Dead Land

by Sara Paretsky

  I needed to get in touch with Alsop. With him, since I didn’t have an email address for him, I decided to play it safe, writing, sending it by overnight mail.

  Please tell Lydia that I have not yet found her piano but that I am putting my best person onto the search.

  And then I had to wait. I got dressed. I did my exercises. I checked on Murray. I went downstairs to talk to Mr. Contreras. I took the dogs on a long walk to the lake.

  When we got back, Donna Lutas was opening the outer door to the building.

  “Hey, Donna,” I greeted her cheerily. “I just got home from Kansas but so far no luck with Lydia Zamir. However, I had a really interesting day in Salina with the Saline County coroner. Did you know that there was a second shooter involved in the Horsethief Canyon massacre?”

  She stared at me. “What are you talking about?”

  “The Horsethief Canyon murders. Your boss defended the one shooter who was arrested. I hope you remember, since you and Rikki Samundar were on the scene fetching water and nicotine patches and so on.

  “Anyway, it turns out there was a second shooter who used a different weapon and everything. The shell casings have turned up, so I foresee some exciting legal battles. The casings are at a forensics lab, but defending the second shooter could be your chance for a promotion. And despite our differences, I’d be right there in court cheering you on.”

  She fumbled for words, but I’d dumped too much information on her too quickly. She finally said that she was still planning on taking me to the condo board for eviction proceedings.

  “That’s a good idea, Donna,” I said earnestly. “Because I have an ugly feeling that the next time someone tries to shoot me here in my home it may be a thug hired by Clarence Gorbeck and it would damage your career if I managed to kill the thugs first.”

  When I’d sauntered back up to my apartment, Stu Shiffman had sent me back the translations in an email:

  My dear brother

  I know you are bitter about the death of your childhood friend, but that was a friendship that should never have survived into adulthood. You say you cannot forgive me for reporting him to the Army but Tilo was a Communist, a Union organizer, and he was not a Patriot.

  If we are to make accusations and talk of blame, I myself cannot forgive you for letting Tilo stay on the estate. Mama and Papa might have been arrested as subversives. So do not write me these melodramas from America, where you live a life of safety and comfort and abjure all responsibilities for the lives of the thousands of people entrusted to our family’s care.

  My dear brother

  The firm’s managing director informed me of your letter giving up all claim to the Aguilar estate. You see yourself as some hero in a Greek tragedy, but you are merely lazy and irresponsible, cruel as well to your own child, cutting him off from his patrimony because you never learned to grow up and to accept adult responsibilities. You also seem not to understand Chilean law: your son is in fact a first-degree heir of our father. You cannot by your own fiat remove him from the family’s trusts.

  Please note, Shiffman’s email added,

  In Pinochet’s Chile, saying someone was not a Patriot was a code phrase for “traitor to the regime.” They were then susceptible to summary arrest by the army and, certainly in the early years of the regime, subject to torture and death. As to which economist is being referred to in the letter to Lydia, or what dramatic assessment he made, the Pinochet cabinet was full of economists making dramatic assessments of Chile’s financial position. I couldn’t begin to guess who the letter-writer means.

  My own guess began and ended with Larry Nieland.

  58

  Where the Rain Never Falls/The Sun Never Shines

  I read Shiffman’s message and his translation over and over.

  How had Lydia ended up with those letters to “the dear brother”? Had Hector found them in his father’s toolbox, along with the photo of Jacobo Palurdo with his boyhood friend?

  I pulled up the copy I’d made of the photo and looked at the two teenagers, happy in their youth and camaraderie.

  The darker teen’s teeth were crooked and chipped; the fair man’s, Jacobo’s, were even and white. How could I have imagined that a wealthy patron had taken care of Jacobo’s teeth? Not even a woman who treated a poor boy like her pet monkey would invest in expensive orthodontia.

  Jacobo and Filomena had worn beautiful clothes to their first communion. These had been stitched by hand, not by their mother but by someone on their estate, perhaps even Tilo’s mother.

