by Chaz McGee
TWENTY-SIX
Maggie and Calvano were exhausted but they would have no rest that night. They had just finished a late-night dinner when the call came through – Gonzales wanted to see them and he wanted to see them now.
By this time of night, Gonzales was usually finishing up an evening of wining and dining all the right people to further his career. I had never known him to be at the office this late. I rode along, curious to know what might have happened to inspire this meeting.
The station house was deserted and blessedly calm. Not even a drunk awaited booking. The news hounds were finally gone and I knew the bars nearby were probably jumping with visiting journalists. Maggie and Calvano hurried through the lobby to the upstairs offices while I tagged along, energized by their urgency and wondering if this was what my life would have been like had I cared more about my job when I was alive.
Gonzales was waiting for them in his office. He was watching the re-run of his appearance on Lindsey Stanford’s show, perhaps seeing for the first time that her follow-up guests and rants had turned away from who might have taken Arcelia Gallagher to focus on illegal immigration. Gonzales looked irritated, but then Lindsey Stanford had that effect on nearly everyone. I couldn’t tell if he was angry because he had been a part of the show, she had anointed herself judge and jury, and the whole country was letting her get away with it, or because he was embarrassed that his people were the focus of such intense scrutiny.
He gestured for Maggie and Calvano to sit. In another rare break in his routine, he poured himself a glass of whiskey in front of them. The smell of it drifted across the room. It was irresistible. Even in death, I was still an alcoholic. Gonzales took a long sip then drummed his fingers against the glass. He did not bother to offer either Maggie or Calvano a drink.
‘You had something for us?’ Maggie asked. She was tired and in no mood for his usual maneuverings.
‘I do indeed,’ Gonzales said. He handed them a manila folder thick with photographs. ‘I just printed these out. I called in a favor and some locals have been tailing Enrique Romero since he arrived in Los Angeles.’
‘Why?’ Calvano asked, unable to stop himself. Like me, he was wondering why the hell Gonzales had bothered to have Romero followed. Yes, the television star had left town as soon as the investigation opened. Yes, he was condescending and annoying. And, yes, as owner of the Delmonte House, he at least deserved scrutiny. But calling in a favor like that from another police department was using up a pretty big chit.
‘I don’t like people who blatantly ignore our jurisdiction,’ Gonzales said abruptly. He banged his glass on his desktop a little too hard. For a moment, I thought the glass had cracked.
Maggie had opened the folder and was staring at the first photograph with a look of astonishment.
‘Is it her?’ Gonzales asked. ‘Romero went straight from the plane to her hotel room. They spent about an hour and a half inside before they were picked up by a car and driven north to some restaurant where they had dinner and, as you can see if you look at the rest of the photographs, several hour’s worth of drinks. He also saw her last night.’
Calvano was staring over Maggie’s shoulder. Why should I be left out? I joined them.
Maggie looked around the office and shivered. ‘Can you turn the air conditioning down?’ she asked Gonzales. He ignored her.
Calvano was too engrossed in examining the photos to care and I didn’t blame him. We were staring at what looked like a photo of Arcelia Gallagher and Enrique Romero in an embrace.
‘This woman is not pregnant,’ Calvano said. ‘It’s not her.’
He was right. Enrique Romero, movie star and heart-throb to many, including his own ignored wife, was shown in a series of photographs kissing, groping, laughing with and clearly wowing a beautiful young Hispanic woman who looked remarkably like Arcelia Gallagher. But she was not pregnant and, from the looks of her body in her clingy red cocktail dress, she had not been pregnant in this century, not unless she knew something about regaining her figure that no woman I had ever known knew.
‘She could have had the baby already,’ Gonzales said. ‘She was due in less than a month, right?’
‘I don’t think it’s her,’ Maggie said. ‘Although the resemblance is startling.’
‘Are you sure?’ Gonzales asked. ‘It explains everything – she goes out to the Delmonte House, meets the man of the house and boom. Chemistry kicks in. You know how it goes. If someone like Enrique Romero wants something, he gets it. He probably moved her out there so that they could be together without interference.’
