Sounds of Silence (13 page)

“How did she—”

“She saw him pretending to read meters on your street the day of the fire. He’s got to be our arsonist.”

“Eli, that’s wonderful!” Isabel exclaimed. “You can find him, right?”

“Well, he’s not smart enough to be working alone. And he’s probably back across the border by now. Anyway—” Eli reached up to rub his forehead “—I want to show his picture to Mercedes, see if she recognizes him. And talk to her about this new drawing of hers.”

“I’ll get her, she’s in the kitchen. But Eli,” she said over her shoulder, “you really need to slow down. You took a bad knock on the head yesterday.”

He shook his head, dropping onto the sofa. “I’ll rest later.”

Isabel found Mercedes standing on a chair beside Pam, who was stirring something in a pot on the stove. Pam looked around and smiled. “I heard Eli’s voice. Any word?”

Isabel shook her head, not up to explaining. “He wants to talk to Mercedes.”

Mercedes had already climbed down from the chair and run to hug Isabel. Isabel found it amazing that the child could be so affectionate. She must have had a loving influence somewhere in her short life.

Laying both hands on Mercedes’s hair, she kissed the child’s forehead. “Eli’s here,” she said clearly, and pointed into the den.

Face alight, Mercedes ran for the doorway.

Pamela bumped the spoon handle against the side of the pot, then laid it in a spoon rest. “That child’s going to die of grief if you and Eli don’t hook up and give her a home.”

She didn’t want to discuss it. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Isabel, a blind person could see he’s in love with you.”

Isabel shivered involuntarily. “I can’t stay in Del Rio.”

“I’m just saying—”

“I’ve got to go back in there. Thanks for cooking dinner.” Isabel hurriedly headed for the family room, forcing her friend’s earth-shattering words from her brain.
He’ll get over it. He just thinks he’s in love because I’m the only single female he’s been around lately.

But when she walked back into the den and saw Mercedes tucked under Eli’s arm, Isabel’s throat closed at the tenderness of his expression. If ever Isabel had seen a natural father, here he was, right in front of her eyes. She sat down on an ottoman where she could watch the conversation between man and child.

Looking like a bright-eyed little robin in a red T-shirt and shorts, Mercedes leaned trustingly against Eli’s chest. Isabel knew she enjoyed feeling the rumble of a voice against her ear.

Eli looked down into the little face tilted upward like a flower to the sun and spoke carefully in Spanish so that she could read his lips. “You know Danilo’s in trouble, don’t you?”

Mercedes nodded. Her lips trembled.

“I think you can help us find him,” Eli said.

Mercedes scrunched her face and looked at Isabel, who translated Eli’s words as best she could into sign language. Mercedes’s eyes widened.
How?

Eli looked at Isabel, then reached for the murder scene drawing that lay on the coffee table. “Remember this?”

Mercedes’s lively expression shut down. She tucked her chin.

Eli tipped it back up with a gentle finger. “Mercedes, who is this?” He tapped the red-smeared, prone figure in the picture.

She shook her head and shrugged.

“Will somebody hurt you if you tell?” When she wouldn’t look at his mouth, Eli said, “Isabel, ask her.”

Heart pounding, Isabel moved into Mercedes’s line of sight and translated Eli’s question.

The little girl began to shiver, and shook her head.

Isabel knew that had to be a lie, but if Mercedes was that frightened, neither she nor Eli had any power to elicit the truth. She was afraid Eli was in a mood to somehow force a confession. There was a dangerous flaring of his fine nostrils, and he briefly closed his eyes.

“Mercedes, I won’t let anybody hurt you,” he said. Then he wrapped his arms completely around her and rocked her as if he were her daddy. Mercedes clung to Eli, her arms around his neck and her cheek pressed to his.

Isabel found herself caught in the oddest mixture of desolation and awareness of God’s unending Father-love.
There’s something here, Jesus,
she thought.
You can’t take away the pain if I don’t give it to You, but You hold me anyway, pain and all.

Slowly, Mercedes loosened her hold on Eli and reached for the young girl’s portrait. Picking up a stray crayon, she began to write on the bottom line of the page.

Lupe.
Looking up at Isabel, she repeated the signs she’d used the night they’d been reading
How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

My sister is dead.

