Category Five, page 18
“Madre de Dios,” the chief said under his breath.
Lupe’s eyes grew wide. “Tío! That’s why he got to the crime scene so quickly!”
“Who?”
“Hernán.” Then she stopped, her head whipping around. “Wait, where’s Marisol?”
An officer standing next to them leaned in. “The dark-haired girl who was with you? I saw her over that way with Torres.” He pointed toward the beach and then turned back to what he was doing.
“The captain?” Lupe and Esteban said at the same time.
“No, Hernán.”
Lupe and her uncle took off, running at top speed toward the back, leaving Javier and his aching head standing there in shock.
Chapter Thirty-one
Marisol
MARISOL WAS DREAMING of her mother. Well, not really dreaming, but in that twilight before unconsciousness she could see her. Not in the exhausted and wasted state she was in before she died, but rather the stylish, edgy version of her youth. Her face was floating above Marisol’s, dark curls cascading on either side like curtains. Her mother was trying to get her up for school, but Marisol couldn’t get her limbs to work. She tried to say so, but her thoughts wouldn’t come out of her mouth. Then the hair shimmered and changed color to blond and Lupe’s face was above hers. That’s when Marisol realized Dream Lupe was shaking her, yelling “Get up!” in Marisol’s face. Then she was rising, the surface of consciousness closer and closer above her head until she burst through, saw Hernán above her, his pale face red and twisted in exertion and hatred. She felt the burning pressure around her throat and remembered.
He seemed surprised to see her revived, so she took that opportunity to shove him off with her knees, pushing him backward into the sand. She punched him across the jaw, a loud crunch echoing and a spray of blood flying as she wound up for another. She was going to beat him across his face until he passed out, then she might keep beating him, until …
Wait.
Years under El Cuco’s curse, her homeland ravaged by storm and forgotten, Marisol understood anger. But this guy … he was trying to kill hundreds of people. Didn’t he deserve to die? Regardless, she needed to know the answer to one question.
“Why?” she bellowed into his face, pulling him up by the shirt.
Hernán moved his jaw from side to side, blood spread across his cheek, trailing into his hair. “You, of all people, should understand! They’re ruining this island!”
“Me, of all people?”
“I looked you up. You’re an activist. You know what they’re doing to our island? Like my father always said, they’re taking the heart of our island! He didn’t have the guts to do anything about it, but I do!” His eyes were almost spinning in his head. “They needed to pay!” Spittle gathered on his lips.
“Just who is ‘they’ in your tiny mind?”
“The gringos! The colonizers!”
“What, like your mother?”
His face grew even darker. “If I could expunge all my mother’s blood from my veins, I would! She … well, you can’t imagine the things she did to me.”
Marisol laughed. “Oh, I bet I can! You’re not the only one who had a difficult childhood, pendejo! And you’re not killing just the gringos with this violence! There are thousands of Puerto Ricans, many from right here on Vieques, out there! You ripped the hearts out of half a dozen people, you psychopath!”
“Sacrifices must be made. And you can’t tell me that you don’t think they deserved it! Each of those people was selfish and greedy and you know it.”
“Yeah, I do know it. But did they deserve to die?”
“Yes!”
“Maybe, but you can’t be the one to decide that! Who are you to be judge, jury, and executioner?” She saw the weird glow from his eyes, his expression getting stranger as they spoke. She knew that look. If the heart ripping wasn’t enough, this would prove her supposition: this dude was pure evil. But she needed a new strategy. She needed to find out where the bomb was.
“They did deserve to die, you’re right.” She nodded as if she agreed. “So, you put the bomb in the audience. Garbage can?”
He scoffed. Amazing he could still be arrogant while being held down by a girl who weighed 110 pounds soaking wet. “Of course not. I’m not a savage!”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “So you’d want to put it where you’d get the maximum impact. Bet they won’t find anything under the grandstand. You must have been too smart for them.”
He smiled, seemingly grateful that someone finally appreciated his plan. “It was really so simple! The grandstand is made up of hundreds of metal tubes. A strategic placement right in the middle will be the most effective at obliterating as many targets as possible. Those seats will be filled with men in power, men who are destroying our island for their financial gain!”
“Oh, like your great-grandfather?”
A look of confusion clouded Hernán’s eyes.
“You see, I looked you up, too, Hernán Torres. Your paternal great-grandfather brokered the damn deal to sell off the island piece by piece after the last category-five hurricane. According to your standards, colonizer blood runs through your veins from both parents! God, all this violence to get back at the colonizers, and you are the colonizer!”
A beat. Then she could see the wave of confusion pass over his eyes, “No, my father said they stole the heart of the island, he said—”
“He probably felt guilty! And I’m sure he didn’t feel good about whelping a psychopath either!” She laughed, knowing she was poking the bear, part of her wanting to.
He looked at her again and the rage and heat returned. “You know nothing, you bitch!” And his fight was renewed, their bodies a writhing, kicking, biting mass of limbs, until she slammed into the beach on her back, the dull thud echoing through her body. Then she looked up and realized he was holding a shiny knife blade at her throat. It was short but looked very sharp.
