Category Five, page 13
“Sam, I think my uncle might be in trouble.”
“What? How?”
“Javier overheard some cops talking about how if he doesn’t solve these crimes, the governor and the police commissioner were going to fire him.”
He sighed. “I was afraid something like that might happen.”
“What? Why?”
“My father has a lot of money invested in this venture, and he will do whatever it takes to protect it. And he has a lot of political pull.”
“How much pull?”
“Like, all the way to the top.”
“Not our paper towel–throwing president?”
Sam nodded. “They play golf together. He’s a member at Mar-a-Lago.”
Lupe’s head started to throb. This was so much worse than she thought.
“You okay?”
She hadn’t realized how long she’d been silent until she saw Sam’s concerned face. “Oh, yeah. It’s just…” She turned around to face him. “You know that point in The Walking Dead when you stop worrying about the zombies and realize the living people are actually the biggest threat?”
“Not my favorite show, but I think so.”
“Kind of feels like that’s where we’re at now. The ghosts are the least of our problems.” It was then that she realized something without a doubt: a serial killer had left the heart in her bag.
A human serial killer.
Chapter Twenty
Javier
JAVIER HAD WATCHED Sam and Lupe walking around the property from the vantage point of his work area. He guessed that the prince was showing the fair maiden the breadth of his holdings.
Everything the light touches is my kingdom.
Javier snorted, then looked around to make sure no one saw him cackling to himself. His coworkers already thought he was a weird, angry loner.
Actually, they’re probably right.
But Sam really bugged him. That level of wealth was just not necessary. At one point he watched Lupe throw back her head of honey hair and laugh, like she was in some kind of shampoo commercial.
The whole thing was nauseating.
It was a good thing his job that day was whacking the soil with a garden spade, breaking it up and loosening it so it was ready for sod placement. He was able to spear his anger right into the ground and imagine it dissipating like ripples in a pond. The owners would get their perfect grass so they could act as if the hurricane never happened—wouldn’t want the guests to see anything unfortunate!—and he could take his frustration out on the ground. Of course, that made no sense either: this poor island had been through enough.
He got lost in the work and the day sped by. There was something so satisfying about working the soil—like going back to our beginnings. He loved having the sound of the surf as a constant accompaniment, the midday sun warming his skin. It was as the sun was beginning to sink toward the horizon that he was picking up his tools and materials to stop for the day. He had an armful of implements when he noticed movement over in the trees next to the opening to the private beach.
Who was over there?
The rest of his coworkers had already knocked off for the day. He had only stayed late in the hopes of avoiding Lupe and Sam.
He tried to ignore it, but then he heard a shushing sound, like something being dragged over sand.
Was it the ghosts again? He looked around. No, he didn’t think it was dark enough for that. But wait, why would it need to be dark for them to appear? Was that just in the movies?
Javier gently placed his stuff on the ground and contemplated running. He remembered the torn and skeletal faces of the ghosts, the moaning that formed ice in the pit of his stomach.
He looked around again, frantic.
No one.
Not a soul.
He really was out there alone. He thought of the dark, wet heart in Lupe’s bag.
No one would even hear him scream.
Scraping sounds, the rustle of dried fronds on the ground.
Javier’s heart pounded in his chest. His mouth was dry.
“C’mon, man. Calm down.” His voice sounded thin, unconvincing, but he made the decision to go check out the noise, wondering in that exact moment if it was a really stupid idea. It always was in the movies, wasn’t it? But he was no coward. He bent down and quietly picked up his hand tiller from the pile of gardening implements. The long-handled tool with its sharp spikes at the end was an ideal weapon. Wouldn’t help much with ghosts, but he felt better with it in his hands.
He crouched and tiptoed over toward the beach, staying close along the strip of bushes and small, young palm trees they’d planted the week before. What was he doing? He was no cop. Christ, he could barely take care of himself! But he forced himself to keep going, his fingers white from his tight grip on the wooden handle of the tiller. He almost laughed out loud. He must look ridiculous! But his sense of self-preservation kept him quiet.
Just before he reached the opening to the beach, a shadow lengthened in front of him, and he jolted backward. He hadn’t been imagining things! There was someone there. But who? Reflexively he put his hand over his heart, wanting it to stay in his chest.
Voices, tinny voices.
It was the blurt of a police radio.
What?
A huge flood of relief washed over him.
It wasn’t anything supernatural. It was someone who worked with the police. But in his life that wasn’t exactly a comfort either: until Esteban Dávila the police hadn’t given him a warm and fuzzy feeling of protecting and serving. Then he remembered what Lupe had said about a possible serial killer, and something about Torres. He would have to check it out anyway, but at least he had a chance against a human. After last year’s rumble with El Cuco he wanted nothing to do with the supernatural.
He pushed a few branches aside so he could see who was rustling near the sand.
He saw the top of a bald head shining in the setting sun, ringed with short, white hair, sweat snaking down the pale brown flesh of the man’s skull. Whoever it was wiped his face and head with a cloth handkerchief, hands shaking. When he put a hat on and turned around, Javier recognized Captain Torres’s reddening face. What was he doing over here looking so nervous? Had Lupe been right? Was he a … serial killer?
