Total Victim Theory (42 page)

It's really a pretty obvious scare tactic. Pathetic really. An attempt to push someone into jumping to conclusions. As if Ropes wanted desperately to make me think he'd done something he hadn't. That he found it was not in his power to do.

And yet—this is just what it would be like to lose her.

For several minutes, I believed I had. Believed it deep inside me, though I wouldn't have admitted it. Even though a half-dozen absurdly hopeful thoughts filled my brain. I guess the mind must just be set up so it never stops grasping for hope.

In those moments when I was sure I'd lost her, I realized she's all I have. The fact stabbed into me like a blade right through the ribcage into the vitals. She's the one thing left that pins me to the world. Her little frame holds all the hope the world has left. The hope that was nearly lost with Lisa flickers on inside her, like a little candle held up to a great darkness. Danielle’s proof of the notion that love could drag itself out of that terrible dune, no matter how anyone tried to stop it, or kill it or cut it to pieces. She’s proof that nothing that was once beautiful can ever be completely erased.

Those were the worst moments of my life—when I was convinced she was gone. Those were dark thoughts that I don't want to have again.

Silva, pick up the fucking phone.

Danielle’s all I have in the world, and I do not know if I still have her.

The tears in my eyes make a blur of the dotted line.

The car weaves, almost out of control, as I keep looking at the phone, dialing and redialing the number. I keep listening to the mechanical pulses of the rings and the silence between them. As if I could hear something in those soundless intervals. Perhaps a voice, whispering to me like some blithe and fragile spirit.

Ringing. Ringing. Ringing. But nothing. Not even a voice-mail. Silva had voice-mail before. And with each ring, my thoughts grow darker.

Got to stay calm. Breathe. Don’t jump to conclusions. That's just what he wants you to do. Lose hope. To lose hope.

My body's shaking. Terribly.

I bring the car to a stop on the side of the road. I lower my head into my hands.

My body writhes in silent, microscopic convulsions.

My head brushes against the horn and the car gives a honk.

I let her down.

I let my baby down.

For several minutes, I sit like this. Finally, I sit up and dry my eyes with my shirt sleeve and pull back onto the road.

For a while, I don't dial the phone. I just leave it on the seat. Like I'm afraid of it. Like each unanswered ring reduces the probability that everything's okay.

I try to just shut off my brain for a minute. Let it all go staticy-white, like an old TV that's blown its vacuum tubes. So I can reboot. Regroup.

I’m back in the city now. Buildings. Traffic. Tail lights.

Got to figure out the best thing to do it. Figure out what I can still do to change the outcome. To shift the odds, however slightly, in my favor. Because it's not set in stone.

Good God, there’s no way it can end like this.

I tilt my head down slightly. As if I'm praying. I am praying. Feel my lips moving. Incoherent prayers, like the mutterings of a deranged derelict, scavenging for garbage.

One prayer to God and one to the killer.

I've got no faith in either of them, but it's time to start hedging my bets.

Okay, here’s the plan. I’ll go back to the hotel and get the new passport—I left it in the room with the rest of my stuff—and then I'll cross back into Mexico. I don't know where the safe house is, but someone at District C will know something. Will at least know where Silva is. And Danielle's still got to be in Mexico. It would have been too risky to cross the border with her.

But none of it makes sense. How could Ropes have figured out where Danielle was, with Silva taking every precaution to protect her? Unless the killer was watching every move Silva made as well. Or somehow shadowing the two officers guarding the safe house. But the killer would practically have to be a member of the force to get that close without anyone noticing.

I pull into the La Quinta Inn, park, and turn off the ignition.

My breaths come short and quick.

All the time I was driving, the flood of memories kept coming. Like murdered corpses slipping from their cinder blocks to bob and buoy and break the surface of a lake.

The faces. They are there. Before me. Just a bit too bloated, a bit too distorted, to make them out—they shimmer just beyond the reach of recognition.

I pick up the phone and dial Silva again. It rings and rings and rings.

