When Galvez and I pull up in front of the house in La Vista, Mrs. del Mundo’s son is waiting for us at the gate. He is about nineteen or twenty, with a round, shiny face, not tall, but heavy, about two hundred pounds of fat and muscle. He is smoking like a chimney and pacing; the collared gray T-shirt he is wearing is stained in the back and under the arms with sweat.
    "What took you so long?" he asks, and I am surprised at the thin, whining voice that comes out of that big body.
    Galvez scowls at him. "Where is she?"
    Fat Boy takes a deep drag off his cigarette and casts the stub into the bushes nearby. "I can’t go back in there."
    Galvez rolls his eyes heavenward and turns to me. "Come on."
    We find Mrs. del Mundo at the foot of the stairs, her legs splayed out on the first, second, third and fourth steps, her neck twisted so that the left side of her face is mushed against the wood panel flooring. There is broken glass and spilt water all along the right side of the body – she must have been carrying a glass of water upstairs.
    We find the girl in a small, dark, musty room beneath the stairs, sitting on the floor in the dark with her knees tucked under her chin.
    She sits there blinking when Galvez switches the lights on, but she doesn’t look at us, doesn’t react to us at all. I think the room is a broom closet at first, but there is a small bed in one corner. I would hate to have to sleep in here.
    "Shit," Galvez says, "it’s hot in here."
    "What’s that smell?" I ask.
    Galvez raises his head carefully so it won’t hit the low, sloping ceiling, sniffing the air. "Piss." He casts a hard glare at the girl, at her faded housedress and disheveled hair. "Somebody didn’t make it to the bathroom in time."
    I come closer to the girl. "Come on. Let’s go outside." I tap her on the shoulder, half expecting her to lash out, but she doesn’t. She stands up and comes quietly with us, not even glancing down at the body as we pass it on the way to the door.
    Fat Boy bounds up across the driveway to meet us. "You little demon,"he squeals, and before Galvez can stop him, he lands a stinging slap across her face.
    "Back off," Galvez barks. "Back off, or I’ll arrest you, too."
    I look at the girl. Her left cheek is reddening. It occurs to me that she hadn’t flinched or tried to evade the slap. Her expression hasn’t changed at all.

    Mrs. del Mundo’s funeral is held three days later. Nobody from her deceased husband’s family comes; in fact, only a handful of her own relatives bothers to accompany the coffin to the cemetery. They all stand around uncomfortably as the priest delivers the blessing for the dead, and they are all walking briskly to their cars even before the coffin is completely lowered into the ground. That tells me something about her, something incongruous with her son’s insistence that she was a good, kind, gentle woman.
    She was, by all accounts, a young forty-three; the family pictures showed an attractive woman who’d kept her looks, although a certain coldness – in the down turned corners of the mouth, in the arch of an eyebrow -- spoiled them. Her son swears the girl – his stepsister – pushed her down the stairs. But he didn’t see it happen. I have no witnesses, no motive and therefore, no case against the girl. At the moment.

    The clinical social workers at juvenile hall have been unable to get the girl to talk. She is about fifteen, perhaps sixteen. They think she might be retarded, but I’m not convinced. I’ve been a police officer for sixteen years. Senior Police Officer 4 Mike Rueda, it says on the roster. Most cops don’t get smarter about anything but graft in sixteen years. I guess I’m one of the luckier ones; I’m good at what I do, which is homicide.
    Juvenile is a lousy place to be. Wherever you go, it always smells of unwashed bodies and stale food, most of it boiled. This is a girls’ facility, though, and better than most, despite the dingy walls and the institutional red flooring. She is isolated in a small room down the hall from the clinic most of the day; she clearly does not belong here, and something about her -- her clean, good looks, maybe, or her submissiveness -- strikes a sympathetic chord with the social workers, who are used to tough-talking, glue-sniffing junior criminals.
    All day long she sits by a window and taps her right foot to the beat of silent, faraway music. She never speaks, never makes a sound. She looks through us, as though we aren’t there.

