Dead on Delivery (18 page)

She shook her head, letting her hair spill over the scarred part of her face. “I took it.”

“Did he not want it?” It was possible. The Basajaun hadn’t exactly been chatty. He could have had less than honorable reasons for giving Ginnar that axe. I couldn’t figure out what they might be, but who knew what ran through the mind of a Basque Lord of the Woods?

“I think he might have wanted it.” Sophie chewed on her lower lip. Ben came in and plopped down on the sofa next to her, a piece of cold pizza in each hand.

I glared at him.

He got up, went into the kitchen and got a plate.

I turned back to Sophie. “But you’re not sure that Ginnar wanted the axe?” I was getting more and more confused.

“Not entirely.”

A vein in my forehead started to throb. I decided to share my pain. “You’re making my head hurt.”

“Well, stop giving me the third degree and let me explain what happened. You don’t have to make it into the Spanish Inquisition.” She threw her hands in the air in frustration.

I shut up, largely because I was speechless. Sophie had never spoken to me that way. I wasn’t sure if I should take her to task for insubordination or be relieved that we were actually communicating honestly. I decided on the latter.

“I drove the axe up to the Sierras like you said I should.” She sprang up from the couch and began to pace. Nervous energy flowed off her like hot caramel off a scoop of cold French vanilla ice cream. Ben watched her every move, looking like a spectator at a tennis match.

“Interstate 80 or Highway 50?” I asked.

She whirled and glared at me. Shutting up was so not my forte. “Fifty.” Her brows drew together for a second. “I don’t know why I chose fifty. I just knew it was the right way to go.”

I smiled. I knew that feeling. I pressed my lips together and tried to get better at the shutting up thing. It wasn’t bad to add to one’s skill set. Mae had often said that there was always room for growth.

“Anyway,” Sophie continued, “I felt it. I totally felt what you meant. I knew where I was supposed to take the axe. I knew which exit to take, and the farther I went, the more sure I was that I was going in the right direction.”

This time I didn’t try to hide my smile. “I know it’s freaky, but it’s kind of cool, too, isn’t it?”

She sat down again and grabbed my hands across the coffee table. “Totally cool. I could feel the axe’s power building. I could feel how much it wanted to be back with the person who owned it.”

I leaned forward toward her. “So why exactly didn’t you give it to the person who owned it then?”

She dropped my hands. “I’m getting to it. Jeez, you’re so impatient.”

I took a deep breath and tried to relax into the papasan chair.

“I pulled off onto this little road that went into the woods. It narrowed way down.” Sophie’s hands flew through the air. It was like watching an interpretive dance of her delivery.

“After about a mile, it really wasn’t much more than a dirt track. Then I saw this little turnout and I knew, I just knew, that was where I was supposed to be.”

I let her catch her breath and didn’t say a word although, quite honestly, it was killing me.

“So there I was. Deep in the woods. All alone. It was a little spooky, Melina.”

I knew that feeling, too. It didn’t lessen over time either.

“I got out of the car with the axe and walked into this clearing. There was nobody there. I sat down on a tree stump and waited. I guess I must have dozed off or something because when I woke up, I felt like my skin was on fire and there was this . . . this crazy-ass bearded thing trying to grab the axe out of my hands.”

It was a fair description of a dwarf trying to get something from you. Manners weren’t their best thing. “I’m guessing that was Ginnar.”

“Well, I’m guessing that right now, too, but he didn’t exactly introduce himself. He just tried to grab the axe.” Sophie stopped pacing and faced me, hands on hips.

“And you didn’t let him.” It wasn’t a question. I knew the answer.

“It was reflex!”

She was right. It was reflex. Try to grab something out of anyone’s hands, even a baby’s, and their knee-jerk reaction will be to grab it back. Try to grab something out of a Messenger’s hands and our better-than-the-average-bear reflexes will grab it back hard and fast. Try to grab something out of the hand of a Messenger who has been receiving martial arts training . . . well, I just hoped Ginnar didn’t need too many stitches.

“How bad did you hurt him?”

“I think it was only a flesh wound.” Sophie’s pretty face crumpled and her big hazel eyes started to fill with tears.

