Orphans of Paradise

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  “How long has he been doing this?” Jax asked, trying to stir her memory.

  “Years. Twenty years.”

  “And using you like this, using your home as his hideout?”

  “He’s always used me,” she said. “That’s why the boys’ father left. He wouldn’t let Marcum control him the way he controlled me, always coming and going from the house, bringing people, hiding them here. Marcum chased him away and he said if I tried to run too, he’d kill me.” She grew still, her eyes on the door. “That girl,” she started. “Michelle Guzman. She was here for nearly four days. Marcum kept her tied up in my bedroom. He gagged her but it didn’t keep her from screaming.” Her voice caught and she drew in a breath. “I remember her screaming all night, especially when he was gone. She knew I was there and she…called for me. She screamed until her voice was just this long dry thing. She screamed until the sheets were soaked and sticking to her. She wouldn’t stop.”

  “He left you alone with her? You didn’t—”

  “I couldn’t. He said he would kill me and my boys if I told anyone she was there or if I let her go.”

  “But you knew he was going to kill her.”

  Alana nodded. “But I was afraid.” She pressed a hand to her chest, her eyes abandoning the door and settling on Jax’s face. “Aren’t you?”

  Chapter 40

  Rani

  Rani could hear her sister’s voice but she couldn’t stop watching Veronica. She was down on the beach again sitting by the water, elbows cutting into her knees as she curled into herself.

  “What happened to her?” Rani finally said.

  “Veronica…” Nadia followed Rani’s gaze. “She was being held at one of the mills.”

  “Mills?”

  A long breath cut between Nadia’s lips. “It was a holding area where girls were sold.”

  “Sold. To who?”

  “Traffickers. Random men.”

  “How long was she there?” Rani asked.

  “Three months.”

  Rani gripped the edge of her chair, nails biting into the wood. She felt sick. Her eyes slipped down to her wrists, the veins still dark where they bled out into a wide bruise. Three months. She could feel the weight, could feel herself still buried beneath it—his thumb, sharp and digging into her hips, his own pressed against her stomach. She thought about the night, about trying to sleep even when it poured over her, unrelenting and familiar. How did Veronica sleep?

  The sand gave way beneath Rani’s feet, heels carving small trenches as she climbed to Veronica’s still form in the sand. She found her folded there, head tucked low the way Rani had curled beneath Jax that night in the rain. She sat down next to her, carving a place there whether Veronica liked it or not. She saw her stirring and then she looked up. Her eyes were red, a fierce blush climbing her nose and spreading across her cheeks. Tears clung to her lash line.

  “I’m not hungry,” Veronica said.

  She gripped her scalp, trying to shield her face. But Rani didn’t move. She remembered Jax’s face, the way he’d said her name only once. The storm climbed the beach and still he’d left her there, unmoved. He let her be, except not alone. And so Rani sat there and let Veronica be.

  Clouds hung on the horizon, a thick wall swallowing the sun. Everything was cold and grey, the tide spilling onto the beach like ash. Foam lapped against Veronica’s shoes, suds clinging to her laces. She looked up, the wind casting a pink glow across her cheeks. Her eyes were dry again, her irises glinting and dark.

  “I’m sorry,” Rani finally said.

  Veronica stared at her for a long time and for a long time Rani let her. She hated when Nadia looked too long at her face. She hated it because it made her feel broken. She hated it because it made her remember. But just then, Veronica’s eyes pouring over her, she didn’t feel broken.

  For weeks Rani’d felt lost in a place, in a body, in a family that no longer felt like her own. Like returning to a strange shore after being lost at sea, her body battered and wrecked by the waves, the constant push and pull of the tide refashioning her against her will into something so ravaged and bare that all she could be when her family found her at the edge of the water was a stranger.

  Rani thought of her father, of the way he used to turn fallen branches and rotting, moss covered tree trunks into honey colored masterpieces. People commissioned him to make shoes, flower vases, chests and trunks for storage and Rani used to watch him crank the carving tools by hand, the old fashioned machines using the friction of heat and speed to hollow out the core and smooth the edges. All of the scraping and digging and burning working together to give the wild corpse its shape. Smoothing it into tamed perfection. That’s what the friction was supposed to do, make the wood stronger, better. Rani was just waiting for her body to do the same.

  “I just wanted to see it,” Veronica suddenly said.

  Rani felt herself moving closer. “See what?”

  Veronica traced a finger in the hard sand, the mark lingering for just a moment before being swallowed by a shallow wave.

  “This,” she said. “I wanted to see the ocean.” She was quiet and then she looked at Rani. “Are you afraid?” she said.

  And without asking of what, or who, Rani answered, “Yes.”

  “I have to do it,” Veronica said.

  “Do what?”

  “Testify.”

  “Why?”

  “Medina said he would bring my family—my father and my sister. He said we could all be together again.”

  Rani remembered that feeling of boarding the plane, of thinking that Nadia was waiting for them on the other side. When she was standing in the security line, when she was pressed to her seat, damp hands clutching the hem of her shirt, it was the only thing she could think about, the only thing that made her feel safe. And if she was faced with the choice of testifying for the sake of her family, well it wouldn’t really be a choice at all.

