Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(29)

“Stirman knew what would happen to these women?” I asked.

Barrera picked up a small piece of metal, a broken link from a chain. “Stirman wouldn’t have cared.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Barrera slipped the link of chain into his pocket. “Come on. Gloria wil be waiting.”

He led me back outside, down toward the river. Under the cypress trees stood half a dozen cinder block sheds and a small cabin. The small er structures might have been kennels. Each had a metal gate. In the center of each cement floor was an iron ring, where you might attach an animal’s chain.

Then I noticed the lidless steel toilets.

Barrera didn’t say anything. I didn’t ask.

After almost a decade, a cold acrid smel stil hung in the air. Human misery, like old bloodstains, is hard to wash away.

The little cabin at the end was so different from the cel s that it took a moment for me to realize it was part of the same row of buildings. Two cinder block cel s had been built together, expanded, treated with stucco and painted dark gold. Rust-colored curtains trimmed the windows. Statues of saints lined the roof. River rocks marked off a little garden fil ed with oregano and mint. It could have been any dwel ing on San Antonio’s West Side—poor but cozy, proud of its eccentricity.

Barrera knocked. The plywood door rattled in its frame.

The woman who opened it was probably no more than fifty-five, but her frayed white hair made her look decades older. Her face was deeply etched, her eyes milky. Her determined expression, and the shotgun held loosely across her waist, made her look as if she’d just charged the throne of God and been blasted by divine light. She was obviously blind.

She said, “Se?or Barrera.”

How she knew without seeing him, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps Barrera’s cologne was the not-too-subtle giveaway. She turned toward me, angling the shotgun in the general direction of my chest.

“?Quién es el gringo?”

I hadn’t moved or spoken, but she knew I was there. She knew I was male, and Anglo.

“We came to check on you,” Barrera said in Spanish. “This is a friend of Fred Barrow’s.”

I wasn’t sure why he introduced me that way, but the woman took her finger off the trigger, lowered the barrel.

“They want me to leave because of some rain,” she said. “I had to fire a warning shot at the deputy. Come in. I’l make coffee.”

Inside, the tiny living room was painted cornflower blue, hung with dried garlic and chili ristras. On the stereo turntable, Lydia Mendoza sang “Dos Corazones,” her heartache cutting straight through the scratch and hiss of the old vinyl.

There was no air-conditioning. The windows let in a breeze from the river. The curtains were dappled with raindrops. With the shade of the cypresses, the room felt just warm enough for a nap.

Barrera kept speaking to Gloria in Spanish, simple questions—was she getting enough to eat? Did the locals bother her?

Gloria heated water in a pan on a gas stove. She knew exactly where to find her extra cups, her tin of instant coffee, her spoons.

“Does your friend speak Spanish, Se?or Barrera?” she asked.

I said, “Sí, se?ora.”

She turned to face me—a moment of adjustment as she let me into her linguistic world.

“Ya lo veo,” she said. “Then please tel Mr. Barrow I pray for him.”

I looked at Sam, who seemed to see nothing unusual in the request.

“Se?ora Paz,” I said, “Wil Stirman escaped from jail. One of the men who testified against him has been murdered.”

She poured boiling water into each cup. “You came al this way to tel me? I am sorry to have troubled you.”

“But, se?ora . . .”

An electronic riff of Mozart col ided with Lydia Mendoza’s song. The new music was coming from Sam Barrera’s pocket.

Barrera frowned, fished out his phone. I was surprised he could even get a signal out here.

He said, “Yes?”

A moment of listening. He paled. “Alicia, I’m in Castrovil e . . . Of course I told you.”

He took the phone away from his ear, looked at us with embarrassment. “Excuse me.”

He took his cal outside, leaving me alone with Gloria Paz.

“Would you like milk?” she asked. “It is goat’s milk.”

I glanced at the tin of Folgers Crystals on the stovetop. Plain, or with goat’s milk. The kind of rock-and-a- hard-place decision tough PIs must face. “Why not?”

She brought over a tray, sat next to me on the sofa. She passed me the blue metal cup. Her hands were rough and warm.

“Se?ora Paz,” I said, “you realize you’re in danger?”

“No, se?or. I am done with fear.”

This blind, prematurely aged woman, alone on a ranch, with the dam upriver about to burst and a kil er on the loose, was tel ing me she had nothing to fear. The hel of it was, I believed her.

Her tone was confident, oddly familiar, though I was sure we’d never met.

“A warning shot won’t be enough,” I told her. “Not against Stirman.”

Her milky eyes seemed to stare past my shoulder, as if keeping tabs on an unruly spirit. “Con permiso.”

She reached out and touched my cheek. Her fingertips traced my jaw, my nose, my lips. “An honest face.