by Jeff Miller
She pressed the button to answer the call.
“I saw the news. You said we’d get him, and you did it. I cannot adequately express my gratitude.”
It sounded just like him. “Who is this?”
“It’s Diego, Dagny.”
“This isn’t funny. Who is this?”
“It’s Diego. Is this a bad connection? I’m headed back to Bilford.”
It didn’t make any sense. “Meet me at the high school.” She hung up the phone.
“Who was it?” Victor asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “But he says he’s Diego.” She flagged down the waiter and paid the bill while Victor shoveled down the rest of his pie.
Ten minutes later, they were back at the high school lot. Dagny blew past the guard at the door and stormed into the gymnasium, with Victor following behind. She grabbed the first technician she found by the arm to catch his attention.
“Where is Father Vega?” she demanded.
The man led them to a stainless-steel gurney. The corpse on top of it was covered with a white sheet. “Take it off,” Dagny said. The man removed the sheet, revealing Diego’s naked, lifeless body. “Turn him over.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, not understanding her request.
“Turn the body over. I need to see his back.”
He seemed puzzled, but he obliged. When she saw that the man’s back was bare, she began to cry.
“What’s wrong?” Victor said.
“Diego has a tattoo. This isn’t Diego. This isn’t him.” She brushed away her tears. “He’s really alive.” She hugged Victor, who seemed surprised but reciprocated the gesture.
“If that’s not Diego,” he said, “then who is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“It looks exactly like him. The man could be his twin.”
Her phone rang. She pulled back from the hug and answered her phone. “I’m waiting outside,” Diego said. “What’s going on?”
“We’ll be right out.”
Dagny ran through the gymnasium with Victor jogging behind her. She pushed open the doors, searched the lot for Diego, and sprinted toward him. Throwing her arms around him, she nearly knocked him down.
“You sounded angry on the phone,” he said.
“Thank God you’re alive.”
“What happened?”
She pulled away from the embrace. “We thought you were dead. I found your body in front of my motel door.”
“My body?”
“He looks just like you,” Victor said.
“Who does?”
“A dead man on a gurney in there,” she said, hiking her thumb toward the school. “Where have you been?”
“I resigned from the church, and then I went to see Katrina.”
Dagny was surprised that it hurt to hear this. They had shared a fleeting moment in the middle of the excitement of the case. To the extent it seemed like there was something more to it, it had been an illusion. “How did it go?”
He shook his head. “She refused to see me.”
“I’m sorry, Diego. Wait, did you say you resigned from the church?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He laughed. “If anyone should understand why I don’t belong in the church, it should be you.”
She shook her head. “I can’t think of anyone who belongs there more.”
“That’s a nice thing to say, but there’s a different life for me out there.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Did you say you saw a dead body that looked like me? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t, either.”
“May I see the body?”
Dagny didn’t want to look at it again. “Can you take him, Victor?”
“Sure,” Victor said. As they started toward the school, he turned to Diego and asked, “Who is Katrina?”
CHAPTER 71
The cold air startled Diego. “I forgot how it felt in here,” he said, surveying the sea of gurneys in the gymnasium, searching for his doppelgänger.
“Who is Katrina?” Victor repeated.
There wasn’t an easy way to answer the question. “She’s one of the reasons I want to leave the priesthood.”
“You love her?”
“I do.”
“But she wouldn’t see you?”
“She wouldn’t.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” If Katrina didn’t love him anymore, he needed to hear her say it in person. That was the only way he could know it was real.
Victor stopped and turned to him. “Everyone has to do what they have to do, I guess. It’s a shame, though, about you resigning from the priesthood. I’m not very religious, but if there were more priests like you, I might be.”
“Thank you. That’s a really nice thing to say.”
“You sure you want to see this body?”
He didn’t want to see it, but he knew he had to. “Yes.”
Victor led him through the maze of people, tables, and gurneys. “It’s this one,” he said, reaching for the corners of the white sheet covering the body. “This is going to be weird for you.” He slipped the sheet down to the waist.
The body was not merely of similar shape and size. It did not simply resemble him or bear an uncanny resemblance to him. Diego was staring at his own form, lying dead before him. “There was no identification on him?”
“None.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Is it possible that you had a twin brother?” Victor asked.
“No,” he said. “It’s not possible. My parents would have . . .” He stopped. Would they have told him? Could he have been adopted?
Victor walked over to one of the technicians and came back with a pad of paper and an ink pad. “Let’s try something,” he said. “Give me your thumb.”
Diego held his right hand out. Victor rolled his thumb in ink and then pressed it on the paper. He lifted the corpse’s right hand and did the same. He held the prints close to his eyes and studied them.
“Are they the same?”
“Identical twins don’t have the exact same fingerprints, but they’re usually similar. They might have the same general peaks and curves. The same kind of pattern.” Victor handed Diego the paper. “I’m no expert, but these are pretty close if you ask me.”
