“Every night I eat dinner here with my wife and son. And every night we eat in silence. Can you guess why?”
Jose Luis shook his head and whispered that he could not.
“It’s because my wife and son have nothing to talk to me about anymore. They haven’t for over a year now. What am I supposed to do, ask them about their day? They hate that I’ve kept them in this house. They hate me because of it. I can tell them all about the Devil, even show them pictures, but it doesn’t matter. For some reason, they blame me. And yes, I know that I am really the one to blame, but they don’t need to know that. All they need to know is that the Devil is out there and he wants to kill them. And as for the Devil, I have no control over what he does next. I know he’ll come someday, but I have no idea what day that will be. I have no control. Do you understand that? No control at all. So when I have control over something, you better believe I make sure to do everything I can to make it happen. That’s why we’re doing this tonight. That woman embarrassed me—the entire town embarrassed me—and I will not let it stand. Do you understand? Are my words making sense?”
Jose Luis nodded silently.
“Good. Now I think you’re right. I should stop drinking. But there’s still more than half a bottle left of good tequila. So we’re going to sit here and you’re going to drink the entire bottle until it’s gone.”
La Miserias was quiet and still, just as it typically was in the middle of the night. Almost everybody in town was asleep in bed.
Yolanda was not.
She was in bed, yes, but she was not asleep. She stared up at the ceiling like she did most nights, Dorado asleep at the foot of the bed. When the insomnia had started exactly, she didn’t know, but over the course of several months it seemed to be getting worse. Before she would try reading, but the small print in the books gave her headaches. She tried watching TV, but there was nothing interesting on, and she realized she was just wasting electricity. And so she had taken to simply lying in bed as she did now. Staring at the ceiling. Telling her mind to shut down so she could fall asleep. And her mind, as usual, completely ignoring her.
Two young men had been chosen to keep watch. The town had divided up the watch in six-hour shifts. The young men were stationed on the roofs of different houses near the road that led into town. Each of them had a rifle. Each of them had an air horn, which they would use to alert everybody in town if the narcos returned. The young men understood the importance of their jobs, but they were both tired from working all day. Each of them kept nodding off on their respective rooftops, but neither fell entirely asleep. It was three o’clock in the morning, and they had another hour before others came to take over their watch. All they had to do now was wait.
Ramon had just dozed off when Carlos nudged him with an elbow.
“Don’t fall asleep on me.”
Ramon shook his head as if to clear it and sat up straight in the seat.
“Did I miss anything?”
Carlos lit a cigarette, shook his head.
“No, you did not miss a single thing. We have been sitting here now for almost eight hours and not one goddamned thing has happened. I think Samantha Lu was full of shit.”
They were parked off the main road among a cluster of trees about a quarter mile up from the drive leading to Fernando Sanchez Morales’s house. Like Carlos said, they had been there now for nearly eight hours. Ever since Ramon had gotten the call from the woman who called herself Samantha Lu. He had immediately called Carlos and they had sped all the way up here without a solid plan in mind. So they did the only thing that made sense: they found a secluded spot to park the car and watch the house.
Carlos blew smoke out the window, tapped the ash off the cigarette against the windowpane.
“I think we should call it a night and head home. Try to get a few hours of decent sleep before we both need to be at the office bright and early.”
Ramon said nothing.
Carlos said, “I want to catch the Devil as much as you do, but we have other cases that we need to work.”
Ramon just stared out the windshield.
Carlos took a final drag off the cigarette and flicked it out into the dirt.
“I honestly don’t know what more we can do at this point. We can’t get other officers to take our place to watch the house. They’ll want to know why we think the Devil is going to attack the Morales family next, and what are we going to tell them? That a woman who claims to be a student from America—and who kicked our asses the other night—says that the Devil is headed here next? No, Ramon, you know just how crazy that sounds. Even saying it out loud now sounds crazy. I’m tired and I’m cranky and at this point I just want to go home. So let’s go home, yes?”
Still staring out the windshield, Ramon asked, “What would you do with the reward money?”
“What reward money?”
“For the Devil.”
“We’re policía, Ramon. We don’t get the reward even if we catch him. Maybe a commendation, a nice letter from the president, but no reward.”
“The PFM isn’t the only ones offering a reward.”
Carlos laughed out loud.
“You mean the reward the cartels are supposedly offering?”
“Ten million dollars. We split it down the middle. Half for you, half for me. Though maybe you would feel generous and only take
