A Fierce and Subtle Poison (10 page)

“Do you want to take a walk?” I offered. “I can show you some great places around town.”

The two of us were halfway through the lobby when I heard my dad call out my name. I could tell by the direction his voice came from that he was in the “library,” a rarely used room just off the front entrance that had very little to do with the actual storage and enjoyment of books. It was more like an Old World man-cave, housing clusters of broken-in leather chairs, an antique pool table that no one was allowed to touch, the stuffed and mounted carcasses of various animals in “lifelike” poses, and my dad’s personal stock of scotch (which was safely secured in a cabinet to which only he had the key). The only time he ever went in that room was when he was trying to impress someone.

I promised Tara I’d just be a second and headed over to the half-open set of twelve-foot-high, seventeenth-century wooden doors. When I entered the room, I saw that my dad wasn’t alone. There, settled across from him at one end of an overstuffed brown leather couch and holding a snifter of brandy, was Dr. Rupert Ford.

The color in both his and my dad’s cheeks indicated that they’d been in high spirits for a while. Sitting there, both impeccably dressed and getting sloshed on a bottle of liquor that probably cost more than three of Carlos’s paychecks combined, the two of them looked like old friends. For all I knew, they were.

“Son!” My dad set his glass down and leaned forward as I stepped into the room. “How are you doing? Have you heard anything about your friend’s cousin? Clara, was it?”

“Celia,” I replied, trying not to stare at the doctor’s long fingers curling around the short stem of his snifter as he swirled the amber-colored liquid. “And, no.”

“Your father’s told me what you’ve been going through the last few days.” Dr. Ford lifted the thin glass up to his mouth and took a sip, wincing from the alcohol burn. “Loss. Grief. Sickness. So unfortunate.”

The silence that followed stretched to an uncomfortable length.

“So, Lucas,” my dad eventually said. “Rupert came over to tell me that you paid him a visit recently.”

Shit.

“Apparently you’re interested in studying botany.” He looked over at Dr. Ford and chuckled. “That’s news to me.”

I cracked a knuckle as I tried to come up with a decent response.

“Yeah, well when you asked about college visits the other day, it got me thinking,” I said. “Since I like it so much out here, I thought it might make sense for me to stay for college.”

My dad’s eyes shimmered, I hoped from the booze and not from some newfound fatherly pride. In a way, I was disappointed he couldn’t see through my flimsy attempt at deception.

I went on. “Science seemed like a good idea. You know, because of all the nature.”

All the nature
. What a dumb thing to say.

Dr. Ford thought so, too. He again brought the snifter up to his lips, though now he was visibly sneering.

“I think that’s great, Lucas!” My dad picked up a large leather-bound book from one of the side tables and held it out to me. “You couldn’t have picked a better mentor. I asked Rupert to bring over one of his manuscripts so that we could add it to our library. I also took the liberty of having him inscribe it for you.”

Once the book was in my hands, I turned to the blue cursive on the title page. The handwriting was similar to, but not quite the same as, Isabel’s.

To the young Michael Knight. Best of luck with your scientific endeavors. Warmest regards, Rupert Ford III.

“It’s apparently groundbreaking stuff,” my dad added.

Dr. Ford shook his head and put up his hand in a show of false modesty. “It’s a minor text. I wrote it when I was a young man not much older than Lucas here. It’s about Puerto Rico, naturally, and all the species of poisonous plants that grow on the island. They’re my specialty, as you know. And while it may not be as exciting as the things most young people read today, it’s still relevant to your burgeoning interest.”

“Thanks,” I said, itching to get away. My dad and Dr. Ford together, acting all buddy-buddy—it was not something I wanted to see. “Can you just leave it here?” I handed the book back to my dad. “I’ll come back and look at it later.”

“Sure, Luke. You on your way out? Rupert and I were just about to head over to the restaurant and have dinner. We wouldn’t mind if you joined us.”

I tried not to smirk as I thought about just how much Rupert Ford would mind if I joined them for dinner.

“I’m good. Hey, I heard Mara Lopez has been around here asking questions about me.”

My dad grunted. “That foul woman. Some people here just have it out for people like us.”

