Healing Sands (21 page)

Before I could even formulate an answer, she shook her head, and this time the bangs did fly. “No, you don't know what I mean because you aren't afraid of what anybody thinks. I wish I could be more like that.”

I shifted my bag to my other shoulder. Hopefully there was a point to all this.

“Anyway—two days a week I volunteer at the CDC.”

“Which is?”

“The Colonias Development Council. It's a nonprofit. They do, well, everything to try to get environmental justice, farmworker rights—it's huge. But what I wanted to tell you is that I know the woman in that one picture—the last one you showed us.”

“By the car?” I said. “With the two little girls?”

“Yeah.” Poco took a step closer to me. “That's Elena Sanchez.”

I formed the name soundlessly with my lips.

Poco nodded. “Miguel's mother. I've known her for a long time.”

I felt the strap to my bag slide down my arm, and I almost let it dump to the ground. Poco and I grabbed for it at the same time, and in the process our foreheads nearly touched.

She didn't move away when she said, “She's upset and confused. She doesn't know why someone would do this to her boy. But—”

“Not just someone,” I said. “She thinks it was my son—just like everyone else does.” I pressed my thumbs against my temples. “And there I was taking her picture.”

“Isn't that why you're up there?” Poco said.

“Excuse me?”

“I don't know how these things work, but why did you pick that story unless you wanted to know about Miguel's family?”

I could only stare at her, mouth hanging open, so that I not only sounded like a lunatic, I probably looked like one as well.

She gave a tiny shrug. “If I were in your situation, I would want to know who they were, what they were like.” She squeezed my arm a final time. “If I can do anything to help, say the word. But just so you know, I won't say anything to anyone else about it.”

I mouthed a thank-you and watched her start to walk away. But I couldn't let her go. “Poco,” I said.

She turned without missing a beat, as if she'd known I'd call her back.

“Elena Sanchez,” I said. “How is she holding up?”

“She's strong.”

“What about Miguel?”

Poco came back toward me. “He's still in a coma. The longer that goes on, the less likely it is he'll make a full recovery. But they're praying for a miracle. They haven't lost hope.” She pressed her palms together as if she herself were praying. “You shouldn't lose hope either, Ryan.”

I nodded. Not because I had any hope. Because I didn't trust myself to speak.

Poco took a few steps backward. Just as she swung around to go, she added, “She works in the coffee shop at the Ocotillo Bookstore on the mall at lunchtime. It's in the back.”

Sully set the phone down and put a check mark next to the last item on his list: Call Better Business Bureau and lodge a complaint against Zahira.

“What is the nature of the complaint?” the woman had said in brisk formalese.

“Bad psychology,” Sully told her.

“Pardon me?”

“She's a bad psychologist,” Sully said. He'd already had his finger on the End Call button by that time. He was pretty sure she did too.

“I think you want the PCMFT board for that. Let me give you their number . . .”

“She doesn't have a license with them.”

“They can handle that for you too.”

She'd rattled off the number and hung up, leaving Sully licking a bad taste out of his mouth. He reached for his cell phone and dialed Porphyria's number. It was the only way he could think of at the moment to get rid of it.

The voice that answered was faint, almost fragile. Sully hesitated and was about to apologize for a wrong number.

“Are you waiting for me to start this conversation, Dr. Crisp?” the voice said.

It was stronger now, and Sully grinned into the phone.

“It didn't sound like you, Dr. Ghent,” he said.

“Who did it sound like?”

Actually, it still sounded like a weaker version of the voice he depended on to shoot sense into his craziness. The verve was still at the center, but the edges were frayed.

“It sounded like somebody who isn't feeling up to par,” Sully said. “What's going on?”

There was no queenly comeback. Sully felt his grin fade. “Porphyria?” he said.

“I'm here. I'm just trying to decide how to put this so you won't think you have to get on the next plane and come on back here.”

“Don't decide,” Sully said. “Just say it.”

