Chapter 7
The knocking at their front door had the insistence of a police officer. Edgar Aviles cracked open the chain to see a man in a polo shirt and khakis with a broad, brown face and a gun on his hip. He held out his gold shield. It read: DETECTIVE, LAKE HOLLY POLICE.
Aviles’s stomach clenched. He prayed to God this detective wasn’t here to deliver bad news about Lissette.
“I’m very sorry to bother your family at this hour, señor,” the cop offered in American-accented Spanish. He was fluent, but it wasn’t his language of choice.
“I can speak English,” Aviles told him impatiently.
“Great,” said the cop, switching to English. “My name is Omar Sanchez. I’m a detective with the Lake Holly Police. I have no interest in anyone’s immigration status. I’m just trying to locate your niece, Lissette. Do you know where I can find her?”
Maria came up behind her husband and put a tight grip on his arm. Aviles got the message: Say nothing.
“I don’t know where she is,” Aviles told the detective.
“Do you mind if I come in? Ask you a few questions?”
“It’s not a good time,” said Aviles. If the people who had Lissette were watching his house, they’d know a police officer was here. They’d think Aviles called him in to make a report. Lissette’s life—his family’s lives—depended on what he did next. The sooner he got rid of this man, the better.
“But your niece, señor—out this late? Aren’t you worried about her?”
Aviles tightened his grip on the edge of the door. “Why do you want to talk to her?”
“It’s about her employer,” said the detective. “Talia Crowley? We have a situation at her house this evening that we think your niece might be able to give us information on.”
Situation. Information. The detective was hiding the real reason he wanted to speak to her. Aviles wondered if something was missing from her employer’s house and they were blaming Lissette. In that case, telling the police what Erick had witnessed this evening would only make them more suspicious.
“I will let her know you are looking for her.” Aviles started to close the door.
“Sir—wait.” The detective stretched out a hand. He looked around, like he was waiting for someone else to tell him what to do. “Mrs. Crowley is dead.”
“Dead?” The word came out barely above a whisper. “What happened?”
“It’s under investigation.”
The officer’s tone was gruffer now. Aviles noticed the detective had switched from “señor” to “sir.” His mind raced. In the same evening his niece had been kidnapped, her employer was dead. If it was an accident, the detective would have told him. Which meant it wasn’t. The señora had been murdered. Or at least, the police suspected as much—and suspected Lissette was somehow involved. He had to disengage.
“I’m sorry,” Aviles told the detective. “Tonight is not a good night to talk. I will tell Lissette to come see you.”
Before the detective could object, Aviles closed the door and locked it. The detective knocked and pleaded for a few minutes, then finally gave up and slipped his card under the door. Aviles heard his footsteps echo down the stairs.
“God help Lissette,” Maria whispered.
Aviles leaned his head on the door. God help us all.
* * *
They pulled the foldout couch into a bed so Erick could go to sleep. Then Maria and Aviles retreated to their bedroom where Noah lay curled in a cot in the corner, his bald head reflecting a nightlight by the floor, his pajama top pulled down, revealing the surgical port in his chest where doctors administered the medicine. The skin beneath the boy’s eyes had a purplish tinge. No amount of sleep ever seemed to be enough. For him or his mother. Aviles wished he were the one suffering—not them.
Maria changed into a nightgown. Aviles stripped down to his undershirt and boxer shorts. He cradled his wife until she fell asleep.
He couldn’t sleep. His worries hummed through his brain like a swarm of bees. He cursed himself for not asking Lissette more about this ICE agent she’d been dealing with. He’d suspected all along that the agent was corrupt. Why else would he reach out? But he’d kept telling himself that if it bought him his freedom, it would be worth it. And now, his niece was kidnapped—maybe dead—and it was all his fault.
The clock was edging up on five a.m. Saturday morning when Aviles pushed himself up from the bed. He found a pair of work pants folded atop a chair and stepped into them.
Maria awoke, propping herself on one elbow. “Where are you going?”
“To try to find Lissette.”
“Please don’t leave.” Maria pushed herself up from the bed and placed a palm on his chest, almost like she didn’t expect to feel him beneath it. Or maybe she just wanted to feel him that way one more time. She’d been the only woman in his life since she was nineteen and he was twenty-one. Not once in all those years had they slept apart from each other. Aviles felt a great rage and shame that a piece of paper might soon separate him from his family forever.
A set of headlamps strafed the closed blinds across their bedroom window, growing bigger and brighter as a car slowly coasted down the street in their direction. Aviles heard the spit of gravel from the tires and the purr of the engine.
And then it stopped.
Aviles walked back into the living room, skirting Erick asleep on the couch. He lifted a corner of the drape and peered at the street. A dark-colored compact sedan sat double-parked beneath a streetlight in front of his house. Two men ejected themselves from the front seats. One black. One white. Both had short-cropped hair and a bulk to their torsos that suggested they were wearing armor beneath their jackets. Both wore pistol holsters and military-looking boots.
