It’s one of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn, Mother. No matter how much it hurts, I must embrace that wisdom again tonight. I’ve never been able to make anyone love me simply by loving them first. Not those few girls in school, whose beauty made me ache inside. They weren’t cruel girls, those secret crushes of mine, they were my friends. They might even have chosen to love me as I wished to be loved, if they’d had both the inclination and the power to choose. But their hearts did not choose me, and that wasn’t their fault.
I can’t be mad at Grady because her feelings for me are not strong enough to overcome her pain. I know she thought I was angry tonight, but mi Diosa, what I felt was great loss and bewilderment. How can I feel so drawn to this woman, and be so wrong about her attraction to me? I’ve touched some part of Grady Wrenn, I know I have. But when I finally found the courage to reach for her, she turned away. I had been so certain that our time was right, sure that tonight was meant to be our beginning. That it was my turn, at last, to experience the kind of love You seem to grant everyone but me.
I feel myself slipping into self-pity, my Goddess, and my spirit rises up to rebel against it. My mother gave in to feeling sorry for herself years ago, and that indulgence has crippled her more surely than any disease.
Do You remember when I was eighteen, the night I sat beside the river and pledged my life to Your service? I accepted, all those years ago, that such a life might have to be a solitary one. Tonight, I reach for that gentle acceptance again. Help me surrender futile dreams, Diosa, so I can focus on the good You want me to do in the world.
And please, comfort Grady in her loneliness. It’s like she was in the river with me, and she started to float away. I grabbed her and tried to hold her close, but she left me, drifting away on her own sad current. I pray she someday finds someone, even far downstream, who can anchor her restless wandering and bring her peace.
Maria. Maria is the River Walker I must reach, somehow. Without Grady’s help, if need be. Keep me strong, Sweet Mother. Send Your most errant daughter to me, and let her hear me. Give me the wisdom to do Your will. Lead us all home by Your path.
Chapter Eighteen
Grady didn’t go to the police to defy Elena’s wishes. She went to the police because Elena wouldn’t return her calls, and she was worried about her. She had no way of knowing if other little gift boxes had appeared on Elena’s front walk, or if a blue truck was following her the nights she went to the river alone. If Grady couldn’t be with her, she had to find another way to provide Elena protection.
Technically she didn’t go to the police at all, because Mesilla was too small for a police force. She pulled up to a square, one-story cinderblock building bearing a sign reading MESILLA MARSHALS DEPARTMENT—“PROTECTING YOUR HISTORY, TODAY.”
The air conditioner within was cranked to an arctic coolness. Should her own a/c conk out, Grady resolved that she would rob a convenience store in order to be taken here. It seemed to be a slow day for crime in Mesilla; most of the seats in the waiting area were empty. She took off her sunglasses and approached the young woman sitting behind the wire-meshed glass screen, who didn’t look up immediately. Grady listened to the faint murmuring in the back offices, a blend of English and Spanish, until the receptionist finally offered a wan smile.
“Hello. What can we do for you today?”
“Hello,” Grady said pleasantly. “I’d like to file a restraining order against Hector Acuña.”
“Well, you wouldn’t do that here. You’d go—” The girl’s eyes widened. “Do you mean Deputy Marshal Acuña?”
“Yes, that’s who I mean.”
“Oh.” She lifted the phone on her desk. “Would you mind sitting down for a minute?”
“Sure.” Grady figured she wouldn’t wait long, and she was right. A large man in a beige uniform bearing a five-pointed star badge on his chest emerged from an office less than a minute later. He pushed through the waist-high hinged wooden gate and extended a hand to Grady.
“Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m Sergeant Oscar Telles.”
“Grady Wrenn, Sergeant.”
He glanced at her left hand. “Please come back, Miss Wrenn.”
“Dr. Wrenn.” Grady followed the big man through the warren of cubicles behind the front desk. She glanced into each of them as they passed. Judging by the uniforms, the Mesilla Marshals Department boasted half a dozen deputies, all male. One younger officer sat on a desk, deep in conversation with a second man seated behind it. Both looked up and studied her keenly as she went by. Grady couldn’t be positive, but the seated deputy bore a powerful resemblance to one of the men she had seen near Elena’s shop. She hadn’t caught much of a look at the driver who ran them off the road, but it was a safe bet this guy was Acuña.