Chapter Twelve

“I
told you she’s one tough little munchkin,” Eli said, watching Mercedes walk into the kitchen holding Phyllis Beatty’s hand, in search of a cookie. The revelation about her sister Lupe had seemed rather to be a relief than anything else.

Beside him, Isabel sat elbows on knees, chin cupped in her hands, studying the pair of drawings on the coffee table. She sighed. “I don’t know how she survived all this, much less came out so sweet and trusting.”

“Well, you know a lot of her healing is because she’s had you to love her.”

Isabel looked up at him and bit her lip. “Anybody would—”

“No, anybody would not.” He reached over to take one of her hands. “You are a woman of God, and I—”

“Eli!” She sat up, eyes widening. “This is not the time for—”

“Maybe not,” he said, “but I’m tired of waiting for the right time. Tell me why you stopped wearing your wedding ring.” He ran his thumb along the fourth finger of the dainty hand cupped in his.

She jumped to her feet, snatching both hands behind her back. “That’s personal.”

“It sure is.” He got up and stood uneasily, feeling like the biggest heel on the planet, but determined not to be a coward any longer. “It’s personal to me. I want to know if there’s any chance you feel the same way about me that I feel about you.”

For a split second he saw something luminous and hungry flash in her eyes before she looked down. “Don’t push me, Eli. I can’t take it right now.”

There was fear in her voice, real enough that he wanted to take back his question and assure her he hadn’t meant anything by it. He couldn’t do that, but he knew he’d run head-on into some emotional wall.

He looked at her for a minute, longing to hold her. He didn’t know if it was wisdom or his own fear holding him back. “Okay,” he finally said, and took a breath. “Okay. I won’t ask again until you come to me.” Isabel swallowed. When she didn’t answer, he picked up Mercedes’s two drawings. “I’m going over to Acuña to show these to Artemio. Call me if you hear anything on Nilo.”

“All right,” Isabel said quietly.

Decided that was all he was going to get out of her, Eli headed for the door. Sometimes, apparently, God just plain said
no.

Isabel walked through the kitchen, headed for the deck outside.

Pamela, standing inside the refrigerator door, looked around. “Are you all about ready for supper?”

Isabel looked at her blankly and kept going. “I’m sorry, I’m not hungry.”

“Isabel?”

But Isabel shut the door behind her and stood looking blindly at the pool cleaner chugging like a rubber snake across the water.

She couldn’t talk to Pamela about this thing with Eli. She couldn’t even articulate it to herself. How could he question her about her…feelings, when her little boy was being held hostage by a known murderer? If she’d put her rings back on, or if she’d just explained to him that she hadn’t wanted people to think they were married—she could have cut it off right then and there.

Instead, she’d avoided the question, let him think there might be hope that she’d—

That she’d what? Fallen in love with him?

“I can’t go through that again,” she muttered, pushing her hands into her hair, leaning over to ease the ache in her stomach. Losing Rico had been bad enough. Getting used to being without him, learning to deal on her own. “God, if I have to love somebody, why can’t You give me some nice, safe tax accountant or something?”

Unexpectedly, the idea made her laugh. She clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a rather hysterical giggle.

And then a giddy bubble of elation floated up from her toes all the way to her scalp.

Eli loves me.

He’d been about to say it before she stopped him. Pamela was right, it was in his eyes and the way he touched her and his tender care for her.

I won’t ask again,
he’d said.

And she could not offer herself to him. She could not.

“That’s Lupe Serraño,” said Artemio, flipping the drawing back across the table. “Little hooker we kept trying to get off the streets until she disappeared a couple of weeks ago.”

Eli picked up the paper and once more studied the clean pencil lines Mercedes had sketched. Her sister. Knowing the life of a Mexican prostitute, he would have said the two were more likely mother and daughter. The girl looked to be about eighteen, but she was probably in her early twenties.

Not that it really mattered. If Lupe was dead, Mercedes was an orphan in every sense of the word.

“What do you know about her?” asked Eli.

He had met Artemio in one of their usual spots, an all-night grocery-cum-liquor store on the outer edge of downtown Acuña. Temio was dressed in his typical nondescript black and brown, his dark hair covered by a black bandana. For himself, Eli figured at this point a uniform would be nonproductive, so he’d gone to his locker at the station and quickly donned an old pair of jeans and a brown T-shirt.

