Her Good Name

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “Yeah,” the officer said. “Tox will likely verify it.”

  “How long do you think he’s been here?”

  “At least forty-eight hours, maybe longer. Landlord said a lady rented the office a few weeks back. He said the last time he saw her was Friday, but he wasn’t here over the weekend.” The officer shrugged. “Of course, he’s managed to lose all the paperwork the renter filled out at the time of rental and she paid in cash. So far we haven’t found any prints. The whole office seems to have been wiped down.”

  “Of course,” Long said. It was often the case in slum buildings like this one for the owner to rent out space without any background checks. He’d charge a premium for his accommodations, only take cash payments, and there would be no paper trail if someone came looking.

  Detective Long scanned the office. “Doesn’t look like anyone plans on using it anymore.” There was a cheap desk and two folding chairs, but nothing else. “Anything else about the victim? Does he work, does he have a girlfriend, an address?”

  “No job that we can find, but he’s likely supported by the faction he’s part of. However, he is married.”

  Detective Long looked up at the officer. “Good. Who is she?”

  “Chressaidia Josefina Salazar—she didn’t seem to take on his last name—American-born Mexican. Lived in Idaho Falls until showing up here back in March. They married a few days later.”

  Detective Long furrowed his brow. If their victim was here as an appendage to a militant group, why marry? Typically people like him didn’t want connections in America. “Find her. See what she knows.”

  Chapter 71

  Idaho Falls, Idaho

  Sorry I’m late,” Livvy said to the kids as she came inside. “They started the quarterly audit today and the computer went down because of the overload.” She put her purse on the table and looked up with a smile. “Hey, don’t you look nice,” she said to Rosa who was finishing dinner preparations—quesadillas, by the smell of it.

  “Do you like it?” Rosa asked, turning from side to side to show off her new shirt. “I asked Doug if I could use the sewing machine downstairs and he said I could, so I took one of those old shirts of yours you gave me and took it in. I changed the neckline too.”

  Livvy stepped back and looked at the way the shirt fit her daughter’s blossoming figure. “I love it,” Livvy said.

  “Chrissy taught me how,” Rosa said, still smiling. “But I’ve never done it by myself.”

  “You did a great job,” Livvy said, ignoring the reference to Chrissy. She hadn’t made a decision since getting the letter, but she had admitted to herself that she wanted to clear things up with her sister. If only she knew how to do it without somehow admitting she’d made a mistake or making Doug angry. She let out a breath and focused on her daughter. “Look at the woman you’re growing into. Wow, but you’re a beautiful girl.”

  “Isn’t she, though?”

  They both turned to see Doug coming out of the bathroom. He zipped up his pants as he walked toward them and Livvy cringed and looked back at Rosa, smiling as if that would keep her from noticing. But Rosa’s face had gone slack, her expression guarded as it usually was when Doug was around. The boys had warmed up to Doug pretty well, but Rosa was still hesitant.

  “She’s one hot little number, that girl of yours,” Doug said.

  Livvy’s eyebrows went up, and she took a protective step toward Rosa, turning to face Doug. “She is very pretty,” Livvy said, hating the nervous feeling that washed over her.

  “I’d say.” He looked past Livvy and winked at Rosa. Livvy swallowed. He doesn’t mean anything by it, she said to herself. It’s just his way of giving her a compliment.

  “Um, Rosa made dinner. Where are the boys?”

  “Outside,” Rosa said softly from behind her mother. “I’ll go get them.”

  The meal was filled with chatter, mostly the boys telling about their day, finishing each other’s sentences and being entertaining enough that Livvy stopped worrying for awhile. At least until she looked at Doug. Each time she looked across the table, he was watching Rosa. She noticed, too, and would only stare at her plate and pull up on the neckline of her shirt, which was rather low now that Livvy really paid attention.

