The Son, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book Two (17 page)

2:37

Until Claudia said, “I think we better get you some fresh clothing,” Mano had been unaware of his appearance. His pants were soaked with blood, and blood had streaked down his bare chest making it look as if he was wearing a surrealistically patterned sport shirt. His face appeared to have been painted for battle. Anyone passing by on the promenade would have assumed he was the victim of the accident on Los Cubos de la memoria, not the rescuer.

“Let me just rest a second,” replied Mano. The crowd of onlookers had dispersed and the ambulance had probably reached the emergency room by now. But the experience of holding a man’s life in his hands was still overwhelmingly vivid in Mano’s mind. He had cradled the man’s head for only a few minutes in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood that seeped through his shirt onto his hands and his chest and his pants. But blood was life and his only goal had been preventing life from leaving that body. Blocking it, literally, as he would block a breach in a castle wall or a leak in a dam, until the man himself recovered the will to struggle. And he had actually sensed the moment when life had won, when the man had regained consciousness and taken control over his own body.

Mano looked at the blood on his arm and sensed that it had penetrated his skin, become part of him, the way his body had intermingled with the earth in Mexico and it had been impossible to distinguish what was mud and what was his own flesh. The inexplicable phenomenon was increasingly more real to him than normal human interaction. He knew the injured man was now a part of him forever, and not just in memory or experience. They were joined physically by the blood’s corpuscles.

Before he and Claudia went into town, he knelt at the edge of a dock and washed the blood from his arms and upper body. One of the workmen who’d helped with the rescue brought over a cloth, so Mano could dry himself.

“Does anyone know how the man is doing?” Claudia asked.

“They think they got him in time. There should be signs telling people to keep off the rocks. Kids climb out there all the time. Something bad was bound to happen. Lucky for him you were there.”

“We were all lucky,” said Mano, handing him back the cloth. “Thanks.”

The walk into town took Mano and Claudia by several shops, selling t-shirts, Most of them were emblazoned with pictures of the cubes, the unofficial symbol of the Llanes, which seemed more morbid than colorful now. Eventually, they came upon a gift shop that featured Indian and Far Eastern imports. Among the furniture and pillows and incense burners, there were a few racks of clothing, so they started inside. Seeing Mano’s bare chest and bloody pants, the owner, a stout woman in slacks, was about to bar the way, when Claudia explained, “There was an accident on the dock. My friend here helped the man. We need to get some clean clothes.”

The owner’s demeanor changed immediately. “Oh, you’re the one,” she said, leading Mano to a rack of cotton pants and Batik shirts. “I am sure we can find you something.”

She handed Mano a few pieces of clothing and while he disappeared into the back of the store to try them on, Claudia slipped outside. Ducking around the corner, she pulled a cell phone out of her backpack and dialed a number. It seemed to ring endlessly, before a recorded voice came on the line and said, “This number is no longer in service. Please check it and dial again.” Claudia knew she had dialed correctly; the number was programmed into her phone. But she tried again anyway. “That number is no longer is service…” Puzzled, she scrolled through the address book until she came to “Sally”. She clicked on the name. Again she was rewarded with a recorded message: “The PCS customer you are trying to reach is not in the service area. Please try your call later.” For one call not to go through was unusual enough, but two? The phones were always answered!

“How’s this?”

Claudia turned and saw Mano standing in the doorway of the shop. The tan drawstring pants and the loose Indian pullover shirt with white embroidery struck her as both exotic and natural on him. She hadn’t been quite so conscious of his long, unkempt hair and his Semitic features before. The clothing made him seem a different man. Less American. Less Mexican even.

“It’s great,” she said, forcing a smile. She wondered if he’d caught her on the cell phone.

The shop owner wanted to make a gift of the clothing, as a reward for his bravery. But Mano politely insisted on paying.

“Well, at least let me throw away those old pants for you,” she said.

Instinctively, he pulled back. “No, no, that’s fine, thank you. I want to keep them.”

Claudia and Mano walked silently to the car, each caught up in his separate thoughts. At last, Mano spoke.

“I suppose I should get a cell phone. It’s almost heresy not to have one these days.”

Claudia barely paused before responding. “They’re great. Well, they’re the great invention and the great intruder at the same time.” She sensed he was waiting for more. “My parents would go crazy if they didn’t hear from me once a week. My father, especially. That’s the only reason I have it. It makes them feel secure knowing they can always reach me.”

“Did you get them?”

“Yes. I told them I was in a lovely little port town in Spain and couldn’t wait to get home and show them the pictures.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all they ever want to know. Anything more would send them into a deep panic.”

The bag with the bloodstained pants sat in Mano’s lap all the way back to Oviedo. Had it not been for the accident, he might have used the occasion to talk with Claudia about what had happened between them the night before. The playful flirtation that had begun the day had been brought to an abrupt end by the man falling on the rocks. Mortality had intervened and eclipsed the intimacy they had been experiencing. Now silence seemed to have temporarily taken its place.

Mano thought ahead to tomorrow, when the sudarium would be brought into the open and displayed on the altar of the cathedral at Oviedo. What would it mean to him? Probably nothing. But he’d come this far, so he’d see it through. The future of his relationship with Claudia was even less clear to him.

She kept her eyes focused on the road, her mind occupied with the fact that she had been unable to get through either to the house in Lowell or to Sally. In her haste to leave for Spain, she’d failed to communicate her plans and now nobody knew where she was. She was uncertain of her next move, an uncertainty that was complicated by the events of the preceding night.

Finally, to break the silence, Claudia said, “I think you ought to throw away those pants.”

“I know. Not just yet, though. I don’t think a man’s blood should be tossed out the window so lightly.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that you throw them out the window. It’s just that there isn’t much you can do with cloth, once it’s been stained with blood.”

