa and you, so when someone is carrying bad energy, it’s really—”

  “We.”

  “Huh?”

  “You said, ‘We do so much to keep it that way.’ ”

  She nodded, slowly.

  “Who is we?” said Zoe.

  Robin fed Adele another piece of her sandwich. “This dog is such a little begger. Aren’t you, sweetie?”

  “Robin.”

  Robin glanced up at her. “We,” she said. “You know, Zoe . . . the people of San Esteban.” She stopped feeding Adele and rested her arms on her desk. She gave Zoe that sunny smile, but it went to waste. Zoe was too busy staring at the deep red scratches on the underside of Robin’s left arm. “It’s all good, Zoe. Lighten up. Come on, you’re on vacation with Warren Clark.” Robin gazed at her for a moment, her dark eyes flickering with a young girl’s wistfulness—the wallflower watching the last dance at the junior prom.

  “You would do anything for Warren, wouldn’t you?” Zoe asked.

  Robin peered at her. “Wouldn’t you?”

  Before Zoe could reply, she heard someone saying her name and turned to see Naomi standing in the doorway, pink faced and breathless. “I’m so glad I found you! Hi, Robin.”

  “Does your aunt know where you are?” said Robin. “She was in here earlier, asking for you.”

  The girl’s eyes narrowed. “If Vanessa wants to see me,” she said, “she should try coming home every once in a while.” Naomi was holding a clear plastic bag. There was a bottle of pills inside, and though her face and voice were calm enough, she clutched it very tightly, her knuckles straining against the skin. “You can tell her I was out, filling the prescription she was supposed to fill for me but didn’t.”

  “Jeez,” said Robin. “No need to shoot the messenger.”

  “Sorry. I just need to speak to Zoe. Alone.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Naomi took Zoe to a restaurant down the street. It was called El Borracho, and it was a windowless cave of a place—the most powerful light source the muted bar TV, playing an episode of Magnum, P.I. The space was made festive, though, by a galaxy of blinking multicolored Christmas lights strewn across the walls and arranged on the ceiling like a psychedelic chandelier. There were also bright red tablecloths and candles in handcrafted metal holders shaped like stars and fresh gardenias floating in round glass bowls. Zoe would have found the atmosphere enchanting enough to say Screw it all, order a margarita and take Robin’s advice about lightening up, if she hadn’t still been thinking of bloody maguey spines . . . and if Naomi hadn’t told her, as soon as they sat down, “Carlos Royas didn’t kill Jordan.”

  “How do you know that, Naomi?”

  “His mother, Alma. She’s the pharmacist. She told me Carlos was home with her and his baby sister the night Jordan was murdered. She says his confession was a lie. She thinks he was threatened into it.”

  “Not to be overskeptical,” said Zoe, “but wouldn’t any mother say that about her son?”

  The waitress set a basket of chips and salsa on the table, a cup of strong coffee in front of each of them and a large bottle of agua con gas with two glasses. After she left, Naomi opened her bottle of Xanax, broke a pill in half and took it with some of the bubbly water. “Mrs. Royas has proof.”

  Zoe’s eyes widened. “What kind?”

  “She didn’t feel comfortable talking about it. She said she feels nervous at work—like someone is watching her. She said someone has been calling her there, hanging up. . . .”

  “What kind of . . . proof could she possibly have?”

  “I don’t know. A threatening note, maybe? Recorded phone call?”

  “If she has that kind of proof, why wouldn’t she go to the police?”


  Naomi shrugged. “Maybe they’re in on this, too. Maybe the real killer has been paying off the police. The new comandante questioned me, you know, and I didn’t trust him at all.”

  Zoe looked at Naomi. “Or,” she said, “maybe Alma just wants you to think that her son is innocent.”

  “Zoe,” said Naomi, “this is really hard to explain because you didn’t know Carlos. But I know he didn’t do that to Jordan. I’ve known it from the start. He’s a weird guy, yes. He’s even robbed graves.”

  “He has?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But there is a massive leap between Carlos’s type of weirdness and what was done to Jordan.”

