When I Knew You (9 page)

I smiled my thanks and began to move toward the door, giving a little wave before reaching for the wrought iron handle.

"Okay." Rosa's voice over the intercom got softer. "He said it's about Antonia."

I froze, my hand inches away from the handle. My hand began to shake and I stepped back away from the door. Father Vincent was pale, his eyes wide. The shaking in my hand was extending to my arm as I pulled the envelope to my chest and desperately surveyed the room for another door. There was one, just to the right of his desk. He nodded and waved me to it, then returned to the phone.

"Thanks, Rosa. Just a moment."

The adjacent room was small with a tiny window and full-length mirror, the scent of incense heavy in the air. Along one wall was a collection of robes, gold, purple, blood red, and the fabric looked heavy. Bright brocade trimmed the sleeves of a few, others were plain, about half of the robes draped down to the floor while the other half looked like they belonged on children. Directly across there was a small wooden bookshelf and a hard chair. There was no other door.

I held the envelope to my chest and stood against the wall to one side of the door. I heard Father Vincent talking again.

"Rosa, I'll be right out..."

There was some commotion and I heard the door in the other room creak open to the protests of a woman.
 

"It's fine, I'll just take a minute..." another man's voice boomed.

I felt pinned in place. Eliah. It was Eliah.
 

I closed my eyes and worked to calm my breathing. It was possible I was overreacting. Maybe he was here because he ... needed spiritual counseling. He couldn't possibly know my mother. Maybe Abuela had called him. Maybe he was trying to help.

"I'm sorry, sir," Father Vincent's voice rose to meet Eliah's. "I was tied up for a moment. Is something wrong?"

"Yes, yes, there is something wrong. I'm looking for Father Henry."

My blood went cold. How did Eliah know about Father Henry?

 
"I'm sure Rosa told you he retired two years ago. Is there something I can help you with?"

A chair creaked in the other room, then I heard pacing. "I really need to find him," Eliah said. "It's for a dear friend."

"I'm not sure I understand," said Father Vincent. "Do you know Antonia?"

"No, no, but I know her daughter. Katarina." I heard Eliah's voice break as if he was choking back a sob.
What the hell?

"Are you all right?" Father Vincent sounded concerned.

"It's just that there was a fire and Katarina..." Eliah's voice faded.

"It's okay son. Take your time."

"Thank you... It's just so awful."

Did he think I was dead? If he started the fire, he had to know I wasn't in there. Unless he didn't bother to look, figuring the pills he gave me would have knocked me out.
 

Eliah cleared his throat. "Katarina is horribly injured, Father. She's in the burn unit at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio."

My thoughts raced. What game was he playing now?

Father Vincent's voice betrayed nothing. "Burned?"

"It's quite serious. She asked me to come here, to pick up an envelope Antonia left with Father Henry. I'm just trying to get it to her."

At that moment, my fear flared into anger. It seared away doubt and its tiny twin, hope.
You did set that fire, you bastard.
Eliah at the fire, his shadow looking like it was dancing in the light of the flames, the strange twisted smile on his face, Pilar's words of warning. All of it was crisp and clear in my mind.

"This is terrible. I'm so sorry," said Father Vincent sympathetically. It struck me that he was a decent actor for a priest.

It was silent for a moment.
 

"Can you help me, Father?"

"Absolutely," Father Vincent said. I heard the sound of a drawer opening and closing, then a chair creaking. "Let's pray the rosary together in the church. Together we can ask for God's help for Katarina."

"But, the envelope... Father Henry..." stammered Eliah.
 

"Son, I don't have an envelope for you. Father Henry is long since retired. But perhaps we can help anyway. Rosa! Join us in the church, ask Denise and Fernando to come as well."

The sound of the door opening and footsteps receding along with voices, one protesting, two insisting, slowly faded. I sunk to the floor.
What the hell was going on?

Self-consciously I made the sign of the cross. Mentally cursing in a priest's changing room was probably pretty high on the "thou shall not" catholic scale.
Get up Kati. Get out of here.

