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couldn’t make it.
    One of those nights turned out to be far from routine.
    Chapa had heard that Delacruz had left the area some time ago, but could not remember if that was the son, or the old man. It didn’t matter either way. There couldn’t be much Chapa did not already know about what had happened that night, but he needed a starting point, and the place where Annie Sykes found refuge seemed as good as any.

CHAPTER 4
     
     
    The convenience store had changed some since Chapa had last been there more than a decade earlier. The kid behind the counter wasn’t old enough to be a regular employee, so he had to be family.
    “You’re looking for my grandfather, he’s in the back,” the boy said, then called out, “Papi.”
    Chapa glanced back toward the door and imagined what Annie must have looked like on that night. Alone, beaten, and bruised, a fighter in need of help. Had Grubb succeeded in breaking her? Chapa had seen no evidence of that back then.
    Smooth jazz flowed through the speakers overhead, and the place smelled of flowery air freshener which almost succeeded in masking the odor of cheap, over-brewed coffee. Dominic Delacruz emerged from a backroom and introduced himself. Chapa recognized the man immediately, though his face was much more weathered than before, and his thick wave of hair had turned almost entirely gray.
    “Sure, I remember you. I haven’t been able to forget anything from that time, you know,” Delacruz said. They shook hands, the store owner’s fingers were hard and coarse like fine sandpaper. “You’re Latino, right?”
    Chapa nodded. “Cuban.”
    This was an exchange that Chapa had grown accustomed to. As a child he observed how Latin American immigrants made a habit of asking each other what country they were from. He always assumed that’s what happens when the peoples of twenty-two different nations, loosely tied together by a common language, are tossed into one large mass by their adopted country.
    “You don’t have an accent. I haven’t met many Cubans, but the ones I have all sounded, well, Cuban.”
    “We left Cuba when I was very young.”
    Dominic gave him a once-over, offering no sign of approval.
    “How old were you?”
    “Barely four.”
    Chapa’s mother had been determined to assimilate into American culture, deciding that it was the best way to succeed in the United States. As a result, by the time Chapa was a teenager his Cubanismo had long become something he set aside and brought out only for special occasions, or when family came up from Florida. He sometimes joked that as a Cuban living in the Midwest he was required by federal law to maintain a cadre of relatives in Miami.
    On a shelf in the next aisle down from where he and Dominic were standing, alongside the Chef Boyardee Ravioli and Chicken of the Sea Tuna, Chapa spotted a can of black beans. Probably wouldn’t find one of those in any other suburban convenience store, he thought, and it reminded him of the cooking shortcuts his mother began relying on as she got older.
    Each day Chapa would step out the door of his house and into a different world, one that quickly became more comfortable and familiar. Still, within the confines of the home he grew up in, Chapa was surrounded by the food and culture of his native country. But that changed over time as his mother made friends at work and around the neighborhood, and even joined the PTA.
    In many ways, Chapa had found it more difficult being the kid without a father than the one whose mother spoke with an accent.
    “So are you here to do some follow-up story now that they’re finally going to kill that animal?”
    “Something like that.”
    Chapa wasn’t trying to be smart. He really wasn’t certain where any of this was going. When he got the message that Grubb wanted a sit-down, he’d expected to do the standard death row piece—part indignation, part remorse, with the occasional guest appearance by Jesus.
    “I realize it was a long