by Hester Young
“It would just be one night,” I tell him. “If we can’t find Ruben, fine. We gave it a shot.”
“It’s too dangerous. I don’t want you in Mexico.”
I can understand where he’s coming from. That old shower with the blue and yellow tile would be right at home in the seedier part of a Mexican beach town, and Noah can’t bring his gun across the border. We’d be vulnerable. But the truth is, we’re vulnerable here, too. Tucson is a relatively high-crime city with an abundance of firearms in circulation, and that sketchy little shower could be in any of its run-down buildings.
“My dream could’ve been anywhere, Noah,” I remind him. “Mexico, Arizona, Texas, I don’t know. Could be Canada, for all I can tell.”
“What’s your point?” he demands. “I should be scared all the damn time? I am, Charlie. I already am.”
“My point is that we can’t run away from it. Any place we run to—that could be it.”
“You’re askin’ me to just sit around and wait for somethin’ to happen. You’re sayin’ there’s nothin’ I can do.” The desperation in his voice—the absolute impotence—leaves me aching. Noah likes to tackle his problems straight on. He’s not used to worrying about what lurks in the shadows, and yet that’s exactly what I’ve given him: a monster he can’t see, can’t fight, can’t possibly conquer. I’ve made him helpless.
“I can avoid showers,” I say. “That’s something. And if I see anything from my dream, we’ll hightail it out of there.”
He’s torn, caught between his natural optimism and an almost primal fear. I take his hand and my fingers curve around his.
“I’m going to be all right, I promise. What matters right now is Micky.”
He closes his eyes, inhales, and chooses, against all odds, to believe the best. Maybe because it’s better than believing in death.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
Nine
I spend the evening on my laptop trying to pinpoint Ruben’s whereabouts. The search term “Rocky Point blue hotel” yields no obvious hits, but Google lists only about fifty hotels across the city. I sort quickly through each entry, and yet, on web page after web page, I don’t spot any blue buildings at all.
There are pools, of course, their chemical-treated water appearing as hypnotic blobs in the aerial photos, and the beachfront resort sites never fail to flaunt the cerulean waters of the Gulf of California. Ultimately, though, the buildings are all the kind of whitish neutrals that only a card of lyrically named paint samples could distinguish between. I find something pink and another hotel in an eye-burning shade of mustard, but that’s as colorful as Rocky Point gets.
“How’s it goin’?” Noah’s stretched out on the hotel bed behind me, looking peevish after a long phone conversation with his assistant, Sharlene. Some irrigation company in Sidalie screwed up one of the town’s sprinkler systems, and Noah’s crew must now salvage a dozen waterlogged flower beds. I don’t want to add to his bad mood with the news that we’re heading blind into Rocky Point tomorrow, don’t want to provide him with ammunition to back out, so I duck the question.
“Looks like there are some nice resorts,” I say. “Where should we stay?”
He shrugs. “Wherever’s safest. A good area with good security.”
“I’ll see what I can find.” All the major hotels look safe to me, but I figure Noah will feel better if I pretend that, after exhaustive research, I’ve found us the Fort Knox of Mexican hospitality.
Another forty-five minutes online produces no new leads on Ruben’s blue hotel. I’m starting to have doubts. Could there have been some other beach town Micky and Jasmine visited? Was Micky mistaken when she said that Ruben worked at a hotel? Unlike most seaside resort towns, Rocky Point skews heavily toward condos and timeshares. If Ruben works from one of those, we’ll be sorting through another two or three hundred properties across the city, easy. There’s no way Noah and I could cover that kind of ground in one day.
I grab a sheet of paper and make a list of properties with a restaurant or bar on the premises. Next, I wade through a series of articles about Rocky Point, trying to narrow down the most likely areas: Playa Mirador, Choya Bay, Sandy Beach. The more I read, the more immense this city of less than sixty thousand starts to seem. And the names are driving me crazy. Some are English, others Spanish, some a mishmash of the two, and some referred to in English or Spanish, depending on what source I’m looking at. As someone who speaks about twenty words of Spanish total, it takes me a while to realize that Choya Bay and Bahía la Cholla are one and the same.
