Still no answer.
“Doesn’t matter in the end. Somebody lit the bodies on fire. But before you did, you didn’t properly search the prostitute. I’m guessing when you were hiding with the children in that closet you took off all your jewelry because already the idea of claiming you were the children’s nanny had entered your mind. So you wanted to make sure the prostitute didn’t have on any jewelry either. But you missed her belly button ring. How am I doing so far, Daniela?”
No response.
“Anyway, Miguel drives you away. He puts in an anonymous call acting like the Devil. He says he just killed a woman and two children and tells the policía where to find the bodies. Because crank calls like that come in all the time, only one car went out initially. Then your dad eventually showed up—I recognize you now, Comandante Espinoza—and despite your strained relationship of course he was devastated. And then when he heard about the phone call and how it went to the motel and the crime scene investigators determined Miguel had been working there, I’m guessing the name rang a bell to your father. And once it became clear Miguel had gone missing, your father decided to hunt him down. How long that took, it’s hard to say, but it couldn’t have been more than two days because that was when Miguel’s body was found. Did your father tell you how he cut up the body into different pieces and stuffed them in a trashcan? Probably tried to make it look like some narcos did it. In the end it doesn’t really matter, because he got information from Miguel and found you and then brought you out here to this ranch house in the middle of nowhere. And now that Fernando Morales is dead, I bet your father decided it was time to come get you. And since we’ve been keeping an eye on him, we followed him all the way here.”
Daniela says nothing.
“I’ll admit, you and Miguel almost got away with it. As far as anyone was concerned, the Devil killed you and the children. There was no way you could have known about the list.”
This last part piques Espinoza’s interest.
“What list?”
“The Devil was killing the wives and children of certain cartel families as retribution for what happened to his own family.”
Understanding ripples across the old man’s face.
“So it was really—”
I nod and cut him off.
“Yes, it was really the Devil who attacked the Morales compound.”
“Where … where is he now?”
“Dead. I killed him.”
“When?”
“Two nights ago. He went after Fernando Morales’s wife and son.”
Espinoza frowns, shaking his head.
“But there was no body. There were dead narcos and there were my two investigators and a few other bodies, but not the Devil.”
“That’s because we decided to take the body with us when we left. We buried it out in the middle of nowhere.”
“But … why?”
“If the public learned who he really was it might cause too many problems for President Cortez. Besides, the president sounds like a good man. He already lost his son once. He shouldn’t have to lose him again.”
Espinoza looks from me to Nova and then back to me. He takes a deep breath.
“If you are going to kill us, then get it over with and kill us.”
I smile at him and glance back at Nova who has kept his gun trained on them this entire time.
Nova has a bag strapped over his shoulder. The gun not once wavering in his hand, he lowers his shoulder to let the bag drop to the floor and kicks the bag over to me.
I stuff my own gun in the waistband of my jeans and then crouch down and zip open the bag. Before I pull out the contents, though, I glance back up at Daniela.
“Whose idea was it to kill the children, yours or Miguel’s?”
She doesn’t answer. Her eyes remain flat. Which, in a way, is all the answer I need.
I pull out the two sets of handcuffs, the two cans of lighter fluid, the pack of matches. I line them out on the floor and stand back up and clap my hands together. I ignore Espinoza and focus all my attention on Daniela when I ask my final question.
“So, are we going to do this the easy way or the hard way?”
Coda
We drive north. The border is maybe six, seven hours away. Time doesn’t seem to have much meaning anymore. I’ve hardly gotten any sleep the past couple days. Which is why Nova drives Geraldo Espinoza’s car. We’ve switched out the plates with one of the other cars at the ranch house just in case.
We don’t talk much. Hell, we don’t talk at all. It’s been at least two hours since we left the burning ranch house. Two hours since we tied up all the loose ends.
The silence, it starts to unnerve me, so I decide to break it.
“I don’t think I would do it.”
Nova glances at me, says, “Do what?”
“Kill Hitler as a baby.”
“Where is this coming from all of a sudden?”
“I’ve just been thinking about it. It’s been bugging me.”
“Why?”
“Because I couldn’t bring myself to kill Morales’s kid.”
Nova says nothing to this.
After a beat of silence, I take a deep breath.
“After I had killed Alejandro—after Morales’s wife had embraced her son and looked at me and said thank you—I stared at them for a long moment. I stared at the woman who had married Morales. Who may have never taken part in the man’s crimes but who was complicit all the same. And then I stared at the boy in her arms. The child whose path was to no doubt take up his father’s business one day. Who might become even more ruthless than his own father. The boy could grow up to become one