    My partner and I have to go out and talk to the del Mundos’ neighbors in La Vista, to get a feel of what the family situation was like. People always have a pretty good handle on what goes on behind their neighbors’ walls and fences, no matter how thick or how high.
    As it happens, one of the hardest things in the world for me to do is to get Galvez’ butt out of the office and into the field, especially on a day as hot as this. I spend the better part of the morning wheedling, threatening and cajoling him to join me.
    The thing that finally gets him is the prospect of seeing some maids.
    Galvez likes maids. He has had four or five children by as many maids, aside from the four he already has with his real wife. Now, I’m no looker – short, wiry and so ugly my in-laws say my wife wasn’t thinking straight when she married me – but beside Galvez, with his leathery brown skin and salt-and-pepper hair and toad-like physique, I think I look pretty good. So his attractiveness to the opposite sex baffles me; I wish I could say it’s the uniform, but we don’t wear uniforms anymore since we both started working homicide.
    Obviously, this maid at the first house we call on is no exception. A shy, plump, toothy girl with round eyes, she takes one look at Galvez and goes to jelly, smiling too much and twisting her fingers this way and that. She lets us in after consulting with the lady of the house, a certain Mrs. Salcedo, and asks us to sit on the lawn chairs while her mistress gets ready to talk to us.
    She disappears into the house a few minutes. When she comes around again to ask us, "Would you like some juice or something?” Galvez stirs ever so slightly in his seat, shifting his pelvis – along with his pot belly – in her direction, and answers with a meaningful lift of the eyebrow, "Yes, I’d like -- something."
    The answer causes her to blush beet-red from hairline to neck. The right corner of his mouth lifts just a little, promising the provinciana earth-shaking sexual delights. When she heads back to the house giggling, he turns to me and gives me that some-guys-have-all-the-luck smile of his. The hairs at the back of my neck stand on end.
    When Mrs. Salcedo emerges, she is a large, gregarious woman with big hair dyed an awful shade of red. Unlike her maid, she does not give Galvez a second look. When I introduce myself, she grips my hand like a construction worker and shakes it vigorously, then immediately begins flapping the front of her red batik caftan to fan herself; the heat, even in the middle of her lush green garden, is oppressive. I like her almost at once, and by the way she looks at me – kind, but focused on the business at hand – I can tell she likes me as well. It is the kind of rapport one always hopes for when making inquiries of this sort; the people who like you will almost always give you quality information.
    She tells me that Laya’s mother Ruth died shortly after giving birth to her. It took Andy del Mundo several years to get over his young wife’s death, years in which he raised a quiet, sensitive child. Andy del Mundo married Araceli Robles when Laya was six or seven; she had worked for his small consulting practice and was a widow with a son. "Andy used to worry that Laya could not seem to get along with them."
    I lean forward, my elbows on my knees, fingers knotted together. "Was she a difficult child?"
    "Oh, no, not at all, quite the opposite. Very quiet, always kept to herself. I think Mrs. del Mundo – Cely – would have preferred a more normal child, you know, noisy, active. Like Alvin."
    The maid emerged from the house bearing a tray with glasses and a pitcher of what looked like iced tea.
    "Mrs. Salcedo, I was wondering – is Laya retarded?"
    She waited for the maid to set the tray down, then poured some of the tea for herself and us before continuing. "You know, we always thought so. Ruth died giving birth to her ... we thought there might have been complications but Andy didn’t like to talk about Ruth. I don’t think he ever really got over her death." She took a sip from her glass and chewed on her lower lip a while. "She looks normal enough, `no? But she moves very slowly, and she hardly talks. She might have had a learning disability, although I think she went to UPIS for a while."
    I think about this, looking down at the kalamansi pulp floating on the surface of my iced tea. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Galvez putting the moves on the girl, who has lingered, hovering around him attentively. He is asking her questions totally unrelated to the case in the low, hot-shit voice he always uses on maids.
    As we talk, a clearer picture emerges of Laya del Mundo’s life after her father’s death. Her stepmother is a loud, high-strung woman, constantly badgering, threatening, berating the girl.
    "Cely was a screamer. She screamed at the dogs, the bill collectors, everything. I think she must have had a thyroid problem, such a loud woman, so high-strung."
    The stepbrother Alvin was just as bad; Mrs. Salcedo calls him a horrible young man, a spoiled brat who will never amount to anything.
    I think about this for a while; so far my initial impressions, of the dead woman and her son, of the atmosphere in the del Mundo household, have been confirmed. But nothing I’ve heard so far is sufficient a motive for murder. I realize, though, that I am talking from my own point of view; my wife’s mother sounds a lot like Cely del Mundo, and to be sure there are days when I’d like to kill her, but that’s just talk. I turn to Mrs. Salcedo and begin taking my leave. She promises to call me if she remembers anything.
    I have to clear my throat several times before Galvez takes the hint.
    Mrs. Salcedo is looking sternly at her maid, and the girl wilts under her mistress’ stare. But Galvez not only winks at the girl, but at Mrs. Salcedo as well, as I drag him out of the compound by the arm. The cheeky bastard.