There's one face that's so close to appearing—but another part of me is keeping it at bay. The way you'd ward off a vampire with a crucifix.

But, finally, there it is. Crisp and clear and undeniable.

A face.

These features haven’t altered much in twenty years. At least not so much as to cast their identity in doubt. Take away a few wrinkles and the facial hair and it’s a spot on match.

The face I’m picturing is that of Silva, my trusted friend.

I grip the steering wheel. So tight the knuckles whiten. The world is mute and solemn and execution-still.

I know what happens next. I understand. So well that what happens next hardly needs to happen. I stare at hands. My useless hands. Buying a few final moments, before my eyes must see it.

Finally, I take the key from the ignition, open the door, and step out onto the blank black asphalt of the motel parking lot.

I slowly and carefully close the door. As if that act, or any act, can have significance. I look at the key ring.

Two keys. One for the ignition, one for the trunk.

Silva made a point of mentioning it earlier. “The square one starts it and the round one opens the trunk.” That's what he said.

He just couldn't help drawing my attention to the trunk.

I walk around to the back of the car and insert the round key. My body moves as if it were on its own, an automaton in which I am just a passenger. I’m both within and outside myself. Witnessing and experiencing the strange fate that’s about to trap me, like an insect beneath a glass.

There's so much cause for hesitation, but I don't hesitate. I just turn the key.

Hope is so slender now it’s hard to see from sideways on. It’s a hope so tiny it rounds off to zero. A hope so tiny you might forget
to call it hope at all.

The door to the trunk goes slowly up and I look inside. And at that moment, all hope is gone.

53

El Paso

I lift my daughter’s body from the trunk of the Malibu and hold her in my arms. She's naked. Just a limp, willowy shape in the parking lot's faint, yellow light. I try to support her head, to hold it up with my shoulder. Like a pillow. But her neck bends back at a hopeless angle.

Her legs, dangling off to the side, end at the ankles. Her feet are an empty space she wears like a pair of blank, black shoes.

I can't bring myself to look at her face—to look her in the face. Fearing the other things that may have been done to her.

I carry her through the parking lot to the hotel. Like a father putting his sleeping child to bed. Just like the way I carried her that first night in Mexico.

A great numbness overcomes me. A wall that separates me from everything.

In the distance cars honk. Tires peel. In the distance.

My mind is skipping things. Not seeing all the steps in what’s happening.

In the hotel room now. Standing in the open doorway. Setting her body gently down on the bed. The bedspread is green and scarlet. It has peacocks on it.

Switch on the overhead light and shut the door.

The AC unit by the bed is running—I must have left it on before. The draft makes the curls of her black hair shift and wave.

Finally, I force myself to look at her face.

I guess this is the one thing left that can touch me. That can
steal me from the numbness.

Her eyes, of course, are gone. Beneath them, a dried residue. Just like Lisa had. A sediment that’s the sum of all her suffering.

Her skin has a blue, translucent hue from all the blood she lost. Her lips and her cheeks and her little ears are blue.

“I'm sorry, baby,” I whisper. Shuddering.

Somehow, this is still far away.

Far away. As if only my big toe were dipped into the cold reality. Only closing myself off from her agonies keeps me here. Let’s me hold it together. For if I felt all she endured, my mind would just unravel and blow away, like the silk of a dandelion.

I untuck the bedspread and wrap it around her. I don’t want her to be naked or cold. I smooth her hair from her face and arrange it behind her head.

My lips are whispering things. Wishing for things it's in no one's power to do or to undo. Muttering prayers that make no sense. Time runs in one direction, and no one can take away the coldness that's taken hold of her.

I have to turn from her. I stand and go to the window and look out.

The dim yellow parking lot.

The shovel has my fingerprints. The rope and her dress are in my car and I'm here with her body. Add to this that the Shermans saw me take her and it should be an open-and-shut case against me.

But this whole set-up is just a trifle here. What becomes of me doesn't deserve a second thought. So, all of Silva's planning and effort were wasted. He should have saved it for another victim—for all he could do to me was done, the moment her life ended.

