Heartless

by Alison Gaylin

  “Okay. Well, I hope it’s still okay for—”

  “I’m lying. Morrison just wanted to get out of the house. He thinks I’m an idiot for speaking to the press.”

  “Mrs. Brink. I promise I will be fair to your son.”

  “I know,” she said. “I have no idea why I do but . . . anyway, come in.” Barbara was a tiny woman. She wore jeans and a black T-shirt, no makeup that Steve could notice, and as he would have expected, her eyes were red-rimmed, dark circles pressing against the bridge of her nose. She had short, spiky brown hair like Laurie Anderson, and large, questioning eyes. College professor, maybe an artist—that was what he would have guessed she was in the real world, back when she was just a regular person and not the mother of a murdered boy.

  Barbara led him into the living room, which seemed to be the largest room in the house. There was an overstuffed floral-print couch, where she sat down, a glass-topped coffee table and two chairs covered in soft gold cloth. The walls were lined floor to ceiling with books—mostly philosophers, first editions. “You guys teach or something?” Steve asked.

  She shook her head. “Those books belonged to Morrison’s dad,” she said. “He taught at SUNY New Paltz. My son used to love him. Jordan loved books so much, loved anybody who liked to read. . . .” She cleared her throat. “Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

  “No, thanks.” Steve sat on one of the chairs. He noticed the cluster of photographs on the table—a dark-haired boy in a rugby uniform; the same boy, shorter and skinnier, in a graduation gown and mortar board. Barbara and the boy, waving from a canoe, and standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial. In another, they were posing with an elephant at the circus next to a man—it had to be Morrison. He had Jordan’s exact same face.

  Steve glanced up, and saw Barbara watching him. “Is . . . was Jordan an only child?”

  “Yes.”

  He winced. “Any pets?”

  “We used to have a dog. We got him when Jordan was three. He named the dog Brother.”

  “That’s cute.”

  “Brother died a year ago.” She pulled a Kleenex out of the dispenser, but she didn’t use it, didn’t cry . . . just held it between her fingers, a sort of safety net, and he could almost hear her thoughts. I’m not going to cry in front of a reporter. I’m not going to cry over a damn dog. “Jordan was very upset when I told him Brother had passed away. He was at NYU, and he’d just started classes, but he took the subway home and we had a burial in the backyard.”

  “I used to have a dog when I was a kid,” said Steve. “Chihuahua. I named him Peanut.”

  Barbara raised an eyebrow at him. “You don’t seem like you’d have a Chihuahua.”

  He smiled. “Guess I wasn’t one of those people who looks like his dog. Of course, I wasn’t quite as big back then.”

  She nodded.

  “Man, was I sad when Peanut died, though. I cried and cried. And my mom told me . . .”

  “Peanut’s in a better place.”

  “Yeah.” He looked at her. “That’s exactly what she said.”

  “We’ve got a cat now. . . . She hides in the closet twenty-three hours a day, only comes out to eat, and even then, she’s very skittish. Morrison keeps saying, ‘That is not a healthy cat.’ ” She raised her gaze to meet Steve’s, and her eyes clouded over. “I don’t think she likes it here.”

  Her eyes started to well up, and for a few seconds, Steve locked on to them and saw it: Barbara’s life now, the pain— the deep, constant, overwhelming pain no one should ever have to feel. He looked away. “That sucks.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It truly does.”

  After about a minute, he said, “Do you want to do this interview? Because, if you don’t, I understand.”

  “Anybody ever tell you that you’re an exceptionally nice guy?”

  “Thanks, but—”

  “Turn on the tape recorder.”

  Steve took a microcassette recorder out of his pocket, switched it on and placed it on the coffee table. “Tell me about your son,” he said. And Barbara did. She told him about Jordan, from her difficult birth all the way through grade school and high school and college; told him about all Jordan’s girlfriends, all the phases he had gone through, from jock to emo to poet to film student. She talked about all the traveling he used to do, how sometimes, he’d just take the car and drive until he ran out of gas, then call his parents from his end point. The farthest he got was the outskirts of Albany. “His father, in particular, hated that game,” Barbara said. “But I think that was the point.”

