dogbearinggifts:

A/N: Thank you so much to @uncuentofriki for beta reading this one! 

*********** 

“I tried to come home, but I died on my way to the train station.”

It was a terrible lie.

Hector had always been a good liar, but the
train station had been one of his obvious failures. Part of its failure was its
sheer transparency. Good lies covered
up the truth, but this one simply sat atop it, drawing more attention rather
than deflecting it. For years, that one lie had dogged Imelda each time she
tried and failed to forget her former husband. Like salt in a wound, it burned.
If he had just told the truth, if he had just said “I ran off, and I don’t have an excuse”….

She might not have taken him back, but she
wouldn’t have gone to the lengths she did to keep him away, either.

But it was
a lie. Anyone could see it, and anyone who could see it would be insulted
on her behalf. To actually believe it would take a special sort of person, one
who had entered the Land of the Dead upon forgetting how to breathe. Imelda had
reminded herself of that lie every time the thought of perhaps reconnecting
with the sad, broken man who had told it strayed across her mind.

Until
Miguel.

Until de
la Cruz.

Until that terrible lie became an even more
terrible truth.  

Now, the sad, broken man who had told it
paced the sala in Imelda’s house. His house. He lived there now, at her
insistence. He’d been confined to the shanties long enough.

Imelda stood in the doorway and watched him
for several long moments, but he just kept going and going, as if he were
trying to wear a hole in the floor. She stepped in front of him and planted
herself there, hands on her hips. “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?”

He gave her that grin she remembered so well,
one charming lie that preceded another. “What? Nothing. Everything is fine.”

She folded her arms and leveled her famous
stare. It took a moment to work, but his grin faded.

“I…don’t want to go down to the station. I
know I’m only giving a statement, but…”

“They’re ignoring your record. Gutierrez put
it in writing, just like you asked.”

“I know. I….” His shoulders slumped as he looked
away, out the distant window. “They’re going to know what happened that night.”

Imelda frowned. “Don’t you know what happened?”

“Not like that. I mean, I know what happened, but I don’t know how it happened. How he did it….all of
that.”

She nodded in sudden understanding. “This might have been premeditated,” Gutierrez
had said, “but we need to know for
certain it wasn’t a crime of opportunity. You can help with that.” An
opportunistic murder and a premeditated one both ended the same way. But each one
carried a profoundly different meaning and—in the eyes of the law—a slightly
different consequence. “At least you’ll know.”

“Sí,” Hector said with a sigh, looking at the
floor. “At least I’ll know.”

She
gently cupped his face, got him to look at her. “Do you want me to go with
you?”

“I don’t know if they’ll let you.”

“I’ll ask. Do you want me to go?”

He paused. For a long minute, he said
nothing; he simply looked into her eyes. Finally, he took her hand in his.
“Would you? I—I don’t want to go alone.”

Imelda brushed a lock of hair back from his
face. “You won’t.”

*******

Gutierrez had never referred to Hector’s
murder as anything but. Rumors flew with more speed than the truth could ever
attain, but even through them, Imelda had never heard any speculation that her
husband’s death was anything but intentional. Nevertheless, she wore her
sturdiest shoes to the police station. Just in case that devil box decided to
lie.

The officer led them through gleaming,
spacious hallways, into a wide room packed with cubicles, and through that to a
cubicle packed with stacks of paperwork. Somehow, three chairs had been
squeezed in front of the desk. The computer—or devil box, as it should have
been called—sat off to the side, protected by a metal grate. Imelda wasn’t
certain whether to be proud or annoyed as introductions were made and the three
of them took their seats.

“Why don’t we start with what happened, Señor
Rivera?” the forensics officer, Officer Estrella Flores, said. In life, she had examined the dead to determine cause of death. Now,
she simply asked them. “Tell me what you remember.”

It was as if Hector had forgotten how to
speak. It’s just your death, Imelda
wanted to say, but it wasn’t. She had to imagine murder was quite a bit
different. Even when the victim had gone nearly a century believing it was an
accident.

Especially then.

Imelda took his hand. He didn’t respond right
away, but after a minute’s staring, he looked down. She felt his bones relax,
wrapping around hers—and he started to speak.

