Healing Sands Page 11

  That and a thirteen-year-old photo, which until Thursday night he’d thought was virtually useless, especially in its current state. He’d straightened it out and left it under a pile of art books for three days, but it still looked like it had been used as a large spit wad. He was flipping channels that evening, half watching, half ruminating, when he landed on CSI. One look at the police sketch artist in the episode—some supermodel in a cameo role—and he had an idea.

  A few calls on Friday had led him to the crisp-sounding Tess Lightfoot, who told him on the phone, in no uncertain terms, that she was a “forensic artist,” working as an independent contractor, and that she’d meet with him Monday morning at ten thirty at a coffeehouse called Beans and Bytes. Sully hoped she could sketch out an updated version of Belinda Cox, especially with the details Sarah Secretary had given him at the church.

  Porphyria had thought it was a good idea too. Though her voice had sounded a little thready, she had been eager to turn over all the stones with him on the phone Friday night.

  “If I can’t locate her by name, I might be able to track her by face,” Sully said to her. “But not the face she had—what?—over a dozen years ago.”

  “Well, no,” Porphyria said. “Time isn’t kind enough to anybody to leave them looking like they did back when.”

  “With one exception. Time has treated you with a great deal of grace.”

  “Now, when did you start that?”

  “Start what?”

  “Shameless flattery.” Porphyria gave him the throaty laugh. “You want something from me, son?”

  “Just your reassurance that I’m not going after Belinda Cox for revenge.”

  “So that’s what all this procrastination is about.”

  “As if you didn’t already know that. The closer I get, the more worked up I get.”

  “And don’t you think that’s normal?”

  “Not for me.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  Sully stopped pacing his kitchen and straddled a chair. She was about to take him down anyway; he might as well sit.

  “It’s normal for everyone else on God’s earth to want to chew barbed wire when they think about somebody that destroyed their family,” she said, “but not Sullivan Crisp.”

  “But we’re talking about vengeance, which last time I checked, was supposed to belong to the Lord.”

  “No, we are talking about your perfecution complex.”

  “Persecution complex?”

  “I did not say that. I said per-FE-cution.”

  Sully grinned. “New psychological term, Dr. Ghent? You want to define that for me?”

  “You think you have to be perfect, and you persecute yourself when you aren’t. And just like any other complex, it keeps you so focused on it, you can’t go on and do the next God-thing.” She gave a soft grunt. There was obviously more to come.

  “And?” Sully said.

  “I used to think perfecution only occurred in women.”

  “I always have been in touch with my feminine side.”

  “And right now you’re in touch with your stupid side. Come on, Sully—you know you’d like to tear Belinda Cox’s arm off and beat her with the bloody stump, but you also know this isn’t about what you’d like to do, it’s about what you have to do. And what you have to do you can’t do alone.”

  “I just said that to a client three days ago.”

  “I hope she’s listening to you better than you are.”

  Sully grinned now as he turned onto Amador Avenue and grabbed his sunglasses from the visor. He didn’t go far here without his shades. Or without a Porphyria fix. Both kept him moving forward.

  According to the cryptic directions Ms. Lightfoot had given him, the coffee shop was in the downtown mall. When he’d mentioned it to Olivia, she’d rolled her eyes.

  “It isn’t really a mall, it’s just a piece of the street they won’t let cars go down. There’s, like, nothing there unless you go on Wednesday for fruit and stuff.”

  She was right. The Downtown Mall was a ghost town at the end Tess had directed him to, except for a storefront that promised to save kids, a movie theater that showed art films on weekends, and the Beans and Bytes.

  Which seemed to pride itself on being uninviting. The glass on the door was smeared with at least a month’s worth of fingerprints, and the windows were so plastered with flyers, Sully wondered if it was even in business anymore. The door opened, though, into a cave-like darkness and the mournful sound of the Dave Matthews Band.

  Sully stood just inside for a few seconds to let his eyes grow accustomed to the lack of light. He could barely make out a guy in dreadlocks at the counter.

