Category Five Page 4

  They came up on a line of police cars up and down the road ahead.

  “Your uncle is never hard to find.” He snorted.

  Lupe wasn’t laughing. Worse, she was gathering her stuff and getting ready to get out of the truck.

  Say something! he chided himself.

  “Lupe, I—”

  “Javier—”

  They both laughed. When had they ever not been comfortable around each other?

  Someone appeared at the driver’s side window and Javier leapt in his seat, squealing a bit like his tía’s ancient chihuahua. He grabbed his chest when he saw the mustached, intense face of Lupe’s uncle.

  “You afraid, Utierre?” A small smile was on the big man’s face.

  “No, Chief Dávila, you just startled—”

  “Yeah, well, lots to be startled about around here.” He gestured toward Lupe, who had just slid off the bench seat of the truck and dropped to the dirt road with a little hop. “Lupe, come with me.” He pulled away from the window, and Javier breathed out.

  But then the chief stuck his head back in the window and Javier jumped again.

  “On second thought, come with us, Utierre. I want to talk to you too.” And then he was gone again.

  Javier looked over at Lupe and she shrugged.

  They fell into step behind the tall man, and Javier was very aware of Lupe’s hand swinging inches from his, but he was going to have to warm things up before he dared take her hand again. And certainly not in front of her uncle.

  Esteban Dávila stopped along a stretch of rocky shore. Javier glanced over and saw a group of uniformed EMTs carrying off three stretchers, each with a zipped body bag balanced on top. He swallowed hard. He knew that the bags contained three guys, not much older than he and Lupe. Javier had lost three lifelong friends the previous year to addiction … and El Cuco, the monster called forth from childhood nightmares.

  “Utierre.” The commanding voice called him back from his bout of déjà vu.

  Lupe and her uncle were standing near the edge of the water, away from other people.

  But Javier’s attention was still on the bodies. “What happened to them?” he asked quietly, gesturing to the stretchers now being loaded in ambulances that idled by the side of the road.

  “Someone cut their hearts out.”

  Javier and Lupe jolted as if the words were a blow. They actually were. Javier appreciated that after all they’d been through the previous year, the chief was so straight with them, but damn.

  Lupe cleared her throat. “I take it you don’t mean that metaphorically?”

  Dávila just shook his head. Then he pulled the two in even closer. “Some of the people, even some of the police, for God’s sake, are whispering that El Cuco has come back.”

  Javier’s heart started pounding behind his eyes. “What?”

  Lupe put her hands on her hips. “Wait, I thought they didn’t buy the supernatural explanation for last year, and blamed you for leaving it unsolved?”

  Her uncle nodded. “Some do, but others … That’s why I wanted you both here.”

  Lupe nudged Javier and gestured toward a small group of rescue personnel who were staring at them, whispering among themselves. After the “incident” last summer, he experienced this kind of attention often, eyes following him, whispers as passersby recognized him. Sometimes someone would be bold enough to come up to him and ask, “Are you the guy who fought El Cuco at the Papi Gringo concert?” Yeah, it had been pretty much the most exciting event in the last decade.

  But then the hurricane hit.

  Maria.

  Then El Cuco paled in comparison and Javier was left in welcome anonymity again. Until, it seems, now. “Who were they? The boys who were killed?” Perhaps there was a clue there.

  “They were all sons of investors in the resort.”

  Lupe and Javier looked at each other. “You mean the one Javier works for?”

  “Yes. Their parents dumped them here for spring break and took off for the Maldives. From the boys’ records, you can tell that happened often. Grand larceny, felony vandalism, sexual assault. Expensive lawyers come in and all charges are magically dismissed, victims refuse to press charges, you get the picture.”

  “So, you’re saying they really are candidates for El Cuco,” Lupe asked, chewing on her lower lip.

