Category Five, page 7
He looked back at her as she closed the door behind them. “And where do you think you’re going?”
Lupe looked down at her pajamas. A T-shirt and shorts. Perfectly acceptable. “You would think by now you’d know, Tío. There’s no scenario where I don’t end up going with you, so you might as well accept it.”
He let out a deep sigh. “True.” He looked over at the door-knocking girl. “Lead the way, joven.”
They walked in a line and Lupe rubbed her arms, surprised at the cool evening air. It was cooler on the small island, the winds coming off the waters of both the Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea. The streets were deserted, made up of variations of the color of slate with sharp edges in the dark, like a film-noir movie set. Lupe took a deep breath, feeling her heart slow from the rush of the middle-of-the-night door knock. Her uncle once told her that he didn’t mind being woken up in the middle of the night. Looking around, she understood why. This time of the morning was crisp and silent, the opposite of the summer days in Puerto Rico. This part of town had streetlights, but more than half were blown out, some crowned by shards of broken glass, probably from Maria, the broken bulbs not replaced. Every day she was newly stunned by how much damage the hurricane had caused.
When they turned the corner of a narrow street with crumbling asphalt, there was already a group of locals gathered in a small side yard, a string of laundry dangling over the inert body on the ground, a motion-sensor floodlight flickering on and off. The girl led them over, then peeled off, and the group of onlookers parted for Esteban as if on hinges.
Her uncle crouched beside the body and she stepped closer. Truth was, she’d never seen a dead body in person before. Even with all the death that had surrounded them last summer, the closest she’d gotten was when she had hidden behind the polished wood of a coffin. The old man looked like he was sleeping, except for the fact that his chest cavity was pried open like a picked-clean guinea hen, with an empty space where his heart should have been. There was a surprising lack of blood.
Lupe checked in with herself.
She should have been freaked out, maybe even vomiting. This was not just a dead body, but a mutilated one. But she felt surprisingly calm. In truth, she was fascinated. “Was he killed somewhere else and brought here?”
“It’s possible,” her uncle answered, then seemed to realize the question had come from her. He looked up at her with a puzzled expression. “How did you know that?”
She shrugged. “Not enough blood around the body.”
A small smile teased up one side of his mouth, then he returned his attention to the body.
The man was old, she thought, probably eighty or eighty-five. His skin was pale with a bluish tint, and he had a hunched back and a permanent scowl on his face. Having your heart torn out is reason enough for a scowl, but the lines etched deeply in the man’s face gave Lupe the impression that this had been a permanent expression.
Wait.
“I’ve seen this guy.”
Her uncle looked up at her. “Where?”
“Not far from our condo. Javier and I almost hit him with the truck.” Wait, that sounded bad. “I mean, not intentionally. He kind of stepped out in front of it.” That was better. Slightly. But Esteban didn’t seem concerned with that.
Her uncle looked up and around the area. He asked a question of the onlookers: “Did he live near here?”
A small, thin middle-aged lady who looked like an older version of the girl who’d come to get them pointed to the dark house to their left. Esteban stood up, a little carefully as he unbent his tall frame with an audible creak, and walked around the house. Lupe followed him like a shadow. She’d always found her uncle’s job fascinating, but watching him work was beyond.
The paint on the small dilapidated house was peeling to the point of nonexistence, and chunks were missing from the cement columns that held up the front porch. He looked over to the right and Lupe followed his gaze. The woman’s house next door was neat as a pin, with a tended garden and mismatched but comfortable chairs out front, warm yellow lights glowing from within, and a fresh coat of pink paint.
The damage to the dead man’s house was not post-Maria. It showed signs of years of neglect. He had probably been poor and sick, unable to do the necessary work on the house.
She heard clipped footsteps on the stone walk behind them and jumped, just a bit. They both turned to find the local captain’s son … Hernán, she thought his name was, walking up, his face open in a wide yawn.