“It’s true.” Dr. Ford nodded. “Distrust is embedded into their culture—particularly distrust of foreigners of a certain means.” He turned toward me and held up his snifter. “Take care, then, Mr. Knight.”

I took that as my cue to leave.

As I closed the door behind me, I heard, in addition to the clinking of glasses, my dad asking the doctor if he cared for another nip.

I needed Tara to forget, and to regress. So, as promised, I took her around to the best of the old Spanish-style buildings and snapped a picture of her in front of the statue of Ponce de León. After that, I led her down to the footpaths outside of El Morro and showed her the old mangrove trees.

It was all going well enough until I made one major mistake. We were walking along the waterfront when I asked Tara if she’d ever thought about jumping into the ocean water and swimming until she sank. Once the words left my mouth, she stopped and stared at me like I was demented, and as I studied her face by the blood-orange light of the setting sun, I tried not to picture her hair, wet and tangled in my toes, or her dead eyes fixed on the moon. It was impossible.

I wasn’t surprised when our date ended there, even though my original plan was to lead her back to my room in the hopes of drinking stolen wine until our thoughts and lips and fingertips grew numb and we fell into each other’s arms.

Instead, I went back to my room alone and lay awake for hours, trying and failing to fall asleep. This made sense, given that I’d been unconscious for three whole days.

Eventually, I went downstairs and paused in front of the library, picturing the expensive scotch behind its doors. Maybe my dad had left his liquor cabinet unlocked.

No such luck. I stayed in there anyway, taking a seat in one of the plush leather chairs and staring at all the books I’d never read. Dr. Ford’s was still out on one of the side tables. I snatched it up and flipped to the title page. Above his signature was an incomprehensible title about tropical flora. If I couldn’t understand the title, there was little hope in me getting through the rest.

On the next page was the dedication:
To Zabana. There is nothing in this or any world strong enough to divide us.

Zabana. The woman who must have given Isabel her dark features. I skimmed past the table of contents to the first lines of the first chapter:

Hot as a hare, blind as a bat, dry as a bone, red as a beet, and mad as a hatter. Doctors memorize this phrase to aid them in identifying the symptoms of poisoning. It is true that many of the
solandra
species of poisonous tropical plants native to the island of Puerto Rico, such as cup of gold, have long been used for ceremonial and hallucinogenic purposes. There are descriptions in the diaries of the Spanish settlers of the Taíno ingesting cup of gold during their religious ceremonies. The natives would report developing fevers, having blurred vision, desperately needing water, and undergoing vivid, psychotropic experiences.

“Tell me about it,” I mumbled.

These sensations, however, have little to do with any kind of spiritual experience. They are merely the result of changes in brain and body chemistry brought about by poison.

The chapter continued, but I stopped and turned to the index. The specific plant that I was looking for was discussed on page forty-eight.

Legend dictates that lions eat the flowers of the columbine during the spring mating period to give themselves extra vigor. Therefore, some people have taken to rubbing the petals of the columbine against their bare skin when they are in need of a touch more courage.

Columbine has also become a popular symbol for ingratitude or forsaken love, and thus it is fitting that Ophelia mentions the flower (among many others, of course) in Shakespeare’s
Hamlet
.

As intriguing as these stories may be, they are just that: stories. They are invented and passed on to mask the realities of poisonous plants and their effects on humans, for it is not remarkable if one merely is sick; he or she must be lovesick. Nor is it enough that a man have innate courage; he must have obtained it from some magical source.

I shut the book and carried it upstairs, but when I tossed it on my bed, it fell open to a page near the middle that had been marked with what on first glance appeared to be a roughly two-inch-wide green-and-yellow bookmark. It didn’t take me long to realize, however, that it wasn’t a bookmark, but a smashed segment of a leaf from the dumb cane plant that I’d seen sitting near the Fords’ doorstep. The fact that its colors were still fresh and vivid and it gave off an acrid scent told me it had been recently torn from its stem.

Was this some kind of a threat? Had Dr. Ford found out about my recent tumbles into his house and was letting me know—
again
—to stay away from things that were, as he’d put it, a “bit of an irritant”?

