Things began to pass in a series of images that were all too real.
Uniformed officers with guns on their belts handcuffing Jake and reading him his rights while he silently wept.
Me sitting on a bench in court, chilled to a place in me that couldn’t be warmed by the jacket Uriel Cohen wrapped around my shoulders.
Hearing a judge with a voice like barbed wire arraign Jacob Daniel Coe on murder in the second degree. Listening as he announced that there would be no bail, that he was remanded to the Dona Ana County Jail—announced it in the same tone he used for the jaded drug dealers who came before him, as if Jake, too, were a criminal beyond hope of rehabilitation.
In another image I watched my son let himself be led away without saying a word. He didn’t have to. The curve in his back spoke of a shame that wasn’t his to feel.
In still another I sat with Uriel Cohen in a corridor of the courthouse while she talked to me about options. Until I told her to shut up and leave me alone because I hated her options and I wasn’t so crazy about her, either. Before she heaved her body down the hall, she patted my shoulder. I hated that too.
All of those images were punctuated with me trying to find Dan. I called his cell and his house phone. I even crunched my teeth and found Ginger’s number on my call history and dialed it. No one answered anywhere. When Uriel left me in the courthouse, I was pulled so tightly between panic and wrath I knew I was going to snap—and that wasn’t one of the options. Not for me, not for Jake, not for—
Alex.
If they say he has to go to jail, will you tell me? he’d said. I just want to know right away.
I didn’t know whether I was going to tell him or not. But I snapped the phone open once more.
“Poco,” I said when she answered. “Do you still have Alex?”
“He left before lunch. Dan picked him up.”
“Where did they go? I can’t find anybody!”
My voice echoed in the empty hall, taunting me with its helplessness.
“I don’t know,” Poco said. “Ginger was in the car. Alex told Felipe he didn’t want to go.”
“Go where? Did he say?”
“No. Ryan, what’s going on? You’re scaring me.”
I strode down the hall, one hand with a death grip on the phone, the other one shoving its way through my hair. “Keep talking to me, Poco,” I said, “or I am going to blow—so help me, I’m going to blow.”
“Okay, where are you?”
“I’m at the courthouse.”
“Tell me what’s happened.”
I knew she was forcing her voice into calm, counselor mode, and I clung to it as I went through it all for her. The more I talked, the less like an image everything became. By the time I got to my car, I was almost blinded by its stark reality, and I began to shake. Head to toe, in spasms I couldn’t control.
“Ryan,” Poco said, “do not drive. Do you hear me? Just sit in your car, and I’ll come get you.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“If I hear the motor start, I’m calling the police. Stay there.”
Her firmness surprised me, but I folded into it.
“Okay,” I said and crawled into the front seat of the Saab, where I sat, phone still clutched to my chest, until she pulled up beside me ten minutes later. Victoria got out of the passenger side, pulled me out, and wrapped me in a blanket that smelled like the inside of a Catholic church I’d once photographed—a strange detail from the past flashing into the present darkness. I was pretty sure I was losing my mind.
“J.P.’s going to meet us at your house,” Poco said when they had me tucked into the backseat with a covered mug of tea.
“What about your kids?” I said.
“They’re all at my house. You just worry about you, Ryan.”
“I can’t worry about me. I have to worry about Jake.”
I saw them exchange glances.
“Drink that,” Victoria said.
“I don’t drink tea,” I said. And then I took a sip and it tasted like arms around you and the promise of cookies. By the time we got to my place, I had finished it.
J.P. was waiting on the front porch, the insulated bag she used for soccer snacks over her shoulder. I told her I wasn’t hungry and then proceeded to drink the cup of tomato soup she put in my hands after Poco pointed me to the couch. My insides slowly warmed and stopped shaking, and my mind gathered itself away from flashes and images and back into the clear, steely situation I was faced with.
“I hate this,” I said.
J.P. grunted.
“I hate that there is absolutely nothing I can do. I can always do something.”
She took the cup from me and refilled it from her Thermos. “There has to be something.”
“Maybe not, J.P.,” Poco said. “Maybe all we can do is surrender—”
“To what?” I said. “I just surrendered my son to the police. If I could go in his place, I would.”