“Is the murder disturbing your beauty sleep?” Esteban asked, but he smiled at the young man. Despite the snide comment, her uncle seemed glad the younger guy was there. She was good company to him, she knew, but she was no cop.
Hernán smiled back sheepishly. “I’m sorry, I just got a call and rushed over.” Then he looked over at Lupe and bowed slightly, like she was royalty or something. This guy was a trip. He was growing on her.
“Did you know this man?” Esteban asked as they walked back to the body, watched by the growing crowd of onlookers.
Hernán looked down at the body on the ground and grimaced. “Sí. It’s a tiny island, Chief. Everyone knows everyone.”
“Even some people we wish we didn’t know,” a woman said from behind them.
Her uncle whipped around, startling the woman. “And why is that, Señora? Are you referring to the deceased?”
“Yes.” She crossed her arms, the fat underneath waggling then settling comfortably against her ample bosom like an old cat. “Señor Carter was an awful little man.”
A woman next to her gasped and made the sign of the cross, obviously horrified that she would speak ill of the dead.
“Well I don’t care, Imelda! I’m just saying what everyone here always thinks but never says.”
Esteban looked around at the crowd, and though they avoided meeting his gaze, it was apparent, even to Lupe, that the woman was telling the truth.
Lupe couldn’t stop herself from asking a question. “What was wrong with Mr. Carter?”
“Yes. Why was he an ‘awful little man’?”
It was as if a switch had been thrown, and the woman became really animated. As she spoke, Lupe could tell this was a favorite subject of hers.
“He was always complaining about any work we did on our houses—God forbid someone should actually care for their home—and he was always calling the police when we spent time in our yards, eating, visiting with family. Not wild parties, mind you, and at reasonable hours!”
Another man spoke up, emboldened. “He complained to me about my children playing in the street, that the sound of the basketball hitting the ground and their laughing was too loud. Who complains about children’s laughter?” A hum of agreement.
Esteban nodded. “Okay, I get the picture. How long has he lived in this house?”
Someone answered “Twenty, thirty years, at least. He used to only come for the holidays until he retired. His aunt lived there before him. She was unpleasant, too.”
The first woman laughed. “And that was the last time he painted the damn house!”
The other woman made the sign of the cross again.
Lupe’s uncle turned to her and Hernán and said softly, “But this doesn’t fit the pattern of the bio-bay murders. I mean, other than that he’s a gringo, too. Those boys were wealthy, entitled outsiders, but this man was old and poor—”
Hernán interjected, speaking low. “Chief, Mr. Carter wasn’t poor.”
Lupe and Esteban looked back at the decaying house, at the small houses crowded in like sardines along the dirt road.
Lupe spoke up, she couldn’t help it. “Wait, what?”
Hernán shook his head. “No, he owned most of this area.”
“Since when? Did he just buy it?” Was he taking advantage of people after the hurricane too?
“No, his family bought it in the twenties or thirties. And he has millions in the bank.”
Esteban said, “Why on earth would he live so frugally then?”
Hernán shrugged his shoulders. “Cheap, I guess.”
The chief looked into the younger man’s eyes, and Lupe noticed the few working streetlights lent them a bright glint. Her uncle was giving him that probing look he was so famous for. “How do you know all this?”
“Mr. Carter was always trying to get me to work on his house for free, but a friend who was his accountant told me not to—told me he could more than afford it. When I went back to the States, I took a break from college, apprenticed to an electrician for a while. My mom was constantly on my case to go back to my pre-med studies, but whenever I came home for the holidays, or summers with my father, old man Carter kept insisting I help him. I told him I was studying to be a doctor, not an electrician now, but he was hard to say no to.”
There was more to this guy’s story, Lupe could tell. After her uncle turned away to speak with the locals, Hernán stayed nearby, so she asked, “What happened? With school, I mean. Why did you become a cop?”
A shadow crossed his face, for just a second. Then it was gone and Lupe wondered if she’d imagined it.
