The Dead Women of Juarez

He left the bullpen. A few men said hello, but most kept clear of him. This was the only benefit of being close to Garcia.

In the basement the ceilings were lower and the cool air drier. Exposed veins of wire and pipe snaked along the walls and overhead. Occasionally an air compressor roared and pumped cool to some section of the great structure. It was not like being in the heart of the building, but in its guts.

Evidence stood behind a barricade of mesh steel. No soldier stood guard here. Two women in uniform kept watch over ten interconnected rooms of metal shelving installed floor to ceiling in tight rows. Los Tigres del Norte played quietly on a radio, the accordion jumping through “La Puerta Negra.” The heavy-framed metal door was secured with two locks. An opening above the check-counter was no more than two feet wide.

“Buenas tardes,” Enrique told one of the women. One was young, the other old. It was always women down here, away from the sun and blood and gunshots of the street. In America women worked the streets alongside the men. Not so here.

“Buenas tardes,” the old woman replied. She came to the counter.

“I need something,” Enrique said. He filled out a slip and passed it through the barrier. “For Captain Garcia. I don’t know the item number, but this is the case. It’s a red notebook. It should be the only thing like it.”

The old woman examined the paper. Her face was expressionless. “All right,” she said at last, and passed it to the young woman. “It will be a few minutes.”

“I can wait,” Enrique said.

They had no words for each other. Enrique caught himself pacing in the open space beneath a hanging rack of exposed fluorescent bulbs and stopped. On the radio the Tigres gave way to Conjunto Primavera and the Chihuahuense band accompanying Tony Melendez while he sang about his first time in love. Enrique did not care for norteno and never had.

When the young woman returned she had the red notebook in a marked plastic bag. Somewhere nearby a fan kicked into motion and clattered loudly enough to drown out the radio. Enrique signed Garcia’s name in the log. He had to speak up to be heard. “Gracias, senoras.”

He felt the women watching him as he went. He resisted clutching the bag to his chest and looking back. At the stairs he put the notebook inside his jacket. It was too large to fit into a pocket, but it lay against his body. His shirt was damp with perspiration.

At the lobby he peered out of the stairwell before emerging. The building was quietening. Men were out to lunch, gone home or to a local gathering place where policemen could take the comida corrida with other policemen and a soldier at the door for safety. The shuttle van back to the parking lot came every fifteen minutes. Enrique checked his watch.

He didn’t want to wait out in the sun, but huddling in the stairwell was no good, either. He crossed the lobby and went into the men’s room, found a stall and sat down on the toilet without pulling down his pants. It was shadowed in the stall. The notebook felt like a secret thing when he brought it out, stripped it free of the plastic bag and dipped inside.

The cuaderno was a cheap, spiral-bound thing with a battered cover. Shredded- edged worms of paper crowded the spiral binding from pages torn out and discarded. The first half was names and addresses and telephone numbers, none of which Enrique recognized. A thin divider of brown paper marked the section the American used for his appointments.

Kelly Courter had a child’s kind of writing with big loops and letters that were not always the same size or shape. He wrote in English, but Enrique knew the language well enough to interpret this word or that. In the final third of the notebook he found a letter to the victim, half written, and dated more than a month before the crime. He saw no hatred there or the kind of anger that would leave a violated corpse half burned in a fallow field.

Enrique checked his watch. He had five more minutes to wait.

He paged through the notebook again. Paper stuck to his fingers and he realized his hands sweated despite the air-conditioned cool. He imagined Captain Garcia bulling into the restroom, cracking the stall open with a single blow. Enrique would be trapped between flimsy metal walls and the beating would come. He had seen many of these.

Now his hands trembled and that was enough. Enrique stuffed the plastic bag in his pants pocket and secreted the notebook into his jacket again. He stood and flushed the toilet automatically. Doing so made him feel stupid. He unlocked the stall and peeked out, but no one had come into the restroom behind him.

The van pulled up at the same time Enrique left the building. He and a half-dozen other cops piled into three rows of bench seats. “Turn up the air,” said one. Another agreed. The driver complied, but the fresh cool escaped from the open passenger window around the barrel of their guardian’s rifle.

The man beside Enrique nudged him. “I know you: aren’t you Garcia’s boy?”

Enrique didn’t recognize the man. He was heavyset, older and maybe his face might be familiar, but not now. Enrique nodded. “I’m assigned to him, yes.”

“La Bestia,” said the first cop who spoke. “Fuck.”

“You don’t look stupid enough to be his apprentice,” said another.

“That’s true,” said the older cop. His eye appraised and Enrique turned away to look out the window. “You seem more like the kind to crack a book instead of a head.”

The other cops laughed. The van moved. Enrique watched the entrance as they turned around in the street and doubled back. Garcia did not emerge from the smoked-glass doors. The soldiers didn’t even watch them go; their attention was elsewhere.

The policemen kept talking heedless of Enrique’s silence. “You know,” said one, “La Bestia is so stupid, he tried to drown a fish.”

“Do they have you read his assignments to him?” the older cop asked Enrique. “Or do they give him reports with pictures on them?”

Enrique shook his head. The notebook clung to the material of his shirt. He was sweating again.

“At least he can break those narco bastards,” said the first cop. The laughter stilled and there was assent all around. “If stupid is what it takes, then so be it.”

The older cop grunted. He nudged Enrique. “Don’t take the joking too hard, amigo. Everyone is just jealous. They made the book for us, not for Garcia. We should all have such a free hand.”

“It’s all right,” Enrique managed. He saw the parking lot ahead, the high fences and the curling masses of barbed wire shining in the sun. A drop of perspiration dripped into his eye. It burned and he wiped at it with his cuff.

“I heard he made a woman-killer confess,” said the older cop.

“Yes,” Enrique lied. He wanted to get out of the van even though it was in motion. The roof seemed too low, the doors pushed inward too far. He wished he was closer to the soldier and the open window.

“Good, good. We can joke, but he’s done a good thing. Feminicidios.”

“You can tell him the jokes if you want,” said one of the policemen. “He won’t get them anyway.”

The men laughed, but the humor was faded. Enrique made a weak smile. He was glad when the van stopped and he could step out onto the hot asphalt and get away from them. The older cop said goodbye, but Enrique moved away without saying anything. He felt breathless, the notebook pressing until he couldn’t draw in enough air. Inside his car he ripped the notebook out of his jacket and cast it onto the passenger seat. He put his hands on the hot metal of the roof and ignored the pain. He sucked in great lungfuls of air and the edges of his vision glowed with heat and hyperventilation.

When the moment passed, he got into his car and turned over the engine. He fastened his seatbelt and cinched it tightly. He closed his eyes until the glowing faded. He opened them again. His hands were on the wheel, the air conditioner humming while the engine idled. When he looked left and when he looked right he expected to see Garcia there, but he was alone.

EIGHT

THEY MET AT THE BACK DOOR OF Sevilla’s home well after sundown. Sevilla knew he smelled of whisky, but there was nothing to be done about it. Enrique didn’t seem to notice, or at least he pretended he didn’t.

“Come in,” Sevilla said. “Did you close the gate?”