The Triangle Conspiracy

“The guy’s a redhead, like me,” Faith said. “You wouldn’t have missed him. He’s tall, about six three, broad-shouldered. He was probably drinking like a fish.”

Ramon snorted.

“What are you, his sister?” Bobby said, and Ramon snickered.

“Yes,” Faith said.

Both men sobered. Bobby had clearly meant the remark as a joke and hadn’t expected Faith’s direct, matter-of-fact reply.

One of the old smokers said something to the other. Both kept staring at Faith. Faith sensed something there and stared back at them, green eyes digging into their brown ones.

The older of the two, who looked to be in his seventies, had a scraggly white beard and was wearing a brown leather vest over a faded denim shirt. He had a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap pushed back on his head.

“Dodgers need a new manager and a pitching staff,” she said. “They haven’t had shit since Lasorda left.” She looked over her shoulder at the table. “Would one of you please translate that for me? There’s a hundred in it for you if you do.”

Bobby looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “You’re crazy.”

“Yep,” Faith said. “Do it.”

Bobby shrugged and spoke rapidly in Spanish to the old man, who looked surprised and then spoke back.

“Senor Vargas says girls shouldn’t talk like that,” Bobby said. “And he says you don’t know baseball. Girls don’t know baseball.”

Faith smiled. “Tell Senor Vargas that the Dodgers haven’t had a real pitcher since Orel Hershiser. See what he thinks of that.”

Vargas’s eyes grew wide at the mention of the name Hershiser, and he looked at Bobby for the rest. After the translation, Bobby said, “He’s testing you. You really don’t want to get into this with him, lady. He wants you to tell him Hershiser’s record in 1988.”

Faith shook her head. “Ask me something hard. Twenty-three and eight. But the postseason was what was amazing. Two complete games in the World Series, one shutout, ERA for the series of one. Uno. One point zero zero. Same series where Kirk Gibson hit that famous home run against the A’s, coming off the bench when he was injured. That was real baseball.” She shrugged. “I was ten years old. That was the first year I watched the whole World Series on TV. I’m a Cubs fan, so I always have to cheer for someone else in October. I watched that series with my brother. He was so wrapped up in it that he actually cried when Gibson hit that home run. I’ll never forget it.”

Bobby translated. Vargas looked at Faith while listening. He never dropped his eyes. When Bobby finished, he took off the Dodgers cap and placed it carefully on the bar. He spoke a few words, slowly, then nodded at Bobby.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Bobby said. “Senor Vargas says your brother went for a walk.”

“Which way?”

“South, toward the border.”

Faith nodded to the old man. “Gracias, Senor Vargas.” She turned to go.

“Senorita,” the old man said in his throaty voice.

Faith turned back to him.

“Ryne Sandberg,” Vargas said, articulating each syllable very carefully. He gave Faith a thumbs-up sign.

“He was great, all right,” Faith said.

She pulled a hundred out of her pocket and handed it to Bobby as she passed. “Thanks,” she said.

“No problem,” Bobby said, watching her as she went out.

Faith walked south from the cantina, through the sharp S-curve in the road, looking at the adobe houses, keeping her eyes open. Three or four brown-skinned children ran across the road and back. One little girl, her hair in a long braid, sat in a hardscrabble front yard, spinning a car’s hubcap around and around.

She walked past the sign that pointed to Mexico. The port of entry lay before her, brick and steel and glass in the midst of this sand and adobe. Now most of Sasabe was behind her. The country to her right was wide open, the United States blending into Mexico somewhere out there in the desert.

She heard Sean’s voice behind her and to the right. “Sorry about taking your car. It was an emergency, and it was all I had.”

Faith stopped and turned very slowly. He was standing in a spot she had just passed, thirty or forty steps off the roadway. She blinked. She’d heard that the desert could play visual tricks on a person.

“Just like that, out of thin air,” Faith said. “You were always good at tricks.”

Sean was wearing dirty, rumpled khaki pants and a white T-shirt. He hadn’t shaved. His eyes were shot through with red. He was holding a gun loosely in one hand, as if he weren’t quite sure what to do with it.

“You planning on shooting me?” Faith said.

Sean looked at the gun. He let it drop to the ground.

“There,” he said. “Happy now? Above all, you should be happy.”

“Sean-”

Sean took a few steps toward her. A car went by on the road next to them, the first one Faith had seen between the cantina and the port of entry.

“Why are you here?” Sean said. “This is one of the stupidest things you’ve ever done, Faith, coming all the way down here.”

“Is it? Why? Tell me why you think so.”