“We're discussing the possibility of replacing the old pacemaker with a new one.”

“What's to discuss? If it needs to be done, let's do it.” Sully clicked back onto the Internet. “I can get a flight out tonight.”

“And you would do that for what reason, Sully? This is not major surgery.”

He heard the rich chuckle.

“And I am not a delicate patient. I'll come through it just fine. You are not the only doctor who knows anything.”

Sully wasn't buying the jocularity. Porphyria never forced anything, but there was something lurking behind the laughter, and she wasn't about to tell him what it was. He got up and paced behind the desk. “You're going to keep me posted every step of the way, right? And if you can't, then Winnie will.”

“Mm-hmm. Just like you're telling me everything.”

Even without her old-soul eyes looking into him, Sully felt himself color up. “Do you have my phone tapped?” he said.

“No, just your mind. Where are you with Belinda Cox?”

It was a clear ploy to change the subject, but Sully followed her anyway. To do anything else was futile. And it was, after all, why he'd called.

“I'm at a dead end at the moment. Maybe I'll give it a rest for a while.”

“Don't you use me as an excuse to walk away from what you know you've got to do, Sully. I'll be here when you're done. Don't you worry about that.”

There was no point in arguing with her. If he showed up at her hospital room tonight, she'd order him out before he got in the door. Besides, she was right. As always.

“I'll tell you what I do want from you,” she said.

“Anything,” Sully said.

“I want you to find that woman, and I want you to have a come-to-Jesus with her until she is on her knees, and then I want you to call me and give me every delicious detail. That's what I want you to do.”

“Done,” Sully said.

Only he knew as he hung up that the account he gave Porphyria wasn't going to happen over the phone. He was going to deliver it in person, the minute he was finished with Belinda Cox. If he ever found her.

He knew it was finality that lurked behind Porphyria's laughter, and it frightened him to the core.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

T
he Ocotillo Coffee Shop was definitely not the upscale Milagro. It was a mishmash of local art on alternating red and purple cinder-block walls, and boxes of teas on top of a Pepsi cooler, and a female customer yelling at her eight-year-old daughter that she was not going to let her read vampire books so she might as well put them back. I saw it all with my photographer eyes, but my mother eyes were on the woman behind the counter.

Elena Sanchez looked different to me than she had the day before when I'd shot her picture. The harsh fluorescent light from the fixture overhead showed the skin beneath her eyes to be dark and sunken, and exposed a finely sharpened vertical line just above and between her eyebrows. She wasn't smiling for the world today or exchanging trills off her tongue with Paul.

Today she wiped the counter as if she were polishing a Chippendale table, hands moving in an almost hypnotic rhythm. Unless I missed my guess, she was merely trying to keep going, pretending if she did all the right things everything would work out. But the image in my head was of her lying awake at night, unable to sleep until she knew how her son's story would end. Just like me.

I set the equipment bag on a table close to the counter. She looked up and gave me a smile, on cue, yet not without warmth. Her face had perfect, square symmetry, and her skin was a flawless caramel.

“What I can get for you?” she said. Her English was blocky and accented and sounded correct even though it wasn't.

“Black coffee,” I said.

“You will like something to eat?”

I looked down through the glass countertop at a display of oversized muffins juxtaposed with seeping breakfast burritos and sugary sopaipillas. It all blurred into the background when I saw the can on the counter above them.

It may have once contained pineapple juice. Now it had a slot in its top and a photocopied photo wrapped around it. A handsome, wide-faced Hispanic teenager in a soccer uniform smiled his mother's smile.
Miguel Sanchez is in a coma,
said the sign taped to the counter.
Your donations for his medical bills are appreciated.

“Anything look good for you?”

My head jerked up, and I found myself meeting Elena's eyes. The hospitable glow faded from them, and for an awful moment I was sure she knew who I was. But she only nodded at the can.

“Do you think maybe that make the people too sad when they come for the coffee?” she said.

