Rebel Island (24 page)

“Mr. Huff told you all this?”

“No. He’s dead.”

Imelda cupped her hands to her face.

“He tried to take Benjamin Lindy’s gun away rather than throw the blame on you,” I said. “He died without giving you away. He was still willing to believe you were innocent.”

“Don’t say any more.” Jose’s voice was tight. “Don’t stir up more trouble.”

“You were an assassin in Mexico. You worked for the cartels down there. You knew explosives.”

He didn’t answer.

“Then your family became a target,” I said. “Your children were killed, but it wasn’t random violence. They died because someone was getting back at you. You left Nuevo Laredo and you found your way here. Maybe you tried to go straight, but you had lots of anger. You had skills that were going to waste. And you had Alex, who trusted you implicitly and had a background similar enough to yours—working with explosives. A perfect fall guy, should you need one. It wasn’t long before you were rebuilding yourself a new career as Calavera.”

Imelda started talking to him in rapid Spanish. I could hardly follow. She said she’d told him a thousand times. He had taken things too far. He should never have gone back to his old work.

He raised his hand and she fell silent instantly. I got the feeling she’d had a lot of practice at this over the years. She had learned to hold back, to fear her husband when he raised his hand like that.

Jose’s face, which I’d thought of as made for smiling, now had the sharpness of a knife.

“I did what I needed to,” he said. “For Imelda and for me.”

“Because of money? You took the drug payoff away from the college kids—easy to do when you’ve got the keys to their rooms. I imagine you’ve got a lot more stashed away. Is Chris Stowall’s twenty grand in one of those boxes?”

“Even before that, we had enough to go anywhere.”

“Then why didn’t you leave?”

He glanced at his wife. “Leaving anywhere…is difficult.”

“Huff
was
your family. This place was all you had. You messed that up when you murdered Peter Brazos’s family.”

“An accident.”

“But you didn’t contact the Marshals Service yourself. You’ve got no remorse.”

“No.”

“Alex, then,” I guessed. “The Brazos killings were more than he could take. He contacted the Marshals Service, pretending to be Calavera. He was going to turn you in. Or maybe you made him think Chris was the killer.”

“No,” Jose said. “You do not understand. It was not Mr. Huff. The person who wished to turn me in was my wife.”

“You should have gone along,” Imelda said softly.

“For what?” he asked. “You would lose me, too? Is that what you want?”

“No,
mi amor.
I do not want to lose you.”

“You already have, Imelda,” I told her. “Your husband kills people. It’s how he deals with his anger, keeps it in check. That’s why he chooses explosives instead of guns. The timer, the sense of control, the complete destruction of someone’s household—that has a lot of appeal to you, doesn’t it, Jose?”

His eyes were steely, but I doubted I could make him lose his cool. Jose was not the type. He wanted to be the master, the timer. He would kill in his own way.

“People die,” Jose said. “My children died before my eyes. Why should other lives matter to me? Why should I not choose the time and the way? I’m good at it.”

“But you made mistakes.”

He shrugged. “That’s over now. I will not make any deals. I will not apologize.”

“Jose,” Imelda said.

“You will stay with me,” he told her, “as you promised. I will take care of you. It will be all right.”

“No, it won’t,” I said. “This boathouse is a dead end, Jose.”

Then he surprised me. He did another calculation, came to a decision I didn’t anticipate.

He took out a gun—the same .38, I imagined, that had killed Jesse Longoria—and he aimed it at my chest.

42

Maia tried to stay put, but it wasn’t something she did well.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that Imelda had been trying to tell her something earlier. She told herself it didn’t matter now. Help had arrived. They would head home and Maia would never see this place again. Tres would be right back, with good news or bad. The worst was over.

But it was hard to believe that. Maia had a tingling feeling between her shoulder blades that usually meant something was wrong. The far end of the island was hidden behind the rubble of the hotel and clouds of smoke. She knew Tres had gone to the boathouse, but she’d never seen it and didn’t know exactly how far it was.

Damn him for running off. He was in worse shape than she was, for God’s sake.

A shadow fell over her. “You sure I can’t get you anything, ma’am?”

It was one of the coast guardsmen. He reminded her of Chris Stowall—young, blond, a little nervous. Then she remembered Chris Stowall was burned to ashes inside the hotel.

“Could you help me up?” she asked.

He looked a little flustered, but he took her hand and helped her to her feet. It was difficult to do this with dignity. She felt as if she was carrying a bowling ball around her middle, but she did her best.

“I’m going for a walk,” she announced. “Over that way.”

The guardsman frowned. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

“No,” Maia answered. “It’s probably not.”

And she began walking toward the boathouse.

43

“No,” Imelda said.

Jose hesitated. I hoped he was having second thoughts. It’s a different thing, killing a man while you’re looking him in the eyes.

