Grave of Hummingbirds

by Jennifer Skutelsky

  For a time, Gregory didn’t speak. He stared into his tea, touching the hot mug lightly, picking it up and replacing it without taking a sip.

  Finn tried to figure out what he was thinking. “Do you believe me, that it’s Alberto?”

  “I must,” Gregory said. “Yes.” He shifted in his chair and, leaning his elbows on the table, dropped his head into his hands. Then he looked up and took a deep breath. “I want to try and explain about Alberto. He lost his mother when he was very young, under violent circumstances, and when Nita started teaching at the school, she singled him out. They were close. It’s why, when the police took him into custody after he found the body a year ago, I made sure they released him.”

  Rosita, the woman from the hotel, had spoken of a strange murder in the village. “The police had him in custody for a murder, and you got him out?”

  “They tortured him, Finn.”

  “But how could you not know how crazy he is?”

  “He seemed so vulnerable. Gentle. I couldn’t believe he was capable of such a thing.” Now he took a sip of his tea. “A year ago he told the governor he’d found an angel, and I think in some ways he believed that. But everyone underestimated him. It didn’t occur to anyone that he was a killer. That level of deception . . .”

  “I don’t know what that means. He found an angel. That’s ridiculous.”

  “Exactly what some people thought. But when I saw the body, I understood.” Gregory got up. “Wait here.” He left the room and returned moments later with a framed photograph that he placed on the table in front of Finn.

  Finn reached for it. “No way,” he said. “This is . . .”

  “Nita.”

  “But she’s . . . she’s just . . . she’s like my mom.” He stared. If an eraser were to soften Sophie’s blazing eyes and features, his mother would emerge an identical tracing of the woman who held her arms open to the camera.

  “The first victim resembled her, too. It’s why Alberto took her. And in the end, when he couldn’t save her, he used a condor’s wings to fly her to the gods. I think—” He broke off.

  Finn’s mind filled with the horror of it. “Couldn’t save her from what?”

  Gregory shook his head. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “What about the bird? Your bird. Was he the one who shot her? You told me she was shot.”

  Gregory stared blankly back at him.

  “You must have really believed in him,” Finn said, “because when you start piecing everything together, it’s hard to miss. Why do you keep making excuses for him?”

  Gregory stood up. “The police asked me the same thing. I don’t know. I can’t explain. But he’s out there somewhere. I have to find him before the police do, or search parties from the village. People are angry.”

  “What’ll you do?”

  “I’ll bring him in. Perhaps I’ll be able to protect him, keep him safe until I can get him a lawyer and a fair trial.”

  “You think you’ll be able to?”

  “I’ll try. There will be very little I can do but focus as much media attention on the case as possible, in the hope that a glaring spotlight will protect him. And there are much bigger issues at stake now.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No, Finn. I need you to stay here with your mother. I can cover more ground on my own, and we don’t know, he may come back for her.”

  Finn helped Gregory saddle up Tomás and watched him canter off. He carried no gun or any other discernible weapon, and as Finn returned to check on Sophie, he wondered whether he’d ever see the doctor again.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Hours later, with Sophie asleep in the room Isabella had made up for her next to Gregory’s, Finn waited for the doctor to return. At least eight policemen were stationed around the house, with more on the logging road.

  When he heard the clatter of Tomás’s hooves, he pulled the door open and ran outside. Gregory looked as though he might collapse, and sweat darkened the horse’s coat.

  Finn held the bridle as he dismounted. “Did you find anything?”

  Gregory shook his head. He was pale and drawn, his expression desolate. “They’ve put together a search party. Now I pray the police get to him first.” He took the reins and began to walk the horse around to the back of the house.

  “You can go inside. You look exhausted,” Finn said. “I’ll take Tomás. Raphael showed me what to do this morning.”

  “Thank you, Finn.” At the top of the stairs, Gregory turned and scanned the mountains. “He’s out there somewhere.”