“I’m talking about God.”
The angry flickers bit at me. “I don’t think I can go there right now. It’s hard for me to believe that I should just give up and let God handle Jake from here.” I glanced upward. “No offense, but I haven’t seen him doing much up to this point, you know what I’m saying?”
“I know what you’re saying.” J.P. tucked the cup between my hands. “Polish that off.”
Poco sat facing me on the leather ottoman. “I don’t know what you’re saying.” Her voice surprised me again. “God hasn’t been doing much? You had Jake for a whole week. He didn’t act like he hated you, at least not when I saw him. You’re getting to be a mother again. You don’t think God had something to do with that?”
“But I can’t be a mother right now! One kid is in jail, and the other one is who knows where with his father and some bimbo!”
I held out the cup, and J.P. took it. I wanted to get up and run from them, but Victoria suddenly climbed onto the back of the couch, dangled her legs on either side of me, and sank her hands into my shoulders. She kneaded them like dough, and I felt the lump rise in my throat.
“How am I supposed to be a mother when I can’t even be with my sons?”
“William’s looking for Dan,” J.P. said.
“Who’s William?”
“Victoria’s husband.”
“He’s also leaving a note at Dan’s place for him to call you. And if nothing else, they’ll be at the soccer game tomorrow.”
“You can go see Jake tomorrow too,” Poco said. “They have visiting hours on Sunday afternoons.”
“How do you know that?” J.P. said.
I remembered something—something about Poco not wanting J.P. to know she was volunteering at the CDC center instead of doing church work. But Poco told her, straight out, daring J.P. with her eyes to say a word. For a few seconds I was distracted enough from my own mess to be impressed.
When it sank down on me again, I said, “I just want to do something right now.”
“Okay, we are doing something,” Poco said. “Victoria’s massaging and J.P.’s feeding and I’m . . .”
“Being the optimist.” J.P. put up her hand. “Not necessarily a bad thing.”
“And you,” Poco said to me without a glance at J.P., “are letting us take care of you so you’ll be ready for tomorrow, whatever it brings.”
“You all have families to get back to,” I said.
“Those helpless men can take care of themselves and the kids for a change,” J.P. said. “Besides, we have a sleepover coming to us.”
Victoria stopped rubbing my shoulder blade long enough to say, “Oh yeah, huh?”
“I’m going in search of blankets and pillows.” J.P.’s palm was already facing me in stay position. “Poco, get a fire going.” She paused and added, “Uh, please.”
I let them stoke a fire in the kiva and make pallets on my living room floor and rub my shoulders and my feet until I drifted off on the couch still wrapped in the incense-soaked blanket. When I woke up, somewhere in the crazy small hours, Poco whispered from the floor below me. “Surrender.”
I wished I could.
They left soon after the sun came up, but only after I had another cup of tea in one hand and a slice of cinnamon toast in the other.
“We’ll see you at the game at noon,” J.P. said. “I’m going to have a ham sandwich there for you.”
I didn’t tell her I didn’t eat ham. I probably would now. I was doing a lot of things I never thought I’d do.
One of those things was calling Dan yet again and hoping he’d answer the phone. He didn’t. It was going to be hard not to light into him when I got to Burn Lake. How could he suddenly render himself incommunicado when we had a son in trouble?
I did promise myself I wouldn’t do it in front of Alex. On the way to the soccer field, I was rehearsing how to tell my younger son when it hit me that not only was Jake terrified at being back in jail, but he had just lost a close friend. No one in his life had ever died before, and I wasn’t sure he even knew how to grieve. Or if he would let himself in front of the kinds of people I’d seen last night, going to the same place he was.
The image of him shuddering alone in a corner of a cot, holding back his anguish so no one would jeer at him, had me gritting my teeth again.
I didn’t see Dan’s 4-Runner when I pulled into the parking lot, which was strange. He was always there at least a half hour before a game.
J.P. greeted me not with a ham sandwich but with the same indignant expression she’d worn the first day I met her. “You obviously didn’t know anything about this.”
“About what?”
“Dan calling off the game.”
“The coach for the Mesilla Mountains got a message last night.” Poco pointed across the field to a flat-faced man in red shorts who appeared to be giving some bad news to a group of soccer boys.
