A Place in the Wind Page 7

  Vega shot a glance back at the woods. How did a hardened ex-con with a record for violent sexual assault talk a pretty high-school girl into those woods? Did he loosen her up with alcohol? Feed her some sob story that excited her girlish fantasies? Charm her with bogus tales of danger and heroism? Who knows the mind-set of a sheltered and gullible seventeen-year-old? Either way, by the time he tricked or forced her into the woods, she didn’t stand a chance.

  “You got an address on this guy?” asked Vega.

  “Not yet. But we’ll get him.” Greco watched Carp giving a statement to reporters. “This story is going national. By the time we’re through, Rolando Benitez-Ochoa won’t be able to find a sombrero to crawl under. He’s finished.”

  Camera lights bounced off Carp’s shellacked hair. His fleshy jowls rose and fell in practiced indignation. He stretched out an arm and gestured in the direction of La Casa—just a quarter mile away. And Vega wondered if Benitez wasn’t the only one who was finished here.

  Chapter 8

  Wil Martinez dialed Rolando’s cell phone on a break. But all he got was a robotic voice in carefully modulated English asking the caller to leave a message.

  Wil dialed a second time. Maybe Rolando was in the shower. Maybe he’d pulled himself together enough to go to work this evening.

  Same number of rings. Same robotic message. Pick up, Lando. Please! The Lord’s Prayer came to Wil now. He could hear his mother’s gentle voice reciting it.

  Padre nuestro,

  Que estás en el cielo.

  Santificado sea tu nombre.

  Wil would always be six when he heard that prayer, holding tight to his mother on the top of that soot-choked boxcar, watching his brother grow smaller and smaller in that cauldron of fists and batons. Only now, the fists and batons were whispered accusations too terrible to speak.

  Wil finished up his break and walked back into the kitchen of the Lake Holly Grill. It was cold outside, but inside there was steam and commotion. Everybody was speaking Spanish, yelling insults and commands with equal gusto. Cooks and busboys were chopping and slicing and boiling and frying. The dishwasher was scrubbing pots and pans. Waiters were placing orders in Spanish for foods that were anything but: Eggplant parmigiana. Chicken teriyaki. Moussaka with pita bread. Matzo ball soup.

  Wil found his boss, Pedro, in the middle of the fray, pulling a tray of something in tomato sauce out of the oven. Beads of sweat settled in the creases on his leathery, lined forehead. No matter the temperature outside, it was always hot in the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry, Pedro. I can’t work anymore this evening. I think I’m getting sick.”

  Pedro frowned at Wil like he was a cockroach. “A la chingada! You couldn’t have figured that out before you started your shift? Now we’re short staffed.”

  “I didn’t feel sick until now.” Wil’s stomach was turning somersaults, a mixture of panic and fear. And beneath that, something else. Anguish. Loss. He closed his eyes and saw the photograph the detective had shown him. Was this who Rolando had been talking about? Wil wished he’d known. Not that it would have changed anything. If Rolando was caught up in this, everything Wil had worked for—his legal status, his college credits, his toehold on the American dream—might vanish anyway.

  He blamed Rolando.

  But even more, he blamed himself.

  One of the other busboys walked up to Pedro as he was setting the platter on a counter. Chicken parmigiana. Wil couldn’t stand to look at it, he felt so sick. The busboy told Pedro that they needed a cleanup in the dining room and he couldn’t find the mop.

  “Do I look like a mop, teto?” Pedro called everybody a “bumbling idiot.” He could be a tyrant when the kitchen was hopping. “I swear, I could get ten more—faster and cheaper—than you.” One of Pedro’s favorite expressions. Probably because it had been used on him often enough when he first came here from Mexico.