“I lived with my mom, in Chicago, but she and I”—he smirked—“we didn’t get along. After Hurricane Maria, a lot of my father’s staff left and he needed help. So, Mom sent me to live with him.”
Sounded familiar. Her father had started sending her away during the summer so he could drink in peace. “Didn’t get along? So, you get along now?”
He shook his head. “No, she’s dead.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” She didn’t need to ask anymore, she’d heard enough, but he kept going.
“Now I can’t afford to go back to school. I had to commit to five years down here with my father. But I don’t think I’ll ever leave now.” The darkness crossed his face again, but he seemed to recover and smiled and shrugged. “So, here I am: a cop.”
Lupe considered him for a second, took in his pale skin, his accentless English. “Your mom, she’s not … wasn’t Puerto Rican, was she?”
A smile, “Nah, I’m half. Half Puerto Rican, half Midwest white bread.”
She snorted. “At least you’re fluent in Spanish.”
“I didn’t have much of a choice. My dad insisted. I’m kind of glad, you know?” He looked around them, the sky beginning to lighten at the edges, the crowd thinning as people made their way back to their houses. “This is where my heart is.”
Lupe couldn’t help it. “Well, Mr. Carter’s sure isn’t.” She regretted the words as soon as they left her lips and her hands flew to cover her mouth in embarrassment. The two just stood there for a second, and then they both started to laugh, trying and failing to hold it back. God, they were terrible! But just thinking that made her laugh harder.
“Torres!” her uncle barked from behind Lupe and the laughter left them in a whoosh. She and Hernán nodded to each other with sneaky smiles, then turned around to face the chief.
“Sorry to break up the fun, but officer Torres and I have work to do. Come on, young man. Let’s walk the perimeter of the crime scene and see how much you know about policing.” Then he pointed to Lupe, who was stifling a yawn. “And you, go back to bed. You’re only causing trouble here.”
Lupe made her face serious and saluted him, and gratefully started back to the condo. In her mind, she was already crawling under the crisp sheets.
* * *
It was mid-morning by the time she heard her uncle’s key in the condo front door, but she swung it open before he could even turn it. She stood there, one hand on her hip in frustration.
“I’ve been texting you! You couldn’t take two minutes to text me back? I’ve been worried to death!”
Her uncle lifted his head and looked around the room. “¿Mami? Is that you? Are you back from the dead?”
A smile lifted one side of Lupe’s mouth but she quickly adjusted it so she looked serious. “Very funny. But you could have answered.”
Esteban lowered himself into the cane rocking chair in the sitting room with a contented groan. “Ah, because I’m such a texter, right? Did you even go back to sleep?”
“Yeah, but when I woke up and you weren’t back, I got worried.” Lupe sat down on the chair next to him. “Well? What did you find out? Any idea who killed him?”
“Ay, Lupe, it could have been anyone. I’ve never encountered someone who was so universally detested by his community. But several of his neighbors say they saw what they thought were fantasmas last night, walking around the streets.”
Lupe’s heart quickened. “The ghosts? Really?”
Her uncle nodded, then leaned his head against the cushioned back of the chair and closed his eyes.
Her mind reeled as she remembered their faces as they reached for her. It was time to tell her uncle about what happened to her and Javier on the beach.
“Tío, I have to tell you something.”
Her uncle said nothing, and she could tell by the rhythmic movement of his chest that he was falling asleep.
“Tío!”
He jumped, his hand reflexively reaching for his sidearm. “What? What’s wrong?”
“I have to tell you something!”
“Lupe, I’m so tired. Can we talk in an hour or two?”
“But Javier and I saw the ghosts. And met an old man near the unexploded ordnance beach who thinks he knows who the ghosts are, but he might be too crazy to get an answer out of him, and then—”
She could see he was fully awake now.
“Okay, slow down, sobrina. What did you say about you being on a beach with unexploded ordnance?”
