Somebody behind the camera—maybe the cameraman himself—tells her to look up.
Gabriela looks up.
For an instant, she looks defiant. There are tears in her eyes, and her face is bruised and bloody, strands of bloody hair clinging to her face, but the defiance that flashes in her eyes gives me hope, if only for an instant. Because then, a second later, that defiance blinks out and is replaced by fear.
Yolanda is on her feet now, and with the help of her cane, she shuffles over to where I’m standing, frozen. The moment she sees what’s on the cell phone’s screen, she murmurs a quick prayer.
She says, “Turn it off. Do not give them what they want.”
But I can’t turn it off. I can’t stop watching. This may be what the narcos want—after all, who else would post what is most certainly a snuff film—but I can’t look away.
I hear myself say something, but the voice doesn’t sound like my own.
“I need a car.”
Yolanda says, “What?”
“I need a car.”
Yolanda tells the boy to hurry out and find somebody who will loan me a car. The boy turns and sprints out of the house.
I keep staring at the screen.
Two men step into view, both of them masked. They have tools, and they use those tools like they’ve used them many times before.
I don’t stop watching. I can’t look away.
Because of the tape covering Gabriela’s mouth, her screams are muffled, but they still cause a chill to race down my spine.
Yolanda is still in the room with me—I can sense her there—but it’s the cell phone I keep watching, because the men take their time. They take turns. And Gabriela, despite the tape over her mouth, screams and cries and then screams some more.
How much time has passed since the video started is hard to say—five minutes, maybe, ten minutes—but at one point Yolanda’s voice drifts in and snaps me out of my fugue state.
“A car is waiting outside.”
But I don’t react. I keep watching—the men leaning over Gabriela with their tools, twisting and tearing and rending flesh—until Yolanda grabs the cell phone and rips it from my trembling hand.
I stare into space for an instant—into the void where the screen was just moments ago, so many thousands of pixels working to show Gabriela being tortured—and then I blink and turn my head to look at Yolanda.
She stares hard at me, the cell phone clutched to her chest, and says one word.
“Go.”
Forty-Two
I park three blocks away from the house, what feels like a safe distance, though for an instant I second-guess myself because adrenaline is still surging through my veins. I take a moment to try to calm myself, to simply breathe, and I’m surprised I managed to make it all this way without getting pulled over. I must have been doing at least one hundred miles per hour at some points, and now I’m here, three blocks away from Gabriela’s house.
I shut off the engine and open my door. I don’t get out at first, scanning the empty street. With the door open, I can hear the sounds of the city, but nothing strikes me as off.
Gun in hand, I step out of the car and quietly shut the door and start down the block.
A minute later I’m standing on the street outside Gabriela’s house. The garage door is closed, but the gate has been forced open.
In the back of my mind I know this might be a trap. Narcos could be inside, just waiting for me to finally show myself. A few could even be positioned on rooftops right now, rifle sights leveled on my head.
I look up and down the street one last time before pushing the gate open and entering the yard.
I slip a penlight from my pocket as I approach the front door. Shine the light at the door and, yes, it has been forced open too, the lock smashed. The door has been pushed closed, so anybody from the street would think nothing of it.
Part of me knows that I need to be careful right now—those narcos could be right inside, holding their breath with anticipation as they aim their rifles at the door—but at this moment I’m not thinking straight. It’s reckless, I know, but I can’t help it. I don’t open the door quietly but instead kick it open and charge inside, my gun raised, the penlight sweeping back and forth searching for any movement.
Nothing.
The living room is empty.
Except, well, not quite.
Gabriela’s grandmother sits in her chair in the corner. Her head is down, like she’s dozed off, only I know she’s not sleeping.
The front of her shirt is dark with blood.
I quickly approach and duck down, shining the penlight at her face. The bastards sliced her throat. All things considered, it’s a small mercy.
It doesn’t take long to search the rest of the house. The place has been ransacked, but there’s nothing to find on either floor.
In Gabriela’s room, the computer on her desk has been destroyed. I’m not sure what the thinking was behind that, but obviously they had used her computer to upload the video to La Baliza and then they had—
Wait.
Why come back here to upload the video on her computer? That seems like too much work. Like too much chance of getting caught. Unless …
“Shit.”
I whisper it as I rush out of the room, down the stairs, through the house toward the door that leads into the garage.
The smell hits me almost instantaneously. It’s not a stench, not yet, but it’s certainly ripe. After all, it couldn’t have been more than two hours since those men were here. The body, in many respects, is still fresh.
I don’t bother with the penlight. I flick on the switch just inside the door and the single bulb in the ceiling blinks to life.
I didn’t recognize the cinderblock wall of the