  By the end of the meal, Livvy was sick to her stomach and fighting tears. She spent the rest of the evening trying to keep Doug out of the same room Rosa was in. Chrissy’s words came back to her: What kind of man is he? How do you know he won’t hurt your kids?

  When it was time for bed, Livvy tucked each of the kids in while Doug watched TV and finished off his sixth beer of the evening. On her way out of Rosa’s room, she turned the lock on the doorknob.

  She pulled the door shut and leaned against it, testing the doorknob to make sure it was secure. She felt disgusted. She was locking her daughter’s door. Why? Her mind wouldn’t let her admit the reasons. She dropped her head and tried to swallow the tears as humiliation battled with regret and even . . . jealousy inside herself.

  Maybe it will be better tomorrow, she tried to tell herself. Surely, Doug would never . . . but her mind couldn’t form the words. She thought of Rosa on the other side of the door. Had she noticed Livvy locking it? What did she think of that?

  Dear Lord, Livvy said, though the prayer sounded foreign to herself. What do I do now?

  Leave, a voice said, making her jump and press her back to the door. She looked around the hallway, but no one was there. She immediately crossed herself against the evil spirits Abuelita had convinced her were very real. But she realized the feeling wasn’t one of darkness. It was urgent, it was strong, but it wasn’t frightening. The voice came again, and the urgency increased.

  Leave now.

  Chapter 72

  Imperial Beach, California

  Oh, and will you grab that mail on the backseat?” Chrissy asked, positioning her bag over one shoulder and shutting her door. Micah had gotten them two rooms at the El Venturo Motel in Imperial Beach—just a few blocks from the new address Micah had found. “I appreciate this,” Chrissy said, wanting to be sure he knew she was grateful for the room.

  “No problem,” he said as he reached into the backseat. “Where’d you get this?” Micah asked a few moments later when he closed the back door and looked at the mail in his hand. The intimacy of their confessions had lingered for awhile but eventually a sense of discomfort returned. He’d explained why they couldn’t be together and she’d agreed. Now what? How were they supposed to act? What were they supposed to do? So they both tried to ignore it. So far, so good.

  “The place that rents out her PO Box,” Chrissy said, using the key to open her room. She put her foot in the door to keep it open and turned, holding her hand out for the mail.

  “What are you going to do with it?” Micah asked.

  “Look through it—well, the stuff that has my name on it, anyway. I figured I’d turn the rest of it over to the police at some point, along with the hair.”

  Micah looked up at her. “Hair?” He handed her the stack of mail.

  “Yeah, I got some hair samples from the shower drain in her old apartment.”

  “You’ve been busy,” Micah said, his expression showing concern.

  “Yup,” she said, moving inside. “We’re running out of day-

  light, so I thought I’d go through this stuff and make a plan for tomorrow.” She was also looking forward to having a bed to sleep in. Though she certainly could sleep in her car again, she was very grateful for a room tonight.

  Micah nodded. “Good idea. I’d rather not be knocking on her door after dark.”

  “Right,” Chrissy said. “Thanks again for springing for the rooms.”

  “Sure,” he said, shrugging it off. They both stood there. “Well, I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” Micah said. He looked as if he wanted to say something else. She understood. For a moment she imagined them watching a movie together, eating popcorn, and going over the mail. But that would cross the invisi
ble and unspoken line they’d agreed to draw between them. They were partners in this, and friends, but the attraction they both felt made more than those two roles off-limits.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” she said. “Thanks again.”

  “No problem,” Micah said, smiling slightly. “I’ll come get you at nine?”

  “Perfect.”

  Chapter 73

  Micah flipped from one TV station to another, trying to find something of interest, trying to keep his thoughts from straying to the woman three rooms down. Was coming here a completely stupid thing to do? It had made so much sense at the time. Not leaving Chrissy to do this herself, and making an attempt to find whoever was doing this to his own life seemed like a good idea. But now, a few hours later, he worried about leaving the kids. Natalie had been happy to have them, though just a teensy bit arrogant at having him ask. Blake had urged him to go, and Mallory had given a non-committal shrug that was wearing on him. After Natalie’s announcement, and his decision to break it off with Chrissy, he was here? With her? What was he thinking?