  El Cuco was … is the Latin equivalent of the boogeyman. When parents want their kids to behave, they say, “You best behave or El Cuco is going to get you!” Well, last year Javier found out he was more than a myth. All three of his friends who were killed were addicts, drug dealers, basically ill-behaved under any definition.

  “Holy shit!” Lupe exclaimed, and her uncle shushed her.

  He was the only one on the planet who could get away with shushing Lupe.

  She lowered her voice. “You said these guys were college students, right? Like, starting their second year this fall?”

  “Right. One of them would have started his third, but I don’t think even his rich father could buy him out of those grades.”

  “So, they’re over eighteen, right?”

  Esteban and Javier looked at each other and a smile of relief spread over each of their faces. “Right!” They said simultaneously. They had established that last year’s murders occurred on the eve of the victims’ eighteenth birthdays, because once they turned eighteen, they were no longer children and El Cuco would no longer have any power over them. So, if the boys were over eighteen, it couldn’t be El Cuco.

  But the chief added, “Then the question remains, who did kill them? We won’t get people to let go of the El Cuco explanation unless we find the actual killer.”

  Something about this wasn’t making sense to Javier. “Why do people think something supernatural killed them and not just a serial killer or something?”

  Dávila took off his hat and wiped his face in a downward motion. “Yeah, that.”

  Lupe looked at her uncle through narrowed eyes. “There’s something you’re not telling us, Tío, isn’t there?”

  “I know what you’re thinking, Lupe, and it’s not to protect you. It’s just it … seems so silly.”

  “Sillier than the boogeyman killing kids because they don’t behave?”

  He froze for a second, then said, “Point taken, sobrina. Okay, it seems that people in the villages of Esperanza and Isabel Segunda saw … beings last night.”

  Javier grew confused. “Like human beings?”

  “Like dead human beings.”

  Lupe gasped. “Zombies? They’re real? I knew it!”

  She loved The Walking Dead, and any ridiculous undead movie, but she couldn’t be happy about this … could she? But zombies weren’t what had first come to Javier’s mind. “Or ghosts?”

  “Heart-eating ghosts?” She put her hands on her hips in classic Lupe fashion. “I don’t think so.”

  The chief held out his hand in the stop gesture, as if that could slow his niece’s roll. “Now let’s not get out of hand. We don’t know if the killer actually … ate the hearts. They’re just … gone.”

  “What, so they stole them? To do what with? Decorate their ghostly living rooms?”

  Lupe did seem to be enjoying this, but Javier’s lunch was pushing against his gullet. Why was this darkness always around him? Was it following him? Or did he bring it out? It’s not always about you, he reminded himself.

  “I’m less concerned with why right now than I am with who. Or what,” he added as an afterthought. Lupe’s uncle had not been a supernatural-believing kind of man before last summer. But they’d all had to open their minds to the possibilities.

  They stood in silence for a moment, that last word hanging in the air, until the roar of engines and sounds of shouting carried over from the other entrance to the bay. Vans with news station logos on the sides squealed to a stop, disgorging overly made-up people in cheap suits, and the police chief sighed.

  “Shit.”

  Lupe gaped at her uncle. “Langua
ge, Tío!”

  The chief threw his hands up. “Then you go talk to them!”

  Lupe smiled. “No, thanks. I’d rather have a root canal. Without anesthesia.”

  “You and me both, sobrina. You and me both.” Dávila put on his hat. “Stay here, you two.” He started walking away, then turned back and added with his index finger waggling, “Especially you!”

  Javier swallowed. “Me, sir?”

  Dávila scoffed. “No, not you, Utierre. Her!” He pointed at his niece. “She’s the troublemaker.” Then he smiled and walked toward the clamoring press.

  Chapter Five

  Lupe

  GREAT. NOW HER uncle had gone and left her alone with Javier. Lupe never was very good at uncomfortable situations. Or forgiveness. But if she thought about it, what had Javier really done? He had been super cranky since their reunion. Well, not at first. That was nice. But the island, his home, had just been put through the wringer. Besides, it wasn’t like she’d never been cranky before—for her that was just Tuesday. But she hadn’t liked the jealousy piece. To her that meant a lack of trust, and that she couldn’t abide.

