El Gavilan (25 page)

Patricia and Tell had found a common, favored recording artist in Lucinda Williams. “Ventura,” one of the saddest songs of loss and longing ever written to Tell’s mind, was playing on the stereo.

Her fingers stroked the back of his hand. “Hell of a day, huh, Chief?”

Tell sipped his margarita and ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s sure been some kind of watermark day. I’m afraid high or low is still to be determined.” Tell sipped his freshened drink then rolled the dice. “Able Hawk mentioned seeing you at the hospital today, Patricia.”

She shrugged. “Don’t read much into that, Tell. Like I told you before, who else was there to visit Shawn? His mother lives in Illinois. Able said he would see to contacting them. Did
you
make it over to the hospital to see Shawn?”

“No,” Tell said. “There wasn’t any time. And if there had been, it would have been a hollow gesture. Hear they put Shawn under while you were there. Hear they mean to keep him that way a few days.”

“His brain was swelling,” Patricia said, shuddering. “
Jesus
. They were mulling removing part of his skull for a time. Doctors think his knee is ruined and he’ll need a cane. And they said Shawn could lose a kidney.”

Tell had also heard from Able that Shawn’s nose would require bone grafts to restore it to some vague semblance of a nose. Able Hawk, characteristically, had probably put it best, if bluntly: “Shawn,” Able said, “is going to end up looking like some loser rummy middleweight ’fore this is all over. And that’s
if
he’s fucking goddamn lucky. Bet he winds up a pain pill junkie too.”

Patricia said, “Able told me the ones who beat Shawn were driving a red pickup truck. That made me think of that recording we watched together of Thalia’s body being dumped.”

Tell paused, a fork-full of
carnitas
halfway to his mouth. “Did you mention that recording to Able?” He hadn’t had a chance to share that tidbit yet with Sheriff Hawk—hadn’t found the right opening. Tell braced for Patricia’s answer. Able learning through a second party could be a terrible thing. It was already clear to Tell that Hawk only half trusted him now.

“I didn’t think it was my place to do that,” Patricia said.

“I know that footage is blurry,” Tell said, “but the ones who attacked Shawn were riding in an Isuzu. The difference between an Isuzu and a Dodge Ram is the difference between a lap dog and a Great Dane, Patricia.”

“How many Rams are there in Horton County? Can’t be that many, right?”

“In
this
county? It’s a muscle truck and appeals to a certain kind of car-poor half-wit. Two hundred and fifty Rams in Horton County, and one hundred and sixty-seven of those are red.”

Tell reached across the table and took her left hand. “I’ve gotten another copy of the footage we watched and I’ve turned it over to the criminology department at your university. They’re going to take the sports photographer back over to the ballpark tomorrow morning—same time and position as the last time. Then they are going to go out in the field to the approximate location of the truck on the tape. They’re going to position various license plates on a stand of the same height of a Dodge Ram’s bumper. They’ll see how the various numbers and letters on the plates pixelate. Then they’ll try to use that information to extrapolate backward—see if they can give me a reading on the plate on that tape we watched earlier.”

Patricia, beaming, said, “That’s brilliant. How long will it take?”

“Days … maybe a week,” Tell said. He nodded at his plate. “Lord, this is really delicious. You should open your own restaurant.”

Patricia smiled. “No. Not here in New Austin, anyway. Although my mom and dad have talked about maybe branching out to other communities or counties.” She squeezed his hand harder and then let go. “Semi-related topic—I’m reminded because my parents operate a food tent there—the Latino Festival is coming up. You going to squire me, Chief?”

“I’d love to do that,” Tell said. “But is that a good idea for you? I have to work it, so I’ll be there in an official capacity off and on. In uniform, I mean. I don’t want ‘us’ to hurt you in any way.”

“Your point, Tell?”

“Being seen with the law isn’t going to hurt you? Stigmatize you?”

“Hurt me? What do you mean? In ‘my community’? Is that what you mean? I’m American, Tell. I was born here, just like you. Hell, your Spanish is better than mine.”

“Sorry,” Tell said. “I just meant charged as things are now, after Thalia’s murder and after Shawn’s beating, we may be on the edge of some ugly racial tension if things keep going like they have. Wouldn’t want to hurt your folks’ business.”