The living room window was open beneath the drapes. Aviles leaned forward to listen. He couldn’t hear what the men were saying, but he noticed their words had a breathy excitement to them. The black man had his hand angled like he was directing traffic.
Directing it right at Aviles’s house.
The white man turned his back and Aviles saw three white letters across his jacket.
I-C-E.
Aviles felt an acid burn in his chest. His fingers and toes tingled with pins and needles. It was cold in the apartment, yet every pore bathed him in a sheen of sweat.
Maria came up behind him, saw the men, and let out a whimper. She knew—they were here for him.
“You have to leave now!” she cried.
“I can’t leave you and the children like this.”
“They will take you away forever if you don’t. Please, mi vida. Please. For our sakes, you must run away.”
Their conversation woke Erick. He sat up on the foldout couch, dazed and confused. Maria told him what was happening, then she turned back to her husband. “Now is your only chance. Now!”
Aviles shoved his feet into his work boots and tried to formulate a plan. He couldn’t go down the stairs. His only hope was to escape through the bedroom window, shimmy across the roof, and slide down to the back porch. He ran into the bedroom in such a blind panic that he didn’t even kiss his wife and children good-bye.
The roof was steeper than Aviles had expected. A slick of pollen clung to the shingles. His boots slid as he shimmied across it. The grit on the tiles scraped his hands. The porch downspout was so dented, he didn’t dare trust himself to grab it. He was thankful it was still dark outside. Had it been light, the agents surely would have spotted him.
He followed the porch roof around the corner to the back of the house. A curtain of weeds surrounded a cracked concrete patio. Several bicycles lay chained against the railing. Two grills collected a film of water that reflected the deep ocean blue of the sky. It was growing paler over the eastern hills. He wouldn’t have the cover of night much longer.
He grabbed one of the column supports and slid down. He was thirty-five—not a teenager. His muscles protested. His body felt the pull of gravity. He tried to land quietly and cleanly on the back porch. But the boards were old and springy. He felt the thud of his weight right through his heels.
“Around back!” a gruff male voice shouted in English.
Aviles sprinted across the patio and hoisted himself on top of the Dumpster. On the other side of the chain-link fence ran the Metro-North train tracks. It was a minefield of deadly currents and speeding locomotives.
“ICE! Policía!” yelled the voice as it rounded the building. “Levanta las manos!” Put your hands up!
And then Aviles heard it—on the other side of the chain-link fence. The rumble of a southbound train. The first train of the morning.
“Put your goddamn hands up!” the agent shouted, this time in English. “I’m not going to tell you again.”
He was white with thin, almost nonexistent lips, close-shaved brown hair, and hungry eyes so pale they looked like they were clouded with cataracts.
The train whistle pealed as it rounded the bend. Aviles heard the squeal of the tires. He was out of time. Out of options.
“Get down. Now!” yelled the agent again, pointing his gun at him.
Aviles looked to his left. He felt the blast of hot air push against his skin. He saw the headlight beams cutting through the last vestiges of darkness. The train was close enough now that he could see the engineer through the compartment window.
He looked back over his shoulder to see another agent rounding the corner of the house. The second agent’s gait was slower, less urgent—like he was running because he thought he should rather than because he wanted to. He was black and older. With spreading jowls and a certain resignation in his eyes.
Two against one. If Aviles delayed his decision any longer, the men would be on top of him, cuffing him. And then it would be all over.
Aviles held his breath and jumped from the top of the Dumpster, over the fence and onto the tracks. One word looped through his brain, over and over.
Run.
It was all he’d been doing since that day, eighteen years ago in Olocuilta, El Salvador, when he found his cousin facedown in a pool of blood by the side of their fruit cart. He knew the masked gangsters would come for him next. He couldn’t afford the protection money they were demanding. So he ran—from El Salvador to Guatemala and then over the Mexican border. In Chiapas, a gang stole his shoes and he walked barefoot on bleeding soles. In Veracruz, cops beat him in the freight yards and broke his ribs. At the border, he nearly drowned crossing the Rio Grande into Texas.
His entire thirty-five years came down to this moment. A few inches one way or the other would determine his fate. Aviles took a breath and pitched forward into the path of the train’s headlights. He would make it. Or he wouldn’t.
One. Two. Three.
He felt nothing but the beating of his heart and the whoosh of breath in his lungs. An air horn sliced the darkness, so loud Aviles could feel it through the soles of his boots. Then it was over.
He fell to his knees in the gravel on the opposite side of the tracks and watched the train barrel past on a current of air. His legs had turned to jelly. His bowels felt weak. Bile and puke gathered at the back of his throat. He tried to shake off the sensation.
He had no phone. No money. Nothing but the clothes on his back. He looked across to the chain-link fence that sealed off his yard. The two ICE agents were pacing there like tigers in a cage.
“Go ahead and run, asshole,” the agent with the cataract eyes shouted as he pulled on the fence. It puckered beneath his grip. “You’re not going anywhere.”
He didn’t want to. That was the point.