A Desperate Silence (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 3) (27 page)

     
Matt noted that the bullet holes were not visible from the vehicle's interior. He knew the Mexican police had access to bulletproof delivery trucks, vans, buses; why not taxis? He leaned forward, said, "Nice wheels."

     
Victor Vargas was somewhere past thirty-five but shy of forty. He had a head of thick, dark hair and a trim mustache and a stubble of beard that went nicely with his bronze skin. He sat erect, dressed in a white polyester shirt and dark slacks, and he had a presence that belied his relatively slight physical stature. At the moment, he looked like a cabdriver who had already worked the graveyard shift, not a cop.

     
Vargas glanced in the rearview mirror, and a wide smile broke open his face, revealing white teeth. "I have a little something for you."

     
"I hope it's a Cuban cigar."

     
"Take a look." Vargas pulled the taxi into a heavy stream of traffic. Two traffic officers—Laurel and Hardy in uniform—directed him past a construction detour.

     
Matt saw a manila file on the floor of the car by his feet; he lifted it onto his lap and opened the cover. The contents included a half dozen photographs and a stack of typewritten reports in Spanish. He focused on the photographs; there was one man in the first picture.

     
Without looking back, Victor said, "The first photograph is Amado Fortuna—one of the few on file because the Big Tuna is allergic to cameras. The other five photos are of his
primo
Paco."

     
Matt studied the drug kingpin. The surveillance photo was grainy, its subject disappointingly mundane. The slight, middle-aged figure did not look like a man who had ordered a hundred-plus executions, a man who doled out death with his bare hands. No fangs, no horns. Only in kinetic energy had the photographer caught a hint of the international criminal's cocky machismo, his natural brutality.

     
Matt moved on to the photographs of Paco Fortuna. He appeared to be a soft man with nondescript fleshy features. On the street or in a crowd he would disappear behind a cloak of ordinariness. A witness would describe him as average, normal. Matt studied each photograph, taking in the narrow mouth, the deep-set eyes behind thick glasses, the unremarkable nose. Was there intelligence etched in the mocking curve of the lips? Did a hint of deftness escape through dark pupils? Matt was careful not to project keenness or cogency upon that two-dimensional image.

     
The photographs slid across Matt's lap when Victor was forced to jam on the taxi's brakes. They were inching through a jammed intersection. All around them, vehicles with Texan and Chihuahuan license plates played stop-and-go while car horns created a disharmonious symphony.

     
Victor gave a noncommittal snort as he glided the car to a stop.

     
Matt tried to roll down his window—it lowered most of four inches and stuck. Enough to register the smell of oil refineries, hot asphalt, anxiety, fast food, car exhaust—plain old urban burn-off at somewhere near ninety degrees. On the first day of November.

     
A hawker waved to Matt from between the rows of idling cars. A barefoot boy with mestizo features, no older than seven or eight but already hard at work, covered with plastic skeletons, skull maracas, paper coffins, and toy spiders with gleaming red eyes.

     
"
El Día de los Muertos
," Victor murmured.

     
Day of the Dead. A major Mexican holiday and one that Matt had always been partial to. He motioned the kid over to the car. The child's dark skin was covered with a film of dust and grease. When Matt pressed his nose over the window, he could hardly breathe through the thick exhaust fumes; but this polluted strip of the world was the child's office. The boy wiped grimy fingers across his face and kept up a running pitch in mongrel Spanish.

     
Matt asked the kid how he split his take—the
policía
had been rumored to rent space to beggars and vendors. The boy shook his head, his broad smile revealing missing front teeth. His fingers clutched the door as the car inched forward in line.

     
He said, "
No problema, Señor Norteamericano
." But his accent was bad, and Victor explained that the boy was probably Indian, a traveler from somewhere deep in Mexico's interior, or farther south, Guatemala or Ecuador. He was a young member of the migrating masses—rivers of people who flowed across natural and man-made borders.

     
Matt bought two of the plastic skeletons—they turned out to be puppets—and gave the boy two dollars.

