Strong Light of Day by Jon Land

he?”
    He resisted the temptation to pull his hands away. “Yes.”
    â€œAnd you witnessed it, you watched him die, this priest,” Madam Caterina said, eyes straying off Paz as if surprised by her own words.
    â€œRight again.”
    â€œHe was murdered. He was carrying something at the time. Two bags. He was walking back to the church with them. Something to eat.”
    â€œBread,” Paz said, louder than he’d meant to.
    Madam Caterina looked into his eyes and something changed in hers. “Oh.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou should leave,” the psychic said, letting go of his hands and pulling away.
    â€œWe haven’t finished.”
    â€œWe haven’t even started, and we’re not going to,” Madam Caterina said, rising to her feet in an unspoken signal for the giant across from her to do the same.
    But Paz stayed in his chair, his knee knocking up against the underside of the plank table. “You answered my question.”
    â€œYou didn’t ask me one.”
    â€œI meant about you being a fake. You’re not. You’re the real thing. That must’ve been what brought me here. Back in the La Vega slum where I grew up, the people thought my mother was a bruja, a witch. She had visions, saw things that weren’t there. For a long time I thought she was crazy.”
    Madam Caterina sat back down. “What changed, child?”
    â€œA few years later, I found her crying when I got home. She knew what I’d done.”
    â€œYou killed the man who shot the priest.”
    â€œHe had it coming.”
    â€œYou did it with a knife, his knife, a knife you still carry.”
    â€œHow do you know all this? Who told you?”
    â€œWould you like to speak to your mother?”
    â€œI speak to her all the time.”
    â€œYou talk, but you don’t hear what she’s got to say. She’s here now. Do you have something to ask her?”
    â€œNo,” Paz said, his voice taking on the sheepishness it always had in his mother’s company as a boy, because he knew he could never lie to her. She could always tell and would scold him with her eyes that could pierce his soul.
    â€œThen what did bring you here … Mo? ”
    â€œThat’s my mother called me. Short for Guillermo.”
    â€œI know. She just told me.”
    Paz suddenly felt very cold and realized he was trembling, an entirely foreign sensation for him. “I’m not the same person I became after killing the man who murdered my priest. I killed a whole lot of people after that—in service to my country, I told myself, but mostly because I enjoyed it.”
    â€œYour mother says as much,” Madam Caterina told him. “But she also agrees you’re not that man anymore.”
    â€œYou don’t even know me.”
    â€œYour mother does, and those were her words, not mine. You sure you don’t want to talk to her? Maybe about these other paths you’ve taken in search of the truth?”
    Paz found himself leaning forward, his chair creaking from the strain. “I audited college classes for a while, but that didn’t work out too well. Then I tried teaching English to Mexican immigrants, but that worked even worse. I always end up back with my new priest at the San Fernando Cathedral near Main Plaza. Thought I was done seeking my answers elsewhere, until I showed up here.”
    Madam Caterina seemed to study Paz briefly, then looked down at the plank table. “You came to this country to kill,” she said, eyes remaining poised that way. “And you’ve done plenty more killing since, but not toward your original purpose in coming.”
    Paz nodded, even though she wasn’t looking at him.
    â€œToward a different purpose entirely.” Madam Caterina looked up but squeezed her eyes closed. “I see a woman wearing a badge.”
    â€œMy Texas Ranger.”
    â€œShe’s the one you came here to