“I don’t accept your premise,” she said.

Tell shook his head. “All right then. I’d be happy to squire you, Patricia.”

“Good.” She smiled. “Now, big day tomorrow, Chief?”

“Not like today I hope,” Tell said. “Come morning, I’ll start looking for Shawn’s attackers. Though I suspect Able might get there first. He’s had a day’s start and one of the suspects ties back to those meth-cooking brothers whose farm Able and Shawn raided earlier today.”

“No more shoptalk,” Patricia said. “I know I kind of started it, Tell, so I’m stopping it, right now.”

“Suits me.” Tell started gathering up empty plates. They carried in the dirty dishes and pans. Patricia blew out the candles and locked up the back door. “I know this day knocked the hell out of you, Tell.” Her fingers traced his chin. She said, “But you will stay the night, won’t you?”

* * *

She had been astride him. Patricia straightened her legs, stretching out half-atop Tell. Her breasts were pressed to his chest; she was moving carefully so that they remained joined.

Tell stroked her back. Patricia said, “Your wife and daughter were beautiful, Tell.”

“So you said.” He combed her damp hair back behind her ear. He cupped her chin in his hand and lifted her face up to where he could see her eyes. “Why do you say that again, Patricia? Particularly now, just after … ? While we’re like this?”

“I was thinking of their pictures, Tell. Especially the one of your little girl.” She pressed her hand to his temple. “How are you about all that now? Up here, I mean.”

“Holding on,” he said after some reflection. “Getting stronger, I think. It was terrible at first. All but insupportable. My wife was dead when the emergency crews reached what was left of our house. Claudia was badly burned. She was already mortally wounded although the doctors wouldn’t or couldn’t tell me that. But she held on for four days. The misguided little fighter in her just wouldn’t give up that easy.” He felt the stinging in his eyes, but pushed ahead, aware Patricia saw his tears. He said, his voice thick, “My cousin Chris was there within a few hours of getting the news. Chris really kept me together for Claudia. He kept me in this world. Thanks to him, I was holding Claudia’s hand when she passed. I owe him for that.”

Tell felt Patricia’s grip tighten on him. He took a deep breath, resisting the notion to wipe his eyes. He let out his breath and said raggedly, “Then there were the funerals to get through. Oh, God, how they nearly killed me again. Chris held me tight to him through both of them. Her parents attacked me. Blamed me. But I agreed with them. I was a goddamn wreck. But by the time the funerals were over, and they were both buried, Chris and some co-workers of mine had identified who had killed Marita and Claudia. And that handed me a new distraction.”

Patricia kissed his chest, then pressed her cheek to the damp spot left by her own lips. “I don’t remember any of those articles I read about you mentioning arrests, or of any trials of the ones who killed your family,” she said.

Tell hesitated, then said, “That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a reckoning.”

Patricia stretched and kissed Tell on the mouth, kissed him
passionately—hard and slow. She said, “Tell Lyon, won’t you make a baby with me someday?”

He shook his head. “It’s very early days yet, Patricia. We hardly—”

She pressed her fingers to his lips. “I
know
. But I want to know that you want to have a baby with me someday.”

Lying there in her bed, feeling Patricia stretched long and smooth and warm against him, her hand softly exploring him, urging him again to hardness inside her, Tell thought about the last time with Marita. He’d made love with his wife the night before the fire. They’d decided that night to have another child—a little brother or sister for Claudia.

The next morning, Tell had kissed his wife and left for work. He left without saying goodbye to Claudia so as not to wake her. It was a week to Christmas and Marita had given him a copy of their daughter’s wish list for Santa as they kissed the last time.

Tell left his house and he never saw Marita alive again. Claudia was a tiny mummy in the hospital bed the next time that Tell saw her. His baby girl was burned so badly that she had already lost her feet and all the fingers of her left hand by the time Tell reached the hospital.

Claudia never regained consciousness.

That was a “terrible blessing” his cousin Chris had said, sitting faithless vigil all night with Tell that first night in the hospital by Claudia’s bedside.

That was how it happened too fucking often: walk out a door and return to a wrecked world.

Tell had left in the morning for another routine day, so far as any of them had known. He strolled out to his SUV and lost his world, suddenly and without warning.

