Jacaranda (7 page)

Juan Rios let him light the end and suck it until the coal glowed, and then he said, “It’s almost like you were called here.”

Sister Eileen protested, “No, it’s not like that at all. He’s a man doing his job, isn’t that it?
I
called him here, not the hotel.”

“Sure,” the Ranger said. But there it was again, that droop to his brow—a thoughtful glance that went sideways, and back again. He wasn’t half so sure as the nun pretended to be. “But for starters, let’s treat this like it isn’t strange.”

“How do we do
that
?” the padre asked.

“By asking questions. You two have tried that, I assume?”

The nun nodded. “Yes, but the hotel’s guests aren’t the most forthcoming bunch.”

She then told him what little they’d learned so far, mostly from Sarah. Finally, though she seemed reluctant to confess it, she added Sarah’s feeling that everyone was called there for a reason. “But not
you
,” she insisted again. “You’re not one of the guests, not really.”

“If you say so, sister, but we’re all in the same boat now—so I’m not sure it matters any, who called whom. Besides that, do you think she meant that folks were called here…or they were
sent
here?” he asked.

“I don’t understand…”

He tried again. “Do you think they’re lured here by the hotel, or do you think they’re sent here by some other power? That’s what I’m wondering: What if this is where you go, when it’s your turn to go to hell?”

The Ranger took a few more notes while he listened to Sister Eileen and Father Rios; and when everything had been said—everything they could remember, no matter how ridiculous—when it was all laid out, he declared his plan.

“I know you two didn’t get very far in your investigation, and I can guess why. You,” he pointed at Sister Eileen, “aren’t from around here. And neither are
you
,” he said to the padre. “But you, Father—you’ve got a leg up with the Mexicans here…or the ones who used to be Mexican, you know what I mean. What Spanish I know isn’t very good, and I’m well aware of how your people tend to view Texians, not that I take it very personal.”

“It’s just as well that you don’t,” the padre said.

“With that in mind, I’m an officer of the law—and that gives me both an advantage, and a disadvantage. First, I can run around asking questions and nobody will think twice about it. But second, most of them would rather chat with a preacher than the police.”

“We’re a veritable triad of difficulties,” the nun sighed.

“Nah, don’t call it that,” he argued. “Let’s say instead, that between the three of us…we just might get somewhere. Let’s start with that desk woman, Sarah. You think she’s up and around, yet? Let’s go pester her and see. She talked first, and she might talk the most. Or then again, she may clam right up at the sight of me. We won’t know until we give it a shot.”

Sister Eileen knew where Sarah’s quarters were, so she led them there—to the first floor, where the girl lived in an oversized suite almost big enough to call an apartment. She knocked, quietly the first time, louder the second time, and with true insistence on the third round.

From within, there was no answer—not even a sleepy mumble telling them to come back later.

The nun pressed her ear to the door, very near to the crack; and Juan Rios couldn’t quite shake the suspicion that she was sniffing again, trying to catch the scent of whatever waited on the other side. She regarded the two men with an instant of gold in her big brown eyes, a flash of light like a glimmering seam in a boulder. “Something’s wrong.”

“Truer words were never spoken, ma’am.”

“No, something new—something
else
. She’s in there, I can sense it,” she said vaguely. “But she isn’t moving. She isn’t breathing. I don’t smell any blood, but I don’t think she’s alive.” Before either of her companions could argue with her, or wonder aloud how she knew all that, she declared, “We have to open this door!” She tried the knob, wrestling it back and forth until a loud snap announced that it’d broken in her hands.

The Ranger drew his gun, but the nun told him to, “Put it away—just help me, she’s in there alone.”

Before the padre had a chance to listen, before he could even come to stand beside her, she shoved her shoulder against the door: once, twice, a third time in very quick succession…each blow sounding heavier than it looked. And before the men could lend her aid, the door collapsed inward with a crash—it banged against the wall and ricocheted, then stopped against her foot as she flung herself inside.

The Ranger and the padre looked wide-eyed at one another, and then at the door. The jamb had been smashed to splinters, and a long fault line had cracked the main panel almost in two.

But there was no time to comment upon the little nun’s strength.

Not when Sarah swung from a long cotton belt, fastened around her neck, tied around a heating pipe that ran along the ceiling. Not when her feet dangled over the nightstand from which she’d leaped.

