I leaned forward now, totally interested in what Pelayo was saying. “You’re saying it was cathartic? That it helped the community?”
“I am. I’m saying it exposed a lot of the closet racism that made those boys think it was okay to roll a Latino for entertainment on a Saturday night. I’m saying this is a better town for what the Elmville Three did. It changed everything. It changed the way the schools deal with the children of illegal immigrant workers. It changed the way health-care workers care for Latinos. It changed the way restaurants and banks and stores deal with my people. I’m sure it was the last thing on their mind that night, but the Elmville Three did all of us—the white community, too—a favor.”
“You know two of them are dead, don’t you?” I asked.
Pelayo’s face went somber. “I’d heard. Guilt can do strange things to a person. Shame can make it even worse.”
It wasn’t a bad assumption to make. Officially, both boys had committed suicide. Factually, both boys had committed suicide. I was one of the few people who knew that there was more to it than met the eye. “You think that’s what made them do it? Shame and guilt?”
“What else could there be?” Pelayo shrugged. “I’d be guilt-ridden and ashamed if it were me. Of course, I’m not anything like them, so maybe I have that wrong.”
It still didn’t make sense to me. “Then why wait until now? It’s been six years. I’m sure they could have found some way to kill themselves before now if they were so filled with anguish.”
Pelayo shrugged. “They guard those places pretty well. Maybe they didn’t have a chance. Maybe they were too busy fighting for their lives in there to think about taking their own.”
“What do you mean?” I broke in.
“Well, it’s not like there are no Latinos incarcerated by the CYA. There are an awful lot of members of the Latino gangs in there. It’s practically a badge of honor to have a juvenile record. It might be an even bigger badge for a
cholo
to beat the crap out of someone who’d rolled an innocent man just for having brown skin.”
I wondered about that. “Are there any gang members here that might have been happy to take out those boys now that they’re home?”
Pelayo looked alarmed. “Look. Our community isn’t perfect, and the gangs are very active all over California. I don’t think those boys would be very popular with the
cholos
, but I also haven’t heard they were being specifically targeted. Besides, those two boys committed suicide. No one killed them. If it had been a gang-related killing, I would have heard about it by now.”
“Anybody else who might not have been so happy to see them home?” I asked.
Pelayo shrugged. “I heard the three of them weren’t such good buddies once they went away. There were a lot of bad feelings between them. The cops questioned them all separately and it’s a little unclear who broke first. Whoever did was responsible for all of them going down. There was a lot of mutual suspicion between them.”
“So you think it’s possible that the third boy might have had it in for the other two? The two that are dead now?” That was an interesting thought. We needed to find that third boy.
“Maybe, but so what if he did? He didn’t kill them. They killed themselves.” Pelayo leaned back in his chair.
“I still don’t understand why they would do it now.” I shook my head.
“Maybe it was being home, back at the scene of the crime so to speak, that drove them to it. Having to face all the people who knew what they did and hated them for it. I can’t say I know what went on in those young men’s heads. I didn’t understand them when they murdered Jorge Aguilar and I don’t understand them now when they murder themselves. It’s not how my mind works.”
“So who hated them the most?” I asked.
“Pardon?” Pelayo’s brow furrowed.
“You said they had to face all the people who knew what they did and hated them for it. Who hated them the most?”
Pelayo rubbed his chin. “That’s an interesting question. You’ve got a few candidates.”
“Name a few.” I took out a notepad.
“What exactly are you after? Those boys committed suicide. There’s no question about that.” Pelayo started to look suspicious.
“I’m as interested in the why of it all as I am in the who. Something just doesn’t seem right about it,” I said.
“Claro. Does it really matter, though? You won’t bring them back. Dead is dead.”
He had a point. There was still one boy who wasn’t dead, though. Was he a murderer? Or another potential victim who needed to be protected? “Humor me.”
“Aguilar wasn’t married and the girl he was with that night moved away a few years ago. He had an aunt in the area.” Pelayo rubbed his thumb along the furrows in his brow.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
Pelayo thought for a moment. “Lopez, I think. Rosita Lopez. She lived over by the cemetery. I heard she died a few years back, though. Cancer.”
