by Alex Segura
“Jesus.”
“Welcome to parenthood, pal,” Rachel said, reaching for the glass of white wine she’d poured herself after her first attempt at putting Ella down went up in flames. “There is no normal.”
“Seems like it.”
“You ever get close to settling down?” she asked after taking a long swig. “Close to having kids?”
“A long time ago,” Pete said. “I was engaged. Figured that was it. But who knows.”
“You make it sound so romantic. ‘That was it.’ Like a death sentence.”
“I just felt like the window had—maybe has—closed,” Pete said, looking around the apartment. “What about you? No time for someone else? Something else?”
“Life happened,” Rachel said. “And I ran out of time for hobbies. I used to love music. Going to shows. But these days, the only music I listen to is the kind that pops onto the radio when I’m in the car.”
“I guess life is about sacrifice,” Pete said. “If you’re doing it right.”
“Or just powering through the bad to get to the good, hopefully.”
“I’m sorry about your sister,” Pete said. “I know it can be hard. To lose someone you’re close to, I mean.”
Alter nodded. “Thanks,” she said. “Yeah, we were close. I still see bits of her in Ella, and it guts me, but it also makes me happy—because it’s like a part of my sister will live on.”
“My dad died a few years ago,” Pete said, rubbing his lap. “I was a mess when he died—it was sudden. He was healthy. Just retired. A legendary cop. I was, well, I was something else, I guess. A drunk. Not there, you know? Not present. I missed a lot of time with him because I was destroying myself. Maybe if I’d been more clearheaded, more of a son—he’d have told me about …”
Pete trailed off, shaking his head.
Alter got up and placed her glass on the small brown coffee table separating their two seats. She walked briskly up the stairs, into one of the rooms. Pete could hear doors opening and closing, albeit gently.
When she returned, she was carrying a large folder, held together by a few rubber bands. She placed it down on the table next to the wine with care and removed the bands, setting them aside to be reused later.
“I wasn’t sure if you were ready for this. It’s not something … well, we’re not allowed to do this. But I keep copies of certain case files, and I brought this one with me, just in case,” Alter said as she knelt in front of the thick collection of documents and looked up at Pete, who was sitting at the edge of a small love seat, watching.
“What?” Pete asked.
“This is a copy of your mother’s file,” she said. “Her murder book. This is all we have on her death. Now it’s yours.”
“VICTIM DIED OF manual strangulation. Manner of death: homicide.”
Rachel Alter’s voice stayed with him, haunted him. The words from the murder book rolling out of her mouth likes lines from a phone book—methodical, on beat—each word a new shock to his system.
“She was found partially dressed on the hotel room floor,” Alter had read. “Victim was wearing a black cocktail dress, black heels, and a gold necklace with a cross. Time of death, 1:55 a.m.”
Pete left her house in a daze. His hands were coated with sweat as he slipped into the backseat of his Lyft, which would take him back to his car. The Miami sky was a cold, dark black, the West Kendall street lights illuminating the back seat at intervals that were few and far between. Pete’s mind whirled—he felt displaced, disconnected, on the tail end of a bad high that was soon going to get worse.
“Autopsy showed broken bones in the victim’s throat—including the larynx and hyoid bone—and burst blood vessels in her eyes, likely caused by a struggle.”
He’d left the house in a hurry, avoiding Rachel’s attempts to go into more detail about what was in the file. That could—and would have to—come later. For now, Pete needed to be alone. He needed a chance to dive into what awaited him in the pages he held on his lap. He needed to process the fact that his father—the man he’d basically canonized—had crafted an elaborate lie to mask the truth about the mother he’d never known. Who was Graciela Fernandez? What had she been like? What drove her? And, most importantly to Pete: Who killed her?
“Victim also had bruises throughout her body—arms, legs, back, and face, suggesting a violent struggle before the final—”
Pete cleared his throat and motioned for the driver.
“Hey, change of plans. New address.”