  Pedro turned back to Wil. Wil expected to receive another reprimand before being dismissed. But Pedro’s eyes softened. “You don’t look so good. You still going to school?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t give up school. School is the most important thing. You understand?” Pedro had dozens of pictures tacked up all over his locker of his own four children in caps and gowns. He’d put them all through college in Mexico and bragged about them every chance he got. His daughter, the teacher. His son, the engineer. Another was an accountant. A fourth was still in school. Pedro never talked about the fact that he hadn’t seen them since they were children; providing for them meant being here, and being here meant never being there. The closest Wil ever got to that conversation was when Pedro learned that Wil’s mother had been deported. Pedro put a thick, callused hand on Wil’s skinny shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

  “Work all the holidays,” Pedro advised. “Christmas. Birthdays. Easter. You don’t want to be alone on those days.” Pedro never spoke about it again.

  The other busboy located the mop and scurried out of the kitchen. Pedro turned back to Wil. “Go. I’ll count you as here until the hour. You want me to put you on the schedule for tomorrow?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  Wil left the Grill by the kitchen door. Then he unchained his bicycle and pedaled home as fast as he could. The snow was falling hard now. His sneakers and jeans were soggy by the time he got to his own block, a tired-looking string of row frames huddled together like cereal boxes on a shelf. Wil half expected to see several police cars double-parked at the curb. To see Rolando being yanked out in handcuffs, still in his undershirt and socks. But the street looked the same as it always did on a winter evening. Snow shovels and boots graced the scuffed front porches. Bicycles were chained under awnings. Lights and televisions flickered behind bedsheet curtains as people settled in for the night.

  Wil nosed his bicycle around back and locked it under the porch. He fished a key out of his pocket and unlocked the main door. The hallway was dark and narrow. It smelled of damp clothes and fried food. A single uncovered lightbulb lit the stairway. Wil raced up the steps. One flight. Then two. All the way to the attic. To the door under the eaves. Wil let himself in. The smell of unwashed clothes was thick in the air. Rolando was sitting up in his bunk, wrapped in his quilt. Not sleeping. Just huddled there, staring off into space. This wasn’t just a hangover.

  “What’s going on?” said Wil. “I called. You didn’t answer.”

  “I didn’t feel like talking.”

  Wil sat on the edge of Rolando’s lower bunk. The Sheetrock walls were thin. Wil spoke softly. He didn’t want the other tenants to hear. “You have to tell me what happened last night,” he said. “A police officer spoke to me when I got to work this evening. He said a girl who teaches English at La Casa is missing. When you came home, you mentioned a girl. Lando—please tell me it’s not the same girl. Tell me it’s not this girl.”

  Rolando raked his hands through his hair. Wil studied his arms. There were so many tattoos. Mayan gods. A heart with a dagger going through it. Chains of razor blades. Birds and snakes. No gang initials, thankfully. But even so—Wil had no idea what half his brother’s tattoos stood for. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  Wil waited for Rolando to say something, but all he could hear was the clang of pots from the tenants cooking on hot plates down the hall.

  “Lando—”

  “I heard you the first time,” his brother snapped. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Do you understand what I’m asking you?”

  “I know already.” Rolando fell back against his pillow and threw an arm across his eyes. “The police went to the Calderons’ door. I overheard them talking. I hid under the bed. They knocked, but I didn’t answer.”

  “If you have nothing to do with this, we can talk to the police—”

  “No one just talks to the police.” Rolando shivered, whether it was from the cold or from that long-ago memory in Monterrey, Wil wasn’t sure.

  “They won’t beat you up if you
just talk to them.”

  “And tell them what? I know who this girl is. She’s the canche who tutored me in English at La Casa.”

  “But . . . you never saw her outside of La Casa, right?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I tell them. The moment they run my fingerprints, they’ll see I’ve got a record for rape and assault. They’ll deport me, chaparro. That is, unless they send me to prison for the rest of my life instead.”

  “Just tell them where you were last night. That you were drinking . . .” Wil’s voice trailed off. He saw the blankness in his brother’s eyes. “You didn’t do anything, Lando, did you?”

  Rolando pushed the heels of his palms to his eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I want to. But I can’t.”

  “You . . . can’t remember anything?” Was it the alcohol that addled his brother’s brain? Or the terrible beatings he suffered all those years ago? Wil couldn’t say. For him, it was just the opposite. Wil remembered everything. Useless, worthless stuff. The combinations to locks he no longer had. Addresses he’d left years ago. Phone numbers of people long gone from his life. The information stuck to the synapses of his brain like some television jingle he hated even as he was singing it. There were things he wanted to forget and couldn’t. Things that made him burn with pain and shame every time he thought of them.

