This Side of Night Read online

  For the both of you.

  She found her phone and bounced it in her hand before dialing Chris. She looked out the window to the sky and scrub around her, a new sun burning the world alive. It was a view like no place else in the world, and she thought she could see forever from here. Chris had once nearly died right outside that window—shot on the orders of Sheriff Ross—and knowing that had admittedly scared her for a long time . . . all that emptiness and all the possibilities so easily lost within it, stretching endlessly into the unknowable future; the remnants of different lives and different choices left behind. But now she couldn’t imagine any other view, any other choice, any other life.

  When she’d aimed her own gun that night at Sheriff Ross, ready and willing to kill him for what he’d done to Chris, she’d been protecting all their future choices . . . and the later promise of this view.

  Forever was fine, and she wasn’t afraid of it anymore.

  Rocky was then leaning against her leg, as if he could see out the same window, enjoying the view with her. She could feel the dog’s heart beating through his fur. It was strong, steady, constant. Mel bent over and kissed Jack between his closed eyes. He stirred once, safe, just knowing she was there.

  It was enough for her.

  FIVE

  There were five bodies.

  Four young men, and the last a teenage boy.

  It would be a few days before they could determine exactly how long they had been in the river, and maybe they never would, but it had been long enough. Demasiado largo. Too long. America Reynosa had listened closely as Doc Hanson explained to Sheriff Cherry about body temperature and river pH and maceration: where the dead men’s skin had absorbed . . . drank . . . the river itself. That process had turned their skin milky and opaque so it hung on their bodies in rolls, like a second set of loose-fitting clothes. At least one of them had also been gotten at by a predator, but whether that had been before or after ending up in the water was an open question. Most of them were savaged in some way or another, their faces ruined, except for the boy’s. His face was fine, unmarked. His young features were clear and clean; only for that strangely colorless but somehow still pale skin.

  It was like he was only sleeping, and someone, maybe his mama, had just brushed wet hair out of his closed eyes.

  * * *

  —

  SHE’D HELPED DALE HOLT bring four telescoping light stands down to the river’s edge, where, once night started to fall, they could run them off the department’s portable generators. There were also two more farther back up in the yard. Sheriff Cherry had called in a full Department of Public Safety forensic team, but until they arrived, she and Dale Holt and Marco Lucero were responsible for the crime scene that ran from the front of Eddy Rabbit’s trailer all the way down to the water’s edge. Two months ago, the sheriff had sent her to a weeklong DPS course about homicide investigations and homicide crime scenes. She’d stayed in Austin for the classes, and Danny had come with her the first weekend to show her around, since he’d spent time in the city before. They’d had a good time, but the main draw had been the course itself. She wanted to attend more, to learn as much as she could, although it was far different being in the middle of her own real crime scene rather than reading about one in a classroom. She couldn’t help wishing Ben Harper was here with her, helping her know what to do or not do. The last time she’d stood over a dead body this way he’d been at her side, but that had been just one, not five.

  Not a young boy.

  * * *

  —

  THE SHERIFF WAS WALKING TOWARD HER, finishing up a phone call. Danny and another deputy, Till Greer, had transported Eddy Rabbit back to Murfee, where they were processing him. The sheriff had stationed his last deputy, Tommy Milford, in his department truck out on Farm Road 170, near the Fort Leaton historic site and at the outer edge of the canyon, ready to help lead the DPS team down to the trailer, which was difficult to find if you didn’t know the area. But Dale and Marco were still standing by the water’s edge, drawn to the bodies, returning there again and again as if they couldn’t stay away. Dale had been a deputy as long as she had (which wasn’t saying much), so those weren’t the first dead men either of them had seen, but this was all new for Marco. Nothing prepared you for it, not really. Not five raggedy things that were once people floating in shallow, dirty water.

  Fat-bodied moscas turning in circles above them.

  To take Marco’s mind off it, she’d had him help her draw maps of the scene, record measurements, and shoot video and still pictures inside the trailer—it’s what Ben would have done—although they’d stopped short at searching the trailer itself. The sheriff had decided to wait for the DPS techs to do that. There was no hurry. The bodies weren’t going anywhere soon, so neither was America.

  It was going to be a long day and a longer night, which was why she’d set up the lights. In a few more hours, once the shadows grew thick as the sun set, she’d turn them on, and she couldn’t help wondering what the bodies would look like under their harsh, unforgiving glow.

  Would that pale dead boy appear even whiter, even less real?

  Or only more?

  * * *

  —

  “YOU KNOW, Dale doesn’t like it when you and Marco talk only in Spanish to each other. He thinks you’re talking about him,” the sheriff said, stopping next to her. He was looking down toward the giant cane and the salt cedar.

  “Lo sé. And we are. It wouldn’t hurt him to learn a few words.”

  “Yeah, but he’s got as much chance of learning Spanish as I do of building a new wing on my house.” America couldn’t help smiling. The sheriff’s struggles with home repairs and renovations had become legendary in the county. “Anyway, just give it a rest, okay? You two will make him paranoid, and the last thing I need is another paranoid man with a gun.” He made a vague motion at the canyon around them. “I have plenty of those in this county already.”

