by Chris Fabry
“It sounds like there was nothing anyone could do.”
“Yeah, but it kind of blew apart her theory on life.”
“She lost her faith?”
“No. That actually got stronger.”
“Then it didn’t blow her theory apart. Maybe it blew yours apart.”
J. D. didn’t answer.
“And that’s why you moved here?”
He nodded. “Maybe it was partly guilt for not listening to her. I guess I wanted to honor her, to carry on the legacy. See if I could live what she believed. Show people she was right.”
“Which put you on a collision course with Maria.”
“Yeah, Hurricane Maria.”
The pastor came around to sit on the edge of the desk, and the closeness unnerved J. D. at first. Ron’s phone buzzed and he tried to ignore it but couldn’t help looking at the screen. He placed it on the desk beside him as if that would keep it from interrupting them.
“J. D., this is not a scenario where good wins over evil. You know that, don’t you?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. And you’re doing an admirable thing. But you can’t take on this girl and her troubles. This is not how you make up for the loss of your wife.”
“I’m not trying to make up for her.”
“The man on the white horse does not win this battle. You can’t fix her life by helping her find safety. Do you understand? This is pure evil. More evil than you can imagine in a lifetime. In a situation like this, good can only hope to survive. The best you can do is outlive the evil.”
He let the words sink in and tried to discern the man’s motivation. Maybe he knew where Maria was and didn’t want her found. Maybe he didn’t know where she was and wanted to find her himself. A million dollars was a lot of money for anybody.
“What do I lose by trying to help?”
“Your life.”
J. D. blinked. “So nothing, really.”
The man smiled painfully. “Your life is a precious thing. A wonderful gift. Don’t throw it away.”
“Isn’t her life precious?”
The pastor looked away and suddenly something didn’t feel right. The man had drawn him out as if this were a counseling session, and J. D. had opened up, but at what cost?
“You’re quite persistent, aren’t you? Like a man who plants a garden every year and hopes the crop will grow.”
J. D. didn’t answer. He heard voices outside.
“Farming is a hard life full of faith.”
Someone knocked at the door and the pastor rose, not looking at J. D. A man opened the outer door and signaled Ron. He turned to J. D. “I’ll be right back.”
When the door closed, J. D. went to the window and saw the reflection of blue and red light on a concrete wall in the alley. He grabbed the pastor’s cell phone and wallet and found the back door.
19
J. D. CURSED AS HE WALKED the alley behind the church. Ron had kept him busy while the police arrived. He had been pulled in by this seller of God. Maybe the man felt he was protecting J. D. That calling the police was the best thing for him. But it wasn’t about what the tattooed pastor thought.
He wanted to search the neighborhood for the Suburban but there was too much activity. He had lost it, the gun in the glove compartment, the Uzi, and the case from the desert.
It had taken a while for the cops to arrive, though. Maybe Ron had wrestled with the decision, whether or not to get them involved. Maybe he had prayed. Maybe he flipped a coin. It didn’t matter. The gun had probably pushed him over the edge.
The heat of the night hit full force and his pores opened. The concrete room had been hot, but compared with the heat outside, it was an ice chest. With the water trickling down his face came thoughts, one leading to another, flowing and coursing.
A siren behind him. Stay away from the main road. They would look there first. But the side streets were dark. Gang-infested. A white guy in cowboy boots and sweats wouldn’t blend.
When the blue and red lights passed a few streets over, he took the chance. Streetlights were dark. The only light came from flat-screen TVs through barred windows.
He passed a house where cigarette smoke wafted from the front porch. He counted five orange glows and let his eyes focus on several men in wife-beater T-shirts. He tried not to make eye contact but his boots clip-clopping along the uneven concrete sidewalk gave him away.
“Órale, el cowboy se ha extraviado,” someone said from the porch.
J. D. picked up his pace, trying to put some distance between himself and the voices. He balled his fists and wondered how long he would last in a fistfight. One-on-one he might have a chance, but with several of them . . . He wished he had taken the pistol into the church. At least he would have some protection until the bullets ran out.
His father had taught him not to run from danger. As a child, his brother had taken that instruction to heart and faced everything with abandon. Once when they’d seen a movie, they encountered several men standing near their father’s car in the parking lot.
“Whatever you do, don’t stop swinging,” Tyler had said.
J. D. smiled at the memory. There had been no fight that night. The men backed away, partly because of what they could no doubt see in his brother. J. D. wished he could live that way, with the same recklessness and abandon his father had tried to instill. Perhaps that was part of the reason he was in this arid wasteland. Somewhere deep inside he wanted to please his father, though the decision to come here had put them at odds. And with that thought came the growing feeling of being alone in the world. He was hunted by shadows and his chances of finding Maria were growing slim.
J. D. was convinced that she was the key. A girl carrying a weapon like that and stalked by animals like Muerte was the key to a lot of things. The town in Mexico. The drug trade there. And something else—something more, but he wasn’t sure what. And it didn’t matter because she was probably already dead.
