Chapter Nine
Nine
On first impression, Las Espadas is just like one of those small, scrappy neighborhoods Elsie has seen in cop shows on TV.
A little tired, but clinging on. No white picket fences.
No cookie-cutter houses with front doors in flawless pigeon gray.
Instead, there’s traffic noise from the interstate.
Potholed streets. Trash cans that are just a little too full.
There is already a crowd gathered outside the Herrera family’s home, a community that has turned out in force to wish one of its own a final goodbye.
Most people are knotted in groups; others sip drinks, finger shirt cuffs, not knowing where to look.
A hundred or so yards away, a mourner hangs back, an outsider, just like Elsie, not sure through which entry point, or at what moment, to approach such an intimate scene.
There’s a stall laid out in the Herreras’ front yard.
A large photograph of Cheryl—calm, wide eyes; thick, dark hair—has been placed atop a bunched white tablecloth.
On a folding chair next to it, a young girl, perhaps a sister, sits with her hands clasped neatly on her lap.
Spread out across the tablecloth are candles for people to light and carry through the streets when the sun goes down.
It makes Elsie’s chest tighten, the dignity of it, the coming together of a community in their grief.
She had hoped that by visiting, by finding out more about Cheryl and her family, she might start to fit together the very first pieces of the puzzle.
She hadn’t expected that being surrounded by so much loss, by people buried under the rubble of a dangerous man’s actions, would affect her quite so much.
She glances up and sees a small man in a white T-shirt and a vest step out of the Herreras’ front door.
Elsie sucks in a breath. His is a face that has been weathered by grief.
His polite smile—for neighbors who clasp his shoulder or take him in their arms as he passes—never quite reaches his eyes.
Elsie knows this must be Cheryl’s father.
The family will have had many visitors since Cheryl was killed, ten days ago—relatives attempting to console the inconsolable, neighbors carrying food and flowers, detectives, rubberneckers, those desperate to brush up against tragedy.
There will be something uniting them all.
She knows because she has felt it: the hum of people electrified by the relief that the universe didn’t choose them, their sister, their daughter this time.
She makes her way through the crowd. Women are sobbing.
Men are nodding, grave faced, their arms folded, their stomachs thrust forward, a posture that says, We will not let this happen again.
Several of the younger mourners are in running gear.
Elsie wonders if they might be from the same track team as Cheryl, makes a note of their kit.
Before she can hesitate further, she makes a beeline for Cheryl’s father, then waits for a well-wisher to depart before she steps into view.
“Mr. Herrera, hi. I’m so very sorry for your loss.” She holds out her hand and he takes it, but the grip is weak.
“My name is Elsie Parker. I’m a reporter with the Tribune.”
She does not want to give her real name or reveal that she is actually from the Signal—not only because she does not want it getting back to Hunter that she broke rank, but because she is sure a grieving family would not let a lowly editor’s assistant ask them questions about their dead daughter.
“Did Roachford not get everything he needs?” Mr. Herrera asks, not unkindly.
She pauses, wrong-footed. “Did…?”
“Your colleague, Dom Roachford. Was there something else you needed to ask about Cherry?”
Of course someone else has been here. Any decent reporter in the area would have been here already. She scolds herself.
“Yes.” She won’t break the smile. “We just needed a couple of extra details for our story.”
His eyes skitter around her face, checking for cracks.
“We just hope that getting the word out there will encourage anyone who knows anything to come forward.”
It feels cheap—truly cheap—lying to a bereaved father. But, she hurriedly reminds herself, this is the only way she is going to get what she needs. And it is for a good cause. It’s for Cheryl.
“Come on in.” He nods over his shoulder, toward the front door. “We just want to catch whoever did this.”
Tragedy has snatched all warmth from the house. There are people on the couch, drinking tea, their eyes ringed with red. Others are gathered in the kitchen, mouths turned downward, hair done nicely.
In the living room, condolence cards line the mantelpiece.
There’s an overspill of lilies in a thick glass vase, their stamens drooping so low that orange pollen has begun to collect on the carpet.
There are ornaments on the shelves, little ceramic animals that Elsie’s mother used to collect, too.
Family photos hang on the walls. The tasseled cushions have been plumped especially for today’s guests.