  Jacobo Palurdo’s work friend, Jesse, said they called Jacobo “professor,” poking fun at his upper-class Spanish. Which he had learned because his own family was wealthy.

  I went back to the letters. Hector and Lydia’s cariñosa tía had mentioned something called the Rettig Report, but I’d glossed over it. When I searched for it now, I saw it had been published in 1991 by the Chilean government, which had set up a truth and reconciliation commission after Pinochet was voted from office. The commission was given a short timeline to discover what had happened to the forty-some thousand disappeared, and so they had focused only on the executions and murders where evidence was easily come by. The commission’s efforts were further hampered because Pinochet was still head of the army, with a lot of supporters in other government posts—including Guillermo Quintana, listed as a “senior economic advisor” to the government.

  The Rettig Report ran to thousands of pages, but fortunately an English translation was available online. When I skimmed through it, looking for references to Chicago and economists, I found a brief paragraph stating that Chile had been a pawn in the old cold war between the United States and the Soviet union: the report said that the United States tried “to prevent Salvador Allende from coming into power” because a South American country electing a socialist meant the USSR had scored big points in the cold war. However, Allende was elected, and so, the report continued, the United States tried “to destabilize the new government economically.” U.S. efforts “are directly related to the devastating economic crisis Chile underwent starting in 1972.”

  The paragraph sickened me. The country that had given my own mother refuge in the harsh years of Italian fascism had undermined a foreign government because of our global battle with the Russians? I felt a childish anger—why can’t they leave people alone to live in peace?

  I looked for “Filomena” and “Palurdo” but didn’t find anything. However, a search for Tilo, the person Hector’s aunt mentioned, brought up a few sentences. Jacobo Tilo had been a union organizer at the Aguilar mines before the 1973 coup. Early in 1974, an army platoon found him hiding in a cottage on the Aguilar estate. He and six unnamed other men were marched to the Tocopilla mine and shot in the back of the head, their bodies dumped into the mine. The army claimed Tilo was leading a group that wanted to sabotage the mine.

  I sank back in my chair, as if the words on the screen had been a physical blow. Hector had gone to Chile with the photograph of his father and his father’s best friend. He’d met someone in Tocopilla who recognized both youths. Maybe someone told him what had happened to Tilo, or maybe Hector had read the Rettig Report. However he’d learned about Tilo’s fate, he’d been distraught and had done something at the mine—not reported in the press. He’d probably told Lydia, but until—unless—she started speaking again, I would never know what he’d done.

  Mr. Contreras came to the door, eager to make me dinner. I told him I had one last errand to run today but that I’d be back in an hour.

  I drove to the Palurdo home on the Northwest Side, not bothering with my usual tap dance: texting Elisa Palurdo, waiting in a parking lot for a response, setting up a discreet meeting at the library. I rang the bell, listened to the Akita growl behind the front door, waited two minutes, and then spoke to her security camera.

  “V.I. Warshawski, Ms. Palurdo. I’m back from Kansas with fresh information about your son’s murder and his heritage. I want to know how much
you already knew about the Aguilar and Quintana families before Hector went to Chile.”

  After another minute, she undid the locks but didn’t invite me in. The dog stood next to her, keeping up a rumbling commentary on my appearance and my manners. Purple shadows were smeared under her eyes like makeup applied by a child.

  “I thought you were coming into my life to help me cope with Lydia’s disintegration, not to fling accusations at me.”

  “Hector took two letters to Chile with him that were written by your husband’s sister. Did you know about them?”

  “You really are a madwoman. I told you my husband’s sister was murdered. I believe what he said to me about his family. If my husband cherished letters from his sister, that was his private affair, and now it’s my business alone. I don’t owe you any explanations.”

  “Don’t you owe something to your son’s memory?”

  She bit her lips and turned away.

  “Were those letters in your husband’s toolbox, along with that photo of him with his boyhood friend?”