  “Did he like to travel?”

  “More than anything. When he wasn’t traveling, he would surf the Net, post on overseas message boards.” She smiled. “He said it was the next-best thing.”

  “Had he ever been to San Esteban before?”

  “Just once,” she said. “He visited his great-aunt Patty there for a summer, when he was sixteen.” Her expression darkened.

  “Was it a good trip?”

  “I . . . I don’t remember.”

  Steve knew she wasn’t telling the truth, but he didn’t want to press her. “Did he mention any . . . famous people who lived there?” He looked at her. “Warren Clark, maybe?”

  “I have no idea who that is.”

  “He’s a soap opera actor.”

  At that, she actually laughed a little. “Far as I know, Jordan had no interest in soap operas.”

  Steve laughed along with her, not because he thought either one of them had said anything particularly funny, but because it was a relief. Before long, though, Barbara’s amusement faded and her gaze drifted to the window, and it was as if she’d left this house, this interview, her own body. “The odd thing is,” she said, “I hadn’t thought he was planning to go to San Esteban this time around. He started off in Guadalajara and then he just . . .” She snapped back into herself. “Oh, that reminds me.” She walked into the other room and returned moments later with a beat-up-looking backpack. “The police sent this to me, after this Royas boy confessed. They’ve been through it already and . . . It’s his . . . his travel bag. I haven’t even been able to open it.” She handed it to Steve, gave him an imploring look.

  “You want me to?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Please.”

  Steve unzipped the backpack. It smelled musty inside, like old sand. He opened it, saw a few T-shirts, shaving equipment, a toothbrush. He found a worn paperback copy of Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan. From the cover art and all, it looked as if it had been published in the seventies, and when he checked the copyright, he saw that, indeed, it had been. 1978. The book was ten years older than Jordan, and it had wound up outliving him.

  He was putting The Teachings of Don Juan back when a stack of six or seven photographs fell out along with a small spiral notebook. Barbara stared at the photos, then at Steve. Without looking at them first, he held them out to her, and she took them, sighing a little when they touched her hand.

  She peered at the first one. “This is his cousin Corinne,” she said, and handed it to Steve—a picture of a smiling, stocky blonde in a University of Texas T-shirt. “This is . . . I guess it’s the market or something. I’ve never been to San Esteban.” She handed him a picture of two Mexican toddlers posing next to a tiny dog, another one of Jordan and Corinne smiling with a group of mariachi players. All the photos had been taken with a digital camera, and they all had a date on top: 8/25/07. The date of Jordan Brink’s murder. Steve wondered if Barbara had noticed the date, if she’d imagined her son snapping photos like any other tourist, downloading them, printing them out, not knowing that, hours later, he would be dead. Worse than dead.

  “He looks happy.” Barbara was holding the picture of Jordan and Corinne, her hands trembling a little.

  “He does.”

  “He didn’t steal drugs.”

  “I know.”

  She looked at him. “I really think you do.”

  The spiral notebook lay in Steve’
s lap. It looked like a reporter’s notebook, only smaller, something you’d maybe use for grocery lists. And when he opened it, he saw Jordan had written up a list. At first, he had a hard time focusing on the words. They didn’t make much sense to him. And he couldn’t get past the handwriting. . . .

  Steve’s own handwriting was a hideous scrawl. If you were to see any of the steno pads he used to take notes during interviews, it would have been hard to tell what language it was. Not when he was younger, though. Not when he was still in school.

  Jordan’s letters were thin and spidery—he wasn’t going to win any calligraphy contests. But it looked as if he’d spent extra time on them, as if he’d tried that much harder to make sure they were legible. At the time of his death, Jordan Brink had been at an age where penmanship still counted, and that got to Steve. Maybe worse than the pictures.

  “What is that?” Barbara asked.

  Steve cleared his throat. “I’m not sure . . . looks like a list of names. You want to take a look? See if you recognize any of them?”