    Before the day is over I’ve been given two new cases to investigate. It’s always like this; I have to juggle anywhere from two to as many as six cases at a time. These new ones are ordinary gangland salvage-type killings, two more I won’t be able to solve. Quite likely the guys who did it are down the hall from me, at Anti-Narcotics, and they like it when I stay off their turf.
    When I get home, the kids are asleep. Dinner was my favorite – pinakbet done just the way I like it, with a lot of squash and eggplant, the sauce dense with crushed tomatoes and shrimp fry – and I know my wife is upset with me because she has stored it in the refrigerator and cleared the dinner dishes away, to tell me they couldn’t wait.
    As I settle in the rickety armchair in front of the television and peel my sweaty socks off, the thing that nags me most about the day’s inquiries in La Vista is how everyone who knew Cely del Mundo said she was a loud woman. They said she would be yelling and screaming from sunup to sundown; at the paper boy who came with the Bulletin Today at seven o’clock sharp every morning, at the family dogs (Japanese spitzes, an especially excitable and noisy breed), at the succession of maids, none of whom could last beyond three months. She reserved her most venomous tirades for the slow, uncommunicative Laya, who apparently was so clumsy and uncoordinated that she had to be moved to the tiny room on the ground floor where we found her that night.
    The UP Integrated School. If the girl could have been enrolled at UPIS, she probably wasn’t retarded -- maybe just a slow learner. It’s been a long day, and going to UPIS in the morning is the last thought on my mind before I doze off in the chair.

    At the school, I am told that Laya del Mundo was a student until the age of twelve; she was pulled out of school in the middle of her freshman year with no explanation from her stepmother. Her records show an indifferent student, with below average to average grades in every subject.

    When I get to juvenile, the administrator tells me the girl has a visitor. "A teacher," she says.
    "I wasn’t informed?"
    She wrings her hands together; lines of worry suddenly creasing her forehead. "I didn’t think there would be a problem."
    "Hmmm," is all I say, and accompany her to the visiting area. The dingy, pale-green door has a glass viewing panel set in it at eye level; I look in and motion for her not to open the door. She waits by my side a few seconds and then excuses herself.
    The two of them are sitting on opposite sides of a dull beige desk. The teacher – the slip of paper on the administrator’s desk said his name was Anastacio Arias -- is quite old, to my surprise, probably a little over seventy; very small, very fair, with light brown hair graying in large areas at the temples and the crown of his head. The skin has grown slack over the fine bones of his face. What catch my eyes are his hands, so big they look like they have been grafted on to his wrists from another person’s body. He is tapping one very long forefinger on the desk and talking; the girl watches him intently for a few seconds, then bends her head to doodle on the surface of the desk with a yellow Mongol pencil.
    To his left, on the desk, is a small pile of apple and tangerine peelings; he has obviously brought her some fruit and taken the trouble to peel it for her. Something about it touches me; it is the same little pile on the table at breakfast, when I peel fruit for the kids, although I haven’t done that in over a week. By her right hand, a few slices of tangerine lie on a square of Kleenex.
    The tapping and doodling, tapping and doodling continue for about five minutes. The girl’s face is animated for the first time since I have seen it. She smiles, she talks, her wide dark eyes are bright with interest. I wonder what kind of teacher he is; did he teach at UPIS? Why didn’t I see him there?
    I hear the tapping of heels behind me; the administrator is back with two attendants. I raise my right hand, motioning for them to wait.
    "Visiting hours are over," she says, brushing past me.
    Arias’ face darkens in helpless fury when the door opens, and the girl’s slips easily back into docile blankness. She allows the pencil to slide from her hand onto the desk and stands up obediently when the attendants come to take her away. When the women leave the room, I’m left alone with the old man; his anger, barely contained in his tiny frame, crackles through the air in the room like static.
    "Rueda?"
    "That’s me."
    The eyes narrow. "Your report says she’s retarded."
    I lift an eyebrow. "You read my report?" Obviously, the administrator has been careless with the papers on her desk.
    The old man’s face twists into a sneer. "I suppose you are qualified to make that sort of assessment," he says, as he sweeps the peelings with one huge, veined hand into his brown paper sack and folds it up. He walks slowly to the door, turns the knob, and is halfway through it when he turns back and looks at me. "You are qualified, aren’t you?"
    I am about to say something when the door opens wider, and Galvez struts in, belly first.
    "Oy, pare, I’ve been assigned to the salvagings full-time, I need your reports."
    The old man takes advantage of Galvez’ intrusion to slip out the door; I try to follow but there is a costly few moments of fumbling at the door, playing patintero with the lumbering Galvez before he finally stands aside to allow me to pass. When I reach the end of the corridor, the old man has disappeared. Annoyed, I stride back to the visiting area. Because Galvez cannot write a decent report, I have wasted a perfectly good opportunity to talk to the old man.
    "Next time you need anything from me, Galvez, wait until I get to the office."
    The bastard is busy chewing on the slices of tangerine Laya left uneaten on the table. "What’s your problem?" he asks with his mouth full.
    I shake my head and sigh. "Never mind." I stand beside the table for a few minutes, in the place where Laya was sitting only a few moments ago. She left the yellow pencil where it is lying now, and I pick it up, thinking to get back to the office. And then I see it.
    On the dull beige paint of the desk someone has drawn a series of musical staves, and in those staves, a complicated series of notes and rests.