“Please, sit down.” The sergeant closed the door of his office and held a chair for Grady. She sat, a little amused. She hadn’t been the recipient of such courtly courtesy in years. Telles didn’t look old enough to be indoctrinated in old-school chivalry. Balding and too grand of girth to be on foot patrol, Telles lumbered around behind his desk and sat in a wheeled chair with a great creaking of springs. The wall behind him was dotted with framed photographs of the sergeant posed with local celebrities, few of whom Grady recognized. Then she blinked. There was one photo of Telles standing with the actor who played Mr. Rogers, his jowly face lit with obvious delight. Grady liked him a little better for it.
“Our girl tells me you have a complaint against Deputy Marshal Acuña.” Telles opened a memo pad and clicked a ballpoint pen. “Is that right?”
“That’s correct. He ran me off the road on July sixth.”
“He ran you off the road.” Telles wrote for a long time, then looked up. “Where was this?”
“On the back road that leads to Manuel Herrera’s pecan orchard.” Grady saw the flicker in Telles’s eyes at the mention of Maria’s first victim.
He kept writing. “Tell me what happened.”
“My friend and I were coming back from meeting with Antonia Herrera. Her grandson, Manny, was also in the house. I believe he called Acuña, who smashed into my truck, twice, and ran us into an irrigation ditch.”
“He was in his patrol car?”
“No. A large blue truck.”
“Well.” The sergeant looked up. “To my knowledge, Deputy Marshal Acuña doesn’t own a blue truck.”
“I believe it belongs to a friend of his.” Grady summoned the name of the cousin of the second man to commit suicide last spring. “Rudy Barela.”
Telles frowned and resumed scribbling. “And who was this friend who was with you?”
“Her name is Elena Montalvo.” Grady saw that flicker go off in his eyes again.
Telles laid down his pen. He studied his notes for an inordinately long time. “You say this happened on July sixth, Dr. Wrenn. That was more than a week ago. How come you didn’t report this right away?”
“I wanted to be sure about the identity of the driver.” Grady figured that was close enough to the truth. “I believe Hector Acuña is one of a group of men in Mesilla who’ve been harassing Elena and her mother.”
“But this blue truck.” Telles ran a beefy finger over a line in his notes. “You didn’t get the license number?”
Grady summoned patience. “No.”
“No license number.” Telles underlined the words in his notes. “Were you or Miss Montalvo injured?”
“We easily could have been. This wasn’t an isolated event, Sergeant. Someone shot out the window of Elena’s shop in June.”
“Did anyone bother to report that back—”
“You’re hearing a report now.” Grady warned herself to slow down. She was too tired to mince words, but she needed this man’s help.
“So can I ask how come Miss Montalvo isn’t here with you today? You say she’s the one being harassed.”
“Elena doesn’t have a great deal of faith in law enforcement. I’m hoping you’ll prove her wrong.” Grady glanced toward the door. “I tho
ught I saw Mr. Acuña down the hall. We can ask him about this directly.”
“Yes, Hector Acuña is here today.” Telles wrote some more notes. “He came in even though I told him he didn’t have to. He was out real late last night, looking for that little girl who went missing over off Guadalupe. We found her this morning. She’s okay. You want some coffee, Dr. Wrenn?”
Damn. He’d found her weak spot. Well, coffee would ensure she’d be here a while, at least he wasn’t dismissing her outright. “I would, thanks.”
“Me too. I was out late myself.” The sergeant lifted himself from his creaking chair. “Give me just a minute.”
Grady closed her burning eyes as she waited. So Acuña searched all night for a lost child, and still came in to work the next day. She was willing to concede Telles’s non-subtle point that the man wasn’t a complete monster, but anyone who threatened Elena was far too monstrous for Grady.
