Lucia, Richard, Evelyn
Upstate New York
In the unheated Subaru, with two windows cracked open and the three of them bundled up like Arctic explorers, Richard Bowmaster told his companions that a few months earlier he had invited a couple of experts in human trafficking to give a talk at his university. As Evelyn had explained, this was what Frank Leroy and Ivan Danescu were dedicated to. Nothing new in that, said Richard, supply and demand had existed ever since slavery was officially abolished, but the business had never been as profitable as it was now; it was a gold mine matched only by drug and arms dealing. The tougher the laws and the stricter the border controls, the more efficient and ruthless the organization of the business became, and the greater sums earned by the agents, as the traffickers were known. Richard suspected that Frank Leroy connected the criminals with clients in the United States. Men like him did not get their hands dirty; they knew nothing of the faces or lives of the migrants who ended up as slaves in agriculture, manufacturing, industry, or brothels. To him they were mere numbers, an anonymous freight to be transported, worth less than livestock.
Leroy maintained the facade of a respectable businessman, with an office on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. There he dealt with clients keen to employ slaves, cultivated politicians and compliant authorities, laundered money, and resolved any legal problems. In the same way as he had obtained a Native American’s driver’s license for Evelyn Ortega, he could obtain fake identity papers for the right price, although the victims of human trafficking did not need them: they existed under the radar, invisible, silenced, in the shadows of a lawless world. He was bound to charge a hefty commission, but the people who moved this human cargo on a large scale paid it in order to be safe.
“Do you think Frank Leroy really intends to kill his wife and son, as Cheryl told you? Or were they simply threats?” Richard asked Evelyn.
“The señora is scared of him. She thinks he might inject Frankie with an overdose or suffocate him.”
“That man must be a monster if that’s what his wife thinks of him,” Lucia exclaimed.
“She also believes Kathryn was considering helping him.”
“Do you think that’s possible, Evelyn?”
“No.”
“What motive could Frank Leroy have for killing Kathryn?” Richard asked.
“Maybe Kathryn had found out something about him and was blackmailing him,” speculated Lucia.
“She was three months pregnant,” Evelyn said.
“What a shock! Why didn’t you tell us before, Evelyn?”
“I try not to gossip.”
“Was Leroy the father?”
“Yes. Miss Kathryn told me so. Señora Leroy doesn’t know.”
“It could be that Frank Leroy killed her because she was putting pressure on him, though that seems a very weak motive. It could have been accidental . . . ,” suggested Lucia.
“It must have been on Thursday night, before he left for Florida,” Richard said. “That means Kathryn died at least four days ago. If it weren’t for the freezing temperatures . . .”
THEY ARRIVED AT THE OMEGA INSTITUTE at around two in the afternoon. Lucia had described a place where nature flourished, with woods dense with bushes and ancient trees, but in the winter many of them had shed their foliage and the park was less secluded than they had hoped. If there were any guards or cleaning personnel they would easily be spotted, but they decided to run the risk.
“This place is enormous. I’m sure we’ll find the ideal site to leave Kathryn,” said Lucia.
“Are there security cameras?” asked Richard.
“No. Why would they want security cameras somewhere like this? There’s nothing here to steal.”
“That’s good. And afterward, what are we going to do with you, Evelyn?” Richard asked in the paternal tone he had come to adopt with her over the past two days. “We have to keep you safe from Leroy and the police.”
“I promised my grandmother that just as I left, so I would return,” she replied.
“But you left to escape the MS-13. How can you go back to Guatemala?” said Lucia.
“That was eight years ago. A promise is a promise.”
“The men who killed your brothers are dead or in prison. Nobody lives for long in that gang, but there’s still a lot of violence in your country, Evelyn. Even if no one remembers the vengeance on your family, a pretty young woman like you will be in a very vulnerable position. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Evelyn is in danger here too,” Richard interjected.
“I don’t think she’ll be arrested for not having documents. There are eleven million immigrants in the same situation,” said Lucia.
“Sooner or later they’re going to find Kathryn’s body and there will be an in-depth investigation into the Leroys. The autopsy will show she was pregnant, and a DNA test could prove the baby was Frank Leroy’s. The disappearance of the Lexus and Evelyn will come out.”
“That’s why she has to get as far away as possible, Richard,” said Lucia. “If they find her she’ll be accused of stealing the car and could be linked to Kathryn’s death.”
“In that case all three of us will be in a spot. We’re accomplices in concealing evidence—disposing of a dead body for starters.”
“We’re going to need a good lawyer,” said Lucia.
“However smart, no lawyer can get us out of this mess. Come on, Lucia, spit it out. I’m sure you’ve got a plan.”
