Total Victim Theory (38 page)

“But what if you're wrong?”

“Then, I'll be yours even in the ranks of death.”

He doesn't smile. “
King Lear
, right?” He pauses for a moment as if thinking. “Okay, here's one. Short but to the point.
Eyes look your last.”

His free hand moves to my shoulder and grips it like a vice. I try to pull away, but he's too strong and I barely budge. Now he grabs my left hand and gives my arm a powerful downward jerk.
My legs buckle and I collapse to my knees just to the right of the nightstand.

The movements happen fast, seemingly all-at-once.

Before I can blink, he's pressing my left hand down on the top of the nightstand. Spreads my fingers out so my palm's flat against the wooden surface.

“What are you doing?” I shriek, pulling away so fiercely it seems like it would rip my arm from the socket.

The knife hovers for a moment above my spread-eagled hand.

“No Chris,” I scream, as I realize he's lining up the blade. “Please no!”

When I see his eyes—the intention burning within them—I realize my faith has been misplaced.

Then with a simple, succinct motion, he brings down the blade.

A slicing sound and the noise of the blade hitting the wooden surface. A few tiny red freckles appear on his cheeks.

Just like that, my thumb and index finger are no longer part of me. I see them separate. I see a little gap hideously open up and begin to fill with blood. Even before I feel the pain.

Shrieking hysterically, I again pull away. This time he loosens his grip, and I topple backwards onto the floor, bumping my head against the bed frame.

I scramble to my feet—dizzy and swaying—and lunge toward the door. Blood spurts out of me in arched pulses. The camera angle of the world seems to zoom out and the sound track goes silent.

Chris takes a few steps back and places his hand on the closed door. I grasp the knob with my uninjured hand and furiously tug at it, but it's no use. Escape isn't happening.

I backpedal away from him until I bump into the wall. There I slump to the ground, my legs drawn up, and stare disbelievingly at my mutilated hand. Blood continues to dribble out in ultra-red tendrils that wind themselves around my forearm and drip off my elbow. I wrap the bottom of my nightgown around the wound to stop the bleeding.

I don't look over at him, as if by not seeing him, I can keep what's going to happen from happening.

Every cricket on earth holds its breath.

But I hope at least one angel has his fingers crossed for me.

A shadow falls over me.

But still, I refuse to look up.

He's waiting for me to say or do something. But I'm not going to. I'll wait him out. I'll win on persistence if nothing else.

Finally, I hear his voice, clear but quavering with emotion. “
Death is the mother of beauty
,” he says. “
Though she strews the leaves of pure obliteration in our paths, it is through her alone that we find fulfillment of our dreams and our desires
.” For a moment it's silent again. “Now how sure are you that I could never hurt you?”

An eerie serenity comes over me where the terror of all that’s happening recedes—and yet my mind stays clear. There's a feeling of near-clairvoyance, as if my brain had harnessed every bit of energy it possessed into a single brilliant burst of awareness.

The words I need to say are simply there. “
Love
,” I say, “
looks on tempests and is never shaken, but bears it out even to the edge of doom
.” I don't look up at him. “I'm still sure there's good in you.”

His shadow wavers. “
Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream
.”

Again, the words I need are just there. As effortlessly as if some prophet had sprinkled them on my tongue. “
The quality of mercy is not strained
,” I say. “
It droppeth like the gentle dew from heaven on those beneath
.”

He squats down before me. Tilts my chin up with his finger and brushes the hair from my eyes. “Look at me,” he says.

I do.

“You see the good in there, don’t you?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“You know what it is?” he says. “It's your reflection.” He turns the knife over in his hand and the blade's shadow twirls on the floor. “Here’s one of my favorites:
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. Mere chaos is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed
.” He speaks the words slowly, like a chant.

I feel the cold press of steel against my throat. A single point of pain, as the tip nicks me.

His breathing. Waiting for me to respond.

I swallow. Then reach up and touch his face.

He lets me.

Finally I say it. “
And everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned
.”

The words resonate and subside.

A heavy silence. Waiting.