  When he got to the local news, he finally stopped flipping channels. With voices in the background to drown out his thoughts, he sat at the small table by the window and opened his laptop. Might as well check his e-mail before he went to bed. He had a loan he was supposed to have done by Thursday and began coming up with the reasons he could give on why that wouldn’t happen. The motel was cheap and smelled like stale beer and mildew, but at least it had wireless Internet—a staple in California, apparently.

  The weather woman was giving tomorrow’s forecast, briefly explaining the fog that had covered San Diego most of the day. The weather woman called it June Gloom and expected a few more days of it before it moved off. Wasn’t California supposed to be sunny?

  He read and replied to several e-mails, including one from Mallory asking if he’d take her shopping for summer clothes when he got back. He smiled as he replied, realizing how much he missed his kids. Having them around so much made it harder than it had ever been to be away. Hopefully, he’d be home by the end of the week. He’d take potato fields and freshly mowed hay over the beaches and billboards of California any day.

  “ . . . ressaida Salazar—with the married name of Chressaidia Ramirez—please call the following number.”

  Micah spun around and stared at the TV, but the anchorwoman had moved on to a report about a car fire in Chula Vista. Was he hearing things, or did they just say Chrissy’s name on the news?

  He looked at the logo in the bottom corner of the TV screen and went back to his computer. After opening a browser window, he went to Google and typed in the call letters.

  Chapter 74

  Chressaidia watched the news without flinching. She’d hoped it would be a few more days before they discovered his body. Perhaps she should have moved it, but that would have presented another complication. Where would she put it? What if someone saw her?

  She stood and walked to the window of the high-rise hotel she and Eduardo had checked into, keeping her anxiety at bay by watching the lights reflect off the incoming waves. She was so close and she had already accomplished so much. A few more days and she’d be gone forever, heralded as a hero, finally finding the place she deserved amid the hierarchy of the People’s Army for Freedom. The police finding Frederico before she’d determined how to explain it to her father was a complication she did not have time for.

  She grabbed her keys and headed for the door of the hotel, calling to Eduardo on her way out the door. “Meet me at the storage unit,” she said. “We have work to do.”

  The best thing to do to keep from falling victim to fear was to get busy doing something else. They’d been so careful, keeping everyone else involved with the transport at arm’s length, dealing with the details on their own. It meant there would be less chance of betrayal. It meant that she would be in charge. It meant she could claim ultimate victory when she succeeded.

  She closed the door of the hotel, taking note, as she always did, of every face she passed on her way to the parking garage. It paid to be cautious.

  When she got in the car, she made another call. “Father,” she said when he answered, preparing in her mind the story she would tell him, blaming the murder on one of his dealers. “Something has happened. Frederico has been killed.”

  Chapter 75

  Chrissy had her hair up, her scrubby lounge pants on, and was just starting to paint the middle toenail on her right foot when someone knocked at the door of her motel room. She looked at the glowing red numbers of the alarm clock on the nightstand between the two queen beds. It was after 10:00. She hoped it was Micah. Who else would it be?

  She put the bottle of polish carefully on the dinged-up veneer nightstand and walked to the door, her toes spread and lifted so as not to mess up the polish. She looked out the peephole.

  She’d been right, it was Micah. “Hi,” she said as she opened the door.

  “Did you watch the news?” he asked as he strode past her and put his laptop on the small table. He pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “I hate the news,” Chrissy said, closing the door. “What are you doing here?”

  “You’re on the news,” Micah said, clicking his mouse and then turning the screen to face her. She leaned forward, forced to squint without her glasses or contacts.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, sitting down in the other chair.