No one moved.

No one thought for a moment that the girl was still alive; no one’s neck makes an angle like that, while the neck’s owner is alive to remark it. No one soils herself until her body’s fluids drip from the tips of her toenails so the rug is a soggy mess, not if they plan to account for it later.

She was wearing a nightdress and nothing else. Not even a bow in her hair.

Juan Rios closed the door behind them, and the Ranger nodded with approval. No one else needed to see this.

“I can’t believe it,” the nun said, never taking her eyes off the swaying corpse.

Korman could. “From what you’ve told me, it makes perfect sense. It looks like the poor girl had enough, that’s all—and this is the simplest death yet. Or it’s the most ordinary one, anyhow, if your descriptions can be believed.”

But the padre stood with the nun. “No, I don’t believe it either. Say what you will, some measure of courage is needed to fling yourself into the afterlife; and this girl had not one drop of courage to her name. You see, it isn’t simple, it isn’t…” he came closer to the corpse, and examined it as closely as he dared, at a distance. “It isn’t easy to break your neck, not like this. All she did was tie a little slip…” he drew it in the air with his finger, pointing at the spot where it dug in deep against her throat.

Now the Ranger looked too, and now he agreed. “You’re right. Hell, I’m not even sure that ribbon, or whatever it is…I don’t think it’s strong enough to break her. Strangle her, sure—but it’d be one hell of a yank to jerk her neck apart like that.”

“We should cut her down,” the nun fretted, looking for some handy blade to perform the task. “Are there any scissors, any knives…?” But no one saw any. “I suppose I could climb up and untie it…”

“Don’t,” the Ranger told her. “Don’t, there’s no point. She’s beyond help.”

“She’s not beyond
dignity
,” Sister Eileen snapped.

“Neither was Constance Fields, but I folded her in two and buried her behind the bushes,” Juan Rios said. “I don’t know if Sarah did this herself, or if it wasn’t her own idea. But whatever has harmed her, it did so without the mess it made of Mrs. Fields. We owe the dark forces a small measure of thanks for that, at least.”

She all but snarled at him. “What a disgusting thought.”

The wind agreed, chiming in with a fierce whistle that tore around the drains, and hissed through the cracks around the windows.

Korman pleaded, “Ma’am, we don’t have time to lay her out. We have another dozen people to speak with, and a hurricane to brace for. I won’t pretend there’s any chance we’ll make it off the island, but there’s plenty of hope we can hunker down and get ready for what’s coming.”

“As if we’re any safer inside these walls, then outside them.”

“One deadly threat at a time, if you please,” he persisted. “One we can prepare for, and one we can’t even understand. Let’s do what we can for the former, and work on the latter as we go. If the place is still standing tomorrow morning—”

“I
will
bring Sarah down. I
will
lay her out,” the nun cut him off. “Whether there’s any need or not. She was not a brave girl, but she was a decent one.”

“None of us are decent.” The padre breathed, “Certainly none of us here, in this hotel, during this storm. We’re all of us terrible, if this is what we’ve come to.” He did not finish his dire thoughts out loud, but when he caught the Ranger’s eye, he wondered if the old man hadn’t heard him anyway.

The Ranger and the padre left the nun to whatever task she had in mind, with regards to the dead woman hanging from the ceiling in the 2-room suite. Sister Eileen had insisted, and though it seemed pointless to them both, they tacitly agreed that it’d be likewise pointless to argue with her. She’d made a decision. She didn’t want their help. She’d join them later.

She’d made it all quite clear.

“Very well,” Korman had told her. “We’ll track down the ladies who work here, and start with them.”

Juan Rios said, “We could begin with Violetta. I expect she’s still at the desk.”

“A captive audience. Perfect.”

Indeed she was there, reading a cheaply printed paperback story about an explorer in the Northwest. She set it aside to speak with them; when she closed it and turned it over, the padre saw a man in a gasmask on the cover.

“Did you find Sarah?”

“We found her,” the padre said quickly. “But I’m afraid she won’t be joining us. You may need to work a second shift, or find your sister. Sarah isn’t well.”

Violetta sighed, because his careful wording hadn’t fooled her. “You mean the hotel’s taken her, too?”

The Ranger cleared his throat, and Juan Rios surrendered. “Yes, señorita. I’m very sorry, but that’s the truth.”