  “Sí. I’ll try not to talk in my native language anymore.”

  He looked at her sideways, shaking off a smile of his own. “Don’t pull that oppressed minority bullshit with me, Amé. I personally think it’s great that you’re a smart-ass in not one but two languages.” He grew serious again, turning away from the river. The bodies were downwind, but he could still smell them, like she could. She’d probably still smell them tomorrow and the day after. “I didn’t have much of a chance to talk to Danny. Was he okay?”

  “He was fine. Ashamed that Eddy Rabbit caught him with that skillet, but he’s okay.”

  “I hate to admit it, but I forgot you all were going to be out here this morning. You know, with the baby, this damn election . . .”

  She shrugged. “No es un problema. We had it taken care of. We had no idea about this. Any of this.” She added, “I don’t think Eddy did, either, honestamente.”

  Sheriff Cherry nodded. “Danny suggested the same thing before he transported him. Had the feeling that Eddy was just as surprised, just as scared, as anyone.”

  She agreed. “After the autopsies, I’ll still show some pictures of these men to Charity, Eddy’s novia. Maybe she’ll recognize them. Maybe this wasn’t the first time they were here.”

  “But definitely the last. A hard way to end,” the sheriff said, now looking past the river, farther south and east to the Chisos Mountains, where they carved the horizon. “I sometimes wonder why our remote corner of Texas is the last thing so many people see. I don’t understand that. It seems wrong to me. Seems like it should be too safe, too removed . . . hell, too beautiful, for all this ugliness.”

  America shrugged again. She’d gotten used to the sheriff and his ideas, sus esperanzas—his hopes. She admired him and the way he tried to hold on to them, for himself and his novia and his new bebé, maybe for her, too. For all his deputies, although he knew better, like she did. Ben Harper had admired that in him, too, ev
en as he’d warned the sheriff right up until the day he died that there was the world the sheriff wanted to believe in, and the world as it truly was—el mundo real. Ben had made her promise that she’d never let either of them forget that.

  “This place can be beautiful, but it’s no different than anywhere else.”

  “I know,” he conceded, without much strength, as if agreeing with her made it all true. He was still watching the mountains, like he was searching for something better in the shadows and sun there.

  “El mundo es peligroso,” she said. The world is dangerous. “You can die badly anywhere.”

  * * *

  —

  SHE WAS ABOUT TO WALK DOWN to the river to check on Marco and Dale when the sheriff held her back. He still had his phone in his hand.

  “I was just on a call with Joe Garrison, that DEA agent out of El Paso,” he said.

  She thought he’d been checking on Melissa and the bebé, or Danny back in Murfee. She wasn’t sure what it meant that he was talking to the DEA so soon.

  “He’s heard about this?” she asked, shaking her head. “Or did you call to tell him?” The sheriff’s long-standing relationship with the DEA agent was difficult, hard to explain, and the sheriff had admitted to her before that she and her familia were the reason, though her own relationship with them was just as difficult and just as hard to explain. Rodolfo, her hermano, had been both a member of the Nemesio cartel and a federal informant, and either truth alone would have been enough for Agent Garrison to distrust her. Worse, Rodolfo’s involvement with Nemesio and former Sheriff Ross and Duane Dupree had ended not only with his own death, but with the death of one of Agent Garrison’s agents, and Garrison could never forgive or forget that. And he either couldn’t or wouldn’t let the sheriff forget that, or that one of America’s tíos—her mama’s own hermano, a man she knew only as Fox Uno—still had ties to Nemesio.

  That meant by birth, by blood—por la sangre—America did as well. And to the agent, that meant she probably had plenty of blood on her own hands, too, even if she now wore a badge.

  On this, Agent Garrison wasn’t so wrong.

  “No, he didn’t know about this,” the sheriff said. “I mean, he does now, but I didn’t call him. You know me better than that. He reached out to me about something else, although he didn’t get into it on the phone. He’s coming out here, and no matter what’s on his mind, he’ll no doubt circle back to what’s going on over there.” The sheriff pointed with his phone south, over the river. “You’ve read the same stuff I have. It’s a mess right now. All those students that were attacked? It’s like it was before, Amé, and those bodies in the water mean that craziness and violence over there is only spreading. It always does, right? It’s like a sickness, or a goddamn fire. Burning its way to our backyard again.”

  It’s like it was before . . . like the way it was with Rodolfo and with Garrison’s agents. With Sheriff Ross and that pendejo, Dupree.

  The boy sicario, Máximo, who Fox Uno sent to Murfee—to her—from his rancho across the river.

  Two silver pistolas—unwanted gifts, terrible promises—for her and her hermano.

  And finally, Caleb Ross—Sheriff Ross’s son—who’d loved her once, but fled Murfee’s secrets after the sheriff’s death.

  These were all her secrets, and Sheriff Cherry knew most of them; all but la pistola she kept hidden in her apartment. She had never asked the sheriff to carry them for her, but he would, and he would never reveal them to Agent Garrison. That was the sort of man he was.

