Kingdom of God Read online

  “I’m not leaving without them.”

  “Fine.” Jen opened the door and jumped out of the front passenger seat. She stormed around the back of the car. “You’re on your own.”

  “We still haven’t checked hospitals. Guy said-”

  “Which hospitals?

  “Wendy gave us a lead on places to look in Libertad. The gas station. The scrap yard.”

  “How are you going to get there?” Michael regarded the vacant neighborhood once more.

  “I’ll call a cab.”

  “Great. Good luck.” She slammed the door shut and made her way back to the front passenger seat. She stopped at the car’s grill and looked back at Michael.

  “You want to look at hospitals.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Start at the gas station where she said they agreed to meet.” The special agent scratched the back of her head. A few split ends burst out of her ponytail.

  “I’ll ask Joe for a few more hours.”

  Michael opened the rear driver-side door and climbed inside. Jen retook the front passenger seat.

  “You’re paying for my counseling after this,” she said.

  “Fair enough.”

  * * *

  A water dispenser hummed beside the vehicle. The SUV sat in front of the small market next to a Pemex gas station. Michael was situated in the rear seat of the car. Jen stood in front of a barred window on the market a few meters away. Michael watched her as she spoke forcefully with the attendant. Graffiti coated the market’s left-hand wall. The spray paint obscured a detailed mural underneath. The impression of a night sky appeared at the top of the wall.

  Tires squealed. Michael turned to his right to see a green SUV peeling off the busy road and into the gas station. It nearly collided with a young man and woman standing beside a silver station wagon. The couple seemed oblivious to the speeding vehicle. The SUV screeched to a stop beside one of the pumps, and the driver jumped out. He hurried to the pump with his wallet in hand.

  Michael sat up in his chair, removed his phone from his pocket and opened his email. The second message down was from Juan. The previous evening, Juan confirmed that Policia Tijuana had issued a death certificate for Raymond Armstead. Surveillance footage from La Vaca Amable Abarrotes y Carnicería revealed that a pickup truck collided with the young man on Federal Highway 1. He was subsequently removed from the scene by unknown assailants. Authorities notified the San Diego Police Department that the 21-year-old male was missing and presumed dead.

  The detective scrolled to the most recent message. It was from Officer Lincoln. She confided that two officers had notified the Armstead family at their home in La Jolla, but they did not ask any follow-up questions. She included a home phone number at the bottom of her email.

  Michael cleared his throat, dialed the number and put the phone to his ear. The tone rang four times.

  “Hello,” a woman replied.

  “Hello, Ms. Armstead.” A few seconds of silence passed.

  “Who is this?”

  “I’m Detective Michael Barrish. I’m with the San Diego Police Department.” More silence hit the line.

  “Is this about Ray?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Yes it is.”

  “Did you find him?” Michael cleared his throat again.

  “No.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Ma’am-”

  “I don’t want to speak to you until you find my son.”

  “I am trying to find your son, okay? But I need some help.”

  “Are you really a cop?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re really trying to find him.”

  “I am. I’m doing everything I can to-”

  “I’m not going to bury an empty box.”

  “I understand that.”

  “Do you want to know the last thing I said to him was? I said it was too dangerous. I said it a hundred times. I kept telling him it was too dangerous. But he kept going. He wouldn’t listen to me.”

  The front passenger-side door opened. Jen jumped inside.

  “He said he saw two gringos,” she announced. “One of them-” Michael leaned forward behind the partition and put his hand over his left ear.

  “I...I understand. I’m a father too.”

  “Ray was my only.” Michael heard her choke on the other end of the line.

  “I really want to find your son. I really want to find the people who did this. But I need your help. Did you ever have contact with...” Michael heard silence. “Are you still there?”

  “He just left. Didn’t even say ‘I love you.’”

  “Do you know a Theodore or Theo Uyboco? Have you had any contact-”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “Okay. Thank you very much for your help, ma’am. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  The call ended. Michael sat back up in his seat. He lifted the glasses from the bridge of his nose and scratched his eyes. Jen watched him from behind the partition.

  “What did he say?” Michael asked.

  “He saw two gringos this week. One of them this morning.”

  “Was it Guy?”

  “He was asking about the other one.”

  “Who’s the other one?

  “He said he didn’t know. He saw him on Sunday. He was in bad shape apparently. They took him to Hospital General.”

  The driver found a parking spot directly in front of the entrance. Michael’s breathing hastened as the vehicle came to a stop under a sign that read “Urgencia.” He stepped out of the car, peeled off his windbreaker and crumpled it under his arm. The stained, purple shirt hung off his shoulders. He and Jen scaled the small flight of stairs and stepped through the hospital’s front entrance.

  They slowed upon entering the lobby. The room was tranquil. A woman sat silently behind a front desk surrounded by a clear plastic partition. A line of eight people formed in front of her. Two orderlies walked across the lobby silently. The glass doors slid shut behind the investigators. Jen took a few cautious steps toward the front desk. The sound of her heels clacking against the tile floor echoed throughout the room. She made her way around the line and up to the window at the front desk. Michael followed closely behind.

