She stood up, a bundle of adrenaline. She hadn’t touched her espresso or her pastry.
“I can’t sit here anymore. Let’s do it.”
89
They had to dodge the parade and an outdoor food fair to get to the church.
With each new block, they drew closer to the cliffs, as the buildings and houses and roads grew more and more decrepit, reflecting an even older Mexico that hadn’t kept up with the times.
There wasn’t much celebrating going on in this part of town. Some of the houses had makeshift altars in their windows, with burning candles, offerings of fruit, and photos of their dead loved ones. But most of the houses were silent and empty.
After a while, they came to a short dirt road with a battered sign that read: IGLESIA DEL SAGRADO CORAZON. At the end of the road stood a large, rustic adobe structure with a leaning bell tower that looked as if it might topple at any moment.
Church of the Sacred Heart.
They stood at the mouth of the road, gaping at it.
“You sure this is the right one?” Vargas asked.
Ortiz checked his map. “This is it, pocho. ”
“Maybe there’s more than one Church of the Sacred-”
“La iglesia esta cerrada,” a voice said.
They turned to find an old woman on a bicycle staring at them from across the street. A plastic sack full of conchas — Mexican sweet breads-hung from the handlebars.
“La iglesia esta cerrada,” she repeated. The church is closed.
Vargas asked her for how long.
“Many weeks,” she said in Spanish. “After Father Gerard left.”
Ortiz’s eyebrows went up. “The priest is gone?”
“Yes,” the woman said. “One day the police came to speak to him; the next day, no more Gerard.”
Ortiz and Vargas exchanged looks and Vargas turned to translate for Beth.
But Beth wasn’t paying any attention to them, her gaze fixed on the church.
“Go home,” the old woman said. “There is nothing to see here.”
Then she turned her bike around and rode away, the sack of conchas swinging from the handlebars.
Ortiz watched her. “That was weird.”
Vargas nodded. “She came all the way out here with those sweet breads. I wonder who they were for.”
Ortiz shrugged. “Maybe she was selling them.”
Vargas turned to Beth again, but she was still staring at the church. Seemed transfixed.
“We need to come up with another game plan,” he told her. “The old woman says the priest is gone.”
“I know this place,” Beth said, then started up the road toward it.
Beth approached the entrance to the church, a jumble of half-memories swirling through her mind, trying to break through.
She did know this place. She was sure she’d been here before.
Moving up to the double doors, she ran a hand across their warped wooden surface.
It felt familiar to her.
There was a chain and padlock on the door handles, but when Beth pulled on the lock it sprang free in her hand. It hadn’t been fastened properly.
Unwinding the chain, she dropped it aside and pushed the doors open, the old hinges groaning.
Inside was a cavernous room with at least a dozen rows of pews, all facing an altar that featured a larger than life-size figure of Jesus on the cross. Sunlight slanted in from a skylight above and through stained-glass windows high along each side.
Beth had never been religious, but as she moved down the aisle there was no denying the power here. The feeling that you were in the presence of something larger than you. Greater.
She stopped in front of the altar, stared up at the watchful eyes of Christ.
“Beth, what is it?”
She turned. Vargas and Ortiz were standing in the doorway.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “There’s something about this place. I-”
She heard a shuffling sound from above and stopped herself, shifting her gaze to the balcony over the doorway.
To her surprise, a boy stood near the rail, staring down at her. Wide-eyed.
He couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old, a Mexican child wearing only a dark pair of pants. There were burn scars on the right side of his neck and down his arm.
He stared at Beth intently, then broke into a smile. “Elizabeth?”
Startled by the sound of her name, Beth stepped backward. The boy suddenly turned and ran, disappearing from sight, his footsteps clattering on the stairs.
And as Vargas and Ortiz stepped inside to see what the commotion was, the boy emerged at a full sprint and shot past them, coming straight toward Beth-the smile even wider now, a smile of joy as he threw his arms around her and hugged her.
“You came back for us,” he said. “I tell the others you would, but they don’t believe.”
He squeezed her tighter.
“You came back, Elizabeth. You came back.”
90
The boy’s name was Cristo.
He seemed hurt when Beth couldn’t remember it.
They were sitting in a pew now, and he was holding her hands, not wanting to let them go.
Vargas and Ortiz sat several pews away, watching and listening, giving them room.
“Someone hurt me,” Beth told the boy, then bent forward and showed him the scar on her scalp. “Some bad people did this to me and it makes me forget sometimes.”
She looked at the burn marks on his neck and arm and knew that he was no stranger to bad people himself. That feeling of anger she’d felt in the car with Rafael threatened to overcome her again.
“What do you forget?” Cristo asked.
“All kinds of things. Names, places. Like this place. I think I’ve been here before, but I’m not sure.”
“Si,” he said. “You come here many times. But how do you forget about me?”
Beth’s heart was breaking.
“I’m sorry, Cristo.” She touched her chest. “I can feel you here…” Then her head. “But I can’t find you in here.”
He looked confused. “Is this why you don’t come back for so long? Because you cannot find us?”
“Yes,” she said. “So help me remember. Tell me how I know you and why I came here.”
The boy said nothing, staring down at their hands now, his smile gone.
“Please, Cristo. Please help me remember.”
When he looked up at her again, there were tears in his eyes. “How do you forget me, Elizabeth? I bring you food when you are hungry. Like the old woman brings food for us.”
“The woman on the bicycle?”
“Si,” he said. “She is a friend of Father Gerard. She take care of us when they kill him.”
Beth glanced at Vargas and Ortiz.
“Who killed him? La Santa Muerte?”
Cristo nodded. “I watch from up there,” he said, pointing to the balcony. “They cut his throat, and let him bleed in front of Jesus. They tell him he is a traitor to El Santo because of what he did.”
“Because he helped you?”
“ Si. Just like you help us, when you were strong again. They keep you in the cage, give you poisons, try to make you one of them. But I bring you food. I make you strong. I take care of you.”
Beth squeezed his hands. “Tell me everything, Cristo. Be my memory for me.”
He let go of her then and stood up.
“Better I show you,” he said, then squeezed past her and started down the aisle toward the altar.
Beth got to her feet, gesturing to Vargas and Ortiz. “Can my friends come, too?”
Cristo stopped and turned. “Si,” he said. “I show you all.”
T HEY FOLLOWED HIM as he moved the past the choir stall and opened a door, gesturing them inside. He led them down a narrow hallway to a tiny, cluttered office, then moved to a wall that was dominated by a large woven reredos depicting the birth of Christ. Grabbing it by the corner, he pulled it back to reveal a hole in the wall where a door used to be.
Cristo took a small flashlight from his pocket, flicked it on, then led them down a set of wooden steps to a storeroom crowded with the shadowy remnants of the church’s past: old lecterns, several floor candlesticks, a broken font, and at least two wooden kneelers.