The driver grumbled about company policies and the app, but Pete wasn’t having it. He tossed three twenties into the front seat and watched as the driver’s demeanor went from irked to cooperative. Pete didn’t want to be alone now, he realized. But if the person he was hoping to see shut him out, he’d have nowhere else to go.
“PETE, IT’S NOT a good time.”
It was past midnight. The door to Kathy Bentley’s apartment door was open a crack and Pete could make out a sliver that included Kathy’s eyes—weary-looking and glazed over. The hallway was dim, but the apartment inside looked even darker. Pete knew Kathy was a night owl, so he rarely worried about waking her. But he was worried now. Of what, he wasn’t sure.
“Let me in, Kathy,” Pete said, gripping the door frame gently, to show he wanted to help. “We need to talk. I’ve been trying to call you since—”
The door gave way with surprising ease. Kathy stepped back into the room, the darkness enveloping her as Pete followed, the door slamming shut behind him. He tried to get a better look at her, but it was impossible. The apartment was quiet—the only sound the groaning of the building’s central air and the horns and engines of the cars outside. Even Kathy’s footsteps as she backtracked were silent.
“Kathy?” Pete asked. “What is—”
“He’s gone,” she said, her voice vacant, ethereal, like a distant chime. “Marco’s gone.”
“What? What happened?”
Pete reached for the wall and found the light switch. He flicked it on. He wished he hadn’t.
“He left,” Kathy said, her face worn and red. Her clothes looked wrinkled and tossed-on, not Kathy’s usual put-together attire. Her hair was matted and loosely tied back. “Why do you think?”
Pete took a step forward.
“Stay there, okay?” Kathy said. “I don’t want ... I don’t need a sympathy card here. He had every right to leave. I fucked up. We both did.”
“You told him?”
“Of course I told him,” she said, spittle flying out of her mouth. “How could I not? You basically told him yourself. So, when he came back home, barging in and asking about it, I couldn’t lie. I don’t want to lie. I was going to marry him and I couldn’t go into that knowing I’d fucked around on him, moment of weakness or not. But I wanted to tell him on my own terms, in my own way. It was a mistake, not who I am, and I wanted to explain that to him. I know you’re fine with that, but—”
“I’m not—”
“Shut the fuck up for one second,” Kathy said, her voice flat, emotionless. “Let me talk. This is my house. You barged in here, remember? My rules.”
Pete nodded.
Kathy cleared her throat.
“I’m not Emily, okay?” Kathy said. “I’m not going to just fall into bed with you and wreck my entire life, then run away. I’m not going to let your indecisiveness mushroom into something that hurts me, okay?”
She leaned on the wall of the short hallway that lead to her living room, not looking at Pete, facing a PIXIES poster she’d picked up at one of their recent reunion shows.
“You never learn, that’s your problem,” she said, her voice wavering. “You just think the world is your playpen and that you can barge into anything. That’s cool when you’re a fucking private eye, but not in life, okay? Not in life. You’re a problem. You break things ... You break people. I can’t let this happen to me.”
“Where’s Marco?” Pete asked, trying to steer the anger he felt simmer
ing in her, about to spill over and burn them both. “Where did he go?”
“That ... that’s not the point here, Pete,” she said, looking at him. “This is over. This has to be over. I care for you. You know that. You don’t need me to spell it out for you. But I can’t love you. Or be with you. I refuse to turn into a shrill, unbearable witch with you. What happened before ... that was a mistake. Not fully your fault ... I did my part. But it was a mistake. I made a promise to this man—to Marco—and I fucked that up and I need to fix that. I need to fix myself. I’ve been pushing and pulling at myself for years—since before I even met you. Bouncing from bad relationship to worse, and finally, finally, I thought I’d found a guy who not only treated me well—but seemed to give a shit about me. Then I wake up and realize that guy can’t even figure himself out. That’s you, Pete. You can’t decide. You can’t pick a lane. You want to keep all your options open. That’s not how life works. That’s a fairy tale. Marco is a good man. I need to fix this.”
