Bobby stepped back into the room and ushered us in. The remains of a beer and pizza dinner spilled across the counter in the kitchen, abandoned where it had first been torn into after being carried in. Chaco himself sprawled in one of the black leather chairs, TV remote in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other.
I tried to keep the shakes out of my voice. “You killed Carlos, didn’t you, Bobby?” Bobby Levin with the dreadlocks beard and dark, wild eyes. He was the real threat in the Bracero gang. “And Felicia, too,” I continued.
“Last fucking time I use a bomb,” the kid said. “Almost blew myself up putting it in.”
Chaco giggled, more amused by us than by the football game on the flat-screen TV. Robert Senior busied himself checking messages on his BlackBerry and Paul Willard stood as stiff as the Tin Man in the middle of the room.
“So what happened that night by the riverbed?” I slumped to the red-stained concrete floor and kept working at the tape behind me. “Markson and Ochoa had taken a child from the day-care center, right? Were they going to shut you down or turn you in?” My guess was that they were going to rescue as many kids as they could. If they had gone to the cops, they’d be in trouble for their involvement, too.
“Darren wanted to shut it down,” a female voice said behind me.
I spun around. Of course. The Jaguar out front. Emily Markson crossed the room, picked a slice of pepperoni off the pizza, and ate it.
“You told Chaco and Bobby where your husband would be that night, didn’t you?” I’d wondered how they’d known to be at the arroyo; both Markson and Carlos Ochoa would have noticed if they were being followed.
She shrugged. “The kids are worth a hell of a lot more than he was bringing home from that damn real estate business.”
“But, Em,” Paul Willard said. “You always told me—”
She didn’t even glance at him. “Shut up. I only put up with you and your wife’s stupid games in case we needed to keep you in line.”
The elder Levin popped the tab on a Tecate and took a swig. He tipped the can in Willard’s direction. “We’ll need to get rid of him now, too.”
“Okay.” His son grabbed the gun from his waistband and—no hesitation, no reflection—shot Paul Willard in the forehead. Willard fell like a stringless puppet, brain and blood and bone scattered behind his crumpled form.
“You idiot!” Emily Markson said. “You should have made it look like an accident!”
The kid shrugged again. “Then he should have said that.”
My vision dimmed. I tried to take regular breaths. A little in. A little out. If they could kill the lawyer that easily, then disposing of Guillermo and me would be no problem at all.
I flashed back to the night of the phone call from Markson. He’d been waiting there at the cottonwood tree for Carlos to come take the little girl from him. Maybe Carlos came in too fast, and hadn’t intended to rear-end him. Markson had covered it well enough with me on the phone. He hadn’t sounded scared. Not until that third voice showed up. That third voice. Bobby Levin. A boy who could kill without even raising his blood pressure. Had Emily Markson been there, too? Maybe that’s why she’d wanted to hear the HandsOn tape; to make sure her own voice wasn’t recorded.
I glanced over at Guillermo, who had managed to uncurl a good eight inches of duct tape from his hands. The senior Levin seemed fascinated by the blood pool seeping from Paul Willard’s head. The two Braceros had returned their attention to the football game and Emily had gone back into the bedroom, none of them troubled by the dead man or the spreading pool of blood on the floor.
Had Emily also watched them kill her husband two days later? He might have died right here in this house. Maybe Chaco’s red floor had been colored that way on purpose, to hide the blood he knew might be there someday.
I stood slowly, my partially unwrapped hands behind me, and leaned against the dining room table. With one final tug, I broke free of the duct tape, grabbed the car keys off the table, and pushed the alarm button. The Cadillac out front responded with a shriek. I tossed the keys in the only place I knew they’d be difficult to retrieve: under the refrigerator. Guillermo moved, lunging for Bobby Levin and crashing to the floor. Hands gouging, they rolled against Chaco’s seat, pinning his legs against the chair. I grabbed a full beer can and hurled it at the lawyer. He didn’t see it coming, and it smacked his temple with a thud. He went down.
Emily Markson ran back into the room, this time with a gun in her hand. She raised her arm in Guillermo’s direction.
I let out a roar and ran toward her, lowering my head below the level of the raised gun and crashing into her. She staggered back into the bedroom and the gun flew from her hand. We followed it to the floor, each kicking and clawing with one hand, the other blindly groping under the bed in a desperate race to reach the weapon.
Emily got to the gun first, but before she could pull it from under the bed, I rolled off her and ran to the barbell in the corner. It was almost a hundred and fifty pounds—more than I’d ever lifted before. Could I do it? One exhalation, bend the knees and lift with every ounce of energy and adrenaline I’d ever known. Up.
The movement caught me unbalanced and I spun around, a hundred and fifty pounds of lead weight careening like a windmill. Emily rolled over on her back and aimed the gun at my face.
I let the bar drop straight across her throat.
I kicked the gun across the room. She was pinned by a weight she couldn’t move, but the plates were tall enough that the bar hadn’t crushed her neck. I panted, hands on my thighs, for the space of three heartbeats, then ran back to help Guillermo.