“It’s not your fault,” I said. “If he’d been polite and asked, it would have gone a lot smoother, now wouldn’t it?”

She nodded. “You’re not mad?”

“No.” I cringed inside. I’d made Sophie frightened of me. It hadn’t been my intention. It hadn’t been how I’d been taught, either. I had respected Mae. I’d wanted her approval and love. I’d been sad when I’d disappointed her.

I had never, ever been afraid of her.

I leaned back in the chair and took a good hard look at Sophie. I really wasn’t that much older than her. It was weird to be her teacher, her mentor, when I didn’t feel like I really knew enough to tell shit from shinola myself. I covered up my lack of self-confidence with a thick layer of sarcasm and sass. It had worked for me before, but I didn’t think it was so effective in the present situation. I decided to try a new approach.

“I’m sorry, Sophie. I suck at this.” Brrr. Honesty. It was a cold and heartless thing.

Her forehead creased. “What do you mean? You’re a great Messenger. Mae told me you were the best pupil she ever had.”

I felt my forehead bunch up to mirror hers. “When did she tell you that?”

“Before she, uh, you know . . .”

Before she died. Before she was killed. Before she was ripped apart by Chinese vampires at the behest of a San Francisco tong before my very eyes. Even Sophie shied away from saying it. The memory of that coupled with the idea that my teacher had thought that about me made tears well up in my eyes.

I don’t cry. It’s not my thing. I’m not saying I’m fantastically stoic and choke back sobs or rein in torrents of tears. They just don’t well up on me. I don’t have to blink them back. They never rise up. I had no idea what to do with them now. I was really falling apart.

“Are you okay?” Sophie handed me a tissue from the box on my own coffee table.

“Uh, yeah. Sorry.” I blew my nose. Sophie averted her eyes. “I didn’t mean I was a sucky Messenger, though. I think I’m a sucky teacher. It never occurred to me that I was going to have to teach this stuff to someone else. I barely have a handle on it myself.”

“You’re doing fine,” Sophie protested.

This was one of the things I hated about tears. They make people say and do things they don’t really mean. I know. They do it to me. Someone starts crying around me and I instinctively want to make them stop. I will do anything to make the water stop pouring out of their faces. I held up my hand. “Don’t,” I said.

She sat back in her chair. I got myself together. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me or to be afraid to tell me when something didn’t work out the way you planned. To be honest, things rarely work out the way I plan and I’ve been doing this for close to twenty-four years in one way or another. Can you find that clearing again? The one where you saw Ginnar?”

Sophie nodded. “I’m pretty sure.”

“Go back next week on the same day and at about the same time that you were there this last time. Do everything the same except lay the axe on the ground near you instead of holding on to it. Dwarves have miserable manners. They’re greedy and aggressive and grasping. He won’t ask politely for the axe. He’ll make another grab for it. You need to let him take it without hurting him or you.”

“Okay. I can do that.” She stood up and started out of the apartment, Ben right behind her.

“Sophie,” I said as she got to the door.

“Yeah?” She turned around.

“You did a good job. That was a big hurdle to let the axe guide you. You cleared it with no problem.”

Her shoulders straightened just the tiniest bit and I felt a little warm spot form in my heart. First tears and now warm fuzzies? I was totally losing it in my old age.

SOPHIE AND BEN LEFT AND I TURNED BACK TO THE PROBLEM AT hand. Who was making these dolls? I imagined there were a lot of people who weren’t all that happy to see Bossard and Rawley out of prison. They’d taken a man’s life and thrown an entire community into turmoil.

Who hated them enough to make those dolls and send them? Or to have them made or sent? There were a lot of services that could be had for a price. I was pretty sure that would be one. Still, whoever it was would have to know where to go to purchase those kinds of services and goods. That wasn’t something that every average citizen knew.

I wondered, too, about the Jorge Aguilar case. I should probably see if I could get in to talk to that Pelayo guy. He seemed to know a lot about it. Maybe he’d have some insight that would help me figure it all out.

