New Growth (Spook Hills Trilogy Book 2) (16 page)

Ivy noted
Steve
no
longer referred to the men killed in November 2014 as the Fuentes.
 
“How long before the court order is signed?”

“The paperwork will be submitted to the court this
afternoon.
 
I doubt anyone will contest
the order, so the judge should
sign
it in
a day or two.
 
Just in case, the FBI
staked out the cemetery with the parents’ graves.
 
They have strict orders to detain anyone who
approaches their gravesites.”

“You think this is another twist added by the brothers?” Ivy
asked.

“Might be,” Steve replied.
 
“You discovering anything in those photographs?”

“Someone, I am guessing the mother, annotated each of the
old photos with names and the date taken.
 
Most of the ones I found so far are now deceased.
 
Three to follow-up on.
 
Two may be neighborhood pals.
 
One might be a cousin.”

“What’s his name?”

“
Her
name is
Annetta,” Ivy said as she pulled up the images of the four cousins on her
screen and motioned Steve over.
 
“She appears in multiple snapshots during their
childhood, particularly with Cristo as they became older.”

 
“Pretty.
 
Not curvaceous,”
Steve
said, leaning over
Ivy’s
shoulder to stare at the image and pointing to the skinny Annetta.

“After the twins turned 17, she isn’t in the snapshots.
 
Three years later, this pic shows the three
brothers and another guy who is called Julio.
 
He appears a few times later too.”

After blowing up a photo of Julio and the last one of
Annetta on her screen, Ivy put up her fingers to block Annetta’s long wavy
hair.
 

Steve bent down to stare at the photos.
 
“And then she transformed into
a he?”

“Possible.
 
Note the
facial structure and the smile,” Ivy said and took her fingers away.
 

“I’ll ask the Bureau to run an image comparison and age
Julio and Annetta with their electronic software to how he/she
will appear
in 2014.
 
From the aged versions, I’ll schedule
passport comparisons of both personas.
 
Now we have a new person-of-interest.
 
Anything else?”

“Their Uncle Rodrigo, Annetta’s father, was killed in a
drive-by shooting around the time she stopped appearing in the prints,” Ivy
said.

“See what you can find on Rodrigo.
 
I’ll run his name and any data you find
through the criminal databases.
 
Will you
work up a chronology listing births, deaths, dates, and so on?”

“Started that along with the family tree.
 
Let me go through the rest of these images
and I’ll shoot you a copy.
 
Will hit places
like Ancestry.com too,” Ivy said.
 
“One
other photo that I found is of two other young men taken around 2002.
 
Names are shown as Ricardo and Maximillian
Machado,
and the annotation
says
‘nephews, leaving for
college.'
 
I’m not finding birth records.”

“Could be a later wave of Cuban immigrants after then
President Clinton decided to set a quota for Cuba.
 
Wasn’t
Machado
the Fuentes’ mother’s maiden name?” Steve asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’ll take those two on to see what I can find.
 
Anything else?”

“Just a question,” Ivy said.
 
“I’m not finding anything in the files about the contacts on the
Fuentes’ cell phones.
 
Wouldn’t the
takeover team have researched those?
 
Seems like they would be good leads to their underworld associates.”

“I did see a report on that.
 
90% of
the phone numbers
were
abandoned as soon as the arrest was announced.
 
The names the phone companies had were bogus.
 
None had more than first names or nicknames
in the Fuentes’ list of contacts.
 
Of the
remaining 10%, a few arrests were made.
 
There weren’t a ton of them.
 
Maybe a half dozen suppliers and about five stateside folks who took the
product.
 
Then another group of people
like a talent scout in Hollywood for actors,
a
shady
sort of temp labor company in Mexico, and then it goes to mostly
legit businesses.
 
I can let you know
where the report is.”

“No need.
 
What I
can’t understand is why
the brothers
left
their
personal stuff, such as the photo
album, if
they
staged
their
demises.”

“Make the pretense more convincing,” Steve said.
 
He was impressed by Ivy’s findings.
 
“If you became an FBI agent, you’d be in the
Bureau’s upper stratum.”

“At least on the investigative part.
 
The actual ops are unnerving.”

He nodded.
 
“No matter
how many times I went out, my abs tightened up right before an operation.
 
Never sure if the sensation came from
excitement or fear.
 
Might be a combo of
both.”

“Promise me one thing,” Ivy said, catching his eye with her
commanding tone.

“Ivy, I will not take part in any required action against
the Fuentes or any other perp unless you agree to my involvement.
 
However
if we are under threat, I will defend you and anyone else in the line of fire.”

“Time to get out in the sun.”
 
Ivy walked over, pulled him to his feet and
led him outside to the lower patio.
 
“Kiss me, Agent Nielsen.
 
Kiss me
long and slow and give me your pledge again.”

Down in Caracas around ten in the evening, Cruze waited
with Julio in their rental car at a deserted genetic research clinic to learn
the study’s outcome on the two femurs and Cruze’s sample.
 
A car came up the street, turned into the lot
and parked.
 
The doctor they communicated
with a few days before stepped out.
 
