The Dead Women of Juarez

The cinder blocks and the whitewash didn’t change when the cells were gone. Instead of barred doors, steel portals with judas holes stood sentinel. They were stenciled with numbers. Kelly saw four of these before they reached the one marked 2.

Kelly held his breath when the jailor opened this door, but on the other side was a space akin to his cell. The bunks and the toilet and sink were missing, replaced by an ugly wooden table bolted to the floor and two chairs secured the same way across from each other. A short metal rail adorned the table on each end. The jailor cuffed Kelly’s left wrist to one.

“Sit,” Sevilla told Kelly. Kelly sat.

Overhead lights banished every shadow from the room. It was a square and ugly space, every pit and scrape on the walls and the table under a surgeon’s lamp. Kelly saw lines on Sevilla’s face that he had never seen before. When Kelly looked at his hands, he hardly recognized them.

“Gracias,” Sevilla told the jailor. He let the man close the door and lock it. They were alone together, except for a video camera mounted high in one corner, a gray metal shoebox with a black eye.

Sevilla followed Kelly’s gaze upward. He nodded slightly and then sat down on the other side of the table. A wrinkled manila folder went between them. Sevilla folded his hands over it. He said nothing.

“Who’s watching us?” Kelly asked at last.

“Does it matter?”

“I guess not.”

“You had your chance to talk to me alone, Kelly,” Sevilla said. “You never took it. Now whenever we speak, someone else will listen in.”

“Local police?”

“It’s complicated,” Sevilla said. “The locals made the arrest, but the state police will lead the investigation. There is a task force for these things.”

“A task force?”

“Yes. And a special prosecutor. This is very serious, Kelly. You don’t seem to understand how serious it is.”

“I do understand.”

“If you say so.”

“You’re in this task force?”

Sevilla shook his head. “No. I deal with drugs. I am here as a courtesy only. Because I asked to be.”

Kelly found it impossible to sit comfortably with one wrist chained to the table. He found himself leaning on his trapped arm, but the angle was wrong and it made his shoulder hurt. Straightening up was no better. “Why would you ask that?”

“I have my reasons. And I want you to know I asked to be there at the arrest, as well,” Sevilla said. “I wanted to make sure you were taken in without any problems. Accidents happen.”

“I think they did,” Kelly replied. He touched his face. When he touched his teeth with his tongue, they were definitely loose.

“No. You’re still alive.”

“Why would they kill me?”

Sevilla opened the folder and held it up. Kelly saw the photo inside and retched. He snapped his head to the side before a rush of sour vomit surged into his mouth. Kelly spat and shut his eyes tightly, but the image flashed on him again and he was sick a second time.

“Take it away!”

“This isn’t the only one, Kelly.”

“I don’t want to see that!” A patch on Kelly’s arm was warm and wet. His belly churned wildly. He gripped the table-rail with his left hand and his leg with the other. His eyes stayed shut. “Put it away.”

Kelly didn’t look again until he heard the folder whisper closed. Sevilla folded his hands over it again and Kelly shivered. Once more Sevilla’s expression was dark and unreadable, his eyes lidded. He hardly seemed to breathe.

“Less than three hundred meters from your apartment,” Sevilla said. “Just a little dirt on her grave.”

The little room moved. Kelly held on. His nose burned with the stink of vomit. “Oh, fuck,” he said.

“Partially burned,” Sevilla continued. “Raped. Las dos vias. Her piercings were yanked out: the tongue, the nipples, the—”

“Why the fuck are you telling me this?”

“Because you did it, Kelly. You did these things to Paloma. Don’t you remember?” Sevilla pushed the folder across the table. Kelly recoiled from it. “Look at the pictures if you don’t remember. For everything you did to her, Kelly, there are a dozen men in this building who would kill you like that.”

Sevilla snapped his fingers. Kelly flinched. He wanted his mind to be blank, but it was not blank; something fire-blackened and mutilated and chewed by animals rushed in and filled the space between thoughts until the thoughts were crowded out completely.

Kelly did not even notice when Sevilla stopped talking, or how long there was silence. The manila folder lingered on Kelly’s side of the table, one corner dangling. Kelly didn’t want to touch it. At last he did, and shoved it back at Sevilla. “I didn’t do that.”

“Did you rape her first? Or was it Esteban?”

“Shut up.”

“I don’t know how a brother could rape his own sister, but it’s happened, Kelly. This wouldn’t be the first time. Were you high? Help me understand, Kelly. Was Esteban high, too?”

“Shut your mouth, just shut your fuckin’ mouth!”

“Is that why you decided to go back to the needle, Kelly? You just couldn’t take it anymore? Tell me: was it easier to do those things to her after you tore her tongue apart, Kelly? She could still scream, but at least she couldn’t talk right. She couldn’t say your name when she begged for mercy. When you set her on fire, she was still alive.”

“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you if you say another goddamned word,” Kelly said. He didn’t look at Sevilla when he said it; he couldn’t raise his eyes from the table, from the folder, to the man on the other side.

They were quiet a while then. Kelly shivered though it wasn’t cold, his bare feet flat on the concrete floor. The heat was leached from him. He could have shed more tears, but this time they didn’t come no matter how much Kelly wished. Tears would cloud his vision and then, even if Sevilla opened the folder again, Kelly would see nothing.

“I would never hurt her,” Kelly said finally.

“You’ll have to forgive me, Kelly, but that’s something they all say.”

“It’s true.”

“That’s something they all say, too.” Sevilla stood up from the table and took the folder with him. He went to the door. “And they say something else.”

“What?”

“They say please, Kelly. In the end they all say please.”

“Don’t leave me here.”

“Buena suerte.”

TEN

THEY KNOCKED KELLY’S LOOSE TEETH out and he choked on his own blood. With one holding him over the table, another punched Kelly in the kidneys until his back was a mass of unbroken pain.

His head went into a sack and the sack into water. A metal basin the size of a baby bathtub was as deep as the ocean. In the end, Kelly heard nothing but his heart beating in his ears, slowly and more slowly.

Men stripped off Kelly’s shirt and whipped him with electric wire. Alcohol on bare meat was white-hot agony.

A fat battery and copper-toothed clamps set his flesh ablaze.