Anatomy of Fear

61

The next day I drove Maria Guerrero to Green Haven. She stayed in Pedriera’s room for two hours and when she came out said that she did her best to cleanse him, but he would soon be dead. Then she returned my money.

Two days later Willie Pedriera was dead.

On the way back to Manhattan she told me she’d had a dream that I would find a man on fire. It reawakened the unsettling vision I’d had that day at the station when Denton dared me to look inside his head. It sent shivers down my spine and I told her about it. She told me not to worry, that I was still protected, but I should come to the bótanica for candles and herbs. I promised I would.

That night, inspired by her dream, I made a drawing of my vision.

It was different from the original. I hadn’t remembered seeing the valley when I’d first had the vision, but it had come to me while I was drawing. I even got out my red ink and added the blood I’d seen on his chest. It didn’t make sense-a burning man in a valley-but I thought I’d take it uptown and show it to my abuela and to Maria Guerrero to see what they’d make of it.

The next morning I got an unexpected call from Mickey Rauder, and went to his office.

The chief of operations patted me on the back and offered congratulations on a job well done. He asked how I was doing and I said fine. Then he asked if I was interested in working another case.

It took me by surprise. I hadn’t thought about it. But when I did, I said yes, as long as I didn’t have to give up my forensic artwork.

“Oh, no. That’s a big part of why I’m asking you,” said Rauder. “Bill Guthrie, in the fortieth, up in the Bronx, has a real strange case. A fire. Looks like arson. A man burned to death in a tenement. Fire department put out the blaze, but the guy was a goner, burned beyond recognition. No ID on him. No nothing.”

The minute he said it-a man burned to death-I thought of my vision, the drawing I’d just made, and shuddered. “And the landlord can’t identify him?” I asked.

“No, it’s some slumlord real estate operation. They don’t know him. Say he paid cash every month. But here’s the strange part. The only thing that survived was a five-thousand-dollar Rolex watch on the guy’s wrist. Half the gold melted, but the lab could still ID it. Odd, isn’t it? I mean, here’s some guy living in some crap hole and he’s wearing a watch like that.”

“So it wasn’t a robbery-arson or whoever killed him would have taken the watch?”

“Right.” Rauder winked at me. “Plus, the ME pulled two slugs out of what was left of his body. The arson was to cover a murder. The guy’s teeth were kicked in so there’s no way to check dentals. Guthrie’s guessing it was a murder for hire. Somebody had this guy snuffed and I’d like to know who-and why.” Rauder’s eyes narrowed. “So here’s my question: You ever do one of those facial reconstructions?”

“You mean build a face based on a skeleton?”

“That’s it.”

One time, at Quantico, an instructor brought us to a morgue to draw a corpse who’d had half the flesh on his face torn off in a car crash. We were supposed to reconstruct it based on the bone structure. Later, we were shown a picture of what he had looked like and my drawing was dead-on. No pun intended. After that, we had to do the whole thing over, in clay and plaster.

“Yeah,” I said. “I made one. It’s been a long time, but it was part of my training. I guess I wouldn’t mind getting my hands in some clay and trying again.”

“Great. They’ve got the remains at the morgue, and you can nose around a little with some of Guthrie’s men, like you did for Russo. It’s always good to have a new pair of eyes on a case that’s going cold too fast. And you won’t get any resentment from Guthrie’s men. They’re happy to have anyone that’s willing to come up to the Bronx. Plus you proved your worth.” He smiled.

I thought again about the first time I’d had the vision of the burning man, and I didn’t know why, but I started to feel something weird about the case, and about Denton.

“Chief Denton have any interest in this case?”

Rauder’s brows knit. “Why do you ask that?”

“No reason. I just wondered.”

“Maybe what Russo says about you is true, kid, that you’re a bit of a psychic.”

“Me? No…not really.”

“No? Because Chief Denton did take an interest in the case, which is odd. I mean, the chief doesn’t take much interest unless it’s a big story. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying anything about the chief. It’s not his job. But this morning we’re having a meeting, one of our regular ones where the chiefs report to me and I report to Denton, and when I tell him about the burning man in the Bronx he starts asking a whole lot of questions. Even asks to see the case file, the CS pics, autopsy report. Odd, because, like I said, the chief doesn’t usually get involved, or care. But I figure if the chief cares about this case so much I’d better make sure Guthrie gets some help. This kind of John Doe usually ends up cold, but maybe not this time-and maybe not with your help.”

