Heartless

by Alison Gaylin

  This morning, she had come to him, his Grace. She had stood before him, so real he could feel her breath. She had touched his face with her soft, icy hand. I miss you, she had said. And then she had offered him her heart.

  He gulped down more tequila, draining the bottle. Grace, Grace, Grace. My beautiful Grace, if only I’d had more time with you, if only my Grace, if only. . . .

  He would never forgive life for bringing him Warren Clark. Warren Clark had taken Grace away. They thought that they’d been hiding it from him, their affair. But he had known. He had let Grace stray with Warren because it made her happy. But how it had ripped Rafael apart inside. . . . Lying in bed, pretending to be asleep as she snuck in, late at night, telling himself, They’re just physical. We are so much more. . . . Who the hell did he think he was fooling? It killed him. He couldn’t help it. He was a man, after all. He’d imagine them together—Warren with his Grace. He would see detailed scenes in his head, and he’d feel tiny parts of himself twisting and twisting until they broke in two.

  When Grace had left life altogether, Rafael had blamed Warren for that, too. Warren had grown tired of her, Rafael could tell. He didn’t come into town as much, spent more time back in New York. And Grace looked so sad. Rafael would ask her what was wrong, and she would tell him she was homesick or she was thinking of a cat she used to own or she’d just read a troubling passage in one of her books, but he knew. He knew the woman he loved. Warren had moved on, and as much as Rafael hated the thought of them together, he could have murdered Warren for that. Poor, poor Grace . . .

  And still, Warren Clark wanted more.

  Warren had come to him this morning—in the flesh, following the lovely vision of Grace. “It’s time to hand over the reins,” he had said.

  “How dare you?”

  “Everyone wants me, Rafael. Half of them already call me Master. And now that I’m no longer working in New York, I can do it. I can take over.”

  Rafael had stared at him, thinking, How can he? After all I’ve done? But that was Warren. No conscience. No sense of . . . “What am I supposed to do?” he had said, hating the frail sound of his voice.

  “Retire. Relax. Paint.”

  “Get out.”

  “But, Raf—”

  “Get the hell out of my studio.”

  Rafael struggled to his feet, tequila and age weighing on him, his heart trembling in his chest. He placed his hand over his heart and tried to warm it, but his hand felt frail and cold, and he thought, Dear God. That’s gone, too. He could no longer heal. The shaman’s magic was crumbling within him, leaving him, just like everything else. Last night, he had even failed with Vanessa. . . .

  He walked up to the portrait. He stared at Grace’s lovely eyes, and he remembered how she had looked at him as he painted her that day—as if he were the only man in the world. He had really captured it, that look. His vision blurred with tears, until he could no longer see her.

  I should never have believed in him, I should never have followed the Master. I’m so, so sorry. . . .

  Zoe headed back toward Murillo, her heart smashing into her ribs, Vanessa’s voice echoing inside her.

  The Master. Not Warren or Señor Clark. The Master. Alma had said it very clearly. An English word, uttered by a Spanish-speaking woman who had looked evil in the face and suffered horribly for it. And the more Zoe thought about it, the more sense it made that Rafael had killed all of them. Rafael had lived here for twenty years. He was very powerful. He’d been angry with Jordan and Patty for learning—and threatening to reveal—the secret that Sangre Para La Vida was still meeting. He had motivation to kill them both. No doubt he had known Carlos for years. When Alma had seen the cross at Zoe’s neck, she knew what it symbolized. . . . If anyone in the world could convince a young boy to confess to a horrific crime he hadn’t committed, it was Rafael. Zoe recalled the power, the strange force Rafael was able to exert, even over her. A grown woman, bleeding and terrified and trying to escape from Las Aguas for all she was worth, and the sound of his voice had stopped her in her tracks. Imagine the effect he had on Carlos. Imagine how Alma had felt when he’d held his obsidian knife and . . .

  No. She couldn’t imagine that. Zoe would never be able to imagine that.

