Did he even have a name?
Alejandro.
That was the name Dr. Torres had chosen for him, and then carefully built the memories of Alejandro into him. But the emotions that went with Alejandro’s memories were Raymond Torres’s, and those he had carefully left out.
It had, Alex realized, avoided confusion. When he saw the women — the women Torres hated — in the environment of Alejandro’s memory, they had become other people from other times, and Alejandro had killed them.
And why not? To Alejandro, they were the wives of thieves and murderers, and as guilty of those crimes as their husbands.
But in the darkness of night, in the visions generated by the remnants of Alex Lonsdale’s subconscious, they were old friends, people he had known all his life, and he mourned them.
And that had been Torres’s mistake.
For his creation to have been perfect, there should have been none of Alex Lonsdale left.
Ahead of him, the headlights picked up the sign for the park that lay on the outskirts of the village. Alex pulled into the parking lot and shut off the engine.
His father had told him that when he was a boy, he’d played here often, yet he still had no memory of it. His only memory was Raymond Torres’s memory of standing on the street, pleading with his mother to take him to the swings and push him as the other mothers were pushing their children.
“No,” María Torres would mutter. “The park is not for us. It is for los gringos. Mira!” And she would point to the sign dedicating the park to the first American settlers who had come to La Paloma after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had been signed. Then she would take Ramón by the hand and drag him away.
Alex got out of the car and began making his way across the empty lawn toward the swings. Tentatively he settled himself into one of them, and gave an experimental kick with his foot.
The movement had the vaguest feeling of familiarity to it, and Alex began pumping himself higher and higher. As the air rushed over his face and he felt the slight lurch in his stomach at the apex of each arc, Alex realized that this must have been what he’d done as a boy, this must be what he’d loved so much.
He stopped pumping, and let the swing slowly die until he was sitting still once again.
Then, knowing he had much to do before he went to the house on Hacienda Drive where the people who thought they were his parents lived, he left the swing and returned to his car.
He drove on into La Paloma, and turned left before he got to the Square. Two blocks further on, he came to the plaza. In the flickering lights of the gas lamps, the memories of Alejandro began creeping back to him, but Alex forced them out of his consciousness, keeping himself in the present. Only when he drove around the village hall to the mission graveyard did he let the memories come back.
Was this where they would bury him, or would they take him up into the hills above the hacienda and bury him with his mother and his sisters?
No.
They would bury him here, for they would be burying Alex, not Alejandro. Again he got out of the car, and slipped into the little graveyard. Tucked away in a dusty corner, he found the grave he was looking for.
Alejandro de Meléndez y Ruiz
1832–1926
His own grave, in a way, and already sixty years old. There were flowers on the grave, though, and Alex knew who had put them there. Old María Torres, still honoring her grandfather’s memory. Alex reached down and picked one of the flowers, breathing in its fragrance. Then, taking the flower with him, he went back to the car.
In the Square, he stepped over the chain around the tree, and stood for a long time under the spreading branches. Alejandro’s memories were strong again, and Alex let them spread through his mind.
Once more he saw his father’s body swinging limply from the hempen noose knotted around his neck, and felt the unfamiliar sensation of tears dampening his cheeks. He took the flower from Alejandro’s grave and laid it gently on the ground above his father’s grave. Then he turned away, knowing he’d seen the great oak tree for the last time.
Lisa and Carol Cochran were still sitting in the friendly brightness of the kitchen when they heard the car pull up outside, and a door slam. Carol hesitated, then pulled the drawn shades just far enough back to allow her to peer out into the street. A car she didn’t recognize sat by the curb, and it was too dark to see who had gotten out of it. She dropped the shade back into position, and went to the stove, where she nervously poured herself yet another cup of coffee. As soon as Jim had left the house, she had given up any idea of sleeping that night.
“Who was it, Mom?” Lisa whispered, and Carol forced a grin that held much more confidence than she was feeling.
“It’s no one. I’ve never seen the car before, and I don’t think anyone’s in it. Whoever it was must have gone across the street.” But even as she spoke, she had the uncanny feeling that she was wrong, and that whoever had arrived in the car was still outside.
At that moment, the doorbell rang, its normally friendly chime taking on an ominous tone.
“What shall we do?” Lisa asked, her voice barely audible.
“Nothing,” Carol whispered back. “We’ll just sit here, and whoever it is will go away.”
The doorbell sounded again, and Lisa seemed to shrink away from the sound.
“He’ll go away,” Carol repeated. “If we don’t answer it, he’ll go away.”
And then, as the bell rang for the third time, there was a pounding of feet on the stairs, and through the dining room Carol could see Kim, apparently having leapt from the third step, catching herself before crashing headlong into the door. Knowing what was about to happen, she rose to her feet. “Kim!”
But it was too late. Over her own cry, she heard Kim’s exuberant voice demanding to know who was outside before she opened the door.
“Don’t open it, Kim,” she cried, but Kim only turned to give her an exasperated glare.
“Don’t be dumb, Mommy,” Kim called. “It’s only Alex.” She reached up and turned the knob, then pulled the door open wide.
Carrying the shotgun in his right hand, Alex stepped into the Cochrans’ foyer.
“How long we going to sit here?” Jackson asked. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette, then cupped his hand over his lighter as a brief flame illuminated the dark interior of the car they had parked fifty feet up the hill from the Lonsdales’.
“As long as it takes,” Finnerty growled, shifting in the seat in a vain attempt to ease the cramps in his legs. He’d been up too many hours, and exhaustion was beginning to take its toll.
“What makes you so sure the kid’s going to come back here at all?”
Finnerty shrugged stiffly. “Instincts. He doesn’t really have any place else to go. Besides, why shouldn’t he come back here?”
Jackson glanced across at his partner, and took a deep drag on his cigarette, hoping perhaps the smoke might drive away the sleepiness that was threatening to overwhelm him. “Seems to me that if I were in his shoes, this is the last place I’d come. I think I’d be heading for Mexico right about now.”
“Except for one thing,” Finnerty growled. “According to the kid’s dad, the kid couldn’t have done anything, remember?”
“You believe that shit?”
“We saw Alex Lonsdale the night he wrecked himself, remember? By rights, that kid should have been dead. Jesus, Tom, half his head was caved in. But he’s not dead. So who am I to say how they saved him? Maybe they did exactly what Doc Lonsdale says they did.”