her plate. “I called the cop who handled Simington’s case.”
The ease and comfort from earlier began to slip away. “And?”
“Name is Asanti. Works out of Imperial Valley in El Centro. Seemed like a good guy. Gave me what he could, which wasn’t much different than what we already knew.”
I forked the last piece of salmon and shoved it in my mouth.
“The names of the two vics were Miguel Tenayo and Hernando Vasquez,” she said. “On the record, he said they were both illegals and not a whole lot of effort went into the investigation.”
“Off the record?”
“Vasquez’s family is in El Centro.”
I set down the fork, letting it clink against the plate. “Legally?”
She shook her head. “No. That’s why he gave it to me off the record. A wife and two kids. He found them during his investigation. He knew that if he put that in the case report, INS would jump all over it.” She pulled her elbows off the table and folded her arms across her chest. “Like I said, Asanti seemed like a good guy. They already lost a husband and father. He didn’t see the point in making it worse.”
I pushed my plate away, the food suddenly feeling heavy and uncomfortable in my stomach. A woman left without her husband and two boys without their father.
Thanks to Russell Simington.
My father.
“The way Asanti put the case together, Tenayo and Vasquez still owed part of the mule fee after they’d made it across,” Liz said. “They were late in paying up. Simington was sent to punish them. Those details came from Simington himself. Tenayo had no family here, and Vasquez’s wife said she knew nothing of the details of his coming across. They came across separately.”
The black water rippled with silver outside the window. Anger was beginning to boil in my gut. It was one thing for a father to choose to stay outside of a family. It was another thing entirely to take away a man’s chance to choose.
“I told Asanti we’d be out in the morning,” Liz said.
I shifted my gaze from the water to her. “Thanks.”
The check came, I paid, and we walked outside into the cool air.
Liz looked up at the sky. “It’s supposed to get ugly the next few days. Lots of rain.”
I grunted in response, unable to shake what she’d told me from my head.
We walked back up the street in silence, her hand warm in mine. We were halfway up the walk to her house when I stopped. “You don’t have to go tomorrow,” I said.
She stared at me, her eyes searching. “Do you not want me to go?”
“No, it’s not that. But I don’t want you to feel like you have to.”
Liz gripped my hand a little tighter and pulled me toward the front door. She fished her keys out of her pocket and unlocked the door, then turned to me.
“When you said earlier that you loved me, I said that maybe something would come up and maybe you’d change your mind. You disagreed.”
“And I meant that, Liz.”
“I know.” She placed her hands lightly on my chest. “There is nothing that I’m going to hear about Russell Simington that is going to change
It was the second time Liz had said something like that to me, and yet I couldn’t disentangle myself from what Simington was and who I was. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her. But there was this continued nagging in the back of my mind that something ugly would emerge and everyone would look at me differently.
Her hands moved from my chest to around my neck. “Now. Earlier, I didn’t get to see you change.”
I pushed Simington out of my mind, refusing to let him ruin the rest of my evening, and focused on the woman I now freely admitted was the most important person in my life. “Your loss,” I said.
“Care to come in and show me what I missed out on?” It was an offer I couldn’t—and didn’t—refuse.
THIRTY-ONE
To find El Centro, you head east on I-8 and push through the El Cajon valley, the mountains of Alpine and Julian, and descend into the desert-covered region that reaches toward Arizona. It has become the furthest suburb of San Diego—if a community one hundred miles away can be considered a suburb—home to not only bedroom commuters but Mexican immigrant families that like the nearly visible proximity to their homeland. Ten minutes to the east and you are in Arizona. But ten minutes south and you enter the poverty-stricken zone of Mexicali.
I’d left a message for Miranda, letting her know where the towels were, that she was welcome to anything in the fridge and that I was sleeping elsewhere. But I hadn’t slept. I tossed and turned all night and Liz had recognized my impatience at waiting for the day to begin. She volunteered to drive, and we took the circular off-ramp into El Centro at nine on the button.
We pulled up in front of a small, square building about a mile down Central Avenue. Letters spelling out “El Centro Police Department” were lined above two dirty glass doors at the entrance.
“Looks deserted,” I said.
“Not a huge department,” Liz said, shutting off the engine. “Asanti is the only detective. Four full-time officers,