Frustrated, I accomplish other tasks. Purchase Mexican auto insurance online. Map out tomorrow’s route to Rocky Point. I’m changing into my pajamas, about to admit defeat, when it finally occurs to me that my failure to locate this mythical blue hotel may lie not in poor research skills but in my decision to take high school French.
“Noah.”
He’s fallen asleep on top of the covers, one arm dangling off the side of the bed, his cheek mashed against the comforter. I nudge his shoulder and he snorts.
“Hnh?”
“What’s the word for ‘blue’ in Spanish?”
“‘Azul,’” he tells me without ever opening his eyes or fully waking up.
“Azul,” I repeat. The word is familiar. “Is that A-Z-U-L?”
“Mm-hm.” He nestles his face deeper in the folds of the comforter, and I have to admire his ability to conduct conversations while unconscious.
I pick up my list of hotels with restaurants or bars inside and groan. There it is, the third item on my paper. Vista Azul Resort. I could’ve ended this search hours ago. Micky wasn’t telling us the color of the building her father worked in, but the name.
It isn’t the satisfying Gotcha, Ruben that I was hoping for, but I’ll take it.
• • •
NOT WANTING TO SPEND a couple of decades in a Mexican prison, we leave Noah’s gun with Pam.
I’d prefer not to tell her the true purpose of our visit to Rocky Point—she’ll inform the TPD, and potentially ruin our chances of having the first crack at Ruben—but Noah dismisses my pleadings as insane and irresponsible. “Someone has to know where we are,” he says.
Upon arriving at Pam’s, however, he spills his guts so immediately and so thoroughly, I realize he’s got another agenda altogether: he thinks she can talk me out of going.
“Ruben, huh? In Rocky Point?” Pam finishes watering a plant in her living room and regards me impassively. “You weren’t going to mention this to the investigative team?”
“Mention what?” I cross my arms, defiant. “That a six-year-old made an offhand remark about going to the beach with Ruben a couple of times? I’m just playing a hunch, Pam. I could be wrong about this. If we find him, of course I’ll let the police know.”
She cracks a half smile that says she doesn’t entirely believe me. “Why do you want to get to him so badly, anyway? You could chat with Ruben after he’s been cleared as a suspect. What’s your rush?”
“He could run,” I say. Does she think I’m stupid? “Your guys obviously don’t have enough to extradite, and all it takes is one visit from McCullough to spook him. As soon as Ruben knows that guy is on his tail, he could disappear.”
“What if he’s dangerous?” Noah demands. “Shouldn’t we be worried about this guy?”
I brush off the suggestion. “I don’t think he killed anyone. But even if he did, what happened to Jasmine wasn’t random, it was personal. He has no grudge against us.”
“If he killed her, then he killed Donna, too,” Noah points out. “Not because it was personal, but because she was there. So maybe rethink how dangerous he could be.”
It’s a fair point. “Pam,” I say reluctantly, “you know more about this than we do. What’s the theory right now?”
Pam lifts her watering can to another hanging
plant and wets her lips with her tongue. “I’ve talked to a few folks,” she says. “My theory is that Jasmine was the target. Donna was just . . . wrong place, wrong time. Hardly anyone knew she’d be babysitting that night. And I sure don’t buy all this bullshit about drugs.” She plucks a dead leaf from the plant and rolls it between her fingers, agitated.
“You’re assuming Jasmine was the target because it happened in her apartment?” I ask.
She nods. “And because of the crime scene.”
“Dare I ask?” Part of me doesn’t want to know, but curiosity—an ugly, morbid curiosity—rears its head before I can stop myself.
Pam looks me over as if assessing whether or not I can handle the details. Maybe she has no one else to confide in, or maybe she sees more in me than just a pale, pregnant women clad in cheerful florals. For whatever reason, she gives me a try.