    Joanna Bonifacio is one of those bitch reporters who think they’re God’s gift to journalism. She’s had some success as a magazine writer, and for a while was hot in Malacanang Palace covering the last President. Now, for some reason I can’t figure out, she’s covering crime for the Philippines Observer. My theory, though, is that the lady likes cheap thrills, and there are plenty of those on the police beat.
    I ring up her desk at the Observer and this really low, honey-and-gravel voice – sort of like a female impersonator -- says: "Jo Bonifacio." I can hear the fast, almost aggressive clacking of a computer keyboard at the other end.
    "Jo, Mike Rueda from CPD." I try to sound friendly, no hidden agendas.
    "Oy." There is a slight pause for what I guess to be a few sips of scalding coffee. "S-P-O-Four," she resumes, "what have I done to deserve this?"
    I clear my throat. "Jo, I need to ask you something. Do you remember that priest friend of yours? The one who helped the NBI with the Payatas killings last year?"
    The rapid clacking continues; she must type at over a hundred words per minute. "Yep, Gus Saenz. What do you need him for?"
    I try to ignore the question. "Do you know where I can get in touch with him?"
    "Uh-huh. What do you need him for?"
    I try not to sigh aloud. "I need his help on something."
    "No kidding."
    It occurs to me that talking to this woman feels a lot like being unzipped and fondled in a dark theater against your will. "He’s a musician, right?"
    She snickers. "What, you want him to join you for a karaoke night? I don’t think you’re his type."
    "Come on, Jo. I really need his help."
    The clack of the keys stop and I hear the creaking springs of a swivel chair. She has obviously pulled up closer to the phone. "Do I get a good angle?" Although she tries to suppress it, a fugitive note of intense interest manages to creep into her voice. I hesitate a moment and the springs creak again, and the clacking starts up. "Well, hey, it’s been nice talking but I have to get back to work."
    "Okay, okay," I say. "You’ll get your angle. There’s a minor involved, though."
    "You’re the best, S-P-O-Four," she crows. "Hang on a minute while I get you the number of the Jesuit House."