     
He dropped the skeletons into the front seat. "Happy birthday, Vargas." Then he stacked the photos together and asked, "What the hell was Amado Fortuna's cousin doing in New Mexico with a ten-year-old kid?"

     
"Moving fast?
No sé
." Victor shook his head. "So Paco Fortuna is your guy?"

     
Matt thought about the dead man whose body was now tagged and stored at the O.M.I. in Albuquerque. The face and hands of the corpse had been badly decomposed. Positive identification could take weeks—and that was assuming Mexican authorities cooperated. "Maybe."

     
"A lot of people will be interested in your maybe. He was a . . . how do you say, a right-hand man?"

     
"To Amado?"

     
"
Sí
." Victor pursed his lips. "Your questions will make people nervous—What was he doing in Los Estados Unidos; What was he doing in
Nuevo
Mexico?—they make
me
nervous." His eyes narrowed to slits. "You ever heard of Snow White?"

     
"Yeah. She ate the poisoned apple."

     
Victor shrugged. "Is it true the child may be the daughter of a condemned murderer?"

     
"It's true. What's the deal with the taxi?"

     
"Amado Fortuna wants to kill me." Victor noticed Matt's expression and flashed a macabre smile. "
No problema, Señor Norteamericano
."

S
EEN THROUGH A
hard plastic security barrier in the Penitentiary of New Mexico's Maximum Facility, Cash Wheeler's face appeared oddly out of focus. The drab prison-issue clothes hung off his body and made his white skin look even paler. His hair and eyes were washed to a dull gray by fluorescent lights and malnutrition. His shoulders were pressed open, and he sat stiffly upright at the table in the visitors' booth. He didn't move his head, but his eyes searched out detail. When he made no move to communicate, Sylvia picked up the telephone on her side of the barrier and waited. Almost a minute elapsed before the death row inmate responded by lifting the receiver on his phone.

     
Sylvia spoke first; to her own ear, her voice sounded pinched and tinny. "Thanks for the drawing," she said. She held up the piece of white paper the C.O. had given her when she arrived. By phone, she had requested a pencil drawing from Cash Wheeler. "Just sketch a man—a self-portrait if you want. Nothing fancy, a stick figure or whatever. Don't sign your name; just print your initials."

     
He'd agreed, asking only: "Is it some kind of psychologist thing?"

     
"Yeah. That's what it is."

     
On the other side of the barrier, Wheeler blinked. A fly landed on the reddish bristles that covered his chin. He ignored the pest and it flew off again.

     
Although Sylvia was used to dealing with prisoners, it had been weeks since her last contact with a penitentiary inmate—even longer since she'd been in a visitors' booth in P.N.M.'s max unit.

     
Sylvia almost jumped when Wheeler finally spoke. He said, "I'm here because Noelle says you're all right." His voice was soft, close to gentle.

     
"Yeah, I'm all right." Sylvia tried a small smile. Cash Wheeler's gaze brushed past her face—settling into that thousand-yard stare so many inmates wear like a uniform. She asked, "Did your sister tell you why I wanted to see you?"

     
"About the kid." His eyes settled on her mouth.

     
"She may be your daughter."

     
Wheeler turned away, blocking her out, perhaps to artificially re-create the solitude he had grown used to. He said, "The jury thought my daughter died in the Pecos River."

     
"Did you put her there?"

     
"No."

     
"Her name is Serena." "Who says?"

     
"She wrote it down. Did Noelle tell you Serena doesn't speak?"

     
Wheeler grunted. "Is she retarded or something?"

     
Sylvia sighed, only partially warding off an instant dislike for this man. "No," she said. "She's not retarded. She's extremely bright. I'd like to tell you about her."

     
She thought she heard Wheeler release a sudden breath into the phone. She felt the icy grip of his attention—he was watching her again. She didn't let herself look at him but pressed on quietly. "The first time I saw her, Serena had bruises from the accident; they've pretty much healed now. She's leggy for a ten-year-old. She weighs eighty-eight pounds. Her hair is long and dark, and she likes it in a ponytail."

