The Face of Death

  Sarah falls to the floor and curls into herself, tighter, tighter, tighter. She continues to howl.

  “Don’t move,” I tell Juan.

  He ignores me. He can’t tear his eyes away from Sarah’s agony.

  When he speaks, his voice trembles in wonder:

  “There I am.”

  In The End:

  The Things That Glow

  62

  “ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THIS, HONEY?”

  Bonnie smiles up at me, serene.

  We are about to enter an interrogation room. Juan will be there. Bonnie has demanded to see him, for reasons she won’t share with me. I had refused, at first. I even got angry about it, something I’d never been with Bonnie.

  She’d remained resolute.

  “Why?” I had asked. “Can you at least tell me why?”

  She pantomimed handing something to someone.

  “You have something to give? You have a gift?”

  She nods. Hesitates. Makes a motion of handing something to me, then handing something to—she points to the name on the paper. Juan.

  “You have a gift for me and for Juan?”

  A smile, serene. A nod.

  She will not let it go. I’ve relented. I’d hoped that Juan would save me from this by refusing to see us. To my surprise and unease, he’d agreed. So here we are.

  Bonnie has a notepad under her arm. She carries a marker in her hand. They wouldn’t let her bring in a pen—too sharp. It took some arm-bending to get them to allow the marker.

  We enter the room. Juan is already there, cuffed at wrist and ankles, secured through a link bolted to the floor. He smiles as we enter. It’s a broad smile, a lazy smile, a dog in a nice patch of sun. The sinner, for now, not the saint.

  I’m told he moves back and forth between these two temperaments. He spent one recent afternoon in the prison chapel, on his knees, arms spread wide to God. That same night he raped his cell-mate, chuckling as the young man screamed. Juan does all of his praying in solitary confinement now.

  “Agent Barrett. And little Bonnie. How are you both?”

  “Fine, thank you,” I reply, trying for dispassionate.

  Once he had realized he was going to live, Juan had spilled the beans on everything. He was, of course, proud of his accomplishments. He was righteous, and now, he had an audience to preach to. We hung on his every word and let him hang himself.

  It had taken him some time to establish with certainty which of the two task-force members had betrayed him.

  He’d spent years tracking down and documenting the flow of money from its original source. He’d managed to get proof on Tobias Walker first, over a decade ago. The FBI end of things was more difficult—Jacob Stern had been smart. Juan found out that Stern had come to the FBI via the LAPD, and had, in fact, served in the same precinct as Walker at one time. This had raised Juan’s suspicions. His ruthlessness and persistence eventually got him the information he wanted.

  Walker had been the primary contact with the underworld, the real Judas of the act. Afterward, he’d needed Stern’s assistance in covering the money trail and so had brought the agent in on the scheme. Juan had proof of Stern’s complicity, of Walker’s sins. They were sitting on Michael Kingsley’s computer.

  “I was going to give you the password and let you extradite Stern. Once he was here”—Juan had smiled with too many teeth showing—“I would have taken my revenge. It would have looked like an accident, of course, as I was supposed to be ‘dead,’ but I could have lived with that. The important thing is that the world would know, would understand that symbols mean nothing, the soul means all.”

  In this, I suppose, he’s succeeded. Stern is mid-extradition. I hope he dies a horrible death in prison. I hold him and Walker most responsible for everything that has occurred. They made this monster, and if Juan had settled for visiting himself on just the two of them, I would have considered justice served. Instead, he wreaked indiscriminate destruction over many lives and numerous years. He destroyed the innocent and I can’t forgive him for it.

  We asked Juan about AD Jones. He’d revealed a surprising streak of pragmatism. “Too risky, killing an Assistant Director. I was willing to wait to kill him at a later date.”

  All of this explains why he had come out into the open. It was a confluence of events, designed to lead us to Cabrera and to expose Stern. Once Stern was here…

  It gives me a chill to think of how close he came to pulling it all off.

