have feelings anymore. I had them before the accident—or at least everyone says I did—but since the accident I don’t. But they acted just like they always have.” Suddenly he grinned uncomfortably. “Bob was teasing me a little.”
“I know,” Tom Jackson said. “Your girlfriend told us about that. And she said you didn’t blush.”
“I don’t think I can blush. I might be able to learn how, but I haven’t yet.”
“Learn how?” Jackson echoed blankly. “But you just smiled.”
Alex glanced at his father, and Marsh nodded. “I’ve been practicing. I’m not like other people, so I’m practicing being like other people. It seemed like I ought to grin before I admitted that Bob was teasing me, so I did.”
“Okay,” Finnerty said, staring at the boy and feeling chilled. “Is there anything else you remember? Anything at all?”
Alex hesitated, then shook his head. A few minutes later, Finnerty and Jackson were gone.
“Alex?” Marsh asked. “Is there something else you remember about last night that you didn’t tell them?”
Once again, Alex shook his head. Everything he remembered, he’d told them about. But they hadn’t asked him if he knew who killed Valerie Benson. If they had, he would have told them, though he wouldn’t have been able to tell them why she died, or why Mrs. Lewis died, either. But when he’d awakened this morning, the last pieces had fallen into place, and it had all come together in his mind. He understood his brain now, and soon he would understand exactly what had happened.
He would understand what had happened, and he would know who he was.
“Why, Alex,” Arlette Pringle said, her plain features lighting up with a smile, “you’re becoming quite a regular here, aren’t you?”
“I need some more information, Miss Pringle,” Alex replied. “I need to know more about the town.”
“La Paloma?” Miss Pringle asked, her voice doubtful. “I’m afraid I just don’t have much. I have the book I showed you a couple of days ago, but that’s about it.” She shrugged ruefully. “I’m afraid not much ever happened here. Nothing worth writing about, anyway.”
“But there has to be something,” Alex pressed. “Something about the old days, when the town was mostly Mexican.”
“Mexican,” Arlette repeated, her lips pursing thoughtfully as her fingers tapped on her desktop. “I’m afraid I just don’t know exactly what you want. I have some information about the Franciscan fathers, and the missions, but I’m not sure there’s much that’s specifically about our mission. La Paloma just wasn’t that important.”
“What about when the Americans came?”
Again Arlette shrugged. “Not that I know of. Of course, there are the old stories, but I don’t pay any attention to them, and I don’t think they’re written down anywhere.”
“What stories?”
“Oh, some of the older Chicanos in town still talk about the old days, when Don Roberto de Meléndez y Ruiz still had the hacienda, and about what happened after the treaty was signed.” She leaned forward, and her voice dropped confidentially. “Supposedly there was a massacre up there.”
Alex frowned slightly, as a vague memory stirred on the edges of his consciousness. “At the hacienda?”
“That’s what they say. But of course, the stories have been passed down through the generations, and I don’t suppose there’s much truth to any of them, really. But if you really want to know about them, why don’t you go see Mrs. Torres?”
“María?” Alex asked, his voice suddenly hollow. For the first time since his operation, a pang of genuine fear crashed through the barriers in his mind, and he felt himself tremble. It fit. It fit perfectly with the idea that had begun forming in his mind last night, then come to fruition this morning.
Arlette Pringle nodded. “That’s right. She still lives around the corner in a little house behind the mission. You tell her I sent you, but I warn you, once she starts talking, she won’t stop.” She wrote an address on a slip of paper and handed it to Alex. “Now, don’t believe everything she says,” she cautioned as Alex was about to leave the library. “Don’t forget, she’s old, and she’s always been very bitter. I can’t say I blame her, really, but still, it’s best not to put too much stock in her stories. I’m afraid a lot of them have been terribly exaggerated.”
Alex left the library, and glanced at the address on the scrap of paper, then crumpled it and threw it into a trash bin. A few minutes later he was a block and a half away, his