Artemio flicked a finger at the back of the picture. “Always standing on a street corner waiting for a man. She seemed to favor Anglos coming over for a good time. You can see she was really pretty, so she could afford to be a little picky.”

“You didn’t know she had a little sister?”

“These girls—their families usually throw them out the first time they get pregnant. Then they’re on the street, no place to go, so they just start living the life.” Temio’s expression darkened. “So, no, I’d have no way of knowing anything about their families.”

“Okay. But we’ve got her and Bryan Hatcher, both murdered—probably in Caslas’s joint. Then we’ve got Isabel’s house burned down and her boy missing. We’ve got to assume Mercedes is the connection.”

“Yeah.” Artemio rubbed his chin. “Anything turn up with the arson investigation?”

“Point of origin was the laundry room. A bowl of gasoline near the water-heater pilot, and it ignited in the middle of the night. A neighbor ID’d a guy entering the yard as a meter reader.”

Artemio sat up. “There ya go. Who was it?”

“Thug named Camino. He was in Mexico City with the governor of Coahuila the night of the murder. We’re looking for him.”

“You don’t think the governor’s in on this, do you?”

“I hope not.” Eli rubbed his aching head with both hands. “Point is, we’ve got a dead hooker, a dead oil baron’s son, and now a little boy missing, probably kidnapped. And Temio—” he looked up “—this kid feels like my own son. We’ve got to connect the dots fast.”

Artemio smiled a little. “Well, you’ve saved my skin more than once. I’ll do what I can to help.”

“All right, then find me a hooker who knew Lupe Serraño.”

Isabel quietly shut the bathroom door before she turned on the light. She didn’t want to wake Mercedes.

Leaning back against the door, she reached into the pocket of the short terry robe Pamela had loaned her yesterday. No, the day before. She closed her eyes. The last week had blurred into one long nightmare. She had no idea what day of the week it was. Was it even June anymore?

Looking at the digital clock on the cell phone Eli had given her, she saw that it was almost midnight, and her stomach gave a little lurch. She turned on the shower to muffle the sound of her voice. If she woke anybody up, they’d think Isabel was a little weird, taking a shower in the middle of the night, but at least she’d be left alone. Then she closed the lid of the toilet and sat down to wait.

Twice she started to dial Eli’s number only to immediately cancel it. All her life she’d relied on the authority of law enforcement, especially as the wife of a federal agent. Only the memory of the dreadful phrase
I will kill your son
kept her from following her instincts. She couldn’t take the chance.

Suddenly the phone’s display panel lit. Shaking so badly she could hardly hold on to it, she flipped it open. “Hello?”

“Are you ready to trade?” asked the distorted voice.

“Where?”

“Cross the border and go through Acuña. At the south highway, head west into the mountains. After twenty miles, you will see an abandoned cement factory. I will call in three hours. Bring the little girl, nobody else. Do you understand me?”

Isabel could hardly force her lips to move. “I understand.”

“Remember, if you bring the police he dies.”

Closing the phone and clenching it in her hand, Isabel bowed her head.
Oh, Jesus. My enemy surrounds me
. Tears dripped on her bare knees and ran down her legs.
Please protect my baby and give me strength to get to him
.

She shuddered.
Father, what do I do about Mercedes? I can’t surrender her to this murderer.

Even if she managed to get out of the house without waking Officer Beatty—who slept in a guest room down the hall—how was she going to get her car? It had been hidden, locked in the Hatchers’ barn.

“God, this is too big for me,” she whispered. She sat up, pulling free a length of toilet paper in order to wipe her face and blow her nose. After a moment, sudden anger steadied her. “I
will
figure this out,” she muttered.

Then she looked at the phone. Its message light blinked.

She snatched the phone open, and this time there was a face on the screen. A little round face with messy black hair and scared brown eyes, above a red T-shirt.

Isabel froze, clutching the phone.

Eli left his car parked in a lighted lot behind one of the restaurants in downtown Acuña that catered to Americans. From there he let Artemio drive his ancient Dodge Dart to St. Teresa, mostly to save wear and tear on his Jeep. Besides, Temio knew the rabbit warren of streets like he knew his own tattoos, and drove like a stunt man. Time was short.