“Anybody else?” I asked.
“I can’t imagine their own families were too thrilled with them. Rawley wasn’t from a prominent family, but Bossard was. His dad owned a car dealership, among other things. He tarnished the family name and damn near bankrupted them with his legal expenses. I doubt they were all that thrilled.”
“They seemed pretty broken up at his memorial service,” I observed, then hoped that Pelayo wouldn’t ask what I had been doing there.
“Yeah, well, the kid’s dead. What are you going to do? Plus, he clearly won’t be around reminding everybody in town that you raised a racist sociopath anymore.”
He had a point. “Anyone else?”
He leaned forward on his desk.
“Maybe. But there are a lot of people who owe them thanks, too. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m done talking about those three devils and I’m ready to get on with my work of the angels.”
I HAD LEFT THE DOLL LEGS IN THEIR ZIPLOC PRISON AND PUT the bag inside a little lead box that Mae had given me as a gift. Lead stopped radiation. Surely it could at least slow down voodoo or whatever this was. I had put it in the trunk of the Buick as far from me as I could get it. I hoped that and a healthy dose of self-awareness would keep it from driving me crazy all the way to Elmville. I had driven down on autopilot, chewing over what I’d learned.
Right after I left Pelayo’s office, I pulled the car over on the side of the highway. With a certain amount of distaste, I retrieved the box from the trunk and brought it up into the front seat with me. I opened the box and the bag. If I wanted to listen to the legs, I was going to have to let them out in the open.
I pulled back onto the street.
I’d gone about two miles when I felt the spider crawling across my neck. I kept my eyes on the road and my hands on the wheel. It wasn’t easy and I was guessing that I’d be taking a scalding hot shower the second I got home, but for now, I was going to live with the sensation.
I managed to drive into downtown Elmville without leaping around in my car, swatting at imaginary insects. If only they gave out awards for those kinds of things. I tried to open my senses more to the legs. It wasn’t easy. The more open I made myself, the more real the sensations of ants crawling on my arms, spiders down my back and cobwebs across my face became.
I gritted my teeth, which quite honestly is very counterproductive to the whole opening process, and tried again. Through the creepy crawlies, I felt a push toward F Street. With a huge sense of relief, I closed myself off enough so that I could drive, and found a parking spot.
I sealed the legs up, shoved them in my pocket and started down the street. I kept my hands clenched at my sides, fighting the urge to slap at my arms and brush things off my face. I didn’t need to call any more attention to myself than was absolutely necessary. Finally, I felt the urge to walk into the Canyon Café. It was just the way Sophie had described it. I knew that was where I was supposed to go. Nothing whispered in my ear. No unseen force shoved me. Something in me responded to something in those nasty half-burnt legs and I knew I needed to go into the café. The hostess seated me and I ordered a cup of coffee and waited.
I’d been there about five minutes when the woman at the table next to me began to scratch at her arm. The guy across from her began brushing at the back of his neck a few minutes later.
Then it spread to the booths along the wall. One woman actually peeled up the leg of her jeans to try and get whatever she was sure was crawling there. Then a man two booths down jumped up and begged his dinner companion to get whatever was there off his back.
I could hear plates dropping back in the kitchen. After a particularly loud crash, a young woman came darting out through the double doors. I caught my breath. It was the crying woman from Neil Bossard’s graveside service. I was pretty sure I’d found my doll maker.
By now, half the restaurant was up, slapping at themselves, shaking and peeling off items of clothing. I left a dollar on the table for the coffee and slipped out unnoticed in the bedlam.
I’M NOT CRAZY ABOUT SURVEILLANCE, BUT I CAN DO IT. OFTEN times, it’s wise to know the lay of the land before you attempt to make a delivery. Since I’m not always delivering happy tidings and gifts of joy, it’s good to have an exit strategy before entering. It’s also not a bad idea to know who’s there and what threats I might face. Or maybe I was just naturally nosey. It’s hard to tell sometimes. I’ve become so good at rationalizing my own behavior it’s often difficult to tell what’s real and what I’ve made up.