On the other hand, Jose had shot Jesse Longoria in the chest. He’d bludgeoned Chris Stowall to death and stuffed his body in a freezer. I doubted my boyish charm was going to keep him from pulling the trigger.

“They’ll hear the shot,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. “They’ll find me dead and know you killed me. You can’t cover that up.”

I could tell his mind was chewing on that, coming up with solutions. I didn’t want to give him time.

“Imelda,” I said, “do you want to stay with him?”

“Of course.” No hesitation, but her voice was full of despair, as if I were asking her whether she’d like to walk on the moon.

“Tell him,” I said. “His only chance is surrender.”

The doors of the boathouse slapped shut and creaked open with a gust of wind. A curl of seawater sloshed over the concrete and doused my shoes.

“You’ll go in the water,” Jose decided. “Get in.”

“No, Jose,” I said. “It’s over. No more planning. No more hits.”

“Your body will be underwater,” he said. “Under the boat. They’ll find it eventually, but not for a while. We’ll be gone by then.”

Imelda was shivering. I needed her help. She was the only possible leverage I could use to make Jose change his mind. But I also couldn’t wait for her. I was out of options. I was weighing the odds of attacking when the worst possible variable got added to the equation.

The boathouse door opened and Maia walked in.

“Ah,” she said. “I caught you at a bad time.”

I locked eyes with her and I told her silently to go.

Not surprisingly, she did the exact opposite. She came to stand next to me and took my hand. “I got worried.”

“Señora.” Imelda’s voice trembled. “You shouldn’t be on your feet…”

Her voice trailed off. I suppose she realized the futility of what she was saying, given the fact that her husband was planning to put a bullet in me.

As for Jose, he looked like a juggler who’d been thrown too many plates. His forehead beaded with sweat.

“Hello, Jose,” Maia said. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

She didn’t wait for him to answer. She pulled up an empty ice chest and sat down as best she could, holding my hand for support.

I was beyond worried. I was ready to unzip my own skin and run screaming into the sand dunes. I wanted, by sheer force of will, to make Jose and his gun disappear off the face of the earth.

“You remember when Imelda was pregnant?” Maia asked him. We might’ve been at a dinner among friends. Her tone was maddeningly casual.

Jose stared at her. I was sure he was going to shoot us, but finally he said, “I remember.”

Imelda closed her eyes. A tear traced its way down her cheek.

“Why did you come?” Jose murmured. “I’ll have to kill you both now.”

“The third trimester is brutal,” Maia said. “But sometimes you feel the baby move, and there’s nothing like that in the world. Did you put your hand on Imelda’s belly and feel that? Did you speak to your babies before they were born?”

“We need time to get away.” Jose’s voice sounded ragged, almost apologetic. “We can’t have anyone tell.”

“Let them go,” Imelda begged.

Jose shook his head. He watched as Maia placed her hand on her belly.

“There it is,” Maia said. “A kick.”

Her smile was as astonishing as the storm, or the way the lighthouse had crumbled after one hundred and fifty years.

“The killings didn’t stop the hurt, did they?” Maia asked.

Jose didn’t answer.

Imelda knelt at his side. “Please,
mi amor.
Don’t.”

She tried to take his gun. He raised it so she couldn’t, but he didn’t push her away, either.

“Imelda knew what she was doing,” Maia said. “After those girls and their mother died…there really wasn’t anything for you to do except turn yourself in. You’d arrived right back where you started. Pain. Grief. The death of children.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Jose said.

“Perhaps the death of
your
children wasn’t your fault,” Maia said. “Everything you’ve done since then is.”

A new sound cut through the surf. It sounded like a small engine, something fast. Too soon for civilian watercraft to be back on the waves. Police, perhaps. Or a water ambulance.

“We can’t get away if you live,” Jose said.

“You’d have to kill us,” Maia agreed. “You were prepared to do that last night. You planned on destroying the entire hotel, hoping everyone would be in it. Was it hard, knowing that would include a family, an unborn child?”

“I told you to get out. I tried…It would have been all right if you hadn’t come here. Alex Huff—”

“Alex would’ve taken the blame as Calavera,” I said. “Even in the end, he didn’t give you up. He would’ve let you go. Despite everything, he cared about you two. He believed everyone on this island deserved a chance.”

Jose shook his head. His eyes were red now.

“You’d have to kill us,” Maia said. “But that would be the wrong choice, Jose. It would be starting all over again.”

She made it sound so sensible. All I could see was the gun and a distraught killer. I had been here before. The odds were terrible. I had seen too many people die. Everything I’d seen in my life told me that I had only one chance—to overpower Jose.

But Maia held my hand, gently restraining me. Maia’s voice was calm, confident.

“
Mi amor,
” Imelda said. “You would have to kill me too. I can’t go through this. Please. No more.”

Jose focused on her, as if seeing her for the first time.