I had no idea how to answer.

“It has make
you
sad.” She reached over as if she was going to remove it, but I put my hand on top of it.

“It's all right,” I said. “I'll just have the French roast.”

She gave the can one more doubtful look and turned to the pyramid of mismatched mugs on a tray behind her.

“Personally, I think people
should
be sad about it.”

I looked up at another Hispanic woman with a long braid, wearing black sweats with a flowered scarf thrown around her shoulders like an afterthought. She pushed two dollar bills and her mug across the glass. “I'll have a refill, Elena, when you have a chance.”

Elena nodded with her back still to us.

“That's her boy,” the woman said to me. “Sweetest thing you've ever met. Some bully ran him down like an animal in an alley.”

“I know,” I said.

My voice was sharp, but she didn't recoil.

“Are you doing a story on it?” she said.

I followed her gaze to my chest and saw she was staring at the press pass dangling on its lanyard.

“I might be.” I glanced warily at Elena, who was coming our way with two steaming mugs and a quiet smile. Uneasiness niggled at the edges of my plan.

“I'd certainly be willing to talk to you,” the woman said, “and I won't be as modest as Elena.” She took her mug with one hand and squeezed Elena's arm with the other. “You doing okay?”

“Much better today. I think Miguel is better too.” The smile grew real. “When I kiss him good night last night, I see the moving under his eyelids. He never did that before.”

I turned to the table and unzipped my bag and fumbled around in it, anything to keep from looking at the fragile hope that shone like tears in Elena Sanchez's eyes.

“Let's talk over here,” said the woman with the scarf.

I hadn't offered to interview her, but I followed her to the corner with my bag and set up the recorder while she retrieved her glasses from the turquoise beaded chain that tethered them around her neck. She nodded at the microphone I'd propped on the table.

“Are we ready?” she said.

In spite of the aging quiver in her voice, she had a purposeful way about her, like her sole mission was to inform me about Miguel Sanchez. This was what I'd come for, but the coffee in my stomach felt like it was being stirred with a stick.

“I'm glad there's going to be some press about this,” the woman said. “Just to set the record straight.”

“Is there a record?”

She sniffed. “People assume because the boy's Hispanic he must be an illegal immigrant. Or at least he's dealing drugs or is involved in some other kind of trouble that got him exactly what he deserved.”

“You're saying he wasn't.”

Two wiry hands sliced the air. “Miguel was a straight-A student. He was about to be inducted into the National Honor Society, one of only two Hispanics this semester, and the only one ever from his colonia. He was a debater, and you see that he played soccer.”

She pointed toward the can on the counter.

“He was just selected to play on a prestigious team. They don't let gang members do that. Nor do they let them compete in forensics, which takes self-control and intellect and a sense of justice.”

She raised what little chin she had, and I was once again compelled to show my agreement, but she was not painting the picture of Miguel Sanchez I wanted to see.

“So why do you think this happened to him?” I asked.

“I have absolutely no idea. I will tell you this, though.” She leaned toward me, pressing her fallen bosom against the edge of the table. “If the white boy who did this does not do hard time for it, those precious people up there in El Milagro won't riot in the streets. But I personally will not let it go. This won't die until justice is done—we'll see to that.”

“And who is
we
?” I was surprised I could speak around the mass in my throat.

She adjusted the scarf, leaving it in no better position than it had been in to start with. “My husband and I have something of a following in this town. He is a major blogger, among other things. We'll make the necessary noise.” She looked again at the recorder. “I'm not looking for free publicity by talking to you—we don't need it.”

“I won't use your name,” I said. “But I do need to know what it is.”

“Cecilia Benitez. My husband is Bob Benitez.”

I was evidently supposed to know who that was.

“We're major supporters of the CDC,” she said. “ACLU, HRI . . . Bob is a leading immigration and naturalization attorney in Las Cruces. And, as I said, he writes a widely read blog.”