I didn’t say what immediately came to mind-that Rauder might have gotten Denton’s reaction backward-because I wasn’t sure I was right, but I told him I’d help.

“Thanks,” he said. “Your dad would have been real proud of you.”

I didn’t want him to get started on my father, but it was too late.

“You know what I remember most about your dad? His locker. What a sight that was. Most of the guys had the usual pin-up girls and crap, but not him. The inside of his locker door was a shrine to your artwork. Every other day he was taping a new picture in there. He’d bring me or one of the guys over and say, ‘Look at what my boy did.’ It sounds like he was showing off, but frankly Juan Rodriguez didn’t give a rat’s ass what me or anyone else thought when it came to you. It was just what he thought. And I can tell you there was no one, no one on this earth more proud of what you could do with a pencil than your dad. He was proud of you then and he’d be proud of you now.”

I swallowed, tried to blink away the threat of tears, and said I’d get over to the morgue and start that reconstruction right away. Then I got the hell out of Mickey Rauder’s office as fast as I could.

I hadn’t spoken to Terri since she’d told me about opening my father’s Cold Case because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. My emotions were mixed, but I knew I wanted to see her.

We met at a bar near her place and she looked really pretty, though I could see she was tense-furrowed brow, mouth tight.

We didn’t kiss hello and we were way past shaking hands, so it was awkward, a nod, a quick “Hi,” then we ordered drinks and sat at a small table by the bar not talking. After the waiter delivered our beers, Terri started the conversation with an apology. “It was a mistake to open your father’s case, and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I hope you believed what I said, that I was trying to get you some closure.”

“Are you sure that’s what you were trying to do?” The question had come from my subconscious, nothing I’d planned to ask.

Terri took her time before she answered.

“You know, I honestly can’t say. Maybe at the time I was kidding myself. Maybe…I just wanted to find out more about you. It’s possible. But I’ll tell you what I feel now.” She looked into my eyes. “Whatever suspicions I had about you, any motives I may have had for bringing you on the case, that’s in the past. It’s not about that anymore. You broke the case for me, and I’m grateful, but I’m talking about something else, something that happened just before that, when I stopped wondering and I started…” She shrugged and went for her beer.

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

“You too, what?”

I didn’t want to say what I thought she’d been about to say: that she had decided to trust me and had started to care, because then I’d have to say it too, so I went back to my father’s case. “I know what you were trying to do, and it’s okay. It got me some answers I never would have gotten.”

“So you’re okay? You’re not mad at me?”

“No.”

“So how come you look it?”

“I’m not angry,” I said. “It’s just that I was thinking about what happened between me and my father. It was the worst thing that ever happened, and…I have to live with that. But it’s the past and I can’t change it. There are some things you don’t get over because you’re not supposed to.”

Terri nodded, and touched my hand. After a moment, she asked, “How’s your friend doing?”

“Julio? He’s good.” I thought about the long night we’d had, me and Julio, talking and talking, and even letting our machismo down, and crying a little too. At first it had stung, that he hadn’t been able to tell me, but now I understood. There were things one didn’t ever want to say. I had never told my mother what had happened, and after a night of debating whether or not I’d get on a plane to Virginia Beach and confess, I realized that was about my need, not hers. It would open an old wound and only add to her pain. She didn’t need it, and it wouldn’t change anything.

“Maybe I’ve been looking for absolution or redemption,” I said, “but I know now that’s never going to happen. Knowing the truth about what happened that night hasn’t changed the facts. I still feel responsible, but…I was a kid. I don’t know, but…maybe now I can let that kid off the hook. Just a little.” I thought about the cartoon I had of myself, the one I’d been carrying around for a long time: the little boy looking for his dad. It wasn’t that it had completely changed, but the cartoon had morphed into a fuller portrait of a man and his father.

“Good idea,” she said, and I thought I saw some tears gathering in her eyes.

“Hey, tough-cop Terri Russo isn’t going all soft on me now, is she?”