Tonight, however, I wasn’t assessing threats or evaluating who or what was in the area. I was parked near the Canyon Café, nasty little doll legs back in the lead box in the trunk, waiting for my voodoo-wielding waitress to finish her shift so I could follow her back to her lair and figure out who the hell she was and what she was up to.
There are about a million things I love about Grandma Rosie’s Buick. There’s the totally wicked air-conditioning system that I think could give you frostbite in the middle of the Sahara. There’s the solid, smooth ride. And then there are the seats. It’s like driving around on a big comfy couch. Actually, it was more comfortable than my present living room couch. Futons can be really hard.
If you have to sit for hours waiting for something to happen, you might as well be comfortable.
It was close to eleven when my waitress finally left the café. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have had feeling in any of my lower extremities if I’d been sitting that long in a Toyota or, God forbid, a Hyundai.
Crying Woman walked down the street, entered a Honda Civic that had seen better days and drove off. I followed. She wound her way past the cemetery toward the east side and parked in front of a well-kept ranch house on the edge of town. I continued on past as she pulled into the driveway, next to a Ford Taurus that was already parked there. As Crying Woman pulled in, someone got out of the Taurus. I couldn’t linger long enough to see who, though.
I circled back around as soon as I felt I could without calling attention to myself and found a place to park a few blocks away. The area was just on the edge of rural. There were enough houses to make it feel like a neighborhood, but the yards were large, and Crying Woman’s house seemed to back up onto some kind of greenbelt.
The farther I got from the car, the more I felt myself relax. One thing I was certain of was that I wasn’t driving back with those doll legs in my car. Even if I had to resort to tying them to my antenna and letting them fly like some wicked freak flag all the way back to Sacto, I wasn’t sharing space with them again if I could help it.
It was easy to access the greenbelt area behind the house. There was an actual bike path that made the walking easy. It was slightly trickier to figure out which house belonged to Crying Woman from the back. With the doll legs a few blocks away, I found it easier to get myself to open up to my surroundings. Once I did that, I was able to pick up the faint trill of her power from the path. Following that was a little like following the scent of a barbecue through the streets. I made a few missteps, but I eventually found it.
Crying Woman had landscaped her backyard for maximum privacy. The back fence was lined with Italian cypress. Thick, tangled bushes spread down each side. I found a scrub oak tree on the greenbelt side of the fence that looked sturdy enough to hold me and climbed up so that I could have a vantage point down into whatever it was she clearly didn’t want people to see.
It was a nice backyard. I could see where she’d had her garden during the summer. There was a patio with a table and chairs and a hot tub over to one side. Right in the center of the yard was an open pit dug into the dirt about the size of a medium-sized woman. I knew that it was the right size for a medium-sized woman because at the moment, a medium-sized woman was lying in the pit, while Crying Woman covered her with dirt.
At first I thought the woman might be dead and Crying Woman was burying her, but then Buried Woman spoke. It didn’t make me feel any better to think that Crying Woman might be burying the other woman alive. I tensed in my tree, ready to spring over the fence when the first shovelful of dirt landed on the other woman’s face.
It never happened.
Crying Woman buried the other woman right up to her neck. Not a speck of dirt landed on her face, which shone in the moonlight like a pale orb. After the woman was buried up to her neck, Crying Woman got up and began walking a circle in the dirt. It wasn’t exactly like one of Meredith’s hedge circles, but it wasn’t totally different either. There was no blue light. No electricity danced through her hair or shot from her fingers. I felt the power of it, though, low in my belly. It was like a soothing warm pool.
As Crying Woman walked, she sprinkled something behind her. At each cardinal point, she would stop, raise her arms and say a brief prayer. When she’d completed her circle, she took an egg and passed it up and down over the woman, chanting in a low voice the whole time. Then she lay down in the dirt next to the buried woman.