“And is it night in Baztán right now, Salazar?”
“It’s always night there.”
Dupree responded with a sad but affectionate smile. “You’re frightened, Salazar.”
She opened her mouth to answer but couldn’t find the words.
“That’s why you leave the light on when you go to bed.”
She said nothing.
“You’re frightened, but you want to see your enemy coming. You’re frightened, but you’re ready for your foe. That makes you courageous.”
She refused to look at him, but Dupree touched her chin gently to turn her head. “I knew it the first time I saw you. You were a student at that conference in Boston. I saw it again in Quantico. You’re a born investigator. Keep a check on your arrogance, but a loose one, because unless you let your instincts guide you, you’ll be no better than any of the others. And listen to your heart. You’re going to be one of the best investigators I’ve ever had the good fortune to know. Listen to your heart, because that’s what you and I have in common with the famous Inspector Sherrington. All three of us had the same experience: our hearts stopped, but for some reason we came back. Each of us had to die and find our way back from hell. That gave us a special advantage. Not only do we know the path to hell and back, we recognize those on that same road.”
“It’s more of a curse than a privilege,” she muttered.
“I need to ask a favor of you. There’s someone in NOLA named Nana. She’s like a mother to me. Lives in Treme, but she said she was going to stay at the Superdome.”
“I don’t know if they’re keeping a record of people’s names, but I can look.”
He nodded, aware of how absurdly hopeless that request probably was, but he had to ask. “And now let me tell you a story before we go back. I’ll have to give the others a different version later. You’ll get used to that. You’ll have to do it often enough throughout your career. You’ll get used to hiding the truth, because stupidity and intolerance are everywhere, and not everyone sees the world as you do. Make up a lie if you have to, lie to save your skin, to protect justice and the truth. But promise me you’ll always remember that those are lies and that you’ll keep the truth clearly in mind. And never lie to yourself or to me.” He paused. “I’m going to tell you something. Something I know you’ll understand.”
“First tell me this,” she interrupted him. “Are we friends?”
“You can bet my life on it.” He took her right hand and placed a little gray bag in it.
Amaia smiled.
69
WITCH
Elizondo
When Amaia Salazar was twelve years old, she was lost in the forest for sixteen hours. A shepherd named Julián Andía found her in the center of a field, and for years he insisted to everyone willing to listen that a lightning bolt deposited the child at his feet. They found her in the earliest hours of the morning, eighteen miles north of where she’d wandered off the trail. She was unconscious, her clothing blackened and scorched like that of a medieval witch pulled from a bonfire. In contrast, her skin was white, clean, and icy, as if she’d just emerged from a glacier. She’d lost a boot and most of her clothing was gone. Even though she’d been wandering in the driving rain for hours, she was completely dry. The girl seemed to have arrived riding a lightning bolt like the Basque goddess Mari herself.
Julián yelled, not to alert the others, but because he’d been thunderstruck—figuratively, at least. He was afraid to touch her, because he’d heard that if you touch someone struck by lightning, the electricity can kill you. People said the best thing to do was to poke the victim with a stick or pole to discharge the energy. Only then could you touch the person. The trooper from the Guardia Civil who responded to his shouts told him that was nonsense, that the electricity had already exited the child’s body through her feet. The proof was that it had blasted off one boot and left the other in tatters.
The trooper squatted down, checked for a pulse, and found no heartbeat. He and his partner switched off, one doing CPR to keep the poor little thing alive, and the other restraining the father, who tried to throw himself on her as soon as he saw her. He shouted gibberish they couldn’t make sense of, like “Those weren’t dreams!” and “You were right, they weren’t dreams!” and “They weren’t just nightmares!”
Julián supposed she’d known she’d be struck by lightning, and her father had turned a deaf ear. Of course, who could blame him? But that didn’t lessen the mystery, for the girl’s dreams had come true, even putting aside for the moment the fact she’d been transported here by a lightning bolt. He’d seen that with his own eyes.
When they pulled her shredded clothing off her chest, he saw the bizarre shape burned into her skin, a bright-red mark like a jagged lightning bolt, as if the wicked storm goddess had branded the child. And he was confused, unable to understand how she could be so cold to the touch if she’d been struck by lightning. And how was it she was completely dry, even though she’d been in the pouring rain all night long? And then there was that weird thing with the dog a few hours later.
Julián had theories he didn’t share with just anyone. He confided only in close friends and family members, reminding them that in the old days, witches would gather at Mari’s caves to make sacrifices and ask for favors they couldn’t get from the good Lord because what they wanted was so depraved. And everyone knew that one of those caves was always dry. God knows that he, Julián, would certainly rather get soaked to the bone than indebt himself to a witch. He’d always found the little Salazar girl a bit strange, but Julián swore he meant no malice. He had nothing against the poor little thing, and it was far better to be nice to someone like her than to get on her bad side. As his late grandmother used to say—and she knew a lot about it—you don’t have to believe they exist, but don’t you dare go around claiming they don’t.
At the regional hospital, Amaia lay on a stretcher, a sheet covering her torso. The rest of her body, except for her scratched and bruised knees and hands, appeared so starkly white that one might think all the blood had been drained from her body. One nurse was closely monitoring her vital signs, and another checked the reflexes of her pupils every couple of minutes.
Engrasi and Juan Salazar held hands as they peered through the window into the ICU and listened to the emergency room doctor.
“We’ll do more tests when she regains consciousness, but from everything we can see, she sustained no serious injuries.”
“Why hasn’t she come to?” Engrasi asked.
“She suffered a tremendous shock to her system. And let’s not forget she was in the freezing rain for all those hours, alone and lost. It’s no wonder she’s exhausted. She’ll be weak and listless for several days. When a person is exposed to extreme stress, the brain starts to shut down most activity so as to focus on surviving. She’s completely drained of energy.”
Engrasi wanted to know more. “They told us her heart stopped. Is that true?”
“Yes. For a while, at least. We can’t know for how long. Lightning discharges a massive electromagnetic pulse in a fraction of a second, and ten percent of those struck by lightning suffer cardiac and respiratory arrest. She’s very lucky the troopers on the scene were trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation.”