Unity and Destiny Pt. 06

"Esteban Castillo," Esther said. "I should have watched those pictures more carefully from the back room, but I was looking outside for associates of Jackson. Castillo had three or four other names, and you're right. A drug cartel, but also organized crime ties in America and Europe. Suspected in several murders."

He did remember Castillo's picture. He still couldn't connect it with the dead body. Someone had found the man's wallet, which contained a license and credit card in a name that didn't mean anything to them, along with several hundred dollars of cash. Javier hadn't been able to look at any of it.

"No one will miss him," Javier said.

"You don't know that," said Esther sharply. "He was still a man."

Javier couldn't argue about that. Never with Esther.

"What I really meant was, maybe law enforcement wouldn't be shocked to see him dead," said Javier. "A man like that could be killed for all sorts of reasons. And Myra Jackson wanted him. Obviously he turned out to be even more dangerous than Janelle. Jackson's list of suspects seems pretty good so far, if nothing else. Maybe she wanted him alive, but we know now he wouldn't have allowed that."

Esther shook her head. "You two talk about this. I can't think about it right now. I'm going to keep Tomiko company. And maybe Jacob would have some better ideas about Mr. Tanaka's cremation."

"We don't trust Jackson one bit, granted," said Javier after Esther left. "But what if she were tipped off about the body? We just heard someone mention it, with our deep connections among the terrorist Changed. Would she try to nail us for it? She could already do that around our connection with Lukas, or Mark. Or would it give us breathing room instead? Show that the Changed are taking care of their own?"

Selena thought about that. "That's an interesting thought, but I don't like it. Seems incredibly risky, and for dubious gain."

"Are we good enough to cover up a shooting like this?" asked Javier. "We're not professionals like Castillo. Do we have to dig out all the bullets? Clean up the scene, DNA or whatever? What if the FBI worked it out anyway, and then they started to chase us down for that? Someone probably knows where Castillo was, approximately. Someone may come looking for him anyway. And that someone might be even more dangerous, with strings they can pull."

"All the more reason to dump his body elsewhere," said Selena. "Though it's true, there are a lot of risks doing that too. But wait a second. Think about what Mr. Tanaka told us. Castillo's abilities were truly unusual, even from what Esther and Tanaka knew between them. He was astonishingly good at hiding, much better even than Diana."

"What? Are you saying he's the Mexican? That doesn't—"

"No, of course not. I'm saying he sounds exactly like the dangerous people Tanaka said the Mexican had suddenly started to use. And Castillo has drug cartel connections. It's completely plausible, from what we know. Whatever else Jackson is, I don't think she's corrupt, or about to roll over at the bidding of Castillo's bosses. And if we can use this to start pointing Jackson and her group towards the cartels—"

"Shit," Javier said. "She said they needed a scapegoat. That is the biggest fucking target they could ever want. The military and security types would have a field day, wouldn't they?"

"Who better to coordinate attacks like Black Christmas? A hell of a lot more plausible than an international secret society of Changed that no one every heard of before. God knows what the cartels' motive would be, from the government's perspective, but I doubt that would slow down the train, if it started going that way. And the best part is, it could easily be the right direction. Right now the Mexican seems like a real suspect, and we have some chance of working out a motive. Unless the Mexican's fallen deep in Unity with all the rest of the loonies, and even he doesn't know the reasons. But I bet we're going to find more information in that notebook, information we might be able to feed Jackson, with our own twist."

"Trying to use Jackson to leverage the whole government response," said Javier. "This is a crazy idea."

"But it would be satisfying, wouldn't it?" Selena said. "If we could pull it off."

* * *

Esther got into the driver's seat of Tomiko's car, watching the woman in the passenger seat. She remembered what she'd been like after her father died. She didn't know what would have happened to her, if not for Javier and his Mamá. This woman had obviously taken care of Tanaka a long, long time. She hadn't answered any of Esther's careful questions about what she wanted to do next, though she'd nodded at the idea of getting her great-uncle's body cremated as soon as they could. Selena said Tomiko would want to keep the ashes, and they might need to be careful to choose somewhere that would understand Japanese customs.