  “What’ll they do, if they catch him?” Finn stroked Tomás’s neck. The horse nickered softly.

  Gregory shot him a bleak look but didn’t respond, and Finn watched him disappear into the house.

  That evening, Gregory kept to his study and declined the dinner Isabella had left. Sophie slept on and off. After having something to eat earlier in the day, she wanted nothing later on.

  Finn was too wired to heat up the food for himself. Around 9:00 p.m., after he’d fallen into bed in a room across the hall from Sophie, he heard the sound of a truck on the logging road. He came out onto the landing in time to see Gregory open the door to Alberto’s father.

  “I must speak with you,” Manco said.

  “Come, come in. Do you have news of Alberto?”

  They spoke in Spanish, but Finn was able to piece together the conversation.

  Manco stepped into the house and looked up at Finn.

  “Don’t worry, Finn,” Gregory said. “Go back to bed.”

  “It’s late, Gregory. I’m sorry.” Manco looked terrible, his hair disheveled and a dark shadow of beard sprouting. “This couldn’t wait.”

  “Of course. No problem. We’ll go into the study.”

  Finn watched the door close and crept down the stairs, determined to eavesdrop.

  “Can I get you anything?” Gregory asked. “Something to drink or eat, Manco?”

  “I have something to tell you. I should have told you years ago, but I made a promise.”

  “A promise? To whom?”

  A long pause seemed to go on forever, and Finn thought Manco had chickened out and changed his mind about whatever he’d come to say.

  “To Alberto? To Rufo?” Gregory said at last.

  “No. To Penelope.”

  Finn couldn’t remember who Penelope was.

  “Alberto is not my son.”

  “I know, he was adopted,” Gregory said. “But you’re the only father he’s ever had. Too much fuss is made of biology.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Of course, Manco. What’s this about?”

  “I was not a good father, Gregory.”

  “Manco . . .”

  “No, no, I wasn’t. I let him run wild, made him look after the livestock when he should have gone to the university. He was smart.”

  “I know. I spoke to him about it. He always said he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, and when he was ready, he’d consider it.”

  There was another long pause before Gregory spoke again. “You think we should have pushed for it.”

  “He wouldn’t have listened to me.”

  “I should have, then.”

  Finn noted the bitterness in Gregory’s muffled voice.

  “It’s too late for that now,” Manco said gruffly. “Alberto was . . . the wind. He could never be contained. He could never be disciplined. Nita was good for him. After she died . . . after she died, I think that’s when everything fell apart. He was like a hurricane after that. And I let him go, hoping the storm would blow itself out. But it never did.”

  Gregory remained silent.

  “They’re going to kill him,” Manco said. “When they find him, they’ll kill him. We can’t let them do that.”

  Finn sensed something building behind the door, a rattling shudder of tension and dread. He stepped back. Both men would be angry if they caught him snooping. He looked toward the stairs to make sure
he had a clear getaway if he had to duck quickly, and his heart just about exploded.

  Alberto sat on a step halfway up, clinging to the banister.

  Finn’s yell of fright emerged as a strangled gasp. He would have run to Sophie’s room and locked the door but for the fact that Alberto stood up, blocking his way.

  Finn backed toward the front door.

  Alberto extended a pleading hand to him. “Please, I mean no harm. I want to hear, too. What are they saying?”

  “H-how did you get in? The place is surrounded.”

  “I’ve been here all along. I know the house well.” Alberto moved down a couple of steps.

  Finn grabbed the handle of the study door.

  “Wait. Wait, Finn. You’ve been listening to them. What are they saying?”

  Finn faced Alberto the same way he had the puma. His mind told him to hammer on the study door. It warned him of the madness in Alberto and what he might still do to all of them if armed and dangerous.

  But instead, he looked into Alberto’s face and caught his torment. He read the blank pages of a young life that was pretty much over, and let him approach.

