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“I tried to come home, but I died on my way to the train station.”
It was a terrible lie.
Héctor had always been a good liar, but the train station had been one of his obvious failures. Part of its failure was its sheer transparency. Good lies covered up the truth, but this one simply sat atop it, drawing more attention rather than deflecting it. For years, that one lie had dogged Imelda each time she tried and failed to forget her former husband. Like salt in a wound, it burned. If he had just told the truth, if he had just said “I ran off, and I don’t have an excuse”….
She might not have taken him back, but she wouldn’t have gone to the lengths she did to keep him away, either.
But it was a lie. Anyone could see it, and anyone who could see it would be insulted on her behalf. To actually believe it would take a special sort of person, one who had entered the Land of the Dead upon forgetting how to breathe. Imelda had reminded herself of that lie every time the thought of perhaps reconnecting with the sad, broken man who had told it strayed across her mind.
Until Miguel.
Until de la Cruz.
Until that terrible lie became an even more terrible truth.
Now, the sad, broken man who had told it paced the sala in Imelda’s house. His house. He lived there now, at her insistence. He’d been confined to the shanties long enough.
Imelda stood in the doorway and watched him for several long moments, but he just kept going and going, as if he were trying to wear a hole in the floor. She stepped in front of him and planted herself there, hands on her hips. “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?”
He gave her that grin she remembered so well, one charming lie that preceded another. “What? Nothing. Everything is fine.”
She folded her arms and leveled her famous stare. It took a moment to work, but his grin faded.
“I…don’t want to go down to the station. I know I’m only giving a statement, but…”
“They’re ignoring your record. Gutierrez put it in writing, just like you asked.”
“I know. I….” His shoulders slumped as he looked away, out the distant window. “They’re going to know what happened that night.”
Imelda frowned. “Don’t you know what happened?”
“Not like that. I mean, I know what happened, but I don’t know how it happened. How he did it….all of that.”
She nodded in sudden understanding. “This might have been premeditated,” Gutierrez had said, “but we need to know for certain it wasn’t a crime of opportunity. You can help with that.” An opportunistic murder and a premeditated one both ended the same way. But each one carried a profoundly different meaning and—in the eyes of the law—a slightly different consequence. “At least you’ll know.”
“Sí,” Héctor said with a sigh, looking at the floor. “At least I’ll know.”
She gently cupped his face, got him to look at her. “Do you want me to go with you?”
“I don’t know if they’ll let you.”
“I’ll ask. Do you want me to go?”
He paused. For a long minute, he said nothing; he simply looked into her eyes. Finally, he took her hand in his. “Would you? I—I don’t want to go alone.”
Imelda brushed a lock of hair back from his face. “You won’t.”
*******
Gutierrez had never referred to Héctor’s murder as anything but. Rumors flew with more speed than the truth could ever attain, but even through them, Imelda had never heard any speculation that her husband’s death was anything but intentional. Nevertheless, she wore her sturdiest shoes to the police station. Just in case that devil box decided to lie.
The officer led them through gleaming, spacious hallways, into a wide room packed with cubicles, and through that to a cubicle packed with stacks of paperwork. Somehow, three chairs had been squeezed in front of the desk. The computer—or devil box, as it should have been called—sat off to the side, protected by a metal grate. Imelda wasn’t certain whether to be proud or annoyed as introductions were made and the three of them took their seats.
“Why don’t we start with what happened, Señor Rivera?” the forensics officer, Estrella Flores, said. In life, she had examined the dead to determine cause of death. Now, she simply asked them. “Tell me what you remember.”
It was as if Héctor had forgotten how to speak. It’s just your death, Imelda wanted to say, but it wasn’t. She had to imagine murder was quite a bit different. Even when the victim had gone nearly a century believing it was an accident.
Especially then.
Imelda took his hand. He didn’t respond right away, but after a minute’s staring, he looked down. She felt his bones relax, wrapping around hers—and he started to speak.
