Brain Child (40 page)

“Okay. But if you need me, call me. All right?”

“All right.” And then, without saying anything more, Marsh closed the door.

Jim Cochran crossed the patio, and let himself out through the gate. As he got into his car, he waved toward the two policemen, and one of them waved back. Finally he started the engine, put the car in gear, and backed out into the street.

Thirty seconds later, as he neared the bottom of the hill, he passed another car going up, but it was too dark for him to see Alex Lonsdale behind its wheel.

Alex pulled the car off the road just before he rounded the last curve. By now, he was sure, they would be looking for him, and they would be watching the house. He checked the breech of the shotgun.

There was one shell left.

It would be all he needed.

He got out of the car and quietly shut the door, then left the road and worked his way up the hillside, circling around to approach the house from the rear. In the dim light of the moon, the old house looked as it had so many years ago, and deep in his memory, the voices—Alejandro’s voices—began whispering to him once more.

He crept down the slope into the shadows of the house itself, and a moment later had scaled the wall and dropped into the patio.

He stood at the front door.

He hesitated, then twisted the handle and pushed
the door open. Twenty feet away, in the living room, he saw his father.

Not his father.

Alex Lonsdale’s father.

Alex Lonsdale was dead.

But Ellen Lonsdale was still alive.

“Venganza … venganza …”

Alejandro de Meléndez y Ruiz was dead, as was Raymond Torres.

And yet, they weren’t. They were alive, in Alex Lonsdale’s body, and the remnants of Alex Lonsdale’s brain.

Alex’s father was staring at him.

“Alex?”

He heard the name, as he’d heard it at the Cochrans’ such a short time ago. But it wasn’t his name.

“No. Not Alex,” he whispered. “Someone else.”

He raised the shotgun, and began walking slowly into the living room, where the last of the four women—Alex’s mother—sat on the sofa, staring at him in terror.

Roscoe Finnerty’s entire body twitched, and his eyes jerked open. For just a second he felt disoriented, then his mind focused, and he turned to his partner. “What’s going on?”

“Nothin’,” Jackson replied. “Cochran took off a few minutes ago, and since then, nothing.”

“Unh-unh,” Finnerty growled. “Something woke me up.”

Jackson lifted one eyebrow a fraction of an inch, but he straightened himself in the seat, lit another cigarette, and scanned the scene on Hacienda Drive. Nothing, as far as he could see, had changed.

Still, he’d long since learned that Finnerty sometimes had a sixth sense about things.

And then he remembered.

A few minutes ago, there’d been a glow, as if a car had been coming up the hill, but it had stopped before coming around the last curve.

He’d assumed it had been a neighbor coming home.

“God damn!” he said aloud. He told his partner what had happened, and Finnerty cursed softly, then opened the car door.

“Come on. Let’s take a look.”

Both the officers got out of the car and started down the street.

Ellen’s eyes focused slowly on Alex. It was like a dream, and she was only able to see little bits at a time.

The blood on his forehead, crusting over a deep gash that almost reached his eye.

The eyes themselves, staring at her unblinkingly, empty of all emotion except one.

Deep in his eyes, she thought she could see a smoldering spark of hatred.

The shotgun. Its barrels were enormous—black holes as empty as Alex’s eyes—and they seemed to be staring at her with the same hatred as Alex.

Suddenly Ellen Lonsdale knew she was not looking at her son.

She was looking at someone else, someone who was going to kill her.

“Why?” she whispered. “Why?”

Then, as if her senses were turning on one by one, she heard her husband’s voice.

“What is it, Alex? What’s wrong?”

“Venganza
 …” she heard Alex whisper.

“Vengeance?” Marsh asked. “Vengeance for what?”

“Ladrones … asesinos …”

“No, Alex,” Marsh said softly. “You’ve got it wrong.” Wildly Marsh searched his mind for something to say, something that would get through to Alex.

Except it wasn’t Alex. Whoever it was, it wasn’t Alex.

Where the hell were the cops?

And then the front door flew open, and Finnerty and Jackson were in the entry hall.