  “Welcome to Bytes,” said the formless voice. “What can I get for you?”

  “A woman—”

  “Can’t help you there, pal.”

  “No, I’m looking for one who—”

  “Internet’s in the back,” he said, still straight-faced. “Try eHarmony.”

  Sully grinned. “Can you make a Frappuccino?”

  The guy cocked an eyebrow.

  “Okay, just make it a coffee with a lot of cream and a lot of sugar. Decaf.”

  “Dude,” Dreadlocks said. “Why do you even bother?”

  Sully looked around, but there were no women in the place. A circle of older Hispanic men had pulled several tables together in the back and were having a lively discussion in Spanish. From the looks of it, they were talking about either politics or their wives, jostling each other with good-natured elbow nudges. It made him feel as if he were on some shelf, looking down at life.

  “One sugar and cream with a shot of coffee,” Dreadlocks droned from the counter.

  Sully took it with him to a table where the Sunday Las Cruces Sun-News was scattered across the top. He took a blistering sip from the cup and perused the front page. Above the fold, the name Ryan Alexander appeared beneath a photo of two men in white shirts and bulging bellies standing in a hallway. City Council Budget Impasse, the headline read. Sully chuckled to himself. She hadn’t shot the council in heavy discussion. She’d caught these two politicians out in the hall, where, as Sully understood it, the real deals were made. He found another of her photos on the front page of the Life section. She’d snapped a picture of a dark-haired woman in a black leotard, obviously a ballet teacher, surrounded by a circle of plump four-year-olds in yellow tutus. They were all looking up at the camera, creating the perfect image of a black-eyed Susan blossoming on a hillside.

  Sully shook his head. It must be a huge challenge to go from Sudanese child soldiers to the local dance studio.

  “Sullivan Crisp?”

  Sully looked up at a woman who had somehow appeared at the table. She moved like water as she put out her hand and shook his and floated into the chair across from him, all in one fluid wave. Sully knocked the front page of the Life section to the floor.

  “You want your usual, Contessa?” called Dreadlocks.

  She nodded and turned back to Sully, sliding long fawn-colored hair over her shoulder.

  “Is your name really Contessa?” Sully asked.

  “No,” she said. “He just calls me that.” She wrinkled her nose in the direction of the counter. “And he’s the only one who gets away with it. Just so you know.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “So what have you got for me? I have about fifteen minutes, so . . .”

  “Of course.” Sully pulled the picture from the inside pocket of the tweed blazer he’d worn for credibility and which was starting to itch. He tried to smooth the photo on the tabletop.

  She picked it up, moved a pair of rimless glasses from the top of her head to her eyes, and studied it. Sully studied her.

  Tess Lightfoot wasn’t beautiful, not by magazine cover standards. But then, who was? Still, she was put together well. Her hair was thick and shiny and seemed to have come nowhere near a goat lately. The brown eyes were bright and quick and educated. She hadn’t smiled yet, but even in repose her m
outh curved, revealing the slightest of overbites and a row of square white teeth.

  She looked up at him and returned the glasses to the top of her head. Nodding at Dreadlocks, who put her “usual” on the table, she tapped Belinda’s picture with her fingernail.

  “How old is this picture?” she asked.

  “Fourteen years—about that.”

  “It’s certainly seen better days. Do you know anything about her life since this was taken? Health issues? Traumas?”

  “She’s moved a lot,” he said. “Worked as a counselor. The only recent piece of information I have is that she goes by Zahira—or works for somebody by that name . . . I’m pretty sure she’s not a belly dancer.”

  Tess snorted—an unladylike sound, but it made Sully grin. She glanced at her coffee, still untouched. “Okay, here’s what I can do. I’ll try to run this through my computer program at home when I have a chance. I have several cases right now with the police department, so it’ll have to wait for those to be done.”