I started toward him, but I hadn’t taken two steps when the air exploded behind me. Screams erupted before I could even turn around. When I did, my own screams joined them.
Smoke billowed out of the boys’ restroom building. Even as mothers grabbed their children and fled, the smoke began to dissipate as if to say, Just kidding.
“Was there anybody in there?” a voice bellowed. The other coach tore past me, cell phone in hand. I could see mothers already punching frantically at their own phones, while others pulled their boys to them and counted heads, over and over. I could only stand and stare—until the coach emerged from the restroom, red-faced and coughing, but shaking his head.
Within moments sirens pierced the air, and the boys wriggled from their mothers to get a better view of the engine that roared into the park. Guiltily, I thanked God that Alex wasn’t there and hurried over to my soccer moms.
“Everybody okay?” I said.
I got a series of white-faced nods. Even J.P. was momentarily speechless.
“What was that?” Poco said.
I didn’t say anything, but I’d seen enough small bombs go off to be sure that was what we were dealing with: kids messing around with stuff from their garage just to see what would happen. I looked around to see if any of the boys from the other team were snickering behind their hands. One of them was running from the parking lot, yelling in that high-pitched way that came out of sheer panic.
“Somebody threw a rock at somebody’s windshield!” the kid screamed.
Everyone with an automobile started for the lot, but the police officer who had arrived only minutes before put out both arms and ordered everyone to stay back.
“Hey, Mrs. Coe!”
I turned to see Cade Winslow high up on the bleachers with Bryan and Felipe. He was waving his pudgy arms as if he were trying to take flight.
“It’s your car!” he shouted to me.
I shoved my way through the small crowd and plowed into a policewoman acting as a barrier.
“Stay back, ma’am,” she said.
“I have to see!” I said. “I think it’s my car.”
“Red Saab?” said a tall man at my right with a better view.
“Yes!”
“Looks like you’re going to need a new windshield.”
Heart in my throat, I tried again to get around the officer, but she was deceptively strong and held me back easily with one arm. Another officer approached with his fingers curled around something wrapped in paper.
The first officer let go of my arm. “You say that’s your car?”
“I’ve been telling you that for five minutes!”
She nodded as if I were being the soul of cooperation. “You’ll want to go see that gentleman right over there. Gomez!” she called to the officer who was unwrapping the object. “She’s the owner.”
Gomez’s face was grim when I got to him. He wore plastic gloves and held the paper out of my reach as he handed a rock to someone else and said, “You better bag that.”
“What is going on?” I said.
“That your car?” he said, gazing at the paper.
“Yes, for the fifteenth time.”
“It could be a random act, or you could’ve been the target.” He looked up from the paper. “You know anybody who would want to send you a message?”
“What message?” I said.
“We should wait until a detective gets here.”
“That message?” I jabbed at the paper and saw my finger shaking.
He glanced around and then lowered the paper for me to see. A chill went up my spine.
MIGUEL SANCHEZ IS DED, someone had written. NOW SUMBUDY MUST PAY. WATCH YORE CHILDS.
The note’s broken English had been printed in pencil, some of the letters formed backwards, as if the writer were not only illiterate but juvenile. Below it was a picture of something exploding, torn, I could see, from Proceso magazine, because the title and page 32 at the bottom had survived the ripping from the magazine. It reeked of grease, as if it had been wrapped around a Taco Bell burrito instead of a rock, and it pulled the nausea right up my throat.
“Ring any bells?” Officer Gomez said.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m going to be sick.”
The bomb squad wouldn’t let me into the women’s restroom. I had to throw up on the ground beside a pear cactus and then stagger to the stone water fountain, where I soaked my face to wash away the smell that wouldn’t leave. Poco, Victoria, and J.P. surrounded me, but I held out my hands to keep them from touching me.
“I’m poison,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” J.P. said. “Here’s a Handi Wipe.” I shrank away. “Just get your kids and stay as far away from me and my family as you can.”
“You aren’t making sense.”
“Somebody made a threat because Miguel died. You have to keep your kids safe, and the only way to do that is to keep them away from us.”
“Ms. Coe?”