He saw her looking at it and held it up with pride. “You like it? It’s my obsidian scalpel from my pre-med days. It would have been so much more poetic to use your brother’s switchblade, though it was rather … crude for me. But I had to sacrifice it to make my statement.” He smiled. “Perhaps I’ll get it back after all, once you’re dead and I blame it on that guy.” He pointed with the knife at a dead officer sprawled near the tree line—she couldn’t help being relieved to see it wasn’t Javier—the dark blood seeping into the sand like oil. “I’m sorry I won’t get to take care of you in my preferred manner, but I’m kind of in a hurry today. However, I’m looking forward to taking care of that Lupe friend of yours, maybe even her uncle. Hell, maybe they’ll make me police chief one day—”
A rush of adrenalin burst through Marisol’s chest, radiating out to her limbs, her arms pulling free. He was so surprised and confused, he took his attention off the knife in his hand, and she hit his arm, sending the scalpel flying across the sand. She used the time to bash him on his ears, then in one swift move she grabbed him and rolled toward the water until she was over him and the surf was crashing against the side of his face. He sputtered as she held his neck down against the sand as he had done to her. There was something about seeing the hate-filled face gasping for breath that brought a joyous heat to her soul.
“I have just one more question for you before I push your tiny head under this wave for good. Why Lupe? What the hell did she do to you?”
He scoffed, spitting sea water all over her face. “That nosy gringa bitch! Her and her uncle were screwing it all up! I was going to get justice for all of us who are true Puerto Ricans in our hearts, not like her.”
That was it. Something snapped, gave way in her head. Every fiber of her being wanted to hold his head beneath the waves. To watch him gasp for breath like a fish on a dock.
“Mari!”
The scream came from behind the resort, the sound of feet hitting packed dirt accompanying her name.
Then Lupe was careening to a stop in the sand, her uncle following, more officers gathering behind. Her friend looked just like she had in the vision Mari had when she was being strangled.
Even though she was sure he deserved to drown, she dropped Hernán’s head and let it fall to the sand. She stood up, wiped the sand off her clothes, and said, “The bomb’s in the most middle tube of the grandstand’s scaffolding.”
A group of officers rushed down and handcuffed Hernán, pulling him up and dragging him across the sand. The rest of them took off in the direction of the bandstand, as there was no time to radio and, given the sounds coming from the loudspeakers, the chaos had reached a fevered pitch.
Now they just had to make it in time before the murderer’s bomb killed them all.
Chapter Thirty-two
Lupe
LUPE TOOK MARISOL by the arm and they ran. She was worried about her friend. Even in the shadows caused by the event lights, she could see finger-shaped bruises blooming across Marisol’s throat, and her eyes looked … wild. Would she have drowned Hernán if they hadn’t gotten there in time? Not that Lupe would have blamed her, but seeing her like that had given her a flashback to the summer before, when they’d fought while Javier was being attacked by El Cuco just a few feet away on the stage at Carlos’s concert. The road to their friendship had been an unusual one—talk about odd couples—but one thing they both needed from each other was trust. Faith. And she had faith in Mari.
The group bunched up at the outskirts of the grandstand. The bomb squad was frantically working underneath the structure, and the people on top were completely panicked. The glowing ghost figures now surrounded the field and the crowd completely, as well as blocking the exit from the platform. They were just standing as if in vigil. Were they going to attack? Most of the people in the center seemed to think so, as they clung to one another, eyes wild with fright.
A microphone squawk broke through the white noise of panic, and the governor’s voice was carrying over the crowd, temporarily dazing them.
“Everyone! Calm down! We must have order!”
“Order?” someone yelled. “Have you looked around? Easy for you to say up there!”
Then Sam’s father, the developer, leaned over and barked into the microphone. “Easy for us to say! I just overheard an officer saying that the bomb squad is beneath us dismantling an incendiary device as we speak! We are at far more risk from the bomb than you are with the ghosts!”
“Bomb?!”
“He said there’s a bomb here!”
“We have to get out of here!”
“Boy, what a complete idiot,” Lupe said, mostly to herself.
“Ya think?” Marisol replied. She was still holding her head and weaving a bit. Lupe watched her out of the corner of her eye with concern.
“It wasn’t a working bomb; besides, it’s been dismantled,” the chief said.
A person in the front cried out, “But what about the ghosts? Are they going to take our hearts?”
The sound of panic rose again, higher pitched this time, but people could only shuffle and push against one another as any possible escape route was blocked by the long dead who stood sentry, waiting for runners like a blue, glowing spiderweb.
The governor pulled the microphone away and tried to cover it, but they all could still hear him say, “That is not helpful, Michael!”
As if in a daze, Marisol started pushing through the police and first responders, then around them, and toward the stand. Lupe tried to catch her by the sleeve but missed, and hurried to catch up. “What are you doing?”
Marisol yanked a stack of papers from her backpack and began to climb the side of the structure.
What was she doing? Was her head injury worse than she let on?
Lupe and Javier followed closely behind, until all three stood on the same level as the mucky-mucks at their tableclothed dais.
