Alex Barclay - Time of Death

‘Mrs Sarvas, I’m trying to help you find out what happened to your family,’ said Ren. ‘I’m not judging Luke or you or your husband. Luke is young. Kids his age do that separation thing — in his head, he could have been just “driving”. These kids can get four or five thousand to “take a drive”. If they make it through in one piece, depending on the kid involved, the rush can get a lot of them hooked on doing it, which could account for the several months between the trip to Tijuana and the events last July. He could have been doing this for several months.’

‘This is insane.’

‘That hour that Luke disappeared when he was in Tijuana?’ said Ren. ‘That was a crucial gap. And it will be extremely difficult for us to fill in what happened during that missing time. But, I think that whatever happened in Tijuana may be linked to what happened here.’

‘But, how?’ said Catherine. ‘This is all crazy. Luke involved with drugs and prostitutes-’

‘Please don’t look at it that way,’ said Ren. ‘He had — from what we can gather — one blowout vacation where he behaved, yes, out-of-character or irresponsibly, but he would not be the first.’

‘He was going to study law…’

‘He might have been overwhelmed,’ said Ren. ‘Scared he couldn’t live up to the behavior expected of a lawyer.’

‘But…drugs? Sex?’

Ren shrugged. ‘Sounds to me like Luke was a good guy who spent one weekend living a very different life-’

‘That ruined his whole family’s lives, if what you’re saying is true.’ Catherine started to sob, sucking in huge breaths that after a while, she was starting to lose control of.

Ren poured her some water and handed her the glass.

‘I am so sorry. I…What about Michael?’ Catherine wiped her nose with a Kleenex.

‘We don’t know,’ said Ren. ‘I’m sorry. Right now, we’re going to presume they’re both together.’

‘Dead…’

‘No. We have no reason to believe that.’ Apart from precedent.

‘I know they are alive,’ said Catherine. ‘I just know they are. No one believes me. Not even my Church any more. They think I’ve lost my mind.’

‘It’s hard for other people to watch the kind of pain you’re going through,’ said Ren. ‘They feel helpless and they just want it all to go away. It’s more about them than you. I’m sure no one thinks that you’re crazy. They just don’t know how to handle your grief. They want you to have hope, but they don’t want to be the people to give it to you, because they don’t want to be to blame if that hope is shattered. They see how devastated you are now, they can’t imagine how bad it would be if you got worse news.’

‘This is a nightmare,’ said Catherine. ‘My worst nightmare.’

‘I know,’ said Ren. ‘But we’re going to do everything we can to find your sons. And to find out the truth. Are you OK here? Is there anyone you’d like me to call?’

‘No, thank you. I’m fine.’

‘I’m sorry I’m going to have to leave this for now.’ Ren began gathering her things. ‘I don’t have much time. I have a flight to catch.’

‘That’s OK.’

Ren reached out, lay a hand on Catherine’s arm and looked her in the eye. ‘Don’t try to do this by yourself. Please leave this in our hands. You know the situation along the border. You’ve seen the news reports.’

Catherine nodded.

‘These people are animals,’ said Ren. ‘They are conscienceless.’

‘I feel so helpless.’

‘You would not be safe down there,’ said Ren. ‘Which means that you would be no use to your sons…’ Ren left the sentence open. I am not the person to give you hope.

The flight to Denver was grounded on the runway for an hour and the air conditioning had died. Ren was trying to read her way out of the panic of being in a small stranger-filled space, breathing in stranger germs. Her eyes started to close. The heat was overwhelming. She flashed back eleven years to Domenica Val Pando’s compound in New Mexico — waking up in the mornings, the darkness of the room. The sense of a searing sun behind the shutters.

Don’t go there.

Ren picked up her book and started to read again. She could feel a rising tension in her chest. It was the claustrophobia of the airplane, the oppression of being surrounded by people you didn’t know.

I am trapped.

Ren was back to the compound again, remembering the tension of the noise — the raised voices of the men, the trucks pulling in and out, the screeching of the birds. And then there was Domenica Val Pando’s voice, the type of screaming that would make you rigid.

The first time Ren had awakened, rigid, it was six a.m. and down the corridor she could hear the stamp of Domenica’s foot.

‘ ¿Qué chingados es esto? No. No. Malo. Malo. Malo. ¿Qué tu madre nitu abuela te enseñaron nada? Deshaz eso. Vuelve a empezar. Mírame a los ojos, pendeja. Si quieres hacerla en este país cada cosa la tienes que hacer perfectamente. Yo no estaría aquí si no fuera por eso. ’

What the hell is this? No, no, no. Wrong. Wrong Wrong. Did your mother, did your grandmother teach you anything? It looks like this! This! Take that off. Start over! This is how it should be! Do not insult me! Do not insult me! If you want to succeed in this country, you do every job to the best of your ability. Look at me! I wouldn’t have got where I am today if it wasn’t for that!

Ren had gotten up and tip-toed toward the room. Domenica was making a bed, working the sheets into perfect hospital corners. A trembling sixteen-year-old maid stood watching her.

Domenica was teaching her how to make Una cama bien echecita! Una cama bien echecita!

The same type of ‘well-made bed’ with the constricting sheets that Ren had pulled loose every night before she got in.

Army corners/hospital corners — why would anyone want to recreate those conditions?

Ren was about to go back to her book, but she had set off on a course of pressing down on emotional bruises. Her next one was Ricky Parry. Even his name was trapped in time: Ricky. Ren remembered how hard he tried to be cool. When he was fourteen, he had started wearing tight black jeans, a black leather biker jacket and some sort of metal chain hanging from his belt. He had blond spiked hair, but a chubby, red-cheeked face and two middle teeth that were slightly longer than the rest. A chipmunk in chains.

Ren had liked Ricky Parry. After Beau’s suicide, they had come together as friends with a connection they never spoke about — they were the kids who wondered if there was anything they could have done to prevent what happened to the brothers they adored. So they swapped all that wondering time for talking and laughing and watching the same movies and reading the same books. The pretty little dark-haired girl and the sullen blond death-metal dope-head, taking the bus to Albany to shoot pool.

Before Ren realized it, she was replaying the scene in Beau’s bedroom, but instead of her mom yelling ‘He’s dead, he’s dead’, she was yelling, ‘Oh thank God, he’s alive, he’s alive.’

And they would all rush off in an ambulance and down the hallway at the hospital holding on to the side of the gurney, surrounded by doctors who were doing all the right things. And Beau would be lying in the bed, young and handsome and happy to be alive. And the whole family would collapse with relief and cry and laugh and Beau would promise never to worry anyone like that again. And he would be waiting for her at the airport to tell her that everything was going to be all right.

Glenn Buddy was in the office talking to Cliff when Ren got back.