by Roger Bruner
~~~
Until a few days ago, I wouldn’t have understood or appreciated what my mother said about a place to go, perhaps even a place to escape to.
After reading her letter in its entirety, though, I felt an overwhelming desire to return to Santa María. Not to stay. Not initially, anyhow. I would test the waters and observe the villagers’ reactions to Alazne and me.
More than anything, I wanted to find my mother’s necklace. No matter how many of her belongings became mine, few would have great monetary value. From what little I’d seen, her affluence as an American had been limited.
Everything in her room was significant in one way or another. Perhaps I could get to know her better by going through her personal belongings. But I most longed to have the necklace.
And not just for myself. At my mother’s request, I owed it to Alazne when she grew older.
Nikki didn’t act surprised to hear of my desire to visit Santa María. Although she didn’t object—or even express concern—I could tell she had misgivings.
She, too, had noticed the chart of seemingly random numbers Mother Chalina had included in her letter as a “brief summary of scoring in a village game you might want to play sometime.” We recognized it as coded directions to Santa María. My momma had learned the way and memorized the details.
“But, Rosa, if she learned these directions when she came to see you—probably fifteen years ago, maybe sixteen or seventeen—what if they’re no longer correct? Roads may be new, and the landscape may have changed, too.”
“My dearest friend, you know as well as I do these numbers have nothing to do with landscape. They are road numbers. Possibly mile marker indications. You noticed how Momma ended that paragraph?”
“Yes. ‘Although the village game is no longer played quite the way it used to be, I’ve made certain these instructions are up-to-date.’”
“Does that tell you what it tells me?”
“She must have used one of her recent all-day shopping trips to drive to Santa María and record the directions.”
Now I felt comfortable about going home, even though I’d always opposed the idea before. “So there’s not a problem.”
Nikki’s face bore an uncharacteristically negative look. She waved her hands while speaking in an argumentative tone. “Unless she expected to die soon, how could she have hoped these directions would remain accurate?”
“Nikki…” I paused to get my aggravation under control. “You have had nothing good to say about this trip. Tell me the truth. Why don’t you want me to go back to Santa María? I won’t go without you. We love and support one another under all circumstances.
“I can’t get there without your help, anyhow. You’re the one who drives. Besides, how could I face the villagers without having my best friend at my side?”
She put her hands in her lap. Her expression relaxed into an accepting smile. “I understand now. I was afraid before—afraid something awful might happen to us there. But now I’m afraid to stay here. We will drive there together, you and I and Alazne. But when?”
“Soon,” I responded. “As soon as we can get ready. But first we must regain our strength.”
~*~
Sleep was almost impossible that night and the next.
My mind raced in every conceivable direction to bring together the details necessary for our trip. Although we didn’t have any reason to rush to Santa María, I felt a need to get out of Tomás’s apartment as quickly as possible. I no longer felt safe there.
Nikki must have had concerns, too. “Rosa, I don’t think we should delay our trip any longer. I have several suitcases. We’ll make a list and begin pack—”
“I have already begun a list.”
“Good. My car hasn’t had an oil and filter change in ages. I haven’t checked the tire pressure lately, either. I’ll get those things done today. It’s still early, so I probably won’t have to wait long. Then I’ll gas up and get back here as fast as I can. I’ll pick up enough beverages and non-perishable food items to tide us over until we come back. The villagers might not appreciate having three extra mouths to feed, and I wouldn’t blame them.”
We laughed and hugged, and Nikki headed out to run her errands. Juanita looked at us with a Cheshire cat look I couldn’t interpret. It made me nervous. Something was going on, but I couldn’t guess what.
“We are going on a trip,” I told her as if she needed to know. “We may be gone several days.”
She nodded as if she understood more than I had said.
24
Several hours later, I heard someone pounding on the apartment door, followed by loud, frantic words in a woman’s voice. I had been expecting Nikki to return. Perhaps she was yelling to get my attention because her hands were full.
As I approached the door, however, I realized the voice wasn’t hers. I couldn’t place it at first.
“Rosa, Rosa! Open up, please. It is Señora del Mundo…your neighbor, Isabel.”
Ignoring the peephole, I cracked the door cautiously at first and then opened it wide when I saw the look of horror on Señora Isabel’s face. She rushed inside and threw her arms around me.
She was wailing hysterically. “They…are…gone!” She could barely speak.
“They? Who?” I shook her by the shoulders. “Where is Alazne?”
Juanita appeared from nowhere. “You must sit down and calm yourself, Señora Isabel.” She had spoken with such authority that I was certain now she didn’t earn her living as a maid or housekeeper. “Then we will talk.”
We led Señora Isabel to the love seat in the living room. I knelt on the floor facing her. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t endure the thought of sitting beside her.
“My son has run off!” she said as if talking about a small child who has run away from home. I knew she had a grown son, but…
What? You identified yourself at the door as Señora del Mundo. You aren’t…?
I took a chance. “Tomás…? Tomás has run away?”
I noticed the sound of Nikki unlocking the front door. I was thankful and relieved she was back, but I didn’t pay any attention to her arrival otherwise. I couldn’t.
