The Woods

The silence was heavy.

“Of course, after you, I boinked everybody.”

I shook my head, looked to my right. She was smiling again.

I made the right turn per the perky voice of my navigation system.

The Perezes lived in a condo development in Park Ridge.

“Are they expecting us?” Lucy asked.

“No.”

“How do you know they’re home?” she asked.

“I called right before I picked you up. My number comes up PRIVATE on caller ID. When I heard Mrs. Perez answer, I disguised my voice and asked for Harold. She said I had the wrong number. I said I was sorry and hung up.”

“Wow, you’re good at this.”

“I try to remain humble.”

We headed out of the car. The property was neatly landscaped. The air was syrupy with some kind of blossom. I couldn’t place it. Lilacs maybe. The smell was too strong, cloying, like someone had spilled cheap shampoo.

Before I knocked, the door opened. It was Mrs. Perez. She did not say hi or offer up much of a greeting. She looked at me with hooded eyes and waited.

“We need to talk,” I said.

Her eyes moved toward Lucy. “Who are you?”

“Lucy Silverstein,” she said.

Mrs. Perez closed her eyes. “Ira’s daughter.”

“Yes.”

Her shoulders seemed to sag.

“May we come in?” I said.

“If I say no?”

I met her eye. “I’m not letting this go.”

“What go? That man was not my son.”

“Please,” I said. “Five minutes.”

Mrs. Perez sighed and stepped back. We entered. The shampoo smell was even stronger in here. Too strong. She closed the door and led us to a couch.

“Is Mr. Perez home?”

“No.”

There were noises coming from one of the bedrooms. In the corner were some cardboard boxes. The inscription on the side indicated that they were medical supplies. I looked around the room. Everything, other than those boxes, was so in place, so coordinated, you would swear they bought the model unit.

The unit had a fireplace. I stood and walked over to the mantel. There were family photographs. I looked at them. There were no pictures of the Perez parents. There were no pictures of Gil. The mantel was full of images of people I assumed to be Gil’s two brothers and one sister.

One brother was in a wheel chair.

“That’s Tomás,” she said, pointing to a picture of the smiling boy in the wheelchair graduating from Kean University. “He has CP. Do you know what that is?”

“Cerebral palsy.”

“Yes.”

“How old is he?”

“Tomás is thirty-three now.”

“And who’s that?”

“Eduardo,” she said. Her expression said not to press it. Eduardo looked like a hard case. I remembered Gil telling me that his brother was a gang member or something, but I didn’t believe it.

I pointed to the girl. “I remember Gil talking about her,” I said. “She was, what, two years older? I remember he said that she was trying to get into college or something.”

“Glenda is a lawyer,” Mrs. Perez said, and her chest puffed out. “She went to Columbia Law School.”

“Really? So did I,” I said.

Mrs. Perez smiled. She moved back to the couch. “Tomás lives in the unit next door. We knocked down a common wall.”

“He can live on his own?”

“I take care of him. We also have nursing.”

“Is he home now?”

“Yes.”

I nodded, sat back down. I didn’t know why I cared about that. I wondered though. Did he know about his brother, about what had happened to him, about where he’d been the past twenty years?

Lucy had not left her seat. She remained quiet, letting me take the lead. She was soaking in everything, studying the house, probably putting on her psychology suit.

Mrs. Perez looked at me. “Why are you here?”

“The body we found belonged to Gil.”

“I already explained to you—”

I held up the manila envelope.

“What’s that?”

I reached in and slipped out the top photograph. It was the old one, from camp. I put it on the coffee table. She stared down at the image of her son. I watched her face to see the reaction. Nothing seemed to move or change, or maybe it was just happening so subtly that I couldn’t see the transformation. One moment she looked okay. Then, seamlessly, everything collapsed. The mask cracked, laying the devastation bare.

She closed her eyes. “Why are you showing me this?”

“The scar.”

Her eyes stayed closed.

“You said Gil’s scar was on the right arm. But look at this photograph. It was on the left.”

She didn’t speak.

“Mrs. Perez?”

“That man was not my son. My son was murdered by Wayne Steubens twenty years ago.”

“No.”

I reached into the envelope. Lucy leaned in. She hadn’t seen this picture yet. I took out the photograph. “This is Manolo Santiago, the man from the morgue.”

Lucy startled up. “What was his name?”

“Manolo Santiago.”

Lucy looked stunned.

“What?” I said.

She shook me off. I continued.

“And this”—I plucked out the final photograph—“is a computer rendering using age-progression software. In other words, my lab guy took the old photograph of Gil and aged him twenty years. Then he matched the shaved head and facial hair of Manolo Santiago.”

I put the pictures next to one another.

“Take a look, Mrs. Perez.”

She did. She looked for a long time. “He looks like him maybe. That’s all. Or maybe you just think all Latinos look alike.”

“Mrs. Perez?”

It was Lucy, speaking directly to Gil’s mother for the first time since we entered. “Why don’t you keep any pictures of Gil up there?”

Lucy pointed to the fireplace mantel. Mrs. Perez did not follow the finger. She stared at Lucy. “Do you have any children, Ms. Silverstein?”

“No.”

“Then you wouldn’t understand.”

“With all due respect, Mrs. Perez, that’s a load of crap.”

Mrs. Perez looked like she’d just been slapped.

“You have pictures up there from when the children were young, when Gil was still alive. But not one photograph of your son? I’ve counseled parents who are grieving. All of them kept a picture out. All of them. Then you lied about which arm was scarred. You didn’t forget. A mother doesn’t make that mistake. You can see the pictures here. They don’t lie. And lastly, Paul hasn’t hit you with the coup de grace.”