Standing back up, I studied the envelope in my hands. The lettering was tight and precise. Antonia Perez, it read. Personal and Confidential. I needed to get out of here, somewhere safe. I heard running footsteps heading toward the office. I backed away from the door. There was a slam of a door, then the sound of things crashing to the floor. I scrambled over to the hanging robes and moved behind the longer ones, crouching low.

There were shouts from the other side of the office door in heated Spanish and rattling of the knob. The crashes in the office continued, the sound of drawers being pulled out and thrown onto the floor, then breaking glass.

I held the envelope close to my chest, feeling something hard inside the padding. There was one last crash, then the sound of the door slamming into the wall of the room where I was. I could hear plaster and adobe falling to the floor.
 

His breathing was heavy and I fought the urge to peer through the vestments. My mind shoved the terror away, taking terrible inventory of what was happening in the room on the other side of the heavy robes.
 

There was one crash, then another. The bookcase, I thought, remembering the few items in the room. Another crash, glass breaking. The lamp. Or maybe the mirror.
 

It was quiet, then the heavy footsteps came closer. The tiny sliver of light coming through the bottom hems of the vestments was blocked. He was standing right there.
 

I considered running, throwing as much of the rack over Eliah. It was stupid, but the only thing left. If there was one thing I learned in self-defense class it was "don't get stuck in a room with a maniac." I crouched lower and prepared to spring, knowing that my timing had to be perfect.

"Get away from Father's things." The voice was deep, thick with a border accent. I froze, and above me the hangers rustled, as Eliah brushed against the vestments.

"I'll leave when I've found it," Eliah's voice was strange, flat and measured. I almost didn't recognize it.

A resounding crack filled the room. "I am not a priest, mister. I'm here to work on my swing." Another crack. "I specialize in legs, but heads are good too." Crack. "Me, I got no problem taking you out of here in pieces."

Eliah scoffed. "Really?"
 

Yet another crack filled the room, closer. "Mister, in my neighborhood this is what we do for fun."

"What the hell are you doing here, then?"

This time the laugh came from the other man, the one with a baseball bat, I presumed. "God works in mysterious ways, guerro. And don't cuss, asshole. This is a church."

"Fine, fine. Calm down, cholo."

"I am calm." I heard a thumping sound, wood lightly slapping against flesh. "This makes me very calm. And don't call me cholo, white boy. You don't even know what it means."

"That's enough, Fernando." It sounded like Father Vincent. "I believe the gentleman was just leaving."

The room was quiet for a minute. I could feel the tension mounting in the silence, closed my eyes and considered a prayer.
Don't let him have a gun. Please, God, don't let him have a gun.

"Yes. All right then. I'm leaving." I could hear multiple footsteps moving away from the room, then the door closing, the hinges screeching.

I sunk to the floor, the smell of incense filling my nose again as I once again began to breathe.

"Katarina," Father Vincent said in a whisper. "Stay here until Rosa comes for you."

I walked out of the room fifteen minutes later when Rosa returned, assuring me that Eliah was gone. The office looked like a bull had been through it, searching for a matador to gore.

"You knew that man?" Rosa asked me, surveying the room. Books were strewn everywhere, broken glass glistened over every surface. Pictures were on the ground, some bent and crushed.

"I did, sort of."

"He did that to you?" she said, indicating my face. Again I'd forgotten that I still had the swelling from the accident, the bruises only starting to fade to a pale yellow.

"No. It was a traffic accident."
There are no accidents, Katarina. "
How is Father Vincent?"

Rosa gave me a look as if she wasn't convinced with my accident story, then shook her head. "Padre Chico? I think his nose is broken. Something with his shoulder too. Collar bone, probably." She walked over to a picture on the floor and crouched down to pick it up. "To think I gave up my job in the family crisis center for this. I thought it would be quiet." She fanned the picture, and glass sprinkled down. "Fernando, my nephew who was here, the one with the bat, he's taking Padre to the clinic."