Tanaka's body was under a folded tarp in the bed of the truck, and they'd gotten Mark into the back seat in a stretcher Nicola had improvised from tree branches and duct tape. Esther had agreed on the plan to leave Castillo's body and car, mostly because it seemed the easiest route and saved anyone from dealing with that horrible mess. Javier and Selena were still arguing about the best way to handle it. That was good. It gave them something to think about aside from the man they'd killed. They'd had no choice, of course, but she hated that it had happened. Just like with Andrew. And this time she'd been an equal participant, though she doubted the others would see it that way.

She didn't know why she was convinced she would be better company for Tomiko than Selena, or any of the others. Esther was starting to think it was a kind of selfishness. She could be the one to comfort, rather than thinking about what had happened and the consequences.

"Tomiko," she said. "Do you have any family or friends we could contact nearby? Or in Japan, for that matter? People to help you?"

It didn't seem Tomiko was going to reply to this either, but she eventually spoke.

"Uncle was all I had," she said. "I've taken care of him for over thirty years. But that was proper. When I was a child he took me in, and loved me so much neither of us knew what to do with it. I couldn't have done any different when he asked me to come back."

Esther drove silently while Tomiko sat with her memories.

"He terrified me," she said. "I was ten when the war ended, and I hadn't known him. He wasn't even really family, except indirectly. Married to the sister of my great-uncle's wife. But that entire side of the family lived in Hiroshima. He was the only one left. My mother had just died."

"I'm so sorry," Esther said.

"He showed up at the children's home, with those horrible bandages, walking with difficulty. Like a creature from a bad dream. Only years later did I finally grasp what it must have been like for him. He was the only one to survive in his entire neighborhood. He'd lost his children, his grandchildren, all his neighbors. Of course he held on to me so tightly that I couldn't stand it sometimes. He took me to America a few years later, and I couldn't understand how he even tolerated being in the country that killed our entire family. The people who built a hideous bomb that should have killed him. But that was never how Uncle thought of it."

She rubbed her eyes and looked at Esther.

"But it was America," she said. "And I was growing up. Uncle was brilliant with languages, and he worked as a translator. We moved a few times, but we settled near Washington. Uncle was involved in diplomatic talks, and I thought he was starting to feel more hope for the future. But he started acting more withdrawn. Having trouble getting up, spending his whole evenings just sitting, as though he was listening. I was in college, though, busy with schoolwork. Dating cute boys who had no clue about my life experience. And then a week after I started my job fresh out of college, he disappeared. He'd been on a trip to San Francisco for work."

"Is that when he heard from Abuela? My old teacher?"

Tomiko nodded. "Yes, though of course he only told me years later. It was a man who found him in San Francisco, and told him that he understood what was special about Uncle, that he wasn't alone, and that his grandmother wanted to help teach him. Uncle said he'd been distantly aware of something pulling on his thoughts, and he was absolutely terrified to find out that it was a real person. He ran all the way back to Japan, to find a place that he'd dreamed of sometimes when he lived there. And then years later, after I'd given up wondering what had happened, he sent me a letter, apologizing and begging me to come. So I left my lonely life in America and plunged into the silence of that place, helping him by making trips down to the tiny town for supplies, or taking the ferry. Uncle told me very little of what he was doing, but I understood enough in time, and I knew I was helping with something far more important than my life in America ever would have amounted to. And so the years passed, until one morning I heard him scream in outrage, and start yelling incoherently. But he was unconscious by the time I reached him."

"Black Christmas," said Esther.

"Yes," she said. "We had a radio, and it didn't take me very long to work out the timing. He'd heard the nuclear bomb strike India, and I can't even imagine what that must have been like for him. When he finally woke, he said he'd tried to stop everything, that we were in terrible danger, and that he'd waited too long. He thought the Ear was still ringing with his shout, and people would come looking. I got him away from there, but he insisted on going to America. That he was no use anymore, but you needed everything he could remember."

