Life or Death (30 page)

Outside the court, FBI Special Agent Frank Senogles told reporters that the FBI had conducted more than a thousand interviews in connection with the robbery and had focused its attention on relatives and known associates of the gang, but the money had proved impossible to trace because no serial numbers were kept of cash that was destined for destruction.

‘I can assure people that we have an open file and regular conversations with the state and county police over strategy and tactics. We have not changed our minds about the people responsible, but as time passes the case becomes harder to solve without public help.’

Desiree is surprised to see Frank Senogles being quoted. Why hadn’t he mentioned that he was involved in the original inquiry? The FBI had headed the investigation, which meant Senogles would have interviewed Ryan Valdez and the other deputies. He would also have talked to Audie Palmer, yet when Desiree claimed to know more about the case than anyone else, Senogles didn’t correct or contradict or belittle her, which he normally wouldn’t hesitate to do.

Turning the page, she finds another news story.

GOVERNOR PRAISES HEROIC COPS

By Michael Gidley

Despite coming under fire, Dreyfus County Sheriff’s Deputies Ryan Valdez, Nick Fenway and Timothy Lewis did not waver in coming to each other’s rescue after a dramatic high-speed pursuit of a stolen armored truck.

Thanks to their heroism, the three officers are alive today and a dangerous criminal is behind bars. For their bravery on that chaotic day in January 2004, deputies Valdez, Fenway and Lewis today received the Star of Texas Award – the state’s most prestigious honor, recognizing “acts of heroism above and beyond the call of duty.”

Gov. Rick Perry and Attorney General Steve Keneally presented the awards at a Capitol ceremony, praising the officers for their outstanding bravery and public service.

The photograph shows all three deputies in uniform, standing beside Governor Perry, smiling for the camera. Fenway, Valdez and Lewis look slightly uncomfortable in the pose, but the Governor is feeding off the shine. In the background, caught in profile as he turned away from the camera, is Frank Senogles. There is a radio in his hand. Perhaps he was part of the security detail.

Desiree hits redial on her phone.

‘There’s something else,’ she tells Jenkins. ‘I need to find two state police officers: Nick Fenway and Timothy Lewis. Both of them worked for the Dreyfus County Sheriff’s Department in 2004.’

40

Invisible within the bowels of the Old Granada Theater, Audie curls in a ball and tries to sleep, but he keeps dreaming of the Trinity River on a stormy day a dozen years ago. Standing close to the edge of the water, he stares into the depths as lightning springs and crackles from dark bulbous clouds above his head. Suddenly a skeleton surges from beneath the surface, carried on a black wave. Within the ribcage is a seal-like creature with sharp white teeth. Trapped. Shrieking to be released. The skeleton slips back beneath the surface, leaving nothing but ripples. Other things rise from the river, new horrors lifted from the blackness, reaching out for Audie, demanding to be freed.

His eyes snap open and a scream dies in his throat. Sitting upright, he catches sight of a reflection in a shattered mirror and can’t recognise himself, this haggard shadow, this joke of a man, this wretch …

The night is over. Audie leans against a damp wall and writes a list of the things he needs. Other people would be running. They would be selling their watch, the gold in their teeth, a spare kidney; they would be catching a bus to Mexico or Canada or working passage on a container ship or swimming to Cuba. Perhaps he desires his own destruction, although Audie doubts he has the necessary moral fibre to support a death wish.

What else to put on his list?

• Masking tape
  
• Sleeping bags
  
• SIM cards
  
• Water
  

He remembers making a similar list, nursing different bruises, after being beaten up by Urban’s nephews and told never to see Belita again. He had booked into a cheap motel near the Mexican border, where he lay in bed like a hospital patient waiting for the truth to make its rounds. Occasionally, he crawled to the bathroom and spat blood into the sink, sucking on a broken tooth. On the fourth day it took him an hour to walk two blocks to a pharmacy and liquor store, where he bought painkillers, anti-inflammatory drugs, icepacks and a bottle of bourbon.

He floated back to the motel on a cocktail of drugs and booze. Along the way he thought he saw Belita. She was walking toward him, her skirt billowing one moment, hugging her thighs the next. Her hair was swept back and held in place by a clasp which he knew was tortoiseshell because it was the only thing that survived her journey from El Salvador.

