Total Victim Theory (24 page)

A renewed bout of sobs.

Already I'm wishing I could take it back. It will only make things worse for her in the long run. While there aren't many things I regret, I'm ashamed of what I just did.

“Where is she now?” she asks.

Again I balk, trying to decide what I can tell her and what I can't. “Your daughter's body was recovered in Mexico,” I finally say.

“Mexico? . . . I don't understand.”

“That's where she died. And I would just beg you to be patient, ma'am. This is an ongoing investigation and I've told you all that I'm at liberty to say.”

“When can I see her?”

“She'll be transported back to Oklahoma in just a few days and you'll be contacted to make a formal identification.”

A long silence. “Okay,” she says, with a tone of resignation.

“Ms. Walters, while I've got you on the line, I also have some questions I'd like to ask you about your daughter. This information could help us find whoever did this.”

“I'll tell you whatever you want to know. . . . But just tell me, do you already have a suspect?”

“We have a number of leads—”

“So you're close, close to finding him?”

“I can’t comment on that. But what I can tell you is that it's very possible that whoever did this knew Lisa. Some of my questions may be aimed at getting a big picture view of your daughter’s life, so that we don't overlook anything.”

“Ask me whatever you want. I just want to help catch him.” After a moment of silence, she bursts into tears again, “God, why did it have to happen now, when she was so close to meeting Danielle?”

I recognize that name as the girl from the photo and from Lisa's letter. “Who's Danielle?” I ask, once it sounds as though Jaci’s composed herself again.

“She’s Lisa’s daughter. She turned ten two weeks ago. Lisa was going to meet her. It was supposed to happen just a few days after, after she was taken.”

“Why had Lisa never met her daughter? Was Danielle put up for adoption?” I ask.

“Yeah, a couple of days after she was born.” Her voice sounds calmer now.

“Why did Lisa decide to do that?”

There’s a pause. Jaci exhales, as if this is something she doesn’t want to talk about. “There wasn't really much choice in the matter. Lisa wasn’t ready to raise a child.”

“I don't understand,” I say. “How was there not a choice?”

“It was Lisa's choice, but she was really sick.” I can hear the hesitation in Jaci's voice. “There's no way she could have taken care of Danielle back then.”

“What was she sick with?”

Another long pause. “Is that important?"

“It could be—I just want to make sure—”

Jaci interrupts me. “Look, it was a mental health issue. . . .” She trails off.

“What sort of issue?”

A heavy sigh. “The doctors had a dozen labels for her. It's been so long I don't remember now.” There's an almost palpable evasiveness in her tone.

“How was Lisa acting? What was it that made her go to the doctor in the first place?”

“Look, there was a period during the pregnancy when she was
depressed. I’m not trying to hide it, but it’s not something we’re proud of. She was in the hospital—the mental institution—when Danielle was born.”

“What happened that made them think she needed to be in the hospital?” I try to keep the emotion out of my voice.

“Why do most people who are depressed get put in mental hospitals, Agent Jordan? Because they try to kill themselves. Lisa tried. More than once. I don’t think she wanted to die. She was just in a bad place, and it was a way of reaching out for help.”

“So she decided to put Danielle up for adoption?” I ask.

“Of course. Lisa was in there for over a year. She couldn’t very well raise a child when she was locked up, could she?”

A pause, as I think through the scenario. “Why didn't Danielle's father take custody of her while Lisa was in the hospital?”

“Lisa told everyone she didn't know who the father was. She said it was a guy she had a one-night stand with and she didn't know his name. That turned out to be a lie. But she didn't tell me the truth till years later. At any rate, the father was never in the picture.”

“Why did she lie?”

“Who knows? She was sick. She did a lot of things I didn't understand. She was scared of things. Thought she didn't deserve things. It was part of the whole self-destructive pattern. That's all I can tell you.”

“And why didn't you and your husband or another family member take custody of Danielle?”

“That wasn’t possible in our situation.” The impatience in Jaci's voice verges on hostility now.

“Why wasn't it possible?”

“There was no family except us.” Jaci pauses. “I don't understand why you're asking this. Does it really matter?”

