Etch forced himself not to make a fist. He thought about Ana in that hospital bed, the uneven bleep of the heart monitor. He had stood at her window for an hour, hating himself, his hand in his pocket, fingering a small glass vial.
“Thanks for the atole,” he told Santos. “Maybe we’ll play a few holes some time?”
The old medical examiner nodded, his eyes cautious. “I’d like that, Lieutenant.”
As Etch drove across the dam, he got one last glimpse of Jaime Santos standing on his back porch, two cups of atole steaming on the rail in the afternoon cold.
DECEMBER 1986, THE SAME CHRISTMAS FRANKIE White murdered his third victim, Etch’s abuela, the ninety-two-year-old matron of the family, had died of a bad heart. What was left of the Hernandez clan came unraveled.
Etch’s parents had died three years before—his father staring down the barrel of his old military service revolver, his mother shortly afterward from an overdose of sleeping pills. Etch’s siblings drifted away to other states. His cousins stopped going to mass at San Juan. Even Etch moved out of the old neighborhood, to a nondescript little house on the near West Side where he could do his target practice in the surrounding fields.
His abuela’s funeral hit him harder than he expected. He finally realized he was alone. No family of his own. No wife or kids. Nothing but his job, and not many friends there.
Not that his colleagues disliked him. Everyone complimented Etch on his efficiency. Most of them trusted him to watch their backs. But nobody invited him for a beer. He did not radiate the kind of easygoing manner that made people want to hang out with him.
Except for Lucia. She went to the funeral with him. She held his hand during the lowering of the casket.
Afterward, they sat on her porch swing and drank tequila while inside the Spanish AM radio played old-fashioned rancheras.
“You should take the sergeant’s test,” Lucia told him. “I can see you as a supervisor. A lieutenant, even.”
For a moment, Etch was too surprised to speak. “I’m a career patrolman, like you. You understand that.”
She poured another shot of Cuervo.
She was wearing a charcoal dress, silver earrings, even lipstick. Her hair was freshly washed and curled. She smelled like jasmine.
“People make a wide arc around you,” Lucia said. “They sense you’re not one of the guys. That’s okay. You’re . . . detached. You’re a born commander, Etch. You should stop worrying and play your strengths.”
A Santiago Jiménez song played on the radio, the sounds of accordion and basso guitar pulsing through the screen door.
Lucia’s daughter, Ana, was home from Lackland Air Force Base. It was her first weekend furlough after basic training. Etch could hear Ana inside, talking on the phone to a friend. A lot of twenty-one-year-old catch-up talk—No way. Oh my God, you’re kidding! He did what?
Etch tried not to resent Ana’s presence.
Lucia looked good tonight. It felt right to just sit next to her.
He’d thought, once Ana was grown and out of the house . . . maybe there’d be time to get closer to Lucia. He’d been trying for so long, building up his courage for the eleven years they’d worked together. They spent every day together. In the field, they could read each other’s body language perfectly, finish each other’s sentences. Yet off duty, she still acted distant. Every time he edged toward telling her how he felt, she seemed to sense it and pull away.
“Lucia, I couldn’t work a job where you weren’t my partner,” he said finally.
She smiled, but there was sadness behind it. “You should do more than this, Etch. You could run things better than the brass we got now, for sure. You’re a good man.”
“No, I’m not. Just lonely.”
She said nothing.
“I know everybody in our beat,” Etch said. “I know their kids and grandkids. And I’ve still got no one. I just can’t—”
“Get close,” she supplied, when he faltered. “It’s like somebody stole that part of you—the part that lets you connect.”
There was no need to answer. She described him as perfectly as the day she’d named him “Etch.”
His heart pounded like a damn teenager’s. He reached over and rested his hand on her knee. She didn’t object. She laced her fingers on top of his.
Then Ana flew out the door, breathless. “Mom, can I borrow your car?”
Gently but firmly, Lucia brushed away Etch’s hand.
Ana took a step back. “Oh—”
“It’s all right, honey.” Lucia forced a smile. “Etch, did I tell you Ana is applying for special police?”
“That’s great.” Etch tried to sound enthusiastic, though his heart felt like crushed paper. “You thinking about civilian law enforcement some day?”
Ana studied him warily, then nodded. “Four years in the service, then college. Then apply to SAPD.”
She said it just like any twenty-one-year-old—as if life plans were carved in stone. It was hard for Etch to believe she was the same age as a monster like Frankie White.
“Uh . . . Mom?” Ana looked at the tequila bottle. “I thought you told me you’d stopped drinking.”
Lucia rolled her eyes. She was only drinking to commiserate with an old friend, she said. Everything was fine.
Car keys were provided.
Ana promised not to be out too late.
Etch tried not to resent the look Lucia’s daughter gave him—as if she thought he was making her mother drink. As if that was the only way Lucia would ever hold hands with him.
After Ana was gone, Lucia and he sat on the porch a while longer, but the moment for holding hands had passed.
A news break came on the radio, the Spanish DJ giving an update on Julia Garcia’s murder. The witness who’d provided the description of a possible suspect had now turned up missing herself. Police would not say if they had other leads.
Music came back on, a ballad about love in the desert.
“Who was it?” Etch asked.
Lucia frowned. “Who was who?”