The blade still pressed against my throat.

But now it goes away.

I'm looking down. I see his shadow rise. But then it freezes or falters.

And nothing

And nothing.

And nothing.

And then a dab of something wet on my neck.

Warm and heavy.

A single drop. In the hollow place where the collarbones meet—what should be blood with all the violence that saturates the air.

But if it blood, it's not from me. My hand's the only place I'm cut.

Now a second drop.

This time on my shoulder. It makes a tiny thump, as if it had fallen from quite a ways.

Now a third warm raindrop on my arm.

I look up. He's not watching me now. Just looking straight ahead.

His cheeks running with tears.

He sees me watching and he turns away.

In the distance, the faint drone of sirens.

The blade dangles at his side. He lets it slip from his fingers and drop. A carpeted clang.

He looks toward the sirens. They grow louder, but he doesn’t budge. I almost want to tell him to go. To just get out of here. This isn't the way things are supposed to end for him.

Finally, his shape moves.

For an instant our eyes meet in the doorway.

Then he's gone.

The sirens reach a bleak crescendo. And in the gaps between the blinds—urgent, grotesque flashes.

Part Three

The Cruelest Thing

47

Mexico

When I said the name
Raul Moreno
it was like flipping on the lights in the galleries of a sprawling museum. The longstanding darkness began to yield to these fluorescent flickerings. Whole wings of a lost self coming to light. Raul was once my name. I was once that boy—during that sunken, underwater life before I resurfaced that day in Baltimore General.

Already there are pictures of my family. A father and mother. And I think I had two sisters. We lived in a small place. With a town square and a garden shaped like a triangle. And a yellow church with a hundred steps leading up to it and a tall white steeple. The memories are images with feelings attached. But they don't come with tags or explanations—I guess I'll just have to sort them out myself.

And it seems like each moment I'm reclaiming more snapshots of that summer on Glattmann Ranch. I can see the cabin and the barn and the faces of the other workers. But of those horrors that Ramon just recounted, culminating in the fire that final, fateful day—the fire that scarred us all for life—I still have no memory. Nor can I clearly picture the people who committed these atrocities—Gary Glattmann and his fiendish sons, Tad and Luke. Their faces remain concealed in the smoky haze of my immemorial forgetfulness. These are the final missing gaps. For all I know those last recollections could finger the killer. But my brain, like an intimidated witness, refuses to give them up.

But just be patient, I tell myself. It's all raveling up and unravelling before my eyes. Coming together and falling apart. As
if according to plan. The rest of it will surely surface soon enough. Though the crux of the mystery be already at hand.

Glattmann Ranch.

The black hole at the center of all this. The black hole that's been pulling me toward it for years.

Ramon described roughly where it is. Just a few miles east of El Paso.

Funny that it's so close to where this all began. Surely that's no coincidence—that I woke up in Baltimore and found my way back, almost to the very spot. You would say I did it blindly, but maybe all the while I’ve been smelling my way along. As for these last gaps, my gut tells me that seeing the place will be the final coaxing my tight-lipped memory requires.

*

I bid Ramon farewell. It's a leave-taking that feels both new and old, familiar and strange. We both have tears in our eyes when I turn to go.

As soon as I'm in the car, I call Silva. The stakeout is a nonevent so far, he says. Ropes, showing his usual lack of courtesy, hasn't shown up for his own surprise party. Silva's officers at the safe house have been giving him updates every few hours. Apparently Danielle and Silva's daughter are as happy as clams in their posh hideaway, well on their way to becoming lifelong friends—just like their fathers. There are moments when I'm tempted to just drop everything and go to her. They hit me in a breathless, irresistible rush. But I promised myself that for her safety I'd wait until this is over.

Patience in all things.

I tell Silva some, but not all, of what I've learned. I tell him we've ID'd the ranch, and I toss him a couple of names to put alongside Adrian Caiman on the updated Ropes suspect roster. Those names being Tad and Luke Glattmann, two survivors of the fire and the two people most likely to have ended up in possession of the ledger after that fatal day. What I don’t tell him is what I've learned about myself and my father. Those are subjects I’m not ready to talk about with anyone.