Javier ducked a bit to make sure the older policeman wouldn’t see him. Torres was pulling a small motorboat farther from the water and into the bushes, talking to himself in a string of muttered words. Then he looked around, finding the coast seemingly clear, and started back toward the opening in the trees, out of breath from just walking across the sand in his shiny police dress shoes. How could a person who was that out of shape manage to be a police captain? And how would he have the energy to cut a heart out of someone, let alone five someones?
Still, Javier knew from personal experience when a man was up to no good.
Chapter Twenty-one
Lupe
DRIVING BACK TO the condo that evening, Lupe and her uncle both seemed to be lost in their own thoughts. She’d spent the day with Sam, eating lunch at the spa, driving around the property in a golf cart, even playing a quick game of tennis on the brand-new courts (badly, though he was patient with her; tennis was not her game). It truly felt like she was playing a role after the events of the morning, but she needed to be occupied when someone found the backpack.
At two o’clock the call from her uncle had come. They had found something at their condo, and did she know where her backpack was? She told him she’d lost it and he seemed to accept that. But he was moving them elsewhere, and he wouldn’t pick her up until later that afternoon.
Sam had been a very gracious host, and she tried her best to relax, but, truth be told, even Sam seemed distracted. For Lupe, it was finding out about the threat to her uncle’s job that ensured she thought about little else.
Her uncle’s phone rang. No, it really rang. He’d programmed his flip phone with that old-fashioned phone ring that sounded like a dentist drill and a shrieking banshee had a baby.
“Dávila. Yeah … a boat? No. Call if you see anything else. Bueno.” Click.
Her tío’s conversations were like shorthand, or something. “What’s up?”
“That was Utierre.”
Her throat tightened. Why was Javier calling her uncle? Did he tell him about the heart? No, he was too calm for it to have been about that. But then what? She had to play this carefully. She worked at making her voice sound casual. “Oh yeah? What did Javier want?”
Her uncle looked over at her through narrowed eyes, like he totally saw through her faux-casual ruse. “He saw Torres dragging a motorboat into the bushes at the resort.”
“Hernán?”
Her uncle shook his head. “No, his father. Javier said he looked like he was up to something, but I told him I didn’t think that’s anything to worry about. The man is a clown, but he’s not dangerous.”
Lupe said nothing. Their little encounter during the ride from the ferry hadn’t felt exactly safe. But now wasn’t the time to have that discussion. Sitting next to him, all she could think about was the threat to his job. She knew Esteban hated prying—he was a private-type creature like her father—but there were questions eating at her from inside like termites. She had to ask, but she was unsure how to best approach it.
She coughed. “Tío. Do you ever get tired of your job?” Sure, it was roundabout, but she had a plan.
He looked over at her with his half smile in the darkening of the car. “Seguro, of course. I think everyone does sometimes. Why do you ask?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I wondered what you and Titi would do if you weren’t a cop anymore.”
He was silent for a few beats, then said, “I don’t know, I suppose I’ve never considered the possibility. I’ve been sure of this path since before I was your age.”
Okay, the conversation was only making her feel worse, but she had to go on. “But what would you do? For work, I mean. Would you retire?”
A scoff, like she’d proposed he put lobsters in his ears. “Sobrina, as your grandfather Carl always said, ‘you stop working and you die.’”
“Um, but isn’t he … like … dead?”
“Exactly my point!” He smiled. Then he sighed. “Well, your aunt has always been after me to move to Miami and work with her brother.” A laugh, then he shifted his focus to a snarl in traffic due to loose chickens running to and fro in the road.
She looked out at the chickens, running with their ridiculous gait. “Looks like Vermont. But we have to wait for cows to cross the road.”
“Well, that happens here, too, but less frequently, I would imagine. Chickens, however, are everywhere. And these do not appear in any hurry to ‘cross the road.’” He laughed his deep, rolling belly laugh that she loved so much.
But Lupe just stared out the window. She didn’t feel like laughing, even at the hens running back and forth in a flurry of feathers. Coming down to this place every year, staying with her aunt and uncle, was what got her through the school year. It just wouldn’t be the same in Florida. Florida? Ugh.
They finally were able to move, and slowly rolled into Esperanza, to the little hotel her uncle had moved them to. She looked at the storefronts shuttered for the night, the men playing dominoes on folded tables outside the open-air bar, their laughter ringing out into the night. She smiled at the old couple rocking in their chairs on the front porch of a little house, the conversation as leisurely as the evening heat, and at a passing car blaring the latest reggaeton hit into the air, the windows thumping with the bass line. The waves kissing the shore beyond the malecón. There was something about this place that spoke to a part of her that hadn’t awoken before last summer, something she didn’t want to lose.
* * *
She had just climbed into bed with the latest thick Chuck Wendig fungal pandemic novel when her phone buzzed. Marisol. When she answered she could hear the line was clear and crackle-free.
“Hey! You have good cell service! You must be in San Juan.”
“Yes, I’m back in civilization. For the night, anyway. I was doing some research into the situation out there.”
Marisol wasn’t a small-talk type. It made Lupe smile.