  Maybe Rolando had it right after all.

  “I remember going to La Casa,” said Rolando. “But then—I don’t know. It’s just a big blank spot in my head. Like that time in Colorado.”

  Wil had heard a dozen different versions of the story of Rolando’s arrest for rape and assault in Denver when he was twenty. Everything from him being set up by a sexy Latina prostitute, who later got beaten up by her gang-banger boyfriend, to waking up with blood and bruises and no memory of how he’d gotten them. With Rolando, the truth was always elusive.

  “Lando, this is worse. Much, much worse. This is a high-school girl. From a prominent local family. Not some gangbanger’s girlfriend.”

  “I know.”

  “So you remember her?”

  “From La Casa, yes,” said Rolando. “Not after.”

  “You remember her tutoring you?”

  “That part, yeah. You should have seen her, chaparro. I could barely concentrate on the lesson. I swear, she could have been teaching a sewing class, and I’d have volunteered to be the needle—”

  “Lando! Don’t talk like that!”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “You can’t. Not now. If somebody hears you—hears us.” Wil’s throat constricted. A headache pulsed behind his eyes. “Maybe the thing to do is call that lady who runs La Casa. What’s her name?”

  “Señora Adele?”

  “I could find out her number and call her for you,” offered Wil. “We could go see her. Maybe she could be with you when you spoke to the police.”

  Rolando picked at a hangnail and said nothing.

  “You can’t just sit in this room,” said Wil. “Sooner or later, the police will find you. Or come back to me when they find out I lied.”

  “About what?”

  “I told them I didn’t know anyone at La Casa last night. I gave them our old address. And I . . .” Wil’s voice trailed off.

  “You what?” Rolando propped himself up on one elbow and searched Wil’s face. Wil saw a simple hunger in his brother’s liquid brown eyes—the same hunger he used to see in his mother. A woman who used to work three jobs to make ends meet. Who used to walk two miles to her closest job so she’d have bus fare to take Wil to the library on Sundays after church. She and Rolando had sacrificed so much for Wil. He was their human corkboard. The one they’d pinned all their hopes and dreams to. He couldn’t crumble. Not now.

  “I just want everything to be okay.”

  Rolando put a hand on Wil’s knee. He forced a smile. A press-lipped one. He never smiled fully anymore. He’d lost one of his lower teeth to the Mexican Police and another in a drunken brawl. He was self-conscious about it.

  “If we go see the señora, do you think the police will leave you alone? Let you go on with your life?” Rolando asked him.

  “I think the señora would try to help you. Try to help us,” said Wil. “You didn’t do anything bad, Lando. You couldn’t have. I refuse to believe that.”

  Rolando chucked a hand under Wil’s chin. “So long as you get through this. That’s all I care about. That’s all I’ve ever cared about.”

  “No, Lando. Us. Us—”

  “Shhh.” Rolando put a finger to Wil’s lips. In the half-light of the room, it was easy to pretend away the tattoos and scars and missing teeth that had remade his once-beautiful face and body. “No. You, chaparro. I’m so proud of you.” For a moment, Rolando’s dark bloodshot eyes looked clear and bright and devoid of the alcohol and ugliness of his life. “No matter what happens,” he said. “Keep making me proud. Keep making Mami proud.”

  That was a heavy burden. Wil wondered if Lando or his mother ever knew just how heavy. “Find somewhere to lay low,” Wil advised. “Not here. The police will find you here. Keep your phone turned off so they can’t trace you. Just check it now and then. I’ll see if I can find Señora Adele or a number where I can reach her to set up a meeting. I’ll text you with the details, okay?”

  “Whatever you think is best,” said Rolando.

  Wil let himself out of the room. He heard his brother whisper behind him:

  “Vaya con Dios, chaparro.” (“Go with God, shorty.”)