  “My husband’s sister was murdered. Those letters in the toolbox—they had nothing to do with Jacobo.” Her voice crackled. Anger or grief? A mix, maybe.

  “Listen.” I kept my voice calm with an effort. “Your husband’s sister Filomena isn’t dead. She’s married to the head of her family’s mining company. Your husband inherited half of it, but he repudiated the bequest. However, Hector was still your husband’s heir: he stood to inherit perhaps half an interest in a copper mine. And he bequeathed that interest to Lydia.

  “After Hector died, Lydia wrote to Filomena. I don’t know what she said, but she did lay claim to Hector’s share of the business because he had made her his heir.

  “In the letter Filomena sent back, she made it clear that Hector’s father was part of an important family and that he had ‘turned his back’ on his responsibilities. Did Lydia ever show you that letter from Filomena?”

  Palurdo’s mouth moved convulsively. “Lydia believed—Lydia said—conspiracy theories, all these theories—I didn’t want to hear them. Hector is dead. My only child. I can’t bear for his death to turn into a drama of conspiracies.”

  I felt anguished at continuing to push her, but I said, “Ms. Palurdo, didn’t Hector tell you about your husband, that he was part of a wealthy, politically powerful family?”

  “Hector pounded on me the way you’re doing. Hammer, hammer, hammer, as if my life—Jacobo’s life—had been a lie, but it wasn’t. His father came from a poor mining family. How could he own a copper mine?

  “I told Hector that he was suffering from the family romance syndrome, you know, where you think you were adopted and your real parents were important people. It was always that way with him: Hector needed to go to a big-name school, even though his father wanted him to stay away from the University of Chicago. Jacobo despised their theories about money and the state. When Hector won his scholarship, Jacobo was beside himself.”

  My adrenaline high was collapsing and I was having trouble keeping the conversation on a useful track.

  “Ms. Palurdo, five days ago I was in Kansas, looking at the place where your son was murdered. Someone shot at me, deliberately, trying to kill me and put an end to my investigation.” I held out my arms, showing the gauze wrappings Lotty had put around the torn skin on my palms and forearms.

  “I’m short on sleep and long on bruises and I’m not as coherent as I’d like to be, but let me put a different scenario to you: Hector couldn’t find anyone in Chile named Palurdo because there is no such name. Your husband reinvented himself when he came to Chicago and he took as his last name a word meaning a ‘hick’ or a ‘yokel.’ He couldn’t overcome the upper-class Spanish that Jesse and his other coworkers teased him about, so he made up a story to explain it, a story about his mother working for a wealthy woman.

  “I’m guessing your husband took his friend Tilo’s story and made it his own. The two were close companions, growing up side by side, miner’s son and mine owner’s son. One with straight white teeth, the other with the crooked broken teeth of someone whose family can’t afford a dentist.

  “But then Tilo was murdered. At the Aguilar mine. Shot there with six other men. It’s in the Rettig Report. I’m betting that your husband witnessed their execution. His own father, or perhaps the man whom his sister married a short time later, oversaw the execution of seven miners. Bullets in the back of the head and thrown into the lower depths of Tocopilla.”

  “Don’t!” Elisa cried.

  The Akita growled more loudly. I saw its shoulder muscles tense, braced to jump. I took a few steps back and spoke quickly.

  “Okay. You can send the dog to tear out my throat, but it won’t change the past. Your husband took his dead friend’s first name when he moved here. He never talked about his family because the pain of their actions ran too deep. When he said his sister had been murdered, I think he meant something metaphoric: the regime had murdered his relationship to her. She married his friend’s killer. Your husband didn’t go to his sister’s wedding at the Valparaíso cathedral. He fled the country. And he hated Hector going to the University of Chicago, because he associated the economic theory there with the economists who created the Chilean policies that he believed led to Tilo’s death.”

  “No!” Elisa cried. “No, no, no!”

