“Drugs,” Consuelo said. “Some fight.”
“He sells drugs?” Raymond asked.
“He carries,” she said. “Mostly.”
“So who does he work for?”
“Different people. He is Colombian.”
“Do you know the people’s names?”
She shook her head.
“Had he received any threats?” Raymond asked. “Were there people who might’ve held grudges against him?”
Consuelo Bola?os made a defeated gesture that suggested that many people held a grudge against her husband. Benjamin was impressed that Raymond was able to formulate questions. He could barely think straight. They were inside the building now, in a lobby, where the air was cool, and they stopped.
“Have you spoken to Detective Rivera?” Raymond asked. “The woman?”
Consuelo glanced around the lobby and shook her head. “There was another detective, before,” she said. “A man. He did nothing. The police are only looking now because they want your children. Because you are Americans.”
“You should talk to Detective Rivera,” Raymond said. “Tell her your story.”
Consuelo seemed defeated by the idea of talking to the police. She nodded.
A lean young man in a lightweight linen suit came through a turnstile and strode across the lobby. “Kenji Kirby,” he said, reaching out a hand to shake. “We spoke on the phone. I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through.”
“This is Consuelo Bola?os,” Benjamin said.
“Of course,” Kenji said. Deeper sorrow took over his face, and he said a few swift words to her in beautiful Spanish. Benjamin was distracted from his confusion and pain by the young man’s preternatural smoothness. Kenji had light brown hair, an epicanthic fold, and a delicately pointed chin.
Consuelo was speaking urgently back to him. Kenji reached into his jacket and produced a card for her, presenting it as a gift. She took it with an air of defeat.
“I assure you, we are doing everything we can,” the young diplomat told her, and Benjamin understood that he had switched to English to include him and Raymond. Then Kenji steered them away, leaving Consuelo and her runny-nosed child near the door, without seeming to actually abandon them. It was a neat trick.
“She might have useful information,” Raymond said, as they passed through the turnstile.
“I promise you we know everything she knows,” Kenji said. His formality fell away as they drew out of earshot, and now he was pragmatic and confiding.
“Then why hasn’t she talked to Detective Rivera?” Raymond asked.
“She has talked to Rivera. She’s talked to everyone. Did she tell you she hadn’t?”
“Why didn’t you tell us about her?”
“I was going to, when we met.” They were in an elevator lobby now.
“Is it true that no one was looking for her husband?” Benjamin asked.
Kenji hesitated, but it seemed to be for effect, and not because he was at a real loss for words. “It’s true that the police look harder for a bunch of American children than for one drug mule,” he said. “Yes. He’s also not her husband, not legally. He has a real widow in Colombia.”
“But they wouldn’t have found the grave if not for our kids,” Benjamin said.
“Maybe not,” Kenji said. “But he’d just been buried, so who knows?”
Benjamin looked over his shoulder and saw Consuelo and her child still standing on the far side of the lobby, looking small and hopeless.
“Are you looking for his associates?” Raymond asked.
“Of course. We’re doing everything we can think of.” The elevator door opened, and Kenji held out an arm to usher them in.
16.
MARCUS WOKE ALONE on the second morning in the house. At first he couldn’t remember where he was. Morning light came through the windows. Then he remembered: the Jeep, the horse, the mango, the bunny. He climbed out of the bed he’d shared with his sister and pulled the covers straight. His mom said it was important to make your bed in the morning, because it made you feel better and more organized for the rest of the day. It was one of their strategies, to make him feel more in control. She would be able to think of some others for being in this house, if she were here. But if his mother were here, she would just take him away.
He knew that his parents were looking for him. Their most important job was to keep him and June safe, they always said that. Now it was Marcus’s job to keep June safe. And Isabel, too, because her brother wasn’t here. She’d left the sheets on her bed in a tangled mess, so Marcus pulled them tight and straightened the duvet, which had dusty streaks from her dragging it through the house. He lifted the pillow to see if it smelled like her hair, but he couldn’t tell. He fluffed it and put it back.
He had only known Isabel for a few days, but that didn’t matter. He was eleven and she was fourteen, but that didn’t matter either. When you were grown up, age difference was less important. When he was thirty and Isabel thirty-three, it wouldn’t matter at all.
There had been a picture on the television of Isabel in her yellow bikini, jumping into the pool, with her arms thrown back and her hair streaming. It gave Marcus a tingling, aching feeling. He had once thought he was in love with Hannelore, a girl in his music class, but that was nothing like this. He knew that Isabel thought of him as a child and paired him with Penny, like the grown-ups did. But Penny always had to be right, and win games, and tell everyone what to do.
In the entryway, he studied the deadbolt lock on the door that led outside. If they could just get out of this place, then he could get them back to the port. He knew what directions they had come. But the ship would have moved on to Panama by now. So maybe he could get to a police station, walk to the main road and flag down a car. Although flagging down the Jeep hadn’t worked so well.
And none of them had shoes. The main road was too long a walk without shoes.
He had just headed upstairs to find his sister when he heard someone come out of the other bedroom. Maria the housekeeper stood in the doorway with a cloth in her hand.
“Buenos días,” she said.
“Hi.”
“You okay?” she asked.
He nodded.
She peered past him, up the stairs. Then she leaned forward. “The girls okay?”
“I think so.” He hadn’t seen them yet this morning.
“Tell them have careful here,” she whispered.
“Okay.”
Maria looked at him unhappily. “Careful of Raúl,” she said. “You understand?”
“Can’t you just call our parents?”
She shook her head.
“Then can you open that door?”
But Maria was looking at something above him. Marcus turned to see Raúl standing at the top of the stairs.
“What are you doing?” Raúl called.
“Nothing,” Marcus said.
Raúl came downstairs, boots thudding on each step, his body filling the stairwell. Marcus withdrew and crouched.
“You’re talking to Maria?” Raúl said.
“Yes.”
“About what?”
“Just saying good morning.”
Raúl looked suspicious. “Go upstairs.”
“Why?”
“They are playing with Sancho.”
But the dog must have heard his name, because he came running down the stairs to his master’s side, panting and smiling. He sat proudly at Raúl’s feet.
“Ayii, tonto,” Raúl said, rubbing the dog’s head. “Okay, you come.”
He unlocked the door with the key from his pocket, went outside with the dog, and locked the door again from the outside.
Marcus watched the deadbolt slide shut. “Where’s he going?” he asked.
Maria shook her head.