  She tapped the photo again as she took a sip and winced toward the counter. “Did he make this hot enough? The problem I might run into is the quality of the photograph. If it doesn’t scan effectively, I may have to do a hand-drawn rendition.” She gave the picture yet another tap. “What happened to this, anyway? Did you throw it away by mistake?”

  “Something like that,” Sully said. She was pulling him along on a piece of silk, and he could feel himself sliding off. “I’d appreciate you just doing what you can.”

  “All right, well . . .” She glanced at her watch and didn’t seem to like what she saw. “So you don’t know anything about the way her relatives aged?”

  “As far as I know, she doesn’t have any family left.”

  “Do you know if she smoked?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did she drink? Overeat? She looks pretty thin here.”

  Sully shook his head. It was disconcerting that after a year of intense research, he knew so little about the woman who had ruined his wife’s life.

  “What about her personality?” Tess said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Was she happy-go-lucky? A worrier? Mean as a snake?”

  Sully stared at the picture for perhaps the thousandth time. “She thought everybody had to wrestle with the devil. As far as I know, that continues to be her mission in life.”

  Tess didn’t say anything. Sully looked up to find her dissecting his face. Who needed a scanner with those eyes?

  “All right, well, I have to go,” she said. The picture went into her bag, the hair over her shoulder, the cup into her hand. “I have your number. I’ll call you when I get to this. Nice to meet you. Larry, I need an ice cube for this coffee.”

  “You’re not ruining my masterpiece with an ice cube,” Dreadlocks told her. Too late. The door had already closed behind her, plunging them once more into dimness.

  Sully took a sip of his own coffee, which was now lukewarm and far from a masterpiece. He had the feeling Tess Lightfoot was never going to get around to Belinda Cox’s photo. Dang, he should have made a color copy and given her that and kept the original. She raced so swiftly, he hadn’t even had a chance to tell her that Belinda Cox dressed like a Native American wannabe and was covered in freckles and was still a blonde.

  He dropped the coffee cup surreptitiously into the trash can by the door as he left. Out in the blinding sunlight, he fumbled for his sunglasses and felt a vague disappointment. Less than he expected to feel at another dead end. More than he wanted to at the thought of not seeing that fascinating woman again. He wondered if she was married. Not that he was interested in a relationship, but—too bad. Just too bad.

  I savored my time with Alex, but it was hard during our soccer tutorials in Dan’s backyard not to drift mentally from learning to dribble to looking for opportunities to talk to Jake. When I came on the scene, however, everyone else disappeared like bats in the sunlight, including Ginger and Dan. I could live without them. I didn’t think I could live without my son.

  Finally, late Monday afternoon, when Alex and I were in Dan’s kitchen having a water-chugging contest, Jake appeared in the doorway. His face flickered unwelcome surprise when he saw me, and he took a step back as if he thought he could hide behind the long string of fresh garlic cloves that hung from the ceiling. He was almost thin enough to pull it off.

  “Alex,” I said, not taking my eyes from Jake, “why don’t you go out and set up those cones I brought so we can practice our ball control?”

  He went out the back door.

  “Jake, sit down,” I said.

  “Dad said I don’t have to—”

  “I’m not going to ask you questions about what happened. Just sit.”

  I sat next to him and pulled my chair in close. “What does whereas mean?”

  He stopped picking at the mole on his arm. “What?”

  “Whereas. What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “How about inalienable ? Do you know that one?”

  He squinted at his hands. “No.”

  “Inalienable rights?”

  “I don’t know. It’s, like, in the Constitution or something.”

  “Or something,” I said. “Can you spell it?”

  Jake’s miserable gaze went to the ceiling. “You know I can’t. Why do you always have to rub that in?”

  “I’m not rubbing it in. I’m trying to show you how I can save your butt.”

  The gaze came down in a glare. “You said you weren’t asking me questions about that.”

  “I’m asking questions about you, and the answers prove that you did not write that note they found in the truck with you.”

