“Cecelia Grijalva is a friend of my daughter’s . . .” Joanna heard herself saying when suddenly Ceci scrambled out from under her arm.
“I know him, too,” she said, pointing to a spot on the screen where a man’s face had momentarily materialized directly over Leann’s shoulder. He was leading a crowd of people filing down the aisle toward the exit.
When first Joanna and then Leann stopped, so did he, but not soon enough. He blundered into Leann, bumping her from behind with such force that he almost knocked her down.
The camera was focused on Joanna in the foreground. Her words were the ones being spoken on tape. Still, the jostling in the crowd behind her was visible as well. As she watched the televised Leann turn around to see what had hit her, Joanna remembered Leann telling her about the incident on their way back to the car after the vigil.
And the glare Leann had mentioned—the one she had said might have been enough to spark a drive-by shooting—was there, captured in the glow of the television lights. Even thirdhand—filtered through camera, videotape, and TV screen—the man’s ugly, accusing stare was nothing short of chilling. He and Leann stood eye to eye for only a moment. Then he glanced up and into the camera as though seeing it for the first time. A fraction of a second later, he ducked to one side behind Leann and disappeared into the crowd.
“You know him?” Joanna asked.
Ceci nodded.
“Who is he?”
Ceci shrugged. “One of my mom’s friends.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t tell me her friends’ names.”
“Jenny,” Joanna said, “would you please run the tape back to that spot and stop it there? I want to look at that sequence again.”
Jenny’s agile fingers darted knowledgeably over the remote control. Moments later, the man’s face reappeared. With his features frozen in place on the television screen, the glower on his face was even more ominous than it had seemed in passing.
“Did you know he was there that night?” Joanna asked.
Ceci shook her head. “No. I didn’t see him until just now.”
“Were there other people there that you knew?”
“Some,” Ceci answered. “There were two teachers from my old school, Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Sandoval. And a man named Mr. Gray from the place where Mom used to work, but he talked to Grandpa, not to me.”
“Didn’t this friend of your mother’s come talk to you?” Joanna asked. “Or to your grandparents?”
Ceci shook her head. “If he did, I didn’t see him.”
“Okay, Jenny. Let it play again.”
As Cecelia’s words played back one more time, Joanna closed her eyes momentarily, remembering the vigil, recalling how people had poured up onto the stage after the speeches, how they had gathered in clumps around the various speakers, offering condolences and words of support. Everyone there had come to the vigil with some cause to be angry, but it was only on the face of that one man that the anger had registered full force. Still, if he had felt that strongly about what had happened to Serena, why hadn’t he come forward to visit with the dead woman’s family?
“Did he come to your house while your mother was alive?”
