“I’ve got to ask you something,” Manuel had told her that afternoon, just a few weeks after, when he had invited her to speak with him alone in the hospital conference room. “I’m just going to say it once, and then I’m hoping we can put it behind us. I know this must be the worst time for you.”
“Say what once?” Eve had asked.
Manuel had nodded then, some hesitancy snagging in his throat. Manuel Paz, it was true, was not even a lead detective in the case, but—as the official Ranger captain assigned to Presidio County and a lifelong Bliss township resident—it was his glum face that was most often featured in the already waning news coverage that played on the waiting room television.
“I guess my question is about Rebekkah Sterling,” Manuel said.
“Rebekkah?” Eve asked, as if that were a new word to her.
“Their teacher,” Manuel said, “Mrs. Schumacher, she says Oliver and Rebekkah had a little friendship.”
“So what is it you are saying?”
“I’m just wondering how well they knew each other. If their relationship might have been romantic in nature. Oliver and Rebekkah.”
“And this is what you called me from his room to ask. This is what you needed to speak with me about in private.”
Manuel shifted his weight in one of the hospital’s lousy armchairs then, the thing squawking desperately, as if a small and displeased family of field mice lived in the hinges of the undercarriage.
“Eve,” Manuel said. “Far as I’m concerned? Hector Espina was evil itself. Worse. Probably can’t ever know his reasons, if you could even call them reasons. But it wasn’t just those three kids, there also was poor Oliver, and doesn’t that seem odd to you? That Oliver was there when it happened. I’m just trying to know why.”
“I thought,” Eve said, “that the story here was that this was some crazy kind of point Hector was making. For the way we had treated your people. That’s what practically every other person is saying, anyway.”
“My people,” Manuel said a little darkly. “Sure. That’s what they’re saying, but the thing just don’t seem to add up for me. For example, what about the fact that Mr. Avalon himself was half-Mexican, that Roy Lopez’s folks came from Bolivia? Anyway, far as we can tell, that kid never raised a protesting word of any kind.”
“So what’s your theory then?”
“You know what one of those Marfa guys Hector dealt to told me? A young man, this burnout named Ken, he told me Hector got a little obsessed with Ken’s girlfriend. The whole thing ended in some fistfight when Hector tried to make a move on the girl. Couldn’t bear the rejection. And you know what they tell a detective on day one? Past behavior’s the best predictor of the future. Jealousy seems to have been the kid’s problem more than some sort of politics.”
“And all of this has exactly what to do with Oliver?”
“Thing is, a couple students came to me, swearing they saw Hector Espina talking with Rebekkah out in the parking lot a couple weeks before. And then there’s the fact that every other kid in the whole school was down in the gymnasium except for Oliver. Just the Theater Club kids, and also Oliver. And Rebekkah, coming out of that night without a scratch? And so it occurs to me that if Rebekkah and Hector really did know each other, then it also makes me wonder if just maybe there was some kind of, I don’t know, love triangle situation there. With Oliver.”
“So you are telling me that my son was what? That he was some kind of reason? A reason that a madman murdered those children?”
“I’m not telling you anything. I’m just asking a question,” Manuel said.
“Oh,” Eve said. “Oh,” the strike of a match, the wind of her outrage blowing too hard for any coherent sentence to catch.
“Eve—”
“Manuel, I really don’t have time for this. My son never did a single bad thing in his life, and he needs me, and so I’m going to go back to him now.”
“Okay. That’s fine. And I know. No one is saying anything bad about Oliver, of course not. But maybe if there’s a chance to at least shed a bit more light—”
“Why don’t you just ask Rebekkah if you have questions?” Eve asked. “Or Jed, for that matter?”
“We have. The girl doesn’t want to talk with us much, can’t say as I blame her. But she says she hardly knew Oliver. And she swears to us up and down that she’d never met Hector before, and truth is we don’t got much evidence to the contrary. Just a couple kids claiming they saw the two of them together, but people are making all sorts of claims these days. And as for Jed, let’s just say that conversation with you is a little more, um, fruitful. Can hardly understand the poor man, slurring so much.”
“Rebekkah Sterling is practically a stranger to me. Jed invited her over to watch the meteorites once. Oliver knew her from class. I remember they had some study group they did together, but as far as I know that was it. End of story. There you have your answer.”
Manuel rubbed his head like a crystal ball as he gazed at the tabletop. “I wish. An answer. I need it, the whole town does. You must’ve heard about those protests Donna Grass and her group are doing out at the school now? Jail the Mexicans, send us all back across the river, that sort of thing. All day long, my telephone rings, everybody has an opinion, some of them treat me like I myself was in cahoots with that monster. Me! Like I haven’t been a neighbor to those folks their whole lives.” Manuel concluded this monologue with his shoulders slung low, as if each word had been another pound piled onto his back.
“I wish I could help you, I do. Of course I do. But the town’s business isn’t exactly my foremost concern right now. Speaking of which, I really do have to get back to Oliver now.”
Manuel snorted long and slow, a dispirited bull. He nodded into his hands.
“You’re right. I’m sorry to bother you with all this. I am.” Manuel reached across the table for Eve’s arm then. His touch practically melted through her shirt material. “I couldn’t be more sorry. I just need to find—I don’t know, something. Those detective folks from Austin might not stick around long, but I won’t ever stop. I promise you that. Follow every lead I can, even if they lead nowhere at all. I won’t ever quit this thing, I promise you that.”