“Why? Was he…? Where did he run away from?” No matter how hard I tried to be coherent, I was too befuddled, and I grew more frantic with each question I tried to ask.
“He has stayed with me the last six or seven days. He used to spend weeks at a time with me, coming and going as he pleased.”
Nikki and I looked at one another.
Señora Isabel wrung her hands. “He often seemed fearful, but when he came to me late one night last week, he was terrified. He wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. He couldn’t—he was too drunk—but his clothes were splattered with blood.”
Nikki and I looked at one another again. Neither of us spoke.
So Tomás hadn’t even left the building after murdering Chalina, beating Nikki and me, and raping me? He had fled only as far as his mother’s apartment. He would be safe from us there because we didn’t realize Isabel was his mother. If he had wanted to hurt Nikki and me, he could have done so easily—at any time.
Then full reality hit me. Señora Isabel wasn’t simply Tomás’s mother. She was my mother-in-law. The grandmother of…
“Alazne!” I screamed. “Where is Alazne?”
“She is…he has…” I felt like shaking the answer out of her. “Tomás has her.”
I was vaguely aware that Juanita was on the telephone, but I didn’t pay any attention to what she was saying.
“Where? Where have they gone, Isabel?”
I had never failed to address an older woman as “Señora” before, but my anxiety was in control of my words now, not my brain. I realized without regret that I had lost all respect for this woman who had served so faithfully and lovingly as Alazne’s babysitter. She was as weak and pitiful as her son.
She could barely catch her breath. “He wouldn’t tell me. All he said was, ‘I’ll tell them an enemy
has killed Rosa, but I was able to rescue Alazne. As long as I have her with me, they won’t suspect the truth.’”
Before I could respond, Nikki whispered, “I’ll finish packing.” When she was halfway to the bedroom, she turned around and added, “We’ll follow him to Santa María and get Alazne back. We’ll show the villagers who is alive and who doesn’t deserve to be.”
The acid rocketed into my throat. “But shouldn’t we call the police this time? We need help.”
Juanita spoke up. “There is no need.” She showed us a badge. “The police are already here.”
~*~
Dr. Morales was bending over me when I came to.
He smiled. “Did you have a good rest?”
A moment or two passed before my head cleared enough to remember what had happened before I fainted.
“I…what?”
“Keep still and I’ll explain to you what’s been going—”
“Are you…are you a policeman, too, Dr. Morales?”
“No, Rosa. Not officially. But I do have a special working relationship with the Law.”
He explained that many of the Mexican immigrants living in San Diego came to him for medical attention. They were more trustful of a fellow-countryman and more comfortable with someone who spoke their language.
I nodded.
But his patients often ended up talking more freely than they realized about family problems, problems that sometimes involved drugs and other illegal activities. Patient confidentiality did not include keeping quiet about criminal activities.
“Rosa, the police were familiar with the name of Tomás del Mundo long before you came to me the first time, but they had never determined the exact nature of his activities. They thought drugs might be involved, but they didn’t want to move in on him until they had enough evidence to put him in jail for good.
“He has a reputation for ruthlessness, and we didn’t want to take any chances our investigation might hurt innocent people. But we needed to find out who was innocent and who was not.”
I nodded. “All of those questions about Tomás…?”
“I needed to be sure you weren’t involved.”
“And you are sure now?”
“If I had doubts before, the way he treated you, Chalina, and Nikki erased them. That’s why I asked for Juanita’s help.”
She smiled at me. I hadn’t seen her smile before.
She took over. “We knew you would be in grave danger after that incident, but we had no idea Tomás was still in the building. Even if you had reported Chalina’s death through normal channels, we would only have questioned some of the tenants in this building. We wouldn’t have had any reason to search the floors that far above yours.
“We made two serious mistakes. One was the failure to recognize that Señora del Mundo is Tomás’s mother. It’s not as if she ever attempted to hide the fact.”
“She never told me she was my mother-in-law.” I looked at Tomás’s mother. She was quivering. “You don’t call that hiding the fact?’”
Juanita shrugged. “Tomás probably made her keep quiet about that.” Señora del Mundo’s head bobbed up and down in agreement. “The other mistake was only guarding against Tomás entering the building.” She shook her head. “He could walk out—he did walk out—without even being noticed.”
I shrieked. “And without anyone noticing Alazne. She’s with him, and he’s dangerous.”
Although taking Alazne to Santa María might assure him of safety, he wouldn’t play the role of loving father forever. An “accident” no one could blame him for would get her out of his hair. Sooner than later. The villagers might grieve with him for a while, but then he would continue living as if Alazne had never existed.
Juanita laid her hand on my shoulder. “A small rescue unit is forming even as we speak, but they need your help. Santa María isn’t on any map of Mexico they’ve looked at, and they desperately need any information you can provide. Do you know how to get there?”
I jotted down the chart of numbers Mother Chalina had put in her letter—I had memorized them—and handed it to Juanita. “Mother Chalina left this clue in the letter you found and looked at. The one Dr. Morales encouraged you to give me.”