  Javier coughed. “I have to get back to work.”

  “Okay. I’ll walk you back to the truck.” Now that he was leaving, she didn’t want him to go. This was way too complicated. Her life was so much easier before romance.

  The area was now crowded with onlookers, police, some local boy who had been the last to see the victims, cars. They walked along the shore to avoid the press of people, but it was too narrow for them to walk side by side, so she followed behind, looking at the back of his head and trying to think of something to say. They picked their way through the brush and the finger-like reach of the mangrove roots. Soon they were walking along a ridge several feet above the water, and Lupe was concentrating on not tripping when she noticed something hanging off a low branch. She stopped and squatted down.

  “What is it? Are you okay, Lupe?”

  “Yeah, there’s just … something here.” She looked closely and saw it was fabric of some kind. “It looks like rubberized fabric.”

  Javier squatted down next to her, his bronzed leg brushing hers, and the warmth made it hard to concentrate.

  “It’s a piece of a wet suit.”

  “A wet suit?”

  Javier shrugged. “Yeah, people dive around the island all the time.”

  “Wait, the water is, like, body temperature. Why would they need a suit?”

  “I don’t know. Guess it depends on how deep they’re going.”

  Lupe looked over the edge of the ridge and saw indentations in the hardened mud. “I see something else. Give me a hand.” She moved to the edge, took Javier’s hand, and lowered herself into what turned out to be a cove-like area that was hidden by the maze of roots above.

  She crouched down and looked at distinct footprints in the dirt. Men’s, by the look of them.

  Javier’s face appeared at the edge of the hidden gap in the shoreline. “What do you see?”

  “There are footprints here.”

  “Human?”

  “Yes.” She turned around slowly; the prints disappeared where the tide had come in overnight. “Boots, from the look of them. And the prints can’t be that old.”

  “I think we better tell your uncle about this.” Javier reached down to help pull her up to the higher shore. She took his hand and let him, something she didn’t used to be good at, but she trusted him.

  When she got to higher ground, she stumbled a bit trying to right herself, and Javier steadied her by holding her upper arms, and for a moment they were close. Really close. It would be so easy to just lean in, to feel his arms around her, to press her lips to his again. But instead she stepped back, a small gesture, but she could tell from his reaction that he caught the meaning.

  Javier stayed there, standing along the shore, staring into the dark water as if something were crouching there, as she fetched her uncle.

  She led Esteban back, showed him the wet suit scrap.

  “Could be from anyone, but we’ll test it just in case.” He put on gloves and stowed the fabric in a plastic bag, handing it off to a CSI who had come with him. Then all three of them scrambled down to the hidden cove to look at the prints. Her uncle pushed his hat back from his forehead.

  He was just standing there, not saying anything. She felt like she was going to burst. Finally, she asked, “Do you think this could be from a human bad guy?”

  “Definitely a possibility. I had the feeling that this was not the work of ghosts or monsters or zombies.”

  She crossed her arms. “That’s what you said the last time.”

  “Yes, but it’s not like I don’t believe in ghosts. My abuela used to sit on the edge of my bed every night after she died. I could feel her weight, see the indentation of where she had sat after.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Oh, I don’t kid about ghosts. But I think these boys were killed by a human or humans. And since I’m pretty sure ghosts don’t need boots—”

  “Or leave prints,” she added.

  “I’m thinking these prints might help prove that.”

  “Dávila!” A loud voice bellowed from above.

  “¡Ya voy! I’m coming,” her uncle yelled back. He grabbed a vine from the overhanging mangrove tree and pulled himself up with ease. How did he do that? Wasn’t he supposed to be old? Before he could help her up, she did the same, feeling a bit like Tarzan as she swung herself up next to him, followed soon after by Javier.