  Juan blamed everyone on the original task force for not “seeing” Walker’s and Stern’s true colors. In his mind, they were supposed to protect him. They failed. They deserved to die.

  He was more merciful to the women because they weren’t a part of the original betrayal.

  “But they were harlots, blind to the inadequacies of their husbands’ souls,” he pointed out with calm rationality.

  They failed. They deserved to die.

  It was about failure, I’d realized, all of it. Juan had been failed, probably from birth, and so he’d grown up to become a killer with no mercy for failure.

  When Juan talked about Walker, I knew I was witnessing the closest thing to pure hatred I’d probably ever get to see. His face would go calm, but his eyes would crackle and his voice would vibrate with poison and death.

  “He escaped my hand, but not his children or their children,” he’d said, gloating and hating simultaneously. “I destroyed the Langstroms. You should have seen their sorrow. It was magnificent! And their death was my justice. Do you know why? Because I ensured they went to hell!” His eyes had been almost all pupil and black. “Do you understand? They committed suicide. Whatever else happens to me, they’re burning in hell right now for all eternity!”

  And he’d laughed and laughed and laughed. Madness.

  I’d been curious about his change of MO. He’d shot Haliburton after forcing him to write a poem, and he’d tortured and castrated Gonzalez.

  “It wasn’t about ritual,” he’d explained to me. “It was about suffering. I tailored their deaths to bring them the most agony before they died. The physical was important, yes, but their spiritual pain was most important of all, praise be to God.”

  Sarah was, of course, him—but only to him. He’d been busy twisting her life, creating betrayals, giving her a taste of the living nightmare he’d gone through, in the certainty that she’d become what he was when all was said and done. He remains convinced that that’s exactly what happened.

  But I know better. Sarah isn’t well, but she isn’t Juan, either. Juan is evil. Sarah is good. I rarely get to think in such black-and-white terms in my job, but it’s warranted here. Her soul is scarred, not gangrenous.

  The “Mr. You Know Who” mentioned in the Vargas video was no longer living. Juan had long ago seen to that. He’d escaped his captors when he was fifteen. Four years later he’d hunted them down, one by one, killing them all in various horrible ways. The video had been a red herring, designed to occupy and confuse us. Juan had paid Vargas to make it.

  “He was so far gone,” Juan had said, “that he didn’t even wonder why I wanted it, or remember who I was. Can you believe that? Junkies are truly bereft of God’s love.”

  Now we’re here, and I’m wondering why. I don’t want to be here. Juan is a lost cause, worthy of both my pity and my rage.

  He turns those overbright eyes on Bonnie. “Why did you ask to see me, little one?”

  Bonnie has remained serene throughout. She appears untouched by Juan, by what he is, the presence of him. She opens the pad on the table in front of her and begins to write. I watch, captivated.

  She finishes and hands the pad to me. Indicates that she wants me to read what she’s written.

  “She wants to know if you’re familiar with her story.”

  Juan nods, really interested now. “Of course I am. That was an inspired act of pain. Forcing you to watch as he raped and killed your mother. Tying you to her body. Masterful work by a true artist of suffe
ring.”

  “You fuck,” I say, trembling with rage.

  Bonnie puts a hand on my arm. She takes back the notepad. I glare at Juan as she writes some more. He smiles back at me. She hands me the notepad again. I read what she’s written, and my heart stutters.

  “She…” I clear my throat. “She wants to know if you’d like her to tell you why she doesn’t speak. The real reason. She thinks you’ll appreciate it.”

  I turn to Bonnie. “I think we should go. I don’t like this.”

  She pats my arm again. Serene, serene.

  Trust me, her eyes say.

  Juan licks his lips. A corner of his mouth twitches.

  “I think…that I would like that very much,” he says.

  Bonnie smiles back at him, takes back the notepad, and hunches over it, writing. She hands it to me, but before I can read from it, she catches my eye. I see concern there. I see a little bit of wisdom. Too much for a girl her age, I guess. I also see more of that unending serenity.