Pete reached out a hand, but Kathy didn’t respond beyond a quick shake of her head.
“I need to talk to—”
“We are talking!” she said, her voice cracking, her eyes redder than Pete had ever seen them. “Except I’m talking to you now, instead of just waiting. Listen to me, closely, okay? I don’t want anything to do with this. This ... whatever it is you’re bringing to my door. I have to deal with my life. And it can’t involve drugs, guns, dead bodies, or whatever is coming down your way. Okay? Please, understand that.”
She motioned for the door, flailing her arm toward the exit, before walking into the living room and shutting the door behind her. Pete didn’t follow.
HE MADE IT back home close to midnight.
He dropped the heavy file on the dining room table. The furniture, he realized, was set up exactly the same way his father had situated it in his house. Before he died. Before the house was destroyed in a deadly explosion. That day, filled with screams and smoke and pain, felt so long ago.
But Kathy had been there then. She’d been with him after. Pete assumed she’d always be there. But maybe he’d been wrong. He was alone. The darkness surrounded him. He hadn’t bothered to flick on the lights. He felt lightheaded, a growing dizziness making his movements slow and lethargic. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. Hungry, angry, lonely, tired ... those were the red flags. The moods the program knew could trigger a dangerous relapse, or a step toward one.
Here I am again, he thought. Guess the simple life wasn’t for me. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the contact.
“Hey,” the voice said, tired but not surprised.
“Did I wake you?”
“Pete, I’m closer to 65 than 55,” his sponsor, Jack, said with a brief laugh. “Of course you did. But I picked up. What’s going on?”
“I ... I don’t know, I just feel like I ...” His voice trailed off.
“I’ll be there in thirty. Just sit tight.”
When Jack arrived, five minutes early thanks to an unexpectedly quiet 826 Expressway, Pete was seated at the dining room table, staring at the file folder, unopened. Jack walked over and scanned the text on the folder’s tab. He didn’t need to know more.
“Don’t move,” Jack said and walked into Pete’s kitchen. After a few minutes, he came back with a turkey sandwich and big glass of water.
“When was the last time you ate?”
“What day is it?”
“That’s what I figured,” Jack said, taking a seat next to Pete. “Eat. Drink some water. This folder can wait a few minutes, don’t you think?”
Pete nodded and took a tentative bite. In a few minutes, the sandwich was gone. He’d been hungrier than he thought.
“How long were you staring at this before you called?”
“Not sure,” Pete said, rubbing his eyes.
“You don’t have to look at it until you feel ready, you know?” Jack said. “But knowing you, I’m assuming you’ve at least cracked it open.”
“You could say that,” Pete said, motioning for Jack to take a seat.
Pete opened the folder and handed Jack the top sheet—a point-by-point recap written by Rachel Alter summing up the murder of Graciela Fernandez, and any findings she had dug up.
“Well,” Jack said. “You were right to call me. Where’s Kathy?”
“Gone,” Pete said.
Jack shoved Pete’s shoulder. It wasn’t a playful tap. Pete got the message: snap out of this funk and talk to me.
“Marco left, because of—well, what happened. But she wants to fix it. To be with him,” Pete said. “She made a mistake.”
Jack nodded. “Hmm, a discussion for another time.” He passed the sheet back to Pete. “How’re you taking this? From what you’d told me ... your mom died when you were a baby. Of an illness?”
“That’s what I thought,” Pete said, looking at his hands. “That’s what my dad told me.”
“But how did this stay under wraps for so long?” Jack asked, skimming a few other pages. An autopsy report. Photos from the crime scene.
“The cold case detective working the case, she said my dad made every effort to bury it,” Pete said, no flicker of humor in his voice. “No pun intended, obviously. He didn’t want the truth out there. He was fine with the murder going unsolved ... I guess?”
“I get that,” Jack said, eyes locked on Pete. “But how do you feel about that? Your dad ... your father was like a god, or something, to you.”