  They’d been communicating in whispers and now stood together, both suddenly distracted by Manco’s voice, loud and clear and explosive.

  “I can’t keep the promise.”

  Finn inclined his head toward the door. “You need to hear this more than I do,” he said. “Go in. He’s your father.”

  “I prefer to stand here with you,” Alberto said.

  Finn flinched and edged away, but dared do nothing to enrage him. And as long as they stood side by side, Alberto was nowhere near Sophie.

  Inside the study, Gregory got up from where he’d been sitting on the arm of the deep leather chair. He moved to the cabinet to pour himself a drink and offered one to Manco, against his better judgment. The man would refuse to spend the night at the house and faced a precarious drive back to Colibrí.

  Manco shook his head impatiently.

  “I don’t know if this is right. I should share my confession with Father Alfonso. I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “You haven’t told this to anyone? Ever?”

  Manco shook his head.

  “To Rufo.”

  “No.”

  “Manco, for God’s sake. Whatever it is, you have to tell someone. And the information will be safe with me, you know that.”

  “The information is yours, Gregory. It’s not for anyone else’s ears. Except perhaps Alberto’s. Alberto wasn’t my son, not because he was an orphan from Estornino, but because he was yours.”

  Gregory choked on his drink. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and coughed. “That’s not possible.”

  “Yours and Nita’s. After you left for Cuba, she discovered she was pregnant. The only people she told were her father and Penelope. The old man wasn’t angry with her—he adored her. She could do anything, but he knew she couldn’t have the baby in Colibrí. She was sixteen when you left, Gregory. You were twenty-one.”

  Gregory fell into the armchair, spilling his drink on his jeans. He and Nita had made love only once before he left Colibrí, the night of her sixteenth birthday.

  “Oh my God, my God,” he whispered.

  The courage to go on seemed to have deserted Manco.

  Gregory pushed his hands into his hair and dug his fingers into his scalp. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me.”

  Manco got up and moved to the tray of drinks. The decanter clanked against the glass, and the amber liquid splashed too loudly, sending drops onto the cabinet. He fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief and mopped them up.

  “She spent her final year of school with the nuns in Estornino, mostly hidden from view. It was a hundred miles away from Búho, but still, she never went out, and only Penelope and her father went to visit her.”

  “Why?” Gregory said. “Why didn’t she let me know? I would have come back.” He thought of something, and his voice grew hoarse. “Good Lord, she wanted to come back to Colibrí after they took Penelope. She wanted to come back for Alberto.”

  “She said nothing because she meant for you to follow your heart, build a career. She loved Penelope. Since they were at school together, they were close. Penelope and I got married very young. She was three years older than Nita, and we were happy to adopt her child. We picked him up from Estornino as soon as we heard he’d been born.

  “For Nita’s father, it should have been a time of great joy, a celebration. But it wasn’t. He got sick soon after that. Before he died, he encouraged her to follow you, Gregory, and to make a career for herself. He’d set up a small life insurance policy so she could study something.”

  Turmoil built in Gregory like an ocean wind. If he drew in a breath, it would tear into him with a great wrenching heave, and his restraint would be gone. “Rufo,” he said, clinging to logic. “Rufo had to have known.”

  “He may have. I never told him, although he asked many times. Not even in my most drunken moments did I break my promise to Penelope. Everyone knew where Alberto came from but not from whom. Rufo may have suspected. You never did. Now we’ll never know. I suppose he could easily have checked. What does it matter?”

  “It matters to me. Do you think Penelope or Nita mentioned anything to Father Alfonso?”

  “Who can say? It’s something else we’ll never know. But somehow, no, I don’t think so. If Nita couldn’t tell you, Gregory, then she would think it disloyal to tell anyone else.”

  Aghast at Manco’s talk of loyalty, Gregory didn’t trust himself to speak. He let the silence fill with Nita’s lie. He’d never thought of himself as a weak man, but now he dredged up a loathing of his cowardice that made him want to throw up. He had sidestepped every clue that might have exposed her secret, and there had been several. Too engrossed in a life that now seemed more pretense than real, neither he nor Nita had considered the impact of their choices on others. This boy, this murderer, his son, paid for it all.