"I'm really sorry," I said. I put the envelope on the desk and started to pick up some books.

She stood up and surveyed the room. "It's not your fault. Is it?" She smiled weakly and nodded toward the envelope. "He was looking for that, you think?"

"It sounded like it."
 

Trust no one Katarina. No one.
 

"Well, you better be careful with it. I'll be back, I'm going to get a broom and a trash can."

I was still too unsettled to leave, worried that Eliah lay in wait, so I insisted on staying to help. We worked for half an hour clearing most of the glass, although the wood floor still glistened in places where slivers evaded the brooms. When Rosa left to get a shop vac, and I went back to Pilar's truck, tired and drained.

Rosa had assured me again that Eliah was gone, that Fernando had seen him peeling out of the parking lot in a brown four-door. I had little choice but to believe her. As the shock wore off, I realized that I needed to leave in case he came back, convinced that the envelope might still be in the church. One thing for sure, I didn't want to confront him alone.

I fingered the tape on the back of the envelope for a moment, straightening a curling edge where the seal was not quite complete.
Not here.
I tossed it on the seat and headed for the highway. I needed to get some distance, to find a place where no one would think to look for me.

Chapter 12

Hueco Tanks used to be a great place to rock climb. It was where Pilar loved to climb, where the boulders stood in a fat massive clump, forming a climber nirvana.
 

It was also a great place to drive to if you wanted to make sure no one was following you. The river of asphalt stretched out flat and long, and it was a highway few people took casually. The turnoff to the park was a dirt road and every vehicle on it sent up a rooster tail high into the pale desert sky. You can spot a hanger-on for miles.

At least I hoped I could.

I pulled into a campsite on the far side of the park and took one last look back down the road. This wasn't the time of day people came to the park – especially since the park service restricted rock climbers in the park, requiring most to use a paid guide. Rock climbers are an independent-minded group and most bristled under the new rules. That meant the weekends were busy, the weekdays, not so much. I didn't see any dust rising into the sky from the road back to the highway.

I grabbed the envelope and headed for a sun-warmed stone. All around me huge boulders rose from the desert floor, every one pocked with holes, or huecos, where water had dissolved away layers of rock surface. The huecos were what made this place a climbing paradise, so much so that it had to be shut down until a management program was put in place. Hundreds of years ago this outcropping was a natural watchtower for natives who drank water from the huecos and drew pictographs on the walls.
 

I'd always thought it was ironic that the ancients whose work the park was protecting were clearly climbers too, given the location of some of the pictographs. A thousand years of arid desert air that preserved their art was giving way to the oil and friction of a new world with climbers not watching for enemies, but fleeing the cocoon of modern times where it was never necessary to climb to escape anyone.

In the few scattered trees I could hear the cicadas running through their buzzing call series, sounding strangely like fluorescent bulbs before they get their glow going. A dusty brown desert bird, some kind of sparrow maybe, hopped closer to me, trying to assess my willingness to deliver crumbs.
 

A trickle of sweat traced my spine as I sat down and began pulling on the curl of tape. Twelve years ago a different Antonia smoothed down this corner, and over time, oil or dust gathered under this one corner, a modern bit of amber. When I pulled it loose, the tape ripped off a layer of brown paper. The tearing was loud in this quiet place, louder than I expected. I winced at the sound but kept going until it was open. I dumped out the contents on the rock. There was a small cardboard jewelry box and two business cards. I shook the envelope, hoping for a note, but there was none.

The first card was a name I recognized. Gustav Calderon, the lawyer who had come to the ropes course two weeks ago, telling me Antonia was "back." He was apparently part of a law firm called Harris and Hernandez in downtown El Paso, and it appeared that he'd been an associate back then. The law firm wasn't one I recognized, but given that I only knew the ones who plastered their faces— some scowling, some grinning sympathetically—on billboards around town, calling out to accident victims, it wasn't surprising.

The other was a simple card, only a name and address: Lupe Bonita with an address in Chicago. A phone number was scribbled on the back.