I was so afraid it would be like a bad movie, that we would tramp back into the woods and the corpse would be missing. But Reyes was still there, just the way I had left him.
One of the two officers on duty stayed to maintain the scene until daybreak. The other took me to police headquarters, located on the first floor of a small modern building. The fire department was upstairs, on the second floor. I found it curious that the dispatcher-receptionist who greeted us on an intercom in the any lobby was seated snugly behind bulletproof glass. The chief, furious after being roused from his bed in the middle of the night, had all but convinced me that his community had no crime rate, at least not until I arrived.
“You have a lot of ’splaining to do, young lady,” he said, reiterating once more that this was their first murder in three years.
I kept telling them that the dead man was a serial killer from Miami, that I was a reporter from Miami, and that he should call the Miami police.
“Might know,” he muttered. “Nothing good ever comes up here from Miami.”
“I think it’s probably the full moon,” I said wearily. “At least that’s been my experience.”
“I thought that whole damn town down there just got blowed away.”
“Almost,” I said, yawning.
“You on drugs?” he said suspiciously. “You are pretty damn cool for somebody who just shot a man down on his own property.”
I assured him that I was only very tired and asked him again to call Miami homicide.
As it happened, Miami called him first. My second call from the pay phone had been to the homicide unit. A beleaguered midnight-shift secretary had finally answered, recognized my voice, and assumed I was calling about the national guardsman who had run amok and killed three hurricane survivors who had been taunting him, or the woman who was holding a baby and threatening to jump from an overpass.
“No,” I had told her, my voice wan. “Don’t tell me about them now. This is long distance and I don’t have time.” I gave her the short version of where I was and what I had done.
My own calm surprised me as I sat alone in the small interrogation room. I had always believed that killing another human being was a wrenching emotional experience. I had met combat veterans who never recovered and knew cops who required psychological counseling to deal with the trauma after taking a life even under the most justifiable of circumstances. I remembered the tears in Hal’s eyes. I had always pitied those who carried the burden of such remorse. But killing Reyes had been so simple, so natural.
What would always haunt me was the lost boys, all of them, and the lives they would never lead. I would never forget their parents. The enormous guilt that led to Edwin Clower’s drinking. The allergies his ex-wife, Vanessa, acquired after their son vanished. The Kearnses at each other’s throats. Cassie Randolph, whose only child never walked out the door without kissing her good-bye. And Andrea Vitale, eating compulsively for two, still buying snacks for her missing son.
The chief returned from the phone with a new attitude. Miami was sending people up to sort things out, he said. I could go back to my motel room if I agreed not to leave it until morning. He would pick me up then to return to the scene for a walk-through of what had happened, for him and the local prosecutor.
I drove the Camaro back to the motel, traded by a police car. “Git some rest,” the officer said. He waved and drove off as I closed the trunk, walked inside, and nearly ran to my room. Sleep played no role in my plans. I had no trouble staying awake. I had waited all my life for this moment. I curled up in a chair beneath a lamp and opened my father’s diary.
June 10, My Angels, my dearest wife and daughter. How can I express how tenderly and respectfully I love you both and Miami, the home that is ours.
My only solace here in this place that is always night, where candle flames are snuffed out forever, is that you are both safe in the land of flowers and sunshine. By now Winslow has kept his promise and you know my situation and why I was sworn to secrecy about our mission…
My Spanish is not terrific, the letters were faded in some places, and at times tears blurred my vision, but it was all there.
The secret mission that the CIA had prevailed upon him to carry out. The insistence that he tell no one of the plan, the promise that his wife would be informed after his departure, and that the government would provide for his wife and daughter should anything go wrong.
First Juan Carlos Reyes betrayed my father, then it was Winslow, the CIA, the government. One act of betrayal after another.
I know the monster, he wrote of Reyes. More dangerous, depraved and treacherous than Fidel.
Had it not been for this traitor among us, success would have been ours. When we took to the hills, the people joined us, patriotic Cubans all filled with a passion for freedom and dignity. Now we are all scattered dead or in prison. But others will carry on in our names. I know that Jorge Bravo, if he still lives, will fight on forever.
I am doing my duty here. Our spirit is one. Endless kisses to my beloved wife and our golden angel. I have two countries now. The one I die for and the one where my heart lies.
I may disappear but my thoughts are with you forever.
Put my ashes in the stars, not in the ground
I cried for my father and for Jorge Bravo and all the others betrayed. And for my mother, who was betrayed perhaps the most of all. Like Bravo, she too had lost thirty years of her life, he in an impossible crusade, she to bitterness.
Odd that an act committed by Reyes so many years ago had resulted in his death here in this place, that justice ultimately overtook him, with my finger on the trigger.
I walked through the reenactment in the morning. The bullet had caught Reyes at an angle near the top of the head and slammed into his brain, a lucky shot. Lucky for me. Not him. La mala hora had been his. Not mine. The chief was sending out for sandwiches when the detectives from Miami arrived.
Lieutenant Kendall McDonald found me sitting in the police station drinking coffee. He asked if I was all right.
“Fine,” I said too loudly, smiling cheerfully, startled as always by the silver-blue depths of his eyes.
He frowned and went off with the chief. They wrapped things up in a few hours.
“Come on,” McDonald said. He put his arm around me. “I’ll take you back to Miami.”
I had to make one call first, to my mother.
“Mom,” I said, excited. “I can’t wait to get back. I have something to show you.”
“Where are you, Britt?”
“On my way home,” I said. “I love you.”
She can grieve at last, I thought. Her life will change.
Detective Simmons, from the Missing Boys Task Force, had come with McDonald. He followed in the Camaro.
“Watch out,” I warned him. “It pulls to the right.”
I sat beside McDonald in a city car, headed south, the diary in my lap. It is my history, I thought sleepily. One of the relics of my life. All I will ever have of my father.
McDonald understands such things, so I told him how easy I had found it to kill Reyes.
“It is easy to kill when you have a reason,” he said, skillfully passing a slow-moving citrus truck on the two-lane road, “but it’s hard to forget. You have the rest of your life to think about it.”
The afternoon light hurt my eyes and I was already dozing off. I woke up once, when we stopped on the turnpike for coffee.
“How’s Miami?” I said, sleepily, as though I had been away for a long time.
“Don’t ask about last night,” he said, and grinned. “We had to call in extra teams from home.”
I became wide awake as we got closer, into Broward County. I thought of Jorge Bravo, who would never again walk on his native soil. One day I will do it for him. And I will bring back a handful of Cuban soil to sprinkle on his grave. Then I can whisper: “You can rest now, Jorge. Cuba is free at last.”
Strangely battered cars began appearing in traffic and I knew we were nearly home. The sun was setting as we reached the Dade County line. “Take the flyover,” I told McDonald, and he signaled for the right lane.
The flyover is a forty-million-dollar boondoggle that tied up motorists for years while it was being built. Its purpose was to end the traffic jams at the Golden Glades interchange. The result is a single lane, a nightmare that has worsened the problem because of poor engineering, lousy signage, and cars that crash and burn. But, rising high over the rest of the traffic, it has a great view.
There it was. Miami. All purple and rosy, the golden fingers of dying sunlight curling around its skyline. I caught my breath, as though glimpsing a passionate lover after being gone too long. My heart beat faster. I do love this place. The city glowed, like hope overcoming the misery, the recovery to come, the pain of rebuilding.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I whispered.
“Yeah, it is,” he said, and held my hand.