  He’d had motivation to kill Grace, too—it was obvious she’d been sleeping with Warren. And if Warren was truly missing and had not just disappeared for the morning, Rafael had motivation to do that, too. Years of it. Zoe hoped with all that she had that she wasn’t too late. . . .

  In moments, she would knock on Patty Woods’s door. She would convince Mateo to follow her across the street to Studio Rafael. She would demand that Rafael tell her what happened to Warren, and then she’d leave him to the federales.

  She passed through the jardín without even glancing at La Cruz. She was over it, just like she was over the rainbow doors and the goblinlike gutters and the winding cobblestone streets and the jacaranda trees and the ridiculously lush gardens and everything else about this pretty blood-bath of a town.

  When she reached the western end of the jardín, she noticed a thick crowd of people starting to gather. She would have thought it was yet another fireworks celebration, only it was still daytime and everyone looked agitated. Over and over again, she heard, “¿Qué paso?” She weaved her way through the group. Once she was on the sidewalk, she saw what had drawn them all: about half a dozen squad cars jammed together toward the end of Patty Woods’s street, their lights flashing furiously. The cars were clustered at the entrance of Studio Rafael.

  Zoe ran across the street. The gallery door was open, and so she rushed in, ignoring shouts of “¡Permiso, señora! ¡No entres!” The gallery was empty, but she heard noises coming from the kitchen—men’s voices, the crackle of radios.

  She ran for it, slamming into a cop as soon as she made it through the door. “Usted necesita irse ya,” he said. But then Zoe felt a hand on her shoulder, and when she turned, she saw Mateo. “What happened?” she asked.

  He gestured at the floor, and then Zoe saw what looked like a river of blood, pooling out from under the sunroom door. “Suicide,” he said.

  Of course it had happened in the sunroom. Zoe stood there, next to Mateo, the smell of blood and gun oil and spent ammunition in the air. Rafael shot himself, she kept thinking. Rafael shot himself. . . .

  Zoe was aware of a plainclothes detective asking Mateo in Spanish who she was, what she was doing there. She heard Mateo telling her, “You must leave now,” but she couldn’t reply, couldn’t speak at all. She couldn’t stop staring at the suicide note taped to the bottom of Grace’s blood-spattered portrait, next to Rafael’s signature.

  Goodbye, my children. I am sorry.

  I ended the lives of Grace, Jordan, Patty and . . .

  —R

  “Zoe,” Mateo said, “you must . . .”

  At the bottom of the page was a tiny arrow. Zoe moved toward the note, grasped it with the tips of her thumb and forefinger.

  “Do not touch that!” the detective shouted in English. “It is evidence!”

  The other side of the note read, Look in the refrigerator.

  Zoe headed for the kitchen, the detective hurrying past her. He threw open the refrigerator and they saw it immediately—in a plastic sandwich bag atop a paper plate, wedged between the Tupperwared remains of last night’s hors d’oeuvres. Zoe’s head swam, and she gagged, tasting bile in her throat. She spun around as the detective called out, “I think we have found Señora Woods’s heart.” The police raced into the kitchen, knocking into her, pushing her aside. Zoe couldn’t stay in there anymore. It made no sense, she knew, to be hurrying back into the room with the dead body, but somehow a whole body was easier to handle.

  He took her heart back to his studio. He put it in his fridge.

  Rafael’s bloody, destroyed body was lying in front of the fireplace. Zoe stared at it . . . maguey spines in the right hand, gun in the left, the barrel lolling out of the hole that used to be his
mouth.

  The barrel of a Glock .45.

  Zoe walked toward the body. Without touching it, without looking at the destroyed face, the shattered skull, she simply stared at the serial number: 074764. Easy to remember . She began to shake, then tremble. And then she cried.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Like everything else in San Esteban, the police station had a somewhat magical look—bright tiled floors, desks carved with images of Aztec birds, glass doors overlooking a lush garden—no doubt fertilized by the comandante with sacrificial blood. But it was all lost on Zoe. She had just been questioned in the apparent suicide of the man many considered responsible for the town’s magic. And she didn’t think it was a suicide at all. Rafael was Warren’s rival. He was killed with Warren’s gun.