  Brace yourself, but don’t be afraid, she seems to be telling me.

  I read what she wrote and understand why. My eyes go wide. My breathing stops. A moment later, a tear runs down my cheek against my will. I feel like I am falling.

  My pain is blood in the water for Juan. His nostrils flare.

  “Tell me,” he says.

  I look at Bonnie, numb. Despair creeps through me.

  A gift to Juan? True enough. He was going to love this, that evil part of him. Why would she want to give him this terrible, terrible thing?

  She reaches up and wipes the tear from my cheek.

  Go on, her smile says. Trust me.

  I take a breath.

  “She says…” I stop. “She says that she decided if her mother couldn’t speak, then neither would she.”

  Juan is as affected by this as I was, for very different reasons. His mouth opens and he sits back. He blinks rapidly. His breathing is shallow.

  The Joy of Suffering.

  I look at Bonnie. “Can we go now?” I ask. I feel hollow. I want to go home and climb under the covers and weep.

  She holds up a finger.

  One more thing, she’s saying.

  She turns to Juan and smiles that wonderful, beautiful, serene smile. It’s everything Sarah’s face in the kitchen wasn’t, and it makes Juan frown. It makes him uncomfortable.

  “But I’ve changed my mind,” she says, her voice clear and distinct. “I’ve decided it’s time to speak again.”

  I stand up in my chair so fast it crashes backward.

  “Bonnie!” It comes out as a scream.

  She stands as well. She tucks her notepad under her arm and takes my hand. “Hi, Smoky.”

  Now I’m the one who’s speechless.

  “Let’s go home,” she says. She turns to Juan. Less serenity, now. “Burn in hell, Mr. Juan.”

  He regards her, angered and yet contemplative.

  Does he see? I wonder.

  In this moment, in some ways, Bonnie was the angel Juan had once been. Un-conflicted and pure, she had no pity for him, no concern for what he was, only certainty of what he’d become.

  She’d given him a gift of despair, and taken it away by giving me a gift of triumph.

  I was happier, standing in that interrogation room with that evil, damaged man, than I’d been in a very, very long time. Which was her point to me, to us, to anyone:

  However bad things may become, evil men only triumph in the most important ways when we let them.

  That was also the moment I realized I wasn’t going to take the offer of Quantico. I was done running. In that moment, once again, life began to glow.

  It always will. You just have to let it.

  63

  I SIT IN THE CHAIR IN FRONT OF MATT’S COMPUTER, AND I STARE at the screen. I have a shot of tequila in my hand, ready and willing to help me. Liquid courage.

  I glance at the glass and frown.

  Bonnie sleeps. I think of her strength compared to my weakness and I feel ashamed.

  I put the glass down. I stare at the computer screen.

  1 for U two 4 me.

  Five days. That’s how much time passed from my first meeting with Sarah to Juan’s capture. More days have gone by since then, but it’s the five days that stick with me like they were years.

  I carry a new scar, Sarah’s scar. It isn’t visible, but the deepest cuts are the ones unseen, the march to death inside. The body ages and withers and dies. A soul can age as well. A six-year-old can become sixty in the span of a heartbeat.

  Unlike the body, the soul can reverse this process, and become, perhaps not young again, but vital. Alive.

  Sarah’s journey cut me deep. My own journeys have aged me, too far, too fast. But scars are more than reminders of past wounds. They are evidence of healing.

  I accept as a truth that I will always have moments of pain when it comes to Matt and Alexa. That’s okay. The only way to be free of them forever would be to forget them, and I won’t give up a blessed moment.

  I accept that I will have moments of great fear when it comes to Bonnie, and I accept that this may never go away. All parents fear for their children, and I have more reason to fear than most.

  I am flawed, I’m not unharmed by the past, but I am alive and I’m pretty sure I’ll be happy more often than I’m not. Pretty sure parts of my life will continue to glow.

