Esperanza (35 page)

None of them would be staying
here
tonight. She went up the ramp, her thigh no longer aching, the burning itch in her wrist now gone. Inside, in the blaze of lights, the floor glistened with the dead man’s blood and everyone stood well clear of it and the body. Her mother was saying, “. . . he’s part of the lawn maintenance crew that works in this neighborhood.”

“No ID on him,” said Frank. “Do you know his name, Mrs. Livingston?”

“No. But the woman who lives across the street will know. He does her lawn.”

“Do you think my shot killed him, Frank?” Tess could barely bring herself to look at the man. “It hit him in the left calf. That was the leg he was clutching.”

Frank, now wearing a pair of latex gloves and rubber boots, moved closer to the body and rolled up the left leg of the man’s jeans, turned it slightly. “What do you think, Doc?”

Brian inspected the injury without touching it. “The shot took out a chunk of skin. But it looks like a clean shot. It didn’t penetrate into the leg. And it certainly didn’t cause all
this
.” He opened his hands, indicating the unspeakable damage to the man’s body.

The forensics team arrived shortly afterward and Tess and Frank moved outside, onto the back patio where an outside light shot a bright beam from the patio to the beach. Moths and June bugs fluttered and flitted through the air, the breeze rustled through the tall sea oats. She didn’t sense anything threatening out here.

Tess typed up her formal statement on Frank’s laptop, sent a copy to her own e-mail. When she returned to the front of the house, Maddie was standing in the driveway, talking to Dan Hernandez. The three people that
thing
had named were now all gathered in one place. Tess looked around uneasily, and wondered how she could protect anyone from something that could possess another person.

Brujos are ghosts who are stuck . . . they are able to seize us, our bodies, to step into us with impunity and use us. Few have survived this possession. It is too violent, too alien . . .

Had that conversation happened? And if it had, why were these memories coming to her in sound bites? Why not in images, complete with characters, names, a plot?

Hungry ghosts. Possession.
Was that what she had seen leaving the dead man? A
brujo
?

“Tess?”

Dan Hernandez stood there in the spill of light from the house, a Cuban anomaly with blond hair and blue eyes, some recessive gene that dated back centuries to his European roots. Before she had died, she thought she’d loved this man. Right now, she felt only fear that a
brujo
would enter him, possess him, kill him.

“Dan. Mom shouldn’t have called you, but I appreciate your making the drive.”

“Hey, I was in Homestead. It’s not that far.”

He hugged her a bit too closely. She breathed in the familiar smells of Dan, the mint of his aftershave, the summery scent of the detergent he used for his clothes, and then the deeper, more complex odors that led her quickly into the memories of the intimacy of their relationship.

“I’m sorry you had to go through this, Tess, on top of everything else,” he said.

She quickly disengaged herself. Yes, she feared for him. But that fear wasn’t inviting him back into her life as a lover. “This afternoon, I got my clearance to go back to work, but that may change now.”

“Look, I just talked to the ME and to Brian. Yeah, you shot this guy, but both docs are ninety-nine percent sure that your shot didn’t kill him. They concur that the guy had, at the very least, a cerebral hemorrhage. But the autopsy will tell us for sure. Regardless, you shot him in self-defense.”

“I shot him because he was about to run out the door.”

“
After
he broke into your home. By the day after tomorrow, you’ll be cleared. Forensics will be here for hours yet, then they’ll bring in a cleaning crew. So I got the three of you a suite over on the beach at the Key Largo Resort.”

“Thanks, Dan, but that’ll cost you a fortune.”

“The owner’s a friend. I’m getting it for next to nothing.”

Of course. Dan rarely paid full price for anything. He took advantage of the fed, state, and county perks. The thought immediately made her feel guilty and ungrateful. “Then let us buy you dinner.”

“You’re on.”

The way he said it, so quickly and enthusiastically, caused her to regret the invitation. He might get the wrong idea. On the other hand, she didn’t want any of them to stay here tonight and she at least owed Dan a dinner for facilitating their accommodations elsewhere.