Like I cared.

I used one of the pillowcases to take the leaf from the book and place it on my nightstand. Then, finally surrendering to the reality that this would be a sleepless night, I headed out into the drizzle. I’d eventually head to Festival de San Juan. But first, I had to stop and see a saint.

Fourteen

AFTER SAINT PIUS
died in Rome during the second century, his hair and nails grew to great lengths and his corpse was sealed in wax. Then for whatever reason, Saint Pius’s mummified, wax-covered corpse took a trip across the Atlantic Ocean and ended up in a glass casket in middle of the San Juan Cathedral.

There are lots of saints there; their freaky wood and plaster likenesses watch over the space and care for the prayers that live as long as the little red candles stayed lit.

But Saint Pius isn’t made of wood or plaster. His weird, shrunken body is actually there—along with his ghost, if the stories are true. His leatherlike skin and brittle bones are perfectly preserved, along with the light brown hair that falls over his shoulders. When I was a kid, I would tiptoe up to his glass coffin and stare, waiting for his fingers to twitch. They never did. His permanent immobility gave me the creeps way more than if he were to suddenly sit up and turn his head to look at me.

I’d lit three of those little red candles—one for Sara, one for Marisol, and one for Celia—and had taken a seat in one of the pews within view of the saint—just an eyelid twitch would do—when I heard the clicking of footsteps coming down the aisle. Whoever it was scooted down the row directly behind mine, and sat down. The wood squealed. A Bible was lifted out of the compartment on the back of my pew. I could hear its pages swish as they were flipped.

Then, there was my name, spoken in a raspy whisper: “Lucas.”

I turned and came face to face with Detective Mara Lopez. As always, her black hair was pulled away from her face and slicked down.

“You remember me, don’t you?” She smiled with her thin, red-stained lips and then opened the flap of her dark trench coat in order to flash her badge. “From last summer? We spoke again the night you found Marisol Reyes, though I don’t blame you if you don’t remember that last encounter. You were pretty shaken up.”

Shaken up.
That was putting it mildly.

“I remember.” I tried to keep my voice low but was still on the receiving end of a sharp look from an old lady kneeling in one of the pews in front of me.

The detective leaned forward and rested one of her hands on my shoulder. The crimson color on her fingernails almost exactly matched her lips.

“What are you doing here?” She nodded in the direction of the prayer candles. “Paying your respects?”

“I missed Marisol’s funeral.”

“Yes, I noticed that.”

Something hung between us in the silence that followed, like static in the otherwise stale church air. Why would she notice that I missed Marisol’s funeral? Why would she care?

“Is there something I can help you with?” I shifted in my seat. “I have to be somewhere in a little while.”

“Ah, yes.” She clucked her tongue and nodded. “The festival, right?”

With her hand still on my shoulder, she leaned in closer as if to tell me a secret. Her clothes gave off the slightly sour smell of cheap fabric having been worn too long and too often.

“I just need a moment . . . ” She held up her other hand and pinched the air with her pointer finger and thumb, “. . . un momento—of your time. We can just walk down to the plaza together, if you don’t mind?” Her eyes darted over to a flower-draped statue of Saint Mary. “This place has too many sets of ears, if you know what I mean.”

She stood and began to make her way down the pew and toward the aisle. I let out a long, loud exhale and followed.

It was only after we were both outside and walking through the drizzle on near-empty streets that I asked how she knew where to find me.

“I usually find the people I’m looking for in one of two places: in church or at a bar. And apparently you don’t have a cell phone.”

“I do back in Houston.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “But I never bring it to the island. What it is you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Marisol Reyes.”

“Okay. But I don’t know what I could say that I haven’t already said before.”

Sighing, she stuffed her hands in the pockets of her coat. “I knew you’d say that, and I know this must be difficult for you. So, here it is. As you probably know, the official story is that Marisol drowned. Aside from being washed up the way she was, the autopsy report came back saying that there was a large amount of water in her lungs.”

The detective paused, giving me the chance for that to sink in. From where we were, the music from the festival was rising into the night sky. I could hear the sharp, low pops of drums.

“And?”

