His partner, Reese Hagerstrom, accompanied him without once commenting
on the lateness of the hour. For Julio and for no one else, Reese would
work around the clock, deny himself not only sleep but days off and
regular meals, and make any sacrifice required. Julio knew, if it ever
beeame necessary for Reese to step into the path of a bullet and die for
Julio, the big man would make that ultimate sacrifice as well, and
without the slightest hesitation. It was something which they both
understood in their hearts, in their bones, but of which they had never
spoken.
At 12,41 in the morning, they took the news of Emestina’ s brutal death
to her parents, with whom she had lived, a block east of Main Street in
a modest house flanked by twin magnolias. The family had to be
awakened, and at first they were disbelieving, certain that Ernestina
had come home and gone to bed by now.
But, of course, her bed was empty.
Though Juan and Maria Hernandez had six children, they took this blow as
hard as parents with one precious child would have taken it. Maria sat
on the rose-colored sofa in the living room, too weak to stand.
Her two youngest sons-both teenagers-sat beside her, red-eyed and too
shaken to maintain the macho front behind which Latino boys of their age
usually hid. Maria held a framed photograph of Emestina, alternately
weeping and tremulously speaking of good times shared with the beloved
daughter. Another daughter, nineteen-year-old Laurita, sat alone in the
dining room, unapproachable, inconsolable, clutching a rosary. Juan
Hernandez paced agitatedly, jaws clenched, blinking furiously to repress
his tears. As patriarch, it was his duty to provide an example of
strength to his family, to be unshaken and unbroken by this visitation
of muerta. But it was too much for him to bear, and twice he retreated
to the kitchen where, behind the closed door, he made soft strangled
sounds of grief.
Julio could do nothing to relieve their anguish, but he inspired trust
and hope for justice, perhaps because his special commitment to Emestina
was clear and convincing. Perhaps because, in his soft-spoken way, he
conveyed a hound-dog perseverance that lent conviction to promises of
swift justice. Or perhaps his smoldering fury at the very existence of
death, all death, was painfully evident in his face and eyes and voice.
After all, that fury had burned in him for many years now, since the
afternoon when he had discovered rats chewing out the throat of his baby
brother, and by now the fire within him must have grown bright enough to
show through for all to see.
From Mr. Hernandez, Julio and Reese learned that Ernestina had gone out
for an evening on the town with her best girlfriend, Becky Klienstad,
with whom she worked at a local Mexican restaurant, where both were
waitresses. They had gone in Emestina’s car, a powder-blue,
ten-year-old Ford Fairlane.
“If this has happened to my Ernestina,” Mr. Hernandez said, “then what’s
happened to poor Becky? Something must have happened to her, too.
Something very terrible.”
From the Hernandez kitchen, Julio telephoned the Klienstad family in
Orange. Becky-actually Rebeccawas not yet home. Her parents had not
been worried because she was, after all, a grown woman, and because some
of the dance spots that she and Ernestina favored were open until two in
the morning. But now they were very worried indeed.
1,20A.M. In the unmarked sedan in front of the Hernandez house, Julio
sat behind the wheel and stared bleakly out at the magnolia-scented
night.
Through the open windows came the susurration of leaves stirring in the
vague June breeze. A lonely, cold sound.
Reese used the console-mounted computer terminal to generate an A.P.B
and pickup order on Ernestina’ s powder-blue Ford. He’d obtained the
license number from her parents.
“See if there’re any messages on hold for us,” Julio said.
At the moment he did not trust himself to operate the keyboard. He was
full of anger and wanted to pound on something-anything-with both fists,
and if the computer gave him any trouble or if he hit one wrong key by
mistake, he might take out his frustration on the machine merely because