The Dead Women of Juarez

“Kelly kept his life in that notebook: his accounts, his telephone numbers, his appointments. I have some things copied, but nothing so recent as could help us now. I want to see what he wrote during the time when Paloma died.”

For a moment Enrique disappeared into the bedroom. When he reemerged, he shook his head. “I’ve never heard of a drug addict who kept records before. No records that make sense, anyway.”

Sevilla rose from the couch. He felt his expression sour despite himself and he turned his face from Enrique. He did not want to show his mind, too. “If you think Kelly is just some American junkie, then why bother with him at all? Let them say he did it with Esteban and it all goes away. What’s one more dead woman on the pile? It’s not like there’s not a hundred other things to worry about.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Understand this, then: I know Kelly. I spent a long time watching him, grooming him. The people who put this in motion against him, they saw him as a foreigner, a stranger. Foreigners have no one who knows them for who they are. These people, they didn’t expect someone like me. They thought Kelly was easy to make look guilty.”

“He was.”

Sevilla shook his head. “For some.”

“Even you,” Enrique insisted.

“At first,” Sevilla said, “but that was because I only listened with my head, and not my heart. What kind of men are we if we forget our hearts?”

SIX

SEVILLA WAITED TEN MINUTES AFTER Enrique was gone before leaving Kelly’s apartment. He went to his car and fished under the seat until his hand settled on the paper-wrapped neck of another bottle of Johnnie Walker. The temptation for a drink, even this early in the day, was strong, but Sevilla knew one swallow would lead to another and another until he was too spent even to drive.

The bottle went back where it came from. Two bottles in two days would be too much to excuse. Many men his age lived inside a glass of alcohol, their wits dulling as they aged into dust. Sevilla had never wanted to be such a man, not now and not before, and so the whisky would stay where it was for at least another day. Perhaps he’d forget about it and it would be a week before his thirst reminded him of what would make it all better.

He drove and while he drove he thought about Enrique Palencia.

Mostly Sevilla knew Enrique from Captain Garcia’s shadow. When state police worked with city police on drug-related matters there were often bodies involved. The narcos of the south honed their bloody-mindedness in Mexico City, the narcos of the west in Tijuana. Murder, not only drugs, was their major export. This they sold to their countrymen as eagerly as they dispensed to the Americans. Garcia was the sort of policeman Ciudad Juarez valued today: one whose expertise lay not in teasing apart layers of an investigation but in rendering them up in pieces.

Enrique lacked the hardness and flatness of Garcia, but these things would come in time. Juarez was a hard wind off the desert. Heat and sand and sheer force cut stone and sliced away the soft parts of a man until there was nothing left but sharp edges and an underlying brittleness that an unexpected blow could shatter. Garcia was expert with such blows.

Sevilla stopped at a light and watched a cluster of school-age girls dash across the walk from one curb to the next. A woman, maybe a teacher, followed them. Some carried boxes for lunch and the sight of these made Sevilla hungry. Eating was better than drinking himself into a stupor in the front seat of his car.

He drove a while longer, tracing a path that was half familiar from his time with Kelly and from the years before. In the early days when he was still getting to know Kelly, Sevilla walked the pavement well behind the man, observing but never from too close. Kelly had a wandering spirit and he was not afraid to go where the other Americans never went. At first this was because he was still in the grip of an addiction, but eventually because he had a taste for the city and its people. Sevilla thought Kelly might have made a good cop if things were very different.

Storefronts Sevilla recognized began to populate the streets. He knew a restaurant that served a hearty lunch for very little, a workingman’s place, and he navigated there without having to watch the street signs. Unconsciously he put his hand on the seat beside him, half-expecting to feel human warmth, but there was no one with him. This was not their drive anymore, but his drive.

He ate chicken and rice and tortillas in the shade of a faded orange awning. People passed his table close enough to touch and conversation bubbled up from the seats around him. From time to time Sevilla’s attention wandered to the offices across the street, the little dentist’s and the open door on the second floor.

Enrique would be back at the central station by now. It might take an hour or more for him to find Kelly’s notebook even if the rest went smoothly. Likely they wouldn’t meet again until tonight, and even then they would have to be careful who saw them and what they were doing. Much as Sevilla would have to be careful when he finished his meal and crossed the street.

He left coins on the table for the young woman who cleaned up, wiped his mouth on his handkerchief and went back out into the sun. The weather took no holiday and offered no respite. Sevilla wilted in his suit. The temptation was always there to switch to something lighter, breezier, but the suit was important to him.

A suit was Sevilla’s armor. Like his badge and identification, it was also a shield. When people saw a man in a suit, they reacted differently, behaved differently and sometimes told more than they wanted to tell by virtue of their discomfiture. Even when the temperature climbed to over a hundred, Sevilla wore a suit because after all this time he couldn’t do his work without it.

Crossing the street, Sevilla reached the switchbacked steps and climbed them one at a time. The sun felt like a weight across his shoulders. This place had a familiar smell about it that prompted unwelcome memories. He shoved them aside, and by the time he reached the door of Mujeres Sin Voces he was composed fully.

The sound of hunt-and-peck typing came from inside. Sevilla rapped on the door frame and then peered through. A slight breeze followed him through the doorway and stirred the flyers on the walls. The woman at the desk stopped her work. For a moment Sevilla saw Paloma Salazar’s face. This was where they first met.

“Police,” Sevilla said, and showed the woman his identification. “Sevilla. What is your name?”

“Adela de la Garza,” the woman replied. “I’m sorry… is something the matter?”

“Something is always the matter,” Sevilla said, and he made a gesture that vaguely encompassed the wall of flyers, all the faces and the cries for justicia. “I’m here because of Paloma.”

Adela crossed herself and then put her hands in her lap. She nodded. “We heard the news.”

“It couldn’t have happened to a finer woman,” said Sevilla.

“Are you the investigator? The one in charge?”

“No, I’m not. Paloma’s case is with the city police. But I consult with them.”

“They say it was her lover, that American. He came here, you know.”

Sevilla took a small pad from his jacket pocket and flipped back the cover. He wrote left-handed with a pencil. “Did he? This is Kelly Courter? The American who boxed?”

“Si, that’s the one. He came here after she was gone.” Adela’s expression curdled and she made a spitting gesture. “He pretended to know nothing! But now we know the truth about him.”

“You asked him about her?” Sevilla inquired.

“No. He asked me about Paloma. Where she went, how long it had been. What kind of a man doesn’t know these things? Is it true he was a drogadicto? It makes sense to me. And Paloma’s brother…”

Sevilla held up a hand for quiet. “I can’t tell you very much about the case. It’s not allowed. Where did you get all of this information?”

“From the policeman who came yesterday.”

“A policeman came here?”

Adela nodded. “That is why I was confused. He only came yesterday. How could anything have changed so soon? He told me about what happened.”

“What was this policeman’s name?”

The woman thought for a moment. Sevilla tried to remember whether he’d seen her before, even once in all