Chapter Eleven
Javier
JAVIER WAS WAITING impatiently outside the town offices when the police cruiser pulled up and Lupe jumped out. When he got her text, he had offered to go to town for needed supplies in order to make this little trip in the middle of his workday and meet her, but if he took too long his boss would be pissed. Bad enough he’d been so tired after the wild picnic dinner with gate-crashing ghosts last night. But Lupe had been all excited when she messaged him, something about the body of an old gringo.
She walked up to him with a big smile on her face and he thought about leaning forward and kissing her, but the policeman in the car was watching him. Besides, he wasn’t sure they were still on that kind of standing. Last night hadn’t been exactly romantic. She balanced a bit on her toes, and he wondered if she was thinking about the same thing.
“Hey!” Her smile was bright and beaming, and he couldn’t help smiling back, despite the crankiness that had been hanging in a thick cloud around his head since he’d opened his eyes earlier that morning.
“Hey.”
“Thanks for meeting me,” she said with way more enthusiasm than he was capable of at that time of the morning. “Let’s go in, I’ll explain.” As they made their way into the town offices, she filled him in on the events of the night before. So much had happened in the time between when Chachu had dropped them off downtown last night and the morning. Way too much. She told him that they had found the same boot prints on the ground around the old man’s house as they had in the mangroves on the edge of the bio bay.
“But what do you think we can find here?” He pointed to the walls of the dirty gray industrial town building they were in. He had to be honest. Though he loved seeing her, Javier’s mind was more on not losing his job.
“Turns out the old man, Carter, was very wealthy, owned tons of land, so I want to see if he had something to do with the land grab that the resort did after the hurricane. My uncle called and requested the paperwork related to all of Carter’s property over the last twenty years. It’s public record, but I didn’t think they’d give it to me.”
Just the mention of the buying-up of the land while the island was desperately trying to recover started Javier’s blood to boiling. And that he was actually working for them? Helping them develop the land they pretty much stole? Well, he worked to live with that every day. He pulled his mind back to the present as his counselor had taught him. If he gave in to the rage, it was so much harder to pull out of it, to bring himself back into his body, and not lash out at anyone who happened to be around.
Lupe stepped up to the counter but before she could say anything, the older woman placed a file in front of her, thick with papers. Lupe just looked at the manila folder in confusion. The woman sighed and said, “Tu eres la sobrina de Esteban Dávila, ¿verdad?”
“Sí. Pero, how did you … never mind. Gracias.” She gathered the folder and walked over to the uncomfortable-looking chairs in the corner. The smells of cheap coffee and discontent were thick in the air; Javier just loved government offices. They always made him think of Beetlejuice. And death.
The minute she sat down, Lupe began shuffling through the papers. Why did she want him along for this? He was not a paper-pushing kind of guy, after all. His phone buzzed. Probably work. He pulled it out and saw another text from Carlos.
Man, u gonna call me back or what? R u ghosting me? I need 2 talk 2 u, ’mano.
Ghosting. If Carlos only knew …
Javier put the phone back in his pocket with a grumble. Carlos had been texting and calling him all week, probably something ridiculous about the concert for the opening. Carlos had been hired as the main attraction, since his song “El Cuco” had been an international hit after the “incident” last summer, to the point where people on social media were suggesting they’d staged the showdown with the legendary monster. But Javier was irritated that his friend was doing the concert at all. Wasn’t it a public show of support for the developers?
Yeah, he understood how ridiculous that sounded. Who was he to talk? He worked for them too. But he needed the money, Carlos didn’t, and jobs were seriously scarce down here these days.
Lupe stood before him and dropped a pile of papers in his lap. “Look at this. Most of that land the resort corporation is building on? It belonged to that old gringo who was killed last night. I can’t find a bill of sale, but I have to imagine he sold them most of the land they are building on!”
Javier’s jaw tightened as he looked over the documents. She was right. It only made him feel more shame.
