Invisible City (3 page)

He goes on: There were something called
hyaloid fractures
—the hyaloid is a little bone deep in the throat that often breaks during strangulation. And
petechial hemorrhages
—tiny broken blood vessels in the eye, another classic sign of strangulation. Taken together, they point to one thing: murder.

Listening to Detective Barratt, I feel like a lizard is slowly crawling along my spine. It's the most horrible and yet the most thrilling thing I've ever heard. Now our pain isn't just a twist of
fate but something evil, something intended. There's a prickling of the hairs on my skin. Even the air around us seems to be charged. I look across at Mom, and I can't read her expressionless face. But her knuckles are white to the bone.

Barratt lets that news sink in for a few minutes, then continues. As things turned out, Dad hadn't been seen at Cancuén for four days before his death. On June 12, he'd flown out of Cancuén, told the other archaeologists he'd be flying back to Mexico. They'd assumed he meant Tuxtla, where he'd rented the plane. But the police had talked to the plane-rental guys. Dad hadn't been there either. At first, no one knew where he'd gone for those missing four days.

The Mexican detectives were certain that Dad was dead before the plane crashed, probably even before it took off—strangled to death, maybe by whoever flew the plane. The theory is that a second man was in the plane with Dad—he probably doused Dad's dead body with lighter fluid, then parachuted out. Since no witnesses have come forward saying anything about the crash or any parachutist, it's likely that the incident took place at night. They're putting the date of death on June 16, based on the examination of the crash remains. It's a theory that works with the facts.

Then last week someone came forward. An anonymous tip. There'd been talk of a secret night landing in a small beachside town.

“A place called Chetumal,” Barratt says. “Do you know it?”

Mom shakes her head. “No. I mean, yes—I've heard of it. Never been.”

“Well,” Barratt begins solemnly. “There was a late-night meeting. So we've heard. The kind of small-town gossip police hear all the time. But this time it ties everything together.”

“Do the police out there have any suspects?” Mom asks. Her voice seems unnaturally flat.

Barratt coughs. “They do, Mrs. Garcia. I'm afraid so. They've already made an arrest. It's going to be another shock for you. I'm very sorry.”

We wait. The air is thick with our anxiety.

“There was a woman out there. In this Chetumal place. The professor had been seen visiting her, you see. This past year. Many times. Plenty of witnesses. Incidents of affection, you understand. In a small town like that, there's always gossip. But where there's smoke … Rumors spread, the wrong people hear.”

Mom's face drains. Her voice cracks. “I see. Was she … a married woman?”

“I'm afraid so. Her husband, you see …”

And in a tiny voice, Mom says, “I understand.”

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Garcia.”

I blurt, “Well, I
don't
understand. Can someone explain?”

Barratt turns sympathetic, watery eyes on me.

“The woman's husband. The jealous type. And a qualified pilot. No alibi. Motive. Opportunity. Far as they're concerned in Mexico, they've got their man.”

“So we're supposed to just believe this—village gossip?”

“I'm sorry. These things happen.”

And I shout, “Not to my dad!”

Mom pulls me close. Her cheeks are already wet with hot, silent tears. I bite my lip. It's not easy to stay calm.

So, it's official. My dad is dead. Not only dead, but murdered.

I thought it was bad before. But after today I'm just sort of tired. There's a weird kind of numbness. Like I've reached a limit.

Comment (1) from TopShopPrincess

Josh … omigod, I can hardly believe you aren't making this up
.

Reply

TopShopPrincess—I couldn't. I'm living it and I can hardly believe it's happening
.

It's a bad night, one of the worst. I can hear Mom crying next door. She'll get up every so often to throw up. She's melting away, losing herself in tiny pieces.

I phone the doctor, but they only put me through to his service.

“Call the doctor in the morning. If there's no difference tomorrow, she can prescribe something to calm your mother down. This will have been a terrible shock.”

Mom doesn't get up until late afternoon. We sit together at the kitchen table. I trace patterns in a pool of spilled cranberry juice. I've lost all sense of the future. What do people do after a thing like this? I have no idea where to start.

Mom begins to shake. She asks for a small glass of brandy. A little later she stops shaking and begins, very softly, to cry. I don't feel like crying anymore—just the opposite. I have an urge to run—anywhere. To get far away from this house of bad news.

She gulps down one of the pills I picked up for her, wipes
her face with a tissue, and blows her nose. I've never seen her look so bad. Not even the very first day.

Finally I speak up. “Why do you believe it?”

“Because it's my worst fear.”

“That Dad died?”

“That he'd find another woman. Your dad is—was—a very attractive man, Josh. I've always known it. And these excavations, they go on forever.”

I'm quiet for a long time. I had no idea. And I can't think what to say. “You never said.”

“Of course not.”

“Did he know?”

“Of course not, he hated jealousy.”

