It is five-thirty in the morning. Andrés Segovia is in his apartment in Sunset Heights, sleeping fitfully, his fists swinging in the air. Dave Duncan is listening to a woman’s voice on his answering machine, “Don’t call me, Dave. Let’s just let it be….”
As Grace Delgado is waking from her dream, fifty-eight passengers file out of a Greyhound bus at the downtown depot. Thirty of the passengers are just passing through. After a bathroom break and a breakfast burrito, they will reboard and continue on to Phoenix and L.A. Twenty-four of the passengers are greeted by at least one family member. The remaining four passengers—all of them men—have no friends or family to greet them. All four have been paroled to El Paso, though they have no previous connections to the city.
As terms of their release, all four men are required to meet with their respective parole officers at least twice a week. They are required to register themselves and their current addresses with the El Paso Police Department.
In the previous eight months, twenty such sex offenders have been released to the border area by parole boards across the country—though none of them had ever called El Paso their home. The men are not acquainted with one another. The fact that they are on the same bus is merely a coincidence.
At forty-one, William Hart is the youngest of them. He walks into the men’s bathroom and shaves, refreshes himself by throwing water on his face. He reapplies some deodorant. He studies himself. Blue eyes, good teeth, nice smile. Still handsome and youthful in that wholesome kind of way that makes people trust him. A few wrinkles beginning to show, but nothing that concerns him. His only imperfection is the small scar above his lip. “Beautiful,” he whispers. Prison didn’t age him, gave him time to think and get in shape. An abundance of time was no reason to waste it.
He checks his luggage into a locker, then walks a few blocks south and crosses the Santa Fe Bridge into Juárez. There are no border guards to stop him. It is not the first time he has been to Juárez. He has good memories from previous visits. He still remembers that boy, that perfect boy, perfect as the morning light.
He smiles to himself.
By early afternoon, having found some release, he will cross back into El Paso. He will walk into the office of his parole officer and tell him he is ready to start a new life.