Beyond Suspicion

“All the time.”

“When last?”

“Tonight.” Just before she kicked me out of the house, he thought.

“Is good. Is muy importante that you tell your wife how you feel.”

“I did.”

She cupped her hand, gently patted his cheek. “Maybe you should tell her again.”

From the moment Jack had walked into her apartment, he thought he’d managed to keep his problems with Cindy to himself. It amazed him how well Abuela had come to know him in the short time she’d been in this country. “Maybe you’re right.”

He rose to help with the dishes, but she wouldn’t allow it. “Go to your wife. Your beautiful wife.”

He kissed her on the forehead, thanked her for di

Jack had a renewed sense of energy as he followed the sidewalk around to the back of the building. He definitely had some smoothing over to do with Cindy. But for the moment it was refreshing to step outside the cynical world and let himself believe, as Abuela did, that love conquers all.

His car was parked in a guest space, two buildings away from Abuela’s townhouse. He followed the long, S-curved sidewalk through a maze of trees. A rush of wind stirred the waxy ficus leaves overhead. He reached for his car keys, stopped, and glanced over his shoulder. He thought he’d heard footsteps behind him, but no one was in sight. Up ahead, the sidewalk stretched through a stand of larger trees. The old, twisted roots had caused the cement sections to buckle and crack over the years. It was suddenly darker, as the lights along this particular segment of the walkway were blocked by low-hanging limbs.

Again, he heard footsteps. He walked faster, and the clicking of heels behind him seemed to quicken to the same pace. He stepped off the sidewalk and continued through the grass. The sound of footsteps vanished, as if someone were tracing his silent path. He returned to the sidewalk at the top of the S-curve. His heels clicked on concrete, and a few seconds later the clicking resumed behind him.

He was definitely being followed.

Jack stopped and turned. In the darkness beneath the trees, he could see no more than twenty meters. He saw no one, but he sensed someone was there.

“Abuela? Is that you?” He knew it wasn’t her, but somehow it seemed less paranoid than a nervous “Who’s there?”

No one answered.

Jack waited a moment, then reached for his cell phone. Just as he flipped it open, a crushing blow to the center of his back sent him, flailing, face-first to the sidewalk. The phone went flying, and his breath escaped with nearly enough force to take his lungs right along with it. He tried to get up and wobbled onto one knee. A second blow to the same vertebrae knocked him down for at least another eight-count. This time, he was too disoriented to break the fall. His chin smashed against the concrete. The hot, salty taste of blood filled his mouth.

With his cheek to the sidewalk, he counted two pairs of feet. Or was he seeing double?

“What… do…” He could barely form words, let alone sentences.

His hand exploded in pain as a steel-toed boot smashed his fingers into the sidewalk. He tried to look up, but it was futile. In the darkness, it would have been hard for anyone to make out a face. In Jack’s battered state, the attacker was a fuzzy silhouette.

“Consider yourself warned, Swyteck.”

The voice startled him. It sounded female. I’m getting whooped by a woman?

He laid still, playing possum. The boot extended toward him, gently this time, poking his ribs, as if to see if he was conscious. Somehow, he found the strength to spring to life and grab an ankle, pulling and twisting as hard as he could. His attacker tumbled to the ground, and Jack tumbled with her. His arms flailed as he tried to get hold of another leg, but she was amazingly strong and quick. They rolled several times and slammed into a tree. Jack groaned as his attacker wiggled free. He started toward her, but she threw herself at him, legs whirling like a professional kickboxer. Her boot caught him squarely on the side of the head, and down he went.

He was flat on his belly as someone grabbed him from behind, took a fistful of hair, and yanked his head back.

“One more move, and you bleed like a stuck pig.”

Jack went rigid. A cold, steel blade was at his throat. The voice was a man’s. He hadn’t been seeing double; there were two attackers. “Take it easy,” said Jack.

“Silence,” he said with a slap to Jack’s head. “Like we said, consider yourself warned.”

“Warned-of what?”

“Pin Jessie’s murder on whoever you want. Just don’t pin it on us.”

“Who… you?”

The man pulled Jack’s head back harder. “We don’t like to hurt grandmothers, but if you keep putting her on the radio to point fingers where she shouldn’t, it’s on your head.”

He focused long enough to regret he’d ever told Abuela about the viatical investors. “She’s not part of this.”

“Shut up. You don’t know who you’re fucking with. Get your grandma off the radio, or there’ll be another bloodbath. Understand?”

“You don’t-” Jack stopped in midsentence. The blade was pressing harder against his throat.

“Yes or no, Swyteck. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Make sure you do,” he said, then slammed Jack’s head forward into the sidewalk one last time. Jack fought to stay conscious, but he was barely hanging on. He saw nothing, heard nothing, as his world slowly turned darker than night itself, and then all was black.

22

•

Cindy’s brain was throbbing. She lifted her head from the pillow, and it weighed a ton. She’d had even more wine after Jack left, putting herself way over her limit. She closed her eyes and let her head sink back into goose down, but it felt like a vise grip pressing at either ear.

She had to move, or, she was certain, she would die.

Her hand slid across the sheet and found the edge of the mattress. She pulled herself up onto her side and checked the digital alarm clock on the nightstand. The numbers were a blur without her contact lenses, and she couldn’t reach to pull it closer. There was no telling what time it was.

Just like in her dream. That awful dream.

She didn’t think she was dreaming. But she didn’t feel awake, either. Never in her life had she been hungover like this, not even from those prom-night slush drinks spiked with Southern Comfort. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. The blinds were shut, but the faint outline of dawn brightened the thin openings between slats. She took a moment, then sat up in bed.

The sound of footsteps thumped in the hallway.

“Mom?”

No one answered, but her voice was weak, stolen by the effects of too much alcohol. Cindy looked around the room. The empty wine bottle was on the bureau, and the mere sight of it was enough to make her sick. She felt a need to run for the bathroom, but, mercifully, the nausea quickly passed. How ironic, she thought, all the school mornings she’d lain in this very room just pretending to be sick. She’d hated school as a kid, and, for the longest time, she’d hated this house. She didn’t think of it as the house she’d grown up in, at least not entirely. Only after her father was dead had the rest of the surviving family moved there, the widow, two daughters, and three very young boys. Yet it seemed full of memories. Or, at least, at the moment, it was filling her head with memories. Through her mind’s eye, she was looking at herself again, the way she could in her dream, except this wasn’t a dream-or it least it wasn’t the dream. The Cindy she saw was nine years old, in their old house, the one before this one, the house in New Hampshire.

•

The leaves rustled outside her bedroom window. As she lay awake staring at the ceiling, the wind plucked the brown and crispy ones from the branches and sent them flying through the night sky. Some were caught in the updraft and swirled high. The others fell to the ground, weaving the endless carpet of dead leaves across their lawn. Tourists came from all over the country to see autumn like this. Cindy loathed it. For a brief two weeks, the green leaves of summer turned themselves into something that no living thing could become without courting disaster, blazing flickers of flame at the end of twisted branches. And then, one by one, the flames were extinguished. It was as if the leaves were being fooled. Tricked into death.