Russ and two other officers are told to knock on every door on the block. They start with the houses lining the playground, the houses with fences that overlook the carousel.
Did you hear anything last night?
They speak to Greg and Rhonda Hansen, the older couple doing calisthenics together in the living room. They speak to Lucinda’s ballet instructor, who insists on serving tepid tea. They speak to Chris Thornton, who struggles to keep a squirming toddler on his hip. They speak to Kelly Dixon-Burns, who wears a silk bathrobe and looks Russ too long in the eye as she takes a hefty pull of her cigarette, and to Sherry DeCasio, who sobs the moment they say Lucinda’s name. In this case—as with the Weinberg family, the Sanchez family, and anyone else who has children at Jefferson High—Russ asks: Can we come back after school? We’d love to have a word with your child. Most nod solemnly.
When Russ gets back to the police department it is late afternoon, and he does not expect to see the boy.
Cameron’s middle-school yearbook photo hangs on a bulletin board where they’ve already tacked up the faces of early suspects. He looks strikingly like his father. No one comments on this. No one mentions Lee at all.
But those hazel eyes: a snake writhes in Russ’s gut. Nostalgia, a dagger.
The entire Broomsville Police Department has been summoned to the main conference room to be briefed on the case. If anyone remembers that Russ is related to the janitor, Ivan—another suspect pinned to the bulletin board—they don’t say anything. Maybe they’ve forgotten about Russ’s brother-in-law. More likely, they don’t care.
The case is already making national news, the chief tells the room of officers and sergeants and receptionists. You are not to make any comments to the media.
A short list of suspect individuals:
Ivan Santos, the janitor who found the body.
Edouard Arnaud, the victim’s ex-boyfriend.
The parents—Joe and Missy Hayes.
Howard Morrie, the homeless guy squatting in the park behind the library.
Cameron Whitley, the stalker boy from down the street.
Russ went to visit Ivan in prison—only once. No warning. Ivan, six foot two, was gargantuan on the other side of the metal table in the visitor’s room. Russell, Ivan had greeted him, with a firm handshake, sliding comfortably into his chair. My brother.
In prison, Ivan fought no one, made no friends. Instead, he read books: Latin American philosophers, combined with texts from a fresh-
man liberal-arts syllabus Ines found online. These were the sort of books Russ couldn’t get through if he tried. Plato’s Symposium, Foucault’s unintelligible French lectures about power. José Martí, Juan Montalvo, Leopoldo Zea, and the writings of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, whom Russ Googled and found to be the first Latin American feminist writer. Ivan copied the entirety of the New Testament onto legal pads, which Ines purchased and mailed in bulk. In the end, the only evidence of Ivan’s time in the slammer was this homemade New Age–Christian religion, an impressive combination of scholarly philosophy, Catholicism, and motivational speaking. And one sloppy jailhouse tattoo—a bleeding Virgin of Guadalupe on Ivan’s right wrist, a bouquet of four-petaled flowers drooping by her side.
A free man now, Ivan delivers winding philosophical sermons to the Spanish-speaking community that occupies plastic chairs in the one-room church on Fulcrum Street. He preaches in a clean white button-down and pressed slacks, encouraging them to further their spiritual exploration by reading, and instead of the Bible, he gives them Plato’s Symposium and speaks of emancipation.
Believe in your own goodness, Ivan cries. Trust your own goodness. Confíe en su propia bondad.
Ines sits in front. She sings with proud, open eyes. The old church women cook food for Ines and bring it to the house; while Russ is at work, Ines walks across town to return the empty pans. Often, Russ wonders if Ines misses that side of Broomsville, with its lopsided houses and peeling-paint cars and all those women who return her rapid-fire language. Sometimes, in her sleep, Ines mumbles in pleading Spanish. Russ keeps a pen and paper in his nightstand so he can write down words and phrases to Google in the morning.
When Detective Williams questions Ivan in the room at the back of the station house, Ivan has none of that messiah fury. Russ briefly watches from behind glass as Detective Williams pulls every interrogation trick he knows. They question Ivan for six hours, and Ivan gives them nothing but a resounding calm that terrifies Russ, who pictures the hundreds of legal pads—Ivan’s handwritten Bible—stacked next to a twin mattress on the floor.
I don’t know anything, he says, over and over again.
I just found her, he says, over and over again.
Confíe en su propia bondad.
Russ and Ines met in summer. Colorado summers are dry—heat presses down, slow and unbearable, a curtain lowered over a blazing stage. Red dust. Chlorine. White-hot cement.
It was Russ’s day off. Girls wore strappy dresses and walked barefoot through the park, where boys threw Frisbees and let the sun drench through their shirts.
Russ parked his car and watched the crowds under the wide, cloudless tent of sky. He had intended to take a run up the mountain, but it was too hot, so he stopped at Main Street Park. He couldn’t go back to his house, where he’d roast in front of the television, drinking Bud Light. It was not uncommon for Russ to go his full forty-eight hours off without talking to anyone but the pimply pizza-delivery boy.
So he had gone to the park for the push and squeal of other people, the existing fact of them. The day smelled like a sunscreen dream, and Russ meandered down the walking path, until he passed an ice-cream cart. He got in line, ordered a snow cone, and walked toward a half-empty bench.
The snow cone melted faster than he could eat it, cherry sugar dripping from the paper cup and over his knuckles, dribbling on his khaki shorts and flowering through like little blossoms of blood.
Here, she said.
Ines was sitting next to him on the bench, a book open in her lap. She held out a miniature wrapped packet of tissues.
Thank you, Russ said as he mopped himself up.
You’re welcome, she said. She had an accent. She was shiny in the sun, the pages of her book a blinding white, and she wore a pair of denim shorts and a baggy T-shirt.
What are you reading? Russ asked.
She held up the cover. Love in the Time of Cholera, he read aloud, stumbling over the word “cholera” because he could not remember what it meant or how to pronounce it. She had marked all over the open page in pencil. Russ could not recall the last time he read a novel. He wasn’t sure he’d ever finished one.
Is it good? he asked.
Yes, she said. I read it many times in school, but this is my first time reading it in English. It’s quite different.
How so?