Her iPhone jingled, and when she slipped it from her pocket, the message read:
Your recorder is full.
She either had forgotten to turn it off after she’d sent her voice message to Maddie or the recorder button had gotten pressed when it was inside her pocket. Did that mean that the voice of that
thing,
the
brujo,
was on here? “I need to get some clothes and stuff, Dan. And drag my mother out of there.” She pointed at Maddie, who paced back and forth in front of her car, talking on her cell. “Could you let Maddie know she should pack a bag?”

“Sure thing.”

Tess slipped the iPhone into her purse and went upstairs again. Her mother, Brian, and the medical examiner had moved away from the body and blood and were debating the possible causes of a bleed-out this massive. Lauren noticed Tess gesturing at her and excused herself. They moved into the hall. “What is it, hon?”

“Mom, Dan got us a suite at the Key Largo Resort. Let’s pack and get out of here.”

“You go along. I’ll join you and Maddie later.”

“
No.
We go together. I asked Dan to have dinner with us. I know you guys just ate, so how about coffee and dessert? Invite Brian, too.”

Her mother seemed surprised by the forcefulness with which Tess had uttered that one word, “no.” “Uh, okay. Brian and I just ate, so he doesn’t need to come along.”

In other words, her dinner with Brian hadn’t gone well. “I’d like you and Maddie to hear a recording. Pack whatever you need for a trip.” Just in case the
brujo
returned and they had to leave for a few days. “Laptop, notes, passport, whatever.”

“Done.”

“
We’re
off to pack.” Maddie came up between them, slung her arms
around their shoulders, walked them into one of the bedrooms, kicked the door shut. “Can someone tell me what’s going on? Please?”

Tess’s unease spiked to a new level. “At the hotel. We’ll talk there.”

The resort sprawled across ten acres on the Atlantic side of the islands, a make-believe world that tourists took as the true representation of life in the Florida Keys. Tennis courts, swimming pools, beaches, saunas, hot tubs, 24/7 restaurants and cafés, shops and a tourist office, high-speed Internet, satellite TV. Tess wished she could find a closet and duck into it with her mother and niece and Dan and play the iPhone recording for them. But first she had to make sure it was audible. The phone had been in her slacks pocket, she had no idea what the recorder’s range might be.

At her earliest opportunity during dinner, she excused herself and crossed the massive lobby to reach the ladies’ room. She locked herself in a stall, plugged in the iPhone’s earplugs, clicked to recordings, scrolled until she found music from the car radio. Apparently, the recorder had come on during the drive back to her mother’s place. She fast-forwarded to the slamming of the car door. Moments later, her voice rang out as she shouted for the intruder to stop or she would shoot. Then the shots sounded and she fast-forwarded the recording to the point after the intruder had pleaded for help.
It is inside me, forcing me . . .

It.
The recording captured his thrashing, the hard strangeness of his voice, the stilted formality of his English.
It appears that I cannot seize you, Tess Livingston, that you are shielded. But I can seize your mother, niece, and partner. I can seize any of them, just as I have seized this man, and will seize them, one after another, if you try to find Esperanza.

Tess turned off the recorder, unable to listen to the last part, about how they would suffer. Suppose her mom, Maddie, and Dan couldn’t hear the voice? At the accident scene earlier, she was apparently the only person who had seen and spoken with ghosts. But this was
recorded.
Even if they could hear it, how could they be protected? It wasn’t as if they could arm themselves against whatever had spoken through the lawn man.

And it knew my name.

Dominica and Ben wandered through a crowd of tourists on Miami’s South Beach. People spilled off the sidewalks, music pumped from open doorways, the night scene in SoBe was a people-watcher’s wet dream. Dominica sought evidence of
brujos
inhabiting bodies around them, but
didn’t see their kind anywhere. After a certain point, it didn’t matter. The beautiful bodies, the sensual promises, the possibilities enticed them even though they existed as nothing more than wisps of smoke, a blur of peripheral movement, a trick of light. That was only when they were perceived at all. Here, they were merely shadows hungry for form. At every turn, she was reminded of how paltry they were, how low in the scheme of things, how truly powerless.