  But he had left a note, said the detective who questioned her. And there were no signs of a struggle.

  Zoe’s gaze had gone from the detective to the comandante standing in the corner, saying nothing, his eyes downcast, his fists clenched. “There were no signs of a struggle with Jordan Brink,” she said. “There were no signs of a struggle with Patty Woods. . . .”

  “She is right,” the comandante had said in English. “We must look into all possibilities.”

  They were finished questioning Zoe, but she wasn’t ready to leave yet. Where was she going to go—back to Warren’s? What if she found him there? What would she say? As she sat on a bench by the front desk, next to Vanessa, who was crying quietly on the shoulder of her niece, it seemed to Zoe as if some kind of curtain had been yanked away. The spell had been lifted, the magic of her four-month relationship literally shot to hell.

  Every bench in the place was filled, with many more sitting on the floor or leaning against the walls—Rafael’s followers and the morbidly curious, most everyone shell-shocked or gasping from sudden grief.

  Dave was leaning against the wall, his face bright red, tears streaming down his face. He looked like a different person—miserable, human. He locked eyes with her. Zoe mouthed the words, I’m sorry. He looked away. Robin stood next to him, her arm around his shoulders, tears on her cheeks. Zoe waved to her, but Robin gave her a strange look, her gaze darting evasively, as if she felt guilty for something. . . .

  The comandante walked into the room, and stood in front of them. “I am very sorry for your loss,” he said. “But you all must leave. We appreciate your help, and will call you with any questions, but for now we are considering Señor Rafael’s death both a suicide and a confession of murder.”

  The crowd started to disperse, but Zoe rushed up to him. Amazing how much life could change in a few hours. Last night, the comandante had held her down while a cult leader had cut her chest with a knife. Now the cult leader was dead and the comandante was her only ally, and she was more afraid of her lover of four months than she was of this flat-featured man who had shoved his fist in her mouth. “I thought you said you were looking into all possibilities,” she told him. “I thought you said Rafael would never kill himself. . . .”

  The comandante’s eyes were sad, resigned. “We have a witness,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Him.” He looked toward the front door, at a slight, black-haired man who stood talking to Robin, Vanessa and Naomi. When he turned slightly, Zoe recognized his face. “His name is Xavier Vega,” said the comandante. “He runs Las Aguas. He says he dropped you off at your house last night after . . .” He looked slightly embarrassed.

  “Yes.”

  “He says he was about to drive away when he saw another car pull up. He says he saw Rafael go into the house. . . .”

  “He did?”

  Zoe headed toward Xavier. “You saw Rafael going into Warren’s house?” she asked. But he just gaped at her.

  “Xavier doesn’t speak English,” Naomi said. “But he just got through telling us the same thing. He saw Rafael go into your house. And he was concerned because of what had happened earlier.”

  “I’m so sorry, Zoe,” Vanessa said.

  “And so he stuck around and waited, to make sure you didn’t get hurt. But Rafael left about five or ten minutes later.”

  Xavier nodded. “Rafael salió de la casa con una arma.”

  Zoe stared at Naomi. “Did . . . did he just say Rafael had a gun when he left Warren’s house?”

  “Yeah,” said Robin, who still wouldn’t look Zoe in the eye. “That’s what he just said.”

  “Well, then,” said Zoe, “I have one question.” Her gaze went from Vanessa to Naomi to Robin. “Where the hell is Warren?”

  Vanessa said, “We have no idea.”

  Someone tapped Zoe on the back. She turned to see a familiar-looking young officer—not Mateo, but one of the two smokers who had been standing with him at Patty Woods’s house. “Se llama Zoe Greene?” he asked her.

  “Sí.”

  He said something to Zoe in Spanish, too fast for her to understand. Vanessa said, “He said there is a man waiting to see you.”

  Warren, thought Zoe, but then the man emerged from the cluster of people behind them and rushed up to Zoe and said her name himself.

  “Steve?”