She walked so elegantly with her back straight and chin held high, and pedestrians seemed to make way for her, stepping aside and smiling. She was only fifty yards away when he called out. She didn’t respond. He tried to run and called her name again. She didn’t pause or miss her stride.

‘Belita,’ he cried, louder this time. She quickened her step and crossed the road. A car braked. A horn blasted.

‘Belita!’

She stopped. Turned. How thin she’d grown. How old. It wasn’t Belita. The woman told him to get lost, but less politely. Audie backed away, palms open, incapable of speech.

Back at the motel he made a list of things he needed. He knew the details of Urban’s accounts, the bank branches, account names and numbers. On Friday January 9, a man wearing dark glasses and a baseball cap walked into eight branches and made an equal number of withdrawals of a thousand dollars each. This man could have taken ten or twenty times that amount – he could have taken it all – but he took what he thought he was owed and a little extra for his injuries. That’s what the man told himself as he filled out the different withdrawal slips and forged Urban’s signature. Afterwards, he bought himself some new clothes and searched the classifieds for a second-hand car.

‘One more time,’ Audie told himself, he had to see her one more time. He would not beg, he would simply ask, knowing that his pride would survive even if his heart broke into a thousand pieces.

Arriving at the church an hour before the morning service, he parked the car in a nearby cul-de-sac and waited for the doors to open. He had a small overnight bag in the trunk, along with the cash. A smudge of the city skyline was just visible above the rooftops and he could hear the highway less than a block away. Would she come, he wondered. Would Urban let her?

When the priest opened the doors, Audie sat in the shadows of the baptismal area, watching the parishioners arrive. Belita was among the last. The nephews had driven her, but waited outside smoking and listening to the radio. Audie hadn’t noticed the young boy. He was sitting four rows from the front, next to a moon-faced Hispanic woman with dyed black hair poking from beneath a colourful scarf that did nothing to soften her features.

Belita dipped her finger into the holy water and made the sign of the cross, keeping her eyes down as she passed him. She genuflected and moved along a pew, wrapping her arms around the boy, who sank into her embrace as though falling into freshly driven snow.

Only thirty or so people had come to Mass. Audie slid into the pew behind Belita and sat so he could see one side of her face. She wore a faded blue sundress, which was tight across her belly, and scuffed white sandals that had a gold buckle above her toes. The smudge of dirt on her cheek turned into an old bruise when he looked more closely. She had taken a fist, which was his fault as surely as if he had delivered the blow himself. The boy next to her wore shorts, long socks and polished black shoes. His legs stuck straight out and he clung to her arm, raising his face to hers, his eyelashes as thick as epaulettes.

Everybody stood. The procession began. A portly priest made his way down the central aisle to the sound of an organ and a mumbled hymn. A young boy and girl, brother and sister perhaps, were dressed in white robes and carrying a Bible and a candle. Belita turned to watch. She spied Audie. He saw relief in her eyes and then fear. She turned away. The woman in the scarf glanced over her shoulder and seemed to understand. Her features hardened. This must be Belita’s cousin, he thought, the one who looks after her boy.

Audie’s eyes hadn’t left Belita. ‘I need to talk to you,’ he whispered.

She said nothing. The priest had reached the altar, where he took the Bible and placed it on the pulpit. The hymn had almost finished. Voices rose more confidently in the final chorus.

Belita made the sign of the cross. Audie now stood directly behind her, his chin almost touching her shoulder. He could smell her perfume. No, it was something else. Not soap or shampoo or talcum powder, but something earthy and raw, her own essence. He was a fool to think he could ever live without her.

The young boy was kneading the folds of Belita’s dress with one hand and holding a stuffed bear in the other. He had a hymnbook balanced on his lap and he was pretending to read the words.

‘Come away with me,’ Audie whispered.

Belita ignored him.

‘I love you,’ he said.

‘He will kill us both,’ she murmured.

‘We can go far away. He’ll never find us.’

‘He will
always
find us.’

‘Not if we go to Texas. I have family there.’

‘That’s the first place he’ll look.’