When he’d finished, he sat back, looking
older than Imelda had ever thought he could. Silence had settled over the
cubicle, making the rustle and bustle of noise surrounding them feel profoundly
wrong. She couldn’t think of a single word to say that didn’t include a long
string of profane curses upon de la Cruz’s head.

Estrella was the first to break the silence. “How
soon after drinking the tequila did you notice symptoms?”

This is her job, Imelda
reminded herself, squelching a rush of anger. She has to ask these questions.

“It couldn’t have been more than a minute or
two.”

More typing. Imelda held Hector’s hand even
more tightly, as much for her own sake as for his.

“You said the pain was severe?”

“Some of the worst I’ve ever felt.”

This was the forensic officer’s job, Imelda
reminded herself for the second time: to get details, the more specific the
better. The only way that could be done was through cold, clinical questions
that forgot the horror of what had happened and focused solely on the events
themselves. Imelda clung to this fact as more questions came, each one reducing
her husband’s murder to a set of events to be recorded and cross-referenced.

There was another clatter of keys, another
long silence. Imelda felt Hector stiffen, ever so slightly—bracing for whatever
came.

Estrella looked up from her screen, giving
Hector a longer look than she needed to. “Do you want to know?”  

“Know what killed me?”

“Sí. If you’d rather not know, I can send you
out, give Gutierrez the report, and call you back in for more questions.”

To Imelda’s surprise, he looked to her. There
was a bit of a question in his eyes, seeking her opinion, perhaps; or maybe he
just wanted to know if she’d rather remain in the dark. She answered it with a
small shrug. It was his murder. This was up to him, no matter how much she’d
rather he say yes and get it over with. Finally, his face settled into a mask
of resolve, and he turned back to Estrella.

“Sí. I…I want to know.”

She turned back to the computer. “Based on
the symptoms you described, plus the short reaction time, it seems formaldehyde
is the most likely culprit.”

“Formaldehyde,” Hector repeated.

“Now, without physical evidence, we can’t be certain, but it does seem to be the best
match.”

“It….it was formaldehyde.” Grim wonder laced
his words.

“It’s more common than you might think,” she
offered. “Getting it would have taken some doing, but I doubt he would have had
to go out of his way—“

“It smells, doesn’t it?”

Hector’s question seemed to take her aback.
“I—sí. It does have a strong smell. But—“

“And the taste?”

“Bitter, very bitter, but—“

“So I should have tasted it.” He slumped back
in his chair. “I—I knew it, I just wasn’t paying attention that night, I should
have known….”

“Should have known a friend was going to poison you?” Imelda barely kept from spitting
the word friend. All of those nights
talking and laughing into the early hours of morning, all of that talk of music
and dreams and making it big—it all should have meant something more than a
ploy to lure Hector from the safety of his family, of his home. It should have
been more than just words. “Hector, no one could have known.”

“He—he put it in one of his movies.”

“He what?”
Imelda’s mind whirred. She should have watched those things. If Ernesto de la
Cruz had confessed to a murder in one of his films, if it would have given her
a clue as to her husband’s fate, she should have embraced music again for at
least the length of a single film.

“Ay, that one,” Gutierrez said, mouth tipping
slightly, without mirth. “I wouldn’t call it a proper confession. It….isn’t the
most reliable guide to poisonings, or how to avoid them.”

“Formaldehyde is extremely toxic,” the
forensics officer added. Her tone was gentle, almost apologetic. “De la Cruz
wouldn’t have needed more than a few drops. Tequila would have hidden the
taste.”

“I—I still—I should have seen something.
He—he had to put it in the glass somehow—I could’ve seen it, but I wasn’t even looking—“

“If he poisoned the glass beforehand, there
wouldn’t have been anything to see.”

The words were like a cold wind, chilling
them all into momentary silence. Poisoning the glass. He would have poured a
bit of formaldehyde into a shot glass, let it dry, and kept it in wait for a
moment to seize. The more she considered it, the easier it was to picture de la
Cruz following each of those steps, tucking the glass into a pocket for
safekeeping, waiting for an excuse to use it.  

“How long, exactly,” she said, barely
restraining herself from shouting, “was de la Cruz planning this?”

“Hard to say,” Estrella said.