  Barbara read through the two pages, then shook her head and handed the notebook back to Steve.

  At the top of the page were the initials SPLV. Jordan had drawn a black cross next to the initials with a red dot at the center. “Was he religious?” Steve asked.

  Barbara shook her head. “We took him to church. He usually fell asleep.”

  On the line under the initials, Jordan had printed in all caps, IT IS STILL HAPPENING!

  What followed were two columns of names—one of which had an X at the top, the other, a question mark. The X column had just two names. Question mark was much longer and started with “Me.” None of the names on either list meant anything to Steve. But then he turned the page, where the second column continued. He saw the last name on the list and his mouth went dry. “Do you . . . do you mind if I borrow this, Barbara? I can messenger it back to you tomorrow—I just want to Xerox the page.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Why?”

  He kept his voice calm. “There’s just one thing I want to look into.” He’d wanted to say that to Barbara, but he couldn’t stop staring at the name—the last name on the question-mark list and, barring the world’s biggest coincidence, the Brink/Clark connection, spelled out in Jordan’s labored capital letters:

  TIFFANY BAXTER.

  THIRTEEN

  Warren drove through the arch and into the parking lot of Las Aguas, which, save for one pickup truck, was completely empty. “I can’t believe you reserved the whole place for us,” Zoe said.

  Warren winked. “I’ve got influential friends.”

  As Warren opened the door, a very thin Mexican man sauntered out to greet him. He was probably in his mid-sixties, small boned and benign, except for the enormous, mean-looking hawk that sat on his shoulder. “Buenos noches,” said the man in a deeply soporific voice—he could have been a jazz deejay, Zoe thought. Then the hawk screamed, causing Zoe’s nerve endings to freeze solid. She backed up until she was more or less hiding behind Warren.

  “This is Xavier,” said Warren. “The hawk . . . ¿cómo se llama?”

  “Pio.”

  “Pio is the hawk’s name. It means pious.”

  Zoe stared at the daggerlike beak, the eyes trained on her like bullet tips. “Thanks for telling me that,” she said. “I feel much closer to him now.”

  Xavier spoke to Warren in rapid-fire Spanish. Warren smiled and nodded. “¡Claro!” He turned to Zoe. “We can go on in.”

  They followed Xavier and Pio out of the parking lot, Zoe lagging a few steps behind for fear the hawk might suddenly decide she was crowding him and go straight for her eyes. “Don’t worry,” Warren whispered. “Pio is very well trained.”

  “He’s a predator,” said Zoe. “How do you train a predator?”

  An odd look passed through Warren’s eyes. “Good question.”

  Xavier flicked on a flashlight, and led them through a dewy green lawn that, like Warren’s and Vanessa’s gardens, had no place in a desert region. “Take your shoes off,” said Warren, and they both did, the grass soft and cool and sensuous against the soles of their feet.

  At the edge of the lawn were a series of stone steps leading down the side of a hill to a landscaped area—bright pansies circling fragrant patches of sage, oregano and cilantro. Xavier raised his arm and there was a great flapping of wings as Pio took off for the trees. They walked down, padding on more soft grass until finally they reached baths.

  Zoe had expected something like the Russian steam rooms on the Lower East Side—clinical and therapeutic, surrounded by white tile. This was more like the season finale of The Bachelor. A long, narrow natural pool wound into a cave, reflecting the moonlight, candles flickering around its edges. It was achingly romantic.

  Warren said, “The water in the mineral baths is very warm, and if you swim in them naked, it’s believed to make you young forever.”

  Xavier left, as if on cue. Zoe looked at Warren. “Should we test that out?”

  Warren pulled her to him, hooked a finger through one of the straps of her tank top and said, “No. No, I don’t think that would be right.”

  Zoe grinned. “I agree.” And within moments they were submerged in the soft, warm, soothing water, all their clothes—including Zoe’s ACE bandage—at the water’s edge.

  Enough had been said for the evening, so Zoe and Warren used lips and tongues and hands, but not voices. They didn’t think, either. They just moved.