It was the first time she had gotten a good look at the group at the dais, the investors and politicians. They were as she expected, doughy gray-haired white men with expensive suits, impatient expressions, and beautiful wives at their sides. One of the women, the proof that you could indeed be too rich and too thin, was sitting as if she were afraid to touch anything, her face like someone had pulled on her perfectly coiffed chignon and tightened her skin. These were the people deciding the future of the island?
While the governor was still distracted by Sam’s father, Marisol grabbed the mic, waved the papers, and addressed the crowd.
“My fellow Boricuas! Are you going to let these men, these greedy swindlers, take our island?” She gestured around to the people sitting and standing on the platform, their pale faces reddening with rage. She turned back to face them, pulling the mic in closer, thwarting a bald-headed man who was trying to reach around and take it from her. “I have here a petition signed by over a thousand island residents, protesting the sale of our precious resources in our time of great vulnerability for the profit of U.S. corporations! A sale perpetrated by one of our very own!” She shook the stack of paper at the governor.
Lupe watched the crowd and saw fear being replaced by anger.
Wow, Marisol was good at this.
“This resort”—she indicated the oversize building behind her—“was built on protected land, land that should belong to the people of—”
The governor lurched across his coconspirators then and yanked the microphone from Marisol’s hand. “That’s enough, you little bitch!” Realizing his tone was untoward, he turned and addressed the crowd once more with the confidence of someone who was rarely questioned. “I’m sure this little girl has her heart in right place—”
Lupe groaned. The man couldn’t have made a worse choice of words and it seemed most of the crowd knew it.
Marisol leaned closer and yelled, “They’re also trying to privatize all of Puerto Rico’s beaches!” She indicated the crowd. “Our beaches!”
The mumbling of the crowd elevated to yelling, anger growing.
The governor plastered on his biggest smile. “I assure you, this is total fantasy. Now—”
Then another voice cut in from behind the man, and Lupe saw Sam, who had just climbed up the other side of the platform—the ghosts let him through!—and was moving toward the governor and his father, with Esteban close behind him.
His mouth was moving, but in the chaos of the moment the words were lost. When he reached his father, he said into the microphone, “No, it’s not made up, and I have proof!”
Sam’s father moved forward. “Sam! Get off the stage! You have no place here either!”
“Actually, Dad, I do have a place here. And so does she.” He pointed to Marisol. “What she said is right. You bribed and lied and took land that didn’t belong to you. And now we believe”—he indicated Lupe, Marisol, and Javier—“that these spirits are here to take back what is theirs.” The heads in the crowd turned toward the ghosts that surrounded them.
His father looked incredulous. “What? This is not our doing! Lord only knows what local heathen rituals have brought forth—”
“No. You did this, Dad. You all did.” He pointed to the other people on the dais. “And now you’re going to fix it.”
They all scoffed and harrumphed and turned to each other. His father then stepped up to act as a spokesman for the greedy bunch. “And how do you kids propose we do that?”
Marisol answered in a clear, forceful voice, “You need to abandon this project, donate the land, and return it to protected status.”
The investors on the stage laughed then. Actually laughed. Several of them had begun gathering their things and preparing to leave when a dozen ghosts appeared behind them, their hands reaching forward, grabbing the edges of the men’s suits, pulling on them with bony fingers, reaching toward their chests. Screams rose from the crowd and Lupe saw the ghosts weaving their way among the people, their moaning high-pitched like a buzzing she could feel in her teeth, and people in the audience began to climb over each other in panic.
Sam’s father pointed to Esteban and shouted, “You! You created this special-effect light show.” He pointed wildly at the ghosts all around them. “And you killed people and took their hearts just to shut down this project!”
One of the other officers pulled Hernán, who was still hand-cuffed, in front of the grandstand, the crowd parting for them.
Esteban’s voice boomed from behind. Tío didn’t need a mic. “No, the murders were done by this young man.” He pointed to the front of the stage and at the younger Torres. “And he even planted a badly made bomb right beneath this very grandstand in an attempt to kill all of you here.” A gasp from the crowd, as if a stagehand were holding a sign with directions. “But these kids caught him.” He indicated Lupe, Javier, Marisol, and Sam.
Emboldened, Sam stepped up, grabbed the microphone, and held up a USB thumb drive. “This contains emails from my father’s investing group implicating”—he gestured around at the group of men—“these people, and ironically initiated by one of the men whose son was killed in the bay, outlining payoffs and building shortcuts. And about the next stage when they planned to control access to all the beaches on the main island and this one.”
Sam had barely got out the last word when his father stepped up, arrogance exaggerating his movements, grabbed the drive from his hand, dropped it to the dais floor, and smashed it beneath his heel. Then he said to Esteban, “Clearly, my son doesn’t understand how these things work.” Smugness spread on his lips like oil.
Lupe’s uncle stepped forward and stood beside Sam. “That’s okay, Señor. You see, your son emailed all those files to my department moments ago.” He nodded his head and a group of officers came up onto the dais and surrounded the investors. “Seems we have all the proof we need.”
Marisol broke in. “Clearly, you don’t understand how this works!”
Lupe felt like shouting Can I get an amen?