  Out in the hall, Alberto and Finn stared at each other.

  Manco’s words continued to drift through the door. “I cheated you of a son, Gregory, and Alberto of a father.”

  They didn’t hear the commotion at the front door until it was too late. It burst open, and three men crashed into the house, fanning out and training their rifles on Alberto. Finn didn’t recognize them, just knew they weren’t police. Both he and Alberto headed for the stairs, but stopped dead in their tracks when a man shouted, “Don’t move.”

  Gregory, closely followed by Manco, charged out of the study. Manco reacted fast, stepping in front of Alberto and holding out his hands.

  “You take him, you go through me,” Manco said, staring down each of the men in turn. “Senor Torres Arroyo, I mean it. You’ll have to kill us both.”

  Two of the men lowered their rifles.

  One cocked the hammer and kept Manco in his sights. “Stand aside,” he said. “We’ve come to take your son. Don’t get in our way, Pacheco. You can’t protect him. There was nothing protecting my daughter Gabriela from him, and your monster will get off lightly compared to her. For months and months I’ve been waiting for this moment. Now, move!”

  Enrique Torres Arroyo held the rifle steady against the indent of his shoulder, his knuckles white on the grip.

  Gregory moved slowly away from the stairs, toward the front door. All he needed was a little time. If he could distract the men, draw their attention away from Alberto, somehow get them to focus on him instead . . .

  “Step away from the door, Doctor,” Gabriela’s father said, calmly enough.

  Gregory stopped. “Lower the rifle, Torres. The police are here. Let them take him away. You don’t want to do this.”

  “You’re wrong. I’ve never wanted to do anything more in my life.”

  Gregory hunted for the right words. “You’ll go to prison. Your life will be over. Please, put down your weapon.”

  “You think I worry about that? I don’t care about pr
ison.”

  Fury took hold of Gregory. “Stand down. Now. I warn you, Torres. This is my house. There will be no bloodshed here.” For seconds he thought it had worked. The angry lash of his voice cracked the tension and momentarily shifted the balance of authority. The men wavered, adjusting to his unexpected show of aggression.

  But that definable moment was lost when Alberto squeezed between Finn and Manco to take a step forward.

  “No,” Manco said. “Please. We’ll hand him over to the police. I’ll take him myself. You can go with us.”

  Sophie, dressed in one of Gregory’s shirts, came out onto the landing on unsteady legs. She took hold of the banister for support and tried to speak, but all she could manage was a faint “Stop this, all of you. Enough.”

  Alberto turned to look up at her. Smiling, he reached behind his back to withdraw something from under his shirt.

  Enrique Torres Arroyo fired.

  Gregory lunged toward his son and fell to his knees beside him at the foot of the stairs. Ineffectually searching for a pulse and growing clumsy in his efforts to cover a bloody wound with his hands, he repeated no over and over again, first in denial, then as a plea. When he felt someone grip his shoulder, he straightened, and it was then that he noted the small smile that played about Alberto’s lips, as though at last everything had fallen into place, just the way he wanted.

  In one hand he held a tattered copy of a book called El principito.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  They buried Alberto between Nita and the condor, with Manco standing beside Gregory as they lowered him into the ground. Finn and Sophie stood at the fringes of the crowd that had gathered to support the two men.

  In the days that followed, Colibrí prepared for an onslaught of political and legal attention.

  Sophie recovered quickly from her physical injuries. She spoke to the police with a quiet sense of confidence and insisted she be part of the forensics team that would gather to excavate the cave. She promised to bring the wrath of the international community, humanitarian groups, and monitoring agencies down on the heads of the Pájaron government and assured them that satellite imagery of every inch of the highlands would be examined in search of mass graves.