Noemi was still in a fever, and Angela hadn’t talked to Oscar yet, because she wanted to think some more about what the kids had said, and what they weren’t telling her.
Then word had come that the divers found a scrap of the Argentinian boy’s shorts on the bottom of the river, snagged on a branch. Pink-and-green cloth. Was it better to see your kid half-eaten, or better not to find him at all, always to have that sliver of hope that he was still out there somewhere, in torn swim trunks?
Lexi rolled over to the middle of the bed, her forehead against Angela’s shoulder. It was too hot to sleep so close, each breath on her skin. Lexi ran a rape crisis center, and Angela thought about the way she talked to the women there, how calm and practical she was. She helped them navigate the worst thing that had ever happened to them—except when it wasn’t the worst thing, or the first time. She had an evenhanded sensibility, a businesslike response to trauma. And still she slept so deeply, so unafraid.
Angela herself had forty rape cases open, and hundreds more closed. Most of the rapists were relatives. The youngest victim in her current stack was two years old. Sometimes the families didn’t want to prosecute. Sometimes the men disappeared across borders and she couldn’t find them. It was so hard to get justice of any kind. She thought about Isabel’s tormented look in the hospital bathroom, her weeping in her mother’s arms. How was it possible to be calm and reasonable about a child’s pain? It was a nightmare.
A hundred reporters with cameras had gone to the river. They’d done a special report on the weapon the divers carried for crocodiles, the bang-stick. They’d already interviewed the grieving sister of Consuelo Bola?os, holding the orphaned little boy on her lap. No mystery there: They had the gun that had killed Consuelo, and the gunshot residue on Raúl’s fingers and clothes, and an eyewitness. And Raúl was dead. That particular chapter had exhausted its shock value, and the news cameras would be on the prowl for the next one.
The hospital staff had been discreet and compassionate, but they were getting weary of their troubled guests. Someone was going to tip off the media for cash or spite, and the cameras would descend. This unexpected time of privacy would be over. The new body in the trees would keep the public fascination and the television ratings going, make the flames dance higher. Angela wanted to solve the mystery of the man with the pink backpack, but she was afraid of the truth, and of what it might mean.
58.
OSCAR INSPECTED THE bandage on his knee. He guessed it looked like Frankenstein’s monster underneath, but at least they’d given him drugs, and the agony was gone. He felt nothing, only the euphoria of painlessness. His mother, terrified of pills, had insisted he could get through the recovery with ice. Ice! When they’d sliced his knee open.
He was thinking about lifting the bandage to see the stitches when a silver-haired man came into his room and closed the door.
“Hello, Oscar,” he said. “I’m Isabel’s father. My name is Gunther.”
Oscar watched him draw close.
“How is your knee?” the man asked. He spoke Argentine Spanish and used the formal you. He sounded rich, but Oscar could have guessed that from knowing Isabel.
“I haven’t seen it or tried to walk yet,” Oscar said. “But it doesn’t hurt.”
“Good,” Gunther said. “I’ve been hoping to talk to you.” He took a seat by Oscar’s bedside and crossed one knee over the other. “Did you know that they found a man dead near the train tracks? Throat cut wide open.”
Oscar held his breath. He saw Isabel again, crouched and feral in the dark, holding his yellow-handled knife.
“Do you know who this man was?” Gunther asked.
Oscar cleared his throat. He thought about lying. “Noemi’s uncle,” he said. “His name was Chuy.”
“You think he was really her uncle?”
“Sure.”
“Was he screwing the kid?”
“No!” Oscar said. “I mean, I don’t think so.”
“So what happened to him?”
“My lawyer doesn’t want me talking to anyone.”
“Smart lawyer,” Gunther said, smiling. “Shall I leave? Or shall I tell you some things you might wish to know?”
Oscar watched him. “Okay.”
“I have spoken with the machona detective,” Gunther said. “My daughter told her that maybe you killed this man.”
Oscar blinked, startled. “I didn’t!”
Gunther paused. “So why did you not mention the dead man before?”
Oscar’s thoughts were jumbled now. He hadn’t said anything because he hadn’t wanted to get Isabel in trouble. “Did you ask Marcus?”
“Marcus also says maybe you did it.”
Fury exploded in Oscar’s brain. “That’s not true!”
“So who killed him?” Gunther asked.
He took a gulp of air. “She did!”
“Who?”
“Your daughter!”
Gunther’s eyes, beneath bushy silver eyebrows, flicked back and forth between his. He didn’t seem as surprised as Oscar thought he should be. “Why would she do that?”
Oscar lay back on the pillow. “She was afraid,” he said. “The uncle was trying to help us. He went to see who was coming, and then he came back. He grabbed Noemi and Isabel, to run with them. Isabel didn’t know who it was, in the dark.”
“How do you know this?”
“I saw it.”
Isabel’s father rubbed his face and looked at the ceiling. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
“What’s going to happen?” Oscar asked.
“I don’t know.” Gunther rolled his neck and Oscar heard it pop. “If my daughter killed this man, as you say, people will want to know why.”
“She thought she was defending herself.”
“Yes, but they will want to know everything. A beautiful girl, a killer. People love this like flies love shit. You understand this, yes?”
“Yes,” Oscar admitted.
“You know my daughter was raped?”
He hadn’t, really, but now it made sense. Fucking Raúl. “Yes.”
“There will be nothing else to talk about,” Gunther said. “It will be a fucking circus.”
The door opened and a nurse looked in.
“A moment, please,” Gunther said, and the nurse retreated and closed the door. He moved his chair closer and found Oscar’s eyes again. “The story the children told is a good, boring, understandable story,” he said. “You were defending them.”
“But I didn’t do it.”
“You know that. And God knows it.”
“Do you believe in God?” Oscar asked.
“No.”
“My mother believes.”
“So does my wife, in a way,” Gunther said. “She needs to. Our son is dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Oscar said. “I didn’t know there were supposed to be six.”
Gunther clasped his hands together, and put his elbows on his knees. He seemed unable to speak.
“My sister died when I was little,” Oscar said. “I found her.”
“That’s terrible also.”
They sat together in silence.
“Can I tell you something?” Gunther asked, and Oscar noticed that he was calling him vos now. “Two police officers went to the Herreras’ house. Before my daughter was raped. They could have stopped everything, right there. But Raúl Herrera paid them, and they went away. And we got a report that no one was at the house.”
“Oh, shit,” Oscar said.
“If I had a time machine, I know I should use it to kill Hitler, but I would go back one week from today and shoot those three men in the head.”
“Did the detective know?”
“Not then,” Gunther said. “She knows now. You see, no one protected my daughter. No one, in this whole fucking place. But I think these kids are very smart. And I think, with their lie, they’ve made it so you, Oscar, can protect them, like everyone failed to.”
“By saying I killed someone,” Oscar said.
Gunther was silent.
“But I didn’t!”
“Okay,” Gunther said, studying a spot on the far wall. “So it all comes out. The children say you killed a man. You say my daughter did. But you didn’t say anything to the police about this terrible murder, when you were questioned. So you aren’t the rescuer and protector anymore. You’re this strange kid who stole some children with his mom.”