  “Hola,” she said with a broad smile. The eight people in the queue glared at her. “Soy Jennifer Chau del FBI en los Estados Unidos. Necesito ver un paciente.”

  “Ta bien. Tengo otras personas-”

  “Necesito verlo ahora. Es muy importante.”

  “¿Cuál es el nombre del paciente?”

  “Luke Jacobson. Se llama ‘El.’”

  The women exchanged more words, but Michael could not keep up with the pace of their conversation. He made out the words “blanco” and “ahora.” A woman in the line appeared agitated. The smile on Jen’s face disappeared. A few seconds later, she turned toward Michael.

  “She won’t say.”

  “What?”

  “They won’t give us any info on patients or visitors. Not without word from PT.”

  “No, that-” Michael leaned over the receptionist’s desk. A sharp pain shot through his leg. “Necesito ver un paciente ahora.”

  “Sir,” the receptionist replied, “we cannot do that. You need to be a family member, or we need a warrant for you to see a patient.”

  A security guard approached the front desk. He placed his hand on Michael’s shoulder. The detective twisted around. The pain in his leg worsened. In Spanish, the guard instructed him and Jen to get in the back of the line.

  The two investigators backed away from the front desk. They wandered down a hallway to the left of the reception area. A few more orderlies passed by. The guard shadowed them down the quiet corridor. Michael glanced back at the security guard as Jen pulled out her phone.

  “I can call Juan,” Michael suggested.

  “No. We can’t have PT involved.”

  “What about CISEN? What about-”r />
  “We can’t have them involved either. He’s American. We need him back on American soil.” She started hammering on the screen. “I know extradition will take months, but it’s the only guarantee we have. I’ll get them started on it. Call Joe and tell him we’ll be back soon.”

  Jen strode out of the automatic sliding door at the end of the hallway. She stopped at the curb with her phone pressed to her ear. The glass door slid shut behind her. Michael remained inside.

  An argument erupted in the lobby. The noise echoed down the hall. Michael turned around and saw the security guard rushing back to the reception desk. The detective stood alone in the corridor. He scratched his stubbled cheek.

  The detective’s eyes fell to a fire alarm on the wall across from a stairwell. Its bright red casing protruded from the cream-colored walls. Michael gazed around the hallway again. His eyes drifted from the lobby to the sliding glass doors and back to the alarm. He squeezed the deep blue windbreaker in his hand and sighed.

  A siren wailed. Lights flashed. Jen looked up from her phone to the sliding glass door flying open. Her eyes locked on Michael. The detective’s back was against the wall. The crumpled windbreaker concealed the fire alarm. Michael hurried across the hallway and up the flight of stairs to the second floor.

  A stream of patients, nurses and doctors filed down the stairwell. Michael stood beside the second-floor doorway ushering patients and staff through. His eyes scanned every person as they evacuated.

  The floor cleared. The piercing alarm continued. Michael stalked down the hallway, peering into each empty room. He removed his hearing aid and covered his right ear with the palm of his hand. A pool of blood formed in his left ear.

  Michael waded through the empty third, fourth and fifth floors. Sweat poured down his forehead. His breathing hastened. A red blot formed in each eye. Every room was deserted. He ascended another flight of stairs and reached the top floor. He limped down the hallway, looking around every corner in every room.

  A door was closed at the end of the corridor. The detective hurried toward the room. He grabbed the handle and thrust the door open.

  Sool was seated in a white plastic chair facing the window overlooking the metropolis. The alarm continued to blare. Sool leaned back and looked at Michael with a smirk on his face. He turned back to a young man seated on his left. He was slouched in a reclining chair. He wore a hospital gown. He sported long, curly, deep-brown hair. He bowed his head with his mouth agape. A large pink scar ran from the back of his neck to the top of his scalp. He clutched a crumpled piece of paper in his hand.

  The sky was still overcast when the young man stepped out onto the roof. The two investigators walked out after him. The alarm’s volume quieted. A few small droplets of rain hit the three men.

  The young man wandered across a pristine helipad toward the edge of the building. Michael rushed to the young man’s side. Sool stood in the center of the helipad.

  “Luke, we’re not gonna hurt you,” he shouted. The young man stopped. His head remained bowed. He still held the paper in his hand. Michael turned to face Sool from the young man’s side. “Do you know who I am?”

  The young man did not answer. He raised his head and surveyed the horizon.

  “All right. Let’s start from the beginning. I’m not gonna hurt you. I just wanna know how you got here. From the beginning. Can you do that for me? Start from the beginning.”

  I don’t really have a beginning. I heard that if you don’t know how to start a story, start from the beginning of time. So here it goes.

  A single point in the universe explodes, and all matter forms within minutes. It starts to cling together in the vacuum of space to form galaxies, stars and planets. One of those planets is Earth, and the conditions are perfect to support life. And rolling around Earth, like a quark around an atom, one of those lives is mine. I don’t know how or why. It just is. The universe is just made up of quarks.

  There was a light. That’s the last thing I remember clearly after the accident. They officially declared it an accident. I’ve had a constant headache ever since, so thinking and speaking and remembering things aren’t really my strengths anymore. I have all the essential details though. They’re locked away. I keep returning to them again and again. I have Matt to thank for that. I don’t know where I’d be without him. Not standing on top of a roof in Mexico. That’s for sure.

