The Dead Women of Juarez

smoke. Once he got the lock open he let himself into the still shadows inside.

“Hola,” Sevilla called softly, and shut the door behind him. He set two locks and the chain, though these too were unnecessary. A standing lamp near the entrance when switched on cast dim yellow light across a crowded front room. Sevilla put his keys in a bowl by the door and realized he still carried the empty bottle of Johnnie Walker. He tucked it into his jacket and felt ashamed.

The furniture was simple, plain and comfortable. Liliana decorated with hand-sewn throws and pillows and a great painting of Jesus dominated one wall. Christ pointed to his Sacred Heart. Sevilla touched his chest unconsciously when he passed.

Another wall was devoted to family photographs new and old. Frames brushed against frames, black and white with color in a sunburst radiating from a picture of Sevilla and Liliana on their wedding day. Sevilla wore his uncle’s best suit on loan and Liliana her mother’s wedding dress. They were outside, but though the sun shone in the photo it rained later on and the reception was driven indoors.

Sevilla disposed of the empty whisky bottle in the kitchen and put a few pieces of newspaper on top of it. The squat, rounded refrigerator was the same one he and Liliana bought with their wedding money. The freezer had to be defrosted manually, but it still kept food cold. Sevilla found a bottle of Jarritos to wash away the lingering taste of Senor Walker.

His home had two bedrooms. More family photos decorated the short hallway that divided the house. These were mostly of his daughter Ana in her growing years, though a few showed Ana and her daughter Ofelia. Once Sevilla and Liliana hoped to fill the hallway with pictures of all their children and grandchildren, but one wall was empty and the other only partly filled.

Sevilla undressed in the bathroom and took a shower. He did not like the look of his reflection — the deep redness of his eyes, the heaviness of his cheeks — but he shaved and put on cologne and hoped for better the next day. Briefly he thought of Kelly, but forced from his mind the image of Kelly in his cell. “Manana,” Sevilla said aloud.

He put on pajamas, a tatty robe and slippers and went to his daughter’s room. Originally the space belonged to Liliana and him, but when Ofelia came without a father the decision was made to give up the room to the child and her mother. The bed was small and neat, Ofelia’s crib beside it. A changing table was still stocked with cotton diapers, pins and ointments. Once Senora Alvarez, who cleaned up, asked whether Sevilla wanted it all taken out, given away, but Sevilla said no, though he could not explain why.

“Hola, hija,” Sevilla told the empty room. “Hola, nieta.”

He sat on the bed. A picture of Ana with Ofelia rested on the endtable. Sevilla allowed himself to hold it, but not to look at the image directly: a young woman and a baby at the Parque Central in autumn. Ana’s smile had a crooked tooth in front.

Sevilla didn’t cry because there were no tears anymore. He simply sat with a weight pressed on his heart until the whisky threatened to put him to sleep. When he could barely keep his eyes open any longer, he put the photograph away and went back to the room he once shared with his wife and went to bed.

He slept, but it was not a good sleep, though at least the dreams were only half formed and he remembered none of the details whenever he woke, however briefly, during the night.

TWO

THE TELEPHONE RANG IN THE morning after coffee. Sevilla stood in the kitchen wearing rumpled pajamas with the early sun showing through the bars on the back windows. The house smelled of the fresh brew, but not of home. “?Bueno?”

“The American is dead.”

Sevilla felt heat and pain in his ear. “What?”

“Kelly Courter is dead,” said the man on the other end.

“What? When? Who is this?”

The line buzzed. Sevilla missed the cradle with the receiver and spilled his coffee at the same time. He cursed and got it right, but his hands shook while his mind turned.

“I’ll clean it up,” he said to no one, and then made a new call.

THREE

SEVILLA DROVE TO THE HOSPITAL General, a plain hunk of functional building peppered with windows. He showed his identification to the attendant at the parking lot and parked in a space marked for a doctor. In his time Sevilla had spent hours upon hours at the Hospital General, enduring its crowded waiting rooms and cracked plastic chairs and the smell of death, urine, blood and cigarettes.

It was no different at this early hour, though perhaps there were fewer people than usual. Sevilla saw an old man in a wheelchair, already hooked up to fluids and his leg elevated. People slept sitting up, leaning against one another. A television droned quietly near the ceiling of one corner, the color out of sync and the signal diffuse.

The counter had cracked sliding windows to protect the staff and as Sevilla approached a nurse opened one. They had no computers here. At the Hospital General they used clipboards and awkwardly photocopied forms for everything. Her workspace was crowded with paper. Sevilla showed his identification again. “I’m looking for a patient: Kelly Courter.”

“When did he check in?”

“I don’t know. Sometime last night.”

The woman was young, no more than twenty, and something about her made Sevilla’s heart ache. She sorted through her many layers of documents. The skin creased between her eyebrows, but when she looked up it was gone. “I’m sorry to say he is in Cuidado Intensivo.”

“Which way is that?”

“Through those doors. Down the hall. You’ll see the signs.”

“Gracias, senorita.”

Sevilla passed through double doors into a broad, greenly lit hall. He followed the signs until he saw the first uniformed policeman, and then another and another. A knot of six stood guard around the entrance to the emergency room, talking to each other or idly watching a television fixed on a stand.

The cops snapped to when Sevilla came closer, then relaxed when he showed his badge and ID. He was one of them. “Where is he?” Sevilla asked them. “The American.”

“In there. But he’s unconscious. The doctors say—”

“I’ll find out,” Sevilla interrupted. “Con permiso.”

He pushed through them and through the door. The room beyond was larger than he expected, with space for three beds though two were empty. Kelly lay twisted in the nearest bed. No television chattered here; the steady beep of a heart monitor kept the quiet at bay. A respirator hissed in concert and in the far corner a woman in a coal-colored pantsuit spoke quietly into a cell phone.

Kelly’s face was obscured by an enormous mass of gauze and the respirator hose snaked out of a nest of transparent tape that let the color of bruises and blood show through. Both of his arms were bound in casts from upper arm to fingertips. His lower legs bulged beneath the light blanket, cuffed in inflatable sheaths that breathed on their own, squeezing away clots that might form and kill the lungs or brain.

“Damn you, Kelly,” Sevilla said under his breath.

Sevilla wanted to go to Kelly’s bedside, but he waited for the woman on the phone. She raised a finger to him while she talked and Sevilla nodded. The conversation lasted another minute. When the woman closed the phone, she crossed the room and shook Sevilla’s hand. “Rafael Sevilla? It’s good to meet you. I’m Adriana Quintero. With the FEDCM.”

“I know you,” Sevilla said. Quintero had a firm grip. He saw that her nails were manicured and painted a subtle shade of seashell pink. She smelled faintly of good perfume and her hair was perfect. “I’ve seen you on the television.”

Quintero smiled briefly. The cell phone went into her pocket. When she looked at Kelly, the smile was gone. “They told me you helped secure his confession.”