She had driven through Mesilla’s cemetery on her way here, on the off chance of finding Elena scrubbing headstones. There had been no sign of her. She hadn’t wanted to leave the graveyard. Its desolate loneliness had suited her mood. “Elena,” she whispered. She sat up quickly as the door opened.
At first she thought Sergeant Telles had dropped twenty years and fifty pounds. The young officer carrying a steaming cup of coffee was the man Grady had seen sitting on a desk, talking to Hector Acuña.
“Uh, Sergeant Telles got called away. He asked me to bring you this and…finish things up.”
Luckily, Grady took her coffee black and strong, as such niceties as cream weren’t offered. She watched the deputy sit carefully behind the large desk and lift the memo pad to read Telles’s notes. He was short and rather skinny; his uniform looked too big. He was trying hard to grow a full mustache and not having much success.
“So…I guess you didn’t get the license plate of this truck that hit you?”
“My name is Dr. Wrenn, Deputy. And you are?” This guy was about the age of Grady’s students, so the patient reproof in her tone came naturally.
“Oh, sorry. I’m Larry Ortiz. Uh, Deputy Marshal Larry Ortiz.” He actually stood up behind the desk and extended his hand. Grady shook it courteously, and he sat again. “So…is there some reason you didn’t come in and report this until now?”
Grady rubbed the back of her neck. “I’ve already been down this road with Sergeant Telles, Deputy. I haven’t seen any indication that he intends to do anything about this, so I’m not sure why I should repeat myself. He didn’t even stick around long enough to ask the same questions twice personally.”
“Oh, no, that’s not true. He’s concerned.” The deputy scooted his chair closer to the desk, looking earnest. “Sergeant Telles recused himself, just now. You know what that means? He knew he shouldn’t finish this interview himself, because you said Rudy might be involved.” He tapped the memo pad. “Rudy Barela? He’s Oscar’s—he’s Sergeant Telles’s cousin. So it’s like he might have a conflict of interest.”
Elena was right, Grady thought, Mesilla is a small town. Apparently, its chief law enforcement officer had also lost a relative to Llorona. Rudy’s cousin Jaime would have been Telles’s cousin, too.
“Did you get a look at the driver at all?” Ortiz was immersed in notes again.
“Just a glimpse. I believe the driver is the officer I saw you talking to earlier, Deputy. I definitely heard him. After he hit us, before he took off, he screamed ‘death to the witches.’”
Ortiz looked uncomfortable. He touched a line on the pad. “Elena Montalvo. She was with you, huh?”
“That’s right.” Grady thought his tone had softened a little when he spoke the name.
“But she’s okay?”
“The last I heard. What action is going to be taken in this matter, Deputy Ortiz? I believe Elena and her mother are in danger, and I need to know what will be done about this.”
“Well, Sergeant Telles is talking to Hector now. He’ll know better what to do after that. Um, let me get your contact information? In case he has questions later.”
Grady supplied her numbers woodenly. She stood, giving the untouched coffee a look of regret. “Please tell the sergeant I expect to hear from him very soon.”
“Dr. Wrenn?” Deputy Ortiz stood too and fumbled in his chest pocket. “I went to school with Elena. I was a couple of years behind her.” He pulled out a business card and wrote on it, then passed it to Grady. “You or Elena could call me, any time. If for some reason you can’t get through on our other lines.”
Grady studied him. “Did you and Elena know each other well?”
“No, no. She was older than me. She really only spoke to me once. But Elena is kind of why I’m a deputy marshal today.” Ortiz folded his hands in front of him, his eyes on the desk. “I was really tempted to drop out of high school when I was a junior. Just didn’t see any use for it. Elena talked me out of it. You know what she said?”
“No, but I imagine it took a very long time.”
“Nuh-uh, she just said six words.” He smiled. “‘Quitting school would be stupid, Larry.’ That’s all she said, and that was it. I changed my mind, right there. And it’s a good thing. You can’t be a marshal unless you’ve got a high school diploma.” Ortiz looked up at Grady, his face slightly red. “Tell Elena I said hello from Larry. Okay?”
“I will, Larry.” Grady found a smile for him as she pocketed his card. “And I’ll call, if anything comes up.”
