The Last King of Texas - Rick Riordan (35 page)

"You met Aaron," I said.

"I told you the truth. I was in his class that
fall. I didn't know Aaron had any connection to Zeta's employer,
Ride-Works. I don't think Zeta ever made the connection. He never
realized Aaron had been one of my teachers. Aaron was..." She
laughed frailly. "Aaron was a lousy lecturer. The other students
used to gripe to each other before he came into class each day.
Aaron's face would twitch whenever he talked about violent scenes in
a book, which of course were the scenes he focused on most. So one
time before class, this idiot P.E. major behind me joked that
Professor Brandon must've been abused as a child. The other students
just laughed. I didn't say anything, but I was furious. I promised
myself that I was going to be on Dr. Brandon's side after that. I
started going to his office hours, discussing books, having coffee
with him in the cafeteria. We understood each other almost
immediately. Aaron and I could finish each other's sentences from the
first day we talked. By the end of the semester, we'd fallen in love.
In the spring, after Zeta had forced me to quit school, Aaron and I
still found excuses to cross paths a lot... Things just took their
course."

"Aaron got you pregnant in April, and you had to
make a choice. You chose to invent a new life."

There were color variations in the deep brown of her
eyes that I'd never noticed before — jagged yellow and amber lines,
as if her irises too had been fractured in the distant past.

"Sandra couldn't have broken away from Zeta,"
she said. "Sandra couldn't have protected her child. Weeks
before Del ever arranged an ID for me that said I was Ines Garcia
from Del Rio, I'd already started thinking of myself as that new
person. And I promised myself Ines would do whatever she had to for
her baby."

I studied the woman across from me — the fierce
sincerity in her face, the disheveled hair, the little crumple of
packing tape on her sleeve, and the incongruous explosion of colors
on the front of her Fiesta T-shirt.

I tried to reinvoke the chill I'd felt a few minutes
before, when she'd first referred to herself in the third person. I
couldn't do it. The fact that I'd been accepting her story, starting
to understand the way she described herself in two distinct layers,
scared me.

"Del knew about you and Aaron," I said.

"Of course. He warned us our lives were in
danger if Zeta or Jeremiah ever found out. He was probably right. He
offered to arrange a new ID for me, a few other papers, and get me
safely out of town. That was easy for Del — he'd done it often
enough for his father's cronies. In return, Aaron was supposed to
hand over his share of RideWorks when the time came to inherit. What
did Aaron care about that damn company? He loved me and we wanted to
be together. He agreed. He'd already lined up his Permian Basin job
for the following fall, so I disappeared into West Texas to wait for
him and have our baby."

"And you got married. Again."

"Fuck 'again.' That was Sandra. That wasn't a
marriage." She spat the word.

"The law wouldn't see it that way. Del knew that
— knew your secret could be used as leverage against you and Aaron
in the future. You played into his hands."

Ines was silent.

"After you left," I said, "Del went to
Zeta. Del convinced him you'd left town because you were having an
affair with Jeremiah."

"It was total fiction."

"Of course. But your husband didn't know that,
and the fiction suited Del perfectly. Zeta knew all about Jeremiah's
reputation with young women. Del didn't have to do much convincing.
Zeta shot Jeremiah. Then Del helped Zeta leave the country. Del
inherited Jeremiah's company and got rid of all his competition at
once — Aaron, Jeremiah, Zeta."

"We had no idea," Ines said. "Del was
horrible, but we never thought he was capable of anything like
murder. Aaron — it destroyed him when he learned about his father."

"And Del wasn't even done. Afterward, he hit up
Aaron for RideWorks. After all, wasn't that Aaron's side of the
bargain? Only Aaron had never counted on his dad being gunned down as
part of their deal. So  Aaron refused. Del took matters into his
own hands again. He stole the company from Aaron in a legal maneuver.
That pissed Aaron off. He filed a suit, but the minute he did, Del
threatened to expose your identity."

"Yes."

"The police would want to talk to you, of course
— a woman who'd fled town with the victim's son and a new identity
right after her legal husband had committed a murder. At the very
least the investigation would ruin your chances at a new life,
nullify your second marriage, make Michael a—" At the look in
her eyes, I stopped. I folded my napkin, tossed it over my Sonora
casserole. "At worst, it would attract the attention of Zeta and
his pals. Del had something to worry about too if the story got to
the police, but he must've been fairly sure no one could prove
anything on him, especially with Sanchez gone. You, on the other
hand, had everything to lose. Aaron had no choice but to drop his
claim to RideWorks. How old was Michael at the time? Two months?
Three?"

"Two months. We had our first terrible argument,
Aaron and I. His father's death was entirely my fault."

"Then Del paid a visit to your brother Hector,
who also knew the truth about your disappearance. Del used the same
leverage with Hector that he'd used on Aaron — 'Do some business
with me or I'll see that your sister gets crucified.'"

"I don't know what Del told Hector."

"Del was just following up on Zeta's good idea —
to move heroin through the carnival circuit. Hector arranged the
purchases from a friend of his, Chich Gutierrez. Del distributed the
heroin, keeping the amounts small so as not to attract too much
attention, but large enough to make RideWorks a nice fat
supplementary income."

She raised her hands slowly off the table. "I —
don't — know. I don't know anything about that."

I looked at the kids. They'd each gotten another
plastic egg from the machine and were prying them open.

"You take it for granted," Ines said
hoarsely.

I refocused on her. Her face was hard as copper.

"What?"

"That you can have a child like Jem someday,"
she said. "Raise him without seeing him shot in the crossfire,
without having him go on lookout for the locos at age five. You can
be in a place where they don't keep the needles and the baby bottles
in the same cabinet, have a spouse who isn't in jail for murder or
dealing. You take that for granted."