The lines swirled and crested in similar ways. So similar as to mean something? He didn’t know. “What about DNA? Is that definitive?”
“Yes.”
“Can you do that for me? Is that something you could do, maybe as part of identifying the body?”
“Absolutely,” Victor said. He called over a technician and explained the situation to her.
She rolled up Diego’s sleeves and tied a rubber band around his arm. He looked at his possible twin while she stuck him with the needle and thought about the great loneliness he had felt his entire life.
She pulled out the needle and transferred the blood into two vials. “I need to swab you. Open your mouth.” He obliged, and she scraped the inside of his cheeks. “All done,” she said.
Diego turned to Victor. “You’ll let me know the results?”
“As soon as I get them.”
“Thanks, Victor.”
“Sure.” He started to cover the body.
“Wait,” Diego said. “Can I have a minute?”
“Of course.” Victor set down the sheet and backed away.
Diego leaned over the body. If this were his brother, why didn’t he know this? Why had this man come to Bilford? Was he looking for Diego? He reached out to touch the cheek of his likeness.
“You can’t touch—” a technician called out, but Victor raised his hand and stopped her.
Diego leaned closer to the body and whispered, “When Rebekah was pregnant with Isaac’s twins, the babies jostled with her. She asked the Lord why this was happening, and he said, ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples within you will be separated. One people
will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.’ I don’t know if you’re my twin, but if you are, I promise I will serve you, and whatever you have left behind.”
No matter how far Diego drifted from the church, the Bible would always be his vernacular. He grabbed the white sheet and pulled it over the body’s head.
He felt Victor’s hand on his shoulder and turned to him. “Thank you.”
Victor nodded. They started toward the door. “You know, I’m surprised to hear about Katrina,” Victor said. “I actually thought there might be something between you and Dagny.”
Diego smiled. There was something. He thought about how to explain it. “She’s an incredible woman, but being with her mostly just reminded me of the way I felt about Katrina. That probably doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, I get it,” Victor said. “I called my fiancée last night and called off our wedding.”
“Seriously? Why?”
“The more time I spent with her, the more I started to have feelings for someone else. That can’t be good.”
“Are you going to go after that someone else?”
Victor shook his head. “No. It wouldn’t work, for all kinds of reasons. But the fact that I was thinking about her told me that my engagement was a mistake.”
Diego stopped at the gymnasium door and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve spent years running away from love, and it’s left me miserable and lonely. Don’t let pride get in the way of your happiness. Don’t give up just because it’s hard. Whatever obstacles you face can’t be bigger than the obstacles between a priest and a nun. Now let’s get out of this place. It’s freezing in here.”
CHAPTER 72
Dagny was leaning against the hood of Diego’s Corvette when the men came out of the school. She tried to decipher Diego’s expression. Was it sadness or confusion?
He walked up to her. “I don’t understand what I’ve seen.”
“I don’t understand it, either,” she said.
“Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or I don’t know anything about where I came from.”
“Sounds like that might be something worth investigating.” She pulled his car keys from her pocket and handed them to Diego. “Hate to give it up. I got used to the ride.”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his rental-car keys. “Take my rental.”
She took the keys. “Thanks, Diego.”
“It’s nothing.”
“No,” she said. “Thanks for everything. You’re the reason we stopped Fisher. It wouldn’t have happened without you.”
He blushed. “That’s not true,” he said, but even he had to know it was. “So, what happens now? You head back to DC, I guess?”
“It will take a few days to wind this down.”
“And then what?”
“And then we look for another case.”
“I can’t imagine living like this all of the time.”
“I was going to suggest that you try it. You’d be a good agent, Diego.”
He shook his head. “Once is enough for me.”
“So, what are you going to do? If you’re really not going to be a priest anymore.”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, maybe you ought to give Katrina one more try,” Dagny said. The girl might not have deserved another chance with Diego, but he sure deserved another chance with her.
“I might.” Diego looked into her eyes. “So, I guess this is good-bye.” He leaned forward and embraced her. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I can’t say that enough.”
“I’m going to miss you, Diego.”
“And I, you.” He pulled away from her, climbed into his Corvette, and started the engine. Victor put his arm around Dagny.
“He seems like a great guy,” he said.
“He might be the best man I have ever known.”
They watched him drive away. When he was gone, Victor turned to Dagny. “How are you on your points?”
“Behind.” She couldn’t remember the last time she had logged them. “I might need a better system.”
They spent the next several days closing down the shop. Bodies that were identified and claimed were released for funerals. They cremated the rest. Technicians were released from duty. Gurneys were collapsed. Equipment was returned. Dagny and Victor spent most of their time sifting through evidence, determining what needed to be saved and what could be pitched.
Bilford PD delivered four boxes of evidence that had been collected from the raid that killed Fisher. Dagny found her backpack among the contents.
Victor found a video camera in the collection. They took it to the gym teacher’s office and plugged the television’s HDMI cable into the camera. Dagny changed the input on the television and hit “Play.”