Esther nodded. "You understood what he'd done, then?"

"Yes," she said. "He wouldn't explain exactly, but when I started hearing the stories, I began to put it together. He'd never said a word about the day the bomb struck Hiroshima, and who could blame him? I should have guessed that everything about it was still frozen in his unbelievable memory, locked away and waiting to explode outwards. I'm glad he did it. I wish he could've made the entire world feel it. Everyone has to know what we built."

Esther shivered. And silently, from a safe distance, she forced herself to look at it one more time: the vision that she had trapped perfectly, in her mind that never forgot a detail.

* * *

Javier and Selena finally lapsed into silence. Nicola sat in the back with Mark, holding him still and stroking his chest. They'd had to bend his legs over her lap to fit him in properly.

"I think that plan sounds like shit," Nicola said. "But I can't come up with anything better."

"Always good to have a vote of confidence," Selena said.

After a while Nicola spoke up again.

"Selena, I'm so glad you took your gun. Esther will never be able to thank you directly, so the rest of us have to do that. You and Javier saved me from being the one to kill him in a horrible way, or more likely get myself instantly killed. I can't even understand how you shot him. I ran straight at him and I still couldn't quite see him properly."

Javier thought about that. It was true. Selena had hit him two of three times, when he was zigzagging and impossible for Javier to keep track of. That must have slowed him down, at least. It was only when Esther had finally frozen him in place that Javier had been able to see him properly, and Selena had shot him instantly and precisely. That wasn't easy to do, was it? She must be very good with a gun.

"It was difficult, and probably I was lucky," Selena said eventually. "Did you feel how he was pushing on your senses? That was how he did it. Something like Franklin's powers, I think. Or a much more aggressive version of Esther's concealment."

"And leaving aside Esther, you're better than any of us at resisting that sort of thing," Nicola said slowly. "And I still absolutely suck at it."

"But you're improving," said Javier. "Esther said so."

"Because she's the sweetest person in the universe. I have to stop being a baby about this. I've always been too ready to ignore anything I'm not good at, and Mark keeps reminding me—" Nicola bit her lip.

"It's OK," Javier said. "We'll have time."

"Goddammit, Javier, that's what I'm saying. It's past time. I should've been able to help Mark. I've got to train my body more seriously, even make myself go running with him when he's better. Esther hates exercising, and even she's managed to do it a lot more than me."

"You're welcome to come running with me," said Javier. "When Mark bounces back and starts annoying all of us again. The two of us might be better matched."

Javier suspected they were both being way too optimistic about Mark, but Nicola obviously appreciated it. "Thanks, Javier. That's a better idea than doing it with Mark, for sure. I'd probably punch him after a couple days of that. I doubt I'll ever be as good a runner as you, though. And I'll be pissy the entire time."

"I'm used to it," he said.

A few minutes later he was interrupted by his phone beeping. "I guess we have reception. Let's pull over. Esther will figure it out."

Sure enough, Esther pulled off the highway before they did. Javier knew her better than anyone, and she still surprised him often enough. It was that she continued to improve at listening to everything. More consistently, more information at once, less exhausted by the process.

Esther called Raj's cellular phone, standing next to Tomiko as she talked. She gave Raj an extremely limited summary of what had happened, and then asked to talk to Jacob. From the sound of it, Jacob was much better prepared for something like this than they'd expected. But then, he'd been involved in many funeral arrangements over the years.

"Would you like a wake?" Esther asked. "Jacob will host one at his house if you like. We would all attend, if you wanted, and could invite any others you can think of."

For the first time, Tomiko started to cry.

"Yes," she said. "I'd like that. There aren't any others."

"Would you like to talk to him?" Esther said. "He's an Episcopal priest, but he says he's performed other types of services, and he has friends who can help if you have any particular wishes."

They gave her space while she talked with Jacob. Apparently things were much simpler than they realized. In the morning Tomiko would go with Jacob to get a death certificate from the health officer, and no one would be suspicious of the sudden death of a man who was well over a hundred. Even transporting the body in the back of a truck was merely unusual, not illegal.