“But he wasn’t one, was he?”
“I don’t know.”
“But to do this,” Pete said, waving his hand toward the papers and photos littering the table. “To lie to your only child ... to the world ... about a woman you loved. That’s not normal.”
Jack shrugged slightly.
“You don’t know what was going on in his life,” he said, his tone flat, neutral. “And he’s not here to talk to. Neither is your mother.”
Pete rubbed his eyes. Jack was right. But Pete wanted something—someone—to be mad at. And his father was the easiest target.
Pete had always idolized Pedro Fernandez. At least in death. As a kid, his father had been a burden—a micromanaging parent who, after Pete got busted for a petty theft in high school, clamped down on his son so hard Pete couldn’t even go to school without a police escort. It’d created a deep resentment between the two of them, one that only healed after Pete left Miami for college and began a career in New Jersey as a rising-star journalist. A few years later, his father was dead, much too soon. Pete and Emily, his fiancée at the time, rushed down to handle the funeral arrangements and to sort through Pedro’s life. They never made it back to their comfortable three-bedroom apartment in Jersey. They never made it back to their relationship.
Emily.
“You worked Vice, right?” Pete asked, breaking the lingering silence. “You knew my dad.”
“Not well,” Jack said. “We’d have to talk now and again, but we ran on different tracks. I dealt with drug dealers, boliteros, thugs … he got the bodies and caught the killers.”
“You knew Alvaro Mujica?”
“Yeah, he’s still around,” Jack said. “He was smart. We could never pin him down on anything. He ran his operation well ... sharp. No recordings, no phone calls, violence only when extremely necessary. Slippery guy.”
“Were you on the Mujica case?”
“Not directly,” Jack said. “I was on a lot of things, though—we were short-staffed, and half the department was on the take, so the cops that were mostly clean got most of the work. I was all over the place. But the Mujica case was big. We were building it for a long time.”
Pete grabbed a stack of photos from the table and started to look them over.
“She was strangled to death in an Overtown hotel room,” Pete said, his voice raspy and strained. “Last person to have seen her was a friend—Diane Atkins. Or so the police report says. But I couldn’t find her interview transcript here.”
“
You sure you’re up for sifting through this now?” Jack asked. “When did you hit a meeting last?”
Pete waved him off. He didn’t want to answer. The truth was, he hadn’t been to a meeting in weeks, months. Not since before Harras was shot and seemingly killed. It’d started as a mistake—he’d been busy working the Javier Mujica case. Then the lack of meetings built momentum. Next thing he knew, it’d been over a month and he had no plans to go back. The thought crystallized in his mind, and it frightened him.
“Not in a while.”
“Figured,” Jack said. “Let’s go. There’s a midnight meeting that should be going late in South Miami. I’ll drive. We can circle back to this later. You need some coffee and fellowship.”
Jack was right. As Pete entered the tiny room—a small storefront that had once probably housed an insurance firm, but now served as a meeting space for AA and related programs—he felt a surge of relief. Of belonging. Suddenly the things that had been buzzing and jangling in his brain quieted, if just a bit. He felt at peace for the first time in a long while.
“Should’ve done this a while ago,” Pete said as he took a seat near the back with Jack.
His sponsor nodded. They settled in just as the speaker, an older woman with curly red hair, took a seat at the wide table in front of the room.
The space smelled of coffee and dust, a musky, familiar odor that added to Pete’s calm. He was home. Nothing else mattered outside of these doors. Nothing would matter if he didn’t maintain his sobriety. If he didn’t take each step he could to prevent himself from taking a drink.
The woman, who introduced herself as Connie, started talking. It was a story like many others but also unique. Early on, Jack had instilled in Pete the understanding that he was not special. People become drunks all the time. Their behavior and missteps are not special, because the solution is not special either. Don’t drink, go to meetings—the words continued to resonate in Pete’s brain, years after his last drink and years after first walking into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. But like anything else, he needed to be reminded about it. He needed the repetition.