When he’d finished, he sat back, looking older than Imelda had ever thought he could. Silence had settled over the cubicle, making the rustle and bustle of noise surrounding them feel profoundly wrong. She couldn’t think of a single word to say that didn’t include a long string of profane curses upon de la Cruz’s head.
Estrella was the first to break the silence. “How soon after drinking the tequila did you notice symptoms?”
This is her job, Imelda reminded herself, squelching a rush of anger. She has to ask these questions.
“It couldn’t have been more than a minute or two.”
More typing. Imelda held Héctor’s hand even more tightly, as much for her own sake as for his.
“You said the pain was severe?”
“Some of the worst I’ve ever felt.”
This was the forensic officer’s job, Imelda reminded herself for the second time: to get details, the more specific the better. The only way that could be done was through cold, clinical questions that forgot the horror of what had happened and focused solely on the events themselves. Imelda clung to this fact as more questions came, each one reducing her husband’s murder to a set of events to be recorded and cross-referenced.
There was another clatter of keys, another long silence. Imelda felt Héctor stiffen, ever so slightly—bracing for whatever came.
Estrella looked up from her screen, giving Héctor a longer look than she needed to. “Do you want to know?”
“Know what killed me?”
“Sí. If you’d rather not know, I can send you out, give Gutierrez the report, and call you back in for more questions.”
To Imelda’s surprise, he looked to her. There was a bit of a question in his eyes, seeking her opinion, perhaps; or maybe he just wanted to know if she’d rather remain in the dark. She answered it with a small shrug. It was his murder. This was up to him, no matter how much she’d rather he say yes and get it over with. Finally, his face settled into a mask of resolve, and he turned back to Estrella.
“Sí. I…I want to know.”
She turned back to the computer. “Based on the symptoms you described, plus the short reaction time, it seems formaldehyde is the most likely culprit.”
“Formaldehyde,” Héctor repeated.
“Now, without physical evidence, we can’t be certain, but it does seem to be the best match.”
“It….it was formaldehyde.” Grim wonder laced his words.
“It’s more common than you might think,” she offered. “Getting it would have taken some doing, but I doubt he would have had to go out of his way—“
“It smells, doesn’t it?”
Héctor’s question seemed to take her aback. “I—sí. It does have a strong smell. But—“
“And the taste?”
“Bitter, very bitter, but—“
“So I should have tasted it.” He slumped back in his chair. “I—I knew it, I just wasn’t paying attention that night, I should have known….”
“Should have known a friend was going to poison you?” Imelda barely kept from spitting the word friend. All of those nights talking and laughing into the early hours of morning, all of that talk of music and dreams and making it big—it all should have meant something more than a ploy to lure Héctor from the safety of his family, of his home. It should have been more than just words. “Hèctor, no one could have known.”
“He—he put it in one of his movies.”
“He what?” Imelda’s mind whirred. She should have watched those things. If Ernesto de la Cruz had confessed to a murder in one of his films, if it would have given her a clue as to her husband’s fate, she should have embraced music again for at least the length of a single film.
“Ay, that one,” Gutierrez said, mouth tipping slightly, without mirth. “I wouldn’t call it a proper confession. It….isn’t the most reliable guide to poisonings, or how to avoid them.”
“Formaldehyde is extremely toxic,” the forensics officer added. Her tone was gentle, almost apologetic. “De la Cruz wouldn’t have needed more than a few drops. Tequila would have hidden the taste.”
“I—I still—I should have seen something. He—he had to put it in the glass somehow—I could’ve seen it, but I wasn’t even looking—“
“If he poisoned the glass beforehand, there wouldn’t have been anything to see.”
The words were like a cold wind, chilling them all into momentary silence. Poisoning the glass. He would have poured a bit of formaldehyde into a shot glass, let it dry, and kept it in wait for a moment to seize. The more she considered it, the easier it was to picture de la Cruz following each of those steps, tucking the glass into a pocket for safekeeping, waiting for an excuse to use it.
“How long, exactly,” she said, barely restraining herself from shouting, “was de la Cruz planning this?”
“Hard to say,” Estrella said.
“But it was premeditated?” Gutierrez asked.