“I'm on the hook till about six tonight,” Silva tells me. “What do you say you and I cross over in the morning and see if we can
track down that ranch?”

“You're not going to like this, Silva, but I'm just gonna tell it to you straight.” My tone is humorless. “I'm gonna do this one on my own.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” He says, sounding genuinely offended.

“This trip is something Ropes will anticipate. He left me the ledger because he wanted me to figure it out, knowing I'd eventually end up at Glattmann Ranch—”

“And that's exactly why you need backup.”

“Listen to me,” I say, firmly. “If something were to happen to me, that's one thing. But if something happened to both of us . . . there'd be no one I could rely on to keep Danielle safe.”

“Then let me go over with a couple of my guys and you stay put.”

“No way,” I say. “I'm not letting you or anyone take the risk in my place.”

“But it wouldn't be a risk if—”

“Just put a lid on it,” I say. “We don’t need any of your macho bullshit at the moment.”

Silva sighs. “So I'm just supposed to sit here with my thumb up my ass?”

“You’re on the stakeout.”

“The stakeout’s dead as a doornail and everyone knows it. The guy’s not coming back.”

“Actually,” I say, lowering my voice, “there's something I could really use your help with.”

“Name it.”

“With the warrant out, my passport is probably flagged by now.” I pause, knowing this is a lot to ask. “Do you think you can get me some new documents so I can get across?”

There's a brief silence.

“If you can't spring it, I understand . . .” I say.

“No, it's no problem,” he says at last. “I was just thinking about the best way. We have hundreds of passports in evidence—arrests from narco trafficking. It takes us about a week before we report them to border control. So I just need to find a fresh one that looks something like you.”

“How long do you need?” I ask.

“Are you wanting to cross over tonight?”

“Yeah, if you can swing it.”

“I get out of here at six,” he says. “I'll meet you in the lobby of the Ambassador with your passport at eight o'clock sharp.”

*

At eight pm on the nose, Silva walks into the lobby of the Ambassador hotel. He walks up to the couch where I’m sitting and passes me a manila envelope. “Passport's inside,” he says. “There’s some cash in there too. I figured they’ll be watching your credit cards, so taking out money might be risky.”

“That's way more than you needed to do,” I say.

“How do you plan on getting over there?”

“The Accord's in my name, so that's probably not a safe option.” I say. “I guess I'll take a cab across and then have to figure something out.”

Silva reaches into his pocket, pulls out a key ring with two keys on it, and places it in my hand. “Figured you'd need some wheels when you get over there. There’s a Chevy Malibu in the La Quinta Inn parking lot, just a few blocks over the border. Had one of my guys drop it off. The round key starts it and the square one's to the trunk. You've also got a reservation at the La Quinta under Emilio Sanchez, the name on the passport.”

“Thanks, Silva. I doubt I'll ever be able to repay you for sticking your neck out like this for me—but what else is new?”

“Just stay safe, so at least you'll have a chance to try.”

I look down, breaking eye contact with him. Suddenly, I'm choked up with emotion.

“What is it, Jake?” Silva asks, putting a hand on my shoulder.

“I know we talked about how this run to El Paso maybe isn't the safest thing I've ever done. Nothing's going to happen, but if something does—”

“Nothing’s going to happen. Don’t even say—”

“I know. But if it did, would you make sure Danielle’s safe? When all this blows over and they catch this guy, she can go back to live with the Shermans.”

“You don't need to ask me that, Jake.”

I give a nod. “I knew that's what you'd say.”

48

El Paso, 1992

Gary was pleased as pie with how things were going.

Talking to the spic turned out to be a pretty straight-forward affair. The idea was just to get him to chill out, so he didn't make a scene when the cop released him into Gary's custody. If he’d hollered or spit or taken a swing at Gary, it would have looked funny. The cop might have insisted on hauling the Mexican in after all or he might have gotten some notion that things weren't adding up and decided to poke his nose around a bit more. Obviously, that wasn't what needed to happen.