  Zoe sipped her coffee and felt the warmth of it. She took a breath, and then she spoke slowly, as if she was trying to convince Naomi and herself at the same time. “I believe what you said about the secret group.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. Not to go into detail, but I’ve . . . seen a few things that have made me think . . .” She exhaled hard. “Okay. I found another cross at Warren’s house. And his housekeeper said it was hers.”

  Naomi stared at Zoe, her face going so pale that Zoe figured, Best to stop here. Best not to bring up cutting or maguey spines . . .

  “I know there’s a group,” Naomi said.

  Zoe nodded. “I think Carlos Royas was in it. I think he went crazy and maybe took some of the group’s . . . beliefs . . . too seriously. I think he killed this Grace person, and when Jordan stole his peyote, he snapped and killed him the same way.”

  “No,” said Naomi.

  “The weird stuff Jordan told you was going on—that probably had to do with his stealing the drugs from Carlos and Carlos threatening him.”

  “You don’t unders—”

  “It is disturbing to think you’ve breathed the same air as someone capable of that,” she said. “It almost feels . . . catching, I know.”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s true—”

  “It’s not catching, Naomi,” she said. “It scars. Bad. But it isn’t contagious.”

  “I know what you’re saying, but that’s not it. Mrs. Royas is very much like Carlos, and when you see her, you’ll get it.”

  “What do you mean? When am I going to see Mrs. Royas?”

  “She’s going to meet us here after she’s done with work.” Naomi looked Zoe in the eyes, her gaze hard and serious and much older than the rest of her. “She’s going to bring the proof.”

  Steve was sitting at his desk, calling Zoe’s cell for the fifth time in a row. He got her voice mail. Again. He hit END. Again.

  Either her battery was dead or she’d turned off her phone, but regardless, he didn’t feel comfortable leaving a message about Warren Clark and Tiffany Baxter on Zoe’s voice mail. In fact, he wasn’t even sure whether he wanted to tell her over the phone at all. What he wanted to do was find out why she’d sounded so upset earlier. If it had nothing to do with Clark, he’d save the statutory-rape bulletin for when she got home. She’d just quit her job; this vacation was all she had. Why ruin it? Like Andy Fennimore had said, it wasn’t as if Clark was going to turn into a werewolf. . . .

  Steve glanced at the Rangers calendar he kept on the wall of his cubicle and noticed that tonight was, in fact, a full moon. If Steve were a character in a movie, the fact that someone had mentioned werewolves to him just before a full moon would have been incredibly significant. But here, in real life, it was nothing. Just a stupid coincidence. Sometimes—okay, lots of times—Steve wished life were more like a movie. He wished there were a plot to it—one that made sense and where, if you paid enough attention, you could figure it out. Steve stared hard at life, always, and he still didn’t get it. What was Zoe doing with Warren Clark? Why was such a bright, kind, beautiful woman with a sleaze-bag like that when she could be . . . she should be with . . .

  Steve’s cell phone chimed. Mike Grady at the next desk called out, “You need a new ring tone, Sorensen. I’m sick of that Tommy song!”

  “Get over it. It’s a classic.” Steve checked his screen. He didn’t recognize the number. He thought about letting his voice mail pick up, but his curiosity got the better of him. “Sorensen.”

  “I need to talk to you about Warren Clark.” The voice was a half whisper—fast and tremulous and very, very high. Either a child or a scared woman trying not to be overheard. Steve was betting on both.

  He said the name. “Tiffany?”

  A long pause, then: “I’m at Sixtieth and Third. Where can we meet?”

  An hour later, Zoe and Naomi were well into their second cups of coffee and their third order of guacamole. Alma Royas still hadn’t shown, even though her workday had ended more than forty minutes ago. Zoe had a feeling it wasn’t ever going to happen—that Alma had told Naomi she was bringing “proof” just to bolster her argument, or maybe to get this overpersistent young gringa to leave her pharmacy and stop upsetting her with questions.

  Zoe wasn’t bringing any of that up, though. As it turned out, Naomi and Xanax were a match made in heaven, and she didn’t want to wreck that. No longer clutching her coffee cup as if it were some form of life support, Naomi seemed, if not entirely happy, then at least relaxed, able to talk about other things besides Jordan Clark’s murder. “Vanessa means well,” she was saying now, “but a lot of times, I feel like I’m her legal guardian.”

