Lucas was so furious he could hardly see straight. He shoved her away and hurried toward the fire escape. Several female nurses and two security guards came running down the corridor. Lucas realized then that beneath the howl of the storm an alarm was clanging, surely set off when the emergency exit was thrown open.
Water and wind beat against his face and body, instantly soaking his clothing. It was as if a bucket had been dumped over his head. He squinted into the darkness. The roar of the storm was deafening. He shouted to Manuel and Nogueira, but his voice was swept away by the wind. He slipped, fell forward, and felt metal bite into his knee. He struggled back to his feet, clinging to the railing, and became aware of a vibration along the hollow metal rail. It seemed to come from above. He climbed the steps, guided by the handrail, only half-aware of the turns in the staircase as he struggled up one step at a time and finally reached the landing.
The profound darkness along the side of the building contrasted with the brilliant spotlights that illuminated the front of the flat roof and the tall blue letters that formed the name of the clinic. Lucas shaded his eyes with one hand and caught sight of the three men just a few yards beyond the sign. He hobbled in that direction as quickly as he could.
The spotlights lit the flat roof as brightly as an airport landing strip. Their hot white brilliance in the beating rain rendered Santiago’s hospital pajamas blindingly white. Soaking wet and plastered against his body, they looked like a shroud. He was standing on the parapet and had turned to face his pursuers.
“Don’t come any closer!” he shouted to make himself heard over the roar of the storm.
Manuel stopped, fully aware he was the closest to Santiago. He looked back for Nogueira, but the glare behind him revealed only three dark silhouettes, two men and a woman. He recognized them from their shapes but couldn’t see their faces.
“Listen to me, Santiago! Please, talk to me,” he said, trying to gain time even though he was sure there’d be no reply. That’s why he was startled to hear Santiago’s voice loud and clear in response.
“There’s nothing to talk about!”
“You don’t have to do this, Santiago. There are better ways to resolve everything.”
Raucous laughter met his plea, followed by a pause and mournful reply. “You have no idea.”
Manuel looked around again, seeking help from his friends, and saw they’d moved forward to his side. Nogueira’s lips were drawn back in a snarl Manuel had never seen before. Lucas was weeping; despite the torrential rain whipping against them it was clear that he’d dissolved in tears. And Catarina . . . Catarina was smiling. Manuel stared, transfixed, incredulous at her expression. It was subtle but undeniable, the tranquil expression of someone awaiting the denouement of a perfectly executed performance and the final curtain.
Manuel took one step forward. “Santiago, we know it was Catarina. We have a dealer who’s willing to testify he sold her the drugs that killed Fran.”
“I administered them,” Santiago responded, unmoved.
“That’s not true, Santiago. You fell apart, crazy with pain when you heard your brother had died. It was Catarina, and she murdered álvaro too. Vicente let her use his pickup that night. She followed you.”
“I did it,” he said again. “álvaro refused to pay the blackmailer to keep our secret.”
Manuel took another step. Santiago did the same and now stood inches from death.
“I know why you think you should do this . . .”
“You don’t know a goddamn thing!” he cried.
“You’re doing it for To?ino.”
Santiago’s face contracted in intense pain, and he doubled over as if he’d just been punched in the stomach.
“Santiago, he didn’t commit suicide!”
Santiago’s face was a mask of immense suffering.
“Did you hear what I said, Santiago?” he called, louder this time. “To?ino didn’t kill himself!”
Santiago straightened up again, confusion clouding his face. “You’re lying! The police officer told me. He was despondent, and he hanged himself from a tree branch. He killed himself!”
“The policeman was wrong. The body had been there for more than a week, and that was just their first guess. I have Lieutenant Nogueira right here.” He waved toward the officer. “He can confirm to you that during the autopsy, they discovered the stab wounds just like those álvaro received.”
Manuel saw Santiago’s gaze shift to Catarina and knew he’d planted a doubt.
“Don’t listen to them, darling,” she called sweetly. “They’re trying to confuse you.”
“Catarina followed you that night when you left álvaro behind. And after the police called late that night, she followed you to your meeting with To?ino. She saw you beat him, and after you left, she finished him off.”
“That’s not true!” she shrieked.
Manuel was on fire. Rage and pain blazed within him. The icy rain pelted his face and soaked his body, and he knew all the water in the world wouldn’t be enough to extinguish the fire inside him. He looked down at his hands, brilliantly lit by the intense white beam of the spotlights, and he saw bright vapor steaming off his skin. He was flooded with the blazing enlightenment of a savage mystic vision and saw with absolute clarity what had happened. He again looked at Santiago and perceived a fire within him as well, but a different sort of blaze, one Manuel had experienced all too fully, a fierce combustion of doubts, questions, and awareness of betrayal.
“álvaro didn’t die in an accident. His car ran off the road because he passed out from internal bleeding. She stabbed him in the parking lot at La Rosa after you left. She’s always seen you as completely inept, an idiot she has to clean up after, and that’s what she was doing. She followed you to your meeting with To?ino and finished him off for you.”
Manuel’s instant declaration made Santiago wail like a baby. The marquis rubbed his eyes with the helpless gesture of a woebegone child.
Manuel remembered Vicente’s desperation, his tears, the raincoat and the weapon, the tools thrown helter-skelter about the bed of the pickup, the buckets, the metal stakes . . . He put his hand into his pocket and took out the gardenia Samuel had given him because someone had told the child to do that, so he would understand the truth. The flower seemed a sudden vision, illuminated from within by an intense glow. Its perfume spread through the air as if the torrential rain had intensified it a thousandfold, precipitating the same dizzying sensation that had struck him down in the greenhouse. He turned toward Catarina. Her eyes were fixed upon the flower as if in a trance, and he had a vision of her on that distant afternoon, smiling and extending her left hand to him, obliging him to shift the boy to his right in order to shake it.
He held up the flower and shouted so Santiago would be sure to hear. “She stabbed To?ino eight times with one of the stakes from the gardenia beds.”
Certainty gives only momentary relief, for truth is always overwhelming. You can assimilate it if it comes to you gradually, just as the earth of Galicia absorbs the water falling from the sky; but when truth washes over you like a tsunami, it causes as much anguish as the blackest of all lies.
Santiago was no longer looking at him. His eyes were turned toward Catarina, but he wasn’t looking at her either; he was seeing straight through her with the gaze reserved for those about to die, the look that marks the instant when they see the border between this world and the next, and that boundary starts to dissolve.
That may have been why she didn’t react. She knew him too well; she saw he’d rather die than face humiliation. He’d been pretending all his life, trying to be and to appear something other than what he was. He was weak. She knew him well. Perhaps that’s why she gave him that last brilliant smile.
He turned toward the vast empty space and seemed to look out expectantly toward the dark horizon, perhaps seeing something out there visible only to him. He turned his head and shouted over his shoulder. “Father Lucas! Father Lucas! Can you hear me?”
Struggling against his grief, Lucas responded. “I’m here, my son.” His voice rang out loud and clear through the rain.