Sean put his hands in the pockets of the dirty khakis. “What are you, my fucking therapist now? Wanting to know how I feel? Sorry, I’m not buying it, sister.”

He walked abreast of her, glanced at her once, and kept walking past. She began to move with him, matching his long strides. Faith imagined how they must look-these two tall people with red hair, striding along in this land where everything seemed to be sand-colored.

“Did you kill her, Sean?”

Sean didn’t break stride. “I guess it doesn’t matter now whether I did or didn’t. Even you believe I did.”

“It does matter. That’s why I asked the question.”

Sean said nothing.

“You were crazy over that girl. You were obsessed. She drew you in, fed your obsession, fed your weakness. Then at some point she rejected you, didn’t she?” A thought came to her. “She called you, didn’t she? That night, the night I took her back to her apartment. After I’d gone home with Scott, Daryn called you. What happened?”

“Rejection,” Sean said. “Just like you rejected her, wouldn’t protect her. Is that what you mean?”

Faith flinched but said nothing.

“Good to see you’ve still got some of that good old Irish Catholic guilt in you,” Sean said. “Of course, you didn’t think you had to protect her from me, did you?”

“What did she say when she called? What did she tell you?”

“Jesus, you just don’t give up. Probably why you’re so good in Department Fucking Thirty. You get your teeth into someone and shake them around until they cough up whatever you want. Yeah, she called. Said she wanted me, needed me. There was some sex talk. Like you said, she played to my weakness.”

“And you went to her.”

Sean nodded. “She was a crazy woman. I’ve never seen anyone make love like that. Though I guess you really couldn’t call what we were doing making love. It was fucking, pure and simple. I was so drunk I couldn’t keep it up, but she kept at it until I came. Then, a few seconds after she rolled off me, she started slapping me and hitting me and screaming at me to get out.”

Faith watched him. To her great surprise, a tear rolled down her brother’s cheek, unchecked.

“I mean,” Sean said, “I’m not stupid enough to think we were in love or anything like that. It was too raw, too…I don’t know what the word is, maybe primal? But I thought we had a connection. That’s why I tried to see her during that week you had her in the safe house. I just wanted to feel that connection. There at the end, I didn’t understand it. It’s like…it’s like she knew she was going to die and wanted me to be blamed for it. Someone somewhere will match up the semen sample from inside her with my DNA, and they’ll be after me.” He looked sidelong at his sister. “Just like you are.”

“They’re already after you, Sean.” Faith stopped walking. They were so close to the port of entry building that they could hear the air-conditioning unit humming. Mexico was only a few feet away. “They found your Jeep. There was blood in it. They’re betting it’s Daryn’s and are probably running the tests right now. They found your gun. They’ll be doing ballistics.”

Sean sighed. “And your boyfriend will come after me with a vengeance.”

Faith felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. “No,” she said slowly. “He won’t.”

“Oh, they gave some other Bureau hack the case, then.”

“No, Sean. Scott is dead.”

Sean whipped his head around.

“Scott was murdered yesterday, shot in the head while he worked on his case notes at his condo.” Faith blinked at him. She felt her own tears welling.

“Oh Jesus,” Sean said. “And you think I did that, too.”

Faith reached out and grabbed his shoulder, spinning his entire body around. “What the hell is the matter with you? Can you think for just one minute about something other than yourself? Are you even capable anymore of considering anything except how it affects you? Jesus Christ, Sean.” Faith’s voice rose steadily. “I loved him! I loved him, and he was decent and honest and smart and funny, and he was shot in the head!”

Faith’s composure cracked, and the floodgates opened. The tears began to stream down her face.

“I found him!” she shouted at her brother. “I found his body, and I had to leave him. Because of all this, I had to leave him right there, like his body was so much garbage, just to be cleaned up later. He showed me respect and kindness, and, goddammit, love! He showed me love, like no one else ever did. And there he was, lying dead on the floor, and I left him there!”

A door opened at the port of entry building, and a burly Hispanic man in a khaki uniform came out. His holster was unbuttoned, his hand on the butt of his weapon.

He took a few steps toward them, then Sean turned to face him.

“Irish?” the man said. “Sean Kelly?”

“Hey, Mike,” Sean said.

“What are you doing down here? I heard you were-”

“It’s a long story, Mike. Sorry to disturb the peace. This is just a little family matter. This is my sister.”

The guard looked uncomfortable. “Hey, Irish, I need to ask you back off from the port, okay? Do I need to make a phone call here?”

“No, no, I don’t think so.”

Mike nodded. “You’ll be safer back up toward town, Sean.”

“Right. Thanks, Mike.”