  “Have you spoken to them?” Rani asked.

  Veronica shook her head. “But they know I’m ok.” She seemed to shudder, choking on that last word.

  Rani saw the clouds tumbling in, something bright twisting in their bellies. Lightning struck down the beach, giving the ground a pulse. Rani reached for her then, just as the first drops fell cold against her skin, and leading Veronica back to the house, pulled them both out of the rain.

  From the kitchen Rani could see someone on the couch, a blanket pulled over her shoulders.

  “Nadia’s still getting her room ready,” Max said, his voice low.

  The girl turned, stirred by their voices. She had a deep cut that ran along the bridge of her nose, the scab bleeding into a black eye. A breath escaped her lips, revealing just for a second the hollow spaces where two teeth should have been.

  Veronica stepped into the living room. “Where are you from?” she asked.

  “Honduras,” the girl said.

  Veronica sat down on the couch across from her, eyes trained on the girl’s face. “What’s your name?”

  “Camilla,” the girl said, fingers twisting a piece of hair as she tried to hide her mouth.

  Rani sat down next to Veronica. She tried not to stare at Camilla and she could feel Camilla trying not to stare back. But there were too many pieces, too many broken things in that room. Rani wondered if they could make something new, if those pieces of themselves were enough to add up to something whole again.

  Then Rani caught sight of herself in the dull sheen of the window—the soft slope of her jaw flush to the pane. She saw her lips, the translucent skin recently abandoned by a scab, she saw her cheeks, flushed pink from the cold, and then she saw her eyes, something fluxing in them that she thought had been dulled forever.

  Chapter 41

  Jax

  As soon as they entered the house Pascual commandeered Alana’s bedroom while Marcum fell asleep on the couch. Alana’s sons were still at school and Jax took to his sliver of floor next to their bed where sleep pulled him under
within minutes.

  He woke with his muscles tensed, his hands raised and shielding his face. When he opened his eyes Julian Baxa, nicknamed the “accountant” because he was the only member of Pascual’s gang who had a college degree, was gripping his forearms and shaking him awake.

  “Get up,” he said.

  “I’m up. I’m getting up.”

  “You’re coming with me today.”

  Jax scanned the hem of his shirt, making sure the wire hadn’t moved while he was sleeping and wasn’t exposed as he followed Julian out to the car. It was already dark outside and Jax wondered if he was still sleeping and the nightmare from the night before was stuck on repeat.

  “Get in.”

  Jax pulled the door closed behind him and Julian locked them inside, the loud snap making Jax jump.

  “I got him,” Julian said.

  Then the cell phone in the cup holder whirred to life and Julian put the car in drive.

  “Answer it,” he said.

  Jax reached for the phone, his thumb grazing the flashing green button. “Hello?”

  “It’s Medina.” The detective’s voice floated out from the earpiece and Jax couldn’t breathe.

  His thumb searched the thin edge of the phone for the volume button but before he could put Medina on mute Julian reached for the screen and put the call on speaker.

  “It’s Julian. Think the kid’s a little confused.”

  “Look Julian’s one of us so you can put shitting yourself on hold.”

  Jax was silent.

  “Hello?” Medina said.

  “Kid’s in shock.”

  “Julian?” Jax finally said. “This…this whole time?”

  “I told you someone would be keeping an eye on you,” Medina cut in.

  “Yeah, but you didn’t say that person was Julian the fucking accountant.”

  Julian smiled. “Good huh? It’s true about me being the smartest motherfucker your brother knows.”

  “Are you a cop?”

  “For four years.”

  “But you’ve been working for Pascual for two. You run his fucking logistics department. When do you have time to be a cop?”

  “Why do you think I run logistics? It’s the only way for us to keep track of the quantities and the mules. I coordinate their flights, their transportation. I even count the fucking cash. I’m in all of it, which means so is Medina and so is the DEA.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Jax,” Medina said. “We need to talk about yesterday.”

  Jax looked down at his shirt, still stained.

  “Jax?”

  “I…”

  “It’s ok, Jax. We heard everything.”

  “Did anyone see?”

  “No one called anything in that night and the school’s security cameras don’t have night vision.”

  “No, I mean did someone find it?”

  “You were right when you said we couldn’t clean it up. It would have tipped Pascual off. We had to leave it there.”

  “You were out all day,” Julian said. “Shit’s been all over the news. A stray dog that’d been tunneling under the school gate dragged the thing into the alley. A teacher carrying some trash out was the one who found it.”

  “Shit.”

  “We were able to clean up the situation quickly,” Medina added. “But there were others. Pascual dumped a headless torso in the middle of the street a block away from the county courthouse. He left another head inside a payphone outside a Planned Parenthood clinic and other body parts were left at a few churches known to have helped mules escape the cartel.”

  “The media’s been having a fucking field day.”

  “Thankfully the general public’s still in too much shock to start rioting in the streets.”

  “Yeah, but it won’t be long,” Julian said.

  “And, Jax, what the hell happened when you got back to the house?”