  He went back to the mole. “Okay, so maybe I do know what that stuff means.”

  “No, you don’t. Listen, I’m going to share this with your lawyer, not to embarrass you—”

  “Why can’t you just leave it alone?” Jake’s voice cracked, and he shoved the chair back and knocked it onto its back on the plank floor. “I’m not afraid of going to prison, so just leave it alone.”

  There was nothing but fear in his eyes as he left the chair lying there and escaped from me once more. I righted it before Ginger could emerge from her lair and accuse me of busting up the furniture—or pick the thing up and swing it at me.

  When I returned to the backyard, Alex was kicking at the dirt with his toe between two of the orange cones I’d picked up at a sporting goods store. As soon as he saw me, he smiled an automatic smile.

  “Juggle for me,” I said.

  He immediately obliged, bouncing the ball off his knee.

  “So are you pretty good friends with Cade and those guys?” I said.

  “I am with Felipe and Bryan. Cade’s kinda bossy sometimes.”

  Cade didn’t take after anybody strange.

  “Do you know any kids on the other teams in the league?” I said.

  Alex grinned and popped the ball onto his shoulder where he was able to bounce it three times before it dropped. “I know everybody.”

  “Everybody?”

  The grin grew wider. “And everybody knows me.”

  “Fibber,” I said.

  “No. Serious. Ask anybody at Burn Lake.”

  His eyes teased me as he smacked the ball with his instep in my direction. I trapped it, the only skill I had actually mastered.

  “Do you know Miguel Sanchez?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, just before his face froze. “Well, maybe I don’t know him. ”

  “Alex.”

  I pushed the ball aside and nodded him toward a cable-spool table just beyond the porch. It had a rooster weather vane coming up through its center, but there was room to sit at it on smaller spool stools. Alex took one as if he were placing himself into a dentist’s chair.

  “You do know Miguel,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “How well do you know him?”

  “Not that good. He�
�s Jake’s friend, not mine.”

  I could barely keep my chin from dropping to my chest. “So Jake and Miguel are friends. Good friends?”

  “Yeah.” Alex still wasn’t looking at me. All the little-boy charm had slipped way.

  “Like, spend-the-night-at-each-other’s-houses friends?”

  “No. They just played soccer.”

  “Miguel’s in the same soccer league as you guys.”

  Alex shook his head. You would think I was beating the information out of him.

  “He wasn’t at first. He just hung around Burn Lake, and me and Jake and Ian would mess around with the ball while we were waiting for Dad to get out of meetings and stuff. Jake asked him to play with us.”

  I groped for control. “So—is he pretty good at soccer?”

  “Oh yeah.” First light came back into Alex’s eyes. “He played like those guys from South America on TV.”

  “That good?”

  “Jake even told him to try out for the select team.”

  “That sounds important.”

  “It’s like the best players in the whole league. They get to travel out of town, all the way to Albuquerque and stuff.”

  Alex went on for five minutes about the glory of being on the select team. I nodded and made occasional appreciative noises while my mind raced elsewhere.

  If Jake was impressed by Miguel Sanchez and befriended him, how could he possibly have tried to kill him? And why hadn’t Jake volunteered any of this information himself? I felt my eyes narrow as I wondered if Dan knew—but again I dismissed the possibility. He wouldn’t just let Jake go down like this.

  Alex was looking at me, his eyes clouded again with misgiving.

  “What’s wrong, guy?” I said.

  “Are you gonna tell Jake I told you?” he asked.

  “Wouldn’t he want you to?”

  Alex shrugged.

  “What does that mean?” I mimicked his lifted shoulders.

  “He doesn’t like me saying stuff about him to people. This one time, I told Dad that Jake stopped these guys from picking on this girl on the bus, and Jake got all mad.” He widened his brown eyes. “I don’t get that, but he just says he doesn’t like people talking about him, so I don’t.”

  “This is a little bit different. People are saying Jake hurt Miguel. It would help if people knew they were friends.”