Shawn O’Hara snuck out a stranger’s front door on a different morning and effectively burned down his own life.

Shawn bounced back from that one, in most ways—as much the result of dumb luck running the
other
direction for a short time.

But then Shawn woke up and walked out
another
door and ended up maimed; unmanned so far as children of his own were concerned. When Shawn eventually limped out of that hospital—or, more likely, when he was wheeled out—he would leave it a toothless, infertile gimp with a stranger’s face, as Able had said.

One bad day.

One life-changing, five-minute delay could fuck a man over for a lifetime.

Someone else’s momentary distraction in heavy traffic? It could cost you, all the way up
.
A stranger’s eyes roam from the road to their passenger seat to seek their cell phone and the next thing you know, you or your life’s one true love is being zipped into a body bag.

Chris’s wife, Salome, building on her husband’s urgings to Tell to get “back in the game,” had bequeathed to Tell a new axiom. Salome, like Chris, had urged Tell not just to bury himself in work, as he was doing, but for Tell to lose himself in sensation, to seize life with both hands again.

Salome had tossed off a casual comment that had lodged in Tell’s brain. Tell had all but decided to adopt Salome’s aside as his life’s new guiding principle: “All any of us has,” Salome had said, “is the moment we’re living in.”

His cousin Chris had first met Salome while trying to climb out of his own private hell. To hear Chris tell it, he had taken Salome to his bed the first night he met her. If true, that was very
un
-Chris. But Chris also told Tell that he’d promptly made Salome pregnant, and, within a few short weeks, Chris had married her. Sixteen years later, and they were still going strong. Salome was even pressing Chris for a third child while she was still young enough to carry a baby. Certainly Tell’s courtship with Marita had been equally whirlwind.

But Chris had come to Salome without the weight and history of a previous marriage. And Patricia was now about the age that Salome had been back then, when she met Chris. Tell was only a few years behind his cousin’s current age.

Tell stroked Patricia’s back, looking into her dark, moist eyes. She said, “What’s going through that head of yours, Tell? Have I wrecked us, being honest? Was I mistaken telling you that I want so much from you?”

His fingers stroked her lips—her generous mouth. Her mouth was so gentle most times, but so hungry in passion.

Patricia was beautiful and sensual and ripe and loving. Unspoiled. Still full of at least some of her dreams. Tell felt like he was exploiting her, wanting her as he did with so many ghosts of his own crowding his heart. He said, “How sure are you of this really, Patricia?”

“I’m sure,” she said, searching his eyes. She kissed him again and traced his lower lip afterward. “If every night we have in front of us is like this one, I can’t imagine myself happier. We don’t have to do it now, but if you’re willing, we could be married soon. Married in a church, in a park. Hell, in my parents’ restaurant, with a mariachi band, if you want. A mayor or a priest can perform the ceremony. I don’t care. Invite your cousin and his wife. See if they’ll come. If they are there, and if my parents and grandmother are there, it’s all we need, isn’t it?”

Tell stroked her hair behind her ear.

“That was a question, Tell. It requires an answer.”

Extracts from the
New Austin Recorder
social pages:

Sharp-Gómez are wed

Luisa Mary Gómez, 22, married Amos Thorpe Sharp, 23, last Saturday at the New Austin Presbyterian Church with Rev. Charles Laird officiating.

The bride is the daughter of Francisco and Inez Gómez of Juarez, Mexico. The groom is the son of the late Nancy (Hawk) Sharp of New Austin.

The bride was given in marriage by the groom’s maternal grandfather, Able Grant Hawk. The bride’s aunt, Sofia Gómez, served as matron of honor. The bride’s cousin, Evelia Ruiz, was the ring-bearer.

The groom is currently completing his studies in criminology at Vale County Vocational Institute.

No honeymoon is planned.

Lyon-Maldonado engagement announced

Patricia Rene Maldonado, 25, has announced her engagement to Tell Mills Lyon, 39. A full church ceremony is planned in September at Our Lady of the Veil.

The bride is the daughter of Kathleen and Augustin Maldonado. The groom is the son of the late Harper (Ross) Lyon and the late Zayre Clark Lyon.

The bride-to-be is currently completing a degree in restaurant management at Vale County Vocational Institute. The groom-to-be recently accepted appointment to the position of New Austin chief of police.