    Father Augusto Saenz is a Jesuit priest who teaches anthropology at the Ateneo de Manila. He is also one of the country’s three leading forensic anthropologists. I have seen him a few times on television, helping the police and the NBI on one case or another, but nothing prepares me for the sight of him in real life: a little over six feet, with long arms and legs and handsome, angular mestizo features, tawny skin. He looks much younger than the fifty-seven or fifty-eight years Joe Bonifacio believes him to be. He doesn’t even dress like a priest; right now he is wearing faded black jeans and a gray linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. When he appears in the doorway of juvenile and walks past the reception desk toward me, the female duty officer and the receptionist follow him with their eyes, their mouths hanging open. I allow him to pass ahead of me into the corridor, then turn to the girls.
    "Sunday confession for both of you," I tell them sternly, and they titter nervously as they get back to work.
    I follow him down the corridor, trying to keep up with the stride of those long legs. "Thank you for coming down, Father Saenz."
    "No thanks necessary. " He walks, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his jeans, with a curious loping gait, the way someone who rides horses might. "Joe said you needed some help. Although I have to admit the police have never asked for my assistance on a musical problem before."
    "No, I guess not, Father. These are – unusual circumstances."
    "Yes, Joe told me. The young girl." He pauses a while, then continues.
    "I don’t recall ever having met you before, and Joe doesn’t remember telling you I used to be a musician." He says this matter-of-factly, not really expecting an answer, although I feel obliged to give him one just the same.
    "When I was a young police officer I rode armed escort for Mayor Daniel Rodriguez." He frowns and tries to remember; when the creases on his brow smooth out in recognition of the name, I continue. "You were at one of his parties once. I think, 1984 or 85? You conducted the choir."
    "Ah, yes, one of his wife’s charity things," he nods. "That was a long time ago, you still remember me?"
    I swallow once. "Mrs. Rodriguez had a big crush on you. Everyone in the escort knew it."
    He stops right before the door of the visiting area and turns to me. His eyes, their irises a curious shade of yellow-brown, narrow a moment; then the hands come out of the pockets. I take a step back; the hands grab me by the shoulders and shake me vigorously, but the handsome face is smiling broadly.
    "She did, too," he laughs, "the old cow!"
    We both have a good laugh about it, and then I lead him into the room.
    I point to the desk. "Over there."
    Saenz moves away from me, toward the desk and bends down to examine the music scribbled on the wooden surface.
    I sit on the opposite side, and watch as he traces the progress of the notes down the staves with his forefinger, as his lips move in short, pulsing bursts of air as though to keep time. He does this for what seems like a very long time, and then he goes back to the first staff and repeats the process. When he comes to the end, he closes his eyes and begins to hum. I can’t understand the music – at some points it begins to make sense, and then he breaks off and follows another line of melody, breaks off again. His face, with the eyelids shut tight, is aglow with pleasure. I realize, of course, that I’m not hearing it the way he is hearing it in his head, and I sit patiently until he is finished.
    When he opens his eyes, he is beaming. "Bach."
    "Good. What is it?"
    He snorts good-naturedly. "Johann Sebastian Bach. The Allemande from the Suite in E Minor, arranged for classical guitar."
    "Oh." Of course I haven’t the faintest idea what he’s talking about. "So you’ve heard it before?"
    "I’ve played it before. You say this Arias is her teacher? Did you find out what kind of teacher?"
    "I guess –"
    "Don’t guess," Saenz wags a finger to no one in particular. "Is his first name Anastacio?"
    I fish my notebook from my pocket and flip through the pages. "Yeah, that’s him."
    The priest rocks back and forth in his seat, biting his lower lip, with one eye closed and looking at me out of the other. "Anastacio Arias is one of the country’s leading classical guitarists." He stands up and begins to slap his thighs with both hands, getting ready to leave. "Your suspect is not retarded, Mike."
    When the girl is brought in, the guitar is propped up on a metal stand; Saenz is sitting beside it with his arms folded across his chest. She goes straight to her chair near the window, ignoring them. Saenz looks at me, unfolds his arms and takes up the guitar. He begins to play. I’ve never heard music like this before: it sounds like – this is stupid, I don’t know what I’m talking about -- like a dream of water and hands and infinite sadness.
    The girl does not react. She continues staring out the window, at the yellow-green, paddle-like leaves of a talisay tree. When the music is finished, Saenz looks up at her, then at me, his curious yellow-brown eyes questioning. I open my hands and shrug.
    Behind me, the door opens and an attendant comes in carrying a tray with a glass of water and two cups of coffee. She puts the tray down on the table and walks out of the room, but unexpectedly, she allows the door to slam shut and I jump, as does Saenz. Slightly embarrassed, I stand, shaking my head, and close it gently.
    "Do that again," Saenz commands. There is an unmistakable urgency in his voice.
    "Do what again?"
    "Slam the door."
    "Why?"
    "Just do it, for heaven’s sake."
    I open the door and slam it hard.
    "Again."
    I repeat the action, and then I realize the priest has not taken his eyes off the girl. I turn to look at her, and then slam the door a third time. She still does not react.
    "Okay, enough." The priest stands and moves behind her. Out of her sight, he leans close behind her, then claps his hands together loudly, once. Then he sighs. "I think you’d better have her hearing checked."