“And . . . ” She looked down at the cobblestones and furrowed her brow. “I’m not so sure about that. At the station, you said something about her neck and face being covered in sores.”

I stopped and turned to face the detective. She was short, shorter than I remembered, but in that moment she commanded space like someone twice her size. Her jaw was clamped tight as if her mother taught her that if she couldn’t say anything nice, she shouldn’t say anything at all.

“I said
what
?”

Detective Lopez reached into her coat, pulled out a small pad of paper, and flipped through its pages.

“Yeah. Here it is.” She tapped a red nail against the pad. “When asked to describe the condition of her body, you said, and I quote, ‘I could only see parts of her—like her neck, throat, and face and fingertips, but they had sores on them, like the kind you’d get from rubbing up against poison ivy or something.’ ” She glanced up, cocking her eyebrow. “You don’t remember saying that?”

I resisted the urge to scratch at my own skin. “No. I was kind of disoriented that night.”

“Believe me, Lucas, I understand,” she said. “And normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal. I mean, bodies in the ocean come in contact with all manner of natural and unnatural objects, and when they wash up they’re typically bloated and nearly unrecognizable.”

In the attempt to erase yet another sudden, unsettling vision of a dead Marisol, I slammed my eyes shut and pressed my palms into my eyelids. We were now just a block away from the festival. The drums were louder; their sound bounced against the sides of my skull.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“Yes.” I opened my eyes and swiveled my head around to see the detective stabbing the air with her pointer finger. “Good question.”

Together, we rounded the corner and entered the Plaza de Armas. It was exploding with life—a far cry from the hushed and nearly vacant church we’d recently left. There had to have been hundreds of people there, all shouting and laughing over the sounds of clinking beer bottles and drumbeats. Rows of white string lights hung overhead. Pink and purple paper lanterns tilted in the breeze. Over by the fountain, near where I thought I’d seen Marisol on the night of the hurricane, four women were dancing a bomba to the beat of the drums. They clutched the folds of their long, full banana-yellow skirts, exposing their expanse of fabric. They stomped and twirled and arched their backs the way bullfighters do when they strut for the crowd and taunt their bulls.

A little girl about Celia’s age ran in front of us. She held a red ribbon high above her head. It fluttered in the air like her own personal comet.

Detective Lopez leaned in so I could hear her over the crowd noise. “I wanted you to know that, as far as I’m concerned, Marisol’s case is still open. Same goes for Sara Fikes. Both of the girls were found in the same general area, and they were in a similar physical condition. What you said that night—about their bodies—got me thinking these cases might be more than your standard-issue drownings.”

Mara Lopez paused again, this time to size me up with her clever, searching eyes. I knew she was gauging my reaction, studying the ways my facial muscles twitched, taking mental notes. It was obvious she’d not just found me out to relay information. She wanted something from me; she thought I was guilty of something; she’d always thought I was guilty of something. In her eyes, she was a hammer, and I was that one stubborn nail that would never slam into place.

“I never said anything about
their
bodies. I only saw Marisol’s. You said on the news that her condition was consistent with that of a drowning victim.”

“I did say that, didn’t I?”

“So what happened?” I demanded.

“I’m still working on figuring that out, but in the meantime, if there’s anything you can remember—anything that pops into your head—that Marisol might have said or done that could help me out, be sure to let me know.”

My response was flat, short: “I’ve already told you everything I know.”

She cocked her head, sharp like a marionette. “Well, you may think that, but there’s this thing called repression. We see it a lot with witnesses. It’s like you forget certain . . .
details
about an event, especially if those details are desagradable.”

“I know what repression is.”

“Is that right?”

Yeah, that was right. And I hadn’t forgotten any of the details about that night, particularly the desagradable ones. I couldn’t forget them if I tried.

She reached into her coat again, this time to produce a business card. Several seconds passed before I took it and shoved it in my back pocket.

“Just think about it,” she added. “You’d be surprised how even the smallest detail can crack a case.”

Just as she said
crack
the crowd erupted into applause: The bomba had ended. The dancers in front of the fountain stood frozen in triumph.

“Is that it?” I shouted over the applause. “People are waiting for me.”

