The Dead Women of Juarez

the time he had come here with his wife, but Adela’s face didn’t come to him. “Jimenez,” she told Sevilla at last. “Yes, I think that’s it.”

“Jimenez?”

“Yes.”

“What was his first name?”

“Cornelio, I think.”

“Did he show you identification?”

“Yes.”

“Was it city or state police?”

“I can’t tell the difference. I do clerical work here; I don’t speak to police. Not like Paloma did. Or Ella.”

Sevilla thought to ask Adela more questions, but there was no point. Paloma he knew and Ella Arellano, as well. There were two or three others he could recall by their faces if not their names. Marina? He wasn’t sure. “What did he want to know?”

“He wanted to ask about the American. He was lucky I was the one here; I remembered everything the American asked. And to think I sent him after Ella! I even gave him directions! What did he want to do to her, I wonder?”

Sevilla scribbled as quickly as he could. “He? You mean Kelly wanted to see Senorita Arellano?”

“I told you: he pretended he didn’t know where Paloma was. I sent him to Ella. I felt so stupid when the policeman told me everything.”

“You had no way to know,” Sevilla said automatically. His thoughts were turning.

“I should have known. Anyone who could do such a thing… you can tell from their eyes.”

“If only that were true. Senora, what else did you tell this policeman? Did he ask to see Ella, too?”

“Yes. I gave him the same directions.”

Sevilla flipped his notepad to a new page. Tension crawled in his back, made the muscles around his spine ache. He wished for another little breeze to flush the heat out of the office; it was as hot in here as it was in the full sun. “Can you give them to me?” he asked finally. “In case I can’t get a hold of this Jimenez. It would be a great favor.”

“Of course,” Adela said. She talked and Sevilla wrote and in the end Sevilla left his card with the woman and stepped out of the stifling little space with relief. The streets had grown still in the after-lunch quietude. When he reached the sidewalk he saw a CLOSED sign in the dentist’s window.

Normally he would also sleep in a still, shaded place where the troubles of the day so far could be shed, but Sevilla went to his car quickly. He rolled the windows down and invisible clouds of intense heat flowed out of the cabin. He sweated afresh beneath the layers of suit and shirt. The engine idled until the air conditioner was strong enough to take over. With the windows up and cool air circulating, Sevilla pored over his notes.

Cornelio Jimenez left no card. If it had been Garcia or even Enrique on the doorstep of Mujeres Sin Voces then Sevilla would have no reason to doubt the man or his appearance. The tension in his back climbed higher and settled between his shoulder blades to clench the nerves there.

He dialed Adriana Quintero’s number and got her voice mail instead of her assistant.

“Senora,” Sevilla said, “this is Rafael Sevilla. I wanted to ask you about one of your investigators, Cornelio Jimenez. Could you give me his number? I wanted to ask him a few questions. It would be a favor to me. Gracias. Goodbye.”

Almost no one walked the streets. The city was drained of bodies at this hour. Only the maquiladoras worked around the clock without pause. There were no quiet and shaded spots there.

He wanted to call Enrique, but it was too soon. His thoughts turned still further and pushed toward the colonias and Ella Arellano. There the people would be sleeping, as well.

“Damn it.”

Sevilla smacked the steering wheel with his palm. He put the car in gear and drove away.

SEVEN

ONCE ENRIQUE’S POLICE STATION had seemed just another government building in a simple collection of such buildings near the office of the Procuraduria. White brick and windows tinted against the sun and barred entryways saying NO ENTRANCE and a glass-and-metal box the size of a phone booth where a single policeman stood on duty, checking identification and manually operating the electric lock.

When the Sinaloa cartel came to the city, the landscape changed. At both ends of the block heavy, x-shaped sculptures made of steel crossbeams blocked traffic into a single lane. Barbed wire obstructed the sidewalks. Instead of a lone cop, a handful of armed federal police controlled the flow of people back and forth through the barricades. Still more guarded Enrique’s building, two of them from a parked jeep mounted with a heavy machine gun.

Already there was word of still more men and equipment headed to the city, more guns and more vehicles. Two days before, Enrique saw an armored personnel carrier patrolling the area around the Procuraduria. Government buildings were secured against assault within and without; uniformed officers with automatic rifles walked the halls, chatted with the local police, made themselves comfortable as if they would be there for a hundred years.

Enrique parked in a lot ringed by chain-link fencing and barbed wire a block away. Three others waited for the white van that shuttled them to and from the main building. An armored federale occupied the passenger seat, the window down though the air conditioning was on, the barrel of his rifle pointed out through the open frame and into the sky.

He didn’t recognize the men with him and they didn’t speak. Enrique knew they tensed as he did each time the van passed another vehicle moving slowly. The Sinaloa cartel and their enemies, Los Zetas, used drive-by tactics and overwhelming firepower. The van was not armored; bullets could pass through the metal skin as easily as through a sheet of corrugated aluminum. In May two years before, the Sinaloa gunned down the chief of police.

The van made a too-sharp stop in front of the building. All four got out and went in different directions. Enrique paused a moment with the sun directly overhead. A federal policeman sat in the metal-and-glass booth. The butt of his rifle rested by his boot. He nodded at Enrique and made a motion toward the door.

“Yes,” Enrique said. The lock buzzed and he went inside.

Inside there were normal sounds, the only real survivor of the drug wars. Telephones rang and there was talking and bursts of laughter. Enrique didn’t like being here anymore. A look out the windows in any direction revealed the city at siege, the city the turistas didn’t see and didn’t care to. When the Gulf Cartel and the gangs and the Sinaloa clashed it was Mexican blood that flowed. In the west, in Baja, tourists were sometimes shot, sometimes kidnapped, but here it was still a domestic war; el Paso del Norte was too valuable to jeopardize.

Enrique climbed the stairs to the second floor. Here was the open bullpen, desks crowded together in clutches of three or four under harsh fluorescent lighting. The air had the smell of men working and coffee and dust.

First he checked his desk. He kept his space neat. His desk calendar was carefully marked with appointments, times and people. The logo of the Policia Municipal bounced around the screen of his computer. A few messages on pink slips of paper were stuffed beneath his keyboard. He could wait to answer those.

Captain Garcia kept an office at the edge of the bullpen, away from Enrique. Normally an assistant would have an adjoining space and enjoy a small part of his master’s cachet, but Garcia kept Enrique among the rest to watch and listen and report. Enrique didn’t tell Garcia most of what he heard about the man they called La Bestia.

Thinking of Garcia made Enrique glance toward the man’s workspace. The blinds on the office windows were open, the desk was empty. Garcia had a computer he rarely used for anything except playing games and wandering the internet. His filing cabinets were empty. His messages were routed through Enrique and he hadn’t bothered setting up his own voice mail. There was no need for any of these things because La Bestia was not an investigator. La Bestia enforced.