“Sure there is,” he said wryly, thinking ahead to tomorrow. “You can always worship it.”

2:38

Shortly after 2 a.m. the blast rocked the quiet middle-class neighborhood in Lowell. People hastily pulled on bathrobes and poured into the street just in time to see the fire break through the roof above Olga’s bedroom. Flames had already reached the gas stove in the kitchen, which had exploded instantly, blowing out part of the back wall. Through the gaping hole, it was possible to make out what had once been a staircase and was now merely blazing timber. The fire trucks arrived quickly, but before they could contain the conflagration, Olga’s bedroom had collapsed in on itself and fallen through to the first floor. Most people stood in the street, hypnotized by the spectacle, and watched long into the night until the fire finally was brought under control and they no longer feared for their own houses.

The following morning the street was cordoned off, while fire fighters ensured that every last ember had been extinguished. Word spread throughout the community that two bodies had been discovered in the rubble, both charred beyond recognition. Neighbors knew that one of them had to be the old woman, who had been bed-ridden for years and never left the premises. The assumption was that the other body was that of the night nurse.

But one thing didn’t jibe. The car of the night nurse had disappeared. The neighbors saw her arrive every night around six and then leave early the next morning. Some seemed to think her first name was Maria. But nobody knew her last name or could recall actually talking to her. Speculation quickly blossomed that she had set the fire and fled. It didn’t take long before her car was located in a train station parking lot outside of Lowell. The keys turned up in a nearby trash bin. Maria immediately became the chief suspect. As for the identity of the second body, it remained a mystery for the time being.

The scene suggested aspects of a murder and suicide. Or maybe two murders. It wasn’t just a fire, that much was certain. Painstakingly, firemen combed through the wreckage, looking for clues, as procedure dictated. Although the upper stories had been engulfed by the fire and partially collapsed, the cellar had been largely spared, attesting to the sturdiness of vintage New England homes. One of the firemen peered through a basement window at the charred rubble that had fallen from above.

“Hey, Sarge, come over here a second,” he called out to the police detective on the scene.

The detective came striding over. “What’s up?”

“I don’t know. It may be my imagination, but under that beam, doesn’t that look a body to you?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” replied the detective.

Together, they managed to dislodge the window casing and the fireman crawled through, picking his way carefully over the rubble, so as not to provoke a further collapse. There, partly covered by ash and several timbers was the body of a black woman. The fire had not reached her, but he noticed a gash on the back of her head.

“You better take a look at this,” the fireman called out.

The detective recognized the body at first sight. “Shit, this is one of the caregivers. She came during the day. But never at night. What the hell is she doing here?”

He turned his back on the fireman and called into the police station. He spoke softly, but still the fireman heard him distinctly when he said, “This fire on Winona Street is looking more and more like a crime scene. Can you send over the forensics guys? … Yeah, ASAP! … Okay, I got it.”

He hung up and addressed the fireman. “I’m afraid I am going to have to ask you guys to vacate the house. If you think the fire is completely out, well, I’d just as soon not compromise any more of the scene for the time being.”

“Okay, I’ll get everyone off the property, until your men come. But our own investigators will have to go through the basement eventually.”

“In due time,” said the detective. He knelt down beside Sally’s body, as the fireman pulled himself out the basement window. He put on a pair of rubber gloves that he kept in his back pocket. He examined the gash on the back of Sally’s head and then what was left of the cellar stairs. And tried to piece everything together. She could have fallen. Or a loose beam could have struck her. Her legs extended at odd angles from her waist, suggesting they were broken, while one of her arms was folded awkwardly under her body, as if she were clutching something to her chest. He lifted the body slightly and saw that she actually was. From the claw-like grip, he gently extracted a crumpled photograph with spots of blood on it. He placed the photograph on the floor and carefully flattened out the wrinkles. A lump rose in his throat. “It can’t be,” he muttered to himself. He took the photograph to the basement window, where the light was better. His reaction was the same. “It’s impossible!”

Hearing voices approach, he slipped the photo into the inside pocket of his jacket. One of his colleagues from the crime investigation unit poked his head in. “It’s one of the nurses,” the detective said, pointing out Sally’s body.

“You can identify her?”

“Yeah. I’ve seen her before in the neighborhood.”

“Did you touch anything?”

“Nope. Just waiting for you guys to show up. Give me a hand, will you, before this house falls on top of me.” The detective allowed himself to be pulled out the basement window. “I’ve got to go home for a few minutes. I’ll be right back.”

“No problem. We know where to find you,” said he colleague, turning his attentions to the interior of the basement. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

The detective crossed the street to the yellow house that sat diagonally across from the charred remains of Olga’s home. At the side door that led to the kitchen, his wife was watching him, an expression of overriding dismay on her face.

“It’s horrible, Bill. Was it a gas leak or something?”

“I’ve got a feeling it was more than that. It looks deliberate to me.”

“But who would do that to a sick old woman?”

“I don’t know. There are a lot of crazy things going on in this world. We always think they happen to other people, never to us. But we’re wrong. None of us is safe.”

The philosophical reflection struck her as unusual coming from her husband. Bill had spent his life believing that there were good people and there were bad people. He prided himself on being on the side of the good people. It was as simple as that. Until now. Obviously, the proximity of this particular incident had shaken him, as it had the whole neighborhood.

“I’m going to get cleaned up,” he said, indicating his soot-covered clothing.

Upstairs in the bedroom, he took the photograph from his pocket and looked at it again. “Goddamn it,” he said, with an angry shake of the head. Then he took down a box from the top shelf of their bedroom closet. It contained mostly Christmas decorations. He slipped the photo inside, put the cover on the box and shoved the box all the way to the back of the closet, where no one ever looked.