“It could. I know these questions are tiresome, but—”

“Me and my husband weren't granted custody, okay?” Another exhalation. “Is bringing up the past like this and bringing up a bunch of painful stuff really going to help us find whoever did this?”

“Honestly,” I say, “it might.”

“I don't see how,” she mumbles.

“Why weren't you or Lisa's father granted custody?”

Jaci balks. “We weren't able to because of her father's criminal record.”

“The criminal record of Lisa's father?” I say to make sure I understood correctly.

“Yes.”

This, I'm fairly sure, is a lie. I clearly remember that Jaci was already divorced by the time I dated Lisa. So unless she remarried her ex in short order after Lisa was institutionalized, his criminal record wouldn't have had any bearing on Jaci getting custody. “What was the nature of your husband's criminal record?” I ask.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” she says, abruptly. “We’ve gone pretty far afield from Lisa, and I’m gonna draw the line at issues of privacy with my family. If you’ve got other questions about Lisa, ask them, but that’s enough about that.”

I’m silent for a moment, not fully understanding her reaction. I'd press on, but I have the feeling she'd hang up on me if I did. “I understand completely,” I say. “So just a few more questions on a different topic.”

“No problem,” she says, trying to compose herself.

“How did it happen that Lisa was just now meeting Danielle?”

“You’d have to ask the Shermans that. They're the family that adopted her.”

“It was their decision to limit Lisa's contact?”

“Of course. It was an open adoption, so Lisa knew who they were and they knew who she was. But when Danielle was younger, they made it clear Lisa wasn’t to be involved in Danielle’s life, at least not with the mental health issues going on. But Lisa was really persistent. She kept writing them, trying to prove to them how much better she was doing. I guess she finally convinced them because a month or so back, they invited her to come out and meet Danielle for the first time on her birthday.”

“And where do the Shermans live?”

“In Midland, Texas.”

My insides are thudding. We're getting close to the main event now. I've been avoiding it, I realize—as if I'm scared of what the answer will be. You get a taste of hope and realize it’s a nice thing to have around.

And it's a big deal, too. The answer changes everything. The
line’s silent. My eyes are closed. Thinking about the dune. How I held her.

My thoughts have been different ever since that night. Distorted or expanded or something. I don’t know. The desert's messing with time. Making it frozen and upended and opened up all at once. Somehow making everything possible. Making me think things that make no sense. Making me feel things. I wasn't like this before. It's like there's hope or something, in spite of everything. Like all that's been done could just undo itself if we wanted it badly enough. Like I could wake up one day and find she'd never died. Find her asleep on the pillow on a Sunday morning and never remember any of this. Right now, even something that wonderful is still possible

“Agent Howard?” I hear Jaci’s voice say. “Are you still there?”

“Sorry,” I say. “Lost my train of thought for a second. Just had one more question I was gonna ask. . . .”

“What’s the question?”

“I was just going to ask who Danielle’s father was?”

I already know what she's going to say. And yet it won't be true until I hear the words.

“Her father was a young lawyer Lisa dated way back when. They were only together a couple of weeks, but I guess she was in love with him. Talked about him in the very last conversation I had with her, the day before she disappeared. I met him a few times. Nice enough guy. She told me later she'd wanted his baby—I don't know if you'd call it fate or instinct or what—but she knew, and by God, she had it. Maybe there's even a little consolation in that fact. Even with her gone. Anyway, his name was Jake.”

Tears well up in my eyes. “Why did she have to leave?” I whisper.

“I'm sorry . . . I didn't hear you.” Jaci says.

“Why did she leave him?” I correct myself.

At first she doesn't respond and I start to think she didn't hear me. But she finally clears her throat. “Lisa kept a lot of things locked inside her. I don't know why she did what she did.” She pauses. “But I know there are people who run away from the things they need or the things that can make them happy. . . . Why do they do that?” She makes a sad little laugh. “Now there's a mystery that might stump even you, Agent Howard.”