Terri wiped her eyes and put on a really great fake smile. “Fuck, no. It’s just the damn smoke in this place.”

I didn’t bother to point out that no one was smoking because she knew that. I clicked my beer bottle against hers. “Is it okay if we don’t talk about this anymore?”

“You kidding me, Rodriguez? I thought you’d never stop.”

I laughed, then got serious. “You took a chance on me, put everything on the line-your job, your reputation; I know that, and I appreciate it. I probably wouldn’t be sitting here if it weren’t for you.”

“Damn right. You’d be in an Attica cell with Montel calling you honey.”

“Nice,” I said. “I open my heart and what do I get, a knife.”

“Just telling it like it is, Rodriguez.” She smiled and tilted her head and I could see she wanted to ask me something.

“What?”

“I’m wondering…Am I wasting my time on you?”

“No way. I’m your man.”

“I’m serious, Rodriguez.” She took a swig of her beer, put it down, and looked at me, one eyebrow cocked. “I just don’t want to spend six months on some goon who is never going to commit.”

“Wow,” I said.

“That’s your response: Wow? What the fuck does that mean?”

“Hey, give me a minute to think about it, okay?”

“What’s there to think about? I didn’t ask for your hand in marriage. Hell, I don’t think I ever want to get married. Just that I’d like to-”

“I heard you.” I tried to collect my feelings, but she didn’t give me a chance.

“What a cliché you are, Rodriguez. And so am I. Here we are, the thirty-something man who can’t commit to anything past dinner and the thirty-something woman who is on her way toward bitter.” She waved a hand. “Never mind. Let’s just enjoy our beers and forget I ever said anything.”

“I swear I can make plans past dinner,” I said. “You want to set up brunch next Sunday, I’m there.”

“Ha-ha.”

“Oh, come on, Terri.”

“No, forget it, seriously. I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Not my first and probably not my last.”

“How about we have dinner and see where it leads.”

“I know where it will lead, Rodriguez. Into your bed.”

“Is that so bad?”

She sighed. “I don’t know about you, Rodriguez, but Terri Russo is starting to want more out of her life than a good lay on Saturday night.”

I chewed a cuticle and studied the damage. I thought about the apartment I hadn’t turned into a home and probably never would; I thought about Julio and Jess and how they were always trying to fix me up and would probably not stop; I thought about their kid growing up and me playing “Uncle Nate”; I thought about dinners once a week with my abuela, whom I loved, but how three years from now she’d still be asking me why I didn’t have a girlfriend. Then I thought about my father taking me to ball games and reading me bedtime stories, and I started to feel so bad I didn’t know what to say.

“Jesus, I’m sorry,” she said.

“Do I look that bad?”

“Yes. And it’s not the bruises or the stitches on your chin, which, to be perfectly honest, I find sexy as hell. But you look like I just punched you in the gut.” She laughed a little. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Go ahead,” I said. “Take your best shot.”

“Think I already did.”

I looked at Terri and tried to figure out what I wanted to say, but I was feeling too many things at once and couldn’t come up with the words.

“I’m not going to beg you, Rodriguez. My life is fine the way it is. I didn’t ask for you to come into it, and if you don’t want to stay in it, that’s fine too.” She stood up. “Maybe it’s better if we just called it a night.”

I got up and pulled her toward me, but she pushed me away.

“If you want me to stay-and I don’t mean here, now-I mean, if you want me to stay in your life, you’re going to have to say it, Rodriguez.”

She only took a few steps back, but it suddenly looked as if she were disappearing. I grabbed hold of her and held on. “Don’t go. Let’s see if we can make this work.” I said it fast so I wouldn’t check myself and stop.

“Hey, that was pretty good, Rodriguez.”

“Are you going to call me Rodriguez forever?”

Terri smiled. “I can’t believe you just used the f-word. I’m speechless.”

“Now that’s a first, you speechless.” I smiled back. “But you should know better than to listen to my words. You want to know what I’m really thinking, look at my face.” I gave Terri a look that I hoped conveyed the warmth I was feeling.

“I think I’m getting it,” she said, then gave me the look she’d had so many times over the course of the case-brows knit, eyes narrowed, as if she were trying to see into my brain.

“It’s not that hard,” I said. “I want you to see me.”