    The chrome-plated Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office clock on my desk says it’s eight o’clock. The fact is it’s about ten-thirty. Yesterday, Galvez, in one of those song-and-dance routines he does when he’s trying to get me to do his paperwork for him, came in smoking like a chimney and talking a load of nonsense about how he’s more of an "action man" than I am, and since I’m kind of a "thinking guy", I’m ideally suited to the job of filling out reports. Without so much as a by your leave, he picked up the clock, shook out the batteries and replaced them with failing ones from his battered Walkman. The hour and minute hands have stopped completely; now the second hand has begun winding down. Sometimes I wonder if I can apply for a change of partner; better yet, I wonder if the guys at Anti-Narcotics would be willing to get him off my back for a small fee. Ah, well.
    Saenz has picked up Arias from the UP College of Music; yesterday we agreed the old man might be more cooperative if he was brought in by someone who wasn’t a cop. When they arrive, the old man looks sullen, and does not take the hand I offer him. He sits in the chair opposite me and looks down at the huge hands resting in his lap.
    "You can help her, you know."
    He is quite feisty and temperamental for such a little guy. One of the huge hands flies up, the forefinger jabbing the air in my direction. "You want to prove she killed that woman."
    "I want to know the truth."
    All at once he is a little old man again, and he slumps back in his seat, looking tired and defeated. Nobody moves or says anything for a while.
    "Her father started her on guitar lessons when she was six. I have been teaching over forty years. I have never seen anything like this child. A musical genius. She can play by ear and by sight, she has perfect pitch. She can hear the music in her head as she reads it on the page." He looks from me to Saenz, and back. "You have done some checking at UPIS?" he asks.
    "Yes."
    "Then you have seen her grades. Lousy, every last one. But an incredible musician."
    The tapping and doodling now make sense; she was writing the notes and tapping them out. "Did she ever tell you what it was like at home?"
    The old man’s face darkens again. "At first it was difficult to believe. Mrs. del Mundo was always such a charming woman. Very friendly. But at home she tormented that child so. Ranting and screaming from sun-up to sundown. The child couldn’t do anything right. Do you know she would cry at the end of her lessons? Cry because she had to go home to that house, to that constant screaming." The old man turns to me. "Did they tell you at UPIS why she was taken out when she was twelve?"
    "No explanation from Mrs. del Mundo."
    "Of course not. A better place to look would be St. Luke’s. Three years ago Laya was admitted for injuries to both ears."
    I take a deep breath. "She was beaten?"
    When he looks at me, his eyes hold both profound sadness and gentle reproach. "You are a policeman, Mr. Rueda. You know how the world works. Don’t you know there is more than one way to be beaten?"
    Dr. Maggie Paterno was the otolaryngologist who took care of Laya when she was admitted to St. Luke’s. She described the injury to the girl’s eardrums as permanent and irreparable. They were punctured, she said, with a no. 1 pencil.
    The injuries were self-inflicted.

    When I step out of St. Luke’s, in the blazing hot sun, with the traffic on E. Rodriguez and the ripples of heat rising from the vehicles’ bodies, I feel a pain in my chest that I can’t explain. I flag down a cab to get to juvenile, and the pain just sits there, bearing down on my chest from outside, or straining it from the inside, I can’t tell. I think about what I have just found out, think about both the desperation and the fierce courage it takes to drive a pencil through your eardrums so you can silence the world, think about how I’ll probably never write with a pencil again. I think and then it all becomes too much for me; the cab driver, handing me a box of Kleenex from his dashboard, asks if someone has died in my family.
    At juvenile, I ask to see the girl.
    In her room near the clinic, Saenz’ guitar is still in its stand; he’s been hoping to reach her through it. She is sitting by the window in her usual place, staring at the talisay tree; she doesn’t mind me, she never has and she’s unlikely to start now. My eyes hurt and I’m tired; when I get out of here I’ll still have three cases to look at. I haven’t been home early enough to play with my kids in the last two weeks; I get home and they’re asleep in their beds.
    Stress and frustration are a regular part of my life, but right now, I’m just fed up with it all, and the girl, with her blank face and staring eyes, is the perfect target for my bad humor, a human ball of cotton.
    "Talk to me, damn it. I’m trying to help you."
    Of course she doesn’t; she just sits there.
    I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees, open my hands and press the heels of the palms against my eyeballs. The action relieves the stress a little, but not much. At the back of my eyes the inside of my brain swirls purple and blue, with splotches of yellow pulsing here and there.
    And then I hear it: the dream of water and sadness. Like a child waiting to catch a dragonfly, I’m afraid to move, afraid the music will stop if I move.
    A musical genius, Arias had told us, and the phrase didn’t mean anything to me. Well, now I know what that is: someone who can turn sorrow into sound.
    When it is over I lift my head from my hands. She is holding the guitar to her chest, and her head is tilted to one side. She is watching me; really watching me, not looking through me to the wall behind.