Alex’s head swung around toward the foyer, and Marsh used the moment. Lunging forward, he grasped the
shotgun by the barrel, then threw himself sideways, twisting the gun out of Alex’s hands. The force of his weight knocked Alex off balance, and he staggered toward the fireplace, then caught himself on the mantel. A moment later, his eyes met Marsh’s.

“Do it,” he whispered. “If you loved your son, do it.”

Marsh hesitated. “Who are you?” he asked, his voice choking on the words. “Are you Alex?”

“No. I’m someone else. I’m whoever I was programmed to be, and I’ll do what I was programmed to do. Alex tried to stop me, but he can’t. Do it … Father. Please do it for me.”

Marsh raised the gun, and as Ellen and the two policemen looked on, he squeezed the trigger.

The gun roared once more, and Alex’s body, torn and bleeding, collapsed slowly onto the hearth.

Time stood still.

Ellen’s eyes fixed on the body that lay in front of the fireplace, but what she saw was not her son.

It was someone else—someone she had never known—who had lived in her home for a while, and whom she had tried to love, tried to reach. But whoever he was, he was too far away from her, and she had not been able to reach him.

And he was not Alex.

She turned and faced Marsh.

“Thank you,” she said softly. Then she rose and went to hold her husband.

One arm still cradling the shotgun, the other around his wife, Marsh finally tore his eyes away from the body of his son and faced the two policemen who stood as if frozen just inside the front door. “I … I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “I had to …” He seemed about to say something else, but didn’t. Instead, he let the gun fall to the floor, and held Ellen close. “I just had to, that’s all.”

Jackson and Finnerty glanced at each other for a split second, and then Finnerty spoke.

“We saw it all, Dr. Lonsdale,” he said, his voice
carefully level. “We saw the boy attacking you and your wife—”

“No!” Marsh began, “he didn’t attack us—”

But Finnerty ignored him. “He attacked you, and you were struggling for the gun when it went off.” When Marsh tried to interrupt him again, he held up his hand. “Please, Dr. Lonsdale. Jackson and I both know what happened.” He turned to his partner. “Don’t we, Tom?”

Tom Jackson hesitated only a second before nodding his head. “It’s like Roscoe says,” he said at last. “It was an accident, and we’re both witnesses to it. Take your wife upstairs, Dr. Lonsdale.”

Without looking again at the body on the hearth, Ellen and Marsh turned away and left the room.

María Torres drew her shawl close around her shoulders against the chill of the December morning, then locked the front door of her little house and slowly crossed the street to the cemetery behind the old mission.

The cemetery was bright with flowers, for no one in La Paloma had forgotten what had happened three months earlier. All of them were buried here. Valerie Benson only a few yards from Marty Lewis, and Cynthia and Carolyn Evans, side by side, a little further north. All their graves, as they were every day, were covered with fresh flowers.

In the southeast corner, set apart from the other graves, lay Alex Lonsdale. On his grave only a single flower lay—the white rose delivered each day by the florist. María paused at Alex’s grave, and wondered how long the roses would come, how long it would be before the Lonsdales, three months gone from La
Paloma, forgot about their son. For them, María was sure, there would be other children, and when those children came, the roses would stop.

Then it would be up to her. Long after his parents had stopped honoring his memory, she would still come and leave a flower for Alejandro.

She moved on into the oldest section of the cemetery, where her parents and grandparents were buried, and where now, finally returned to his family, her son lay as well. She stood at the foot of Ramón’s grave for several minutes, and, as she always did, tried to understand what part he had played in what she had come to think of as the days of vengeance. But, as always, it was a mystery to her. Somehow, though, the saints had touched him, and he had fulfilled his destiny, and she honored his memory as she honored the memory of Alejandro de Meléndez y Ruiz. She whispered a prayer for her son, then left the cemetery. For her, there was still work to be done.

She trudged slowly through the village, feeling the burden of her age with every step, pausing once more in the Square, partly to rest, but partly, too, to repeat one more prayer for Don Roberto. Then, when she was rested, she went on.