She made her way back through the warren of cubicles, keeping a sharp eye for the one she wanted. She heard Hector Acuña before she saw him. He and Sergeant Telles had their chairs pushed together near the far wall of his cubicle, and they were engaging in an intense, whispered conversation.
Grady waited in the doorway until Acuña looked up, his face flushed. The sergeant didn’t look happy to see her, either. She reached into her breast pocket and pulled out the small box Elena had found on her porch. She tossed it onto Acuña’s cluttered desk. “I think you dropped this, Hector.”
She held his gaze for a moment, then walked out of the building and into the baleful sunlight, fumbling for her sunglasses. She knew she would drive by Elena’s shop on her way home, like a lovelorn teenager hoping for the small comfort derived from glimpsing a face through a window.
Chapter Nineteen
Grady cleared her throat while she waited for the beep. She tried for an upbeat, casual tone. “Elena, hey. Just checking in with you again. You might have tried to return my calls today, but I was knee-deep in student conferences. Sylvia mentioned she hasn’t heard from you for a while, either. She and Cesar and Janice say hello. They’re still hoping you might be willing to help them out with their project.”
Grady was shameless. If she could guilt Elena into picking up by implying she was neglecting her promise to her students, she was craven enough to try it.
“You know Cesar and Sylvia’s wedding is coming up this weekend, right? I don’t know if you still plan to go, but they sure want you to be there. We don’t have to talk if we see each other. I promise I’ll hide under a pew on the other side of the church, if you want. Heh.” Grady’s brow was dotted with flop-sweat. “I don’t have to go to the reception, if you’d rather I stayed clear. Just say the word.”
Grady sighed harshly and slid down the wall, to sit cross-legged on her generic carpet. “Elena, just say any word. Tell me to fuck off, if that’s what you really want, but this silence is flat-out killing me. I don’t know how to—”
An electronic shriek went off in her ear, and she nearly dropped her phone. She heard a great clattering, and a woman’s voice muttering curses in Spanish. “Elena?”
“Do I sound like my daughter, you stupid gringa?”
The voice was older, the accent stronger. “Inez? Is something wrong?”
“Everything is wrong. How do I turn off this pinche answering machine?”
Grady waited until the echoing she heard on the line finally snapped off. “I think you found the ri
ght button.”
“No thanks to you.” Elena’s mother had stopped shouting, but her voice was low and tense. “I got nothing to thank you for, Grady Wrenn. You said you would take care of Elena. What happened to your promise to me?”
“Inez, I’ve been trying to get Elena to talk to me for days. She won’t return my—”
“What, do you think we have moved? Do you think we have packed up this house that has been in my family forever and moved into one of the big mansions on Alameda? You know where Elena lives! You know where she works! Why do you stay away?”
Inez was trying for pure righteous indignation, but even through her anger Grady heard the anxiety in her voice.
“I haven’t come by her shop because…” Grady raked a hand through her hair. She had come by Elena’s shop, at least a dozen times, but always driving. Sometimes she caught a glimpse of Elena through the wide window, just a flash of her behind the counter or reaching up to one of the wall shelves. She couldn’t bear to face Elena until she could convince her to talk to her. If those beautiful eyes stared at her with flat rejection, if she ordered her out of the shop, Grady didn’t think her bruised heart could take it.
“Because why?”
“Because I don’t think she’d speak to me, Inez.” Grady got to her feet and began to pace her small living room. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“What’s happening is my daughter has turned into a little bruja who won’t tell me anything. She goes out every night, even though I beg her to stay home. She won’t tell me where she’s going, or why she won’t talk to you. Tell me why she won’t talk to you!”
Grady paused, looking out the window at the lowering sun. Your daughter won’t talk to me because I kissed her, and that was the closest, most loving moment I’ve had in years, and still I turned her away. Somehow, she doubted that this explanation would either placate or satisfy Inez. “It’s a long story.”
“That is what she says!” Inez sputtered incoherently, then managed to lower her voice. “Trouble is coming, Grady. And we are all alone.”
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