He
nodded and walked in silence to the building, unlocking the front door and
relocking it behind them, before escorting them to his office.

“Sit down, please,” the geneticist said.
 
“You wanted to know if these femurs came from
your siblings, yes?”

Cruze nodded.

“Be aware chromosomal studies are not always absolute, but
may be open to interpretation.
 
I did run
the comparatives multiple ways so as to isolate the genomic material the same
as your own.”

“Your conclusions?” Cruze asked.

“The larger one is from your identical twin brother.
 
I am sorry,” the doctor said with a
sympathetic tone.

Cruze slumped back in his chair as the significance of the
man’s words
sank in
.
 
He harbored a little hope Cristo might yet be
alive so that even as he grieved, a part of him yearned for his brother.
 
When he glanced over at Julio, he realized
this news also made him despair.

“The other one is intriguing,” the doctor continued.
 
“I believe he is your
half-brother,
but the protein sequences show many
similarities.
”

Cruze sat in silence absorbing this confirmation of the
death of his brothers.
 
What was this
issue with the distorted genetic makeup?
 
“Eduardo is my brother.
 
My
parents devoted themselves to each other.”

“I can only tell you what we find in the samples.”

The doctor walked through the charts, indicating the
likenesses and the differences.
 

“Would these patterns result if a close relative fathered
the child?” Julio asked in an undertone.
 

The doctor nodded.
 
“What you ask is plausible even probable.”

Cruze turned to his cousin, his resentment rising.
 
Why did Julio ask such a question?
 
His mother fool around?
 
Not imaginable.
 

“Stay calm,” Julio murmured.
 
“Thank
you,
doctor.
 
Now we want the bones and the file.”

“The rest of my payment?”

Cruze handed him a heavy envelope.
 
The doctor left the room and came back with a
wrapped package.
 
Cruze smoothed the
wrappings with his hands and slid it into the duffle he brought along.
 
Julio put the report into his slim briefcase.
 

“You destroyed all documentation, paper and electronic?”

“Wiped clean.
 
No record
of the work I did for you.
 
I am known
for my discretion.”

Once in the car, Julio headed back to
their
hotel in downtown Caracas.
 
They rode in silence, each of them mulling
over the implications of the findings.
 
After a few
blocks
Julio
said.
 
“When we are back in our suite, we
must talk.”

Cruze peered over at Julio, realizing he possessed unshared
insights from all those years ago during the mixed-up time when Annetta had
vanished,
and her father was shot to
death.
 
What a horrible year!
 
The same year of his arrest and his time in
juvie.
 
Eduardo’s kidnapping had happened
then too.
 
For the first time, he
wondered if the events were somehow connected.
 
He leaned his head back on the headrest, probing his memory from those
days for a thread to bring each
event
together, back in those months when spring had turned into a hot, humid Miami
summer dominated by sadness,
anger
and
desolation.
 
The world
whirled
around him as his secure adolescence
ended not by winding down, but by a series of explosions.

Emotions tore around inside of him, guilt at leaving his
brothers to what turned out to be horrible fates, anger at the agents who had
killed them, loathing of himself for not wanting to jump into revenging his
brothers’ deaths.
 
The loss of the
fortune they had accumulated was of no consequence.
 
If only the FBI had taken the money and let
his brothers escape.
 
But they had killed
Cristo and
Eduardo.
 
H
e must take some action.
 
Now there was this mix-up on the DNA.
 
How could Eduardo not be his full brother?
 
His mother would never have cheated on his
father.
 
He refused to believe that of
her.
 
It was simply not in her character.
 

Cruze collapsed forward in the passenger seat, with his
hands pressed against his head, trying to hold his thoughts together and force
back his emotions.
 
He wanted to yell out
his anguish until he went hoarse.
 
He
wanted to get out of the car and run until
he fell down exhausted.
 
He wanted to
turn the clock back and travel through time to save his brothers.
 
But he would do none of those things, even if
he could.
 
He inhaled deeply once, twice,
three times and sat back up only to hear Julio tell him that they had a car
tailing them.

The next day Steve took a swim before lunch, after
concentrating on the Fuentes case since four in the morning, stopping only for
breakfast.
 
Nearing the end of his
freestyle exercise, he noticed that someone stood at the far end of the
pool.
 
He finished the lap and stopped,
took off his
goggles
, let his eyes
refocus and realized the person was Callie.
 
A quick smile flitted across her face and disappeared as she wove a
strand of hair around her finger.

“I can wait until
you finish
your workout
,” she called out in a high, thin voice.

“Four more laps.”
 
He
put the goggles back on, completed his workout with a slower, cool down
backstroke, bounded out of the lane by the far end, toweled off and put on his
navy terry-cloth robe.
 
He walked back to
where Callie stood
balanced
on one foot
the way a child might when nervous.

“Hey Callie, you here to talk with me?” he asked.

“About Mathew,” she said, her voice still thin with
concern.
 
“Do you want me to come back
later?”

“It’s warm today.
 
Let’s sit outside.”

They pulled two lawn chairs over to a sunny spot.
 