“I’m…surprised, a little. I thought Sarah would be the last. The Jacaranda needs her. Or it
needed
her. Or…or I thought it did.” She shook her head and crossed herself, then leaned forward on the counter as if she needed it for support. “Sarah’s been here the longest. She knew the most. She really seemed to understand the hotel, and what it needed. But if she’s gone…it surely means the end is very near. If even Sarah is taken, what hope is there for the rest of us?”

Her eyes filled up with tears, and the despair on her face made the padre’s heart hurt. It was a familiar grief, and he wondered if it would be his own hell—to bear witness and offer comfort to every doomed girl who served as the Jacaranda’s gatekeeper. 

What else was he there for? What else could he do?

He took her hand. It was cool to the touch, and faintly damp. Her pulse fluttered at the edge of her wrist. “Tell me, why are
you
still here? You and your family, I mean? Constance Fields suggested that you were caught here, just like her—and like the other guests, perhaps. If we can learn why people come to this place, why they stay, we may solve the mystery yet.”

“So what if we do?” she asked. She took her hand away from his, and swiped at her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “Solve it, understand it…it does not matter. It will devour us all, or else the storm will take us.” She bobbed her head toward the doors, which shook and hummed against the gusts outside.

“No,” the Ranger argued. “No, we aren’t going to talk like that. There’s time yet, before the storm hits us good—and time before we’re all dead, from one thing or another. Now answer the good padre’s question, if you please.”

“But I don’t
know
. Not for certain…”

“Then give me your best guess,” Juan Rios pushed. “Tell me why you think you’ve come here, and maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong. But it will be a place to start.”

The younger Alvarez daughter glanced anxiously toward the Ranger, who did his best to look encouraging, but there was only so much his eyebrows could accomplish alone. So he told her, “If there’s been some crime committed, by you or your mother, or your sister…I want you to know: I don’t care about it. That’s not why I’m here. Right now, at this hotel, I’m no officer of the law and I’m on no mission from Austin; I only want to stop whatever darkness is eating the heart of this place. Same as the padre here, and the little nun in Sarah’s room.”

In Spanish, Juan Rios told her, “Besides, you said it does not matter. If you’re right, then what harm does it do to tell us? Unburden yourself. Confess what you will, and you’ll see no punishment for it…except whatever we may all find here, at the hands of the storm or at the gates of heaven.”

Violetta looked over her shoulder at the hotel’s office, then beyond and behind the two men who so gently interrogated her. Seeing no one, she crossed herself again and leaned in close, her eyes red as pennies.

So softly he barely heard her, she replied in her first tongue.

“You mustn’t tell my mother, you must promise me that. You can’t let her know that I told you.” When the padre nodded solemnly in return, she said, “We are here because of this: My mother kept
her
mother in our house, though Grandmother’s mind was weak, and she was very difficult. She was easily confused and prone to wandering. She fought us sometimes, when she could not remember who we were, or why we wanted her to eat. She tried to run away from us, but my mother always went after her. She always brought her home, even if she swore at us and struck us with her fists.

“My mother had promised, you see—back when Grandmother was still aware of herself, and when she was first afraid that her mind would leave her. She made my mother promise to keep her safe, when she could not keep herself safe anymore.

“So my mother, my sister and I…we kept her safe for three years, until the night she screamed at my mother and hit her with a pan. My mother screamed back, and told her to
go
—if that’s what she wanted to do. So Grandmother went. My sister and I followed after her, but it was dark and Grandmother threw rocks at us. So we gave up and went home.”

She lowered her voice even more, until there was scarcely any sound at all—just the soft rush of breath pushed past her lips. “The next day, they found her in the tide. She’d gone to the ocean and drowned. Mother told the police she’d wandered away in the night, when we were all asleep. But we were
not
asleep,” she concluded in the very faintest of whispers. If the padre hadn’t been watching her lips so closely, he wouldn’t have understood her.

He patted her shoulder and asked, “Have you confessed this to your priest?”

“Yes. But it does not feel any different to me. I told God what we did, and I told Him that I am sorry, and that I wish I could have that night back—to do the right thing, this time. Please forgive me, Father, but I do not think that God is listening anymore…not to me. Because when the hotel creaks and moans at night, and the shadows slip back and forth when I’m alone…when the men and women die, one by one or two by two, going to hell like animals into the ark…when I wonder why we remain at the Jacaranda, and try to imagine leaving…I think of my grandmother, throwing rocks in the dark.”