  More than that, I cannot ask. Hope for. But not ask.

  We finished packing away the house, Bonnie and I. We had converted Alexa’s room into Bonnie’s studio, a fitting memorial.

  The last thing, now.

  1 for U two 4 me.

  I’ve come to realize that my fear of this is not just the fear of what I might find.

  You love a person, you live with them, you marry them. You spend your whole life getting to know them. I learned something new about Matt every day, every month, every year. Then he died, and the learning stopped.

  Until now.

  If I invoke 1 for U two 4 me, and look through that folder marked Private, I may learn something good or bad, but however it goes, it will be the last new thing I’ll ever learn about my husband.

  I’m afraid of that finality.

  Maybe I should save it. Save it for a day when I’m old and gray and I’m missing him.

  I ignore my tequila, and I lean forward and click on the folder. I enter the password and gain access.

  I see the icons that indicate that the files are photographs. They’re all numbered. I poise the mouse-arrow over one, and pause.

  What am I going to see if I click this?

  For a moment, just a moment, I consider deleting it all. Letting it go.

  I click the first, and it opens before me. My jaw drops.

  It’s a picture of me. Me and Matt. Having sex.

  I squint, looking closer, remembering. The picture was taken from the side, so that our bodies are in profile. My head is back, and my eyes are closed in ecstatic concentration. Matt is looking down on me, his mouth slightly open.

  It’s not artistic, but it’s not anatomically explicit, either. It looks like an amateur photograph. Which it is.

  Matt and I went through a period, a time I’ve learned many couples do. Where sex becomes a subject of concentrated fascination and exploration. You try things, experiment, leave your comfort zone a little. Eventually you find your middle ground, a place that contains the balance of the things that excite you without shaming you. It’s a fumbling time, full of mistakes. It requires trust. Exploration is not always graceful. Sometimes it can be mortifying.

  Matt and I had explored taking pictures of each other nude, and of some of our sex together. It excited us at first, but it didn’t last. It wasn’t something we were ashamed of, it was just something we were done with. We tried it, it was interesting, we moved on.

  I move through the photos, opening them one after the other, remembering each moment. There are photos of me by myself, trying to be saucy (but looking sill
y). I find one photo of Matt, sitting on the bed, back against the headboard. He’s grinning. I close my eyes. I don’t need the photograph. I see the grin, I see that mussed-up hair, the twinkle in his eyes. I can see his cock, and I remember thinking once that I knew it better than any woman anywhere, it had been in me and on me and against me. I had touched it and giggled at it, and I had gotten angry at it when it was too demanding. I had lost my virginity to it.

  My eyes are stinging. These, I think, are moments that will never come again. I don’t know what my future will bring in terms of love and companionship. I do know that I’ll never be that young again, that I’ll never feel the need to explore that particular thing again.

  Matt and I had covered that ground. We’d fucked and fought and laughed and cried and learned, and that curiosity was done and gone.

  This was his, only his.

  “1 for U two 4 me, babe.” I smile, tears running down my cheeks.

  Matt doesn’t reply. He smiles at me. Waiting.

  Say the words, that smile says.

  So I do.

  “Good-bye, Matt.”

  I close the folder.

  64

  “YOU READY TO GO?” TOMMY ASKS.

  “Zip me up and then my answer will be yes,” I say.

  He does so and then pulls me into him with his one good arm. He kisses my neck. It has a familiar, comfortable feel.

  I hear the sound of footsteps. My precocious daughter appears in the doorway. She rolls her eyes and makes an icky face.

  “Geez, can’t you guys give it a rest? I want to go see Sarah.”

  “Yes, yes, munchkin.” I smile, disengaging myself from Tommy. “We’re ready.”

  A month had passed. Sarah had stayed curled into herself for a week. A week after that, she began speaking again. Theresa and Bonnie and Elaina spent hours by her bedside in the hospital, coaxing her away from her despair.