“They were sitting at the dining room table,” she says. “Donna was still in her chair when they found her. Two shots to the head from a distance of four to six feet. Didn’t look like she was running, so they’re guessing she was killed first. She probably didn’t suffer.” Pam recites these facts in a quiet, affectless voice, but beneath it, I can still feel her loss, a black hole exerting its own gravitational pull. I wonder if her time leading Homicide has made this easier for her or if having seen these cases up close only sends her imagination into overdrive.
“Jasmine was discovered on the floor next to the dining table,” Pam continues. “She was shot four times, once in the shoulder, three times in the chest. They also recovered a bullet in the wall behind her, probably a miss.”
Noah whistles. “Somebody was pissed off at Jasmine.”
“Yeah.” Pam sounds like she knows the feeling.
“Was she trying to get away?” I ask.
“She didn’t get far,” Pam observes drily, “but that’s what it looks like. We don’t know exactly how much time elapsed between the two deaths. Could’ve been seconds, or this guy could’ve held her at gunpoint for several minutes.”
“It must’ve been fast,” I say. “Micky was in that apartment. She would’ve heard the first shot, wouldn’t she?” I don’t want to believe that Jasmine spent her final moments pleading with some psychopath for her life.
“The shooter didn’t necessarily know Micky was there,” Pam says. “And there was a party going on outside that night. It was loud.”
Noah clears his throat. “Whoever it was . . . he didn’t mess with them, did he?”
I’m not even sure what he’s getting at until Pam replies, “No sign of sexual assault. If that’s what the Rohypnol was for, it didn’t go down according to plan.”
Noah breathes a sigh of relief.
“So.” Pam sets down her watering can and folds her arms. “You still want to make this trip to Rocky Point?”
“Not if you think we shouldn’t,” says Noah. “I don’t especially like the sound of Ruben.”
Instead of weighing in, Pam dispenses a few facts. “Here’s what I know about Ramos,” she says. “According to US Customs and Immigration, his student visa expired in December of 2006, and he hasn’t returned since. If he’s in Rocky Point right now, he couldn’t have killed these two women unless he made it in and out of the US undetected. Now, I’m not saying our border security is infallible, but that sounds awfully premeditated for a domestic dispute with his girlfriend.”
Noah bites his lip. “Okay. I trust your judgment, Lieutenant.”
“So you won’t get the police involved yet?” I ask. “We just need a day, that’s all.”
“You’re really sticking your neck out for this kid.” Pam studies me, bemused. “Why? A week ago, you didn’t even know her.”
I rest my hands on my belly, feel my daughter stirring inside of me like the answer to her question, though not one I can articulate. “I don’t know. It’s what needs to be done,” I say, and there’s something in Pam’s reaction to those words—a haunted look, her breath drawn in sharply with startled recognition—that tells me she’s heard this logic before.
Donna, I intuit with some discomfort. I’m sounding like my mother.
“You’ve got twenty-four hours,” Pam says.
I want to hug her. “Thanks.”
“Twenty-four hours,” she repeats gruffly. “And then I’m gonna have a chat with Vargas. In the meantime, if you do find Ruben, you don’t go anywhere alone with him, okay? You stay in public places, you don’t hang out with his buddies, and you never, ever mention that he’s a suspect in these murders. If you get a bad feeling, if anything sets your spidey senses tingling, you get outta there and you give me a call pronto. Got it?”
I smile. “Got it.”
• • •
THOUGH MUCH SHORTER, the drive to Rocky Point feels at least as desolate as our journey through Texas. This is straight-up desert, a single-lane highway with few cars. I spend the first fifteen minutes playing with my adjustable chair, trying to achieve maximum comfort in the passenger seat before I accept that it’s a lost cause.
We’re not far out of Tucson when a sign informs us that we are entering Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation lands. I remember Sanchez saying that Pam grew up on a Tohono O’odham reservation and wonder if it was this one. Living in Connecticut, the only reservation lands I knew of were home to Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods, a pair of opulent casinos that don’t exactly call to mind the dire economic straits of many native people. As we drive through Sells, Arizona, the capital of the Tohono O’odham nation, I realize I’ve never seen what actual reservation living looks like.