She turned up Hacienda Drive, and was glad that today, at least, she needn’t climb all the way up to the hacienda. It was empty again, and now she only went there once a week to wipe the dust away from its polished oaken floors and wrought-iron sconces. The furniture was gone, but she didn’t miss it. In her mind’s eye it was still as it had always been. Her ghosts were still there. Soon, she was sure, she would go to join them, and though her body would lie in the cemetery, her spirit would return to the hacienda which had always been her true home.

Today, though, she would not go to the hacienda. Today she would go to one of the other houses—the house where Alejandro had died—to speak to the new people.

They had only come to La Paloma last week, and she had heard that they needed a housekeeper.

She came to the last curve before the house would come into view, and paused to catch her breath. Then she walked on, and a moment later, saw the house.

It was as it should have been. Along the garden wall, neatly spaced between the tile insets, were small vines, well-trimmed and espaliered. From the outside, at least, the house looked as it had looked a century ago.

María stepped through the gate into the little patio, then knocked at the front door and waited. As she was about to knock again, the door opened, and a woman appeared.

A blond woman, with bright blue eyes and a smiling face.

A
gringo
woman.

“Mrs. Torres?” the woman asked, and María nodded. “I’m so glad to meet you,” the woman went on. “I’m Donna Ruiz.”

María felt her heart skip a beat, and her legs suddenly felt weak. She reached out and steadied herself on the door frame.

“Ruiz …” she whispered.
“No es posible …”

The woman’s smile widened. “It’s all right,” she said. “I know I don’t look like a Ruiz. And of course I’m not. I was a Riley before I married Paul.” She took María’s arm and drew her into the house, closing the door behind her. A moment later they were in the living room. “Isn’t this wonderful? Paul says it’s exactly the kind of house he’s always wanted to live in, and that it’s really authentic. He says it must be over a hundred years old.”

“More,” María said softly, her eyes going to the hearth where Alejandro had died so short a time ago. “It was built for one of the overseers.”

Donna Ruiz looked puzzled. “Overseers?”

“From the hacienda, before the … before the
americanos
came.”

“How interesting,” Donna replied. “It sounds like you know the house well.”

“Sí,” María said. “I cleaned for Señora Lonsdale.”

Donna’s smile faded. “Oh, dear. I didn’t know … Perhaps you’d rather not work here.”

María shook her head. “It is all right. I worked here before. I will work here again. And someday, I will go back to the hacienda.”

The last of Donna Ruiz’s smile disappeared, and she shook her head sadly. “It must have been awful. Just awful. That poor boy.” She hesitated; then: “It almost seems like it would have been better if he’d died in the accident, doesn’t it? To go through all he went through, and end up …” Her voice trailed off; then she took a deep breath and stood up. “Well. Perhaps we should go through the house, and I can tell you what I want done.”

María heaved herself to her feet and silently followed Donna Ruiz through the rooms on the first floor, wondering why the
gringo
women always assumed that she couldn’t see what needed to be done in a house. Did they think she never cleaned her own house? Or did they just think she was stupid?

The rooms were all as they had been the last time she had been here, and Señora Ruiz wanted the same things done that Señora Lonsdale had wanted.

The cleaning supplies were where they had always been, as were the vacuum cleaner and the dust rags, the mops and the brooms.

And all of it, of course, was explained to her in detail, as if she hadn’t heard it all a hundred times before, hadn’t known it all long before these women were even born.

At last they went upstairs, and one by one Donna Ruiz showed her all the rooms María Torres already knew. Finally they came to the room at the end of the hall, the room that had been Alejandro’s. They paused, and Donna Ruiz knocked at the door.

“It’s okay,” a voice called from within. “Come on in, Mom.”

Donna Ruiz opened the door, and María gazed into the room. All the furniture was still there—Alejandro’s desk and bed, the bookshelves and the rug, all as they had been when the Lonsdales left.

Sitting at the desk, working on a model airplane, was a boy who looked to be about thirteen. He grinned at his mother, then, seeing that she wasn’t alone, stood up. “Are you the cleaning lady?” he asked.

María nodded, her old eyes studying him. His eyes were dark, and his hair, nearly black, was thick and curly. “
Cómo se llama?
”
she asked.

“Roberto,” the boy replied. “But everybody calls me Bobby.”

“Roberto,” María repeated, her heart once again beating faster. “It is a good name.”