Her throat finally closed, and her tears fell, and she would say no more.

To the Ranger, the padre said, “I’ll explain what she told me, later.” For right that moment, from the corner of his eye, he saw a figure moving outside the far window—struggling to walk upright the wind. “Violetta…over there. Through the window, you see? That’s Sarah’s cousin Tim, isn’t it?”

Violetta nodded. “He should come inside,” she squeaked.

“We’ll see to him.”

“Back into the gale?” asked Korman, even as the padre was stepping toward the doors, and the Ranger came to follow him.

“The man outside, they say he has the mind of a child. We must bring him indoors for his own safety’s sake; and though it may be a difficult thing to do, we must tell him what’s become of his cousin.”

Together they opened the great front doors, and closed them again—using all their weight and strength to see them fastened behind themselves. Then it was only the two men against the weather, the blowing, spinning low clouds that scrubbed the island raw.

Tim was not so far away, only around the first corner.

Even as tall and sturdily built as he was, the wind was hard on him—but he moved against it with determination, carrying something close to his chest and shielding it as best he could.

“Tim!” shouted the padre.

Tim turned to look at him, but seeing no one he recognized, he continued onward—hunched against the coming storm, step by step, alongside the building.

Ranger Korman tried another approach. “Tim, I’m a Texas Ranger and I’m ordering you to stop where you are!” But that didn’t work either.

“Tim, please, you need to come inside!”

Their words were whipped around and muddled by the maelstrom, but Tim heard enough to nod, and to call back to them. “I’m
going
inside. You should come too.”

“A side entrance?” asked the Ranger.

“Apparently.”

“Wish I’d known about it five minutes ago.”

“As do I.”

Another twenty yards, and yes—they were at the end of the eastern wing. Or was it the north one? Everything was turned around, even the shape of the hotel was distorted, carved, and adjusted by the whims of the sky.

But there was a door, and Tim opened it.

He stepped inside and held it for the Ranger and the padre to join him; and when they were all back within the Jacaranda, he forced it shut with one long arm. (The other arm was still wrapped around something he kept hidden beneath his work jacket.)

“Tim, I am Father Rios, and this is Ranger Korman.”

“I know,” he said.

“Did Sarah tell you?”

He shook his head. “No.”

The padre didn’t ask. Instead he tried, “What were you doing out there, in this terrible weather? You should be inside, somewhere safe.”

“I’m going to Sarah’s room. She’s dead now.”

From behind them, Sister Eileen said, “For what it’s worth, I didn’t tell him.”

They all turned to look at her. No one had heard her coming up behind them.

She ignored their surprise, and added wearily, “He knocked at her door, and when I answered it, he told me she was dead. He said he had to go get something for her.”

“I got it. Can I see her now?”

The nun nodded, despite the uncertain glances cast her way. “You can see her, Tim. I’ve laid her out, and she’s lovely. Come and pay your last respects, and leave your gift beside her.”

He opened his jacket to reveal a ragdoll that had been much beloved in some years past. “It was hers,” he told them. “She let me keep it, for night time. I don’t need it anymore.”

Inside Sarah’s room, the young woman was no longer dangling—but lying on the bed, dressed in something clean with a very high neck. Her hands were folded across her belly. Tim stared at her, but did not appear particularly grieved. Though that wasn’t fair, or so the padre told himself.

Whatever went on in the boy’s mind, it stayed there. That was all.

Tim placed the doll beside his cousin’s shoulder, leaving it staring at the ceiling from which she’d had hung. It was not a pretty doll, and its face was stitched from black thread—giving it an expression that should not have been very comforting at night; but it was Sarah’s again, and that’s what mattered to the young man now. He looked satisfied, at least.

The Ranger asked him, “Who told you Sarah died?”

“Jack told me.”

The nun frowned. “Jack?”

“Jack always knows. He always tells me.”

Juan Rios felt a sinking in his stomach, because Sarah had been wrong. The hotel
did
speak to her cousin, innocent or not. “You mean
Jacaranda
.”

Tim nodded. “It talks.”

“To you?”

He shrugged, and gave his cousin another long look before turning and walking away. “It just
talks
. It said that Sarah broke her promise. It said she left me alone.”