Thirty-four

A few strokes of the keyboard in my office, and the captain, David, and I assessed the meaning of the fifth symbol, the one drawn on the hide of the fourth dead bull. In the photographs, it resembled a heart with curlicues reminding me of a silver necklace Bill gave me one Valentine’s Day, not long after we married. This Adinkra was called Sank ofa, and the Web sites I found said it represented the wisdom that comes from knowing the past when planning for the future.

“So what does this mean?” the captain asked. “What’s he trying to tell us?”

Not sure, I clicked the back key and returned to the list of Web sites, then clicked on another link.

“Look at that,” David said, pointing farther down the computer screen. There on the new page I’d pulled up was a mention that up until recently, clothing made from fabric stamped with the symbol was reserved for funerals, and something else, a translation of the word Adinkra: “saying good-bye to the dead.”

“This looks worse all the time.” David shook his head, and there was silence. There had to be dozens of interpretations, but every one that popped into my mind threatened the life of the boy while offering no clues on how to find him. I felt my shoulders sagging, and I had a pain in my forehead, kind of a dull throb. I thought about Maggie, wondering if she’d heard about Buckshot’s death on the news. By now, she and Mom were both asleep, but I made a mental note to call first thing in the morning. I needed to warn Mom, to tell her to keep the television off until I got home to tell Maggie about Buckshot myself. It all felt lost and hopeless.

“Maybe if we think about the purpose of the symbols,” David said, his voice reminding me that we hadn’t given up hope. “Sarah, Benoit suggested the killer was trying to guide you, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, he did,” I said, wondering if any of the things the man had told me were true. Obviously he’d lied about even the essentials, including his name. “Although, as I told him, I wasn’t impressed with the level of help.” Thinking about what David had just said, I realized Benoit had been truthful when interpreting the symbols. I took out a piece of paper and listed all five: Abakuá= war; Ako-ben= a call to arms; Aya= I am not afraid of you; Nosoroma= a child of the Supreme Being; Sank ofa= the wisdom of learning from the past.

We stared at them, exhausted, feeling defeated, and wondering how to interpret any of the clues Benoit had left us to help us find him. “Looks like the first three were threats, declaring war, and a statement of defiance,” David said. “The fourth tied him to the child, another indication of his defiance, his belief that he is superior to us, like rubbing our faces in it, saying, ‘You dumb cops, look here, I’m the one who took the boy.’”

“That fits,” said the captain.

“So that leaves us with Sank ofa, the fifth symbol, the only one that points toward an answer, suggesting we look to the past,” I said, rubbing my temples, hoping to relieve some of the tension that had my forehead tied up in knots. “The question is how do we do that?”

No one spoke while we all considered what to do next. Out of ideas, exhausted by death and waste, I wanted to go home to sleep and to wake up the next morning without a hurricane bearing down on us, with Buckshot still alive and well, and with little Joey Warner safe and loved. As much as I wanted the other two, especially that Buckshot could be resurrected, of the three, there was only one goal I had a hope of accomplishing. I couldn’t blow away the hurricane or breathe life into Buckshot’s burned corpse, but maybe, with a little luck, I could help find the missing four-year-old.

“On the telephone, Buckshot said that the real Alex Benoit lives in a nursing home west of the city,” I said, grasping the only idea that stirred my weary mind. “Perhaps he’s the link to this guy’s past, the one the symbol is supposed to direct us to. Maybe he ties all of this together. I know it’s the middle of the night, but maybe David and I should drop in for a visit.”

The two men looked at each other and shrugged. “I don’t think we’ve got any better ideas,” the captain said. “Go wake that old man up. See what you can find out. I’ll be here in the office. Let me know what happens.”

 

“This is a mandatory evacuation. Hurricane Juanita is projected to land somewhere just south of Galveston. It’s the most dangerous storm to hit the Gulf Coast in decades, a category four, with current wind speeds of one hundred and forty-six miles per hour. Water surge in Galveston is expected to be twenty feet. This is a potentially catastrophic storm, a deadly hurricane, and it will flood low-lying areas not only on Galveston Island, but inland,” Houston’s mayor explained in a prerecorded announcement David and I listened to in the car on the way to the nursing home.