  * * *

  —

  “DO YOU THINK he’s coming here to talk about me?”

  The sheriff turned to face her. “Probably. That’s usually the way it is. Él no te quiere. And he doesn’t know you the way I do.” He tried a smile.

  “You’ve been practicing,” she said.

  The sheriff held on to the smile, like it was the most important thing in the world, holding on to it just for her. Wanting her to believe that he didn’t care about Garrison and his concerns and never would. “Yeah, I have. You know, if I win reelection, I think I should be able to speak the language. Mel looked up the percentage of households here that speak Spanish daily. More than half this county is Hispanic. I hope they’re voters.” He didn’t say it as if he was convinced. “And even if I don’t win, at least I’ll know what you and Marco have been saying about me all this time.”

  “I saw the signs in the back of your truck.”

  “Yeah.” He laughed. “They didn’t turn out quite right. Not the way I thought they would.”

  “¿Qué vas a hacer?” she asked, testing the Spanish she knew he’d been practicing.

  He looked toward the invisible river, hidden by the cane and salt cedar. You could only tell where the bodies were by the yellow tape she’d put out and the sunlight gleaming on the light stands. “Well, I’m going to burn them I guess, and then decide how to start over.”

  They stood silent together, listening to the wind move. The handheld radio on the sheriff’s belt crackled, breaking the silence, coming to sudden life. It was Tommy Milford relaying that he’d heard from DPS. They were still a couple of hours away, but Doc Hanson, the county’s ME, had just passed him on his way to the trailer.

  Finally, she said, “I don’t know anything about this, or what’s going on over the river. Not then and not now.”

  The sheriff nodded, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I know, Amé, I’ve always known that. You don’t have to say it, and I wasn’t going to ask. I just wanted you to know he’s coming.”

  “Bueno,” she said. “So he really doesn’t like me?”

  “I’d say it’s more a matter of him not quite trusting you.” And the way the sheriff said it, he almost made it sound like there was a difference. “But I do. I trust you with my life, and you know that. Honestly, he probably doesn’t trust any of us out here, including me. There’s not a hell of a lot I can do to change his mind, so I don’t try. Not that hard, anyway.” He looked like he was going to say more, but instead he nodded to himself, and started walking back around to the front of the trailer, to meet Doc Hanson.

  Before he rounded the corner, he turned back to her one more time.

  “But whatever reason has got him coming out here tomorrow must really be bothering him. No matter what he thinks about you, or me, he truly hates this place.”

  SIX

  CHAYO & NEVA

  Neva would never be pretty again, but she was still beautiful.

  For one whole day, Chayo cradled her face, talking in her ear. She cried most of that time, from both pain and fear.

  He held her tight and her heart beat fast against him, fluttering like one of the small swallows that circled the fields at Librado Rivera.

  She cried even more when he went to stitch her smile back together.

  She couldn’t speak, but she didn’t have to. Her eyes said everything.

  Neither of them knew if she’d ever smile again.

  * * *

  —

  THEY HAD RUN, Chayo using his body to protect her, but a bullet had caught her across the face anyway.

  It ricocheted off a light pole first, probably saving her life. But it still carved an ugly, ragged path from the corner of her mouth to her left ear, spinning her around and knocking her off her feet. Another bullet struck the same light pole, tossing tiny sparks, and even as Chayo waited for a third and final bullet to take him, he picked Neva up to carry her the rest of the way through the night . . . onward toward dawn.

  Her blood soaked his shirt, hot and thick against his skin. It was precious and he wanted to save it all.

  By then, other normalistas were running, too. His friends. All the boys he knew. There were more sounds of gunfire, of screaming. Dogs barking. The deep rumble of truck engines.

  He called for help, kicked on doors.


  But he never stopped, and never looked back.

  * * *

  —

  MORE THAN A DOZEN BLOCKS AWAY an older couple took them in. They lived above their small candy store, Dulcería La Bonita, and Neva bled all over their tile floor. All the candy wrappers beneath the glass were impossibly bright, but none as bright as Neva’s blood. The old woman, Carmelita, wiped it all up with an apron, while her husband, the even older Amador—who reminded Chayo of Naranja—pulled the metal shutters over the storefront windows.

  They all carried Neva upstairs in darkness, in silence.

  So it had only been by candlelight that Chayo had finally gotten a look at her face.

  * * *

  —

  THE STITCHES WERE FRESH so she still couldn’t talk, but they could watch Carmelita and Amador’s tiny television.

  For three days, they did.

  They saw the pictures from the morning after, the bodies and the blood still on the street, the piles of clothes and broken glass.

  The rocks that some of the fleeing normalistas had thrown, and that others had used to mark where bullet casings littered the ground.

  One report said that one hundred shell casings had been found. Another claimed it was more than two hundred.

  Six normalistas had been admitted to the hospital, three more were dead. The rest were missing.

  In the day right after the attack, some people claimed they’d seen the surviving students herded together and hooded, driven away in municipal trucks.

  A day later, no one admitted to seeing anything.

  One periódico claimed it had been shown a text from one of the normalistas who had disappeared:

  HELP ME NOW I AM DYING