  Probably a hospital. That’s where I’d be. A majority of my life has been in one now that I think about it. If it were up to me, I’d never set foot in one ever again. That light is from waking up in bed with the headache. I thought I was there for Mom. Between collapses and mood swings, Matt and I were in and out of Bay Point Baptist for at least eight years. She never let me leave her side. I would try to get up to go to the bathroom or get a soda, but she always found a way to squeeze my hand and pull me back. She’s losing all of her motor functions. She can’t even sit up on her own. And she always finds a way to pull me back.

  I feel so bad. All I wanted was to get away from them. I wanted to live like my buddy, Talon. He was my best friend for a while. My only friend. I wanted to live in a two-story condo high above the city like him and his dad did. I wanted to live someplace with more than one bathroom. I wanted every game console hooked up to a 52-inch plasma. I wanted a dad that worked in video games. I wanted a dad who was around period.

  Instead I was latched to three other people through some quirk in heredity. Whenever Mom and Dad argued or when Mom droned on about all the great things Matt was doing, all I wanted to do was to run away. I could feel all this positive energy in me just drain the more and more whenever I was around my family. I couldn’t really take it anymore. It didn’t seem fair.

  I’ve learned my lesson since then. Now I can see how wrong I was. I snapped out of that mindset when she finally let go. I was in Chemistry when they told me. Dr. Josh called the school and told me he was sorry. The secretary cried and hugged me. But that was it. They were the only people to comfort me. I walked back to my locker, and nobody stopped to say anything or even noticed that something was wrong. They just ran by, talked to one another and went on with their own lives. And they should have. They weren’t my friends. They weren’t family. It’s those little links that keep us persisting. Dr. Josh said that my mom fought until the end, but then he backtracked. He said this wasn’t the end. She was still with us as long as we carried her memory forward.

  Matt carries Mom and Dad forward every day. He became like a third parent. I hated that too, at least initially. When mom was in and out of treatment, he tried to make me do my homework, get me a job, and scolded me for paying for stuff with phony credit cards. When he worked the cash register at Ralph’s, he refused to ring me up. If he spotted me, he would run all the way across every line like a maniac and told them not to ring me up. He thought of it as stealing, signing up for credit cards in Dad’s name and never paying them off. He told me it was dishonest and unfair. I thought Mom is in the hospital and Dad is long gone. Don’t tell me what’s unfair.

  The last time I did it, he chased me into the parking lot. All I bought was some soda and candy. I almost got hit by a car trying to get away from him. It was the biggest fight I could remember having. He threw out all the same insults. Loser. Idiot. Waste of space. I thought that’s just how brothers talked. He said don’t bother coming home if I wasn’t going to do my homework or get a job. I said fine. I ended up taking the BART to the city and hanging out with Talon all night. We played ‘Dead of Night’ until sunrise. We didn’t even go to school the next day.

  Matt completely changed after the accident. I’m lying in bed. My headache is pulsing, and he holds my hand. When I’m hungry, he brings me food. When I do my tests, he says ‘great job’ and ‘way to go.’ It’s like he became a brother again. Not a parent, but a brother.

  I know Punnett squares show how offspring split and share characteristics from both parents, but our family's an exception. There is no crossing of genes. I
mean Matt looks exactly like Dad, but they don’t think the same way at all. Matt would go to church with Mom. He played guitar and sang Christian songs. He would volunteer at stuff all around town. I have Mom’s brown hair and eyes, but I stayed at home on Sundays with Dad. I wanted to study science with him. I thought there was no way God created the Earth in seven days or that Jesus could bring someone back from the dead. I wanted real, logical answers. Those were the only classes I cared about. I remember a counselor told me that if I wanted to get into Berkeley, I had to improve my grades in every subject, not just science. I thought it was impossible to concentrate on every topic at once. But now I see how you can broaden your mind to everything around you. Life really forces it on you.

  The only place Mom and Dad came together was the bookshelf between the living room and the kitchen. It had Mom’s bibles next to Dad’s textbooks. There were framed family photos. Our favorite picture was all of us in front of a giant sequoia. It stretched for at least eight feet around either side of us. We tried to link our arms around it, and we didn’t even get halfway. I was five in that picture. There was also the embroidery that said ‘carry a torch.’ They loved saying that. To them, it meant take your love wherever you go, like carrying a flame. Dad always said it before we would walk to school. ‘Love you guys. Carry a torch.’

  He wouldn’t let me look at anything he was working on. He was a college professor and worked at nuclear plants all around the country. That meant a lot of business trips. He explained to me he would help close them down and clean up any nuclear waste so that it was safe for people to be around. On his last trip, he said he was going to San Diego for two weeks. He never came back. I was nine. We never learned exactly what happened to him. I kept yelling and screaming about where he went. I called 911 so many times that some cops came to our house and told me to stop. I don’t know if it was a conspiracy or anything, but everyone just moved on. Matt just plowed ahead with jobs and homework as if Dad was gone for good. He picked up the torch for him.