Do Not Become Alarmed(31)

“Walk inside with us,” Benjamin said. “It’s too hot out here.”

Consuelo Bola?os glanced around, as if she expected security to throw her out. She pulled the kid beside her. He stuck a finger into his nose and then in his mouth.

“My husband disappeared, since three weeks,” she said. “I could not find him. Everything seemed impossible.”

Benjamin realized that in his mind, the tragic accident of the grave had been that his children had stumbled onto it. Not that a husband and father had been murdered. That had not been his concern. But here was Consuelo Bola?os, bereft and angry. He tried to imagine how it would feel to have your loved one pulled from the ground, wrapped in a tarp. His intestines seemed to liquefy and his head went light. He wasn’t sure he could carry on this conversation.

“Why do you think he was killed?” Raymond asked.

“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.