‘We’ll hide from him.’

They were trying to talk in whispers, but people were beginning to notice. Belita’s cousin turned and confronted Audie.

‘¡Fuera! ¡Fuera! Usted es el Diablo.’

She poked at his chest and waved him away. Someone hushed them. The priest looked over the top of his glasses.

Audie leaned closer, his breath on the back of Belita’s neck. ‘You have taken so many chances to get here. You deserve more than this. You deserve to be with your son. You deserve to be happy.’

A tear hovered on the edge of her lower eyelash and her hands fluttered across the soft swelling of her stomach.

‘Life is short,’ said Audie.

‘Love is vast,’ she whispered.

His chin was resting on her shoulder. ‘If you leave through the side door, follow the fence and you’ll find a gate. Don’t let them see you. I’ll be waiting. I have a car and money.’

When the sermon finished, Audie slipped away and went back to the Pontiac. There was a skate park over the road with a concrete half-pipe spray-painted with graffiti. Skateboarders rocked back and forth, doing aerial manoeuvres and then resting on the platforms above. Audie’s tongue explored his mouth in search of moisture. What if she didn’t come? Why should she trust him? He had made his move, a fluky play, more in blind hope than real expectation.

The mass ended. Nobody came. Audie drove slowly past the church and saw the nephews escorting Belita to the car. She hugged her boy, who clung to her leg, burying his face in the folds of her skirt, not wanting her to go. She crouched and brushed hair from his eyes. He cried and she cried and the car doors clunked shut and soon she was gone.

Audie sat staring at the scene for a full minute, as though waiting for the actors to return. Surely this couldn’t be the end. Bereft, he lifted his face to the sky like a slave contemplating freedom and looked straight into vast blue heavens that mirrored his own emptiness. ‘OK, show me something,’ he wanted to scream. ‘Show me how I get through this.’

Somebody knocked on the side window. The sour-faced cousin was motioning at Audie, wanting him to lower the glass. She was holding the boy’s hand.

‘Write down your address,’ she said in Spanish.

Audie searched desperately for a pen … paper. He found the bill of sale for the car and jotted down the name of the motel. Room 24.

‘She will contact you.’

‘When?’

‘Beggars must be grateful.’

Waiting sounds like a passive thing, but it wasn’t for Audie. His vigil was as fraught and strenuous as anything he had ever done. He paced. He reasoned. He did push-ups. He ignored the TV. He didn’t sleep. Time could not be killed. He could have plunged a stake through its heart, diced it up, burned it, buried it deep, but it still would have lived.

He waited three days until he got a message from Belita’s cousin, and another two days before he stood at the Greyhound Bus station on National Avenue and watched a coach empty, staring at the faces. What if she had missed the bus? What if she’d changed her mind?

But then she took the final step and stood between the coaches, a small suitcase in her hand. Audie was suddenly speechless. Dumb. The distance between them seemed immense. She smiled. Gaunt. Tired. Beautiful. She was clutching an ugly orange suitcase and pressed against her belly was a small boy. Clearly terrified, he was dressed in beige corduroy trousers, a T-shirt and bright red sneakers.

Audie didn’t know what to say or do. He took Belita’s suitcase. Put it down. Hugged her. He squeezed her too tightly.

‘Steady,’ she said, pulling away.

He looked crestfallen. She took his hand and placed it on her stomach. His eyes asked the question.

‘It is yours,’ she said, waiting for his reaction.

He bent and scooped her up, hugging her hips and raising her high in the air so that his face pressed into her abdomen and he could kiss her stomach through the cotton of her dress. She laughed and told him to put her down.

The young boy was standing next to the suitcase. He had hair the colour of cooking chocolate and those unbelievably brown eyes.

‘How-do,’ said Audie. ‘What’s your name?’

The young boy looked at his mother.

‘Miguel,’ she said.

‘It’s nice to meet you, Miguel.’

Audie shook the boy’s hand. Miguel looked at his fingers afterward, as though worried Audie might have stolen one.

‘Nice shoes,’ said Audie.

Miguel looked at his feet.

‘Very red.’

Miguel turned one leg inwards to get a look at the shoes himself and then put his face back in his mother’s skirt.