It was Officer Gomez, standing several yards away with a younger man in a sport coat whom I’d seen at the precinct, one of the detectives I’d passed in a hallway.
“I have to go,” I said to my friends.
They stepped back and let me pass, faces pale and shattered. J.P. was already looking beyond me toward the little-boy sounds, eyes fearful.
As much as I wanted them to insist on staying with me, I got why they didn’t. I got it because I finally got what it meant to be a mother. It meant fierce protection of your children at any cost. It meant giving up your allies if you had to. Even if you might never find allies like this again.
Detective Nelson only questioned me for ten minutes. He already knew who I was, knew the whole story behind Miguel Sanchez. He didn’t say it, because he didn’t have to: the note was intended for me, and the threat was real.
“This is not a professional job,” he told me as I sat shivering in one of the pavilions. “But I think we have to take it seriously.”
I nodded toward the object in his hand—what looked like the lid to a jar, somewhat battered but still intact.
“What’s that?” I said.
“Piece of the bomb,” he said. “If you see anything the least bit suspicious, even if you aren’t sure it’s anything, you call.”
As he gave me his card, I asked to see the paper again.
“We’ll check it for prints, all of that,” he said.
I almost gagged again as I took a whiff. It had none of the aroma of the real Mexican cooking I’d come to know. Nor did the attempt at broken English ring true somehow.
“I’ll have an officer drive you home,” he said. “We’re having your car towed in.”
A cold fear gripped me. Could I be any more out of control of things?
I had Officer Gomez drop me at the nearest Hertz and rented a Ford Taurus for the week. It was like driving a piece of tin, but it had a trunk for my camera equipment—although I couldn’t see myself going to work the next day.
As I drove aimlessly around, I actually couldn’t see anything except the note. The note that didn’t smell right, didn’t sound right, that tried too hard to look like something it might not be. It certainly didn’t line up with what I knew of the people in El Milagro. But if not them, who? And who was it that they wanted to “pay”? Jake was already paying.
By then it was late afternoon, and I headed for Dan’s place. He didn’t know about any of this yet, and he had to. As hard as I tried to keep from believing it, Alex might need extra protection.
As I drove the last dusty stretch toward the house, I tried Dan’s cell phone again, but he didn’t pick up. Yet when I pulled into the driveway, the 4-Runner and Ginger’s red Mustang were parked cozily side by side. There was absolutely no way I was talking to her right now. I bypassed the house and headed for the studio, through the sculpture park where the metal musicians mocked me with their merriment. I’d only taken a few steps beyond the patio when I heard the back door open. I smelled her perfume before she said a word.
“Dan’s not out there, Ryan,” Ginger said—pleasantly.
She clicked her way across the patio in black kitten heels, her cleavage exposed as always by a red V-neck sheath that clung to her like a second skin. The makeup was in a heightened state, even for her, and a pair of sparkling earrings dripped nearly to her shoulders.
“Where is he?” I said. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with him since yesterday.”
“I took the family on a little trip. We all needed to get completely away from everything. The stress was getting to us.”
“Yeah, well, the stress just got worse. Could you tell him I’m here?”
Ginger shook her head, setting curls and earrings into a dance. “He’s in the shower.”
I was close to vomiting again. “Then could you get him out? It’s important.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing that can’t wait. We have some important things of our own going on here.”
“No, it can’t wait while you give Dan a Swedish massage.”
“We’re celebrating our engagement. Is that important enough for you?”
I forced myself to register nothing. Even my words came out like wooden blocks.
“Then why don’t you just give him a message for me?” I said. “Miguel Sanchez has died. Jake has been charged with murder and is being held without bail until the trial. Someone wanting revenge set off a bomb at the soccer field and threw a threatening note attached to a rock at my car. We’re all in danger right now.” I narrowed my eyes until I could hardly see her. “Is that important enough for you?”
Ginger stood there—just stood there—as if nothing I’d said computed. I held my shoulders up in a shrug, until she said, “I’ll tell him.” And then she twirled on a kitten heel and disappeared inside the house.
It was then my turn to stand there, and I did, waiting for the anger to fire up and save me. But there was no anger. There was only a deep despair I didn’t know what to do with.