The household certainly doesn’t look, Elsie thinks, like the sort that would have links to a dangerous gang like the Kings.
She eyes the lilies. She received flowers—just one bunch, freesias—when Albert had been arrested.
No note. She’d thought it odd. What on earth was she supposed to do with flowers?
As the petals wilted, she had denied the authorities and the journalists nothing.
Not because she was charitable, like Mr. Herrera, but because she hadn’t had the strength to say no.
She sat in her living room as they took over her house, her lips tentatively forming but never quite releasing the words she didn’t feel she deserved to say: Get out.
Mr. Herrera offers her a cup of coffee. She declines, wondering where Cheryl’s mother is, knowing it’s entirely possible that she is behind the closed bedroom door.
“That’s Cherry’s room, right there.” Mr. Herrera gestures to another door, which is propped open. There is a nameplate on its outside, sneakers and stars scrawled in lurid felt-tip pen. Elsie swallows. She had forgotten that Cheryl was only a few years out of high school.
Beyond the doorway, the room has a time-capsule quality about it, a strange, nostalgic glow—the kind that only rooms of the deceased can have.
“You can look if you like. I’d just ask that you don’t touch anything.” Cheryl’s father glances at his feet.
She could wait, tell him that she wouldn’t want to disturb his daughter’s things, that it would be improper of her to snoop around.
They could just talk here, on the couch, by the lilies.
Instead, she rises and crosses to the room, called in by half-used cosmetics, by the wardrobe door left open, an avalanche of clothes bulging from inside.
An old Chatty Cathy doll sits slumped on the windowsill, next to a forgotten ant farm.
Its soil is dry, but a few insects still beaver away, oblivious to the somberness outside their glass.
On the floor, a pair of purple socks lies wrinkled.
Cheryl must have slipped them off, kicked them aside when she got too hot.
Elsie takes care to step around them, not to touch anything—to leave the room just as it was when Cheryl was last here.
The walls are covered in certificates, Elsie sees. Medals dangle in thick clutches, hanging from nails wedged into the wall. She moves closer to try to read some of the details.
“She was about to go to state finals.”
Elsie startles.
Mr. Herrera steps into the room and takes a bunch of medals down from a nail, loops the ribbons tightly around his palm, holds the disks out for her to inspect.
“She just had it,” he says. “She was a superstar, Daddy’s little princess.”
Elsie watches his face, searches for something unsaid behind the words. She has a journalist’s mind, and she knows a journalist’s first impulse is to try to pin down details. Sometimes it’s the father. She has to consider that possibility.
“She was clearly talented.” Elsie brushes her fingertips across embossed gold. “You must have been proud. Was there anyone she ran track with who—”
“She would have made it senior year,” he cuts her off, “but she got mono, was laid up sick—lost ten pounds of muscle.”
Elsie imagines him weighing his daughter, invested in her routine, her performance, wanting her to reach her potential. Did it anger him when she didn’t?
“She was going to be homecoming queen that year, too.” He hangs the medals carefully back on the wall. “She cried herself to sleep. Her mother had even made the dress, bright blue. She looked so beautiful in it. Too beautiful.” His laugh is hollow. “Too grown-up. I almost didn’t let her go.”
Elsie flinches as a memory daggers in. Her own father, the day of her homecoming, the strike of his arm across her face, the way her mother apologized for him, said he didn’t mean it.
He couldn’t control himself. He’d been through so much.
They’d covered the bruise with makeup. The dress she wore was yellow.
Albert had called her a sunflower as he grasped the silk in his fist, pulled it tight, just as Mr. Herrera had done with the ribbons.
“When she came down with mono she took it out on me. Typical teenager.” He pulls at his chin as if the memory of it hurts him. “She said I was happy that she was stuck in the house. But I was never happy when she was ill. I never liked seeing Cherry like that.”
“I’m sure any girl who missed out would have acted the same,” Elsie consoles.
He nods, exhales. “You got kids?”
“Never happened for us.” It’s only half a lie. He doesn’t have to know that she is relieved, every day, that she never had kids with Albert, that she never wanted them.
“The school put her in the yearbook, though,” he says, ignoring her answer. “The photographer let her come in one day, in her dress, and shot her in a little crown.” He taps his head.