“But it was
premeditated?” Gutierrez asked.

“I don’t see how it could have been anything
else.” She looked to her screen again. “Most
people don’t carry around bottles of any type of poison. I suppose there’s evidence for a crime of
opportunity, but that is very weak.”

“Premeditated.” Hector seemed to have fallen
a few steps behind—and Imelda couldn’t fault him. “He planned all this.”

“It seems he did,” Estrella said. Her tone
was still gentle, kind even. She had done this before.

“If it’s any consolation,” Gutierrez put in,
“premeditated murder carries the maximum sentence.”

“And what is that?” Imelda didn’t try to
sound demanding, but she didn’t soften her tone, either.

“Ninety-six years—the same length of time
this murder went unpunished—plus twenty-five years for each attempted murder
charge.”

Imelda nodded, but Hector didn’t seem to have
heard. He cradled his forehead in one hand, eyes closed.

His friend—the one he’d sung with and laughed
with and run off into the great wild yonder with—hadn’t just killed him. He’d
planned it. He’d formed a plan and lain in wait until he could enact it, and it
didn’t matter whether he’d waited for three days or thirty. A friend had
murdered him and built a shining, celebrated career on his corpse.

“Do you have any more questions?” Imelda
asked.

Estrella and Gutierrez both noted Hector with
sympathy and traded glances. “They can wait,” the forensics officer said.

“Hector?” He didn’t seem to hear her, so she
put a hand on his arm. He looked up, his eyes filled with pain.

Imelda wanted to stay. She wanted to yank off
her shoe and demand these people take her to de la Cruz this instant. They
couldn’t confiscate her shoes. They could try, but they wouldn’t be able to do
it. If they gave her ten minutes, she could put de la Cruz through a shadow of
the torment he’d visited on her husband.

But Hector was there, and he didn’t need her
anger. He didn’t need her taking revenge on his behalf. He needed her.

“We can go home.” It wasn’t difficult to keep
her tone gentle. Not with him in that state.

It took a moment for the words to register,
but he finally nodded, pushing his way out of his chair as though sleepwalking.
Imelda took his hand and helped him to his feet. A light trembling had set in,
and she felt him shaking as she slipped an arm around his shoulders, as she
retraced their steps out of the cubicle and through the wide room. He drew a
few looks as they passed, but those were quickly averted. Had she the time,
Imelda would have thanked them.

They passed through the door and into the
echoing quiet of the hall. There, Imelda sighted the nearest bench and guided
Hector to it, taking a seat beside him. For a long minute, neither spoke. Few
people passed, and those that did showed no interest before hurrying along.

“I’m sorry.”

Imelda couldn’t think why he’d say such a
thing.

“I—I shouldn’t have left. I know I’ve said it
before, but I—“ He rested his head against the wall, eyes closed. “I’m sorry.”

It took her a moment to parse out what he
wasn’t saying, but the realization sent a fresh wave of anger through her. It
took her longer to get it under control.

“Hector.” Whether it was the sound of his
name or the sharpness of her voice that made his eyes open, she didn’t know,
but the results were the same. “You didn’t deserve it.”

He looked away, and that urge to storm back
in and demand to see de la Cruz took hold of her again. She moved closer,
tipping Hector’s chin instead.

“This wasn’t you. You might have left, and I
may have hated you for it, but this was
not your fault. You did not deserve
to die, and if you think that for one
minute, then I’ll—“ With some difficulty, she held back. This was not the time to give him a litany of all the
things she’d do to de la Cruz.

Ninety-six years. It should have been long
enough to make peace with what had happened. Perhaps it had been, until this.
Until the word murder upended the
story he’d believed and the word premeditated
tore that peace to shreds. She could see it in his eyes, written all over
his face. A poorly timed accident that took him from his family was bad enough.
Murder at the hands of a friend deserved every ounce of rage a human could
possess.

And Hector had chosen the wrong target.

Imelda managed a small, sad smile. Words
fled. There was nothing she could say, nothing she could think of, to lessen
his pain.

She wrapped her arms around him and held him
close. He clung to her, and she pulled him tighter. They could remain on that
bench for the rest of the day, for all she cared. As long as he needed her
there, she would stay.