  “I took a shower.”

  “I mean after the shower,” Medina said.

  “One of Marcum’s nephews saw me trying to tape the wire back on. Then he told Marcum’s sister.”

  “So she knows.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what that whole monologue was about. She wasn’t confiding in you, she was speaking into the wire’s microphone?”

  “Did you get all of it? The names, the dates, everything?”

  “We got it. I sent some cadaver dogs to check out some of the locations she named. We haven’t turned anything up yet. But listen, I need you to try and get her to talk some more.”

  “When? Someone’s always there and she told me everything she could remember.”

  “I’m not telling you to purposefully put yourself in danger. I’m saying be patient and when the opportunity presents itself ask her about Melissa Cavarón.”

  “Melissa?”

  “It’s the only case we’ve got where Pascual is an actual suspect and there’s actual evidence against him. All of the other murders connected to him and the drug cartel aren’t solid enough. We’re almost positive he ordered all of the executions but Melissa, we know he did that with his own hands. We’ve got to find out what Alana knows. Maybe he brought her by the house a few times, maybe she saw him put his hands on her, maybe Marcum helped him do it. But we’ve got to start piecing this shit together.”

  “We’re almost back at the house, Medina,” Julian said.

  “Ok kid, if something goes down you stick with Julian, ok?”

  “Ok.”

  “And try to talk to Alana about Melissa.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “We’re trying to wrap things up on our end so hopefully we can get you out of there sooner rather than later. Julian will let you know if anything changes.”

  “We’re turning onto the street. I’ll check in later,” Julian said before hanging up.

  “Tomorrow,” Julian said, pausing as they turned up the street.

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “Your brother has something planned. A meeting with Toly. Everyone has to be there.”

  “What do you mean a meeting with Toly? What the hell is he thinking?”

  “He’s thinking he’s fucking pissed. Look, this could go to shit real quick and if that happens you find me and I’ll try and get you out.”

  “You’ll be there?”

  Julian nodded. “There’s too many of those fucking commies. Just Pascual’s inner circle isn’t going to cut it.”

  “So what? He’s calling in reinforcements or something? He’s always so—”

  “Careful? Not this time. Apparently Toly’s pissed off a lot of people.”

  “How many?”

  “Enough to fill up the old warehouse in the industrial district.”

  Jax swallowed. “Is he trying to start a fucking war or something?”

  The car pulled to a stop in front of Alana’s house.

  “If they ask we were making a drop. I brought you along for the extra muscle,” Julian smirked.

  “And tomorrow? What else do I need to know?”

  “Just be careful.”

  “Does Medina know about this?”

  “Of course he knows. But the police don’t waste manpower on gang wars. The way they see it, the more of Toly and Pascual’s men that get caught in the crosshairs of their cock fight the better. It’s better for everyone when the problem can just sort itself out this way.”

  “And if Pascual’s killed?”

  “Chavo won’t let that happen.”

  “And me?”

  “I told you. You run. You get the fuck out of there.”

  “But I’m on my own.”

  “We’re all on our own.”

  The front door eased open and Alana’s face edged beneath the glow of the porch light. Julian followed her inside but Jax stopped in the doorway when he saw a man crumpled on the couch. His hands were bound and his face was dark and bruised, blood dried above his lip. Pascual was sitting next to him, a bowl of cereal resting on his
knees.

  Jax didn’t want to take another step but Pascual was eyeing him, trying to gage Jax’s reaction to the mess of a man on the couch. Jax made his way to the window just on the other side of his brother and looked outside.

  “Who’s the guy?” Jax asked, hoping Medina was listening.

  “Oh, old Ivan here? Ivan works for our good friend Toly. Don’t you Ivan?”

  The man exhaled, the air releasing in spurts as if the minute force was about to break him.

  Jax pushed for another question. “What’s he doing here?”

  “What’s with all the questions?” Pascual grunted.

  “Nothing, just—”

  The front door swung open and Marcum tossed a set of keys to Pascual.

  “It’s ready,” he said.

  “And Chavo?”

  “All good.”

  Pascual stood, pulling the man next to him up by the collar of his shirt.

  “Did you hear that Ivan? I’ll give you one thing,” Pascual said, twisting the man’s jaw, “you motherfuckers sure are loyal.”

  Jax heard the door to the bedroom where he’d been sleeping creak open. He glanced over his shoulder and saw one of Alana’s boys, his shirt riding up over his round belly as he wiped his eyes with both hands. There was a loud pop as the back of Pascual’s hand made contact with Ivan’s face and Jax crossed the room just as the child’s brother was trying to move past him to see what was going on.

  “Go back inside,” Jax told them, “and don’t come out.”

  Jax pulled the door shut, almost catching the little one’s heel as he stumbled back into their bedroom. He stood there, blocked from view as he heard something heavy fall against the carpet and then Pascual grunting as if he were trying to heave Ivan back onto his feet. Jax wondered if Medina could hear any of it beneath the loud knocking in his chest and he knew he would have to go back into the room. The hint of a face caught Jax’s attention and he saw Alana peering out through her bedroom door.