Calvano was staring at Gonzales, trying to hide his disgust. ‘I don’t think that Arcelia Gallagher would do that to her husband,’ he said. ‘It seems completely out of character.’
Gonzalez waved a hand dismissively. ‘People will do almost anything when they’re offered a limitless bank account, a big house in Malibu and fame. Arcelia Gallagher was raised in poverty in Mexico. You’d better believe she jumped at the chance for a better life.’
There was something in his voice we’d all heard before. I knew that Maggie and Calvano were wondering, as I was, why Gonzales had it in for people who looked like him.
‘I still don’t think it’s her,’ Maggie said quietly. ‘It would help if there were better photographs of her face.’ Gonzales missed her sarcasm.
‘Call in the husband to look at the photos,’ Gonzales told them. ‘He’ll know if it’s his wife.’ He looked disappointed. He had deigned to dabble in their investigation and had hoped to pull off a coup, probably to show them that he still had all the right moves.
‘Now?’ Maggie asked. She glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘This seems like a pretty big thing to spring on him this late.’
‘If he wants to find his wife, he’ll cooperate,’ Gonzales told her.
Maggie rose, willing to obey him for now. But I noticed that she kept the news of what she had found out from the two witnesses at the church to herself. She did not want Gonzales interfering with her investigation any more than he already had.
‘Does this mean that Aldo Flores can be released?’ Calvano dared to ask. It really bugged him that the poor guy was still in jail, a convenient suspect on hold until someone else came along.
‘No, it does not mean that Aldo Flores can be released,’ Gonzales said irritably. ‘Call me if it turns out to be her.’ He sat back down at his desk and stared at his empty drink moodily. He hated the case and wanted it to be over.
The woman in the photograph was not Arcelia. Danny Gallagher raced to the station house as soon as he got the call, frantic to find out if his wife was safe. He had grabbed the photographs out of Maggie’s hand and, when the first one proved disappointing, spread them out across the conference table, looking from each to each with a hopefulness that broke my heart to witness. He wanted it to be his wife. He wanted her to be safe. He was willing to accept anything – even the possibility that she had run away with another man – so long as she was safe. But he had been forced to acknowledge that while the woman in the photograph resembled Arcelia, it was not his wife.
‘I’m sorry, man,’ Calvano said gently, patting him on the back. Danny Gallagher had begun to cry again, the combination of hope, followed by hope lost once again, proving too much for him. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Let’s all get some sleep,’ Maggie said. ‘We’ll start again in the morning.’
‘No,’ Danny said. He wiped away his tears. ‘Not yet. I want to visit Aldo Flores.’
‘Why?’ Calvano asked, unable to help himself.
‘Because he’s the only one who knows what I’m going through,’ Danny said. ‘He’s the only one who can really understand.’
I could feel the possibilities flitting through Maggie’s head, but she did not really think that Danny Gallagher and Aldo Flores had somehow conspired with one another to kill their pregnant wives. ‘You can see him,’ she decided. ‘But everything you say to him has to be in English and I’m going
to be right there beside you listening in.’
Danny nodded and they rode down in the elevator to the second floor in silence. The guard outside the holding cells looked a little confused when he recognized Danny Gallagher, but Calvano gave him the nod and he backed away.
Aldo Flores was sitting up on his bunk, unable to sleep, staring out a square window in the wall of his cell. He recognized Danny Gallagher at once and went over to the bars, his voice cracking as he asked, ‘What is it? Have they found your wife? Was she alive?’
‘No, man,’ Danny said. ‘They haven’t found her.’ He grasped the other man’s hand and held it tight. ‘I didn’t mean to get your hopes up. I just wanted to come by and tell you how sorry I was that your wife is missing. That your wife and baby are missing.’
Aldo Flores did not hesitate. ‘Me too, my brother, me too,’ he said. He reached through the bars with his free hand and patted Danny Gallagher on the arm. ‘I know what you’re going through, what your head is telling you right now, and I’m sorry it happened.’
