Chapter 33
White Rock Lake
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
I run.
Passing the grand houses in Lakewood, their windows frosted with golden light and gauzy curtains, passing the old-growth trees on half-acre lots that have withstood the strain of their own weighty limbs for nearly a century.
I extend the length of my stride as I near the lake, the streets gently rising and falling over what was once an ancient seabed. “It’s layers of Austin Chalk,” Jackie had informed me when I first described my delight at finding a part of Dallas that wasn’t as flat as a pane of glass.
“Like the White Cliffs of Dover,” she had added, astonishing me once again with her seemingly endless knowledge of the natural world.
The night she talked about the chalky hills was one of the first we’d spent in our new home. Entangled in the sheets of our bed, our bodies molded into a landscape of momentary quiet, Jackie had whispered, “Did you know that rocks come from a source called a Mother Rock? But chalk is made up of all the tiny shells of sea creatures that died a hundred million years ago.”
“Does that mean my Mother Rock was a crustacean?” I’d asked, holding her closer.
She’d smiled at me, cupping her palm along my cheek. “It means the harder the shell, the sweeter the insides.”
*
I had finally called Jackie a few hours after the unsuccessful search of Estella Cruz’s apartment. She had begged me to come and stay with her tonight at her mother’s house. When I told her I couldn’t, that I would be staying in our own home, she heard not only the steel-tipped defiance in my voice but also the pain and desperation. My lame excuses of not wanting to keep her up all night with my anxious tossing and turning were met with a lengthy silence, and then a resigned acceptance. What I didn’t say, but what I suspected she understood, was that I was hoping Evangeline, or one of her minions, would try to break into the house again. I wanted a chance to end it early by discharging every round from my SIG Sauer into the invader’s face.
*
I pick up my pace once more, trying and not succeeding to banish the fear that this time I’ve pushed Jackie to her limit.
A troubling mantra takes its place. Two more days, two more days, two more days…It’s Tuesday night. Thursday is the deadline that El Cuchillo has given me to find Evangeline.
Once I hit the trail circling the lake, there are very few other runners or cyclists. Those on the trail give me a wide berth—as though sensing the emotional storm emanating from me like a tsunami.
The evening is warm, but it may rain later, and clouds are already dimming the advancing twilight. I press on, trying to make my mind, at least for a brief while, a vast, blank wasteland. But despite all my best efforts, I see in every form that walks or runs or lurches around the lake startling facsimiles of those who would stalk me, and worse. Ahead of me is a woman rapidly pushing a runner’s baby carriage, eager to leave the lakefront before it gets too dark. The baby’s face is upturned, rapturous, open mouth catching the wind. I pass an older woman, one of the homeless who camp out in the open-air pavilions, her long, wispy hair tied back with a bandanna into a wild gray mane.
“Whatever it is,” she shouts at me, “you can’t outrun it.”
In an eerie echo I see my mother’s face, her own hair gone gray within a year of her cancer diagnosis. I can remember sitting by her hospital bed, holding her hand—grown bony and insubstantial. And yet, some essential part of her had grown more resilient, even as the disease ravaged her body. The only people she would allow into her hospital room were me and Uncle Benny. My father was not allowed.
She had looked at me with concern, as though I were the one who was desperately ill. Following the suicide of my brother, I’d begun running six miles a day. Following my mother’s diagnosis, seven or eight. I was gaunt, knotted with worry, a high-tension wire that could spark into flames at any moment.
“Betty, you punishing yourself will not change anything,” she had said. “Promise me you’ll look after yourself, and your uncle Benny. Promise me.”
I had promised without revealing that I had overheard her extracting the same promise from Uncle Benny too.
The last words she spoke to me were in Polish. Wole walczyć trzy, niż raz rodzic.
I’d rather do battle three times than give birth once…
*
Once I return to the house, I wander the silent rooms, checking the locks on windows and doors, every room except the nursery. I place the palm of my hand over the closed door as though feeling for directional vibrations, but I don’t go in. Before I crawl into bed, I look at my naked body in the full-length mirror, examining the damage of justice served, and justice delayed: the large tattoo of Saint Michael covering, but not quite obscuring, the long scar over my Achilles tendon, the still-red wound where El Cuchillo’s skinning knife punctured the hollow at the base of my throat, the scars on the back of both hands from the fire. And I would rather face all of those things again than have to feel just one time the pain of losing the child in my care.
I have every intention of staying alert, but I soon fall into a twilight state—not completely asleep and yet not fully awake—my gun by my side.