“It’s just an idea, Richard . . . what’s most important is to make sure Evelyn is safe somewhere where neither Leroy nor the police will find her. I called my daughter last night, and it occurred to her that Evelyn could disappear in Miami. There are millions of Latinos in the city, and more than enough work. She could stay there until things calm down, and once we’re sure no one is looking for her, Evelyn could go back to her mother in Chicago. In the meantime, Daniela offered to put her up in her apartment.”
“You’re not thinking of getting Daniela involved in this, are you?” exclaimed Richard, horrified.
“Why not? Daniela loves adventures, and when she heard what we were up to she was only sorry not to be here to lend a hand. I’m sure your father would say the same.”
“Did you tell Daniela all this on the phone?”
“On WhatsApp. Calm down, Richard, no one suspects us, there’d be no reason for them to investigate our cell phones. Besides, with WhatsApp there’s no problem. As soon as we’ve dealt with Kathryn, we’ll put Evelyn on a plane to Miami. Daniela will be waiting for her.”
“A plane?”
“She can travel within the country with her Native American ID, but if that’s too risky, we can put her on a bus. It’s a long journey, a day and a half, I think.”
THEY ENTERED THE OMEGA INSTITUTE along Lake Drive and passed the administration buildings in a white landscape of absolute silence and solitude. Nobody had been there since the start of the storm. No machines had come to clear the path, but the sun had begun melting the snow. There were no tracks from any recent vehicles. Lucia took them to the sports field, because she recalled seeing a box for sports equipment big enough to hold a body. Kathryn would be safe there from coyotes and other predators. But Evelyn said it would be a sacrilege to put Kathryn somewhere like that.
They continued on to the shore of a long, narrow lake where Lucia had paddled a kayak on her visits to the institute. It was frozen over, but they did not dare step out onto it. Richard knew how difficult it could be to judge the thickness of ice at a glance. There was a boathouse on the bank, a few canoes, and a jetty. Richard suggested they tie one of the light canoes to the Subaru’s roof rack and drive along the narrow path bordering the lake in search of an out-of-the-way spot. They could leave Kathryn on the far bank, covered by the tarpaulin. Within a few weeks, when the thaw began, the canoe would float across the lake until someone found it. A funeral in water is poetic, he added, like a Viking ceremony.
Richard and Lucia were struggling with the chain mooring one of the canoes when a cry from Evelyn stopped them. She pointed to a nearby grove of trees.
“What is it?” asked Richard, thinking she must have seen a guard.
“A jaguar!” exclaimed Evelyn, ashen faced.
“That’s not possible, Evelyn. They don’t exist up here.”
“I can’t see anything,” said Lucia.
“Jaguar!” Evelyn repeated.
In the white expanse of the wood the three of them thought they glimpsed a big yellow animal that turned and leapt away toward the gardens. Richard assured them it must be a deer or a coyote. There had never been any jaguars in that region, and if there had been other large cats, such as pumas, they had been wiped out more than a century earlier. It was such a fleeting vision that he and Lucia doubted they had seen it, but Evelyn, transfigured, began to follow the tracks of the supposed jaguar as though she were floating above the ground: light, ethereal, diminutive. The other two did not dare call out to her in case someone heard them, but followed behind, waddling like penguins to avoid slipping in the snow.
EVELYN FLOATED ON ANGEL’S WINGS along the path past the office, the store, the bookstore, and the café. She drifted on until she rounded the library and the lecture hall and left the large dining rooms behind. Lucia remembered the institute in the high season, green and filled with flowers, myriad birds, and red squirrels, with visitors moving in slow motion in the garden to the controlled rhythms of tai chi, others strolling between their classes in saris and monks’ sandals, as well as youthful employees reeking of marijuana on their electric carts loaded with bags and boxes. The winter panorama was desolate and beautiful, with the phantasmagoric whiteness adding to the sense of vastness. The buildings were locked up, their windows sealed with wooden planks. There were no signs of life; it was as if no one had been there for fifty years. The snow muffled the sounds of nature and their crunching boots. They followed Evelyn as if in a dream, without making a noise. Though it was a clear day and still early, they felt as if they were enveloped in a theatrical mist. Evelyn went on past the cabin area and took a path to the left that ended in a steep flight of stone steps. She climbed them without hesitation or watching out for ice, as though she knew exactly where she was headed. The other two struggled along behind her. They passed a frozen fountain and a stone Buddha and found themselves on the top of the hill in the Sanctuary, a square, Japanese-style wooden pagoda flanked by covered eaves: the spiritual heart of the community.