‘Yeah, but you’re in there and I’m out here,’ Danny said. ‘It doesn’t seem fair, does it?’
Aldo Flores was unconcerned with how differently he had been treated. He just wanted his wife and baby back. And he wanted to make the man who was suffering as much as he was feel a little bit better. He stared at Danny’s injuries. ‘Maybe I am safer in here,’ he said.
‘Maybe,’ Danny admitted.
‘Can you do something for me?’ Aldo asked Danny. He sounded almost apologetic.
‘Anything,’ Danny told him.
‘Make them understand that someone else did this. They won’t believe me. They are never going to find who took our wives if they don’t look beyond you or me.’
‘I will,’ Danny told him. ‘I promise that I’ll make them understand.’
‘Thank you, my brother,’ Aldo Flores said. ‘Do you want to pray together?’
Danny nodded. Both men bowed their heads and began to pray. I didn’t think there was any doubt by anyone in the room about what they were praying for – which is why I bowed my head and joined in.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The dead of night can wreak havoc with your soul. There is something about the darkness, and the way the rest of the world is silent, that causes your regrets to rise and run through your mind, reminding you of your failures again and again. I often think that the biggest reason why I drank was to escape those bleak hours in which I was forced to confront the choices I had made, the decisions I had waited to make until it was too late, and the actions I had failed to take.
It is also during the dead of night that I have often discovered the truth about human nature. Or at least about those truths we hide from others.
I returned to the Delmonte House in the wee hours of that night, determined to make contact with my fellow traveler again or, perhaps, hoping to catch a glimpse of the true nature of those who lived within its walls. I could feel Arcelia Gallagher near. I had walked through the unmistakable essence of her despair earlier on the lawn and I now knew how to recognize it. I could feel it even more keenly in the dead of the night without interference from others. I could feel her everywhere. I could also feel the unhappy presence who had struggled to make me understand its needs. Wherever it had gone earlier, it was back.
As I passed through the empty foyer of the house, the moon came out from behind the clouds and threw its light off the marbled floor. I followed the moonlight through room after room, feeling the other presence near me but never quite seeming to make contact with it. I stopped in the drawing room and turned slowly in a circle, hoping to catch a glimpse of the other presence. There, over in one corner, I thought I saw the outline of something manlike, about the size of what I had seen in the kitchen. It could have been a trick of the light, but it felt tangible and sad, so sad, as if all the sorrows of the world had converged in that one spot. As the night shadows settled around me, the shape took form. It was a rough outline of a man, filled with a thousand tiny stars that sparkled like diamonds as they danced within the confines of the amorphous shape.
I shut my eyes for a moment and with a rush of insight, there it was – I was somewhere else, somewhere hot with a blinding sun overhead, and I was looking at a mother being ripped away from her children. I could hear their screaming and the mother sobbing, and I could feel the anger that rose in me like a beast. White men were dragging my wife away. She was flailing and struggling against them, crying out the names of our children. I was struggling, too, straining against the chains that bound me. I could feel the bite of the metal in my skin. And then, just as suddenly, I was back in the library and I was myself again.
That was the connection. The being that wandered this house had once had his wife and children taken away from him. He knew where Arcelia Gallagher was. He knew she was a mother and that someone, somewhere, was grieving for her. He was trying to tell me where she was. ‘I am ready,’ I thought, trying to will my acceptance to my fellow traveler. ‘I am ready for you to show me.’
I felt a heaviness growing within me, as if I was once again carrying the burden of flesh and blood. I grew drowsy, an equally unexpected sensation, and began slipping into an inky void. I felt the sensation of falling, as if I were spiraling backward through time and space. It was that shape, I thought to myself as I lost control and fell into the void, it was that shape with the stars dancing inside its borders. It was the unhappy spirit, inviting me into its world. I felt myself free-falling through what felt like miles of space until I found I had stopped, without any sense of slowing. I was staring at a crying woman huddled in the corner of a dank, dark room. The walls were made of heavy clay reinforced with wooden timbers. The floor was dirt as hard as concrete. A tray of half-eaten food had been kicked into one corner and the woman was sobbing quietly to herself in another. Her thick hair fell over her face and her hands were clutched across her swollen belly, though one arm was affixed to a hook in the wall by a handcuff and chain.