“I don’t see how it could have been anything else.” She looked to her screen again. “Most people don’t carry around bottles of any type of poison. I suppose there’s evidence for a crime of opportunity, but that is very weak.”
“Premeditated.” Héctor seemed to have fallen a few steps behind—and Imelda couldn’t fault him. “He planned all this.”
“It seems he did,” Estrella said. Her tone was still gentle, kind even. She had done this before.
“If it’s any consolation,” Gutierrez put in, “premeditated murder carries the maximum sentence.”
“And what is that?” Imelda didn’t try to sound demanding, but she didn’t soften her tone, either.
“Ninety-six years—the same length of time this murder went unpunished—plus twenty-five years for each attempted murder charge.”
Imelda nodded, but Héctor didn’t seem to have heard. He cradled his forehead in one hand, eyes closed.
His friend—the one he’d sung with and laughed with and run off into the great wild yonder with—hadn’t just killed him. He’d planned it. He’d formed a plan and lain in wait until he could enact it, and it didn’t matter whether he’d waited for three days or thirty. A friend had murdered him and built a shining, celebrated career on his corpse.
“Do you have any more questions?” Imelda asked.
Estrella and Gutierrez both noted Héctor with sympathy and traded glances. “They can wait,” the forensics officer said.
“Hèctor?” He didn’t seem to hear her, so she put a hand on his arm. He looked up, his eyes filled with pain.
Imelda wanted to stay. She wanted to yank off her shoe and demand these people take her to de la Cruz this instant. They couldn’t confiscate her shoes. They could try, but they wouldn’t be able to do it. If they gave her ten minutes, she could put de la Cruz through a shadow of the torment he’d visited on her husband.
But Héctor was there, and he didn’t need her anger. He didn’t need her taking revenge on his behalf. He needed her.
“We can go home.” It wasn’t difficult to keep her tone gentle. Not with him in that state.
It took a moment for the words to register, but he finally nodded, pushing his way out of his chair as though sleepwalking. Imelda took his hand and helped him to his feet. A light trembling had set in, and she felt him shaking as she slipped an arm around his shoulders, as she retraced their steps out of the cubicle and through the wide room. He drew a few looks as they passed, but those were quickly averted. Had she the time, Imelda would have thanked them.
They passed through the door and into the echoing quiet of the hall. There, Imelda sighted the nearest bench and guided Héctor to it, taking a seat beside him. For a long minute, neither spoke. Few people passed, and those that did showed no interest before hurrying along.
“I’m sorry.”
Imelda couldn’t think why he’d say such a thing.
“I—I shouldn’t have left. I know I’ve said it before, but I—“ He rested his head against the wall, eyes closed. “I’m sorry.”
It took her a moment to parse out what he wasn’t saying, but the realization sent a fresh wave of anger through her. It took her longer to get it under control.
“Héctor.” Whether it was the sound of his name or the sharpness of her voice that made his eyes open, she didn’t know, but the results were the same. “You didn’t deserve it.”
He looked away, and that urge to storm back in and demand to see de la Cruz took hold of her again. She moved closer, tipping Hector’s chin instead.
“This wasn’t you. You might have left, and I may have hated you for it, but this was not your fault. You did not deserve to die, and if you think that for one minute, then I’ll—“ With some difficulty, she held back. This was not the time to give him a litany of all the things she’d do to de la Cruz.
Ninety-six years. It should have been long enough to make peace with what had happened. Perhaps it had been, until this. Until the word murder upended the story he’d believed and the word premeditated tore that peace to shreds. She could see it in his eyes, written all over his face. A poorly timed accident that took him from his family was bad enough. Murder at the hands of a friend deserved every ounce of rage a human could possess.
And Héctor had chosen the wrong target.
Imelda managed a small, sad smile. Words fled. There was nothing she could say, nothing she could think of, to lessen his pain.
She wrapped her arms around him and held him close. He clung to her, and she pulled him tighter. They could remain on that bench for the rest of the day, for all she cared. As long as he needed her there, she would stay.