*
In the curious way of dreams, blackness gives way to light, immediate and revelatory. I’m standing under the magnificent vaulted ceiling of Saint Stanislaus Catholic Church in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The church where my mother’s funeral service was held. To the right of the altar is a larger-than-life statue of Saint Michael standing upon a rocky ledge, his wings spread, holding a sword aloft, one sandaled foot firmly fixed over the head of the Evil Serpent. And standing with his back to me, observing the statue, is Uncle Benny wearing his full-dress uniform, the uniform he wore to pay his final respects to his brother’s wife.
“You know, if you had been born a boy, your mother was going to name you Michael.” He says it over his shoulder without turning around. He senses it’s me standing behind him in the nave. “I think she knew that he would forever be your guardian angel.”
“You loved her, didn’t you?” I ask.
He nods. “Always have. Always will. But I think you knew that.”
I take a few steps toward him. He points to something on the plinth below Saint Michael and motions me closer. Four ones—“1111”—are chiseled into the granite.
“Do you know why this number is important?” he asks. He looks at me briefly and smiles, and I’m made breathless once more with pride and admiration, just as I was as a child. “Your grandmother would have said it was the time when your guardian angel was opening up a celestial portal. Your father would have insisted it had something to do with medieval Polish history.”
I’m standing next to him, inhaling the comforting scent of his Old Spice cologne. “What happened in Poland in 1111?”
He turns to me and laughs. “Not a goddam thing, as far as I know.”
As he looks at me, his face turns grave and he leans closer, his breath in my face. “What does a religious leader always look for?”
“A congregation,” I say.
“And where will she house that congregation?”
“In a church.”
He looks once more at the statue of Saint Michael. “And upon what rock will she build this church?”
I remember full well the Roy matriarch telling me of her fevered visions of Saint Michael, and of her belief that he had chosen her to dominate the earth with her redheaded followers.
“The Archangel,” I whisper.
He holds me in the warmth of his gaze. “And what happened at eleven eleven o’clock?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s the time you were born.” He puts his finger against my forehead and pushes. “Time for the awakening, Betty.”
*
As soon as my eyes open to the murky shadows in my bedroom, I know, even before looking at the digital clock, that the time is 11:11 p.m. I rub the middle of my forehead where Uncle Benny’s finger pressed into my flesh. And I smile, certain that I’ll sleep the rest of the night undisturbed.
I now know where to start looking for Evangeline Roy.
Chapter 34
Dallas Police Department, North Central Division
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Arriving early at the station, I’m surprised to see Seth already at his desk. He looks like he didn’t sleep at all last night. I stride past him on my way to my office and gesture for him to follow me.
Sitting at my desk, I start a search of all the churches in the Dallas area named Saint Michael’s. Or any that make reference to the Archangel.
Seth is lingering in the doorway, and I beckon him in. “I know where to start looking for Evangeline Roy,” I say, tapping at the keyboard. “I had a spark of inspiration last night, and now—”
I look up at my partner, who’s still standing in front of my desk. He looks haggard, almost ill.
“Are you not feeling well?” I ask.
He turns and closes the door before sitting in one of the visitor’s chairs. He stares down at his hands and then looks up at me. “Riz,” he says, his voice ragged. “Something’s happened.”
I’d stand but my legs wouldn’t hold me. His eyes are red and swollen. Whatever it is, it’s bad. I grab the edge of the desk.
“Is it…is there news about Elizabeth?”
He shakes his head and clears his throat. “It’s Kevin.”
I sit back in my chair. “Kevin? Our Kevin?”
“He’s gone.”
My partner’s not making any sense. “Gone? What do you mean? Gone where?”
“Riz, he’s dead. He was shot.”
Now I do stand up, my mouth open and panting. He’s dead. He was shot. The nonsensical sounds have coalesced around a terrible clarity. A crippling pain inside my ribs begins to swell, and I mash a hand against my sternum to keep it from cracking open.
“No.” My head spasms back and forth. “No. No. No!”
Seth stands as well, his hands held palms upward, like a supplicant beseeching pity, or understanding.
“It happened last night,” he says.
“Evangeline.”
“No.” He takes a breath. “It was the kid he was mentoring. The kid tried to rob a convenience store, and a bunch of patrol cars showed up. He called Kevin, saying he’d give himself up if Kevin was there to make sure he wasn’t shot.”
He grabs my arm, abruptly, as though to steady me, and I sink back down into my chair.
Moving his chair closer to mine, he sits so we’re knee to knee. “I spoke to the cops on the scene. They said that Kevin talked to the kid for some time, and it looked like he was giving himself up. Kevin reached to take the gun away, and the gun discharged.” He runs a hand over his mouth.
“The kid shot him? Why?” I wail. Kevin Ryan, the baby-faced detective who’d decided he could make a difference…the man who was finally going to be a father. Snuffed out by a messed-up teenager?
“I don’t know,” Seth says. “He’s being interviewed this morning.”
“Oh my God,” I whisper. “Where’s Craddock? Who’s with Kevin’s wife?”