  “Look,” he said, pointing at the screen. “Police are looking for a Chressaidia Salazar Ramirez in regards to a shooting that occurred in a downtown office building. Though not considered a suspect, police would like to confirm her whereabouts and see if she has any more information.”

  Chrissy sat back. “Oh, my gosh,” she said, making a face. “That is so creepy. She’s married?”

  Micah nodded and looked back at the computer. “I have a feeling we’re in over our heads here.”

  “Well, I’ve known that all along,” Chrissy said, giving a dismissive wave to his discovery. “But what are we supposed to do with this?” She motioned toward his computer. “All it really says is that, more than ever, I need to prove I’m not this woman.”

  “Then let’s go to the police,” Micah said. “Show them what we have, explain the situation.”

  Chrissy considered this, but remembered too well the night she’d spent in the Idaho Falls jail. That was Idaho, and it was freaky. How much worse would it be in southern Cal? The Idaho police had charged her, even though they seemed to believe that she wasn’t the woman who committed the original crime. Plus, she’d left the state. How would that look when she walked into a police station with the same name as a woman being looked for by their department.

  “I think we need something more than my documents. What about that address you got from that rental agency?” She remembered the mail and stood up too fast, feeling her wet toes brush against the bedspread. She looked down at her ruined nail polish and scowled, but moved past it in the spirit of sharing her finds.

  “Look at this,” she said, grabbing a stack of papers and handing them to him.

  “Apparently, the key to all this is to simply pretend to be the woman who’s pretending to be me instead of trying to explain to everyone that I’m Chressaidia, but not the Chressaidia they think I am.”

  Micah took the papers, looking confused. She sat back down in her chair again, resting her feet on the edge of the bed to see if she could repair the mangled polish. “Look at that top one—the storage unit bill.”

  Micah sifted through the papers until he found the one she’d indicated. He read it over.

  “I wonder what she keeps in there,” Chrissy mused.

  Micah looked up at her with an incredulous expression. “You’re not going.”

  “Of course I am,” Chrissy replied, as if he had asked a question instead of making a statement. “It’s the best lead we’ve got. We go to the storage unit, see if there’s anything of interest, and who knows, maybe we’ll find something we ca
n take to the police—something that irrefutably proves I’m not her.”

  Micah kept reading, then nodded and let out a breath. “This whole thing is crazy, ya know?”

  Chrissy shrugged. She could tell he was just as curious as she was. She leaned forward to punch him in the arm. “Hey, you came out here too.”

  Chapter 76

  Imperial Beach, California

  Tuesday, June 3

  Good morning,” Chrissy said when she answered his knock the next morning. She was still formulating what else she could do to put off going to the police a little longer, but for now, she was just focusing on one step at a time, and Micah had agreed to go to the storage unit first.

  She left the door open and waved him in as she returned to the mirror bolted to the wall above the dresser. He followed slowly, as if uncomfortable to be in a girl’s room—as if he hadn’t come barging in the night before. He was dressed in jeans, a red T-shirt, untucked, and his Boise State hat. She wondered if men ever matched their hats to their clothes the way women matched their purses to their shoes. She’d never thought about it and Micah didn’t seem to.

  She returned to the mirror and leaned forward so she could put the last of her accents on her eyes. She was wearing lavender today, one of her favorite colors, so she’d chosen pink and purple eye shadows to coordinate. The knit top fit snug, but not obscenely so, and the skirt, with angled pink, purple, green, and yellow stripes helped to slim her hips. She’d put on an eyelet-trimmed slip that peeked out from beneath the hem, and topped it all with a pastel-themed necklace and matching bracelet. The cheery shades helped her ignore the seriousness of what she was doing today—tracking down the person who had become her. Trying to imagine what might happen today caused a shiver to run down her spine.

  She sought Micah’s reflection in the mirror and found him, not surprisingly, watching her. She stood a little straighter, but still leaned forward. “I like your hat,” she said. She put down her eye shadow brush and blinked, opening her eyes wide as she compared both lids to make sure they matched. They did.