I had found Arcelia Gallagher.
The amazing core of strength I had sensed within her was fading. She sobbed in the darkness of her prison, fearful for her life and the life of her unborn child. The air was cold and smelled of earth. I knew we were underground. No light broke the darkness and, yet, I could see her enough to know she was huddled beneath a sweater for warmth, one she had spread over herself like a blanket.
The room was little bigger than a large bathroom. No more than four men could have stood in it at one time. I counted the days that she had been down here, breathing in the dank air, and I marveled that she seemed as healthy as she did.
A great weariness enveloped her. She was no stranger to suffering nor to sorrow, or even physical cruelty. But she had already endured the unmanageable once upon a time, and lived through it, and perhaps keeping those memories at bay had taken away all her strength. She was not equipped to endure more suffering, not in her condition. I could feel her hope leaking from her, draining as surely as water down into the earth.
There was nothing I could do. There she was – the woman we were all searching for, still alive, still pregnant, yet barely holding on. The baby inside her was strong. But its strength meant that it was drawing energy from its mother, sapping her own strength, taking from its host what it needed to survive.
I felt helpless and ashamed and inadequate. Why had the other spirit sent me here? What did it want me to do?
As I thought of the other being, I could feel it near me. It was both near and not near. Part of it was me, I thought irrationally. Or maybe he had lived here, in this place, and lingered still. Then I had it – the thought flashed through me with certainty: he had died in here.
My realization scared me. Death lived in this strange room. It hovered in its corners. It filled the air. It was embracing Arcelia Gallagher in its arms.
I wondered if she could sense my presence. I wondered if it comforted her or frightened her. I wondered what the other spirit wanted me to do. I tried
to think of how I could help her. There was so little that I could do.
Arcelia’s sobbing subsided. She no longer had the strength to cry about her confinement. She needed to sleep, she wanted to sleep, but her fear was keeping her awake. I could feel the bad memories pressing in on her, memories of times past when her freedom had been taken away from her and angry men with quick fists and cruel imaginations had visited her again and again. I knew that the longer she stayed in this strange dungeon-like room, the more those bad memories would return. I had to do something to help her.
I willed myself to enter her mind. It was a meager ability but all I had to offer. I fought through the bad memories and called on newer ones, conjuring up sunny days spent on the farm helping her husband till the soil and happy evenings arranging the nursery for the baby to come. I entered those memories, and I felt their warmth. I felt the sun on my skin and heard the buzz of the bees and I smelled the sweetness of strawberry jam. I could feel the rough wood of the kitchen table and a lightness in my heart as I looked up and saw my beloved crossing the room toward me. I concentrated on it all. I felt every ounce of its beauty, and the warmth of being loved and the gloriousness of feeling safe. I clung to her happy memories.
It was difficult. Her darker memories called to me. Always the remembrance of cruel men with cruel appetites threatened to overshadow the joy. But I turned my back on the darkness again and again. I followed the light and the goodness she held in her heart. I found her hope and I fanned it back to life, I meandered through her memories to an even simpler time when she was a child beneath the hot Mexican sun, the earth parched around her but the steps to her simple home swept clean of the desert sand. I could hear her mother singing in the kitchen and smell a rich aroma from something spicy bubbling on the stove. There were pigs rooting in the brush nearby and the air was filled with the laughter of her brothers and sisters as they chased one another, shrieking, through the front yard. Yes, I thought, this was the place where I needed to keep her. This was where she had been loved and cherished. This was where she had been free beneath an endless desert sky with acres of sunlight and unbound vistas beckoning everywhere she turned. Yes, I would keep her in that place as long as I could. I would keep her there so that she could breathe. I would lead her there so that she could sleep.