But what if she wasn’t?
“¡Ey! ¡Alto ahí!”
He knew enough Spanish and enough from the tone of the speaker to run. The voice had come from behind him, back where the orange glow congregated.
“Quieto, muchacho.”
An engine fired. Something deep and resonant that reverberated off the one-story brick houses. What would his father do in this situation? He would turn and face them. Take his chances. What if they would help him? What if they were looking for Maria?
This was what being alone did. It played with his mind. It clouded his thinking and made him even more desperate.
He came to a stop sign and ran left, crossing the high beams of whatever car was closing on him. Music boomed from the speakers—thumping bass over the squeal of metal on metal brakes.
“¡Ven acá, cowboy! Queremos hablar contigo.”
“Mejor que no vayas por allá. Te arrepentirás.”
“Ya lo tenemos.”
He could feel his underarms swimming, sweat pouring from his brow. The car followed but the street was a dead end, which seemed fitting.
He turned as both car doors opened. Finally a working streetlight overhead. They were in a souped-up Honda with an oversize muffler that made it sound like a 747. A paint job that looked like it was done in a backyard. J. D. chose the yard that seemed least likely to house a pit bull and sprinted toward it, vaulting onto the chain-link fence and steadying himself with his left hand on the wobbly metal rail.
Shouts behind him. As he jumped down, he felt a buzzing in his right hand and was surprised at the phone’s light. He hadn’t remembered grabbing it. Running through the rock-filled backyard toward the next fence, he flipped it open.
“Yeah,” he said, masking his fear and shortness of breath.
It was a woman’s voice, but he couldn’t make out what she said because there was a dog barking, almost as deep as the car’s rumble and closer. Just a black streak behind him, then a flash of light at the house and h
e saw the six-foot fence rising ahead. The men were laughing as the dog caught him. Not a pit bull, but a wide mouth. Maybe a boxer. J. D. wished he had tucked his sweats into his boots. White teeth and clenched jaws and a ripping and pulling at his pant leg. He closed the phone andhung on as he lunged toward the fence, but his jump was like a toddler’s, only about a foot onto the structure with his right leg trailing.
The dog had torn a hole in the bottom of his sweats and was pulling, down on its haunches, grunting like a linebacker huffing toward a quarterback, backing up through the stones, trying to get a foothold in a place where J. D. could tell the thing went to the bathroom. He released his hold on the fence and went down on the ground, struggling to keep the sweats on.
He kicked with his left boot and landed one to the dog’s jaw. It was like kicking concrete. The dog held its grip and stared, growling. Like staring down a clench-toothed devil. J. D. was kind to animals, but he made a distinction between something defenseless and a snapping turtle. He didn’t blame the dog—J. D. was the intruder—but a man had to do what he had to do. J. D. saw a man standing in the doorway of the house holding a gun. He shouted something in Spanish, which seemed to be directed at the dog.
The man didn’t care about J. D.; he didn’t want to shoot the dog.
Perhaps it was the click that made a mixture of anger, fear, and determination to live rise up and aim the toe of his boot for the dog’s eye. When he connected, the animal turned and yelped in pain, releasing the sweats long enough for J. D. to scramble up the fence.
With a renewed vigor, the dog leaped, but J. D. had made it to the top. A siren wailed and lights flashed in front of the house. He hit the ground and felt pain shoot through his left ankle. Then came the gunfire. Birdshot ticked against the metal fence and through tree branches above. He didn’t stop to see if he was hit.
He staggered through the parking lot of a single-story hotel. People in doorways smoking, watching him stumble. These were his enemies, able to describe him to police that were sure to follow.
He crossed the street quickly, four lanes of fast traffic that had thinned because of the hour, and came to a graveyard walled with concrete and iron, as if it were needed to keep the people inside. He found an entrance and stole in, walking past tombstones and crypts and rose-scented flower arrangements dotting the walkway. It was a huge cemetery, and he wondered how many people lay quietly under the earth.
The phone buzzed again. He flipped it open and said, “Hello.”
“Ron?” A woman. A frightened voice. Trembling.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“Why haven’t you called? I’ve been waiting. What do you want me to do?”
Think fast. Get information. “Just calm down. Relax.”
“Don’t tell me to relax. We’re in danger.”
Deep breath. Take a chance. “How is she?”
“I told you, she’s fine. Bruised and scared, but she slept. When do we move her?”
He tried to sound as much like Ron as he could. Keep his sentences short. “We’ve got police here now.”
“Police? Are they picking up the cowboy?”
“Exactly.” A squad car screamed by, siren blaring. Think. “Let me call you right back. I’ll tell you where to meet.”
Silence. As the police car got farther away, he heard something in the background on the phone. Music. Maybe a television.
“You’re not Ron,” she said.
The phone clicked and J. D. felt more than the connection die. In the distance were more sirens and lights. Probably crime scene tape going up and the guys with the Honda on steroids giving their version of events. He found an exit at the other end of the cemetery and sat in the darkness behind a Pollo Feliz restaurant.