    When I come through the door, Cecille knows not to nag me about coming home late again. Maybe she sees something in the sag of my shoulders, in the look on my face, in the way I slip my feet out of my shoes and head straight for the bedroom without a word. I strip off my shirt and drop it into the hamper, go to the bathroom and wash my face. I reach for the face towel on the towel rack near the sink, eyes shut tight against the water; my fingers find it, as well as Cecille’s hand, which has taken it off the rack and brought it closer to me. I press both the towel and her palm to my face and stand there without moving for a while.
    When I open my eyes, I can see her standing behind me in the mirror, her pretty face filled with worry and concern. I feel like I ought to say something, to explain why I’m feeling so awful, but all I can do is shake my head and say, "I don’t understand."
    She rubs the back of my neck gently, the way she does when soothing one of the kids. "You will." I turn into the warmth behind me and the hurt falls away.
    Hours later, I am lying in the darkness, listening to the house. A house will tell you a lot of things people won’t. I can hear my wife’s regular breathing as she sleeps beside me in the sweet, quiet peace that follows lovemaking; the drip of the faucet in the bathroom sink; the occasional skitter of lizards playing tag on the wooden ceiling. Since it is a small house, the sounds do not have far to travel, they do not break the air and change and become something else other than Cecille’s breathing or a dripping faucet or the skitter of lizards. It is a peaceful house, noisy, bustling, disorganized in the daytime, but the air remembers our laughter, our bargaining over chores and allowances, our problems with math and chemistry and English, our worries about money, our love and hope.
    I think about other houses I’ve been in, how the sounds change in them, how the air smells and feels. I think about how words, voices, anger, love, joy, fear, linger in the air of a room, and how they alter the character of silence.
    I don’t understand, I told her.
    You will, she said.