Despite the impending natural disaster, the city appeared quiet. Traffic had let up enough so the roads were navigable. Many of those who’d been ordered to leave their homes, it appeared, were already well on their way, far from the city, north and west, of the projected path of the storm. “Once Hurricane Juanita comes ashore, currently projected to be between ten and midnight Saturday night, everyone in the area is advised to take shelter. Throughout the duration of the storm, there will be no emergency services. Please, don’t call 911. It will not be safe for rescue and emergency personnel to travel during the hurricane, so they have been ordered not to respond. Only after the hurricane passes through our area will emergency services restart.”

I looked at the clock in the Tahoe: 2:36. That was a.m. Once the storm hit in approximately nineteen hours, David and I, like everyone else, would have to put our lives and our work on hold to stay safe and ride out the hurricane. As it trekked in from the Gulf of Mexico, the full force of the storm would hit Galveston and the southern reaches of the city first. There it would be at its most deadly. Once on land, Juanita would slowly weaken but still be a formidable storm, with more than hundred-mile-per-hour winds, torrential rains, flooding, and the threat of spawning lines of deadly tornadoes. Thinking about the days ahead, I decided it was time to ask David something I’d been considering. “Mom has Bobby staying at the ranch through the storm,” I said. “The land is high, and we don’t flood. And the hurricane will lose some steam before it hits us. If you’d like to, you’re welcome to ride it out on a cot in the living room.”

David eyed me.

“Plus, my guess is that you’ve been too busy to prepare, buy supplies, and we have,” I said. “Mom and Maggie have stocked up. We’ve got water, food, everything we’ll need.”

“Is that it?” David asked with a questioning smile. “Those are your only reasons? Just my personal safety?”

“Yeah,” I said, finally admitting, “Pretty much, I guess, under the circumstances, not really knowing where we stand, those are my motives.”

David appeared not to know what to say. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I know this is tough. It is for me, too,” he said, his voice hoarse and tired. “But you’re right. Things are kind of uncertain. Maybe I’d better just plan on staying at my place during the storm. Until this is all straightened out between us, I’m not sure it would feel right to act like part of the family.”

“Sure, but that wasn’t what I was suggesting, that you’re part of the family,” I said, sorry I’d brought up the subject. “I was just offering a safer place during the storm.”

“I know. I really do. And I know we need to talk, and I need to decide what I’m doing. Until we do, maybe we shouldn’t subject Maggie to this.”

“That’s true,” I said, disappointed but seeing his logic. “You’re right. Now’s probably not a good time for you to camp out at the ranch.”

Taking my hand, he asked, “Just give me until all this quiets down, to think things through?”

“Okay,” I said. Maybe I should have stopped there, but I didn’t. “But part of me wonders, if we were really right for each other, would this be a hard decision?”

David looked at me, his eyes sad, and just shook his head. “I don’t know. What I am sure of is that I do care about you. But right now, I can’t think about us. There’s too much going on. Sarah, I need time.”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling much the same way despite my need to know. “That I can understand.”

The rest of the short trip was made in silence, until we neared the nursing home. Then David turned to me and said, “Sarah, it wasn’t your fault, you know.”

“My fault?” I said.

“Buckshot,” he answered. “What happened wasn’t your fault.”

The captain had said the same thing, but I’d been thinking about that, about all the things I could have, perhaps should have, done differently. No matter what, I never should have walked out on Buckshot, leaving him to investigate the case alone. Yet in a sense, it seemed like a perfect storm, the hurricane making it impossible for him to get backup, the missing boy, the ranchers demanding action on the dead longhorns, so many events that had all conspired to transport Buckshot to the plantation. But I was the one who’d dumped the case in his lap as I ran out the door to help David find the four-year-old. Would it have changed things if I had been with Buckshot?

“I know Buckshot’s murder wasn’t my fault,” I said to David, my voice tight, betraying an overwhelming sadness. “But I’m not sure I’ll ever stop feeling guilty about walking out on him, handing him the case.”

“You can’t be sure that being there would have changed anything,” David reasoned. “And if you hadn’t been at the Warner house to see the symbol left on the doorstep and connect the dots, we might never have linked the two cases and figured out who had the kid.”

“All true,” I said, my heart heavy with regret. “But I still walked out on my friend, and now he’s dead. And we’ll never know if my being there could have saved him.”

We pulled up in front of Weldon Manor Nursing Home, a gray stucco structure with white trim, and parked under the porte cochere. At the entrance, David reached out to open the door, but it was locked. “The middle of the night, that’s smart,” he said, reaching over to ring a bell.

Moments passed, and then from somewhere inside, a voice said, “Yes. May I help you?”