  A short, stout man whose flesh seemed barely contained in what was on others a crisp black uniform was stalking over to them. Given the gold trim on his shoulders, Lupe assumed he was the local in charge.

  “Dávila, what’s going on here? Where are you taking our bodies?”

  Her uncle gave him that withering look that she so enjoyed seeing him give other people. “First of all, you will address me as Chief Dávila”—his eyes darted to the marks of rank on the man’s shoulders as if in judgment—“Captain…” He waited for the name.

  Just then a younger officer—where did he come from?—reached around the man and saluted her uncle. He was thinner, and his skin a lighter tone than the older man, but they had the same intense, deep-set eyes. Related, had to be. “Torres, Chief. This is Captain Torres, and”—he turned to Lupe and Javier, including them in the introductions—“I’m Hernán Torres … his son. I mean, Officer Torres. At your service.”

  Lupe had to smile. Hernán was clearly not much older than Javier and, unlike his grumpy father, seemed to have a lot of enthusiasm. He was also kind of cute, in an overly clean-cut sort of way.

  “Well, Captain Torres, they are not ‘your’ bodies; they are being taken to the mainland to be autopsied.”

  “Oh, so you think the local police can’t handle this, huh? You had to come and save us all from our ineptitude?”

  “Actually, Torres…” Lupe noticed the omission of rank. Yeah, he was getting pissed. “Your office called me.”

  “What? We most certainly did not!”

  “Actually Papá, I called him.” The younger Torres’s voice was smaller than it was in his introductions, with a touch of nerves on the edges.

  His father wheeled around. “What?”

  Hernán shrugged. “What with the big opening event coming up and all the townspeople talking about zombies—”

  Lupe loved all these mentions of zombies. She had been beginning to think they were extinct and classified as cliché. Hernán was talking quickly, trying to get it out before his father stormed off, a good bet, given the man’s demeanor.

  “—so I thought we should bring in an expert in the supernatural…”

  “Expert, hah!” Both Captain Torres and her uncle scoffed at the same time.

  Torres Senior pointed his finger at Esteban. He actually had to point up, as he was a good foot shorter. The man just didn’t seem to get it. “You look here, Chief…” The word dripped with sarcasm as slow as m
aple syrup. “We have a big event coming up, the biggest in Puerto Rico since the four-hundred-year anniversary in 1992, and we can’t have your people traipsing around causing unnecessary complications!”

  “Oh, is that what you call this investigation of three dead boys? An ‘unnecessary complication’?”

  “If you ask me, it’s payback for their fathers’ destruction of this island! Why they’re ripping—”

  “Dad…” Hernán stepped between the two men. Bold move: she kinda liked this guy. Lupe thought he probably had to play diplomat for his father often. She didn’t have to do it much since her father stopped drinking, but she’d played that role enough in her day to understand it well. But why wouldn’t the captain want help solving this crime? Investors’ children having their hearts torn out couldn’t be very good for the tourist trade.

  But her uncle only looked amused as the young officer held one hand in front of him and one in front of his stout father, as if Esteban couldn’t just crush them both with one move. What an incredible waste of energy.

  Javier touched her shoulder. “Lupe,” he whispered as the grown men bickered in front of them, “I have to get back to work or I’m going to get my ass fired.”

  She nodded and turned around. “Just your ass?”

  He screwed up his face, “Huh?”

  “Not the rest of you?”

  He shrugged. “Hard to work with no culo, right?”

  She smiled. “Maybe.” She was trying to lighten it up between them, she knew she was. He probably knew it too, but Lupe just didn’t know how to work around Javier’s anger. She’d always been attracted to angry boys, surely because the men in her family were angry men, but it was also because she liked the passion, the willingness to fight to change things that weren’t right. She’d never tolerate angry, violent men, but she liked boys who felt things deeply. But this? The anger coming off Javier in waves like radiation was hard to navigate.