30

El Paso, 1992

Maybe it was the boy's fault for planting the notion in Emilia's head. The notion that something was wrong. And maybe that's why she was suddenly suspicious of everything. Finding proof of wicked deeds all around her that yesterday she wouldn't have even noticed. But however it started, she couldn’t just drop it or let the questions hang unanswered in her mind. She had to know if she was sleeping a few rooms down from a . . . a . . . well, that was the question, wasn't it? What’s more, she had to know the truth about what happened to Fernando and Esteban. And her hunch was that the truth, or at least an important part of it, was contained in those two envelopes Gary had just locked up in the study.

She waited a long time till she felt sure they'd all be asleep. Then she got out of bed and crept on tiptoe across the carpeted floor. Soon she stood in the open doorway, listening. The hall was almost pitch black, but it was far from silent. There was the drip of a faraway faucet and the trickle of water in a toilet basin and the tiny unaccountable creaks of the house settling.

Her first task was to make it to the kitchen and get Gary's keys. She set out in silent, creeping steps trying not to brush against the wall or bumble into a picture frame. When she was midway down the hall, the central heating clicked on. The prior quiet was replaced by a soft ambient whoosh of air. Pressing on, she soon felt her bare feet touch down on the cool linoleum of the kitchen floor. Her heart was thundering inside her. It was so hard to keep the sound of her breathing quiet.

She crept over to the drawer next to the fridge and carefully
pulled it open. Her fingers maneuvered through the clutter of objects—scissors, tape, paper clips, matchboxes—until she felt the thin body of the small flashlight. She turned it on and directed the beam at the key rack on the fridge, pinpointing Gary’s keys on the second to last prong.

It was fortunate that he’d left his keys out tonight. He usually kept them with him. On his nightstand. It was nice to get a lucky break. A moment later, the flashlight was off, the keys gripped tightly in her closed fist. Before long, she’d retraced her steps back through the living room, all the way to the study door.

Holding her breath, she reached out and turned the doorknob—so slowly that the metal inner workings produced not the slightest peep. For a second, standing before the half-opened door, she almost lost her nerve. Almost decided it was crazy and that she should forget the whole thing and go to bed. But then she remembered the tail lights and the odor on Gary's skin, and she knew her fears weren't crazy at all. She had to know what this man—this man she'd loved—had done.

And so, she stepped inside.

*

The first thing Raul noticed when he stepped into the barn was the smell. It was hard to describe, sort of like rotten vegetables or the odor of a cellar. It felt rank and mildewy in his lungs. Like a clammy hand gripped him by the windpipe, trying to suffocate him. He pulled his shirt up over his nose to keep out the unpleasant odor. His father began to scour the floor with the flashlight, while Raul tracked the flitting corridor of light wherever it went. The first few passes of the beam revealed nothing but the gray cement of the barn's floor.

Slowly they advanced, their footfalls echoing through the dark interior. Seconds later, the beam hit upon a flash of color. Exactly the color Raul didn't want it to be. A red blotch off to the left. Arturo returned the beam to the spot and squatted down for a closer look.

“Is it blood,
Papi
?” Raul asked.

His father reached down and touched it. When he pulled his hand back, his fingertip was red and moist. “Yeah,” his father said.

“What's it from?”

“I don't know . . . but it hasn't been here long.”

Raul's heart beat hard. He was trying to be brave, the way his father was brave. He was trying not to think about where the blood came from.

His father stood and directed the flashlight around them.

“Jesus . . .” his father muttered. “It's everywhere.”

What the roving beam revealed was strange. At least, it didn't look the way Raul imagined spilled blood would look. The red wasn't splattered or gathered in pools, but drawn out in wide, curving streaks. Like the strokes of a thick paintbrush, the kind you'd use to paint a house. And everywhere the beam went, it uncovered more, until it seemed like half the barn was covered with them.

Raul felt his stomach tightening. “Why is it like that, Papa?”

There was a pause as if his father was trying to think of an explanation. “I don't know,” he finally said.

They walked deeper and deeper into the barn. Raul tried to keep from stepping on the streaks of blood, as if they were the cracks on a sidewalk. But there were too many of them, and the blood made a sticky, sickening noise on the bottom of his shoes.