The Dead Women of Juarez

“?Policia!” he heard.

Suddenly the big doors at the head of the building were shoved apart and two of the bodyguards spilled in crying panic. Red and blue lights flashed outside in the street and then there was chaos.

Down on the floor of the warehouse the men and their whores fled toward the exits but were turned back by a flood of spotlights from outside. Loudspeakers blared orders to surrender. Some headed for the rear doors.

He wanted to do something for the poor girl at his back, but the time was now. He was on the steps now headed down.

Gunfire sounded on the street and a stray bullet shattered the pane of a high window. Bodies swirled around the great banquet table and at the center there was Madrigal, standing alone. He did not flee. His face was stone because he was not afraid.

He saw Sevilla. Sevilla saw him. The gun was in Sevilla’s hand.

“I know you,” Madrigal said over the noise.

Sevilla put a bullet through Madrigal’s eye.

The federal police poured in through the open doors of the building. Sevilla was already on his knees, his gun on the floor and his identification held over his head. Men in black armor were everywhere, charging up the steps to the second level, swarming around the girls where they lay violated and the bodies of the dead fighter and Madrigal.

Out on the street it was a stroboscopic explosion of clashing lights and black-and-white vehicles. Someone wrapped Sevilla in a blanket and steered him toward an ambulance. Once he saw the girl, the one Hernandez violated, being loaded into another, but the glimpse was short and he had no chance to speak with her.

He looked toward the apartment building. He saw Rudolfo’s window illuminated with yellow light. The ancient man was silhouetted there, and as if he knew Sevilla was watching, he raised his hand in greeting.

EIGHTEEN

IT WAS DAWN AGAIN AND HE WAS SET free. There were questions, so many questions, and he answered them all with half-truths and outright lies. In the end they had no choice but to turn him loose; the evidence was there, the men in custody, the bodies catalogued. He asked one of the federales to take him back to his car.

Behind the wheel, he steered himself to the Hospital General. He signed in at the front desk and went to Kelly’s room. It was empty.

Sevilla went to the nurse’s station. “Excuse me, I came to visit Kelly Courter. He was in that room just there.”

The nurse furrowed her brow. “Who?”

“Kelly Courter. He was being cared for here. Just there. That room.”

“You mean the American?”

“Yes, the American. Kelly Courter. Where has he gone?”

“One moment, senor.” The nurse used the phone. She spoke with her back to Sevilla and glanced once over her shoulder at him in a way Sevilla did not like. When she returned she was polite. “Please wait for Senora Garza. She is the head nurse.”

Sevilla looked into Kelly’s room again as if he might be there again and it would all be a mistake, but the bed was empty and the sheets fitted tightly. The quiet machines that ensured his breathing and monitored his pulse and kept track of the functions of his body were all gone. The room seemed emptier still than just of life.

“?Senor? Pardon me.”

He turned away from the room. The head nurse was there in her whites.

“I’m looking for Kelly Courter. He was in this room.”

“He’s been moved.”

Sevilla could not describe the sensation that rushed through him. It was more than relief or happiness but something akin to both that made his face flush and his skin tingle. He gripped Senora Garza on the arm and felt himself nearly cry. “Is he all right?”

“Yes. He’s been moved to a bed in chronic care. Follow me.”

They went away from the intensive care unit to the third floor. Kelly was held in a long room with many other beds, some occupied and some empty, the only real division between them being curtains hung from sliding tracks in the ceiling. Kelly seemed smaller here, lighter and paler, but he was real and he was alive.

“Thank you, senora,” Sevilla told the head nurse. She left them there.

He could not sit far away from Kelly here, but was so close that his leg touched the bed. This close he could hear Kelly breathing on his own, see the stubble of beard that the hospital staff kept down with trimmers and smell the odor of a man bathed every other day with a sponge as he lay motionless.

How to begin?

“Kelly,” Sevilla said. “I came to… I wanted you to know.”

There was no reason for him to hesitate. Things were no different between them, though Sevilla felt changed. It was the place, open enough that anyone could hear Sevilla talking and draw judgments that only Kelly was qualified to make. Sevilla did not want to speak here, to tell the things he knew and what he’d seen.

Sevilla put his hand on Kelly’s. It was surprisingly warm and soft the way boxers’ hands were always soft, steamed inside tape and gloves for long sessions before the bag. His own hand trembled and then his whole body shook, his breaths shuddery and his eyes suddenly filled with stinging tears. He held onto Kelly and cried until the urge was passed and then he rubbed his eyes with the edge of his sleeve.

“It’s all right now, Kelly,” Sevilla said. “It’s all right now.”

AFTERWORD

THE DEAD WOMEN OF JUAREZ IS A work of fiction and the Ciudad Juarez of the novel has been semi-fictionalized to fit my purposes as a storyteller. That said, the problem of the feminicidios, the “female homicides” of the real Ciudad Juarez, is not some feat of morbid imagination.

Since 1993 more than four hundred women have gone missing in the city or been found raped and murdered. A handful of the cases have been tried in court, but to a one the suspects have complained of fabricated evidence, torture, forced confessions. For a recent (and excellent) examination of the facts, I refer you to The Daughters of Juarez, written by Teresa Rodriguez with assistance from Diana Montane and Lisa Pulitzer.

In recent years the feminicidios have been overshadowed by an outrageously violent war between drug cartels that has plagued the state of Chihuahua and the city of Juarez in particular. This doesn’t mean the problem has gone away. If anything the situation is worse because the attention groups like Amnesty International and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights managed to direct to these women has now been taken away. The drug war trumps all.

It is my hope that this novel can in some small way shine a light on the femicides. Many dozens of families hope daily for justicia. Some would be happy just for the opportunity to bury their dead. Until the police and the government of Mexico do something substantial, that will never happen.

The group Mujeres Sin Voces in the novel is inspired by the real-life organizations Voces Sin Eco (Voices without Echo) and Las Mujeres De Negro (the Women in Black). I urge you to get involved with the issue through Amnesty International. In the end, this problem will be solved not with a bullet, but by bringing all those responsible for the abuse and murder of Juarez’s daughters to judgment before the law.

—Sam Hawken

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