Sells is a barren little town with a population in the two thousands, and maybe it’s the New Yorker in me, but imagining this place as the capital of anything saddens me. The homes are small and blocky, with laundry flapping on a line outside, a statue of the Virgin Mary perhaps, or else a few horses pent up in a modest-size yard. A community college on the outskirts of the “downtown” area resembles a juvenile detention center more than a place of higher learning. Half-melted traffic cones divert traffic around a crumbling section of highway.
Maybe to the Tohono O’odham people, it’s a sanctuary, a refuge—but to me, Sells looks like a prison. The kind of place you put people you want to forget.
“Is this crappy piece of land really the best the government has to offer?” I ask.
Noah casts me a sidelong glance. “Honey, they’re desert people. They’ve been livin’ in the desert for ages. They choose to live here. Nobody’s makin’ ’em.”
But I wonder how much choice a child born here has, what kind of tools they might be given to prosper in the outside world. Suddenly Pam’s success in the Tucson Police Department seems all the more miraculous, and I can understand what my mother must have seen in her, the fierce determination and courage Pam must have employed as she clawed her way up.
“I’m just saying, this doesn’t exactly look like a land of opportunity.”
Noah shrugs, ever the pragmatist. “What would you rather do?” he asks. “Round all the kids up and send ’em to one of those Indian boarding schools, like they used to? I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t know when sittin’ around feelin’ sorry for someone ever helped ’em any.”
Is this his polite way of calling me a bleeding-heart liberal?
I don’t ask. We have another hundred-odd miles to drive together.
• • •
FOR A ROAD SO BARREN, Highway 86 appears to have a disturbing number of traffic accidents. We pass several memorial sites on the side of the road: white crosses staked in the dirt and draped in flower wreaths, Jesus and Mary figurines, a message on a telephone pole in pink spray paint. U 4EVR, someone has written, RIP JOEY.
As we pass through yet another hilly region populated with tall, treelike cacti, Noah lets out a long sigh of contentment. “I hope you’re enjoyin’ this,” he says.
I yawn
, trying to calculate how much longer I can hold in my pee. “Enjoying what? The cacti?”
“It’s a saguaro forest. Saguaros only live in the Sonoran Desert. This is special.”
I peer out at all the looming saguaros: thick green central columns with rounded tips, their branches jutting upward on the sides like arms. Though it’s hard to gauge their precise height through the car window, most are much taller than a human being. They look like every cartoon cactus you’ve ever seen, and if one slapped on a mustache and a sombrero and came to life, I would only be sort of surprised.
“Biggest cactus in the US,” Noah tells me, “but you get a drought, and it can take ’em ten years just to grow a couple inches.” He scans the horizon, and I can just imagine him big-eyed under those sunglasses, taking it in with the shiny wonder of a kid. “Their flowers don’t bloom until night, you know.”
“Night-blooming flowers?” It sounds like some romantic fairy tale, not a fact of desert survival. “Why? Too hot?”
“Nocturnal pollinators, probably.”
“You’re better than a Snapple cap.” I run a hand across the top of his head. His hair tickles my palm; the buzz cut is starting to grow out.
“This right here . . .” He lifts one hand from the steering wheel and gestures all around us. “This is the Southwest done right. I mean, can you imagine this place at sunset?”
For an instant, I can—the dark, spiny silhouettes of the saguaros against a fluorescent orange sky—but the winding, unlit roads and all those highway memorials prove a more powerful image.
“What happened to Mr. Protective?” I ask. “Are you suggesting we drive to Mexico in the dark?”
“No, of course not,” he says, chastened. “I bet it’s quite a sight, that’s all.”
I smile. Until we came to Arizona, I didn’t fully realize how deep Noah’s love of horticulture extended. Before, I’d looked upon his knowledge of trees and shrubbery as a professional necessity. Only now, as he spouts facts about a desert terrain he’s never had to landscape, do I understand his work is not just a job but a vocation. The guy loves plants. Loves watching them, learning about them, tending patiently to them. It’s a promising skill set, I think.