  She swayed in the doorway and collapsed against the frame. The dog and I exchanged malevolent looks, but I put my arms around Elisa and half-carried, half-walked her into the house, down to the room where we’d spoken when she’d shown me the photo of her husband with Tilo. The dog paced next to us. When I’d deposited her on the chaise longue where she’d sat before, the Akita put himself between Elisa and me.

  “Can I call a friend—Jesse, maybe? Get you water?”

  “You can leave,” she said in the thread of a voice. “Don’t come back. I can’t survive another conversation with you. I thought you wanted justice for Hector and Lydia, but all you want is destruction.”

  My own mouth worked with the pain I felt. She was saying the same thing as Franklin Alsop about the harm I caused.

  I walked to the front door on leaden feet. As I left the house, a late-model Honda Pilot pulled up in front. Jesse got out and marched up the sidewalk to me. “Elisa told me you were here. Why can’t you leave her alone?”

  I suppose she called him while I was waiting for her to answer the door. “She needs you,” I said. “She’s in the lounge with the dog.”

  He watched me, arms akimbo, until I got into the Subaru. He had his own key to the front door. I wondered how Hector would have felt about Jesse as a stepfather. I wondered what Jesse knew about his dead friend. Had Jacobo Palurdo/Fernando Aguilar felt the need to confide in someone, or was his revulsion against his family so thorough that he never thought about them? Still, he’d kept those letters.

  I turned on the engine but lay back in the broken seat, eyes shut. Maybe I needed a new career, caring for lepers, perhaps—something where the value of my work was widely recognized.

  “Get away from the house now, or I’m calling the police.” Jesse had pulled open the Subaru door and was shaking my shoulder.

  I blinked at him muzzily, trying to clear my head. I’d been in a closed car on a hot evening. I’d fallen asleep. I was not operating at peak levels.

  “Did Jacobo confide in you?” I asked. “Did he tell you about the Aguilar mines?”

  His face turned blank. After a long moment, he said, “Jacobo Palurdo was a good friend to me, always. I respect his memory.”

  59

  The Boy Reporter Wakes Up

  I again spent the night in Murray’s room at the hospital. He’d been weaned completely from the respirator; the ICU nurse said they were starting to bring him out of his coma. As soon as they could assess the level of brain impairment, they might be able to move him to a regular ward.

  I knelt next to him, massaging his hand. “Murray, it’s V.I. You’re in the hospital. You�
��re going to recover, okay? Repeat after me: ‘I am recovering. I am the king of reporters and no one can shut me up.’ Lotty is watching over you and so am I. All you have to do is get well. And tell me who shot you so I can make them sorry they ever got out of bed in the morning.”

  “He’s lucky to have such a devoted sister.”

  I started. The charge nurse had come in behind me on silent feet.

  I asked if anyone but me, Lotty, and Max had been asking for updates on Murray. She said his editor at the newspaper, who was distressed to know Murray was still in a coma, called several times a day.

  “Don’t let them get their hopes up too fast,” I said. “They will want him to get back to work too soon if they think he’s on the mend.”

  “We won’t lie to anyone, even for worker’s comp claims,” the nurse said frostily.

  “Not for insurance reasons—they’ll pressure him and he’ll feel unable to say no. Not just his passion for the job, but you know how it is—older guy with lots of experience, they’d love to get rid of him for someone young and cheap.”

  “It’s too early to know if he’ll ever be able to return to work, actually.” The nurse unbent. “We need to see how much memory he recovers.”

  When she left, I turned back to Murray. He was probably safe as long as the larger world thought he was still in a coma. If his editor passed word up the chain to Norm Bolton that Murray was recovering consciousness, then whoever had ordered the hit would worry that he’d start talking about the plans for the Burnham Wildlife Corridor.

  Once again, I lay next to him, singing to him, talking through for him everything I’d been finding out, and how I was trying to piece it together. The shadow looming over the whole story—that the Quintanas might have conspired to murder their own nephew, along with sixteen other people—was so enormous, so monstrous, that I couldn’t get near to it. Besides, I was so tired that my brain had frozen, like a set of pistons deprived of oil.