“Something Quiñones said has been bothering me,” she continued.
“Everything that man says bothers me. What in particular?” Yeah, no way she was going to tell her about the backpack on the phone. She’d wait until they saw each other in person. Maybe she’d wait even longer.
“What he said about the land not being blocked off for natural conservation. I did some digging and came across some things that don’t make sense. There’s this retired naval officer, a Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Jones, I think we should talk to. He still lives on the island, never left. Something weird went down and I think he knows what it is.”
“Yeah, the navy pulled out.”
“Right, but why?”
Lupe reviewed what she knew. “The protests?”
“No, I think something else happened, and this Jones guy might know about it.”
Something to do! Thank goodness. If there was one thing Lupe detested it was inactivity. “Great! When you comin’?”
“I think I’ll take the eight a.m. ferry in the morning. It’s going to be a zoo, thanks to the resort opening, and they don’t let nonresidents bring cars on a regular day. Can you or your uncle pick me up at the boat dock?”
Chapter Twenty-two
Marisol
MARISOL HAD TO park far away from the ferry terminal in Ceiba. The public lot was full to overflowing with cars and it was only 7:30 a.m. She had to navigate through boxy news vans and hundreds of protestors, their signs, clean and smelling of recently applied paint, balanced on shoulders as they slowly made their way with the crowds merging onto the ferries. The worst were the giggling teenage Papi Gringo fans, T-shirts featuring Carlos’s face tight across their breasts, their eyes hidden behind overpriced Papi Gringo brand sunglasses.
Damn.
Didn’t they know the island was in turmoil?
Actually, Marisol was torn between being pleased to see them acting like normal teenagers and returning to normal life after the nightmare that Maria brought, and newly disappointed that they hadn’t all become activists fighting for what was right.
Okay, so she knew that was far-fetched, but a girl could dream.
Three ferries came and went, people stuffed in like sardines, before Marisol finally was able to get on a boat. After Maria they didn’t even have all the regular ferries back in service, but the developers had brought in private ferries from Florida, so they had extra ones running for the grand opening. Too bad they couldn’t use those resources to help Puerto Rico when there wasn’t money to be made. Sigh. But between the people on the line and the people on the ferry, she had filled almost all the pages of her petition. She hated approaching strangers, but her counselor said human contact was good for her. She preferred dogs.
There wasn’t anyone who looked like a VIP among the other ferry riders. No surprise there. They were probably on the small private planes and buzzing helicopters that would start coming to and from the island like bees to a hive in the midafternoon. The rich, famous, and political had to sleep off their hangovers first.
She was wondering how she would find Lupe in the bedlam of disembarking when she saw her pony-tailed head near a police cruiser with its blue lights blazing. Marisol smirked. She could never lose Lupe in a crowd. As she walked over, she saw her friend talking to a short but handsome officer, his face lit up in the way that men and boys tended to do when they talked to Lupe. As far as Marisol could tell, they never hit on her openly—Lupe was not exactly approachable in her snowy Vermont winter kind of way—but when she was nice to them it was like the sun was shining on them alone.
But a cop? Not exactly her type. Lupe tended toward the bad-boy variety. She was going to have to get the scoop on this situation.
Lupe saw Marisol and literally skipped up to her, messy ponytail bouncing. She threw herself at Marisol and hugged her hard. Oh great: another hug. As if they hadn’t seen each other in months instead of just two days ago.
“Okay, that’s enough hugging. Hell, you’ve used up your quota already and it’s been less than forty-eight hours!” Marisol pulled back with a smirk, but when they separated, she could tell something was wrong. When Lupe was worried her forehead did this crinkly thing, right between her eyebrows. Marisol looked over at the way-too-cheery cop standing next to them. She’d have to ask her later when they didn’t have surveillance.
He greeted her in fluent and respectful Spanish. “Marisol, this is Hernán—I mean, Officer Torres.”
Hernán, huh? He looked like a gringo but spoke Spanish without an accent. Yeah, she would have to get the scoop. And she would have to stalk him on social media just to be sure.
Then Torres put out his hand and she shook it, watching the surprise in his eyes at the firmness of her grip. Her brother, Vico, had taught her how to shake hands when she was little. He used to say, “You gotta know how to navigate the world, Mari. Don’t take shit from anyone, you hear me? I won’t be around forever to defend your ass.” Of course, he was the one who gave her the most shit, and then he starting dealing drugs and got himself killed by the boogeyman.
Won’t be around forever.
No shit, hermano.
Torres retrieved his hand with an awkward head bob, then turned to Lupe. “You sure you don’t want me to drive you two wherever you’re going?” He gestured around to the mass of people flowing past them, then put his hands on his gun belt in stereotypical cop fashion.
Lupe smiled, but it didn’t go to her eyes. It was her wary smile. “No, thanks. We’re just going to do some sightseeing.”
Sightseeing? Lupe never did sightseeing. They weren’t sightseeing types.
“But I grew up here. If you want to tell me where you’re going, I can act as a tour guide.”
“Really, we’ll be fine. Thank you.” The “thank you” smacked of finality, conversation over, y punto.