No need to keep pretending we hadn’t overheard them.
“Juanita,” Dr. Morales began, sounding deathly serious, “we must learn to speak more quietly from now on.” Then he chuckled.
“But, Doctor Morales,” Juanita protested, “we were talking in English. Rosa doesn’t speak English.”
Nikki came back into the living room dragging two suitcases. She looked like a cat that had swallowed a seagull.
Dr. Morales filled in the blank. “Ah, but Señorita Nikki does.”
No matter how frightened I was for my daughter, I couldn’t keep from laughing at the stunned look on Juanita’s face.
~*~
Dr. Morales shook his head. “No, you can’t come with us. It would be too dangerous.”
I was too desperate to accept no as an answer. “I’ll stay out of the way. I promise. So will Nikki.” Nikki nodded, but our promises didn’t change the resistant look on Dr. Morales’s face.
“I can’t let you come. I’m truly sorry.”
“We don’t feel safe here,” I said just before the door closed behind Juanita and Dr. Morales.
Nikki, Señora del Mundo, and I looked at one another as if to say, Well, what next?
Before we could stop her, Señora del Mundo threw the door open, exclaiming as she ran out, “I’ll follow them! I have the keys to my son’s van. He took Alazne in the red sports car.”
She must have been too impatient to wait for the elevator, since she was halfway down the stairs by the time we reached the top. No matter how fast we tried to run, our injuries slowed us down, and we couldn’t catch up. For her age, Señora del Mundo was amazingly agile.
Once we got outside, I spotted Juanita and Dr. Morales standing beside a white van. Probably an unmarked police van. Heads together. Talking. Apparently trying to decipher my momma’s code. As sharp as those two were, that wouldn’t take long.
I started yelling and waving my arms. “Stop her! Stop Señora Isabel!”
I couldn’t make them hear me. They probably assumed we were saying we would follow them no matter how they opposed it. Or that we didn’t need to follow them since we knew the code and could figure it out on our own.
So they didn’t notice Señora Isabel touch the key to the lock on her son’s van. Nor did they see the explosion that followed.
Had Tomás booby-trapped his own van—perhaps to dispose of Nikki and me if we tried to follow him—or had one of his countless enemies done it?
The question was irrelevant. Nikki and I clung to one another in terror. Speechless.
Before I could get my wits back after seeing Señora Isabel die so horribly right before my eyes, Juanita and Dr. Morales pulled the van up in front of us.
“Get in quickly,” Juanita said.
“You were right,” Dr. Morales added once we were inside. “You aren’t safe here. You will be better off with us.”
The van squealed and screeched from the parking lot, smashing through the gate at the guardhouse. Distant sirens sounded like they were coming in our direction.
25
Juanita, can’t you go any faster? I looked over Dr. Morales’s shoulder at the speedometer. Eighty-eight. I bit my tongue to keep from asking her again. She had assured me she understood the urgency of reaching Santa María before something dreadful happened to my baby. But she had also wisely pointed out that we would probably be too late if we had an accident on the way.
Thank goodness the van had four-wheel-drive. The last few miles of path to the village had grown even more impassable than I remembered, making me doubly thankful I wasn’t—or at least hoped I wasn’t—pregnant.
Juanita proved to be an amazingly skillful driver, and we finally reached the outskirts of the village. The van might get a new paint job when
this was over, but I couldn’t imagine it would ever be the same again.
At 1:47 p.m., she pulled into the out-of-the-way area I told her would be a good, isolated spot.
“The rescue unit must’ve gotten lost,” she admitted reluctantly as she dropped the handset into Dr. Morales’s lap. “They aren’t even in radio range.” As remote as Santa María was—as impossible as it was for an outsider to find—her conclusion was more distressing than surprising.
“We can’t wait. Rosa, you and Nikki are to remain in the van. Dr. Morales and I will do surveillance and locate Tomás and Alazne.
“The villagers may not even know they are here, much less that they’re fugitives. The two of them might be hiding from the villagers. They may not be together, either. He may have tied her up and gagged her. Left her in a separate spot. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
My fists tightened as I waited speechlessly for her to continue.
“Tomás would be a fool not to realize that his mother would tell us his plans—what she knew of them, anyhow. Perhaps he was counting on that. And kidnapped Alazne to lure the two of you here to dispose of you, far from the eyes of the authorities.”
I wouldn’t have given Tomás credit for such premeditation, but I was not an expert in such matters. No matter how many suspense novels I had read during the last four years.
Remain in the van? I growled in frustration. We didn’t have a choice. Although we were desperate to learn what was happening, we couldn’t. If only Juanita had left one of the walkie-talkies behind.
But she had been afraid we would try to talk to one of them at a sensitive and dangerous moment—and turn all hopes of a successful rescue into a disastrous failure. We couldn’t chance that.
At least we hadn’t heard any gunfire. But that wasn’t significant. We might not hear anything through the van’s special armor and acoustic padding.
Nikki handed me one of the sandwiches Juanita had purchased at a service station on the way out of the city. “We should eat, whether we feel like it or not.”