  “You’re okay. Oh, thank God!”

  Zoe saw the overnight bag he was holding and she was too grateful to ask questions. She started to introduce him to everyone, but she figured that could wait and just threw her arms around him. She buried her head in his chest, and inhaled the clean laundry smell of his oxford shirt, able at last to breathe, really breathe.

  Steve was saying, “I went to the police station as soon as I got into town because I was afraid you were . . . God, I’m so glad you’re okay. . . .”

  Robin cleared her throat, and Zoe pulled away. “This is Steve, who is . . . wonderful,” she said.

  “Well, we’ll let you guys catch up.” Naomi looked at Steve. “Can you give me your cell phone number, in case Warren calls Zoe back? Her battery is dead.”

  “No kidding,” said Steve. He handed Naomi a card.

  As Zoe and Steve headed out of the police station, Steve said, “Listen, this might freak you out, but I found out Warren is a member of a very strange cult. It’s called Sangre Para La Vida.”

  “Oh, man,” said Zoe, “are you ever in need of an update.”

  Zoe and Steve stopped at a coffee place around the corner from the police station. It was called La Paloma and it was very charming, with embroidered lace draperies and tables of carved wood, but Steve wasn’t paying attention to the decor. Zoe ordered them both black coffees, and caught him up, more or less, on the past three days. As she talked, he grew increasingly pale and his jaw tensed. By the time she got to the ritualistic bloodletting and then the discovery of Patty’s body, he was looking at Zoe as if he were praying that at any moment, she was going to point out a hidden camera and tell him that he’d just been punk’d.

  “Are you okay?” Zoe asked.

  “Am I okay?” He stared at her, his head shaking slightly in either amazement or admiration or a combination of the two. “I would say my okayness is pretty irrelevant.”

  “Yeah, well, you know what, Steve? If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all this, it’s that if you bury your head in the sand and you don’t pay attention to the news and you don’t ask questions—especially if asking questions comes as naturally to you as breathing—then . . .”

  “What?”

  “Then a whole lot of weird shit is going to happen to you.” Steve grinned. “I hate to say I told you so.”

  “No, you don’t hate to say that at all.”

  Steve started to say something else, but then his mouth snapped shut.

  Zoe realized he was staring at her cross necklace. “Oh, this,” she said. “Well, Warren—”

  “I’ve got to show you something.” Steve removed a small steno pad from his shirt pocket and handed it to her. “Morrison and Barbara are letting me keep it for a few days.”

  “Who?”

  “Jordan Brink’s parents.”

  “What?”


  “It was found in his travel backpack. He wrote that . . . when he was here the last time.”

  Zoe stared at the writing. SPLV IT IS STILL HAPPENING! She stared at the black cross with the red dot in the middle and the two lists of names. “I think I might know,” she said slowly, “what these lists signify.”

  Steve looked at her.

  “I think they’re sacrifices . . . people under thirty-five who were repeatedly bled out as part of this cult Warren belongs to. I think the question marks lived . . . and the x’s didn’t, but . . .”

  “Look at the last name on the question-mark list,” Steve said. “Turn the page.”

  Zoe’s eyes widened. Her mouth dropped open. “Tiffany Baxter?”

  “He was going to take her to Mexico, but then her parents found out,” said Steve. “That’s what got him fired.”

  “So I was plan B.”

  “Apparently . . .”

  All she could do was sit there, staring at the name. Tiffany Baxter. All those months, blushing at the sound of Warren’s name, all those months needing him to the point of addiction, of thinking only of him, and at the same time, the exact same time, he was trying to convince a fifteen-year-old girl to let him ceremoniously cut her. “I was really stupid.”

  “You’re never stupid, Zoe,” Steve said. “He just never deserved you, that’s all.” His gaze lingered on hers for a full five seconds. In Zoe’s body-language course, she had learned that anything over three connotes romantic interest.

  She found herself looking right back.

  Steve said, “I need to tell you about the first name on the X list.”

  “Nicholas Denby?” said Zoe. “He was Warren’s first visitor.”