He hit Redial and the phone rang. Someone picked up but didn’t speak. Like the chain-link fencing he had vaulted, this felt like a last chance, a once-in-a-lifetime risk.
“Listen to me. You’re right; I’m not Ron. He gave—no, I took his phone from his office. I’m the cowboy you were talking about. I need you to get a message to Maria. Are you listening?”
A long pause. Still a tremble in the voice. “Yes.”
“Tell her J. D. is looking for her. I need to tell her something about what she left in the desert. I found the case. I think she needs to know what was in there.”
He paused to listen. Heavy breathing on the other end of the line. Fear and uncertainty.
“You are just like the rest of them,” the woman said slowly. “You want the money.”
“I understand you being scared. I’m scared too. I’ve never been mixed up in anything like this. But you ask her how I treated her. If it wasn’t for me, she’d be dead.”
Another long pause.
“Tell her I need to talk to her.”
He searched for more to say, something to reassure her he was trying to protect the golden goose, not snatch her. The phone’s screen switched to a picture of a young girl, probably one of Ron’s daughters. The woman had hung up.
He took a deep breath and the odor of the nearby trash bins sickened him, but he couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything but rub at the sweat stains on the curvature and contours of his hat and think. How different his life would be but for a few choices. If he hadn’t come to Arizona. If he hadn’t fallen in love. If he hadn’t been born. Little things.
In the time between his run from the dog and his escape through the graveyard, he realized that with each blip of the police cruisers and swirling lights, with each new danger and lifeless move toward existence, he felt again. The energy had coursed through him with Maria’s first movement. His heart had jump-started. He was alive. Prepared for something more instead of marking time and waiting for the next bad thing.
He’d always feared being too simple—feared his music and life would be judged irrelevant or clichéd. An untalented man grasping for the unattainable. However, on a deeper level, beyond the definitions of success that caused him to stay in the shallow end of life, the bigger terror that seized him and chased him through the night watches was that there was something great inside, something powerful, and failure would be to let that atrophy. Death would not be the cessation of life, as it had been for his wife, but allowing the life inside to remain paralyzed when it longed to bubble and gurgle from his soul until it reached the surface.
Maybe he was being called to something bigger, something higher, and the strength to accomplish it wasn’t his own.
Then again, maybe he was a failure. Maybe he was inadequate and the thoughts of strength were just some positive-thinking charade.
The phone vibrated and he nearly dropped it. He answered without looking at the number.
“J. D., it’s Ron. Are you all right?”
“Why did you lie to me?” J. D. said.
“I didn’t lie to you. I’m trying to help you.”
Risk. Go ahead. “Did you tell them you have information about the officer who was killed?”
“What are you talking about?” Ron said.
“Did you tell them your connection with Maria? Do they know about that?”
“He’s making this up,” Ron said away from the phone. “I don’t know nothing about the officer killed.”
“Tell them the truth, Ron. I’m not the one they’re looking for.”
A noise on the phone as if it were passed to someone else. Then, “J. D., this is Detective—”
He pushed the red button and ended the call, then walked across Oracle Road, dragging the chewed-up pant leg and passing a used-car lot surrounded by a fence with razor wire at the top. Neon windshield stickers glowed in the fluorescent light. He continued down a side street, looking over his shoulder at the cemetery that seemed to stretch forever, passing more homes with barred windows. Mexican music played in a bar.
He knew he had to toss the phone and had wandered toward a Dumpster when it buzzed again.
“It’s me,” Maria said softly.
That voice. He closed his eyes as he spok
e. “You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m not sure how long that’s going to last. A lot of people are looking for you. Not just Muerte.”
“My friend said you found the case.”
“Yeah. I’ll tell you all about it when you come get me.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Maria, the people you’re with are going to turn you in. To the police or to Muerte. You’re not safe with either. You have to get away.”
“These are good people.”
“Maybe so, but they’re getting pressure from all sides. Can you get a car and meet me?”
“What happened to your truck?”
“I donated it. I’m sure Win won’t have a problem with that. I’m on foot.”
She was quiet a moment. “I appreciate all you did. But I can’t leave. These people have risked their lives.”
“Did you know it was your ring?” he said.
“What?”
“Your ring led Muerte straight to me. Did you know you were setting me up?”
She said something under her breath. “My mother gave me that ring. It couldn’t have been used to track me.”
“Then those guys are part bloodhound. It had to be the ring. I haven’t seen anybody since I got rid of it. So if you can get here, you’ll be safe. We can get out of Dodge and figure out what to do.”
“I swear I didn’t know about the ring.”
“All right, I believe you.”
A big sigh. “But I can’t let these people down.”
“All the more reason to get away. Don’t endanger them. You know what’s going to happen if Muerte finds them, and you know he will.”
“These are people of prayer. They believe God is going to protect them.”
“Prayer is one thing. Bullets are another.”
A pause. “Good-bye, J. D.”
Last chance. Last shot to convince her. “Wait, Maria. Are you still there?”