  They had been apart for nine years, then together for a year with his mother before immigration took her away. For the last three, it had been just the two of them. In rooming houses and tents. Whatever they could pull together. Rolando drank. He lost jobs. He disappeared for a night or two sometimes. But he never said farewell because they both knew he’d always be back.

  Wil walked down the stairs. With each step, he felt the same queasy weightlessness he’d felt that day his brother had lifted him onto that train. Rolando was supposed to be right behind. But he wasn’t. Only one of them could make it.

  Only one.

  Chapter 9

  The snow had stopped by the time Vega pulled into his gravel driveway behind his daughter’s hand-me-down white Volvo. Vega was glad Joy had chosen to drive up before the storm started, even if that meant he’d have to shovel her out. In good weather, the trip to his two-bedroom lake house was a hike. In bad weather, it was an odyssey. Twisty, unlit two-lanes. Lots of blind curves and black ice. When Vega bought this former summer cabin and winterized it six years ago after his divorce, friends said he was crazy to bury himself up here, a whole county north of his job. But Vega loved looking out the sliding glass doors of his back deck and seeing the lake through the fingers of bare trees. It calmed him. The crack and groan of ice in winter. The stillness after a snowfall. The rest of his life could be in turmoil. Yet here on this lake, nothing but the seasons ever changed.

  Vega grabbed a shovel from the back of his truck and began digging his way into the driveway. Diablo was barking to come out. Vega would have liked to believe the greeting was just for him, but Diablo barked at everything. Squirrels. Deer. Fallen acorns. The television. He had a thing against Jeopardy!—or maybe he just thought he knew all the answers.

  Vega was almost done creating a path when Joy opened his front door and Diablo bounded into the snow. He jumped on Vega, showering him in slobber, the soft flaps on his upturned ears jiggling like charms on a bracelet as he danced around Vega’s legs. Diablo was supposed to be half German shepherd and half golden retriever, but he seemed not to have read the shepherd part of the dog manual. He was an effusive and unselective greeter who would gladly welcome anyone in Vega’s house—invited or not—in return for a good belly scratch. The only things he was afraid of were Canadian geese, the vacuum cleaner (not that that was any sort of regular worry in Vega’s house), and thunder. The only thing he growled at was his own reflection in the mirror. And yet Vega loved him. He owed him
. After the shooting in December, Vega sorely needed a companion who would love him unconditionally without asking a single question. None of his two-legged friends even came close.

  Diablo raced back and forth between Vega and the front door, where Joy was standing, cocooned in an old plaid quilt. She gave her father a sleepy smile. She looked ten with that thing wrapped around her. Vega had to remind himself that she was going on nineteen, halfway through her freshman year of college.

  Vega kissed Joy on the cheek. “Sorry to wake you.”

  “You’re later than I expected.” She stifled a yawn. “Must have been a good gig.”

  “It was.” He’d have to tell her the other stuff. But not out here. Not yet. It had killed him to have to text those details to Adele. “Let me get my guitars and gear inside, okay?”

  The house was one big open room downstairs anchored by a fieldstone fireplace. Upstairs under the eaves were two small bedrooms and a bathroom. Vega had made up the spare bedroom for Joy. He’d put clean sheets on the bed and everything. But he could see as he dumped his gear inside that she’d been sleeping on the lumpy corduroy couch by the fireplace. A science textbook lay on the rug next to the couch. Every light was on.

  “Too cold upstairs?” he asked as he closed the door.

  “A little,” said Joy. “I don’t like being up there by myself when you’re not home. And then I got the news. After that, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even study.” She pulled the quilt more tightly around her.

  “Come here, chispita.” Vega’s childhood nickname for her. “Little spark,” in Spanish. Joy sank into his embrace. He held her tight. “You heard, I guess.”

  “Mom called. And then after that, I got a bunch of texts from friends. I can’t believe she’s dead.” Joy’s voice turned ragged. “Someone at La Casa murdered her, didn’t they?”

  “Nobody knows that for sure yet,” said Vega. Joy shivered beneath his touch. He rubbed his hands down the sides of the quilt. He could feel her arms beneath, small and fragile as hummingbird wings. “How about if I build a fire?”