  Afterward, Zoe and Warren slipped out of the water and padded over to a picnic blanket by the side of the baths, on which someone had placed a tray of chocolates, champagne, two large, thirsty towels . . . and a small velvet box. Zoe’s pulse quickened. “What is all this?”

  “The rest of your surprise.” She wrapped the towel around her body, popped a delicate piece of dark chocolate into her mouth and lay on her back, savoring the flavor and feeling the perfect air on her skin, gazing up at the stars. “This is wonderful,” she said. But in the back of her mind, she had a strange feeling, as if someone was watching. Pio screamed at them from the trees, but this was something else: the feeling of human eyes, trained on her. . . .

  “He was watching me.”

  “Who?”

  “Jordan’s murderer. When I was talking to Jordan by the fire that night. I could feel it. . . .”

  Warren said, “Don’t you want to know what’s in the box?”

  Zoe shook off the feeling. “Yes, please.”

  “Close your eyes.”

  She did. Soon, Zoe felt something smooth and delicate against her bare chest, Warren’s fingertips on the back of her neck as he fastened a chain.

  She opened her eyes, and saw a thin black cross resting between her breasts, a red stone glistening at its center.

  Zoe’s mind reeled as she gazed at this strange, sleek pendant, the same size as Vanessa’s silver cross, the same color as the dark wooden cross on Warren’s dressing room wall, the red stone in place of the red thorn-crowned heart. . . .

  “Do you like it?” said Warren. “It’s ruby and obsidian.”

  The pendant looked so strange on her—that strangeness compounded by Zoe’s heritage. Warren knew she was Jewish. Why had he chosen this for her?

  “I love it,” she said.

  “I knew you would.” Warren slid around in front of her, and kissed her deeply. She made herself stop thinking of crosses and secret clubs, or eyes watching them in the darkness. She made herself forget that moment in the car, when Warren had said of Patty Woods, Now she knows what it’s like to have a visitor disappear. Zoe made herself forget looking at his face and not liking what she saw.

  She forgot all of that, thinking only of Warren’s soft lips and the gentle lapping of the water and the cool obsidian against her skin. She had no use for the past.

  Zoe heard the sizzle first. Then she smelled smoke and only then did she feel the burn. It wasn’t supposed to work this way, but it was a dream, and Zoe was sleeping lightly eno
ugh to know that. That didn’t stop her heart from pounding, though. It didn’t stop her blood from running thin and cold like water as she looked down and saw the cross Warren had given her, saw it glowing orange, burning its shape into her chest like a branding iron, burning all the way through to her beating heart.

  Zoe’s eyes flipped open, and her hand went to her chest, even though she knew she wasn’t even wearing the cross. It was on the nightstand, coiled up next to the clock, which read one a.m. Warren had told her not to wear the cross until Rafael’s party the next night. And she hadn’t asked why.

  Why hadn’t she asked why?

  Warren was sound asleep. Zoe listened to that purring snore and watched his chest rise and fall with each intake of air, thinking how peaceful he looked, even after tonight. He had confessed to her. Warren, who never even talked about past girlfriends, had laid open his soul and revealed to Zoe the most difficult time of his life. He had told her about losing a friend—literally losing him—and blaming himself for his disappearance, just as she had blamed herself for the Barclay killings.

  At the time, she had been so grateful, she’d felt so close to him. But now . . . now, in the middle of the night with Warren asleep, clouds were parting in her head, and all she could think of was the coldness with which he’d talked about Patty Woods.

  Warren had this hold on her—this crazy, puppeteer-like grip—and it was only away from him that she could begin to see the strings. It was the sex—yes, of course it was the sex. But it was more than that. It was the way his gaze drilled into hers, the way he seemed to be able to climb into her head and bend her thoughts. He had told her he could fix her, and she had thought, Good! and When?

  Not How? Or What the hell are you talking about?

  Odds were, tomorrow morning they’d make love, and again, the strings would disappear. But now, Zoe thought, How could he hide a gun that long without knowing where it came from?