I took hold of Bobby’s long, tangled beard and yanked. He howled as the strands pulled away in my hand, but didn’t loosen his grip on the gun. Guillermo had both hands around Bobby’s gun wrist, forcing the barrel away from his face.
Chaco kicked at the tangle of men at his feet and dug in the seat cushion for his own weapon. I grabbed a floor lamp and swung it hard at his face. It didn’t make a solid connection, but at least it distracted him.
A child’s muted wail came from the next room and my heart caught in my throat. Where? I hadn’t seen a child in the bedroom.
Then a gunshot split the air and Chaco’s chest blossomed with a new red rose. A stray shot from Guillermo’s battle with Bobby had found a different target.
Guillermo bucked hard and rolled on top of the last Bracero. They could have been statues, frozen nose to nose with only their panting breath to give away the pantomime. Four hands gripped the gun between them.
Another shot. I held my breath, then watched Guillermo close his eyes and slip sideways as the young Bracero squirmed out from under him.
Bobby gave me just a moment’s glance, then turned and ran out the sliding glass door in the back and zigzagged from cactus to cactus up the sloped hill and into the darkening night.
I knelt at Guillermo’s side. The bullet had grazed his temple and blood oozed down his face and neck. His eyes blinked slowly. He was still alive.
“I need help!” I screamed into the phone I found in the kitchen. “Ambulance! Police! Three people shot. One on the loose! And call Deke Treadwell!” I gave them Chaco’s address then turned back to Guillermo. “Stay with me. You’re going to be okay.”
“The wife?” he asked.
“She’ll live.”
I glanced over at Robert Levin. He was still unconscious, but I made sure he wasn’t going anywhere by tying his hands and feet with the cord from the floor lamp. I picked up the gun he’d threatened us with and placed it in Guillermo’s lap.
A cry from the bedroom set me in motion again. In taking care of Guillermo and getting help, I’d forgotten all about that previous wail.
On the floor, Emily Markson squirmed to rid herself of the weights, but the bar across her neck kept her down.
Where was the little girl?
The sound was coming from the metal footlocker at the end of the bed. Two air holes had been drilled in the side. I unhooked the latches and pulled the lid open. A brown-haired three-year-old girl blinked away tears and recoiled into the far corner of the trunk.
“Hush, hush, it’s going to be okay.” My God, had she been here all along? Imprisoned in that trunk the day I was here raiding the car keys but too afraid to make a noise?
I lifted her from the metal tomb, singing soft nonsense syllables to quiet her, repeating them in a slow cadence until they sounded like two pieces of silk rubbing together.
I returned to the living room, cradling her like an overgrown doll. Chaco and Paul Willard’s blood had mingled into a work of macabre art on the floor. Guillermo had managed to prop himself up against the black couch and held a wad of paper napkins to his temple. His face was pale, but his eyes tracked me as I moved.
After Guillermo tucked Levin’s gun under his thigh, I set the little girl down next to him on the floor. He cradled her face against his chest, blocking much of her view of death and gore. She seemed to settle there, giving soft mewling sounds and rocking softly against him.
I stooped to pick up Bobby’s gun from the corner. A little triangular piece of hard rubber was missing from the grip. I’d been right about who ransacked my house. It was Catherine’s gun, used in a homicide the police could no longer try me for. But now it had new deaths to its credit.
The car alarm continued to scream from the front yard. I pushed aside the pizza box on the table. There, shoved under a flyer for free brake inspections, was a box of .38s. I loaded the gun.
“The cops are on their way,” Guillermo said, watching me spin the cylinder and click it into place.
“Make sure she gets back to her parents.”
“You don’t have to do this. They’ll catch him.”
“I know. So will I.” I didn’t have time to explain, but I was surer now than I’d ever been. I knew what I had to do.
I followed the first three zigzags I’d seen Bobby Levin make as he ran. Saguaro to cholla and back to duck behind a saguaro again. It looked like he’d slid at that point, leaving boot-heel gashes in the dirt. Twilight was deepening, I wouldn’t be able to see the tracks much longer.
A steep rocky hillside rose only a couple hundred yards from Chaco’s back door. I looked up. He was up there somewhere.
I climbed about a hundred feet, using only one hand to scramble up so I could keep the LadySmith out of the dirt. No sounds until the wail of an approaching siren echoed off the dark rock. I turned to look back at the house; a small army of police and fire trucks were turning into Chaco’s driveway, lights spinning like a carnival ride.
A cascade of dirt and pebbles to my left told me that Bobby Levin had heard the same thing and was on the move. I kept climbing; the old gash in my calf now no more than a goad, spurring me on. Another fifty feet up, the mountain ran out of dirt and reverted to its primitive volcanic self. Black spires of craggy rock offered few footholds but lots of places to hide.
“Come on down, Bobby! The cops are right behind me. You won’t get away!” No response. As far as I could tell, I was the only one of us with a gun, but that didn’t make me feel any better.
I scanned the shadowed hillside and settled on what looked like a javelina track between the largest outcroppings. The wind was light. No sound but the garbled radio transmissions from the cops below echoed around the canyon.