“Your friends? I spoke with a couple of them. Ruben Reyes said you have a temper. That you broke down his door.”

What the hell, Ruben?

At this point I had choices: I could act meek, apologetic, shake my head regretfully and say that she and I got off on the wrong foot, that I wasn’t the insufferable snob she thought I was, that when it came to me and my dad, the apple fell far, far from the tree. Or, I could tell her to back the hell off, that I just went through a trauma and wasn’t going to play the part of the villain in whatever bullshit narrative she was constructing. Or, I could choke down my pride, force a smile, say thanks, tell her I would call if and when any deep, dark memories resurfaced and then wait for Mari and Sara’s cases to close so I could get on with my life.

“Is everything all right, Lucas?”

“Fine,” I said, looking La Lopez in the eyes and matching her patronizing grin with one of my own. “I’ll be sure to let you know if I remember anything.”

I should’ve just stayed home. Even at one in the morning and with the light rain, the plaza was packed; bodies were crammed up against each other and into every conceivable space. Normally, I would’ve loved that, the wild crush of humanity, but that night it felt like I was drowning.

After Detective Lopez left me, I milled around the edges of the crowd for a while. Just before the band kicked into a new song, I turned at the sound of a shrill whistle. It was Rico. He was waving his right arm over his head to try and get my attention from across the plaza.

I sized up the number of bodies between myself and Rico and sighed. As I pushed through, the crowd seemed to give off a collective rumble. Fingers hooked my clothes. Arms and legs in mid-twirl flew out in front of me, whacking against my shoulders and my shins. The mingled, cloying scents of cheap cologne, sweat, and spilled beer flooded my nose.

A woman laughed, high and loud, to my right, causing my head to snap in that direction. There, through the tangle of arms and legs and long skirts, I thought I saw a dark figure in a narrow alley between two buildings. I stopped and squinted.

It was Dr. Ford. He was crouched down in front of the little girl I’d seen earlier, the one with the red ribbon. But now, instead of being displayed proudly in the air, the ribbon was hanging limply down by her side. Dr. Ford, dressed just as he had been earlier in the library, in his brown herringbone suit and dark wide-brimmed hat, was talking to the girl. She was smiling as if she knew him.

“Lucas!”

I spun around to see Rico. Next to him was Carlos. They both had bottles of beer. Rico’s looked fuller, so I grabbed it from him and took a long pull.

“Let’s get out of here!” Rico hollered as he paddled his arms through the air, in a motion I took to mean that he wanted to head to the beach. “This sucks! Too many people!”

He’d read my mind. The heat coming off the crowd was making me feel as if my fever was flaring back up, and I craved the shock of jumping into a cold ocean.

Rico turned and began digging through the crowd. Carlos gave me a shove, my cue to lead the way through the masses.

“Lucas! Lucas Knight!”

I stopped short at the sound of Rupert Ford’s unmistakable voice, which caused Carlos to slam into me from behind and spill his beer all over my shirt.

“Damn, Luke! Watch it.”

“Go with Rico,” I shouted, after turning to see Dr. Ford cutting through the crowd. “I’ll find you guys at the edge of the plaza. Don’t leave without me.”

Carlos shrugged before going on.

As Dr. Ford got closer, I noticed the flush in his face and the moisture that rimmed his red eyes. He was still drunk. But beyond that, he was furious—his jaw was clenched, the skin there pulled tight. The cords of his neck bulged.

He stopped in front of me, not bothering to hide his derision as he looked me up and down. “Is that a new shirt?”

An unexpected tremor rattled up my spine. I didn’t even have to look to know that I was wearing the shirt Isabel had let me borrow the night of the hurricane. Housekeeping must have taken it and washed it and put it with all my other clothes while I was sick. I reached up and felt around the collar, and sure enough there was the mend.

“You are such a fool,” Dr. Ford hissed. “The more you come around, the more attention you draw, and the more suspicious people get. You realize that if these people find out about her,” he said, his eyes scanning the crowd, “they will draw certain conclusions. They will take either her or me away, and she will die. Is that what you want?”

“I wasn’t planning on . . . ” I stammered.