     
Sylvia gave a quick laugh, adding, "There's a little gap between her front teeth." She looked directly at the inmate. She wanted to personalize Serena—in name, physically, emotionally—to make the child real for Cash.

     
She pressed her fingers together and leaned forward toward the barrier. "Her eyes are huge. They're so dark they're almost black."

     
Wheeler dropped his gaze, but still he held the phone to his ear.

     
Afraid she was losing him, Sylvia said, "She's an artist. Her drawings are amazing—"

     
"Why tell me?" He shrugged, apparently uninterested.

     
"Do you understand your daughter might be alive?"

     
The inmate leaned forward until his forehead touched the security barrier—the gesture was subtle, oblique, and threatening—and the psychologist knew she was back in the con game: a world of antisocial, predatory personalities.

     
Wheeler said, "Here's what you should understand: I want out of here. If the kid can get me out, great."

     
Sylvia pushed a loose strand of hair from her face. For a moment, Wheeler's expression had revealed something unintended—the hollow bravado of a teenager. She was reminded of the blind psych screens done in prisons where inmates consistently scored below average for their age group. Almost to a man, you could take the chronological age and subtract the number of years spent behind bars. Incarceration stunted most inmates—emotionally, intellectually. In many ways, Wheeler was still a brash, angry, and pathetic nineteen-year-old.

     
She knew he would hate her if she allowed pity to show in her face. Speaking in a hard voice, she said, "You're not making this easy."

     
"Nobody made it easy for me." His tone was harsh, but he had relaxed just slightly. Resentment was a comfortable and familiar refuge.

     
"How can I make it easier for you now, Cash?" She didn't try to keep the edge of sarcasm from her voice.

     
Cash looked away, tapping his fingers on the plastic table.

     
Sylvia spoke softly. "I know this must open up feelings from all those years ago—"

     
"No." Wheeler swallowed and his Adam's apple bobbed. He spoke in a flat voice. "It doesn't open anything."

     
Sylvia bit her lip, then frowned. "What if Serena
is
your daughter, Cash? What do you want her life to be like? What would you
dream
for her?"

     
No response.

     
Suddenly, the inmate's sharp eyes caught and held Sylvia in their gaze. There was nothing hidden, nothing masked or challenging in his stare. His face looked naked, his innermost feelings painfully exposed. Sylvia swallowed, almost flinching at the hopelessness played out on his features. The man sitting five feet away had spent the last decade locked in a prison cell for the murder of the woman he loved. If he was guilty, remorse had eaten away at his soul. If he was innocent . . . Sylvia could only imagine what his pain must be.

     
But there was a faint flame in his eye, a candle flickering at the end of a long, dark tunnel—his humanity had not withered completely.

     
Sylvia leaned forward in her chair, the plastic digging uncomfortably into her butt. Her muscles were suddenly trembling. She clenched the phone. "If you are Serena's father, she's waited ten years and traveled five hundred miles to find you. Don't turn her away without giving her a chance."

     
Then it struck her like a bolt of electricity—she felt incredibly dense that she hadn't figured it out sooner. Noelle Harding's words about Serena replayed in her mind: "She
is
Elena."

     
"You don't believe you were the father of Elena's baby—is that it?"

     
She caught her lip between her teeth and shook her head slowly. She tried to remember every word the inmate had spoken in the last five minutes. He was staring at her, his eyes boring oppressively into her face. But Sylvia saw the warring emotions beneath the mask—anger, frustration, and shame.

     
"Cash, if you weren't the baby's father, then who?" He didn't answer. She pushed: "Did Elena tell you she'd slept with someone else? Or did you guess? Did Elena love another boy?"

     
In Sylvia's mind, a name swam to consciousness; early this morning, bleary-eyed, she'd watched Matt leave for the airport and Mexico. Then she'd returned to her kitchen, and over strong, black coffee she'd read more of Jim Teague's case files. All the time her curiosity had grown—who was the boy who had disappeared? Who was Jesús?