This place, after all, was not Esperanza—no residual power here to help them assume virtual forms, no fog, no place to hide, nothing within which they could move rapidly from place to place. The air was like glass, the clear summer sky brilliant with stars. They were out of their element and knew it.

“Well?” he asked. “Have you seen anyone who fits the bill?”

“No.” Forcing someone to commit murder wasn’t easy. The individual had to be prone to such violence. America in 2008 had no shortage of violent, neurotic, gun-loving people, but finding exactly the right individuals for this job would be a challenge. Tess’s partner? To even be in his line of work, he needed a violent streak, just as Tess did. But if he was still in love with her, it would rule him out unless his body’s chemistry could be extensively manipulated. The ideal was to find someone without emotional ties to Tess, a complete stranger who was prone to violence and knew how to use a gun.

When she said as much, Ben nodded. “We’re surrounded by hip couples in search of the next high, the next thrill. What’s a bigger thrill than murder?”

“No thrill seekers.”

“Then what?”

“I’m not sure yet.” They moved on for another few blocks before Dominica gestured at a neon blue sign that read:
CLUB MARTINIQUE
. “Let’s try here.”

A private club. They drifted past the bouncer checking membership cards at the door. Secluded booths tucked away in shadows, behind large billowing potted plants, were occupied by upscale couples, the urban cool crowd. She and Ben moved through the main room, checking out the customers, searching for a pair who appealed to them. What delicious choices. Black, white, brown, Indian, Latino, Asian, Canadian, European. A banquet.

Ben indicated a booth next to a window, where a handsome couple sat alone, two wrestler types standing nearby. Bodyguards. “What do you think?” Ben asked.

An Asian woman, a man who looked European. “Intriguing possibilities.”

He said he’d check them out and drifted away, a shadow merging with darker shadows. Dominica remained close to the beautiful oak bar, shaped in a sweeping half-moon that crossed the width of the room. Now and then people walked through her, but only one young man seemed to feel it. He shuddered and rubbed his hands over his arms, as if to warm himself against an inexplicable chill.

When Ben reappeared, she sensed he was pleased. “She’s a model, he’s her photographer. Both bodyguards are armed, one of them drives the car.”

“Can they kill?”

“We’ll test them.” He explained his plan, she liked it, and they drifted over to the booth.

The bodyguards had been poured from the same physical mold, large, muscular men with biceps the size of tree trunks. One was bald, the other had thick dark hair and an intricate tattoo of naked women on the inside of his left arm. Dominica and Ben moved past them and regarded the model and the photographer.

The woman was pretty but not stunning, not the way Dominica imagined a model would be. Her companion had a cute, friendly face. They held hands, sipped from tall glasses of red wine, spoke in hushed, intimate voices. Ben stood behind the man, Dominica came up behind the model. Dominica wanted to tell Ben that the photographer appealed to her. But if she did, he would tell her how much the Asian woman intrigued him, and then as soon as she and Ben took them, they would lose themselves in sensuality and lust.

Ben stepped into the photographer, Dominica entered the woman. No resistance. It was as if this woman already had lost her soul to the countless photographs that had been taken of her, to the strange adulation that had made her a commodity. She believed her own PR, her self-concept defined by
People
magazine.

Since she wasn’t going to be in this body long, Dominica didn’t need to take stock of it, but it was difficult not to notice how fine it was. Excellent lungs and heart, all the internal organs worked well. However, her internal chemistry was a bit screwy, too much sugar, too many salads, not enough nutrients. Dominica felt she might be in the early stages of diabetes.

Other than a few twitches and an unnatural movement here and there, Ben didn’t seem to have any trouble with the photographer. No battles. Nothing to indicate the photographer knew he had been compromised. He reached for Dominica’s hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing each
knuckle, his eyes holding hers. It stirred all those human desires and passions and such deep hunger for his body that she nearly lost track of why they were here.