They understood this was the spot Kathryn had chosen. Evelyn Ortega could not have known the Sanctuary was here, and there were no tracks left in the snow by the animal visible only to her. It was useless trying to find an explanation; as she had done so often, Lucia gave in to the mystery. Richard managed to continue with rational doubts for a few moments, then shrugged and gave in as well. Over the past two days he had lost confidence in what he thought he knew and in the illusion of being in control. He had accepted that he knew very little and controlled even less, but was no longer frightened by this uncertainty. During their night of shared secrets, Lucia had told him that life always asserts itself, but does so more fully if we accept it without resisting. Guided by an unshakable intuition or by the specter of a jaguar that had escaped from a secret jungle, Evelyn had led them directly to the sacred place where Kathryn would rest in peace, protected by kindly spirits, until she was ready to continue her final journey.
Evelyn and Lucia waited beneath the pagoda roof, sitting on a bench near two frozen ponds that in summer contained tropical fish and lotus flowers, while Richard went to fetch their car. There was a steep access road for maintenance and gardening vehicles that the Subaru, with its snow tires and four-wheel drive, climbed with ease.
They lifted Kathryn carefully out of the car, laid her on the tarpaulin, and carried her to the Sanctuary. Since the meditation room was locked, they chose the bridge between the ponds to prepare the body, which was still rigid in its fetal position, the big blue eyes open wide in astonishment. Evelyn took off the stone carved in the image of Ixchel, the jaguar goddess, the ancestral protective amulet she had been given by the shaman in Peten eight years earlier, and hung it around Kathryn’s neck. Richard tried to stop her, considering it risky to leave this evidence, but relented when he understood it would be almost impossible to trace the stone to its owner. By the time the body was found, Evelyn would be far away. He contented himself with wiping it clean with a tissue soaked in tequila.
Following instructions given by Evelyn, who quite naturally took on the role of priestess, they improvised some primitive funeral rites. A circle was closing for her: she had been unable to say anything at her brother Gregorio’s funeral and had been absent for Andres’s burial. She felt that by saying goodbye to Kathryn she was also solemnly honoring her brothers. In her village the last moments and the passing of a sick person were faced without any great drama, because death was regarded as a threshold, just like birth. Those present were supporting the person as they crossed to the other side without fear, delivering their soul to God. In cases of violent death, a crime, or an accident, additional rites were needed to convince the victim of what had happened and to ask them to leave and not come back to frighten the living. Kathryn and the child she was carrying inside her had not had even the simplest vigil. Perhaps they had not even realized they were dead. No one had washed, perfumed, and dressed Kathryn in her finest clothes, no one had sung or worn mourning for her, served coffee, lit candles, or offered flowers. Nor was there a black paper cross signifying the violence of her departure. “I feel very sorry for Miss Kathryn, who hasn’t even got a coffin or a place in a cemetery. And the poor little unborn child, who has no toy to take to heaven,” said Evelyn.
While Evelyn prayed out loud, Lucia wet a cloth with snow and washed the dried blood from Kathryn’s face. Instead of flowers, Richard cut a few sprigs from a bush and placed them between her hands. Evelyn insisted they also leave the bottle of tequila, because in vigils there was always liquor. They wiped the fingerprints from the pistol and left that alongside Kathryn. That could be the clinching proof against Frank Leroy. Kathryn’s body would be identified as being his lover’s, the gun that fired the shot was registered in his name, and it could be proved he was the father of the fetus. Everything pointed to his guilt, except for one thing: he had an alibi because he had been in Florida.
They rolled Kathryn into the rug, folded the four corners of the tarpaulin around her, and tied the bundle with the ropes Richard had in the car. Like all the buildings in the institute, the Sanctuary had no foundation, but was raised off the ground on stilts. This left a gap underneath into which they could slide Kathryn’s body. They spent some time collecting stones to block the entrance. With the spring thaw the body would inevitably start to decompose, and the smell would reveal her presence.
“Let us pray, Richard, to join Evelyn in saying farewell to Kathryn,” Lucia asked him.
“I don’t know how to pray, Lucia.”
“Everyone does it in their own way. For me, praying is relaxing and trusting in the mystery of existence.”
“Is that God for you?”
“Call it whatever you like, Richard, but give Evelyn and me your hands while we form a circle. We’re going to help Kathryn and her little one go up to heaven.”
Afterward Richard taught Lucia and Evelyn to make snowballs and stack them one on top of another to form a pyramid, with a lit candle at its center, as he had seen Horacio’s children do at Christmas. The fragile lantern composed of a flickering flame and frozen water cast a delicate golden light, surrounded by blue circles. A few hours later, after the candle had burned down and the snow had melted, there would be no trace left.