"I take it for granted you'd kill to protect
Michael from your past."

"Oh, you're right. You're absolutely right.
That's the difference between me and Sandra Mara. I would kill to
protect my son."

"How's your batting average so far?"

Ines shook her head, as if she were disappointed in
me. "I won't lie to you. I didn't feel guilty that Jeremiah
Brandon got killed, or that Zeta had to flee the country. In fact, I
was disappointed Zeta didn't get shot in that barroom, too. I can't
say I care much if Hector and Del were moving heroin through
RideWorks, either, if it bought me and my son some extra years of
anonymity. None of that matters. But you think I killed my husband?
Or had him killed?"

"That was my original question."

"You're wrong. Aaron was putting Michael and me
in terrible danger — that's true. When Aaron wanted to move back
here to San Antonio, I told him it was too much of a risk. Too many
people here who might recognize me. Aaron insisted. He had all these
ideas about challenging Del — getting back that damn company. He
seemed to forget what Del would do if he tried. I was desperate, but
I'd never—"

"You wrote those threats to the University."

"I—" She faltered. "All right. Yes.
I wrote them. Aaron had brought the first letter home, the one
addressed to Dr. Haimer. It wasn't hard. Before I knew it I'd sent
six of them."

"You thought if things got unpleasant enough,
Aaron would agree to move away again, out of San Antonio."

"There had been two other offers, Tres — one
in Iowa, one in Connecticut. Not wonderful jobs, but we should have
gone there. We would've been safe there. But Aaron was so damned
determined to come home."

"And the bomb?"

"Hector's idea, before we even knew Zeta was
back in town. Hector was sure the University police would discover
the bomb before it ever went off, that they'd blame it on campus
radicals. Hector just wanted to convince Aaron the threats weren't
idle. He didn't intend for anyone to get hurt."

"Why were you away the weekend Aaron was shot?"

"We'd found out Zeta was back in San Antonio.
Hector and I were both insane with fear. Hector told me to get out of
town for a while."

"—so you couldn't be implicated. Hector was
timing a murder."

"No," Ines insisted. The word was a little
shrill. "He swore to me. He didn't shoot Aaron."

"Then who?"

"God damn you, Tres. Leave it alone."

"Paloma knows," I said. "She was the
witness."

"Paloma wouldn't talk to me."

"You must've guessed she was lying about Zeta
being at your house that night. But you haven't pressed her too hard
on that point, have you?"

Ines flattened her hands on the Formica. "No. I
haven't."

"You knew she was lying to protect you. You
figured if somebody had to go down for Aaron's death, it might as
well be your husband."

"Zeta isn't my husband anymore. Why can't you
see that?"

The waitress came to our table, sensed the tension,
took a step back. She asked skeptically if we were finished with our
food. We said we were. She slowly loaded our plates onto her tray.
She smelled of black-eyed peas.

"I'll bring y'all the check." Before
leaving, she shot me a chastising look.

"Those are two cute boys over there."

The old couple at the next table had gotten up and
were shuffling toward the door. The margarita-drinkers on the
opposite side of the room kept doing their best to ensure
prizewinning hangovers for the following morning.

Jem and Michael were making a pretty good dent in my
quarter supply now. Their pockets bulged obscenely with prize
capsules.

"I've told you the truth," Ines told me.
"What now?"

"There's still the matter of my friend."

She frowned, not immediately understanding who I
meant. That irritated me. "George Berton," I said. "He
got himself shot poking around in your past after Zeta Sanchez was
arrested. George talked to Hector, then visited your family farm. He
must have found a photo of you there, used it to get an ID from the
woman at the Poco Mas. He realized that the real story was you, but
he didn't know all the details, and he was a little too soft-hearted
to put a widow and her five-year-old boy in harm's way. So he set up
another meeting with your brother. Probably George wanted to figure
out a bargain whereby you could be spared discovery and Hector could
give Del Brandon to the police on a skewer. It would've meant Hector
getting jail time for the heroin, but this is the guy who'd got
himself shot in the leg for you once. Hector would take the fall.
Before that could happen, somebody interrupted his meeting with
Berton — murdered Hector, almost killed George Berton."

"You're accusing me of that, too? Of murdering
my own brother?"

"The police will wonder."

"I don't intend to talk with the police."

"Two people have died. Aaron. Hector."

"Don't you think I know that?"

"That's a lot of blood, Ines. A lot of blood
even for a secret worth keeping."

She gazed across the room at her son, watching
Michael's every move like she was trying desperately to memorize him.
"Are you in love with somebody, Tres?"

The question struck me mute.

Ines raised her eyebrows — a gesture that reminded
me powerfully of Ana DeLeon. "Are you?" she insisted.

"I — no." And then added inanely, "I
don't think so."

That brought a dry smile. "Safe answer. Love's
not the blazing epiphany some people imagine, is it? I didn't realize
I was falling in love with Aaron until we'd been seeing each other
for two months. When I started to fall out of love with him, the
process was just as insidious. Now that he's gone..."

Streetlights on Broadway started to blink on as the
sky darkened. The round window behind the 410 bar glowed, the glass
liquor-bottle shelves that crossed it making it look like some sort
of giant military insignia.

Ines fixed her eyes on the traffic outside. "Aaron
so desperately needed to prove himself. He would've destroyed our
family, endangered Michael, not even realized what he was doing until
it was too late. That was his real inheritance from his father. Aaron
and Jeremiah — they were like children. They both took what they
wanted. No matter who got hurt. It took me a long time to understand
that about Aaron. Hector — I'm not sure I ever understood my
brother. To him, I was just some family banner he had to keep from
getting trampled. All I'm really sure of now is Michael."