I think about how my parents were together. Okay, no one likes to see their parents kiss and stuff. Obviously, it's gross. But I sort of liked that Dad was always really affectionate with Mom. She is shy, reserved. Very British and all that. Not him, though. Always pleased to see her, big hugs and kisses when he came home. My whole life, they'd held hands, watched TV in each other's arms. All that, had it been a lie?

“But how?”

She sighs. “Men … are that way, I suppose. Detective Barratt said the woman is in her late twenties. Late twenties! You probably think that sounds old. But to a man your father's age …”

She leaves that one unfinished, goes back to her brooding. I can sense waves of anger building inside her.

I chip in, “Not Dad, though.”

Mom snaps, “Why not? He's just another man, isn't he? I should have been more suspicious. What a fool I've been!
La casa grande y la casa chica!
Not as though I haven't seen plenty of Mexican men behave this way. It's finally happened to me.”

“‘
La casa grande
…'?”

“The big house and the little house. A nice little euphemism for a married man's family and his mistress's. Haven't you wondered where some of your uncles disappear to when they're in their forties? To their younger women, that's where. But the first wife, if she's in the know, then she's supposed to be quiet, dignified. She's supposed to cover for him! ‘Where's your husband?' ‘Oh, away on business!'”

I stare at Mom. I can't believe how easily she believes it. She's judging my dad without evidence, as if he were just any macho Latin husband. If she thinks that about him, is she going to start treating me like just another one of “them”?

“No. It's not fair to accept this without hearing Dad's side. I don't believe he'd do it.”

She's quiet for a long time. “I wish … I'd like to believe that.”

“Well, why not?”

She looks at me with a faint glimmer of hope.

“Do you think we could? Just not believe it?”

I take a deep breath. “
I
don't believe it.”

But she can't meet my gaze. She looks down, begins to
tremble. “I must be a terrible person,” she says, her voice quavering. “Because I think it must be true … Why else would they arrest someone?”

Why else?

I wonder about that all afternoon.

Mom spent today in bed again. It's been over a week. Well, I feel like I'm grinding through it, going to school every day, which takes my mind off stuff for a few hours. But each day I come home to find that Mom hasn't moved. When I came home today, I found her listening to “Waters of March.” She and Dad didn't have one tune, but I'd guess that one was probably in their top five. She'd put it on a continuous loop and was lying flat on their bed, staring up at the ceiling.

Since Dad's death, jazz has been banned from our house. Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Stan Getz, Tom Jobim, all those guys—that's my dad's music. Me, I'm not a fan, but you get used to it. Mom and me—we have this unwritten rule now. Hearing jazz is just too miserable—for us both.

And yet there she was, wallowing in it.

Well, I said nothing. Just closed the door quietly so that I didn't have to listen.

I'm trying to keep things going here. I even cook sick-person food
for Mom. Tomato soup with soft white bread. Chicken broth and buttered crackers.

But still she won't eat. Finding out what really happened to my dad seems to have finished her off.

What the heck am I supposed to do?

Comment (1) from TopShopPrincess

Jeez … Josh. You need to get some help, man. I'm out of my depth here. Call the doctor!

Reply

So … I did it. Called the doctor. Told her that Mom was hardly responding. Just staring. And that was it.

They sent some paramedics around. Said Mom needed some time with specialists. I don't know if Mom even understood what happened. I prepared a bag for her: makeup, toiletries, spare clothes. As she walked through the front door, she got this look in her eye.

It made me crumble. I feel like a traitor.

Comment (2) from TopShopPrincess

Josh—you've done the right thing. You're only thirteen. How can you look after your mom when she's like this? She'll be all right in a bit. You wait and see.

Reply

I know you're just being nice. But I'm the one who feels guilty
here. I have to come up with something quickly, something that will get Mom's hopes up again. If only I can get some bit of proof that this affair is a lie. Or come up with another reason why someone might have killed Dad.

Comment (3) from TopShopPrincess

Well—yeah. You could try. But how?

How am I going to prove that Dad wasn't having an affair with that woman? It's pretty tough to prove a negative.

I think about those four missing days. The way I see things, the police have accounted for just two of them: Dad's plane landing late at night in the town of Chetumal, Mexico, on June 12. And the plane crash on June 16—the night of the murder.

What about all the days in between? Did the mystery woman hide Dad away somewhere? Where had his plane been? But the police aren't asking those questions. They don't believe a word the woman says. They think she'll say anything to keep her husband out of jail. Meanwhile the husband pleads his innocence. “But he would say that,” insist the police. They have their man, and that's that.

I figure that something like this doesn't come from nowhere. People meet, they communicate. E-mails, phone calls. Maybe even old-fashioned letters.

Until I make some headway, school is off the agenda. At my school they don't chase truants right away. I figure I have at least one day to get something done.