Artemio stopped the car at the bottom of the hill with a final roar of the unmuffled engine. He grinned when Eli made an exaggerated check of his teeth to make sure none had jarred loose. “You Americans got no sense of adventure.”

“Facing a grizzly at ten paces is adventure. Riding with you is kamikaze.” Eli wrestled the door open and got out of the car. He looked up at
Las Joyas Bellas
and shook his head. At just past midnight, the place was literally rocking. Music boomed from every window and the open door, and Eli could hear scuffling and glass breaking in counterpoint. “I didn’t see any girls last time I was here,” he said, following Temio up the hill.

“You probably came too late,” said Temio. “Much later than this, and they’re all hooked up.” He suddenly turned and caught Eli’s arm.
“Español, amigo,”
he said quietly, “and let me take the lead.” He continued to the open doorway.

Ten minutes later Eli was sitting at a table, working hard at keeping his eyes above the neck of a young Mexican girl dressed in…well, not much, if his first glance at her was anything to go by. She was very pretty, in a sloppy kind of way, and looked him boldly in the eye. She kept scooting her chair toward him, then he’d move away, until he was nearly sitting on top of a laughing Artemio.

Finally Artemio had pity on Eli, slapping a ten-peso bill onto the table and holding it until he got the girl’s attention. “Sylvia,” he said, “my friend is very shy, so you will leave him alone. All we want to do tonight is talk.”

Sylvia pouted. “Talk is boring, and your friend is cute.”

Artemio rolled his eyes. “I promise you my conversation is interesting enough to keep you out of jail, if you tell me what I want to know. Eh?”

Her thick black brows drew together. “I don’t know why I’d have to go to jail. I haven’t done anything.”

“We’ll see.” Artemio scrubbed the money back and forth a couple of times. “Did you know a girl named Lupe Serraño who used to work here?”

Sylvia twirled her hair. “I knew Lupe, but I haven’t seen her in a while.”

“Do you know what happened to her little sister?”

“Mercedes? No, she disappeared about the same time as Lupe.” Sylvia shrugged. “Maybe they went with her boyfriend after all. Lupe sure talked about him enough. He said he was some kind of big-stuff bodyguard.”

“Bodyguard?” Eli, easily following the conversation, couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “You mean Camino?”

Sylvia giggled. “That fat pig? No, he was only Pablo’s flunky.”

Eli started, and Artemio gave him a warning look. “Where can we find Pablo? Does he work for the governor, too?”

“Why?” Sylvia looked suddenly alarmed. “You won’t tell him I mentioned his name, will you? Bad temper, that one.”

“I’ve forgotten all about you,
querida,
” Artemio assured her. “Have you seen…what was his name?”

Sylvia hesitated until Eli slid another bill across the table. “Pablo Medieros,” she mumbled. “I’ve got to get out of here. I don’t feel good.” She hitched her purse onto her shoulder and darted toward the door.

Eli leaned toward Temio. “Can you run the name for me? I want to know everything about this guy.”

“Sure. But I’ll have to do it myself. Not sure who I can trust.” Artemio looked uncharacteristically worried. “If this guy’s on the governor’s staff—”

“I know. Look, find out what you can and come back for me. I’m going to talk to Caslas again, look around the area.”

Artemio nodded. “Watch yourself, though. This place is a snake pit.”

As his compadre pushed through the crowd, Eli approached the bar. Different bartender tonight; not surprising, this place had a short life cycle.

“Where can I find Hector Caslas?” Eli showed the bartender another bill, much smaller than the one he’d given the hooker.

The money disappeared. “That’s an easy one. Caslas is dead.”

Dumbfounded, Eli looked around the noisy, smoky room. “But—”

The bartender shrugged. “Life goes on.”

“What happened to Caslas?”

“Got on somebody’s bad side, I guess.” The bartender slung a filthy rag across his shoulder and leaned in for gossip. “He was watching TV with his wife last night, somebody calls his name, and he goes to the door.
Bam!
” The bartender slapped his chest, shaking his head. “Shot, standing right there in his house.”

“Man.” Eli stepped back. Another possible witness eliminated. Medieros, if he was their man, apparently headed up a vicious and powerful syndicate. No wonder Sylvia had been nervous.