This long, winding road of revenge has come to an end. I wonder how that feels for him. I wonder if he even gets any satisfaction from what he’s done. I mean, did he ever really give a shit about his father? Giving a shit about anyone doesn’t seem like a possibility for a mind like his.

But, then again, what do I know about him?

Other than that he’s bound to be close by. Peeping in the window to watch the grand finale. I'd bet my life on it.

I've got my gun. Right here. I could run around looking for him, shooting everything that moved. And maybe, just maybe, I'd
get him.

That's bullshit. He hasn't slipped yet, and he sure as hell wouldn't let that happen now. With it all in the bag. The truth is that I'm no match for him. For his scheming. My pathetic good can’t hold a candle to his evil. Should have just accepted the inevitable when that thought first crossed my mind. Would have saved me a lot of worry, knowing there was nothing I could do.

Who knows? Maybe he'll pop in at the last moment and kill me. Though there wouldn't be much point in framing me, if he was going to go that route.

Just stop thinking about reasons. Reasons are just distractions.

Everything that meant or could mean anything is dead. What's left is just life support. A drawing out of something that should have ended. What's left is just a tribute to him. To go on would be to show a complicity with all of this. To multiply these horrors in remembering and making others aware. Perhaps that’s just a part of what he wants—for me to survive as a legacy of this bleak triumph.

The only act that could have the slightest significance is to cut things short. To erase every trace of what’s happened here.

I kiss Danielle a final time.

The police and FBI have, I'm sure, already been tipped off to my whereabouts. Probably a convenient anonymous call placed by the true culprit. Within a few minutes I bet I'll hear sirens.

A few minutes is all I have to finish things. If they take me into custody, even that weak consolation will be taken away.

How to do this? Put the gun in my mouth? Bang. Blackness.

No. Too easy.

It would have taken hours for Danielle to die. As she cried out for someone and blood leaked out of her. Surely, a bit of suffering is in order for me. At least a minute or two, so that I get a taste of what I made her go through.

I have a better idea. Will end things with a bit of poetic justice.

I leave the room and walk back across the parking lot to the Malibu. The trunk’s still open, the keys dangling from the lock. I pull them out, open the passenger-side door and flip on the dome light. The blue dress and the coil of rope are on the seat. I grab them and return to the room.

I unroll Danielle from the bedspread and carefully help her
into the blue dress. Don’t want the police and everyone that swarms on the scene to see her naked. I make the bed and lay her down on top of the bedspread, her head resting on a pillow. I grasp her small blue-white hand in mine, then arrange her hands on her waist, one atop the other. I go into the bathroom and grab a towel from the rung by the sink. I wet it and go to her and wipe away the sediment below her eyes. I wipe it all off. Off the lids, and the lashes, and off her cheeks. And when you close her eyes, you can't even tell.

A picture of Lisa comes to mind. When she lay before me, much like this. With the stained handkerchief draped over her. Hard to believe that was just five days ago. Feels like a thousand years and a million miles away.

With a thought, I tell them both good-bye. Now it's done and we think of other things.

Scan the room’s low ceiling. There's a sprinkler head and a fire alarm and down the middle of the sheetrock surface runs a long, thin pipe—maybe for heating. The pipe's held in place by a series of metal mounts, with about an inch of space between it and the ceiling. As convenient a place as any to tie a noose.

Wonder if Silva planned it that way when he scoped the place out. Maybe suicide was on the agenda all along. That would explain why the rope was already tied into a lasso knot at one end. Ready for me to use it.

I thread the rope over the pipe, eyeball an appropriate height for the noose, and tie it in place. Then I take the chair from the desk and roll it under the noose.

A final glance out the window. Gnats swarm around the orange lights high above the parking lot. I draw the curtains closed and lock the door.

Stepping up onto the chair, I steady myself and slip the noose around my neck. At least I know this is good rope, equal to the task it’s charged with.

I give a curt nod. Not sure why or to whom—whether it's to Lisa and Danielle, or to myself, or to some hypothetical sliver or backwater of the world where something good still resides.