    I’m standing in the house in La Vista. Alvin has left the keys with the neighbors while he vacations with family in the South. Some of the furniture is gone; he has sold off things he probably has no right to sell. Inside, the dull resonances of a large and empty house, its doors and windows closed against the sound of birds, the absence of any hum of electricity. Something heavy hanging in the air, something sour and spiteful and unhappy.
    I head for the broom closet – Laya’s bedroom, which no one can ever convince me is habitable. When I open the door, I catch a whiff of ammonia almost immediately; the room has been closed for weeks. I remember the smell of urine in this dark, cramped room, how strong it was when Galvez and I came to pick her up. Galvez had said -- I close my eyes and try to remember -- he’d said "Somebody didn’t make it to the bathroom in time."
    When Galvez walked her out ahead of me, her duster was dry.
    Somebody didn’t make it to the bathroom in time.
    Who?
    I turn the bedcovers down. No stains. I look into corners, under the bed, at the piles of folded clothes that lay on the floor, on sheets of newspaper; it occurs to me that she was put in a room with no closets. No closets; no tables; her books and things lying on the floor, lined up against the wall near the door. I walk on my knees to them, geometry and algebra textbooks, notebooks from when she still went to school, dictionaries, Shakespeare and Louisa May Alcott, Nancy Drew mysteries and Archie comics.
    I could be imagining things, but that ammonia scent seems to be getting stronger. I pass my hands over the tops of the books and boxes and envelopes, exams and class pictures and photo albums, loyalty awards and Work Ed projects with feathers and yarn.
    The tips of my fingers now find edges of paper curled stiff, as though from water damage. My hands stop here.
    As always, she doesn’t react when I come in. I lock the door of her room behind me and go to her. I take her by the elbow – a little more roughly than I realize until it’s too late -- and make her sit on the chair at the table where she takes her meals.
    I spread the yellowed music books and scores on the table in front of her and wait for a reaction. She glances down at them, then away. Finally it’s her hands that betray her; they open, fingers seeking the paper slowly at first, then with increasing eagerness.
    "Did he piss on them?"
    She does not react; I forget that she can’t hear me. I put out my hand and tilt her chin up so she can read my lips. "Did he piss on them? Was that what made you angry?" She tries to turn away but my fingers grip her chin firmly. "It was okay if you couldn’t hear, wasn’t it? You didn’t need to hear the music to make it. It was in your head. That’s why you were brave enough to make yourself deaf. You needed to shut her out to hear the music in your head. Look at me. He came in that night and pissed on your music. That was the last straw. You needed to see the music, you needed to be able to read it." I push the books and scores toward her. "You can’t read any of these, can you? They’re ruined. The ink has run; the pages have gummed together. The photocopies are the worst; you can’t salvage any of them. Bach, Vivaldi, Barrios, all of them. Lost."
    In one swift move she pulls away, shoving her chair back so violently that it falls to the floor. She runs into a corner of the room, crouches low, as though by making herself smaller she will succeed in becoming invisible altogether. She presses the palms of her hands to her ears. I follow her; she cringes as I take her by the wrists and pull her hands away from her ears.
    "You’re deaf, remember? You don’t have to do that anymore. You can’t hear anything. You took care of that. But you couldn’t take care of the books. You couldn’t make them deaf. Look at me."
    She cries out, a word I can’t understand, and her voice breaks hoarsely from disuse. It seems to go on a long time. Then words come, one after another, clumping together like candy that has been stored too long in a jar. "He came in he told me to do the dishes. He said I was too slow he said he would teach me a lesson he pissed on them." And then she cries out again.
    Her wailing sounds like a hurt animal in this small closed room. I think about my children. I think about how they will probably never get to Disneyland, never play an instrument, never live in a nice big house. I think about my noisy, rowdy, average kids and thank God none of them will ever want to take a pencil and make themselves deaf because that is the only way they can survive. I swear for as long as I live no one will ever, ever piss on the things that are most precious to them, and I take this girl, who is not my child, take her in my arms and hold her. I hold her hoping it will make up for the moment when she told her stepmother about the ruined books and was told to shut up because she deserved it anyway, to go back to that tiny broom closet because she didn’t belong upstairs -- upstairs in her father’s house, in her own house. Hold her for the blinding anger and humiliation and hurt that followed, too much to turn toward herself again. Hold her for the horror that came when she realized what she had done. Hold her for her father and mother, who died not knowing she would come to this, to this moment in this room, with a stranger who knows she has had to kill to stay alive.
    When the wailing stops, I release her, get up and move to the table. I gather up the books and papers, cross over to the other side of the room and pick up the metal trashcan and bring them to the corner where she still crouched. I set the trashcan down between us, show her the books and reach out to take her chin in my hand. "Look at me. Look at me. Mr. Arias has copies of these, right?"
    She nods.
    I put the ruined books and scores in the trash, fish out the lighter from my pocket and apply the flame to one corner of a piece of paper. The paper catches fire, blackens, and the flame moves to the other sheets. I pick up the trash can, open a window, set the can out on the outer edge of the window sill and slide the window closed again. I stand watching the black smoke billow from the trashcan for what seems like a very long time.

    Saenz drops by a couple of days after Laya is released to the custody of a paternal aunt. He sits across me at the desk, hands folded over his chest, and waits for me to start talking about it, the way priests do. For a long time I say nothing; we stare at each other in a silence filled with understanding.
    "Well, she’ll be okay now."
    He nods. "I know."
    I sigh. "I didn’t have a case."
    "Didn’t you?" He smiles, and for a moment I wonder if he knows anything. Impossible. Before I can answer he stands and gets ready to leave then pats his pockets for something. He finds it in the square pocket of his shirt; it’s small and flat, in a blue Shoemart plastic bag. He puts it on the desk and slides it toward me.
    "What is it?"
    "A quick education. For when she starts performing professionally." With a chuckle, he’s gone.
    I take the package out of the blue plastic bag. It’s a cassette tape. The Instruments of Classical Music: The Guitar and The Lute. Vivaldi. Bach. Rodrigo. Sor. Falla. Dowland. Strange, unfamiliar names. I turn it over. With a red felt-tip pen, Saenz has encircled one of the selections: no. 4, Bach’s Allemande from the Suite in E Minor. I tear the plastic wrapping off, pop the tape into the cassette player, put my feet up on the desk and listen.
 

Ichi Batacan worked in the Philippine intelligence community and was trained to be a classical guitarist.  She started writing seriously in 1996 and has been published in Philippine magazines and the 1998 literary anthology of the University of the Philippines.  Her work has won Palanca awards (her country's equivalent of the Pulitzer/Booker prize) for her fiction; and writes mainly mystery and detective fiction.

Contents

  Ichi

  Batacan