Allison Jenkins sat, tied in a chair opposite from Fisher. Her hair was unkempt, and there were bags under her eyes. The bright-red handprint on her cheek suggested that she’d been slapped hard. “This is Allison Jenkins, live at the home of the silo killer, with an exclusive interview.” She said it with surprising vigor, considering her circumstance. “Would you please tell the country who you are?”
“My name is Harold Fisher,” the thin man said. “And I’m an American.”
Jenkins glanced down at papers on her lap and read, “Where are you from?”
“I was born here in Bilford.”
“What did your father do?”
“My daddy worked at the Dakota Ironworks.” The thin man turned toward the camera. “Most of you are too young to have heard of it. It was a different country then. A time when men worked with their hands and knew how to build things. My daddy welded iron from six to five every day, and then came home and beat me for my transgressions.
“Most of the time, I deserved it.” He pulled a sheet of paper from the floor and studied it, then set it back down and continued. “The heavy hand of my father’s discipline made me into a man. We don’t make many of those anymore, and it’s because the whole country has gone soft. My daddy taught me to defend myself. He taught me that life wasn’t easy, and that every day of pain is another day of life. He showed me that justice was order, and that being a man means standing for something.
“It took me a long time to learn these things. As a teenager, I drank and smoked pot. I shoplifted sometimes. Booze or magazines. My daddy always found out, and he bloodied me until I couldn’t speak. I’d run to my mama afterward. She’d clean me up and beg me to be good. When I was sixteen, she told me she was going to leave my father. I asked if I could go with her, but she said no. She said I needed my father’s guidance, and she was right.” He turned to Allison and signaled for her to ask the next question.
“What happened after your mother left?”
“Daddy became violent. I took a knife in the leg one night. The next night, I put one in his while he was sleeping. Old man pulled it from his leg and smiled. ‘Finally,’ he said. ‘Finally, you’re a man.’
“After that, he didn’t beat me no more. I graduated from high school and joined the navy. Best decision I ever made. It taught me the importance of structure and routine. It gave me a sense of responsibility.” He gestured to Allison again.
“When did you fall in love?”
“When we were stationed in the Philippines, I met a girl named Malaya. She was beautiful and fragile and loving. We didn’t plan on her getting pregnant, but I stuck with her. I was there when she gave birth to the boy we named David, and I took them both back to the States when my stint was over. We got married here in Bilford, and I took a job at the Dakota plant like my dad.”
“What happened next?”
“Malaya died when David was eight years old, and I was left to raise the boy on my own. I gave that boy all of my wisdom and all of my heart. When the Dakota closed down, I found odd jobs here and there, anything to put food on the table.
“David was a good kid. Graduated from Bilford High with better grades than me. Worked at the Olive Garden for
a while and did just fine. Was saving money for college. Met some college kids, and when the cops busted them for smoking pot, they busted David, too. Sent him to jail for a month. On the day of the release, INS showed up and said they were going to deport him to the Philippines, and they took him away.”
“How could they do such an injustice?” Jenkins dutifully read.
“They said I wasn’t his daddy. They said his mother was a whore, and that she whored around. Said David’s birth date and weight suggested he was conceived before my ship arrived in the Philippines.” His voice grew louder, angry. “They said that this boy who I had raised was not an American citizen, even though he had been raised in America by a man who had served his country with honor.”
“What did you do?”
“I hired a lawyer, and she got David a conditional release and a nine-month stay of deportation. And I took this boy back into my home. But when I looked at him, I didn’t see me anymore. And when I pictured his mother, I didn’t see a woman who was beautiful and fragile and loving. I saw a woman who slept around. I saw filth and deception.
“And this boy who had been released to my care,” he continued, “was just a lie. I had devoted my life to this lie. There was none of me in him. This made me angry, and in this anger, I struck him and killed him.”
Allison Jenkins stared at him. He looked at her and motioned for her to ask the next question. She looked down at her list. “Why did you kill him?”
“I didn’t kill him. This country did. This country that I’d served. It made me kill him. David was my boy until the INS showed up. Malaya was my love until the INS showed up. No one would have cared about David if immigration weren’t an issue in this country. And it’s only an issue because so many Mexicans have poured over our borders.
“And to be fair, I helped it happen. I had hired those Mexicans to tend the properties we had foreclosed, and I had placed them in other jobs, too. You can see the irony, Allison, right? I had helped make this problem, and if I hadn’t, David would be my son, and Malaya would be my love, and everything would be all right. I had to undo what I had done. And so I started killing them.”
He spent several minutes describing his murders in sadistic detail and with obvious pride. “But then I realized that none of you cared, and that I didn’t matter to you,” he said, looking into the camera. “So I blew a fireball into the sky, and suddenly, you noticed. You sent all the pretty people to Bilford with their cameras and their theories. And yet, you still don’t get it. This story isn’t about the murder of some Mexicans. It’s about what you all did to me. You’re all monsters out there. You all deserve to die.
