The liquid streaming down his face was a torrent of blood.
His body rested against the ground and it annoyed him that he couldn't remove his hand from the mess that had been the top of his head. His eyes focused in and out, like a quick zoom, then fixed on the flock of birds struggling up into the air, away from the danger, frantic for the safety of the woods. Elijandro saw the big Tom among them, dragging his long beard as he disappeared into the trees all in an instant. It was the same instant that the day was born.
The sun appeared bright in Elijandro's eyes, blinding him and washing over him until all was lost.
CHAPTER 2
UP MAPLE AVENUE HALFWAY TO LOVE FIELD WAS A SUNOCO filling station. One day, one of two partners disappeared with all the money he could carry. The weather-worn building sat empty long enough to lose half its windows to vandals and the cinder-block south wall facing the street caught a new shellacking of graffiti every other week. The pumps stood like upright corpses, dead to the world beneath a metal roof built to entice patrons in out of the sun or a thunderstorm to fill up.
When Casey rounded the corner she wasn't surprised to see every bit of the shadow under the roof occupied. From the rectangular crowd, a single line of people connected the pump area to the filling station like a human umbilical cord. It was 8:57 in the morning and people knew Casey's clinic opened at nine. Monday was the day they interviewed people for new cases. Like a school of fish, they turned in a single motion when her Mercedes rocked up over the lip of broken asphalt from the street, groaning and yipping on shocks gone bad twenty thousand miles ago.
She pulled around to the back of the building, thankful she'd laid down the ground rules over a year ago, when she first moved into the neighborhood. Unlike the shoppers at Neiman Marcus, these people had a quiet dignity and respect for others that superseded even their own tragic lives. They would wait for her to open the front door for business.