  “Like she’s going through a second childhood?”

  “More like she never finished her first.” Naomi smothered a grin. “She ties up the landline talking to her boyfriends. When she’s upset, she locks herself in her room and turns up the music. Really loud.” She started to laugh.

  Zoe laughed, too. “It’s like you’re living with a fifty-five-year-old Gidget.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. I watch too much classic TV.”

  “Vanessa goes out, doesn’t tell me where, disappears for hours. Oh, and you should see what she wears to bed!”

  Zoe put her coffee cup down. Her smile dropped away. “She . . . she disappears a lot?”

  “Not all the time. Actually, it’s usually when there’s a full moon.” She laughed a little. “Maybe she’s a werewolf.”

  “Warren does the same thing,” Zoe said. “Here, I mean. During this trip. He’s never around when I wake up.”

  Naomi’s face went still. “You . . . you think the group is—” She was interrupted by a loud trill. “Probably my aunt. She called a couple times, but I didn’t pick up. . . .” Naomi plucked her cell phone out of her straw bag and squinted at the screen.

  Her eyebrows lifted. She flipped it open. “¿Bueno?” she said, and launched into a five-minute conversation, entirely in Spanish. Zoe didn’t understand much of it beyond “¿Por qué?” and “Pero—” But from the tone of Naomi’s voice and the confusion building in her eyes, Zoe could tell who was on the other line and what was being said.

  “Alma Royas?” she asked, after Naomi hit END.

  “Sí. I mean . . . yes.”

  “She’s not meeting us.”

  Naomi shook her head.

  “She doesn’t have any proof.”

  “She . . . she told me she lied to me. She said Carlos was not home with her and the baby that night. She said . . . she said she saw Carlos in the morning, washing blood off his hands and arms.” She lifted her coffee cup, her grip tightening. She bit her lower lip, as if she were trying to keep it still.

  “Naomi,” said Zoe, “that’s good news. It means they arrested the right man, that you don’t have to be—”

  “She was whispering. Her voice was shaking so bad I could barely understand her. She sounded really afraid.” Naomi took a sip of bubbly water and set the glass down, carefully. “If her son confessed, and her son is in jail . . . I could see her being sad. I could see her being shocked and angry and thinking that her life was totally ruined. . . . But why would she be afraid?”

  Zoe stared at her. “I . . . have no idea.” She’d been going for comforting words. But under the circumstan
ces, that was the best she could do.

  Naomi stared back. “I wasn’t going to tell you this,” she said, very quietly. “But I got this . . . really disturbing phone call last night.”

  “You did?”

  “I . . . I saw him in the park yesterday and . . . it’s a long story.” She cleared her throat. “But . . . Alejandro called me and said he was serving someone evil and that I should stop asking questions. . . .”

  “Who is Alejandro?”

  “Carlos Royas’s best friend.”

  “You know him?”

  She nodded. “Not that well. He goes to the boys’ school, though, and we sort of bonded when I first moved here because of my mom. Mr. Christopher died like ten years ago in a car crash, and Alejandro’s still messed up over it, so—”

  Zoe felt the color draining from her face. “Mr. Christopher.”

  “Alejandro’s dad was American,” she said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Did he ever tell you his father’s first name?”

  “Yeah, a while ago,” said Naomi. “I . . . I think it might have been, like George or—”

  “Garrett. Garrett Christopher.”

  “That’s it. How did you know?”

  Zoe couldn’t say any more. She felt two hands on her shoulders, and when she turned around, Warren was gazing down at her. “I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said. His eyes were flat.

  Steve and Tiffany had agreed to meet on the corner of Fifty-seventh and Third. He’d image searched her on Google first—and from what he’d seen, Fennimore had been right. In the red-carpet shots especially, Tiffany wore clinging, short dresses, lots of makeup and a leer that would drive any father to install an electric fence, bars on the windows, maybe a couple of eunuchs packing Uzis. . . .

  But the girl who waited for him on the street corner was very different. He recognized her when he was about a block away. She was wearing a baggy T-shirt and jeans, pacing in tense circles. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, she wore no makeup and she looked like a frightened kid.

  When Steve approached her, Tiffany’s mouth formed a sort of half smile, half grimace. “Walk with me,” she said.