Father Crisanto pauses again.
“Cortez had a son named Alejandro. He was a lieutenant in the Mexican Army. Some believed he would one day lead the army. He was Cortez’s only son, his pride and joy. Alejandro had a wife and two children of his own, a young boy and girl. Cortez loved his grandchildren very much. Anybody who knew the man knew that. Anybody who met the man would probably guess—”
Father Crisanto breaks off midsentence, shaking his head.
I say, “The cartels went after his grandchildren, didn’t they?”
Father Crisanto nods.
“Yes, but not just his grandchildren. They went after the entire family.”
“What did the cartels do?”
This was what cartels did, Father Crisanto says:
They sent sicarios, or hired killers, to take out Cortez’s son and his family. They raided Alejandro’s house one night. They stormed inside and put a gun to Alejandro’s wife’s head to force Alejandro to do as they said. But still Alejandro tried to fight them. For his trouble, one of the sicarios took out a knife and cut off Alejandro’s wife’s little finger. Her strangled cries echoed throughout the house. After that, Alejandro agreed to surrender.
They tied him to a chair. They brought his wife in and stood her in front of him, completely naked. And then they proceeded to rape her. The men took turns. After that, they brought in Alejandro’s daughter, who was no older than ten years old. They raped her too. Finally, they brought in Alejandro’s young son and raped him as well.
After the men were done, they tied Alejandro’s wife and children to chairs and doused them with gasoline. They doused Alejandro, too.
The gasoline had dripped from each person, making a trail, so when one of the sicarios lit a match and threw it at Alejandro’s wife, the fire began to fan out toward Alejandro and the children.
Father Crisanto pauses, shaking his head again. He’s told the story so far in a stunted, toneless voice. Merely relaying events. Doing everything he could not to think too much about those events.
To nudge the priest along, I ask, “When did Cortez learn that everyone died?”
Father Crisanto takes a deep breath.
“The next morning word finally got to Cortez about what happened. He rushed to his son’s house to see for himself. They were still in the room, their charred bodies still propped up on those chairs. The two children, the two adults. To Cortez and anybody else, it looked as if his son and his family had burned to death.”
I glance at Nova and frown before I turn back to Father Crisanto.
“What do you mean, it looked as if his son and his family had burned to death?”
“Because”—Father Crisanto looks at me as if for the first time—“Alejandro survived.”
Forty-Seven
When the sicarios broke into the house, Alejandro knew his family was going to die. It was not something he wanted to believe—or wanted to accept—but deep down in his heart he knew it was true. That was why he fought them at first. Did everything he could to give his family a chance. But once they cut off his wife’s finger, once they rounded up the children and put guns to their heads, Alejandro knew he had no choice but to surrender.
Had he known just what the sicarios intended to do, he may have tried to kill his wife and children himself just to spare them.
After the men had beaten and raped his family, gasoline was poured on them, the scent so pungent it caused his muscles to tense. The next thing he knew his family was on fire, just like that, first his wife was in flames, then his children, and then the flames came for him.
The sicarios stood watching for maybe a minute before they left.
By that point, Alejandro was also burning. His legs completely on fire, the flames working their way up his body toward his face. He had been working at the ropes binding his wrists this entire time, trying to loosen them as much as possible without the sicarios noticing, so once the fire began to consume his hands, the rope became weak enough to break apart.
His entire body now on fire—the flames burning off patches of skin while parts of his clothes melted and fused to his body—he ripped his ankles free and fell to the floor, rolling back and forth to extinguish the flames. Then he slowly climbed to his feet and stood there for a moment, watching his wife and children still burning alive. They had been set on fire first, and he knew there was no saving them. The only thing he could do now was put them out of their misery.
Alejandro hurried out of the room into his office. He grabbed the lockbox out of his desk, managed to punch in the right combination, and extracted the already loaded pistol.
When Alejandro returned, his wife was no longer bucking in her chair. Neither was his daughter. His son had gone completely motionless, and Alejandro knew that he was probably already dead.
Cursing the sicarios and God and everything else that was holy and unholy in the world, he fired a bullet into each of their heads—his wife, his daughter, his son—and then he fell to his knees, most of his nerve endings already exposed, his entire body feeling more pain than it had ever felt a day in his life.
Outside, one of the sicarios had heard the shots. That sicario hurried back inside while the others prepared to leave. The sicario raced into the room, his weapon raised, not sure what to expect. He most certainly had not expected to find Alejandro standing there in the burning room, waiting for him.
Alejandro shot the sicario in the head.
He set the gun aside and grabbed the sicario and dragged him over to the empty chair. He propped the sicario in the chair