My mind wandered as I thought about it. It had been nice to see Sophie walk out of here with her shoulders back. I remembered that sense of pride when Mae had told me I’d done a good job. My life had seemed so complicated back then. I’d had no idea how much more complicated it was going to get. I hoped like hell that I wouldn’t look back on this time of my life and think about how good I had it.

Sometimes, however, things were simpler than they seemed when you were in the middle of them.

That was the moment that it dawned on me. Maybe finding out who made the dolls was simpler than I realized. I’d delivered them once. Granted, there’d been an address scrawled on the label. Still, they were objects of power. Maybe the burnt legs of Kurt Rawley’s voodoo doll could guide me to the person I sought in Elmville.

In the meantime, I could drop by and chitchat with Luis, too. What could be better than killing two proverbial birds with one Messenger stone?

I grabbed my keys and headed to my car.

 

 

IT WAS SURPRISINGLY EASY TO GET IN TO SEE HIM. LUIS Pelayo had started a foundation to help immigrant families make the transition to living in America. All I had to do was intimate that I was working on a freelance article about immigration issues and his assistant set up an appointment for me immediately. I met him at the foundation office. It buzzed like a busy beehive with a little bit of happy Thursday afternoon giddiness added in.

“You led the protests when Judge Moffat made the decision to try the Elmville Three as juveniles,” I said. It wasn’t phrased as a question. It wasn’t exactly confrontational either. I kept my gaze right on Pelayo’s face. As an opening gambit, I didn’t think it was half bad.

“I did.” Pelayo leaned back in his chair. “I thought it was a travesty. Those boys murdered a young man in cold blood, just for the fun of it. At fifteen, they were damn sure old enough to know that it was wrong. It was an adult crime. It was a hate crime. It should have been tried as such. If it happened today, all three of them would have been tried as adults.”

“I believe you were arrested at the time.” Again, it wasn’t a question, just a flat statement of fact in a neutral tone of voice. I kept my hands down, my feet flat on the floor.

Pelayo smiled, his teeth shining white against his brown skin. “Inciting a riot. I paid a fine.”

“Did you? Incite a riot?” I leaned forward now.

Pelayo shook his head. “This town was a riot waiting to happen when that decision came down. Even the white folks were upset. No one wants to be from the racist town. They wanted—needed—those boys to be portrayed as a few bad apples that would be punished. Instead, it looked like they were golden boys getting a slap on the wrist.”

“And you were just the helpful guy who threw the match in the gasoline?” My tone stayed perfectly pleasant. If anything, I was being even more friendly and conversational than I was being before, but the words I was saying weren’t all that nice.

“There are all kinds of ways to help people.” Pelayo spread his arms out to indicate the space around him. “For instance, this place would not have been possible without the Elmville Three. In some ways, those three hate-filled, violent sociopaths were the best things that could have happened to the Latino community of Elmville.”

I blinked at that. “They viciously murdered a young man. How can that possibly be a good thing?”

Pelayo smiled that charming smile again, the one that made me want to finger a protection amulet. Or possibly see if he wanted to have a drink with me after work. Some guys just have it, you know? “When they made the decision to try those three boys as juveniles, the entire country was outraged. Money poured into the community from all over the world. Everyone wanted to help. There was no way I could have founded Projeto Latino without the funding that started coming in after the riot.”

“So it meant big money for you?” I asked.

“Me?” Pelayo held his hands up in protest. “Not me, per se. My cause? Absolutely. Look around this place. We are always busy. We help set up English tutoring. We help navigate the legal system. What those boys did was the essence of evil, but we turned it into something else here. We turned it into goodness. We’re on the side of the angels here and the Elmville Three made it possible.”

“So have you forgiven them?” I asked.

“It’s not my job to forgive them or not,” Pelayo said. “That’s between them and their gods. I know what they did was evil. I’d guess they know that themselves. It’s a matter of fact, if not public record. But let me tell you something else. What those boys did? It was like when there’s an infection under your skin and someone has to cut into you to let the disease out. What they did? It hurt. It hurt bad. In the end, though, it let the hatred out into the open. When you pull that stuff out into the sunshine, it can’t live.”