I moved cautiously around a barrel cactus in the narrow path and heard a groan. Bobby Levin slumped against a stony ledge, both hands holding his right knee.
“Hurt yourself?”
“Fuck you.”
I held the gun steady. Only eight feet away, I couldn’t miss.
“Give it up, Bobby.” I gestured with the gun for him to precede me down the hillside.
He panted, head hung down. I watched, transfixed, as his hand dropped from his knee to his boot. He came up snarling and clicked open the long, dark knife in his hand. He lunged at me, swiping right to left at waist level.
I pulled the trigger.
I told myself that I would have killed him anyway—that’s why I had chased him up the mountainside—but I wondered if I really could have done it without provocation. Bobby had saved me from finding out.
I scooped up the knife that had dropped from his fingers and flung it as far as I could to the west. Deke would have no reason to look for it there.
I was sitting cross-legged on the ground next to Bobby’s body when Deke and two uniformed officers reached me.
“What happened, Jessie? Are you all right?” Deke’s voice was ragged with exertion and anxiety.
“I killed him.”
“In self-defense?”
I shook my head.
“Don’t say anything else,” he cautioned, turning to look at the two cops behind him. “We’ll get you a good lawyer.”
“Don’t need one, Deke. I’m pleading guilty.”
“I’m so sorry about this,” he said, cuffing my hands in front for the trip down the steep hill.
Poor Deke. He’d tried so hard and for so long to believe in my innocence, but this time there was no way he could ignore my criminality. Sabin would have no trouble with my guilt. Neither would I.
But I did have one condition as part of my guilty plea: I wanted to make a Day of the Dead altar before going to jail. Deke was the first to agree. Len Sabin and the prosecutor, Ted Dresden, soon followed suit.
We made quite a crowd there at the cottonwood tree by the arroyo the next day. It was November 2, the last day of the Day of the Dead celebration.
Guillermo’s head wound had been wrapped and the doctors had cleared him to come with us. He’d brought pictures of Carlos and Felicia. I looped thin pieces of string through pinprick holes and hung them on the highest branches I could reach.
My dad brought a picture of Catherine, and had clipped a newspaper photo of Paul Willard and—my own private shame—Walter Racine. I gave Catherine and Walter pride of place, tucked into the strongest crook of the tree at eye level.
Darren Markson, Reuben Sanchez, Chaco, and Bobby Levin were on their own. They had been masters of their own destinies and had no business being remembered on my Day of the Dead altar.
I wondered if Aloma Willard ever put together an altar, and whether she would now yearn for the day that she could add Emily Markson to the list of the dead. I’d heard that Emily had hired my old pal Buckley Thurber to defend her. If he did his usual stellar job, she’d be growing old in prison. Unless Emily and I got assigned to the same facility, that is.
I placed a dozen votive candles around the base of the tree and lit them, although it was still too bright out for the candlelight to be seen. Just like the ghosts of all those children taken by the Braceros, the Marksons, and Robert Levin; young lives whose flames had not had a chance to blaze brightly enough.
A lavender smudge, in honor of the birth mother I’d never met, curled wispy gray smoke toward the group. I added a long pink satin ribbon for Catherine’s child and the unclaimed three-year-old from the trunk. Deke told me that her first name was Baila—Dance—but they hadn’t found her parents yet. As it should be, I thought. One Dancing ends her old life and another girl named Dance starts a new one.
I strung another card to the tree. That optical illusion drawing of a vase—or was it two faces in profile?—that was what I’d been doing the last three years. Looking at one image but not recognizing the truth of the other. I’d only seen the hard lines of the vase—Catherine’s story about the abuse—and not the faces, the truth. I’d even misinterpreted Racine’s actions that day he pushed Katie on the swing. It had been a proud, loving great-uncle’s gaze, not that of a predator. My guilty plea now was the only way I could, even in part, pay my dues to Walter Racine and his family.
Guillermo was lost to me now, and he, too, had to be remembered on the altar. Giving him up, saying good-bye to whatever possibilities we might have had, would be one of the hardest parts of my incarceration. I lit an orange candle to signal a change of plans and to open new roads for him.
Mad Cow had taken the day off and driven down from Phoenix. She was the only one with tears in her eyes. The rest of us were already too steeped in pain to cry.
“Can I come visit you?” she asked.
I laughed and hugged her. “Yes. And you just won the Dumb Question contest.”
Finally, I knelt between the tree trunk and the orange candle and tucked away the broken shard of agate that I’d fingered, contemplating my own suicide. I’d built up a hard shell of anger these last three years, but could feel it melting away, leaving me strangely calm and at peace there in the clearing.
Deke gave me a few minutes, then stepped behind me and gently held my wrists in place for the handcuffs.
“I don’t understand, Jessie. You could have said it was self-defense. Nobody could prove you wrong.”
The wind came up, twirling the cards and photos and threatening the tiny flames.
“But it wasn’t.”
The undisputed queen of Liars Anonymous was back.