Callie sat in silence, twisting her hands
together.
 
She was an attractive woman
with her long dark hair and brown, almost black eyes.
 
Her high cheekbones set off her other
features, making him wonder if Native American blood might be part of her
heritage.
 
When she shrugged off the
burdensome
mantle John Henry had heaped on her
shoulders, he
expected her to blossom into
a beauty,
becoming even more eye-catching over
time in the way Ivy flourished as she embraced this next third of her life.

“The quicker you get out what you came to say, the sooner
you will be out of the agony of not speaking,” Steve said.

“You’re Mathew’s best friend, right?”

“He could be my son.
 
Did he do anything out of line?”

“He asked me out to dinner,” Callie said.

“Can’t say that is out of line.
 
If you don’t want to go, tell
Mathew
and
tell
him
why,” Steve said, although Callie must have more on her mind than
she was saying.

“I want to go,” she hesitated.
 
“
Mathew is
like no man I’ve ever met.”
 
She went
back to gripping one hand with the other to steady her nerves.

“Is this about John Henry?”

She nodded.
 

Given how their exchange struggled to get going, Steve
decided to keep leading her along, hoping to save her some embarrassment.

“John Henry was
challenging
to be married to
, wasn’t he?” he asked.

She blushed.
 
“Difficult
is one way to describe our life together.”

“Callie what happened between you two is over.
 
Mathew understands the man wanted things you
found objectionable,” Steve said.

“I am unworthy of Mathew.”

“He is a
41-year-old
man.
 
He
has been
in relationships.
 
He’s
not a starry-eyed teenager,” Steve said, trying to ground Callie in reality.

“He’s a much a better person than I am,” she said.

“Deep inside, you are
a
worthy
woman,” Steve said in a softened tone.
 
“Even if you might feel tarnished, the people
close to you recognize your inherent sweetness.”

She sat with her head curved down as if ashamed.
 
Steve figured sharing aspects of his history
might help her come to grips with her troubles.
 

“I went through a bad time beginning about ten years ago or
so,” Steve said.
 
“I gave up on romance
and
relationships.
 
I picked up women in hotel bars when I
traveled to circumvent any obligations.
 
This went
on for years until I became sick of
it.
 
One night I talked with Mathew about
love and our conversation started me on a journey of self-exploration.”

He had been staring ahead at the vineyard while he talked,
but now he glanced over at Callie, thankful to find her expression more
interested than disgusted by his former lifestyle.

“The opportunity for real love, the kind my parents enjoyed,
enticed me and I juggled that around in my brain for some time,” he
continued.
 
“While the possibility scared
the bejesus out of me, I committed to taking a private expedition to find more
of myself.
 
I ended my long string of
one-night stands.
 
Inside I resonated
with hollowness.
 
Back then I centered
all my attention on my work for the Bureau.
 
Off hours, I only hung out with other agents and most of them I could
not call friends.”

A hummingbird came over and hovered right in front of
Callie’s
face
as if evaluating her level
of sugariness.
 
The flittering bird
buzzed right by Steve, pressing on to what Ivy called ‘the friendly garden’
planted a surfeit of perennials to attract bees,
butterflies
and hummingbirds.
 
The day before when he went there to think about the case, the
active
little patch amazed him.
 
Sitting on the
rustic woven willow bench placed in the center, he became so busy watching the
activity among the flowers he never did think about the case, although the respite
refreshed him.

“I became what we in jest called an FBI
monk
,” Steve said, resuming his recount of the
changes in his personal life.
 
“No one
shared even a night with me from the time I started searching, until Ivy.
 
I do not recommend taking so long.”

“How then?” Callie said in a whisper.
 
“I feel I need to do penance.”

Steve stayed quiet for a few moments, trying to find an
inspired alternative for Callie.
 
“Why
don’t you go away to a retreat offering spiritual cleansing?
 
A place where you can go to think and put the
past in perspective?
 
If this approach
might work for you, go out with Mathew and tell him your plans.”

“I’m going to a psychologist.
 
She
said recovery will take years,” Callie said.

Steve was not fond of the concept of recovery.
 
He felt a person could have experiences from
which recovery was not possible, but a person could move on by putting
adverse experiences in
the past.

“Do we recover or do we reconcile ourselves
with
our past?” he asked.
 
He spoke slowly to let Callie appreciate the
import of the difference.
 
“The answers
are all inside you.
 
We each contain dark
sides and dark times.
 
What matters is
whether we can shove the darkness we have in a virtual closet, click the lock
shut and keep the
murky
horrors at
bay.
 
You spent nearly ten years with
John Henry.
 
How many of those made you
happy?”

“None.
 
Even the first
one was tainted,” Callie said

“Don’t you think you squandered enough years on that man?”
Steve said, with a little harsh impatience.
 
Quickly he pulled himself away from his disgust with her husband back to
helping
Callie,
and he softened his
tone.
 
“Think ahead to the future.
 
Bask in the light inside of yourself.
 
The glow of your most inner self is what Mathew
sees.
 
Reach back to remember
your
true nature and let that young woman come
back.”