She held out her hand.

Jose’s jaw tightened. His eyes were as turbulent as the water in the slip. He pointed the gun at his wife’s chest. Then he crumpled, kneeling next to her while she held his head against her breast, and he let out a sob that had been trapped inside him since the death of his children.

For a long time, the four of us sat in the boathouse. The only sounds were the waves against the hull of the sunken boat and the crackle of the fires dying on the hill.

44

Imelda waited for someone to confront her, but no one did.

They treated her like a sick child—someone to be checked on occasionally, spoken to gently, sheltered from the others in case she was contagious.

Jose was taken from her. A last kiss, and he whispered in her ear, “Say nothing.”

His only wish: to protect her from what she had done.

She sat on a tarp and wrapped herself in a shawl that smelled faintly of candles and altar incense. She thought about the day Peter Brazos had visited the island.

He had questioned Señor Huff, yes. But mostly he had questioned her.

The lawyer’s eyes had been like a falcon’s, dark and without mercy.
I know Jose was involved. Tell me how, and you could save him.

She had no idea how Brazos found them: a confession from someone, a deal to betray Jose. They had been so careful, and yet someone knew who they were. After their children were murdered in Laredo, they had moved north, hoping to escape. Jose promised to stop working for the drug lords, but he still built his devices, still used the workroom Señor Huff had given him to plan occasional jobs. Bomb-making was in his blood like a drug. He could not leave it behind completely.

After Peter Brazos found them, she told Jose what they must do. She located his home in Corpus Christi, his other house in Port Aransas.

We should run,
Jose told her.
We have enough money.

But Imelda had run too many times. She loved Rebel Island. She wanted to grow old here with Jose, tending the hotel rooms, listening to the ocean. When she thought of Peter Brazos, threatening to take her husband away from her, her hands trembled. She lit a candle at the altar of her dead children, and made a promise.

If you will not,
she told Jose,
I will.

In the end, he had relented. But it had been her idea—her murder. The wife and children—if Imelda had not pushed Jose, if she’d given him time to plan…

Imelda had been coming out of the grocery store in Port Aransas when she heard two men talking about the explosion—the mother and the two little girls. Imelda’s knees turned to water. She collapsed in front of the IGA and her grocery bag split, oranges and soup cans rolling through the parking lot. The men had tried to help her, but she ran. She didn’t stop until she found a pay phone and called Jose.

They waited for Peter Brazos to revisit the island with an army of police. But nothing happened. At first Imelda did not understand why. Then she realized she had misjudged. Brazos knew less than he let on. He had no idea Jose was Calavera. He had simply been pushing on them as one of many leads to get at his targets in court. Brazos’s wife and children had died for nothing.

Something had broken inside Jose when he learned about the little girls. He wandered the hotel at night, muttering the names of his victims, the dates of his kills. His believed the police would come for them eventually. Or worse, the drug lords. They would resent Calavera’s botched, unauthorized assassination. It had caused them too much grief.

Jose made a plan. He would negotiate with the American Marshals Service, exchange information for immunity. Imelda pleaded with him not to, but Jose would not listen.

It is the only way to save ourselves,
he told her.
They will find us otherwise, wherever we run.

The marshal Jesse Longoria had arrived, but he did not want to negotiate. And everything had spiraled out of control.

Imelda watched another boatful of police come ashore.
They brought black plastic cases, yellow tarps and cameras. They joked easily with one another, offering drinks from coolers as if they had come for a day on the beach.

Señora Navarre was talking to one of them. Her hands were cupped around a coffee mug. The señora’s eyes caught hers, and an electric charge passed through Imelda.

The señora paused in her conversation. She fixed Imelda with a strange look—almost like pity. Then she turned her attention back to the policeman. She did not look at Imelda again.

She knows,
Imelda realized.

And yet…Señora Navarre would not tell the police. Imelda wasn’t sure how she knew this, or why the señora would keep silent, but she sensed it was true.

Imelda clenched a handful of sand. She was free, but she would never see Jose again. She had the blood of children on her hands.

I will pay the price,
Jose had told her.
You must not. Please, you are all I have. Please, my love, let me do this.

She wrapped her shawl around her. She would pay a price—only a different price than Jose. The world would be her prison until she answered before God.

She would go back to her cousin’s in Corpus Christi. From there…she didn’t know. She would find a new job, something to help people. She would add three candles to her altar and pray for the family she had destroyed.

Suddenly she understood Señora Navarre’s look of pity. Imelda needed no more punishment. She would live alone with her ghosts and her altar, struggling to make amends, knowing it would never be enough. The police could do nothing worse to her than that. Señora Navarre understood, as only a mother could.

A pilot fish jumped from the water—a silver spark like a camera flash. Imelda watched for it again, but the waves churned gray and empty. She would have to settle for that single splash—a tiny sign that the sea might come back to life.