Eventually Javier got on the phone with Raj to explain their plan to handle Castillo's body.

"Esther agreed to this?" Raj asked dubiously.

"Yeah," he said. "But if you can think of anything better, we can still switch it around. The thing is, we don't know how long his body will stay undiscovered. His car's abandoned on the highway, and Esther says there's a hiking trailhead further up the gravel road. Someone's going to find him, and we thought at least we could keep some control by letting Jackson's people deal with it first."

Raj sighed. "No, I doubt I'll come up with anything better. If it'd been me, I would probably have panicked and been caught by police dumping the body somewhere. But this grand scheme you're concocting, implicating the cartels, we have to talk more about that. Don't try to push that too hard from the start."

In the end they agreed on a short message to send to Jackson. Esther supplied the coordinates, and Raj wrote it as they talked.

You told us to send along any information we heard. Well, we've heard there was an assassin with Changes who's been killing people who might expose things about the Black Christmas conspiracy. A cartel enforcer, was the rumor. I guess there was a fight, and he wound up dead, near the coordinates below. The way they described him, it was probably Esteban Castillo. He killed two of them with his bare hands. I guess it was only luck they managed to kill him. I hope this is useful. We have no interest in protecting people like Castillo and whoever he was working for. We'll keep listening.

-J.

"Should I really send it right now?" Raj asked. "Shouldn't we wait a little, for plausible deniability?"

"Maybe," Javier said, looking at the sun beginning to set. "At this point no one's likely to find Castillo until tomorrow. If you wait one more hour, it'll be dark here. Whoever Jackson sends may hurry to be on the scene before the locals find out. It might make them more likely to just cover up everything overnight."

"All right," said Raj. "Give my best to everyone. We'll be thinking of Mark. Jacob says he can stay here to recover if that's the easiest thing. I think he already told Ms. Nakahara that she's welcome as well."

* * *

It was late enough when they got to Jacob's that Nicola gladly accepted his offer to stay. They all helped move Mark to the living room floor, and Jacob gave up his room to Tomiko. Then they helped move Tanaka's body into a simple pine coffin Jacob had managed to procure.

Javier took one last look at the scene when they left. Tomiko sitting in a chair next to the coffin, looking lost, with a mug of tea Jacob had brewed for her. Jacob bringing Nicola more blankets for Mark, and herself. Crouching next to her to ask if there were any medical supplies he could buy. They took him too much for granted, Javier thought. Jacob was always there at the worst of times. Somehow he always had time for them.

They took the van to the Shack, walking the last stretch in the dark. He and Esther collapsed into the bed together, just holding each other. They'd barely even touched each other today, and Javier hadn't even noticed until now. He suddenly found himself crying.

"Javier," Esther said eventually. "I don't blame you and Selena for helping kill Castillo. By that point there was no other way. You were protecting all of us. And I'm not truly angry about the notebook. I was terrified. I saw you stand in front of me, and I couldn't seem to do anything to stop Castillo. The only thing I had to cling to was that maybe Castillo wasn't interested in you, that he'd left alone the others after killing Aaron. And then I remembered you'd taken the notebook from me."

"As I said," Javier managed. "I'd do it a thousand times. I'd do anything it took. But Esther, Selena kept her cool despite it all. She only did what she had to. I can't stop remembering what it felt like to hit that man, over and over. I've never felt anything like it. I don't know how you can kiss someone like that."

"The same way I kissed you yesterday," she said. "And the same way I'll keep kissing you tomorrow, and the day after that. Javier, you walked away from that and helped save Mark's life. You're the same person I've always loved. Let's take our clothes off and go to sleep."

Javier couldn't stop shivering, and Esther warmed herself up for him in that amazing way, but it wasn't enough. He tried to hold still, and probably Esther was utterly exhausted anyway, because she fell asleep quickly. But every time Javier tried to close his eyes, something jerked him awake again: a creak in the walls, the whisper of wind. Each time, his right hand grasped for the feel of something familiar.

Not Esther. A rough, heavy weight of wood.